History of English Literature

Dr Mirosława Kubasiewicz
English Studies B.A.
Semester 4, 2022-2023
30 hours (4 ECTS points); credit with a grade

Requirements: active, informed participation in the course

good knowledge of the assigned main and secondary texts
positive result of the test - with a score of min. 60%

positive results of home assignments (apart from reading) 😉

Weeks 1-2
Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice (the first three chapters will be closely analysed);
a novel of manners; the use of irony; Free Indirect Discourse.
Reading:
Carole Moses. “Jane Austen and Elizabeth Bennet: The Limits of Irony”
https://jasna.org/persuasions/printed/number25/moses.pdf
Katheryn Sutherland. “Jane Austen and Social Judgement”. https://www.bl.uk/romantics-
and-victorians/articles/jane-austen-and-social-judgement
Week 3-4
Joseph Conrad – “An Outpost of Progress” from Tales of Unrest; themes – the role of
civilization and the meaning of progress; honour and human dignity; irony; announcement
of the themes explored in Heart of Darkness;
Reading:
Martha Fodaski Black. “Irony in Joseph Conrad’s ‘An Outpost of Progress’”
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20873853

Weeks 5-6
James Joyce – Dubliners (“Araby”, “Eveline”); modernist short story, epiphany, narration,
main themes;
Reading:
Seamus Perry. City, paralysis, epiphany: an introduction to Dubliners
https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/city-paralysis-epiphany-an-introduction-
to-dubliners
Week 7
Contemporary Irish short story – Colin Barrett – “Let’s Go Kill Ourselves”;
Wendy Erskine – “Locksmiths”;
Week 8
D.H. Lawrence – “A Horse Dealer’s Daughter” – love/ death connection; reason/mind –
emotions/body; nature /culture; +
Weeks 9-10
Katherine Mansfield: “The Garden Party;” “The Fly”; modernist short story, epiphany, Free
Indirect Discourse, the theme of WWI; of death.
Reading:
William Atkinson. “Mrs. Sheridan’s Masterstroke: Liminality in Katherine Mansfield’s
‘The Garden-Party’”
 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233322861_Mrs_Sheridan's_masterstroke_Limin
ality_in_Katherine_Mansfield's_The_Garden-Party
Zastąpić – Jean Rhys? Dodać Woolf dla porównania??
Week 11-12
William Golding – Lord of the Flies; a dystopian novel (affinities with Blake and with
Conrad); universality;
Week 13
Test /essay
Week 14-15
Kazuo Ishiguro – Never Let Me Go – a utopia that has gone wrong
Reading:
“Questioning the Possibles: Never Let me Go” in: Matthew Beetham. The Novels of Kazuo
Ishiguro, ch. 8 (137-147) – in the UZ library.

Secondary reading for the course:

1. Carter, Ronald, John McRae, The Routledge History of Literature in English,
Routledge, London, 2002.
2. Sanders, Andrew, The Short Oxford History of English Literature, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 2004.
3. Walder, Dennis, The Realist Novel, Routledge, New York, 1995.
4. Articles assigned as home reading during the course.
5. Daniel Vogel. “Joseph Conrad in the Light of Postcolonialism.” (at least pp. 102-105
- on “An Outpost of Progress”)
http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.ojs-issn-2084-3941-year- 2012-
volume-7-article-119
6. Martin Šemelák. “The suffering of existence in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go”
DOI: 10.1515/aa-2018-0008

7. An interview with Kazuo Ishiguro

https://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm/author_number/477/kazuo-
ishiguro