| Unit name | American Literature: 1945 to Present |
|---|---|
| Unit code | ENGL29007 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
| Unit director | Dr. Cheeke |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None. |
| Co-requisites |
None. |
| School/department | Department of English |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit will focus upon American writing from 1945 to the present, including novels, short stories, poetry, essays and journalism. The weekly seminar will be based around a particular author or text(s), sometimes a specific subject. The aim of the course is to introduce students to a wide range of post-war American writing and to explore the connections between this work and the extraordinary events and developments in American history and culture from 1945 to the present. Authors to be studied may include: Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Richard Ford, Vladimir Nabokov, Truman Capote, Flannery O’Conner, John Barth, Cormac McCarthy, Mary McCarthy, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, E.L.Doctorow, John Updike, David Foster Wallace, Richard Yates, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, James Merrill, the ‘New York Poets’.
The unit aims to introduce students to a wide range of post-war American novelists and poets, and to guide them through the exploration of the connections between this work and American history and culture from 1945 to the present.
Students will have enhanced their knowledge and critical understanding of a wide range of post-war American writers, and will have examined the complex ways in which the literature of this period interacts with the history, and engages with the culture, of the United States.
1 x 2 hour seminar per week in one teaching block, plus 1-to-1 discussion in consultation hours where desired.
Full reading lists will be provided for each weekly seminar. The following are useful background or reference books:
Josephine G. Hendin (ed.), A Concise Companion to Postwar American Literature and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004);
Sacvan Bercovitch (ed.), The Cambridge History of American Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), vols. 7&8.
The library contains these reference works.
It would be useful to read some novels by the major American writers of the post-war period. Below are some suggestions:
Saul Below: The Adventures of Augie March (1953); Herzog (1964); Humboldt’s Gift (1975).
Don DeLillo, Americana (1971); White Noise (1984); Libra (1988); Mao II (1991); Underworld (1997).
Philip Roth, Goodbye Columbus (1958); Portnoy’s Complaint (1969); American Pastoral (1997); The Human Stain (2000).
Thomas Pynchon, V (1963): The Crying of Lot 49 (1966); Gravity’s Rainbow (1973).
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita(1955)
