Courses / Module

This module will introduce students to nineteenth and twentieth century fictions which deal with the experience of empire and its ending.. Starting with writers of the moment of ‘high imperialism’ in the 1880s such as H Rider Haggard and Joseph Conrad, we will examine the interweaving processes by which the European empires came to be contested and literary narratives of empire passed into political and aesthetic crisis. With writers such as Graham Greene and George Orwell, we will see the European empires crumble; with contemporary novelists such as Robert Stone and Joan Didion, we’ll see how writers figured America’s newfound role as the dominant global power of the late twentieth century and dramatized critique of and opposition to it. We’ll conclude by considering the future of imperial romance in a post-Western world. Films we may consider will include Lawrence of Arabia, The Year of Living Dangerously and Apocalypse Now.