The AML19 course presents a complete summary of the most significant characteristics of the literary, cultural, and social development of the USA during the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on cultural, ethnical, and genre diversity.
The first segment of the course will focus on literary and cultural development in regards to the 19th century, namely the chronological and intellectual specifics concerning the rise of the American novel (establishment of a prosaic tradition by Ch. B. Brown, Washington Irving), the attempt to create the American legend in the works of J.F. Cooper, the Gothic styles of Ch. B. Brown, E.A. Poe), the basis of transcendentalism (R.W. Emerson, D.H. Thoreau), late Romanticism (N. Hawthorne, H. Melville), the birth of modern poetry (W. Whitman, E. Dickinson), Regionalism (M. Twain), Realism (D. Howells, H. James) and Naturalism (F. Norris, S. Crane, T. Dreiser, J. London).
An integral part of the course is also the introduction of African American literature. The second segment of the course will deal with the developmental periods and concepts of American poetry of the 20th century and modern American literature in general (the Lost Generation, E. Hemingway, H. Miller, F.S. Fitzgerald, S. Lewis, J. Steinbeck, E. Caldwell, and so forth).
- Teacher: KAŠPAROVÁ Jana