School of Undergraduate Studies Ambedkar University Delhi

Transcription

1 MODERNISM School of Undergraduate Studies Ambedkar University Delhi Course Code: EN 30 Course Coordinator: Usha Mudiganti The literature of experimental Modernism which emerged in the last years of the nineteenth century was an art of cities, especially of the polyglot cities which, for various historical reasons, had acquired high activity and great reputation as centres of intellectual and cultural exchange FromM Bradbury and J Macfarlane, Modernism: A Guide to European Literature This course will look at how Modernismas a congress of ideas and as a symptom and experience of modernitygrew in response and reaction to the rapid urbanisation of Europe in late 19 th and early 20 th century. While London, Paris, Berlin, Zurich (and New York) grew in size and dominance, it also triggered utmost anxiety, alienation and sense of loss. The course will critically discuss how the major movements and works of major European writers and filmmakers during this time responded to the emerging urban modernity as it was being preserved in the feverish change of the urban landscape: the debates over territory, the political edginess, the breakdown of frames of reference, radical art movements, rapid militarisation of skies and seas, urban expansionism, sudden and total alienation of the individual and the search for a personal space in the ruthlessly impersonalising ecosystem of the cities. The artistic response was ambivalent, as much despair at the loss of a familiar and familial climate as that same despair triggering a difficult and productive search for a new idiom, a new language. This search most was productively embedded in the extraordinary burst of art, literature and cinema across the Continent from the mid-19 th century to the beginning of the Second World War. The course will take into account the major movements and sample works of the giants of Modernism: Charles Baudelaire, Garcia Lorca, TS Eliot, WB Yeats, Katherine

2 Mansfield, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Charles Chaplin, Dziga Vertov, Samuel Beckett and others. The course has been structured in the following manner: Part A The Climate of Modernism Module I (Week 1-3) Modern, Modernity, Modernism Understanding the modern metropolis: The architecture of the post-imperial world, Haussmanisation, theflanuer, Belle Époque, migration and the crowd Modernism and others arts: Painting, Music, Photography, Cinema, Architecture Modernism and the foundation of a new poetics Part B Texts and Images Module II: Poetry (Week 4-6) Charles Baudelaire (from)paris Spleen Garcia Lorca (from)the Poet in New York Fernando Pessoa: The Tobacco Shop Osip Mandelstam: We shall meet again, in Petersburg TS Eliot The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock WB Yeats The Second Coming Mina Loy Joyce s Ulysses Module III: Fiction (Week 6-10) Katherine Mansfield The Fly James, Joyce Araby Albert Camus, The Outsider Virginia Woolf Mrs Dalloway Module IV: Cinema (Week )

3 DzigaVertov Man with a Movie Camera Charles Chaplin Modern Times/City Lights Vittorio De Sica Bicycle Thieves Module V: Theatre (Week -13) Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot Assessment structure In-class test I: 20% (on Module I) Response Paper II: 20% on (Module II) Presentation 20% (on Modules III & IV), Class participation: 10% End Semester Test/Term Paper: 30% (End Term) Secondary Reading M Bradbury and J Macfarlane, Modernism: A Guide to European Literature M Levenson, Cambridge Companion to Modernism M Levenson, Modernism M Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air P Nichols, Modernism: A Literary Guide P Lewis, Cambridge Guide to Modernism Lawrence Rainey, Modernism: An Anthology Edward Timms: Visions and Blueprints: Avant-garde Culture and Radical Politics in Early Twentieth Century Europe A Davis & LM Jenkins (ed), Cambridge Companion to Modernist Poetry P Burger, Theory of Avant Garde B Buchloh, S Guilbant and D Solved (ed) Modernism and Modernity P Brooker and others (ed) Oxford Handbook of Modernisms Murphet, Julian and Rainford, Lydia, editors, Literature and Visual Technologies: Writing after Cinema (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)

4 David Trotter, Cinema and Modernism (Critical Quarterly Book Series, 2007)

5 IV REALISM AND THE NOVEL Course Code: EN18 Course Coordinator: Shiv Kumar Type of Course: Discipline (English) Cohort for which it compulsory: Not applicable Cohort for which it is elective: English and all other Majors of the 6 th Semester No. of Credits: 04 Semester and Year Offered: Winter Semester, 2014 Pre-requisites: None Aim: Fiction, by definition, is a removal from reality. The aim of many major writers of fiction, though, was to mimic the real. In their endeavours to replicate the real, writers rejected the heroic and the aristocratic to embrace the gritty social reality of their times. The focus was on the ordinary person and the ordinary situation. At its best, the realist novel was to be like life itself. However, Realism s claim that it can mime the complexity of life has been contested. Roland Barthes, for instance, states that Realism only offers a reality effect. This course aims to conduct a detailed study of four realist novels to explore notions of time, chronology, consensus, points of view and the narrator, along with other important devices used by the realist writer, to learn the ways in which these contribute in simulating reality in fiction. While Realism as a form emerged in Europe, and owes much to developments in painting, this course restricts itself to the tracing the Realist novel in nineteenth century England and recording the changes the form went through while attempting to capture the real through fiction. Assessment Details with weights: Class Assignments- 20%, Mid-semester Examination- 20%, Class Presentation (Presented paper to be submitted) - 30%, End-semester Examination- 30%

6 Reading List 1. Austen, Jane. Emma. (1816). 2. Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. (1854). 3. Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D Urbervilles. (1891). 4. James, Henry. Daisy Miller. (1878). A supplementary reading list of critical material and a longer list of novels for class presentation will be given on the first day of class.