Masterworks of Early 20th-Century Literature

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01: Road Map—Modernism and Moral Ambiguity

In addition to providing an overview of the course, the opening lecture introduces a method of literary interpretation called Formalism, which allows readers to appreciate fiction regardless of their literary background. You'll explore some major themes of Modernism through a reading of John Crowe Ransom's poem "Captain Carpenter."

30 min

02: How to Read Fiction—Joyce's "An Encounter"

Using a story from James Joyce's "Dubliners," Professor Thorburn demonstrates how close attention to the text can produce an insightful and valid interpretation. He contrasts this kind of reading to the over-ingenious and grandiose interpretations of some scholars who rely too heavily on evidence external to the text under discussion.

31 min

03: Defining Modernism—Monet's Cathedral

Revolutionary new ideas - the theories of Darwin and Einstein; the psychological insights from Freud and James; the philosophies of Marx, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche provide a powerful intellectual context for Modernism. But perhaps the most central precursor of literary Modernism is the Impressionist art of Claude Monet.

28 min

04: Defining Modernism—Beyond Impressionism

If Impressionism anticipates literary Modernism, Postimpressionism exemplifies a break with previous artistic modes. Artists such as Picasso and Beckmann create a new visual vocabulary to communicate a profound sense of modern alienation.

29 min

05: "The Man Who Would Be King"—Imperial Fools

Rudyard Kipling serves as a transitional figure between 19th-century certitudes and the Modernist disillusionment. Though many of his most popular works betray a deep-seated racism and faith in the British Empire, his anti-imperial fable The Man Who Would Be King deconstructs the myth of the white man’s burden.

30 min

06: "Heart of Darkness"—Europe's Kurtz

A Polish expatriate, sailor, and English novelist, Joseph Conrad's life exemplifies the Modernist themes of isolation and alienation. In his masterpiece, "Heart of Darkness," Conrad created the character Kurtz, the embodiment of Western civilization, its highest aspirations, profoundest myths, and most depraved violence.

30 min

07: "Heart of Darkness"—The Drama of the Telling

Central to Modernist literature is the idea that each story narrates the difficulties of its own telling. More than just a simple travel story, Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" exemplifies this obsession with the problems inherent in storytelling.

27 min

08: "The Shadow-Line"—Unheroic Heroes

Conrad's late work, "The Shadow-Line," tells of a young sea captain whose failed first voyage is a journey into adulthood. The story serves as an example of many of Conrad's favorite literary devices and themes, including the use of doppelgangers and the antihero.

28 min

09: "The Good Soldier"—The Limits of Irony

Though less renowned than some of his contemporaries, Ford Madox Ford was a prolific writer, an influential editor, and a discoverer of literary talent. In The "Good Soldier,", he crafted a fable of infidelity that pushed to its furthest extreme a hallmark of Modernism: the unreliable narrator.

28 min

10: "The Good Soldier"—Killed by Kindness

This lecture takes a closer look at Ford's masterpiece of irony and examines how the author uses language and structure to enact the narrator's "drama of the telling."

30 min

11: Lawrence (and Joyce)—Sex in Modern Fiction

A striking feature of Modernism is its willingness to confront the nature of sexuality. Through his controversial works, D.?H. Lawrence presents an unblinking view of the complexity of sexual passion, as seen in "Sons and Lovers," "Lady Chatterley's Lover," and "Women in Love."

28 min

12: "Horse Dealer's Daughter"—A Shimmer Within

Please note: Parts of Lecture 11 contain some explicit discussion of sexual matters and may be unsuitable for children.

29 min

13: "The Metamorphosis"—Uneasy Dreams

Lawrence's short story "The Horse Dealer's Daughter" illustrates the continuities between Modernism and Romanticism, both of which celebrate the exhilarating, mysterious, and sometimes dangerous workings of passion and selfhood.

28 min

14: "Dubliners"—The Music of the Ordinary

Through the stories of his native city, Joyce explored the failures and revelations that mark the lives of ordinary men and women. His most accessible work, "Dubliners," introduces some of the themes and techniques he would later use in his masterpiece, Ulysses.

29 min

15: "Ulysses"—Joyce's Homer

Joyce's masterwork represents a new kind of fiction that pushes the limits of language. Joyce's retelling of the foundational text of Western literature, "Homer's Odyssey," is both an act of respect and of rebellion, an illustration of how we are and how we are not.

29 min

16: "Ulysses"—The Incongruity Principle

In "Ulysses," meaning is constructed by juxtaposing incongruous situations, perspectives, and themes. Through this "incongruity principle" Joyce aimed to dramatize the complicated, often contradictory experience of life in its actual fullness. He attempted to duplicate the way the world registers almost moment by moment in our consciousness.

31 min

17: "To the Lighthouse"—Life Stand Still Here

A prolific writer, perceptive literary critic, and member of the famous literary circle, the Bloomsbury Group, Virginia Woolf is now one of the most widely read authors of the Modernist movement. This lecture explores how she sought to capture the experience of life through her art.

27 min

18: "To the Lighthouse"—That Horrid Skull Again

This lecture returns to Woolf's classic novel to take a closer look at its structure and narrative style. Through the story of Mrs. Ramsay and her family, Woolf dramatizes the self as fluid and celebrates the ability to stem the tide of mortality and flux (even if only momentarily) through art and community.

27 min

19: Isaac Babel—Jew and Cossack

Ironic, ambivalent, often violent, the stories of Isaac Babel reflect his experience of the brutal anti-Semitism of prerevolutionary Russia. In ironic fables and "Red Cavalry" stories, he reveals another face of Modernism: affectless, numbed, and precise.

28 min

20: Isaac Babel—Odessa's Homer

In his tales of Odessa, Babel teases the reader with the idea of autobiography, but his accounts of the brutal pogroms of his childhood in Russia is more ironic and morally ambiguous than mere self-confession. In his mock-heroic stories about Benya Krik, the Russian-Jewish gangster, he sings, like an ancient poet, of a lost world.

28 min

21: Faulkner's World—Our Frantic Steeplechase

William Faulkner's difficult, multivoiced novels demand active collaboration from readers. This lecture describes Faulkner's rich portrait of a fictional Mississippi county.

30 min

22: "Absalom, Absalom!"—The Fragile Thread

Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!" synthesizes a variety of genres (adventure, family melodrama, detective novel, gothic novel and mythological allusions) to create a complex "drama of the telling" that is simultaneously a deeply American fable of race, gender, and ambition.

29 min

23: "Pale Fire"—Modern or Postmodern?

In "Pale Fire,", Vladmir Nabokov creates a complicated parody of scholarship in his portrayal of the mad editor, Kinbote, and a verbally dazzling meditation on the nature of art and creativity.

29 min

24: The Moral Vision of Modern Fiction

The course concludes with an overview of Modernist themes, emphasizing the respect for the past these authors shared. A key to their modernity, Professor Thorburn says, is their mission to dramatize the nearly irretrievable complexity of life.

28 min

Overview Course No. 2539

If you've ever longed to read the great Modernist novels of the early 20th century - perhaps Ulysses, To the Lighthouse, or Absalom, Absalom! - but have shied away or set them down because of their intimidating style, fragmented narrative, or lack of a clear plot, this is the course for you.

In this series of 24 lectures, acclaimed literary scholar and award-winning teacher David Thorburn of MIT has created an accessible gateway to this remarkable literary movement. Professor Thorburn will show you not only how an entire generation of Modernist authors - including Joyce, Faulkner, Conrad, Woolf, and Kafka - turned the tradition of literature on its head, creating new techniques to reflect an increasingly complex post-Victorian world, but how to understand and enjoy them. You'll see that even though their works are indeed some of the most challenging you'll ever encounter, they are also among the most rewarding.

Even if you don't have time to read the full works, you will easily understand the lectures. Professor Thorburn demystifies the world of literary criticism and demonstrates how a thoughtful, careful reader can find exciting and enriching insights in these works. You'll examine these great novels and stories from all angles, through close readings of selected passages and illuminating discussions of structure, form, symbolism, and character.

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About

David Thorburn

Whether you’re coming to these great writers for the first time, or returning to them after a long separation, I urge you to aim for as close to an unmediated connection to this fiction as possible.

ALMA MATER

Stanford University

INSTITUTION

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dr. David Thorburn is Professor of Literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Director of the MIT Communications Forum. He earned his A.B. degree from Princeton University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. Professor Thorburn previously taught in the English Department at Yale University for 10 years. Professor Thorburn is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including Fulbright, Woodrow Wilson, and Rockefeller foundation fellowships. He was the founder and for 12 years the Director of the Film and Media Studies program at MIT. He has won teaching awards at both MIT and Yale, and he was named a MacVicar Faculty Fellow, MIT's highest teaching award, in 2002. Professor Thorburn is the author of Conrad's Romanticism and many essays and reviews on literary, cultural, and media topics in publications such as The New York Times, Partisan Review, and The American Prospect. Professor Thorburn has edited a widely used anthology of fiction, Initiation: Stories and Novels on Three Themes. Professor Thorburn's courses at MIT in modern fiction and film are among the most popular in the Humanities Department. He has lectured widely in the United States and Europe on literature and media.

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