ENGL W4502 - Late Modernism

Institution:

Columbia University in the City of New York

Subject:

Description:

The term "modernism" is unusual in that refers simultaneously to a style, an idea, and a period. Critics often argue about the beginning of the modernist period, some joining Virginia Woolf in dating it from "on or about 1910" (when "human character changed"), others pushing it back to 1890 or earlier. There is even more debate about when - or if - modernism ends. In the 1980s, critical theorists such as Fredric Jameson posited the existence of a decisive break between modernism and so-called postmodernism. More recently, scholars have become interested in the longevity and temporal unevenness of modernism as an aesthetic and social phenomenon. Inspired by such scholarship, this lecture class examines the evidence for a concept of "late modernism." We will examine late modernism in a number of guises: as an extension of modernist aesthetics into the late twentieth century; as an elegiac, negative, or inward turn within the modernist avant-garde; and as a symptom of an unevenly globalized modernity. Literary readings by the likes of W. H. Auden, Djuna Barnes, Samuel Beckett, Basil Bunting, T. S. Eliot, B. S. Johnson, Ann Quin, Jean Rhys, and Virginia Woolf. Critical and theoretical readings will come from figures such as T. W. Adorno, Clement Greenberg, Fredric Jameson, and Edward Said.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.columbia.edu

Phone Number:

(212) 854-1754

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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