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 »April 2020
All Roads Lead to Middlemarch
This course is entirely dedicated to one of the greatest literary works of the nineteenth-century and my own personal favourite: George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Written in 1871, the novel deals with such important contemporary issues as political change, education for women, identity, marriage and the changing social structure. It is still deeply meaningful today and this is partly why it has stood the test of time: it is, amongst other things, a series of love stories, an exploration of life in the…
Find out more »Housekeeping with Marilynne Robinson
The small town in which Housekeeping is set is a remote outpost in Idaho, America's Midwest. Sylvie, the principal character, is an 'oddball', uncomfortable with settling in one place and afraid to take her coat lest somebody ask her to stay. But stay she does as she tries to fulfil her duty as guardian to her two abandoned nieces. In this course we will explore Robinson's presentation of a lived alone and the social forces that shape identity making us…
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 »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…
Find out more »June 2020
All Roads Lead to Middlemarch
This course is entirely dedicated to one of the greatest literary works of the nineteenth-century and my own personal favourite: George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Written in 1871, the novel deals with such important contemporary issues as political change, education for women, identity, marriage and the changing social structure. It is still deeply meaningful today and this is partly why it has stood the test of time: it is, amongst other things, a series of love stories, an exploration of life in the…
Find out more »