ENGL 357 - Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

(Same as WFQS 357) In-depth study of literatures of the twentieth century, with primary focus on British and postcolonial (Irish, Indian, Pakistani, South African, Caribbean, Australian, Canadian, etc.) texts. Selections may focus on an author or group of authors, a genre (e.g., modern verse epic, drama, satiric novel, travelogue), or a topic (e.g., the economics of modernism, black Atlantic, Englishes and Englishness, themes of exile and migration). Heesok Chang.

Topic for 2026/27a: Proust and Woolf .

“My great adventure is really Proust.” – Virginia Woolf

In 1922, Woolf began reading C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s magisterial translation of Swann’s Way: the start of a twelve year journey traversing all seven volumes of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (In Search of Lost Time). Reading Proust was, for her, electric: “the astonishing vibration and saturation and intensification he procures – there’s something sexual in it …” Daunting: “what remains to be written after that?” And transformative: “Scarcely anyone so stimulates the nerves of language in me … . he will I suppose both influence me & make out of temper with every sentence of my own.” Proust’s impact on Woolf’s mature style remains a conventional if underexamined topic in comparative literature. Beyond the question of literary influence, scholars have largely ignored the astonishing range of topoi they shared, classical and modern motifs which they expressed in singular idioms and explored in comparably insulated social circles set in rapidly changing metropolises. These include: the rapprochement of painting and writing, the structure of memory, the anachronism of timelines, the catastrophe of daily life, the sovereignty of rooms and objects, the buried life of the senses, the queer intricacies of desire, the delirium of signs, the language of flowers, the multiplicity of personhood, and the endlessly elusive nature of the social tie. In this seminar we read the authors side-by-side, juxtaposing Swann’s Way with Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, and, if there is time, Sodom and Gomorrah, which Woolf read with her lover Vita Sackville-West, with The Waves. Heesok Chang.

Prerequisite(s): Open to Juniors and Seniors with two units of 200-level work in English, or by permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS