The first half of the twentieth century was among the most vibrant and inventive in English-language fiction. This period of literary history unfolded during a time of rapid and radical change that saw the development of new communications technologies like the radio and cinema, the massive upheavals of two world wars, the decline of empire, and paradigm-crushing developments in thinking about gender, sexuality, psychology, philosophy, and science. This course explores how a diverse selection of writers responded to this world in flux — and how they sought to use literature to intervene in this world, including through techniques such as plural conceptions of the self, stream-of- consciousness, unreliable narration, and multiple perspectives.
The first half of the twentieth century was among the most vibrant and inventive in English-language fiction. This period of literary history unfolded during a time of rapid and radical change that saw the development of new communications technologies like the radio and cinema, the massive upheavals of two world wars, the decline of empire, and paradigm-crushing developments in thinking about gender, sexuality, psychology, philosophy, and science. This course explores how a diverse selection of writers responded to this world in flux — and how they sought to use literature to intervene in this world, including through techniques such as plural conceptions of the self, stream-of- consciousness, unreliable narration, and multiple perspectives.
