HENA03636U Engelsk - Frit emne: Women Novelists of the Mid-Twentieth Century

This course will focus on women novelists in Britain from the end of the 1920s to the beginning of the 1960s; in other words, on writers who were active in the aftermaths of the two World Wars of the twentieth century. The novelists I have chosen to present avoid the extreme stylistic and formal experimentation of the Modernist movement, although each is aware of previous traditions of writing and is concerned to forge an individual form and style appropriate to her vision. Though their focus is often on women’s experience and subjectivity, on the whole they cannot be classified as feminist. Their novels are responses in different modes to the traumatic events and the wide-ranging social and political changes of their times, and give rise to such topics for analysis and discussion as education, the family and sexuality under changed and changing conditions. Participants in the course will be expected to research and prepare topics for presentation dealing with both social/political context and literary technique. The authors covered will include Rosamund Lehmann, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Elizabeth Bowen, Jean Rhys, Ivy Compton Burnett and Muriel Spark. A fuller reading list will depend on the availability of certain titles, but should be ready in mid-December; however, the first book to be studied will be Dusty Answer, by Rosamund Lehmann.