ENGL 20434 - The City and Literature

Institution:

University of Notre Dame

Subject:

English

Description:

On its most basic level, narrative involves an author and character interacting with their world, engaging it in a manner that entails a beginning, middle, and end. How can such a basic model of storytelling, however, fit the wild variety of sights, sounds, and people which greet anyone upon first entering a city? Thinking of our own experience, how can anyone hope to address the vast size and events of cities such as Chicago or New York, and moreover connect the variety of this environment in an integral way to his or her personal life? It is this basic question that I hope we can begin to answer in this class. We'll be looking at writers dealing primarily with London in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, asking how they responded to a large metropolis undergoing drastic changes at this time. We'll look at how these writers responded to the vast crowds and new technologies which emerged in this urban space, and how race and gender impacted these authors' art. In order to place the experience of London in comparative perspective, we will also examine some literary treatments of Dublin, and of other cities such as New York and Paris by English writers. In these texts, which span from the end of the eighteenth century up to the 1960s, a number of common themes will emerge: the individual's relationship with massive crowds of strangers, the difference between the country and the city, the close proximity of wealth and poverty, the effects of gender and race on one's experience of the city, the overwhelming novelty of the city's new sensations and technologies, and, ultimately, the place of art in such a setting.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.nd.edu

Phone Number:

(574) 631-5000

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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