Tuesdays, 11:30-12:45  Wilson Annex 400, Fall 2005

WRITING WORLD WAR II/English 417	Professor K. Bluemel
Office Hours: T 1:00-2:15 p.m.	Office phone: 732-571-3622
W 7:30-8:30 p.m.	English Department:  732-571-3439
R electronic; 8:30-9:30 p.m.	Office: Wilson Annex 509
F 1:00-2:15 p.m.	kbluemel@monmouth.edu

Required Texts:

The Last Enemy, Richard Hillary (Burford Books)

Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf (Harcourt)

The Mortal Storm, Phyllis Bottome (Northwestern University Press)

The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen (Penguin)

“Home Front Diaries,” Inez Holden (xerox)

Selected poems, Alun Lewis and Keith Douglas (xerox)

“Blood, toil, tears, and sweat” and “Wars are not won by evacuations,” Winston Churchill (xerox)

“Wartime Diaries [Dunkirk]” and “Frontiers of Art and Propaganda,” George Orwell (xerox)

Syllabus 417:01

Course Description and Objectives:

This course is intended to introduce you to some of the most significant writing in English to emerge out of World War II, a crisis time in British history when England lost its empire and almost lost its independence. One of the key concepts we’ll use to organize our thinking about this literature is that of “The People’s War.” This phrase, used at the time of war, captured the notion that war was transforming a highly stratified, class-conscious nation ruled by an aristocratic elite into a democratic nation ruled by “the people” who together would save it from Hitler.

Total war, one involving all the people and impacting almost every aspect of life, presented writers with extraordinary challenges. Until very recently, literary historians believed these challenges were too much for British literature and declared that WWII, unlike WWI, had produced no great writing. We’ll start from the opposite premise and assume that extraordinary challenges produce extraordinary writing, but that we might need to search for new kinds of writers and new kinds of writing in order to recognize such quality.

We will analyze texts published during a ten year period, from 1938-1948, all written by British writers, some focusing on distant landscapes and cultures, many preoccupied with questions of national, personal, and political identity. One of our primary objectives is to understand the implications of these questions and be able to compare how different writers handle them. Another primary objective is to understand the connections between literary production, genre, structure, and meaning and historical and political contexts. Analysis of visual media—films and photographs—will complement our study of literary and historical representations of war. Although this course is on a highly specialized topic, it is still just an introduction to World War II writing. Its third main objective is to give you enough of a background in the period and its literature to enable you to independently study the many other wonderful WWII texts that we will not have time to read.

More Questions for Advanced Reading:

1.  What turns literature into war literature? Are there any symbols or references that emerge time and time again and come to define Britain at war? What makes this war literature specifically a literature of WWII?

2.  What difference does genre make for your understanding of the British literary response to war? What difference does gender make for your understanding of the British response to war? Is literature by noncombatants as valuable or compelling or “real” as that by combatants?

3.  How does this literature contribute to or work against the heroic myth of “The People’s War”? What other categories might you come up with to organize study of British World War II literature?

Specific Class Requirements and Grading:

Class participation, presentations, quizzes, response papers: 15%

In-class paper:  10%

Mid-term exam:  15%

Second paper: 15%

Final researched paper:  25%

Final exam:  20%

Policies and Guidelines