Seminar:
They met at the Fitzroy Tavern:
London’s Unconventional Literary and Cultural
Scene (1920s-1950s)
Di 14-16.00
The Fitzroy Tavern was (and is) more than just a beautiful old London
pub. It was a meeting place of authors, musicians, artists, dancers and
comedians from the 1920s to the early 1950s. The Fitzroy was a very special
cultural hub, a home from home to people creating unconventional art and
literature, and leading unconventional lives.
These included
familiar names such as Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Dylan Thomas, Ezra Pound,
Richard Attenborough, and also Lady Ottoline Morell (aristocrat and society
hostess, living in an open marriage), Edith Sitwell (poet and noted eccentric,
known for her delightfully bizarre outfits), Augustus John (painter, spent some
time living in a caravan with both his wife and his mistress), Nina Hamnett
(artist and writer, famous not only for her texts and paintings but also for
her flamboyant lifestyle and her open bisexuality, hated by Aleister Crowley),
Aleister Crowley (into occultism, sexual magic and libertinism; founded his own
religion), Wyndham Lewis (artist and writer, obsessed with Vorticism), Mark
Gertler (artist, supported by Lady Ottoline Morell, obsessed with Dora
Carrington), Dora Carrington (painter and designer, obsessed with Lytton
Strachey), Lytton Strachey (writer and critic, living together with, but not
very much obsessed with Dora Carrington), Ras Prince Monolulu (who claimed to
be an Abyssinian prince) and Bud Flanagan (comedian, member of the Crazy Gang).
This seminar will
approach the fascinating multi-faceted phenomenon of English modernism through
studying people who met at the Fitzroy Tavern. It will give you a chance to get
acquainted with selected texts, images etc. created by this remarkable set of writers,
painters, designers, musicians etc. – and of course with their rather
interesting lives.
Material to be
studied (texts, images, music, videos) will be provided in a Moodle room; you will receive your Moodle
password via e-mail.
Requirements:
thorough preparation for each session, active participation, and written work
according to your particular Studienordnung. As always: read,
think, enjoy (!), annotate and look
things up if necessary (why not begin with “Vorticism” right now?)
Just in case your application is rejected by the LSF system: If you want
to do this course because you are genuinely interested, you will be most
welcome, no matter what LSF says. Please get in touch with c.hausmann.ude@ajvm.de
who will enrol you manually. The worst that might happen to you is that you
cannot do a Leistungsnachweis if you
lack the formal requirements.