"...the novel tells a story. That is the fundamental aspect without which it could not exist. That is the highest factor common to all novels, and I wish that it was not so, that it could be something different..." (E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel). In this course we'll consider the various stories English novelists have told about life in the twentieth century--about the splendors and miseries of love, about working-class poverty and ways of escaping from it, about war and its aftermath, about houses and the values associated with them, about post-imperialist London, about the past and its incessant pressure on the present. How these stories are told, the narrative methods which modern writers have employed (flashbacks and flashforwards, competing points of view, alternative endings, cinematic techniques), will be part of our concern. So will the wish Forster mentions in the quotation above--to escape from the tyranny of "story." D.H. Lawrence cries out against "the old stable ego of character," Virginia Woolf wonders if she's producing elegies rather than novels. We'll seek to understand the motives behind these innovations, though without devaluing the work of traditional writers like Evelyn Waugh or Forster himself; this is a course about continuity as well as change.

We'll look at a few critical readings, such as Woolf's "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown," Forster's Aspects of the Novel, and short articles gathered in David Lodge's The Art of Fiction, but the emphasis will be on the fiction. Probable reading list: E.M. Forster, Howards End; F.M. Ford, The Good Soldier; Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse; D.H. Lawrence, selected stories; Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust; Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim; William Trevor, Felicia's Journey; Angela Carter, Wise Children; and another novel chosen in consultation with the class. Writing assignments will in part depend on enrollment. They won't be extensive, in view of the course's reading requirement--some short papers or exercises and a medium-length paper; probably a midterm exam; certainly a final exam. In class I'll lecture informally, ask questions, and encourage discussion whenever it seems called for. There are no pre-requisites and non-majors are welcome.