A Spring syllabus: The Novels of E.M. Forster at OLLI at AU

E.M Forster by Dora Carrington (1920)

A Syllabus

Online at: https://ellenandjim.wordpress.com/2020/02/16/a-spring-syllabus-the-novels-of-e-m-forster-at-olli-at-au/

For a course at the Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at American University
Day: Monday afternoons, 1:45 to 3:15 pm,
Mar 2 to May 4
4801 Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, D.C. 20016
Dr Ellen Moody

Description of Course

In this course we will read Forster’s best-known fiction, A Room with a View, Howards End, and A Passage to India. We’ll discuss what makes them such distinctive literary masterpieces capable of delivering such pleasure while delineating the realities, tragedies, comedy, and consolations of human life. We’ll place them in the context of his life, other works, Bloomsbury connections and era. We’ll also see clips from some of the brilliant films made from them. I ask that before class begins everyone read his short explanatory Aspects of the Novel.

Above young Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) and Miss Charlotte Bartlett (Maggie Smith), 1987; older Lucy (Elaine Cassidy) coming into Florence, 2007 — Room with a View

Required Texts (these are recommended editions; there are other good ones you could buy, i.e, with notes and annotations):

EM Forster, Aspects of the Novel, ed. Frank Kermode. Penguin ISBN 978-0-141-44169-6
EM Forster, A Room with a View, ed. Wendy Moffat. Penguin ISBN 978-0-14-18329-9
EM Forster, Howards End, ed David Lodge. Penguin 978-0-14-118213-1
EM Forster, A Passage to India, ed PN Furbank. Everyman ISBN 978-1-85715-029-2

Above Leonard Bast (Samuel West) in a reverie sequence, 1992; Margaret Schegel (Haylet Atwell) at breakfast, 2018 — Howards End

Format: The class will be a mix of informal lecture and group discussion. Please read for the first session, as much of Aspects of the Novel as you can.

Mar 2: 1st week: Intro, syllabus, Forster’s life and work; the Bloomsbury group (one of his groups of friends); his aesthetic point of view. We’ll cover Aspects of the Novel, Intro, and Chapters 1-5

Mar 9: 2nd: Aspects of the Novel, Chapters 6-10. The first two novels. We begin A Room with a View: Part One

Mar 16: 3rd: A Room with a View: Part Two. We’ll see clips from the Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala Room with a View (1985) and Andrew Davies’s Room with a View (2007)

Mar 23: 4th A Room with a View, transitional; we begin Howards End: Chapters 1-14

Mar 30: 5th: Howards End: Chapters 15-26

Apr 6: 6th: Howards End: Chapters 27-43: We’ll see clips from Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala Howards’ End (1992); Lonergan’s 4 part Howards’ End

Apr 13: 7th: Forster’s Maurice; we begin A Passage to India, Chapters 1-11 (Part One)

Apr 20: 8th A Passage to India, Chapters 12-28 (Part Two)

Apr 27: 9th: A Passage to India, Chapters 29-37 (Parts Two into Three). We’ll see clips from David Lean’s A Passage to India (1984)

May 4: The other 46 years: travel writing, biography, essays, short stories.

Adela Quested (Judy Davis), Dr Aziz (Victor Banerjee) and Mrs Moore (Peggy Ashcroft), 1985 — A Passage to India

Recommended biography, essays & by Forster:

Beauman, Nicola. Morgan: A Biography of E.M. Forster. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1993.
Colman, John. E. M. Forster: The Personal Voice. London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul, 1975.
Forster, E. M. Abinger Harvest. London: Penguin, 1967.
Forster, E. M. Maurice, ed. David Leavitt. NY: Penguin, 2005.
Furbank, P.N. E.M. Forster: A Life. London: Harvest, 1997.
Moffat, Wendy. A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E.M. Forster. NY: Picador, 2010.
Shahane, V.A., ed. Focus on Forster’s Passage to India: Indian essays in criticism. India: Orient Longman, 1989.
Summers, Claude J. E.M. Forster. NY: Ungar, 1983. Excellent essays on the novels
Trilling, Lionel. E.M. Forster. NY: New Directions, 1965. Liberal imagination, humanistic perspective.

House (Peppard Cottage) used as Howards End in 1992 movie

Films:

Howards End. Dir. Hettie Macdonald. Screenplay: Kenneth Lonergan. Producer: HBO. Perf. Hayley Atwell, Matthew Macfayden, Joseph Quinn, Philippa Coulthard, Alex Lawther, Rosalind Eleazar. 2018.
A Passage to India. Dir. Screenplay. David Lean. Perf. Peggy Ashcroft, Judy Davis, James Fox, Alec Guinness, Nigel Havers, Victor Banerjee, Roshan Seth. Columbia, 1985
A Room with a View; Howards End. Dir. James Ivory. Screenplay Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Producer: Ismail Merchant. Perf: Denholm Elliot, Maggie Smith, Helena Bonham Carter, Cecil Day-Lewis; Simon Callow (Room with a View); Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Samuel West, James Wilby (Howards End). 1985; 1992.
A Room with a View. Dir. Nicolas Renton. Screenplay. Andrew Davies. Producer: ITV. Perf. Elaine Cassidy, Timothy and Rafe Spall, Timothy West, Sophie Thompson, Mark Williams, Sinead Cusack. 2007.

Alex Lawther as the appealing impish, but marginalized Tibby in Howards End (2018) — the character reappears more fully developed, older, articulate in Cecil Vyse (played by Daniel Day Lewis) in A Room with a View

Four blogs:

Moody, Ellen. E.M. Foster’s Maurice, with a few words on the Merchant-Ivory movie adaptation. A blog-essay. https://ellenandjim.wordpress.com/2020/02/21/e-m-forsters-maurice-perhaps-the-finest-of-the-novels-with-a-few-words-on-the-merchant-ivory-movie-adaptation/ At Ellen and Jim have a blog, two. February 21, 2020.
————. E. M. Forster’s Howards End and A Room with a View. A Blog-essay. https://ellenandjim.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/e-m-forsters-howards-end-and-a-room-with-a-view/ At Ellen and Jim have a blog, two. November 29, 2018
———
———–. E.M. Foster’s A Room with a View, partly a rewrite of Northanger Abbey. A Blog-essay. https://misssylviadrake.livejournal.com/43931.html At Under the Sign of Sylvia. Live Journal. March 30, 2011. Also https://reveriesunderthesignofausten.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/e-m-forsters-a-room-with-a-view-partly-a-rewrite-of-austens-northanger-abbey/ At Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two. Transferred.
Tichelaar, Tyler. A Working-Class Lover. Class and Homsexuality in E.M. Forster’s Maurice. https://thegothicwanderer.wordpress.com/2018/09/20/a-working-class-lover-class-and-homosexuality-in-e-m-forsters-maurice/ At The Gothic Wanderer. September 20, 2018.