1 Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Colegio de Letras Modernas Departamento de Letras Inglesas Literatura en inglés VI (Siglo XX) Thursdays 16:00-18:00 2018-II Mtro. David Pruneda prunedasenties@gmail.com Overview of Literatures in English: 1880s to 1990s The objective of the course is twofold. On the one hand this overview proposes to discuss some of the most important and well-known texts written in English during the twentieth century. On the other hand, paramount to this class is the development of close reading skills. Being a theoretical product of the historical period that concerns us, close reading critical practice is not only essential to understand the literary production in the twentieth century, is also a basic tool for literary studies. This focus, however, does not prevent us from exploring other critical reading practices that crystallised in the past hundred years. In this sense, secondary to the main objective of the course is an introduction to the history of twentieth-century criticism. Reading List Date Text(s) Speaker(s) 1 1 February Introduction and reading list *************************** Transition to XX Century: Aestheticism, Decadence, Criticism 2 8 February Henry James. The Figure in the Carpet Crossing the Threshold: Technology, Colonialism and Emancipation 3 15 February Olive Schreiner. Three Dreams in a Desert, Dream Life and Real Life. A Little African Story. E.M. Forster. The Machine Stops 4 22 February Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness; Chinua Achebe s An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad s Heart of Darkness 5 1 March Charlotte Mew. A White Night Algernon Blackwood. The Willows Modernism: the City and Responses to World War I
2 6 8 March W. B. Yeats. Leda and the Swan and The Second Coming James Joyce. A Painful Case 7 15 March T.S. Eliot. The Waste Land 8 22 March Virginia Woolf. Mrs Dalloway 9 5 April Abstract deadline Samuel Beckett. Waiting for Godot The Southern Renaissance (USA) 10 12 April Zora Neale Hurston. The Gilded Six-Bits Katherine Anne Porter. The Jilting of Granny Weatherall 11 19 April William Faulkner. As I Lay Dying Shifting Aesthetics 12 26 April Dylan Thomas. When Once the Twilight Locks No Longer and Especially When the October Wind W. H. Auden. First Things First and As I Walked Out One Evening 13 3 May J. D. Salinger. A Perfect Day for Bananafish 14 17 May Final essay deadline Sylvia Plath. Daddy and Poppies in October Postcolonial Narrative Jhumpa Lahiri. The Treatment of Bibi Haldar Nadine Gordimer. The Moment Before the Gun Went Off 15 24 May Sandra Cisneros. The House on Mango Street 16 31 May Return of essays and final comments. ***************************
3 Methodology. The texts on the reading list will be divided amongst the class. Every student will deliver a presentation that will consist of the following: 1) Introduction to the author (biography and context) 2) Analysis of the text, providing a) an interpretation supported by critical and/or theoretical sources (2 minimum), and b) an exercise of close reading (the whole text for poetry and one or two paragraphs for narrative). 3) Guidance of the group discussion.* 4) Handout with relevant information about the presentation. *Group discussion: Students should be prepared to discuss the text in turn. To be prepared means to have read the text closely, to have consulted criticism, and to be ready to make clever comments. Depending on the size of the group, every student will be asked to participate in every session. Should a student come without preparation, s/he will have to leave the classroom. Evaluation: a pass mark is required for each task. Plagiarism is severely punished. Presentation+handout: 33.3% Class Participation: 33.3% Abstract: due on 5 April 2018 Final Essay: 33.3% due on 17 May 2018 Bibliography Most required texts are on line, but the texts we use are The Norton Anthology of English Literature and/or The Oxford Anthology of English Literature (1973 and thus a little out of date). Longer texts, such as novels and plays should be bought or borrowed. By no means exhaustive, this bibliography attempts to cover the topics under study in this brief overview of Anglophone literatures of the twentieth century. There is no reason to believe that earlier texts are useless. A Bloomsbury Group Reader. Ed. S. P. Rosenbaum. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1993. Print. Anaya Ferreira, Nair María. La otredad del mestizaje: América Latina en la literatura inglesa. México: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM, 200 Print. A Reader s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. Ed. Raman Selden y Peter Widdowson. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993. Print. Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth y Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back. Theory and practice in post-colonial literatures. London/New York: Routledge, 1989. Print. Bal, Mieke. Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. (1985). Toronto: U of Toronto P,1999. Print. Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Nueva York: Grove Press, 1956. Impreso. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London/New York: Routledge, 1994. Print. Boehmer, Elleke. Colonial & Postcolonial Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. Print. Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 196 Print. The Cambridge Companion to Beckett. Ed. John Pilling. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1994. Print.
The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce. Ed. Derek Attridge. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1990. Print. The Cambridge Companion to T.S. Eliot. Ed. A. David Moody. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1994. Print. Carey, John. The Intellectuals and the Masses. Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia 1880-1939. London: Faber & Faber, 199 Print. Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1984. PDF. Cohn, Dorrit. Transparent Minds. Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1984. Print.. The Distinction of Fiction. Baltimore: John Hopkins U P. 2000. Coombes, H. Literature and Criticism. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1963. Print. Culler, Jonathan. The Pursuit of Signs. Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. Ithaca: Cornell U P., 198 Print. The Cultural Studies Reader. Ed. Simon During. London: Routledge, 1993. Print. Eagleton, Terry. The Function of Criticism. From the Spectator to Post-Structuralism. London: Verso, 1984. Print.. Literary Theory. An Introduction. 2 nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1996. Print. Eliot, T.S. Essays of T. S. Eliot. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc, 1964. Print. En busca del texto. Teoría de la recepción literaria. Ed. Dietrich Rall. México: UNAM, 1987. Print. Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. Novels 1930-1935. Nueva York: The Library of America, 1985. Print. Forster, E.M. Aspects of the Novel. 1927. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. 1955. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1957. Print. Gordimer, Nadine. Living in hope and history: notes from our century. London: Bloomsbury, 1999. Print. Green, Martin. The English Novel in the Twentieth Century. The Doom of Empire. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. Print. Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. London: Routledge, 1988. Print.. The Politics of Postmodernism. London: Routledge. 1989. Print. Kermode, Frank et al., comps., The Oxford Anthology of English Literature, v. II. Oxford: OUP, 1976. Print. Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999. Print. Leavis, F.R. The Great Tradition.1948. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 196 Print. Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. London: Chatto and Windus, 1996. Print. Modern Literary Theory. A Reader. Ed. Philip Rice & Patricia Waugh. London: Edward Arnold, 1989. Print. Mudrick, Marvin. Conrad. A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1966. Print. Nation and Narration. Ed. Homi K. Bhabha. London/New York: Routledge, 1990. Print. The New Feminist Criticism. Essays on Woman, Literature and Theory. Ed. Elaine Showalter. London: Virago Press Ltd., 1985. Print. 4
Pimentel, Luz Aurora. El relato en perspectiva. Estudio de teoría narrativa. México: Siglo XXI/UNAM, 1998. Print.. El espacio en la ficción. Ficciones espaciales. La representación del espacio en los textos narrativos. México: Siglo XXI/UNAM, 200 Print. The Post-colonial Studies Reader. Ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths y Helen Tiffin. London: Routledge, 1995. Print. Postmodern Culture. Ed. Hal Foster. 1983. London: Pluto Press Ltd., 1985. Print. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. London: Routledge, 1978. Print.. Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto and Windus, 1993. Print. Salinger, J. D. Nine Stories. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 199 Print. The Theory of Criticism. From Plato to the Present. Ed. Raman Selden. Harlow: Longman Group (UK) Ltd., 1988. Print. Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society 1780-1950. 1958. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 196 Print. Woolf, Virginia, Mrs. Dalloway. Nueva York: First Harvest/ HBJ Edition, 1994. Print. Yeats, W. B. A Vision. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1937. Print. 5