123043 PS Proseminar Literature / Literary Studies (2017S)

In this course we will be concerned with fiction by American and Irish writers who went to Paris in the first decades of the 20th century - either as exiles or as long-term visitors to the French capital. While the emphasis is on the close reading of our texts we will also have a look at their historical, social or cultural dimensions and at the contribution of American and Irish writing to modernism. In this context the role of Paris as the centre of modernist production and artistic experiment, as a geographical place turning into a 'state of mind' will have to be examined.