SEMINAR IN 20th CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE

3RD YEAR ENGLISH MINORS

TUTOR: DR. ERIKA MIHÁLYCSA (erika.mihalycsa@gmail.com)
2015-2016

TOPICS OF DISCUSSION:
1. The turn of the century and the British novel: realism re-defined: Henry James, “The House of Fiction” (“Preface” to The
Portrait of a Lady); Henry James, “The Art of Fiction”; Joseph Conrad, “Preface” to The Nigger of the Narcissus. Joseph Conrad,
Lord Jim.

2. The advent of modernism: the private and the public; perspective and focalization; impressionism: Virginia Woolf, Mrs.
Dalloway, Virginia Woolf, “Modern Fiction”.

3. The “language revolution”; impersonality, exile and tradition reinvented: James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man;
T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”.

4. Modernity-rites of passage: the nightmare of history and the myth of civilization: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World; George
Orwell, 1984; Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (fragments).

5. Defining postmodernism, redefining the individual, refiguring discourse: Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot; J. Habermas:
“Modernity – An Incomplete Project”; J. F. Lyotard: “Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?”.

6. Storytelling and the sense of the past: pastiche, historiographic metafiction, spatialisation of time, re-writing history: John
Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman.

7. The “fall from innocence”: postmodern/metamodern sensibility, authorship, (inter)textuality: Ian McEwan, Atonement; J.M.
Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello.

PRIMARY SOURCES:
 Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, (New York: Bantam Books, 1981)
 Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (London: Random House, 1993)
 James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (London: Penguin Classics, 1993)
 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (London: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2003)
 George Orwell, 1984 (New York: Plume Penguin, 2003)
 Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot (London: Jonathan Cape, 1984)
 John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969)
 Ian McEwan, Atonement (London: Jonathan Cape, 2001)
 J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello (London: Viking, 2003)

SECONDARY SOURCES
 Henry James, “The House of Fiction” (“Preface” to The Portrait of a Lady) (London: Penguin Classics, pp. 41-57)
 Henry James, “The Art of Fiction” (http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/artfiction.html)
 Joseph Conrad, “Preface” to The Nigger of the Narcissus (http://www.classicauthors.net/conrad/Narcissus/Narcissus1.html)
 Virginia Woolf, “Modern Fiction” (http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91c/chapter13.html)
 James Joyce, “Realism & Idealism in English Literature: D. Defoe - W. Blake”
 T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (in Selected Essays,
 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (fragments) (New York: Harper Perennial, 1993, pp.55-70)
 J. Habermas: “Modernity – An Incomplete Project” (in Thomas Docherty, ed., Postmodernism: A Reader, New York: Columbia
University Press, 1992, pp. 98-109)
 J. F. Lyotard: “Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?” (in Thomas Docherty, ed., Postmodernism: A Reader, New
York: Columbia University Press, 1992, pp. 38-46).