Courses

This introductory course charts a literary map of British and Irish writing since 1945. Covering a broad range of contemporary fiction, poetry, and dramatic prose, this course examines how writers in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Northern Ireland responded to, and helped shape, the cultural and literary landscape during a period of great political upheaval and cultural change. After the Second World War, large parts of Britain and Ireland were either bleak or bombed-out, simultaneously scarred by war or poverty and poised for reinvention. From decolonization to the rise and fall of the welfare state in Britain to the growing conflict and militarization in Northern Ireland, the second half of the twentieth century ushered in an era of profound social and literary transformation. In Britain, postwar reconstruction became a total cultural project, one that animated and attracted writers from the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asia as well as Britain, expanding our notions of what might constitute a national literary tradition. In Ireland, such transformations took on a different shape and timeline, as writers pushed against religious norms and censorship, exulted in, then critiqued, the economic boom known as the Celtic Tiger, and worked within and against a rich tradition of modernism and literary invention. In our readings each week, we will explore how writers engaged with both place and voice in order to understand the interconnectedness between and among literary expression, the locations of cultural production, and course themes. To do this, we will read both canonical and non-canonical works from Zadie Smith, Kazuo Ishiguro, Colm Tóibín, Edna O’Brien, Hanif Kureishi, Dylan Thomas, Samuel Beckett, Sam Selvon, and Jean Rhys, among others. Through close reading and comparative analysis, we will read in order to deepen our understanding of how these writers made significant contributions to not just national and regional traditions but, more broadly, to literature as a whole.