Early modern writers were a self-reflexive lot. Many of their novels, stories, and poems deal with the making of art (“art” here being a term that certainly includes literature). Across creative genres, these authors explored questions concerning the identity of the artist, the conditions necessary for artistic production, and the significance of art in society. Do social conditions suppress some kinds of artistic production and encourage others? Is art an escapist repudiation of society, or can it serve as a vehicle for personal transformation? If the latter is possible, is it enough? Does art have—did it ever have—the potential to effect social change?

In this course we’ll consider Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, Mansfield’s short stories, Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and poems by Eliot and Yeats. We’ll read essays (supplied in a course pack) in which Modernist authors propound their beliefs about the role of literary art and artists, and compare these with essays by contemporary critics such as Astradur Eysteinsson and Peter Nicholls on the motivation and meaning of Modernist work. While the focus of the course will be on the early Modern period, it will also afford the opportunity to discuss the role of art and literature in our own society.