English 369 - Studies In Modern Fiction

This course will survey major trends in twentieth century fiction by taking as its theme the idea of `writing at the frontiers'. We'll understand this in various ways, ranging from the frontiers of form in the work of some of the century's foremost writers, to the literal frontiers that many of them have faced: of geography, culture, race, gender, politics, and (in the broadest sense) history. We will begin with the cultural phenomenon of modernism; that complex of literary, artistic and philosophical developments which defined a specific shift in modern intellectual consciousness between about 1880 and 1930. (Gen.Ed. AL)