Gwybodaeth Modiwlau
Course Delivery
| Delivery Type | Delivery length / details |
|---|---|
| Seminars / Tutorials | 10 x 2hr seminar |
Assessment
| Assessment Type | Assessment length / details | Proportion |
|---|---|---|
| Semester Assessment | 2 x 2,500 word essays | 100% |
| Supplementary Assessment | Resubmit or resit failed elements and/or make good any missing elements |
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the module, students should typically be able to:
1. demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the core literary texts and of appropriate critical approaches to the study of those texts;
2. demonstrate an understanding of the historical and cultural contexts in which the set material was produced;
3. write about the set material in a well-structured and well-argued way;
4. illustrate their knowledge and views by drawing upon appropriate literary, historical and critical sources beyond the core literary texts;
5. demonstrate developing skills in critical analysis;
6. demonstrate developing skills in oral presentation, both individually and in small group presentations.
Brief description
This module provides students with the opportunity to study six major works of American fiction from the nineteenth century. It seeks to establish a thorough understanding of the core literary texts and of the historical context in which they were written. Building on the study of literature and literary analysis in Part One, the module encourages students to develop and hone the skills needed to critique the nineteenth-century American novel in particular and literature in general.
Content
_1-2. Representing the Frontier and Mythologizing American History
Required reading: James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans
_3. "Somewhere between the real world and fairy-land": Dramatising the Past and the Present in the Romance
Required reading: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
_4-6. "You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in": Moby-Dick and the Expansive Imagination
Required reading: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
_7-8. Sentimental Fiction, Abolitionism, and the Politics of Emotion
Required reading: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
_9. The Meanings of Freedom: The South Before and After the Civil War
Required reading: Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
_10. "The Courageous Soul that Dares and Defies": The Awakening and the Subversive Imaginations of Women
Required reading: Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Reading List
Should Be PurchasedHarriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom's Cabin any unabridged edition Primo search Herman Melville Moby-Dick Penguin, Oxford World's Classics, or Wordsworth editions Primo search James Fenimore Cooper (1994) The Last of the Mohicans Penguin Popular Classics Primo search Kate Chopin The Awakening Penguin, Oxford World's Classics, or W. W. Norton editions Primo search Mark Twain Pudd'nhead Wilson Oxford World's Classics, W. W. Norton or Dover editions Primo search Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter Penguin, Oxford World's Classics, or Bedford Books editions Primo search Recommended Consultation
F. O. Matthiessen American Renaissance Primo search Harry Levin Power of Blackness: Hawthorne, Poe, Melville Primo search Jane Tompkins Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction Primo search Leslie Fiedler Love and Death in the American Novel Primo search Lucy Maddox Removals Primo search Michael Colacurcio (ed.) New Essays on the Scarlet Letter Primo search Michael Gilmore American Romanticism and the Marketplace Primo search Richard Chase The American Novel and Its Tradition Primo search Sacvan Bercovitch (ed.) The Cambridge History of American Literature Primo search Susan Harris Nineteenth-Century Women's Novels Primo search
Notes
This module is at CQFW Level 6