Modern Fiction
This MIT OpenCourseWare course examines tradition and innovation in early modern fiction, focusing on how writers of the period treat the role of the artist, the representation of psychological and sexual experience, and the risks and rewards of experimental form. Readings draw on Conrad, Kipling, Babel, Kafka, Henry James, Lawrence, Mann, Ford Madox Ford, Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, and Nabokov, tracing a common set of concerns across authors working in very different styles and national traditions. The course materials include a syllabus, reading list, and assignment prompts as published on MIT OpenCourseWare, offered free with no certificate. It suits readers interested in the formal experiments of early twentieth century fiction and in how those experiments connect to changing ideas about consciousness, sexuality, and artistic purpose.