American Literature - lecture 3300-LAW-SFK-3-Z
Lectures provide a historical survey of American literature in the context of the most important historical events such as the American Revolution and the proclamation of Constitution, Civil War, the Great Depression, 1st and 2nd World Wars and the War in Vietnam. We begin with literary texts and samples of oral texts from the colonial times and move on to discuss: American Renaissance, realism and naturalism, modernism, World War II literature and the most important trends in post-war writing, as well as postmodern experiments and the literature of the 21st century. During the lectures we examine the most important tropes of American Literature such as individualism, american dream, self-reliance, the motif of the road or the frontier, consumerism, counter-culture or the development, starting from the 19th century, of ecological thinking. Close readings of chosen texts allow for an in-depth understanding of the evolution of US thought and culture also in the context of politics. The material for discussion is presented chronologically. Before each lecture students read chosen texts (fiction, poetry, drama, essay). The course includes but is not limited to the writings of the following authors:
Jonathan Edwards, Anne Bradstreet (Puritanism)
Benjamin Franklin (Enlightenment)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau (Transcendentalism)
Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Alan Poe (Romanticism)
Henry James (Realism)
Stephen Crane (Naturalism)
Djuna Barnes, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein (modernism prose)
Ezra Pound, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore (modernist poetry)
Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker (prose after WW II)
Allen Ginsberg, Jacques Kerouac, William Burroughs (the Beat Generation)
Sylwia Plath, Robert Lowell (Confessional Poetry)
Don de Lillo, Thomas Pynchon (Postmodernism)
Elizabeth Bishop, John Ashbery, Amiri Baraka, Joy Harjo (Poetry after WWII)
Charles Bernstein, Lynn Hejinian (Postmodern Poetry)
Jeff Vandermeer ("Weird Fiction")
Forrest Gander, Natalie Diaz (21st Century Poetry/Poetry of the Anthropocene)
Occasionally we also refer to other texts of culture such as films or song lyrics.
Mode
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
K_W01 The student has the knowledge and understanding of the place and the meaning of American literature within literary studies.
K_W02 The student has a structured knowledge and understanding of the history of American literature, of its literary phenomena and their multifaceted influence on the development of literary theories.
K_W03 The student has knowledge and understanding of the specialist terminology and methodology, which are characteristic of English literary studies.
K_W08 The student has the knowledge and understanding of the multifaceted relations of American literature to historic and cultural processes.
K_U01 The student can apply basic theoretical constructs which are characteristic of English literary studies.
K_U02 The student can apply basic research skills in accordance with the scientific code of ethics and copyright law; these skills include identifying and analysing the problem, choosing adequate methodology and research tools, analysing and presenting results, all of which pertain to literary studies.
K_U03 The student can recognise, analyse, and interpret various types of texts of American literature; can anchor them in the general historic-cultural context; can conduct their analysis with specialist terminology and adequate methods.
K_K04 The student is ready to respect the professional code of ethics.
K_K05 The student is ready to show respect and care for preserving American cultural heritage.
Assessment criteria
Written exam (60%)
Participation in class discussions (40%)
Absences allowed - 3
Bibliography
Selected primary texts:
Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (1941)
Benjamin Franklin, "Autobiography" (1793)
Ralph Waldo Amerson, "Self-Reliance" (1841)
Henry David Thoreau, "Walden" (1954)
Edgar Allan Poe, selected stories
Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The House of the Seven Gables, A Romance" (1951)
Herman Melville, "Bartleby the Scrivener" (from: "The Piazza Tales", 1956)
Henry James, "The Turn of the Screw" (1898)
Djuna Barnes, "Nightwood" (1936)
William Faulkner, "As I Lay Dying" (1930)
Joseph Heller, "Catch 22" (1961)
Toni Morrison, "Sula" (1973)
Thomas Pynchon, "The Crying of Lot 49" (1966)
Jeff Vandermeer, "The Annihilation" (2014)
Selected secondary texts:
Reynolds, David S. "Beneath the American Renaissance" (Harvard University Press, 1988)
Gilbert, Sandra M.; and Susan Gubar eds., "Shakespeare's Sisters. Feminist Essays on Women Poets" (Indiana University Press, 1979)
Steinman, Lisa. "Made in America: Science, Technology and American Modernist Poets" (Yale University Press, 1987)
Grauerholz, James; and Ira Silverberg eds., "Word Wirus. The William Burroughs Reader" (New York: Grove Press, 1998)
Rankine, Claudia; and Lisa Sewell, eds. "American poets in the 21st Century. The New Poetics" (Wesleyan University Press, 2007)
Keller, Lynn, "Recomposing Poetics: North American Poetry of the Self-Conscious Anthropocene" (University of Virginia Press, 2017)
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: