The anglophone literary world experienced a banner year in 1922: T.S. Eliot published The Waste Land and James Joyce published Ulysses for the first time in its entirety. Together with other innovative texts, these two would later be seen as pinnacle achievements of literary modernism. In 2022, much of the literary world is celebrating the centennial of 1922 as it reconsiders modernism.  Our seminar, taught jointly by the professors of Modern English Literature and American Literature, will look in particular at transatlantic aspects of modernist poetry.  We want to engage MA students from both angles: British and American modernism(s) will be studied in their mutual influence.

After a glance at the pre-World War I scene in England and America, including theorists like Virginia Woolf and T.E. Hulme, The Waste Land will be our focus in the opening weeks. Starting in April, visual modernism and the so-called Little Magazines will occupy us. Auden and Yeats will follow, before we turn to African American modernists.  The class will conclude with a look at Wallace Stevens—who considered poetry the "supreme fiction"—and Robinson Jeffers, who promulgated what he called "inhumanism" as a way of escaping from the strictures of history and disaster. 

Students in this seminar will participate in a special event scheduled for March 21, when—during class time—the seminar will offer a staged reading of portions of The Waste Land for the benefit of collège classes that have been invited from throughout the region. The preparation and planning of this event will be integrated into the class. 

If you intend to take this class, be aware of a mandatory info session that will take place via TEAMS on Monday, January 31 at 5:15pm. In order to sign up, please contact Joanne Waeber at joanne.waeber@unifr.ch

Texts: 

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land and other Poems.  London: Faber, 2002.  ISBN 978-0-571-09712-8   

Additional texts—poems, essays, manifestos, critical opinions—to be provided via MOODLE