This course examines one of the most varied and contradictory periods in Western Literature -- the movements, trends, schools, and revolts that came to be called "Modernism" in every European
language during the early decades of this century. The reading will include examples of experimentalist or avante garde writing in English, French, German, Italian, and Russian, all in translation. For English majors, the seminar will provide helpful background and context for familiar writers such as Joyce, Eliot, Pound, Yeats, Lawrence, and Woolf; for Comparative Literature minors and Foreign Language students, the seminar will draw connections between some of the most important European literary traditions and provide an opportunity to survey the Modernist scene as a whole.

One of the requirements for this seminar, as part of the Comparative Literature minor, is that students deal with a short foreign-language text (probably a poem or short story) in the original language. The choice of a text, depending on practicality and student language ability, will be worked out between the individual student and the instructor. Anyone who has completed the fourth quarter of a foreign language should be adequately prepared for this assignment.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

Literature of the Western World, Vol. 2 (Prentice-Hall)

(Contains assigned selections from Baudelaire, Mallarme, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Yeats, Pirandello,
Joyce, Eliot, Brecht.)

Mikhail Bulgakov, Heart of a Dog (Grove-Atlantic).

Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis, The Penal Colony, and Other Stories (Schocken).

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (Harbrace).

Other materials made available in xerox on reserve in the library (including, among others, Proust, Rilke, Nietzsche, Marinetti, Hulme, H.D., Pound, Mayakovsky, Gertrude Stein, Hart Crane, Tristan Tzara, Breton, Walter Benjamin)

GRADING:

Reading Quizzes     15%
Short Paper            15%
Term Paper            20%
Midterm                 20%
Final                      30%
                            100%

The five reading quizzes will be short and mostly non-interpretive. The short paper (maximum 5 pages) will deal with one of the non-literary background reading selections, explaining its implication for poetic practice. The term paper (maximum 8 pages) will discuss a short literary work that the student has
read in the original (non-English) language, comparing it to another work from a different language. The midterm and final will contain identification and essay questions. Attendance will be noted, and excellent attendance will be worth a few points in borderline grades.