Course Description: Both celebrated and maligned, the Bloomsbury Group is the best-known English artistic coterie of the twentieth century. This course will examine some of the works of the individuals who made up this charmed circle, such as prose writers Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Vita Sackville West, and Lytton Strachey; artists Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, and Duncan Grant; the economist John Maynard Keynes; and art critics Roger Fry and Clive Bell. The course will focus on Bloomsbury's influence during the interwar period, when the Group's celebrity peaked, but we will also discuss the persistent fascination with the “Bloomsberries” today. Students will hand in weekly responses, lead class discussion, and write a long seminar paper.
MA-Lit Course Designation: Literature After 1800, D (Cultures/Politics/Histories)