History of British literature CM
This lecture is meant as a background course to the TD. It will
present a chronological panorama of the history of British
literature, and will focus more particularly on the way literature
and historical developments are interconnected. The course will
underline the way that, in its early stages, literature is informed
by religion, but also how, for instance, Elizabethan drama
tackles important contemporary events by discussing historical
event. It will emphasise the part played by philosophers in
literature, discuss romanticism in connection with contemporary
society but also with its impact on present literature. It will cover
the birth of the novel, and will end up looking at the 20th and 21st
centuries, to illustrate and underline the interconnections and
differences between wide literary movements such as
modernism or postmodernism. Time allowing, we’ll look at how
various critical developments from the 20th century onwards
have led to looking at literature from a variety of angles.
There will be lectures/sessions during which we’ll take a closer
look at a passage from some of the works mentioned. For those
lectures, students will be required to prepare a commentary of
the passages. A schedule and a booklet will be provided on
AMetice
TD Otherness in Fiction
After World War I (1914-1918), the British élite, including
some writers and intellectuals, started to reflect upon the
downside of Imperialism. In a world that had almost collapsed,
the fear of division, or lack of cohesion, within society led to a
number of ‘war narratives’ that foregrounded the solitude of
human beings, their lack of connections with others, the
inherent risk there was of seeing another war break out. This
is the context in which E. M. Forster wrote A Passage to India,
which he published in 1924 to great acclaim. In many respects,
one might think that the novel uses the same narrative
techniques and plot construction as A Room with a View:
instead of Italy, the British characters are travelling to India,
where some of them have settled for good. But whereas Italy
was only a backdrop to better understand England in the 1908
novel, India is much more than a touristic attraction in the 1924
novel. In it, Forster explores the depths of British people’s
distorted vision of the colonies, the (surprising?) absence of
knowledge derived from their encounter with people from a
different background, their prejudice definitely amounting to a
form of pride. It is the complexities of otherness that this course
seeks to address, both in the way the other is constructed and
in the way people are othered by this experience.
Students will be invited to do so by reading E.M. Forster’s
novel alongside another work of fiction that, prior to or after the
20th century, also portrays the confrontation between the
familiar and the unknown, the complex, at times alienating,
effects that such experiences can produce, and the ubiquity of
human pride.
