English 125D

Book List

Carpentier, Alejo: The Lost Steps; Dreiser, Theodore: Sister Carrie; Gibson, William: Neuromancer; Hardy, Thomas: Jude the Obscure; Mann, Thomas: Doctor Faustus; Woolf, Virginia: Mrs. Dalloway

Description

This course is a survey of the 20th-century novel. The novel is the quintessential form of expression of modernity and modern subjectivity. In this survey of key works of the century, we will explore the novel form as it is framed by these three thematics: history, modernism, and empire. Some questions we will address: how have the vicissitudes of modernity led to a re-direction of historical narration within the novel; how has modernist aesthetic experimentation re-shaped the very form of the novel; and, lastly, how has the phenomenon of imperialism, the asymmetrical relations of power between center and periphery, widened the scope and influence of fictive milieu? We will conclude at the cusp of the 21st century with a work of speculative fiction.

The English Department is working on expanding the class size for this offering. If you would like to enroll in this course after it fills, please put yourself on the wait list and if we are able to accommodate you, you will be added as soon as possible (no later than the first week of classes).