British Literature after 1800.

Catalog description

This is a survey class of British literature from 1800 to the present day, a span of time that challenged what both “British” and “literature” fundamentally mean. This period saw the continued rise and the dramatic fall of Britain as an imperial power. It saw Napoleonic revolution and two world wars. Britain got smaller as its imperial boundaries eroded, but also larger as it accepted the postcolonial influx of a global population in England. This forced a continual reevaluation of not only national identity, but personal identity, identity of the family, and gender identity as well. We will be studying great and representative works of British literature against this historical backdrop of radical change. ( GE2A , GELN , GEND )