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Vile Bodies/Bright Young Things
One of the Intermodern novels I thought about teaching in LIT218 was Evelyn Waugh’s novel Vile Bodies, which was made into the film Bright Young Things a few years ago. Waugh was easily outvoted by Mrs. Dalloway, but I think I will keep the novel as one of the options for the adaptation report.
Mrs. Dalloway
One of the most obvious choices I had for LIT218 was using my favourite novel, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway for the class. I am quite knowledgeable about the novel because I wrote three papers in graduate school about Woolf and also write for the Blogging Woolf weblog. This is my favorite novel and one of my absolute favorites stories of any kind.
The 1990’s adaptation starring Vanessa Redgrave is well done and will fit the course sufficiently. This is the one I will be looking forward to the most.
Jane Eyre
The newest adaptation of Jane Eyre, a very artsy version that is cinematically beautiful, was one that a student turned me onto while I was planning LIT218. It doesn’t fit into the regular schedule, it’s somewhere between Dracula and Mrs. Dalloway I guess, but I will definitely add it to the list for final papers.
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Orlando
At some point, I had hoped to have a section on queer issues in literature and film, and already kind of regret not doing it. Perhaps next time. Four works of literature came to mind right away. Virginia Woolf’s Orlando has a wonderful adaptation starring Tilda Swinton. The World Unseen is a great novel and film about queer issues in the Arab world. Two Shakespeare plays also came to mind: My absolute favourite As You Like It, with its disguises, and Cymberline, which Woolf writes a lot about.
I can always teach those if/when I teach Shakespeare.
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Papers
Here is how I think I will break up papers: One: The Odyssey and Hamlet. Two: Dracula, Mrs. Dalloway, The Moral Storm. Three: Speak and V For Vendetta. I think this works both chronologically and thematically for the most part. The final paper will be on a literary work of their choice (out of a list I supply).
These papers, I think, are going to be 1,000 words, 1,250 words, 1,500 words, and 2,000 words.
