English 134

Other Readings and Media

C. Churchill: Cloud 9; J.M. Coetzee: Waiting for the Barbarians; G. Greene: The End of the Affair; K. Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day; J. Ramazani, ed.: The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (volume 2 only); A. Roy: The God of Small Things; Z. Smith: White Teeth; T. Stoppard: Arcadia. [While this book list is fairly solid, you may want to come to the first class before purchasing everything on the list, particularly the Ramazani anthology.]

Description

In this course we will sketch the field of contemporary British literature, closely reading some of the key post-1945 texts from Britain, the Commonwealth, and Ireland. In addition to paying careful attention to issues of poetic form and narrative style, we will think through the relevance of such a phrase as �British literature� in a globalizing world, especially in the aftermath of the British Empire and in the wake of several generations of scholarship that have focused on the colonial legacy of that empire in such places as India, Africa, the Caribbean, and Ireland. Students will be required to write two essays and a final exam during the semester.