Impressionism, Consciousness, and Modernism

Catalog description

This course explores the role of the "literary impressionists" (Crane, James, Conrad, and Ford) in the transformation of the novel from realism to modernism (especially the "post-impressionists" Stein, Joyce, and Woolf). "Impressionism" is defined by its focus on consciousness, the inner life, and the ambiguities of perception. What happens to the novel when writers worry about whether the way they tell their stories is an accurate reflection of how we know the world? Attention will also be paid to how the literary experiments of impressionist and post-impressionist writers relate to simultaneously occurring innovations in the visual arts.