本课程分理论探讨和作品分析两部分：理论上探讨英美现代主义小说和后现代主义小说生成的环境、二者间的异同（如在主题、人物塑造、情节等方面），并通过阅读具体的作品，来加深对二者的认识。涉及的小说类别有意识流小说，存在主义小说，元小说；作家主要有Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, Beckett, Pynchon, Fowles, Barth, Federman, Coover等。

The course is intended to address such issues as the definitions and backgrounds of modernism and postmodernism in British and American fiction; the similarities and differences between the two (e.g., in theme, characterization, plot); stream-of-consciousness novel, existentialist novel, metafiction. It focuses on the reading of selected works by Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, Beckett, Pynchon, Fowles, Barth, Federman, Coover, etc., with the aim to deepen the understanding of modernism and postmodernism in literature.