Courses

The class on post-war British literature focuses on fiction written since the end of the Cold War, with a particular emphasis on the twenty-first century. Lectures are structured around the theme of “Britain and its Belongings,” with three main historical and thematic emphases. First, the question of “the contemporary” or “belonging together in time”: What, if anything, makes the period since the 1990s hang together as a cultural, and more narrowly literary-historical, category? Second, the question of Europe: Is British literature a subset of European literature? How, in the era of Brexit and the ongoing migration crisis in Europe, have British novelists represented the country’s relationship to the continent? Finally, the linked problems of economic globalization and Britain’s complex post-imperial history: How have British novelists attempt to represent a world in which “domestic” experiences seem inextricably, if inconceivably, linked to events taking place thousands of miles away? Our answers to these questions will be aesthetic, as well as historical, focusing particularly on how novelists have thought to reimagine their sense of belonging by innovating at the level of narrative structure, point of view, and generic form.

Authors discussed include a mixture of established and emerging writers, with a particular emphasis on novels by women and by members of ethnic and national minority communities. Assignments include weekly reading, a midterm, a final, and two critical essays.