Proseminar The Modern British Novel

-Only connect!- reads the epigraph of Howards End (1910), one of the most important British novels of the 20th century. -Connect what?-, one might ask. The characters in Howards End are faced with many antagonisms, such as tradition vs. progress, past vs. present, class vs. individuality, and materialism vs. idealism, which the novel struggles to synthesize in some way. Written at the dawn of a new century, Howards End finds itself in an uneasy and shifting territory called -Modernism.- This seminar will look at novels written in this period and see how authors and their characters deal with the substantial changes (social, political, cultural, moral...) that came about in the early 20th century. It will ask what makes the novel -modern- and what this modernity means for the themes and structures of novelistic writing at the time. Reading list: Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles; E.M. Forster, Howards End; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover; Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark (all either Oxford or Penguin Editions, if possible). Since this is a reading-intensive seminar, participants must have read at least Hardy, Forster, and Woolf before the start of the term. A short reading quiz at the beginning of the semester will ensure that this is so. Department III - Anglistik und Amerikanistik LMU München SoSe 2015 PD Dr. Meifert Menhard Felicitas