The Modernist Novel

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the literary imagination across the world was seized by a sudden onset of radical experiment and innovation. This aesthetic revolution not only changed the idea of what novels could do, but offered new ways of understanding the self. The explosion of literary masterpieces in these decades expanded the possibilities of what art can do, and remain cultural touchstones to this day. In this course we will read a selection of novels from places such as Paris, London, Dublin, Vienna, Prague, New York, and Berlin. Authors may include some of the following: James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, Djuna Barnes, Franz Kafka, Italo Calvino, John Dos Passos. Works not written in English will be read in translation, and the course will also include films.