English 203

Book List

See below.

Description

This course will have two parts: in the first, we will read across the range of Henry James’s career, from its American beginnings to the achievements of his major phase; in the second, we will discuss a series of figures directly or indirectly influenced by James’s signature aesthetic and stylistic innovations. We will be especially interested in the development of James’s “realism,” and how it provides, for himself and others, a language for examining the shape of modern life from the late-nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. Readings by James will include Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl, The Wings of the Dove, and various shorter works. After James, we will read texts by Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein, Elizabeth Bowen, Lionel Trilling, James Baldwin, and Philip Roth. We also will screen films by Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica.

This course satisfies the Group 4 (Nineteenth Century) or Group 5 (Twentieth Century) requirement.