Modernism's Kids: Children in Modernist Fiction
ENGL 348
Spring 2016
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01
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Modernist art--from the writings of Gertrude Stein to Picasso's painting--has frequently been derided as something that could be made by children. The gibe is, perhaps, to be expected. Central to the modernist project was the aim to recreate the world with the unrestrained and unfiltered vitality of children. The child embodies modernist hopes for a transformed future, but s/he is also the repository of the past, of the more vital self each adult loses through their passage into adulthood. Representing the consciousness of children--and even, at times, inducing such a consciousness in its adult readers--is a strategy that informs a wide range of modernist texts.
This course will explore the fascination with and investment in children in Anglophone modernist prose by authors based in Europe. In addition to exploring the central role that child characters play in many key modernist novels, we will explore the way in which ideas about childhood inform authorial experiments with form and narrative voice. To inform this inquiry, we will read selections from texts in philosophy and psychology and psychoanalysis that were influential in shaping modernist conceptions of language, culture, consciousness, and the human life cycle. Finally, we look at a selection of children's books written by modernist authors and investigate their relationship to children's literature of the period. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 50% - 74% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Virginia Woolf, THE WAVES
Henry James, WHAT MAISIE KNEW
James Joyce, A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN
Gertrude Stein, THE WORLD IS ROUND
Katherine Mansfield, PRELUDE
Richard Hughes, A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
D.H. Lawrence, THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER
Sigmund Freud, DORA: A CASE OF HYSTERIA
Selections by Henri Bergson and William James
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Examinations and Assignments:
one class presentation and five short essays |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This course contributes to the British Literature and Theory & Literary Forms concentrations of the English major. It is a Research Option course. |
| Instructor(s): Bachner,Sally Times: .M.W... 02:40PM-04:00PM; Location: WYL114; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 25 | | SR major: 5 | JR major: 5 | | |
| Seats Available: 3 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 5 | JR non-major: 5 | SO: 5 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 10 | 1st Ranked: 1 | 2nd Ranked: 1 | 3rd Ranked: 2 | 4th Ranked: 2 | Unranked: 4 |
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