This course reads various key texts across English literary history as well as across various genres, with the additional focus on literary historiography as a genre in itself. We will be addressing the Italian influence (in Elizabethan poetry), or French influence (in Davenant’s The Playhouse to be Let; or in Aestheticist verse) on English literature, both in form and style, as well as the conflicting demands on a national literature (in essays) which resulted from it. Finally, we will be looking at a Modernist rewriting of history in Evelyn Waugh’s novel A Handful of Dust. In consequence, students will address a variety of texts in their analyses over a variety of literary periods, gaining a deeper understanding of period features and specifics. A collection of shorter texts will be provided for copying at the beginning of term; please obtain your own edition of Waugh’s novel. Regular attendance, lively participation, an oral presentation and a final exam are the requisites for credits. Textual knowledge will be tested in the course of the term.
Text:
Waugh, Evelyn. A Handful of Dust. London: Penguin Classics, 2012.
Suggested Reading:
Barnard, Robert. A Short History of English Literature. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
Daiches, David. A Critical History of English Literature: In Two Volumes. London: Mandarin, 1994.
Sanders, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.
