ENGL 288 Modern British Literary Traditions
A survey of modern British and Anglophone literature, this course ranges across the rise of the novel in the 18th century, the birth of Romanticism, the varieties of realism (and its others) in Victorian-era fiction and poetry written in England and across its empire, and modernism’s diverse experiments; it concludes with some more contemporary British and Anglophone writers that reflect on Britain’s past and present from different geographical standpoints. The survey is meant to help students explore, discuss, and write perceptively about the literary innovations in these different periods of British literature, and to situate the literary works studied in the historical contexts they were shaped by and responded to (including the Restoration, industrialization, the expansion of the British Empire, the World Wars, decolonization). Students will gain a broad understanding of modern British literary history and the spread of Anglophone literature across the globe during the 19th-21st centuries, cultivate their capacities for interpreting challenging poetry and fictional prose, and grow as analytic writers.
Prerequisite
One First Year Seminar