Instructor: Beth Blum
Monday & Wednesday, 1:30-2:45 pm | Location: Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for location
Course Site
Speaking of James Joyce’s Ulysses, T.S. Eliot confessed: “I wish, for my own sake, that I had not read it.” How does one write literature after Joyce’s revolutionary prose? This course explores different authors’ responses to that challenge. You will be introduced to one of the most influential authors of the 20th century through selected readings from Joyce’s key works: Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake (excerpts). After immersing ourselves in Joyce’s oeuvre, we will track its afterlife in literature (Virginia Woolf, Zadie Smith), graphic narrative (Chris Ware, Alison Bechdel), and popular culture.
This course satisfies the “1900-2000 Guided Elective" requirement for English concentrators and Secondary Field students.