Literature in English: Modern Texts and Contexts

3 units

What is modern English literature, and how do we tell its story? Is it a succession of literary movements from romanticism to realism to modernism and beyond? Is it a canon of classic texts to survey? Is it a sustained critique of that canon's exclusions, a recentering of the marginalized authors whose works reveal previously obscured accounts of modernity? It is, in fact, all of the above. In this course, we will introduce students to the central themes, forms, and forces that have shaped the history of English-language literature from the late 18th century to the present, as well as to the tools, vocabularies, and critical practices of contemporary literary studies. Throughout, we will examine the norms and assumptions of literary history, including those based in race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality. Students will encounter fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction from Britain and the United States, along with African, Caribbean, or other global literatures in English. Authors studied may include William Wordsworth, Phillis Wheatley, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Frederick Douglass, Oscar Wilde, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Claude McKay, Samuel Beckett, James Baldwin, Wole Soyinka, Toni Morrison, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Zadie Smith. Note: This course satisfies one of the two 200-level requirements for the English major.