11/19 Please note slightly revised course description:
“Modern” is a sneaky word (it’s old), so we begin by thinking about that, then jump into novels overtly featuring the relationship of past to present—whether in terms of personal memory, historical monument, shellshock, or clothing. Novels likely include Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, Rebecca West’s Return of the Soldier, D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and perhaps a late 20th century re-working of the Woolf by Michael Cunningham. We will pay close attention to the form of the novel; and the motif of clothing’s relation to the body, gender, and identity, since the only thing that fetishizes the novel more than the novel is fashion, obsessed as it is with the new. This is a reading-heavy class, with assessment based on informed in-class contributions to in-person discussion; and short response papers, one of which will blossom into a final 8-page paper.
Hard copy is mandatory (no Kindle, E-books, or on-line pdf’s). The following editions are recommended:
Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (Norton Critical Edition, ed. Martin Stannard ISBN-13 : 978-0393927924)
D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, Penguin Classics, Introduction by Amit Chaudhuri (ISBN 9780141441542)
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, intro Elaine Showalter (Penguin, ISBN 978-0143136132)
Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier, intro by Samuel Hynes (Penguin, ISBN-13 : 978-0141180656)
Perhaps: Michael Cunningham, The Hours