British Literature from the 20th century to the Present

Syllabus

Seminars:

Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness D. H. Lawrence: The Virgin and the Gipsy Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway James Joyce: “Eveline”

Christopher Isherwood: Goodbye to Berlin (extract) Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange John Fowles: The French Lieutenant’s Woman (extract) Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day

Andrea Levy: Small Island (extract)

Ian McEwan: Atonement  

Drama

Samuel Beckett: Waiting for GodotJohn Osborne: Look Back in Anger

Poetry W. B. Yeats: “The Second Coming” T. S. Eliot: “The Hollow Men”

W. H. Auden: “Musée des Beaux Arts” Philip Larkin: “Church Going” Seamus Heaney: “Punishment”

Craig Raine: “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home”

Carol Anne Duffy: “Valentine”

Benjamin Zephaniah: “Dis Poetry”

Annotation

The aim of the course is to introduce students to the cultural plurality of British literature of the 20th and 21st centuries as well as to develop the ability to analyze, interpret and evaluate texts. The chief focus will be put on major watersheds of 20th and 21st -century British literature, esp. on the dynamic development of the novel.