ENGL 343(F) Images of the City: Urban Spectacle in English Literature

At some point during the second half of the eighteenth century, London began to increase dramatically in size because of pressures related to the Industrial Revolution. It doing so, it became what has come to be called a metropolis, the first in human history. It thus provided a new subject matter for creative writers, a content that would eventually affect the form of literary texts (T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land is an obvious example). From Blake to Wordsworth onwards, there is a significant tradition of city literature, and this course will use a wide range of literary texts in the novel, drama, and poetry-supported by material in film, painting, architecture, and music-to illuminate the ways in which London as metropolis has played a role in textual and cultural formation. Texts include Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, G. B. Shaw's Plays Unpleasant, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Grahame Greene's The End of the Affair, Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, Angela Carter's Wise Children, Peter Ackroyd's Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, and Iain Sinclair's Lights Out for the Territory. Requirements: two 6- to 8-page papers and a final exam. Pre-requisite: English 101. Enrollment limited to 25.

Hour: G. SMITH