Literature: Summer's End: British Literature of the Belle Epoque 1888-1915

This course will begin with an exploration of Henry James’ psychological ghost story, The Turn of the Screw, before we progress to Grahame’s, The Wind in the Willows, which we will assess as a fiction rooted in the nature of the British class system at the turn of the century. We shall also evaluate its contribution to the notion of the British aesthetic movement. Such themes will continue in Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, and we will additionally investigate Lawrence as a writer of women characters. The position of women and their value as the memory and objects of love poetry will also inform our consideration of Thomas Hardy’s poems of 1912-13.

In the other text on our course, Ford’s, The Good Soldier, we will discover the increasing brittleness of the British middle and upper-classes, and the hypocrisy which structured the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.

There will be enormous scope for the discussion of those subjects, themes and authors outlined above, and you will discover new ways to consider sometimes familiar texts, and thus reanimate them. Additionally guidance will be provided for further reading into our authors and more broadly into authors from the same period not included on this course.