Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Examines selected twentieth-century works in a variety of genres, organized by cultural movements, critical issues, or theoretical approaches. May include works in various media and explore Canadian, British, American and other literatures.

COURSE DETAILS:

Twentieth century literature was remarkably vibrant, complex, and diverse.  So much so, that no one course could possibly hope to do justice to it. Instead, we will orient our discussions around one of the dominant preoccupations of twentieth century literature and society: the quest for identity, be it individual, national, or literary. We start with a classic tale of Imperial adventure set in India; then engage with one of the most enduring fantasy worlds of the twentieth century. We move across the ocean to North America, where we encounter the Vietnam War through the eyes of one of America’s foremost living poets and revisit the issues of race and slavery from a mid-twentieth century perspective. We next read Métis poet Marilyn Dumont’s critically acclaimed exploration of the “in-between-ness” of Métis people, and Métis women in particular. We will examine these texts in the context of key literary and cultural movements that punctuate the century – modernism, postmodernism, colonialism and post colonialism, gender, race, sexuality.  We conclude with an additional text that will provide us with a further example of how a contemporary writer deals with these movements – a post-modernist detective novel by one of the most acclaimed mystery writers of the late twentieth century.  A third strand of discussion will underpin our study of these texts, themes, and movements – the materiality of literature and how that changed through the course of the twentieth century.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

REQUIRED TEXTS/READINGS:
Butler, Octavia Kindred Beacon Press 9780807083697
Dumont, Marilyn A Really Good Brown Girl Brick Books 10-0919626769
King, Laurie R. The Game e-book
Kipling, Rudyard Kim Oxford Classics 10-0199536465
Komunyakaa, Yusef Dien Cai Dau Wesleyan Poetry 10-0819521639
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit HarperCollins, 9780007487295         

Critical readings will be available on line via Canvas.