British Literature since 1900

Catalog description

Students explore English literature written since 1900, a period when writers have confronted the turbulence of modern history while defending the value of their art. The last century is marked by two world wars, the rise and fall of the British Empire, globalization, accelerating technological development, and changing gender roles and class structures. In this era, some artists have followed the modernist dictum to “make it new,” to overthrow, reimagine, and thus revitalize older forms of literary expression no longer attuned to the modern era, while others have sought to refine traditional structures for plays, poems, novels, and short stories. Against an historical backdrop that has witnessed the rise of radio, television, film, the Internet, and the 24-hour news cycle, writers have used their art to assert that (in the words of twentieth-century poet Ezra Pound) “literature is news that stays news.”