Modernism Today

Catalog description

Ezra Pound declared that literature was 'news that stays news.' This class looks back at some monuments of modernist literature and asks: how has modernism stayed new? What elements of its styles, themes, and forms remain useful today? Each unit consists of a pairing between a modernist writer and a later author who used modernist techniques in a different time for a new purpose. We'll look at modernism from the perspective of marginalized figures often excluded from its key texts. In the process, you'll be asked to think about and analyze your own relations - positive and negative - with the literary canon.