Major Authors in the British Literary Tradition: From Empire to Brexit

This course covers a range of twentieth and twenty-first century British writers whose works engage with the major social, political, and historical events of the time, including World Wars I and II, the tumult of the 1950s-1960s, millennium anxiety, and the Brexit crisis. Thematically, the literature of these centuries reflects a tension between the nostalgia for the glory days of empire and the desire to create a radical new vision of the future. Complex questions surrounding national identity, globalization, immigration, racism, class, and gender differences become central subjects in these works as writers attempt to define the real England. Authors to be studied may include T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, and Seamus Heaney; E.M. Forster, John Osborne, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jez Butterworth, Ian McEwan, Ali Smith, Adam Thorpe, Bernardine Evaristo, and Jonathan Coe.