This class will focus on the relationship between literature and social change in England during the first three decades of the twentieth-century, which included the struggle for women's suffrage, the First World War, and the Depression. The poems, short stories, and novels that we will be studying this quarter reflect-- both in style and content--the conflicts, discoveries, and social/psychological theories that were current during this period. We will consider the relationship between "modernism" and modernity, the implications of Freudianism for literature, the impact of war and its aftermath, class conflict, changing gender roles, and other topics relevant to our reading.
Texts:
E. M. Forster, Howards End ; D.H. Lawrence, Selected Stories ; Katherine Mansfield, Selected Stories; World War One British Poets; Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway; Elizabeth Bowen, Death of the Heart