The years between the end of the First and the beginning of the Second World War were a time of international conflict, political upheaval (the Irish War of Independence and subsequent Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, the rise of Nazism, intellectuals’ political allegiances to both communism and fascism) and economic instability but also a period of literary innovation and experimentation. The selection of texts chosen for this class were published between 1922 and 1938 testify to the heterogeneity of these two decades. They range from high modernism to quirky experimentation as well as more traditional forms like domestic fiction. Our focus will be predominantly, but by no means exclusively, on the ways these texts engage with their historical contexts, both ethically and aesthetically.
Please start reading the texts before the beginning of the semester (they will be discussed in the order indicated)!
Texts:
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Rosamond Lehmann, Dusty Answer
Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September
Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies
Christopher Isherwood, Mr Norris Changes Trains
Stevie Smith, Over the Frontier
Further materials will be made available in the course of the semester. |
