Character and Self in the Modernist Novel, Harvard University

In self-consciously reacting against the 19th century Realist novel, the Modernist authors of the the 1920s and 1930s experimented with the form of the novel. In so doing, they introduced new concepts of time and narrative. But, in parallel with the revolutions taking place in biology and psychology, they also changed the concept of character. In the process, they called into question the inherited views of the stable self that had been more or less uncritically accepted beforehand. The repercussions of that reconceptualization are still felt today across most of the social sciences and humanities. We will read novels by six writers who contributed in important ways to this change: The first four will be Elizabeth Bowen, William Faulkner, Ford Madox Ford, and Jean Toomer. We will together select the last two novels during the second meeting of the reading group. Each student will be asked to give some introductory comments at one session to help begin the discussion of the novel assigned for that day. This information has been collected for the Post-Discipline Online Syllabus Database. The database explores the use of literature by schools of professional education in North America. It forms part of a larger project titled Post-Discipline: Literature, Professionalism, and the Crisis of the Humanities, led by Dr Merve Emre with the assistance of Dr Hayley G. Toth. You can find more information about the project at https://postdiscipline.english.ox.ac.uk/. Data was collected and accurate in 2021/22.