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When consulting the Oxford Companion to English Literature, one finds the following statements on Modernism: "A sense of cultural relativism is pervasive in much modernist writing, as is an awareness of the irrational and the workings of the unconscious mind ... Modernist literature is a literature of discontinuity." In fact, Modernism brought about numerous changes in society, science and the arts, all of which are of course reflected in the time's literature. This seminar will provide an introduction to Modernism as a literary movement by giving a general outline of its historical background, origins and developments and by having a look at some major texts of the era. Among others, we will study poems and short stories (as well as one novel) by writers such as W.B. Yeats, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, James Joyce and T.S. Eliot. A reader containing various theoretical and literary texts will be available in the copy-shop on Reckhammerweg from early April onwards. However, students are asked to obtain their own copy of Virginia Woolf's Orlando (Penguin Edition, ISBN 978-0141184272). |
