OBJECTIVES
LECTURE
A survey course in 20th-century English literature. A basic outline of canonical writing is presented in chronological fashion, based on the consensus of traditional literary historiography. This map of English literature is supplemented by lectures on the most vibrant alternatives to the generally accepted styles and genres. Furthermore, the course provides an outline of related literatures in English – Irish, Scottish, diasporic, colonial and post-colonial – and charts their interactions with English literature on the one hand, and their mutual cross-fertilization on the other.
SCHEDULE 4 Oct Introduction; Fiction I: Towards Modernism – From Conrad to Lawrence (Beran) 11 Oct Poetry I: Poetry and Politics (Poncarová) 18 Oct Scottish Literature (Poncarová) 25 Oct Irish Literature (Pilný) 1 Nov Fiction II: Modernism and its Legacy (Vichnar) 8 Nov British Drama 1900-1945 (Wallace) 15 Nov Poetry II: Poetry and Gender (Theinová) 22 Nov Poetry III: Poetry and Place (Theinová) 29 Nov Fiction III: 1950-1970 (Beran) 6 Dec Fiction IV: 1970-present (Beran) 13 Dec British Drama after 1945 (Wallace) 20 Dec Diasporic Writing and “New Literatures in English” (Nováková) 3 Jan, 10 Jan reserve
BASIC BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fiction I
Hilský, Martin. Modernisté. Praha: TORST, 1995.
Stříbrný, Zdeněk. Dějiny anglické literatury II. Praha: Academia, 1987.
Stape, J.H, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Messenger, Nigel. How to Study an E.M. Forster Novel. London: Macmillan, 1991.
Bowering, Peter. Aldous Huxley: A Study of the Major Novels, London: Athlone, 1968.
Poetry I
Corcoran, Neil, ed. Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century British Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Day, Gary, and Brian Docherty, eds. British Poetry from the 1950s to the 1990s: Politics and Art. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997.
Das, Santanu, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Poetry of the First World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
David, Alex, and Margaret Lee Jenkins, eds. A History of Modernist Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
David, Alex, and Margaret Lee Jenkins, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Modernist poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
“Discovering Literature: 20th Century”. British Library. https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature.
Johnston, John H. English Poetry of the First World War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.