Episodes in Literary Cultures

In the masterful hands of Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust, the novel becomes an instrument for studying and for experiencing what it means to exist in the world and in time. Both Woolf and Proust saw the world around them changing rapidly – the world of the new twentieth century, increasingly global, a world of artistic revolution, of technological innovation, of political upheaval,  of rapid social change, of international warfare. They wrote novels as part of studying that change, as part of thinking about the experience of change itself, the effects of change on our ability to perceive the world we live in.  In turn, their novels changed how people thought about and read novels. Some would say their novels contributed to changing our ability to see the new world around us. The novels of Woolf and Proust (Woolf, in fact, was an admiring reader of Proust) are now thought of as some of the most inventive, challenging, and influential novels ever written.  In this course we will explore Woolf and Proust’s aesthetic, philosophical, historical, and sociological experiments within the form of the novel.  We’ll read four novels by Woolf, part or all of four of the volumes of Proust’s seven-volume masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time, along with a few of their essays and a few essays by other writers.

Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Sodom and Gomorrah, Finding Time Again  (We will be reading the Penguin translations, series editor Christopher Prendergast.)

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, The Years