- What is Britishness and how does it change or amalgamate over time? How do notions of Nation, Nationalism, and duty inform our comprehension of Britishness?
- What impact does Empire and Imperialism still have on our readings of British Literature? What implicit ideologies must we make ourselves aware?
- How do attitudes about and constructions of femininity and masculinity feature in the works we read? How do they change or stay the same across the decades?
- How does literary style change and what informs those changes?
- What themes/political issues/social concerns persist across the literature we read this semester? What becomes less important, de-emphasized? What becomes more vital?
- What needs to happen within the critical conversations (scholarly debates) to widen our understanding and interpretations of these works, especially those for which there is little critical attention?
Feel free to use these questions as starting points for your thinking about the content. You may use these questions to springboard your posts, response papers, and projects. You may also add to this list by contributing more questions and comments to this post, and I hope you will.
ENG 629: 20th Century British Literature 