ENGL 292 ESSAYS

1. Continuity & Change in British Literature (1789–Present)

Key Shifts:

• Romanticism → Victorian realism → Modernism → Postmodernism (e.g., Wordsworth’s nature vs. Eliot’s fragmentation).

• Audiences: From aristocratic patronage to mass literacy (Orwell’s plain style vs. Joyce’s elitism).
  Syllabus Examples:

  • Continuity: Yeats’ myth-making (Easter 1916) vs. Heaney’s Digging (rural roots).

  • Change: Woolf’s stream of consciousness vs. 18th-c. epistolary novels.

2. The Evolving British Literary Canon

Debates:

• Inclusion: Postcolonial voices (Achebe, Rushdie) vs. traditional "Great Tradition" (Leavis).

• Norton Anthology: Larkin’s conservatism vs. Agbabi’s Grime Mix (oral traditions).
  Case Study:

  • Kipling: Once canonical (“White Man’s Burden”), now contested for imperialism.

3. Periodization vs. Transnationalism (Post-1900)

Tensions:

• “British” Modernism: Eliot (American expat), Conrad (Polish).

• Postcolonial Hybridity: Smith’s Embassy of Cambodia (London-Dhaka diasporas).
  Question: Is “British literature” a useful category after empire?

4. Literature & 20th-Century Upheavals

Themes/Techs:

• WWI: Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est (trench realism).

• Post-WWII: Larkin’s Homage to a Government (austerity disillusionment).

• Globalization: Armitage’s Ark (climate anxiety).

5. Colonial Legacies in Modern Literature

Texts:

• Heart of Darkness → Achebe’s critique (Things Fall Apart).

• The White Man’s Burden vs. Heaney’s Punishment (colonial violence).
  Concepts: Hybridity (Rushdie), writing back (Said).

6. Modernism: Contexts & Innovations

Traits:

• Form: Fragmentation (The Waste Land), interior monologue (Woolf).

• Interdisciplinary: Freud in The Dead (Gabriel’s epiphany as subconscious).
  Debate: High Modernism’s elitism vs. postmodern accessibility.

7. The Freudian Turn

Case Studies:

• PTSD: Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway.

• Madness: Plath’s Ariel (via Hughes’ Birthday Letters).

• Oedipus Complex: Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers.

8. Secularism & Morality

Texts:

• Loss of Faith: Larkin’s Church Going, Hopkins’ Thou art indeed just (doubt).

• New Ethics: Orwell’s humanism vs. postmodern relativism.

9. Postmodernism vs. Tradition

Contrasts:

• Experimentation: Ulysses (mythic pastiche) vs. Animal Farm (parable clarity).

• Neo-Romanticism: Hughes’ Pike (primal energy).

10. Unit 3’s Core Themes

Recurring Ideas:

• Isolation: Prufrock’s paralysis, The Dead’s marital distance.

• Imperial Decline: The Second Coming’s chaos, Windrush narratives.

• Formal Innovation: Agbabi’s Grime Mix (sonic hybridity).

Essay Tips:

• Comparative Analysis: Pair Yeats’ terrible beauty with Heaney’s Punishment (revolutionary violence).

• Theoretical Lenses: Postcolonialism (Said), psychoanalysis (Freud), feminist narratology (Woolf).

• Quotes: Use Eliot’s objective correlative or Orwell’s doublethink as framing devices.