Course Syllabus

Course Syllabus & Information

The following lecture schedule can guide your reading. The powerful WWI poetry will be read passim and schedule announced in class: it is strongly recommended that you bring a copy of the Penguin Anthology to class. With one exception, the poetry and novels are very short, and save the Woolf text, quick to read beside. The Madox Ford text is not short, but it is glorious and, as we shall see, very readable. We will be working on this text for our class project Term-long.

C.S. Forester- The General
January 5th & 7th
January 12th & 14th
Rebecca West - Return of the Soldier
January 19th & 21st
January 26th & 28th
Virginia Woolf- Jacob's Room
February 2nd & 4th
February 9th & 11th
Evelyn Waugh - Vile Bodies
February 16th & 18th
February 23rd & 25th
Ford Madox Ford - Parade's End
March 2nd & 4th
March 9th & 11th
March 16th & 18th
March 23rd & 25th
March 30th & April 1st
Review and Wrap-Up
April 6th

See support material available on Library Reserve.

Nb: “Participation requires both participation in seminar and attendance and punctuality at lecture and seminar."

Instructor Contact:
Office Hours: AQ 6094 -- Monday & Wednesday: ten-thirty to noon, Tuesday noon to three o'clock. Bring your coffee and discuss course matters freely. E-mail to ogden@sfu.ca, phone 778-782-5820

1. Mid term paper, two thousand words: due March 11th in lecture. Topics posted February 18th.
2. Group field project. The field project this Term will be a configuration of Parade's End for a future BBC TV Series concentrated on the sui generis character of Sylvia Tietjens, under the rubric of Virginia Woolf's insightful remarks in In Search of a Room of One's Own on the nature of the female character in art. Seminar time will be set aside throughout the term to work with the Instructor on this project. Due last class of term.
4. Final Paper, three thousand five hundred words: due April 6th in the Instructor's Department mailbox.

Nb: There is a five percent per day late penalty for all assignments, documented medical or bereavement leave excepted. For medical exemptions, provide a letter (not a note) on a Physician's or Surgeon's letterhead which declares his or her medical judgement that illness or injury prevented work on the assignment. The letter must cover the entire period over which the assignment was scheduled and may be verified by telephone. For bereavement leave, simply provide, ex post facto, a copy of the order of service or other published notice of remembrance.

Course Approach
The course is working toward an understanding of the imaginative effect of the First World War on British Literature to 1945. The novels on the course reading list are all masterpieces by authors of wide credibility which have, in the main, sunk from common view by accidents of history. The novels are embellished by selections from the great poets of the Great War. The approach to the fiction involves reading them in their historical context and from a close analysis of the literary techniques they manifest.