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The Fitzroy Tavern was (and is) more than just a beautiful old London pub. It was a meeting place of authors, musicians, artists, dancers and comedians from the 1920s to the early 1950s. The Fitzroy was a very special cultural hub, a home from home to people creating unconventional art and literature, and leading unconventional lives.
These included familiar names such as Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Dylan Thomas, Ezra Pound, Richard Attenborough, and also Lady Ottoline Morell (aristocrat and society hostess, living in an open marriage), Edith Sitwell (poet and noted eccentric, known for her delightfully bizarre outfits), Augustus John (painter, spent some time living in a caravan with both his wife and his mistress), Nina Hamnett (artist and writer, famous not only for her texts and paintings but also for her flamboyant lifestyle and her open bisexuality, hated by Aleister Crowley), Aleister Crowley (into occultism, sexual magic and libertinism; founded his own religion), Wyndham Lewis (artist and writer, obsessed with Vorticism), Mark Gertler (artist, supported by Lady Ottoline Morell, obsessed with Dora Carrington), Dora Carrington (painter and designer, obsessed with Lytton Strachey), Lytton Strachey (writer and critic, living together with, but not very much obsessed with Dora Carrington), Ras Prince Monolulu (who claimed to be an Abyssinian prince) and Bud Flanagan (comedian, member of the Crazy Gang).
This seminar will approach the fascinating multi-faceted phenomenon of English modernism through studying people who met at the Fitzroy Tavern. It will give you a chance to get acquainted with selected texts, images etc. created by this remarkable set of writers, painters, designers, musicians etc. – and of course with their rather interesting lives.
Material to be studied (texts, images, music, videos) will be provided in a Moodle room; you will receive your Moodle password via e-mail.
Requirements: thorough preparation for each session, active participation, and written work according to your particular Studienordnung. As always: read, think, enjoy (!), annotate and look things up if necessary (why not begin with “Vorticism” right now?)
Just in case your application is rejected by the LSF system: If you want to do this course because you are genuinely interested, you will be most welcome, no matter what LSF says. Please get in touch with claudia.hausmann@uni-due.de who will enrol you manually. The worst that might happen to you is that you cannot do a Leistungsnachweis if you lack the formal requirements. |
