Group III: Special Topics I

By the mid-1910s what we know as literary modernisms were well underway and reaching a mature phase just as the First World War was beginning. With the nineteenth century and its legacy of Victorian mores receding quickly, writers were more determined than ever to experiment with literary forms, styles, and subjects to reinvigorate aesthetic goals in an effort to “make it new”—to borrow Ezra Pound’s famous phrase. Together we will explore the question of what it meant to write both “modernism” and “modernity” in British and American poetry and fiction from roughly 1914-1942. We will refine our close reading skills, become sharper critical readers of both fiction and poetry, and pay careful attention to genre and poetics as we simultaneously consider important shifts in cultural, racial, political, technological, and gender configurations.