This course attempts to trace the central
philosophical and conceptual issues in the study of Western Modernist thought.
Emphasis is on reconstructing the main ideas of the period and examining the
literature of that age in relation to these ideas. As the last in a four-part
paper, this is an attempt to acquaint students with the cultural and
intellectual ideas that have shaped the modern western culture. Alongside the
literary appreciation of texts, it is expected that students will also learn to
appreciate the political and social contexts which the shape the ideas
represented in these texts. Selections include literary and non-literary texts
from the period and critical and scholarly works from recent times which
attempt to throw new light on the period. A selection of texts for self study
has been suggested which will help students gain more in depth knowledge about
the issue treated in the in the course.
- Unit
I: Introduction to Key Themes and Issues
- Perry
Anderson, "Modernism and Revolution"
- André
Breton, First and Second Manifesto of Surrealism, including later
prefaces
- Camus,
The Myth of Sisyphus Chapter 4
- Unit
II: Key Ideas
- Sigmund
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents , Part III
- Friedrich
Nietzsche: from preface to Human, All Too Human [modernism anthology,
17-22]
- Marx
and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, including prefaces.
- Unit
III: Texts
- Manifestos
of Futurism: Marinetti et al.
- Eliot,
The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock
- Eliot,
Tradition and the Individual Talent
- Joyce,
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- Unit
IV: Revisiting Modernism
- Bell,
The Metaphysics of Modernism
- Todorov,
Imperfect Garden: The Legacy of Humanism Chapter 1
- Texts
for Self Study
- Shaw:
Man and Superman
- Charles
Darwin, from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
- Leon
Trotsky, Diego Rivera, André Breton, "Manifesto: Towards a Free
Revolutionary Art"
- Kundera,
Life Is Elsewhere
- Antonio
Gramsci, "Marinetti, the Revolutionary"
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