Literature's Modern Spirit: 1925-2025 | Livestream Zoom + Recorded

Course Description:

1925 was a seminal year for the publication of modernist texts, among them Ernest Hemingway's "In Our Time," F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," and Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway." This course will consider the last two texts by Fitzgerald and Woolf. What qualities make these modernist texts? Why does each remain so timely? "The Great Gatsby" questions the meaning of the American Dream, then and now. It questions the significance of money and excessive displays of wealth. This novel may be the most frequently taught book in high school curricula, and there are reasons it remains so. Hemingway famously said of Fitzgerald's style, "His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings" (while adding that Fitzgerald wasn’t in control of his style…). "Mrs. Dalloway" explores the meaning of time, memory and trauma through delicate stream-of-consciousness narration. We'll examine both books, the era and the lives of the two writers.