Academic Catalog 2017-2018 
    
    Mar 29, 2024  
Academic Catalog 2017-2018 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Add to Portfolio (opens a new window)

HST 269 - Orwell’s England 1900-1950

Course Units: 1
(Not Offered this Academic Year) The English writer George Orwell did far more than give us the famous novel 1984. Just 47 years old when he died, Orwell lived through the decades that defined both his England and the 20th century. Too young to fight in the Great War, Orwell became a colonial administrator in Burma before answering the call to write. Orwell’s pen interrogated English society, championed social justice, and denounced totalitarian ideologies of the Right and Left. He chronicled the epic history through which his generation lived: British imperialism, the Great Depression, Stalinism and the rise of Fascism, Britain’s ‘finest hour’ in World War II, and the challenges of building a just, peaceful order in a world dominated by two rival superpowers. This course examines the history of England and the first half of the twentieth century through a selection of Orwell’s novels, non-fiction books, essays, and reportage combined with standard historical accounts, film, and critical analyses of Orwell’s literary record. By the time you complete this course you will have studied the works of an important literary figure and used your critical literary and historical analysis of them to broaden and deepen your understanding of England and the Twentieth Century. CC: HUL



Add to Portfolio (opens a new window)