Lectures in Twentieth Century British Literature, 2nd Year Minor

Reader Ioana Zirra

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(General Presentation of the Lectures/Seminars)

Among the aims of this course of lectures for the second year English minor students are:

To orient students in their interaction with British literature in the twentieth century, which can be regarded as indicated in the handbook of the same title, soon to be made available as a whole:

To make students find their own way in English contemporary literature by negotiating between norms and trends, on the one hand, and the particularities of actual modern texts, on the other hand;

To develop the students’ capacity of communicating and enjoying the act of reading texts while being in the know about what they are doing because that is what literature does in principle;

To encourage students and train them for reading the literary texts in the bibliography in English, rather than in Romanian translation (or translated into any languages that students feel more at home with for reading rapidly);

To develop in the students the skill of identifying with the intentional structure and intentional objects that each literary text puts forward;

To drive home the differences between literary modernism, neo-modernism and postmodernism and give the students a sense of what British literature is, as a whole, in the twentieth century;

To connect literary texts to the social, historical and literary contexts which produced them; To train students for working with twentieth century literary texts independently and creatively

in reading, oral discussions and in written assignments (in accordance with the state of the art in essay-writing)

To satisfy the agenda presented above, the lectures and seminars will be organized as follows:The lectures will cover four teaching modules that represent themes of discussion meant to cover, each, chronologically the entire twentieth century. This enables students to survey the English canon and the literary conventions and contexts four times, rather than just once, although each module contributes particular topics to the discussion. Thus, the first module, “Chronicles of War and Evil” refers to a great number of authors and texts and dwells longer on… “the skeletons hidden in the modernist cupboard”. It is the most important module because it introduces and explains what was new in modernism, neo-modernism and postmodernism – in a century which, according to the American art critic Harold Rosenberg, who wrote in the 1950s, introduced the “tradition of the new”. The second module “The Imperial British Ethos and Its Contestation” compares three categories of texts: one traditional , E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, one experimental , Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness and one post-colonial. The aim of this module is to explain the important issue of British colonialism, which in fact the twentieth century regards critically (as can be seen in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness) and to

address post-colonial discourses which combine politics and literature. Poetry, which is shorter, and the poetry in the Irish postcolonial space, which is both geographically and culturally closer to Britain and the Eurocentric metropolises, can be felicitously used for this second purpose. Also, Irish poetry is important to know since the Irish poet Seamus (i.e, James) Heaney received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995 owing to the fact that he restored the contemporary world’s faith in poetry.Also, since in our discussions of literary texts we need to identify with the intrinsic intentional structure/objects, the second theme/module is also important because it demonstrates what is specific in the mechanisms of symbolic twisting and of literary defamiliarization adopted by Joseph Conrad by comparison with E.M. Forster in talking about ”the same subject” (the colonial theme), both of them.

The third theme, “British Tradition Revisited” introduces the topic of British identity, fashionable in cultural studies nowadays, from the purely literary point of view. This module surveys the forms that self-critical skepticism takes and reviews the forms of modernist, neo-modernist and postmodernist subversion of tradition when regarded through its stale conventions. The excursus of this module raises the issue of the possible attitudes to tradition, which need not be as skeptical as indicated by neo-modernist or postmodernist literature.

Moving even further away from dominant twentieth century skepticism, the next theme examines the avatars of religion in the twentieth century, noticing how, on this subject, literature follows the same path, from an elevated attitude in the modern religious dialogue to one less and less elevated. Following the classes of subject and character elevation in Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism, this module demonstrates again the generalization of a low-mimetic spirit in matters related to religion in the mid-twentieth century and the establishment of irreverence in iconic reversals of Christian faith. Students are invited to examine the intention of particular literary excerpts from fiction with whole poems and/or scenes from plays.

The final theme/module is a sociology of literature section which completes the presentation of the twentieth century literary canon with analyzed documents about the Nobel Prize awards to English-speaking literary authors and their discourses. The analyses of the writers’ discourses can also be regarded as examples of applying the information and concepts introduced by the courses.

The individual lectures will provide openings into the first four modules of the course, focusing on explanations of difficult concepts or text difficulties. The connection with the seminars will be supervised during the entire semester, by checking the students’ portfolios of independent work. Seminars will be dedicated to individual texts in the bibliography and they will have firstly a formative function, being occasions for students to perfect their capacity to communicate about texts actually read both orally and in written.

Because students are encouraged to choose which module they wish to study exhaustively – and all students must study exhaustively ONE module (one of the five themes dealt with in the taught course), choosing from the general bibliography of the course the relevant texts of poetry, fiction, conceptual prose or drama, the final exam will take into consideration the thoroughly motivated individual choices from the bibliography. One seminar subject will be proposed by each of the instructors for the final exam ticket, the other subject being in accordance with the choices from the module bibliography.

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2Students’ Obligations in Preparation for the Final Examination and the Lecture/Seminar

ConnectionAttendance (in 80%) proportion , discussions and writing are compulsory for the seminars. Each student shall produce a printed essay three and a half or four and a half pages long (or, in other words, 7,000 or 9000 characters long) dealing with the topics set by the seminar instructors in conformity with the bibliography and content of the taught course discussions. Essays shall be submitted in the last seminar. The final essays shall be preceded by preparing and submitting plans of ideas to the seminar instructors; these will be examined by the instructors, then returned to students to add introduction and conclusion plans; the final essay can only be written after two preliminary discussions of the plans of ideas for the body of the essay, the introduction and conclusion. PLEASE BE SURE THAT IN THEIR FINAL FORM, YOUR ESSAYS OBSERVE THE MLA STANDARD AND THAT THERE ARE NO SPELLING OR WORD-ORDER OR OTHER LANGUAGE MISTAKES IN THEM. In addition, each student shall take down all the unknown words from the lecture notes or literary texts read in a portfolio. The portfolio shall also demonstrate how students advance in the understanding of the literary texts in the bibliography: by recognizing norms and forms of literary communication and the specificity of each literary text. The individual portfolios may also be required for inspection by the course tutor during the lectures.The seminar mark will be the average of your attendance and participation in the classes and the mark obtained for the plans of ideas and final assignments. Its weight in the final mark is 30%, and all students who wish to take the final exam should have a seminar mark. Should the final examination mark not be a passing one, the seminar activity will not be taken into consideration, though it will count for the future re-examination.

The final exam will be oral and it will take into consideration which was the theme analysed in depth by each student in the way the question formulated on the ticket from the course is conceived. The other subject on the final examination ticket will be from the seminar.

Advice for the students independent seminar work: Take down all the unknown words (and there will be galore!) with both English-English

dictionary explanations and Romanian translations. Learn to organize your conspectuses so as to make evident for anybody the differences between

literary texts. Use as many concepts from the glossary of terms at the end of the handbook to demonstrate

your own understanding of the literary texts The bibliography for seminars should be read in advance and the texts assigned ought to be on

your desk during the seminars. Make sure you become acquainted with the essay writing techniques and formal requirements

(the MLA standard) and that you observe them (it) in the assignments before setting out to do the work and before handing it over to the seminar tutor.

Check the spelling and correct structure of your sentences before handing in your printed essays Close-knit essays, which undertake to answer strictly the specifications of the title – as if they

were relevant answers to the question(s) the title asks – must find their own introduction, fitting

the subject tackled and stating the theme or literary trend it is related to. What makes essays be close-knit is the fact that the ideas in the body of the essay derive logically from the introduction and from each other, each paragraph being dedicated to one, maximum two ideas. The succession of the paragraphs in the body of the essays is correct if it constructs a cumulative demonstration of the essay’s main ideas by using arguments from the text (namely, enumerations of text elements or quotations which prove the point made) or by using arguments from the lectures or secondary/reference bibliography listed. Ideally, the empirical facts observed in the literary texts should be assembled so as to evoke and make applicable the greatest number of ideas regarding the theme, trend or methodological concepts in the glossary at the end of the handbook. There are two ways of presenting the main ideas of an essay: (a) by stating them from the beginning, preferably at the end of the introduction; or by (b), by gradually discovering them while following the development of the literary text analysed or while advancing with understanding of one’s subject. In the first case, (a), the conclusion of the essay assesses the extent to which the tasks set by the original thesis have been proved in the essay-work itself. In the second case, (b), the conclusion is more important than the introduction as it synthetically/orderly expresses the discoveries made while writing the essay; it is a convincingly and beautifully expressed summary of the ideas in the body of the essay. The so-called paratextual apparatus of the essay, i.e., the notes and bibliography cannot be missing. In the MLA standard, long quotations from literary or critical/theoretical texts must be indented. Short (two-line long) quotations should be followed by brackets indicating the name of the author followed by the page, or simply the page, if they refer to the same overall text that the essay analyses. Feel free to create evidence of your own, inspired by the literary text, by ideas in the literary criticism, the lectures and the glossary, and, while being systematic, be as creative as you can! At the other extreme, attempts to plagiarize will be severely punished, since the mere reproduction allegedly in one’s own name of information produced by other people does not develop thinking but stultifies the mind; check (on the net) the regulations of the Faculty and the Department regarding plagiarizing, which can lead to students being expelled.

The importance of the seminar in respect to the final exam, in this discipline, is exactly like that of dress-rehearsals before final theatrical performances.

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Bibliography for the Lectures

Please note that the printed course of your tutor, Ioana Zirra, British Literature in the Twentieth Century: Themes, Paradigms, Authors, Approaches is in print at the Editura Universitatii Bucuresti and will be available in about a fortnight.

Primary Texts:

Beckett, Samuel, Waiting for Godot. London: Faber & Faber. 1970

Carter, Angela. Nights at the Circus. London: Picador. 1984

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness, in Greenblatt, Stephen (general editor). The Norton Anthology of

English Literature. Volume 2. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company.2006, p. 1890-1947

Eliot, T.S. The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.1971

Forster, E.M. A Passage to India. London: Penguin.1989

Fowles, John. The French Lieutenant’s Woman. London: Triad Panther Books. 1985

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies.London: Penguin- Perigee Trade.2011.

Gray, Alisdair. Lanark: A Life in Four Books. London, Glasgow, Toronto, Sidney, Auckland: Paladin Grafton

Books.1989

Heaney, Seamus. New Selected Poems 1966-1987.London, Boston: Faber & Faber,1987

Ishiguro, Kazuo. The Remains of the Day. New York, London, Boston: Faber & Faber. 1989

Mahon, Derek. 1993. Selected Poems. London, New York: Penguin Books.

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.London: Penguin Classics. 1993

Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four.London: Penguin.1974.

Smith, Stevie. New Selected Poems. New York: New Directions Publishing. 1988.

Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. London, Boston: Faber & Faber. 1988.

Swift, Graham . Waterland. London: Picador. 1983

Thomas, Dylan. Collected Poems 1934-1953. New York: Phoenix House – Everyman Series.2000

Yeats, William, Butler. Selected Poetry. London, New York: Penguin. 1991

Woolf, Virginia . Mrs. Dalloway. London: Tauchnitz. 1934

Woolf, Virginia . Orlando. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2000

Anthologies of Annotated Texts and Criticism

Brooker, Peter, Widdowson, Peter (eds.) A Practical Reader in Contemporary Literary Theory. London,

New York: Prentice Hall/Harvester Whitesheaf. 1996

Finneran, Richard (ed).The Yeats Reader. A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama and Prose. New

York, London, Toronto, Sidney: Scribner Poetry. 2002

Greenblatt, Stephen (general editor). The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Volume 2. New York,

London: W.W. Norton & Company.2006

North, Michael (ed). T.S. Eliot - The Waste Land. New York. London. W. W. Norton & Company.2001

Surdulescu, Radu and Bogdan Stefanescu (eds). Contemporary Critical Theories. A Reader, Bucharest:

Pilot edition of the English Department of the University of Bucharest. 1999

Whitaker, Thomas R. Tom Stoppard (The Modern Dramatists Series). London and Bassingstoke:

Macmillan. 1983.

Optional Reference Books

Brooks, Cleanth and Robert Penn Warren, Understanding Poetry. New York: Henry Holt and Company (revised edition, 1950; Original edition, 1938). Available in the common reading room of the library downstairs. E-book excerpts online at http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/understanding-poetry.html; www.cardinalhayes.org/ourpages/auto/.../Understanding%20Poetry.pdf

Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. London: Penguin. 1990.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism. History. Theory. Fiction. New York and London:

Routledge.1990

Lodge, David. The Art of Fiction.London: Penguin. 1992.

Rycroft , Charles. A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. London and New York: Penguin. 1972.

Williams, Raymond. Drama from Ibsen to Brecht.Harmondsworth, New York: Penguin Books /Chatto &

Windus. 1976

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Individual Lecturing Themes

1Chronicles of War and Evil I: The First World War and Its Reflexes in Literature: by direct responses to

war in the Poems written from the Trenches and by cryptograms whose affinities with earlier history, art

history and politics complicate the theme of war and change the canon from traditional writing in the

high-mimetic, low-mimetic and ironic vein to enigmatic modernist cryptograms (of war and evil) . The

role of myth in fashioning literary enigmas: A comparison between W. B Yeats’s “The Second Coming”

and “Lapis Lazuli” (twisted myth, the first tributary of English modernism)

2 The dramatic monologue tradition in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The Waste Land” (the

second tributary of English modernism)

3 Norms (theories, theorems) and pronuncements of the high modernists: T. S. Eliot “Tradition and the

Individual Talent”; Virginia Woolf “ Modern Fiction”; James Joyce “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young

Man” (an excerpt from chapter V)

4 The application of the modernist norms in fiction: Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

5 The departure from the modernist norms in sermonic neo-modernist and early modernist fiction

6 The hushed, hazy decentered perspective on evil in the post-modernist war document: Kazuo

Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day.

7,8 Forms of Religious Dialogue in Twentieth Century English Literature The Ritual and the Sacramental

Dimensions of Religion Evoked in Literature in the Twentieth Century T. S. Eliot’s Play Murder in the

Cathedral and Dylan Thomas’s Poem “In the Beginning” and Seamus Heaney’s “Lightenings”

Low Mimetic Representations of Faith in Twentieth Century Debates: T. S. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi”,

W. B. Yeats’s “The Magi”, Philip Larkin “Church Going”

9, 10 The Imperial British Ethos and Its (Postcolonial) Contestation I: Two ways of making a case

against colonialism in fiction: A Passage to India and Heart of Darkness. The later post-colonial voices of

Irish nationalism versus Anglo-Irish cosmopolitanism in poetry ( Seamus Heaney versus Derek Mahon)

11, 12 British Tradition Revisited in Poetry, Postmodernist Drama and Fiction: From T.S. Eliot’s High

Comedy, to Domestic, Facetious, Carnivalesque and Black Comedy in Texts which Recycle Tradition. The

Comparison with the Nostalgic Metafiction in Graham Swift’s Waterland.