This course explores the range of fiction being produced within the British tradition in the first half of the twentieth century, and includes novels by Ford (The Good Soldier), Conrad (Heart of Darkness and The Secret Agent), Kipling (Kim), Joyce (Ulysses), Woolf (To the Lighthouse), and Forster (A Passage to India). The relationship of these works to three issues central to modern life in Britain (and Ireland) will be brought out over the course of the semester: the rise of mass culture; the emergence of female suffrage and feminism; and the demands of empire and imperialism. At the same time, the course will cover some of the important formal developments that shaped the novels of this period, including experiments in narrative point-of-view, stream-of-consciousness, and the uses of symbols and myths to create non-narrative structures of meaning. Format: discussion/seminar. Requirements: class participation, two papers, and a final exam. Prerequisite: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 25 (expected: 25). (Post-1900)