Module Identifier | EN33320 | ||
Module Title | AMERICAN LITERATURE IN THE 20TH CENTURY | ||
Academic Year | 2001/2002 | ||
Co-ordinator | Mr Clive Meachen | ||
Semester | Available semesters 1 and 2 | ||
Other staff | Mrs Carol Marshall | ||
Course delivery | Lecture | 10 Hours | |
Seminar | 10 Hours | ||
Assessment | Continuous assessment | 2 essays (2,500 words each) | 100% |
Resit assessment | Resubmit any failed elements and/or make good any missing elements. |
1. 'Women in their Places':
Required Reading: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (Women's Press);
Further Reading: Kate Chopin, The Awakening; Willa Cather, O Pioneers.
2. 'The Decline of the West' I:
Required Reading: Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (Penguin);
Further Reading: Ernest Hemingway, The Essential Hemingway.
3. 'The Haunted South':
Required Reading: William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (Penguin);
Further Reading: Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe; Eudora Welty, Collected Stories.
4. 'The Decline of the West' II:
Required Reading: F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (Penguin);
Further Reading: Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust.
5. 'Brave New World' I:
Required Reading: Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire (Penguin);
Further Reading: Tennessee Williams, A Glass Menagerie; Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky.
6. 'Brave New World' II:
Required Reading: Arthur Miller, All My Sons (in Collected Plays, vol.1, Methuen);
Further Reading: Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman.
7. 'Destroyed By Madness?':
Required Reading: Allen Ginsberg, Howl (City Lights Press)
Further Reading: The Penguin Book of the Beats, Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath, Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar.
8. 'Persecuted by Paranoia':
Required Reading: Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Further Reading: Don DeLillo, White Noise.
9. 'Liberating Laughter':
Required Reading: Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5 (Vintage);
Further Reading: Richard Brautigan, The Hawkline Monster; John Irving, Prayer for Owen Meany.
10. 'Hyphenated Americans':
Required Reading: Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior;
Further Reading: Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club (Minerva); Louise Erdrich, Tracks; Alice Walker, The Color Purple.
- Demonstrate a broad knowledge of the diversity of literatures of the USA in the 20th century
- Read literary texts in an informed and critical manner
- Demonstrate an understanding of the social and political contexts in which the set texts were written
- Describe the differing themes and formal strategies which develop from the ethnic an regional experiences of American during the 20th century
- Explain issues of gender and class in relation to the themes and forms of the set texts
- Engage in coherent oral discussion of the texts
- Write about the subject in a well-structured and argued manner