Spring 2005

E 392M • The British Novel at the End of the 20th Century

Course Description

This course traces some developments in British fiction from the late 1960s to 2002. We will place that fiction in various interpretive contexts—historical, cultural, political, literary, aesthetic—while always taking as our primary goal a detailed, critical familiarity with the contents and strategies of the novels themselves. We will pay special attention to innovations in technique and subject matter, to the ways that our authors extend, depart from, or even reject, the goals and attitudes of “modernism,” “post-modernism,” and latter-day realism—three “isms,” by the way, whose meanings and critical usefulness we will define and redefine throughout our semester together. Many of our books are too recent to have elicited much critical commentary or scholarship. Therefore, much of our “secondary” reading will consist of reviews, interviews, manifestos, and the like, with special emphasis on statements made by the authors themselves.

Texts

Fowles, John. The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) Thomas, D.M. The White Hotel (1981) Rushdie, Salman.* Midnight’s Children (1981) Swift, Graham.* Waterland (1983) Winterston, Jeanette. Oranges are not the Only Fruit (1985) Ishiguro, Kazuo.* The Remains of the Day (1989) Carter, Angela. Wise Children (1991) Roy, Arundhati.* The God of Small Things (1997) Sebald, W.G. The Rings of Saturn (English, 1998; German, 1995) Doyle, Roddy.* A Star Called Henry (1999) McEwan, Ian.* Atonement (2002) This reading list may have to be shortened, owing to time limits. It may also be revised in small ways, depending on the availability of specific titles. Please strive to get the editions ordered through the Co-op, so that we all my have the same pagination.

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