239603 Primitive and Supercivilised: The Characters of Early Modernism (S) (WiSe 2012/2013)

This course looks at British literature at the turn of the 20th century. The fin de siècle, marked by a sense of despair and pessimism, raises the concern that civilisation may eventually lead to decadence and degradation; still, it is a time of anticipation of changes to the existing cultural and social order. The tradition of the novel lives on in the works of D. H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad and Henry James who use the well-known form to talk about the newly realised urges of men and women and the sense of paranoia caused by the unpreparedness to manage the increased freedom of choice. The biting dramas exploring and satirising the ills of British society, often with a vein of comedy, are indicative of the break with traditional aesthetic forms and the birth of new ones, adequate to the requirements of the nascent modernist consciousness.

Literatur

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (1890)
Pygmalion, G. B. Shaw (1912)
Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence (1913)

Additional text for discussion shall be provided by email and as photocopied handouts.