Admission requirements
Successful completion of Literature 1A, 1B, 2 and 3 or equivalent.
Description
This course will give an overview of literature written in Great Britain, Ireland and the United States between ca. 1890 and 1940, the period of Modernism, noted for its international and transatlantic dynamics. Keywords of this period are “subjectivity”, “epistemology”, “relativism” and “-ism”. Next to a focus on the formal and experimental aspects of Modernist texts, this literature will be studied in a larger context (developments in the fields of science and the arts, social and political developments).
We will study canonical Modernist writers such as W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, H.D., Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, as well as the importance of the various avant-garde manifestoes and magazines.
Course objectives
This course will extend and deepen the power of students’ literary critical analysis through in-depth consideration of texts. Students will explore critical debates central to the literature of the Modernist period. The course will also aim to extend the students’ skills in the reading of narrative and the understanding of the relationship of a text to its cultural/social context. Students will be encouraged to share analytical and critical views on the texts ascribed in class discussion, and will focus research skills in the writing of a final essay. This essay will be on a relevant subject of their own choice within the parameters of the course, and will further extend the students’ critical skills and their ability to produce good, clear writing. A final exam will test students’ knowledge of the literature of the period, and give them an opportunity to display their insight, their familiarity with the texts, and the range of their critical ideas.
Timetable
The timetable will be available by June 1st on the website
Mode of instruction
Two-hour seminar per week.
Assessment method
Essay of 3000 words (50%), final written test (50%)
Blackboard
At least two weeks before the course starts, the Blackboard site will be open for self-enrolment. There you can find the course syllabus. See Blackboard
Reading list
Lawrence Rainey, ed., Modernism: An Anthology (Blackwell)
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Penguin)
E.M Forster, A Passage to India (Penguin)
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Penguin)
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (Oxford World’s Classics)
Henry James, What Maisie Knew (Penguin)
Registration
Students should register through uSis. Exchange students cannot register through uSis, but must see the director of studies and register with her. If you have any questions, please contact the departmental office, tel. 071 5272144 or mail: english@hum.leidenuniv.nl.
Exchange and Study Abroad students, please see the Study in Leiden website for information on how to apply
Registration Studeren à la carte and Contractonderwijs
Registration Studeren à la carte
Registration Contractonderwijs
Contact
Departmental Office English Language and Culture, P.N. van Eyckhof 4, room 102C. Tel. 071 5272144; mail: english@hum.leidenuniv.nl.
Co-ordinator of Studies: Ms T.D. Obbens, MA, P.N. van Eyckhof 4, room 103C.