October 2019
The American Novel: Lolita and American Pastoral
In this course we will discuss two of the great works of post-war American fiction. Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is a novel that continues to scandalise and fascinate and Philip Roth’s American Pastoral is similarly uncompromising is its exploration of relations between the generations against the backdrop of political radicalism, race riots and the Vietnam War. Both texts explore the dark side of the USA at the apogee of its political and economic power and experiment boldly with narrative technique and structure without ever losing their narrative punch.…
Find out more »The American Novel: Lolita and American Pastoral
In this course we will discuss two of the great works of post-war American fiction. Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is a novel that continues to scandalise and fascinate and Philip Roth’s American Pastoral is similarly uncompromising is its exploration of relations between the generations against the backdrop of political radicalism, race riots and the Vietnam War. Both texts explore the dark side of the USA at the apogee of its political and economic power and experiment boldly with narrative technique and structure without ever losing their narrative punch.…
Find out more »November 2019
‘Why can’t we be friends? Passage to India and The Grass is Singing
In this course, we examine two great twentieth century novels that explore the everyday realities of life in the British Empire. E. M Forster’s novel is set in the 1920s Indian Raj and Doris Lessing’s traces the lives and shifting relationships of a Rhodesian farming community over decades. In both, racial conflict is never far from the surface, and explodes into violence and recrimination, yet relationships develop across racial divides. Characters are locked in a relationship with a natural environment…
Find out more »December 2019
Festive Bite: ‘The Dead’, James Joyce
Widely considered one of the most significant short story collections of the 20th century, 'Dubliners' is a rich tapestry of life and death in Dublin of the early 1900s. In this one-off session, we will focus on the last tale in the collection, ‘The Dead’. Set at, or just before the feast of the Epiphany, this is the story of a man's epiphany about his relation to the world and, despite its rather morbid title, exudes a warmth and lyricism…
Find out more »Festive Bite: ‘The Dead’, James Joyce
Widely considered one of the most significant short story collections of the 20th century, ‘Dubliners’ is a rich tapestry of life and death in Dublin of the early 1900s. In this one-off session, we will focus on the last tale in the collection, ‘The Dead’. Set at, or just before the feast of the Epiphany, this is the story of a man’s epiphany about his relation to the world and, despite its rather morbid title, exudes a warmth and lyricism…
Find out more »Festive Bite: ‘The Dead’. James Joyce
Widely considered one of the most significant short story collections of the 20th century, ‘Dubliners’ is a rich tapestry of life and death in Dublin of the early 1900s. In this one-off session, we will focus on the last tale in the collection, ‘The Dead’. Set at, or just before the feast of the Epiphany, this is the story of a man’s epiphany about his relation to the world and, despite its rather morbid title, exudes a warmth and lyricism…
Find out more »January 2020
The American Novel: American Pastoral and Lolita
In this course we will discuss two of the great works of post-war American fiction. Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is a novel that continues to scandalise and fascinate and Philip Roth’s American Pastoral is similarly uncompromising is its exploration of relations between the generations against the backdrop of political radicalism, race riots and the Vietnam War. Both texts explore the dark side of the USA at the apogee of its political and economic power and experiment boldly with narrative technique and structure without ever losing their narrative punch.…
Find out more »The American Novel: Lolita and American Pastoral
In this course we will discuss two of the great works of post-war American fiction. Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is a novel that continues to scandalise and fascinate and Philip Roth’s American Pastoral is similarly uncompromising is its exploration of relations between the generations against the backdrop of political radicalism, race riots and the Vietnam War. Both texts explore the dark side of the USA at the apogee of its political and economic power and experiment boldly with narrative technique and structure without ever losing their narrative punch.…
Find out more »February 2020
American Pastoral: Philip Roth
In this course we will discuss one of the great works of post-war American fiction, Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. Uncompromising in its exploration of relations between the generations, American Pastoral exposes the dark side of the USA at the apogee of its political and economic power. Set against the backdrop of political radicalism, race riots and the Vietnam War, Roth takes us kicking and screaming through a riot of domestic crises - we want it to end, and we don't, we…
Find out more »The Wasteland
T S Eliot’s, ‘The Waste Land’, published in 1922, is the most famous poem of the twentieth century and widely considered to be the great, but difficult masterpiece of modernist poetry. This short course aims to cut through some of those difficulties. We shall examine the poem closely and, as we do so, situate it in its historical and literary moment, and explore its themes, form and complex allusions. If you are keen to understand and appreciate ‘The Wasteland’ but…
Find out more »The Wasteland
T S Eliot’s, ‘The Waste Land’, published in 1922, is the most famous poem of the twentieth century and widely considered to be the great, but difficult masterpiece of modernist poetry. This short course aims to cut through some of those difficulties. We shall examine the poem closely and, as we do so, situate it in its historical and literary moment, and explore its themes, form and complex allusions. If you are keen to understand and appreciate ‘The Wasteland’ but…
Find out more »The Wasteland
T S Eliot’s, ‘The Waste Land’, published in 1922, is the most famous poem of the twentieth century and widely considered to be the great, but difficult masterpiece of modernist poetry. This short course aims to cut through some of those difficulties. We shall examine the poem closely and, as we do so, situate it in its historical and literary moment, and explore its themes, form and complex allusions. If you are keen to understand and appreciate ‘The Wasteland’ but…
Find out more »March 2020
America in Crisis: Lolita
In February, 1954, Vladimir Nabokov wrote to publisher, James Laughlin, “Would you be interested in publishing a timebomb that I have just finished putting together? It is a novel of 459 typewritten pages.” The novel was “Lolita,” the tale of a pedophile’s exploitation of a twelve-year-old girl. It took Nabokov five years to get his 'timebomb' published and since then it has become a totem of American literature. The subject matter is shocking but the prose is sublime. How can…
Find out more »May 2020
North and South
When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the North of England. Initially repulsed by the griminess of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice. This is intensified by her tempestuous relationship with the mill-owner and self-made man John…
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