ENGL 362(S) Conrad and Ford
We will study the most important works of two great twentieth-century novelists: Joseph Conrad, long considered one of the preeminent figures of early British modernism; and Ford Madox Ford, who has come to be recognized as one of the most brilliant authors of the central or "high" phase of modernist fiction. In reading Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo, and The Secret Agent, we will be concerned with moral crises involving heroism and its failure, questions of empire and race, and the fate of revolutionary politics. Ford's preoccupations, particularly in The Good Soldier, are more domestic and psychological, focussed on sexual passion, deception and faith, and the imperilled state of the British upper-classes at the turn of the century. In his tetralogy, Parade's End, he interweaves such issues with haunting evocations of combat in World War I. Conrad and Ford shared close aesthetic affinities-indeed they collaborated on several novels-but the younger Ford extended Conrad's powerful innovations and developed other experimental techniques akin to those used by Joyce and Woolf. By studying their work together, we are thus afforded a kind of genealogical survey of the development of modernist fiction. Requirements: active participation in class discussions, weekly journal entries, a short paper, and a 12- to 15-page final paper. Major Seminar. Open only to English majors and qualified non-majors. Permission of English Department chair required; see information above. Enrollment limited to 15.