20th Century British Literature

Catalog description

A survey of major developments in twentieth-century British, Irish, and Anglophone Post-colonial literature. 20th-Century England is shaped by rapid technological changes, the breakdown of Victorian mores and orthodox beliefs, the devastation of the Great War, the advent of psychoanalysis, and the height and decline of the British empire. Students learn to recognize and evaluate how these events relate to the new, experimental styles of Modern, Postmodern, and Postcolonial writing. Authors studied range from early figures such as Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, W.B. Yeats, and James Joyce to contemporary stars such as Kazuo Ishiguro, J.M. Coetzee, and Zadie Smith.