20th-Century British Novel
Class Information
Instructor: Dobbins, Gregory
CRN: 44591
Time: MWF 10:00-10:50am
Location: Olson 146
GE Areas: World Cultures Writing Experience
Description
This course will serve as a survey that seeks to track innovations and transformations in "British" fiction throughout the twentieth century. (The word "British" must be placed in quotation, as we will be reading writers from Ireland, the Caribbean, and Scotland in addition to a few who are English). Since twentieth century British fiction is too vast for us to comprehensively cover in the course of ten weeks, an emphasis will be placed upon the impact Modernism made upon the period. The course will be comprised of three units: the emergence of the High Modernist novel in the 1920s (James Joyce and Virginia Woolf); mid-century Late Modernist attempts to grapple with the legacy of imperialism (Jean Rhys and George Lamming); and finally post-modern novels from the end of the century that engage with various forms of identity (Jeanette Winterson and Irvine Welsh).
A note on textbooks: for a number of reasons, texts for this class will NOT be available through the campus bookstore or its Equitable Access program. PDFs of each text will be made available to the class. For those of you who would prefer to own physical copies of each text-- and I very much encourage you to purchase physical copies, as all of them are in-print, widely available, and relatively inexpensive-- I have listed the ISBN numbers of the specific editions we will be reading below. Be sure to track down these specific editions (particularly in regard to the books by Joyce and Woolf), since they can be very different.
Joyce: ISBN # 978-0-14-243734-6
Woolf: ISBN # 978-0-15-603035-9
Rhys: ISBN # 978-0-39-335256-6
Lamming: ISBN # 0-472-06468-1
Winterson: ISBN # 978-0-8021-3516-2
Welsh: ISBN # 0-393-31480-4
Grading
Two essays, short writing assignments associated with each essay, ungraded reading journal posts, and a take-home final exam.
Texts
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
In the Castle of My Skin, George Lamming
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson
Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh