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This course will be dedicated to the years 1900 to 1930, which produced a new movement in the various arts (literature, painting, music, dance) that was international in scope and that is still influential today. This period saw a number of fundamental changes in the political, social and cultural fields. It covers World War I and its aftermath; it was a time when traditional values were questioned, when gender relations were being renegotiated and concepts of femininity and masculinity were redefined, when new findings in psychology fostered a marked interest in the workings of the individual consciousness, and when the nature of reality itself was under severe scrutiny. And it was a time marked by considerable literary innovations. Virginia Woolf, one of the prime representatives of Modernism, claimed that a new vision of life required new forms of literary expression. We will explore these issues by analysing a variety of sources, e.g. philosophical and psychological texts, paintings, essays, fiction and poetry. Please buy and read the following texts (more will be announced in due course): James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway
Further material will be made available at the beginning of the semester. |
