College of Arts and Sciences
English 523: British Authors: The Bloomsbury Group
Summer Session II, 1998, M, T, W, and Th., 3-5:30 pm. Instructor: Nancy L. Paxton Office LA 115 E; Office hours, for Summer Session II: M, T, Th, 2-3:00, and by appointment
Prerequisites: Graduate standing or permission of the instructor.
Course Description: This course will focus on the modernist fiction written by major British writers of the Bloomsbury Group, including E. M. Forster's Howard's End and A Passage to India; Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out and To the Lighthouse, and D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love, as well as selected short stories by James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, Radclyffe Hall, and others. Since members of the Bloomsbury group worked in painting and other genres, this fiction will be considered in an interdisciplinary context. Interested students will have an opportunity to consider the aesthetics of this group through discussion of the paintings of Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, D. H. Lawrence, the art history of Roger Fry, and the history of Lytton Strachey, author of Emminent Victorians, or to pursue other relevant interdiscipinary topics.
Students will be expected to participate in class discussions, write at least 5 posting (of 250 words) on the assigned readings for the class list-serve, and present an oral report to the class. They will also be required to write one short analysis (5 pages, topics provided), one longer paper (10-15 pages) with a significant research component relevant to the novelists under consideration, and a comprehensive final exam.
Required Texts available at Aradia Books, 116 W. Cottage, Flagstaff, Az.. You may substitute any edition for these texts.
E. M. Forster, A Passage to India. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovavovich, 1984. paper ISBN 015-671142-7.
E. M. Forster, Howard's End New York: Bantam Books, 1985. Paper ISBN: 0553-21208-7.
Virginia Woolf, A Voyage Out. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1948. paper
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1989. paper, ISBN 015-690739
D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love. New York: Penguin, 1982. paperback ISBN 014-0042601 Optional: Virginia Woolf, Orlando. San Diego: H B J, 1956, paperback. Course Objectives:
1. Develop understanding of important features and techniques of English literary modernism through a study of major writers of the Bloomsbury group and their cultural contexts.
2. Introduce the aesthetic theories of Bloomsbury writers and painters, especially in use of symbolism.
3. Refine critical perspectives on stream of consciousness and other modernist narrative techniques
4. Develop an understanding of the architecture and other formal structures of the novels of this period
5. Promote analysis of inscriptions of gender identity and sexuality in English fiction between 1900 and 1930.
6. Develop understanding of the impact of World War One on modernists and their writing/art.
7. Deepen appreciation of relation between modernism and uses of irony.
8. Promote familiarity with trends in current literary criticism on writers of this group, including major revisions by feminists and gay theorists.
9. Develop graduate level research and writing skills.
10. Develop critical expertise using new research tools and media technology.
Course Requirements:
20 % 1 short paper (5 pages, topics assigned) 25% (5 email postings) on class list-serve. (alternative assignment on request). 20% Final exam 35% Final paper (10-15 pages, to include a significant research component)
Grading scale: A+ =97-100 A = 93-96 A-= 90-92 B+= 87-89 B = 83-86 B- = 80-82 C = 73-79 Grading policy
Since this course emphasizes discussion, regular attendance and participation is required. Failure to attend class may result in a lower grade for the course. Participation in Newsgroup is a supplement to class discussion.
Papers are due on the date listed on the syllabus. Late papers are not accepted. (exceptions may be made for serious illness or emergencies if student has an official university excuse.)
Personal integrity is an essential ingredient in all authentic learning. All written work for this class must be original work, written by the student for this class, between July 6 and Aug. 4, 1998. Each student is responsible for presenting written work that gives proper credit to any secondary sources quoted, whether quoted directly or presented in paraphrase. Any student who is caught cheating, plagiarizing, defrauding, or assisting others in doing the same will receive an F in the course, in accord with university policies set forth in the NAU student handbook.
This syllabus is subject to change without notice as pedagogy requires.
Schedule of Assignments:
July 6
Introduction
July 7
Read E. M. Forster, Howard's End (1910), ch. 1-22.
*July 8
Read E. M. Forster, Howard's End .ch. 23-44 (end) Film clips: Ivory/Merchant, Howard's End
July 9
In-class writing exercise due.
Finish discussion of Howard's End.
Read handout: James Joyce, "Araby"
Oral Report: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
*July 13
Read, Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (1915), ch. 1-15, pp. 9-209
Oral Report: The Paintings of Vanessa Bell
July 14
Read Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out, ch.16-21, pp. 210-289
Oral Report: The paintings of Duncan Grant
*July 15
Read Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out, ch.22-27, 290-375
Oral Report: Dorothy Richardson, Pilgrimage
Oral Report: T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
July 16
Paper 1 due.
*July 23
Read handout:short stories by Katherine Mansfield, "The Fly," and "Bliss," and Radclyffe Hall, "Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself"
Oral Report: Katherine Mansfield
Oral Report: Radclyffe Hall
*July 20
Read E. M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924), ch. 1-11, Mosque
Oral Report: Leonard Woolf
July 21
Read, E. M. Forster, A Passage to India, ch. 12-32, Caves.
Oral Report: George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant"
*July 22
Read, E. M. Forster, A Passage to India, ch. 33-37, Temple.
Film Clips: Lean's "A Passage to India"
*July 23
Read, Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse. (1927), The Window, pp. 30-124
Oral Report: Roger Fry
*July 27
Read Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse., Time Passing, pp. 125-143
Oral Report: Rebecca West, Harriet Hume (1929)
Oral Report: Vita Sackville West
July 28
Read, Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, The Lighthouse, 145-208
Film clips from Sally Potter's film "Orlando" based on V. Woolf's Orlando (1929)
*July 29
Read D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love (1920), ch. 1-9, pp. 1-111
Oral Report: Lawrence's paintings/ or earlier fiction
July 30
Read D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ch. 10-20, pp. 111-269
Oral Report: Dora Carrington
Oral Report: Frieda Lawrence
*Aug. 3
Read D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ch. 21-31, pp. 269-473
Aug. 4
Final papers due Review
Oral Reports: 2 Open topics
Aug. 5
Final Exam (Last class)
Bell, Quentin. Virginia Woolf: A Biography. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.
Bradbury, Malcolm and McFarlane, James. eds. Modernism: A Guide to European Literature, 1890-1930. London: Penguin, 1976.
Butler, Christopher. Early Modernism: Literature, Music, and Painting in Europe, 1900-1916. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1994.
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Kinkead-Weekes, Mark. D. H. Lawrence: Triumph to Exile, 1912-1922. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.
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Marler, Regina. Bloomsbury Pie: The Making of the Bloomsbury Boom. New York: Holt, l997. This is my personal copy; please treat it kindly, like all Cline books.
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Shone, Richard. Bloomsbury Portraits. London. Phaidon Press, 1995.
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Woolf, Virginia. Melymbrosia, ed. Louise Di Salvo. New York: New York Public Library, 1982.
Worthen, John. D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years, 1885-1912. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1991.
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Baker, Michael, Our Three Selves: A Life of Radclyffe Hall. London: GMP, 1985..
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Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1986.
Castle, Terry. The Apparational Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture. New York: Columbia U P, 1993.
Clark, L. D. The Minoan Distance: The Symbolism of Travel in D. H. Lawrence. Tucson: U of A Press, 1980.
Delany, Paul. D. H. Lawrence's Nightmare: The Writer and His Circle in the Years of the Great War. New York: Basic Books, l978.
Eksteins, Modris. Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.
Froula, Christine. Joyce and Woolf; Gender, Culture, and Literary Authority. Chicago: U. of Chicago P, 1996.
Garnett, Angelica. Deceived by Kindness. A Bloomsbury Childhood. London: Oxford U P, l984.
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Gillespie, Diane Filby. The Sisters' Arts: The Writing and Painting of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Syracuse: Syracuse U P, l988.
Holyrod, Michael. Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography. 2 vols. London: Heinemann, 1967-71.
Hynes, Samuel. A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture. London: Bodley Head, 1990.
Jackson, Rosie. Frieda Lawrence. New York: New York Univ. Press, 1995.
Kaplan, Sydney Janet. Katherine Mansfield and the Origins of Modernist Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell U P, 1991.
Kerschner, R. Brandon. Joyce, Bakhtin and Popular Literature: Chronicles of Disorder. Chapel Hilll: U of North Carolina Press
Lane, Christopher. The Ruling Passion: British Colonial Allegory and the Paradox of Homosocial Desire. Durham: Duke U P, 1995.
Levenson, Michael. Modernism and the Fate of Individuality: Character and Novelistic Form: From Conrad to Woolf. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1991.
Miller, Jane Eldridge. Rebel Women: Feminism, Modernism, and the Edwardian Novel. London: Virago, 1994.
Raitt, Suzanne. Vita and Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville West and Virginia Woolf. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993.
Ruderman, Judith. D. H. Lawrence and the Devouring Mother: The Search for a Patriarchal Ideal of Leadership. Durham: Duke, 1984.
Spalding, Frances. Roger Fry: Art and Life. Berkeley: U of Calif. P, 1980.
Suleri, Sara. The Rhetoric of English India. Chicago: Chicago UP, l992.
Weeks, Jeffrey. Sex, Politics, and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality Since 1800. London: Longman, 1981.
Woolf, Leonard. Beginning Again: An Autobiography of the Years 1911 to 1918. London: Hogarth, 1964.