The American Essay 3301-LA225

The aim of the course is to introduce students to literature understood a bit differently than fiction-writing or literary criticism. Essay is a literary form which invites an intriguing combination of personal tone and autobiographical information with the elements of social and political critique and literary criticism. Therefore, in the course 225 students are offered classes which focus on the study of critical articles, essays, letters, diaries, and manifestos of selected American writers, thus enabling students to, first of all, acquaint themselves with the formal characteristics of the essay form (in terms of style, rhetoric, structure etc.) and second, gain an insight into the problematics of self-writing in the work of discussed authors. In order to foster comparative reading, the syllabus is divided into thematic sections -- there are, for example, sections devoted to such topics as illness, youth, music, solitude, or sense of humor - within which the essays of American writers are discussed against the background of the ideas of other writers and philosophers. While the general structure of the syllabus is thematic, the thematic organization takes into consideration the necessity to present students with the history the essay genre.