The 19th century and the transition to the 20th were of great importance to Great Britain, in terms of its projection as a colonizing and industrial force and of its relevance in the fields of literary and cultural production. In this context, the work of William Blake stands out, as it uniquely registers the social tensions surrounding the emergence of British industrialism and plants the seeds of the literary movement that would later become known as romanticism, and would feature such important figures as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Shelley. Studying the poetry of Tennyson and Browning allows us to accompany the transition from the romantic period to the Victorian age, perhaps best known for the emergence of the realist novel, as exemplified in the work of Charles Dickens and George Eliot. A master of the narrative form in the last years of the 19th century, Joseph Conrad's work places him at the juncture between the Victorian period and the new and dynamic phase of cultural change known as modernism. This movement will be studied through the narrative, poetic and critical works of such figures as James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot, among others. During the course unit, work from other fields of artistic production (painting and film) will be used to exemplify the strategies of representation characteristic of the periods in question, as well as to help situate the dynamic of literary innovation in a broader cultural context.