American Literature II 4219-AL002

This course is on the developments in American literature—fiction, poetry, drama—from the end of the Civil War until the present. It looks at changing literary styles, themes and assumptions concerning the role of literature. We will look at realism, naturalism and local color fiction, modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, politically engaged literature of the 30s, the post-war generation, postmodernism and finally the diverse literatures of contemporary multi-ethnic America including examples of very recent fiction. Significant attention will be paid to the evolving cultural context of literature: debates about the meaning of American identity, the changing role of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality. Works by major women writers, African American literature, and the writing of immigrants and ethnic minorities are important reference points. Participants will also be exposed to visual material (paintings, photographs), audio recordings (authors reading their own work, especially poetry), as well as excerpts of film adaptations of plays and fragments of documentary films about writers, literary movements and cultural developments

2. Full description
1. Introductory Class
2. Reading Race, Reading Twain
3. Key Social and Ideological Currents at the Turn of the Century
4. Realism, Naturalism and Local Color Fiction
5. Introduction to Modernism
6. Modernism continued
7. Modernism continued
8. Modernism continued
9. The Harlem Renaissance
10. Literature and Social Responsibility: The ’30s and ’40s
11. American Drama in the Twentieth Century
12. The 1950s and 60s – Conformity and Rebellion
13. Major Currents in American Poetry Since 1945
14. Postmodernism and Multiculturalism
15. Contemporary US Literature

1. Literature

Primary literature with the obligatory reading underlined:

1. handouts, requirements, exams

2. Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn– selections to be made by individual teachers Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Assign to them 3-4 of the following chapters: 1-9; 12, 14,15, 16 19, 31, 39, 42-43 – be sure to discuss the fragment when Huck decides to go to hell, chapter 31)

3. Bret Harte, "The Outcasts of Poker Flat”; Jack London, "The South of the Slot"; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and "Why I Wrote…”; Kate Chopin, "Desiree’s Baby”

4. Henry James: “Daisy Miller: A Study,” “The Jolly Corner”; Hart Crane, “The Open Boat,” Jack London, “The Law of Life”; Sarah Orne Jewett, “A White Heron,” Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, “A New England Nun”; Edith Wharton, from: The House of Mirth (Chapter XV of book I) or “The Other Two”

5. F. S. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

6. Gertrude Stein, from The Making of Americans (Introduction); Ernest Hemingway, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” “The Indian Camp,” “The Battler”

7. Ezra Pound: “To Whistler, American”; “Portrait d’une Femme”; “A River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”; “In a Station of the Metro”; Canto I; T.S. Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”; “The Wasteland” (part I); Wallace Stevens: “Of Modern Poetry”; “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”;“Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock”; “The Snow Man”; William Carlos Williams: “Spring and All”; “To Elsie”; “The Red Wheelbarrow”; “This is Just to Say”; “Young Sycamore”; H.D.: “Mid-Day”; “Helen”; Robert Frost: “After Apple-Picking”; “The Wood-Pile,” “The Road Not Taken”; “Home Burial”

8. William Faulkner: “A Rose for Emily”, “Barn Burning,” “That Evening Sun” ; Sinclair Lewis: from Babbit (a fragment)

9. Langston Hughes: “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” ; Jean Toomer: Cane (as excerpted in Norton); Claude Mc Kay: “If We Must Die,” “The Lynching,” “America”; Langston Hughes: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”; “The Weary Blues”, “I, Too”; “Mulatto”; Zora Neale Hurston: “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”’; Countee Cullen: “Yet Do I Marvel”

10. John Dos Passos, from U.S.A (the selection from Norton); John Steinbeck, “The Leader of the People” (Norton), a fragment of Grapes of Wrath; Richard Wright, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow”; Ralph Ellison, from Invisible Man (Prologue; Chapter 1) (Norton)

11. Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman; Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire; Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey Into Night; David Mamet, Glengarry Glenn Ross, or any other major American play of your choice

12. John Updike, “The Happiest I’ve Been”; Philip Roth,“Epstein”; Norman Mailer, “The Time of Her Time”; James Baldwin, “Going to Meet the Man”; Eudora Welty, “Where is that Voice Coming From?”

13. Allen Ginsberg, Howl (I); Robert Lowell, “Man and Wife,” “For the Union Dead”; Sylvia Plath, “Daddy,” “Lady Lazarus”; Elizabeth Bishop, “The Fish,” “At the Fishouses,” “Questions of Travel”; Frank O’Hara, “Digression on Number 1, 1948,” “Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!),” “The Day Lady Died”, “Why I Am Not a Painter” Gwendolyn Brooks, “a song in the front yard,” “We Real Cool,” “The Ballad of Rudolph Reed”

14. John Barth, “Nightsea Journey,”Toni Morrison, “Recitatif,” Sandra Cisneros, “Mericans”; Amy Tan, “Mother Tongue”; Sherman Alexie, “This is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona”; Bharati Mukherjee “A Wife’s Story”

15. Jonathan Franzen, “Good Neighbors,” (opening chapter of Freedom); Raymond Carver, “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love?” (1981); Alice Munro, “Meneseteung” (1989); Annie Proulx, “The Half-Skinned Steer” (1999)