127011 KO Critical Readings in Literature (2022S)

“Paris was the place that suited us who were to create the twentieth-century art and literature”, Gertrude Stein famously remarked.
In this Critical Readings course we will discuss works by American and Irish/English writers who went to the French capital in the first decades of the 20th century. We will explore the ways in which Paris, and the Left Bank in particular, as a site of modernist production, artistic experiment and cultural exchange inspired the literary imagination. Special emphasis will be placed on Modernism as an urban and international movement and on the roles played by the Little Magazines, the (literary) salons, and Sylvia Beach’s bookshop “Shakespeare and Company”.
Participants will become familiar with avant-garde and high modernist writing, deepen their knowledge of terminology central to the analysis of literary texts, and apply a range of critical and theoretical approaches to narrative fiction and poetry.

Methods:
In-class discussions, reading assignments, oral presentations, group work, written assignments, mini-lectures, eLearning