Abschnittsübersicht

  • Projekt Rozšíření akreditace studijních oborů o kombinovanou formu studia s podporou různých forem e-learningu a dalších moderních didaktických metod
    Registrační číslo projektu: CZ.1.07/2.2.00/18.0023

    Tento projekt je spolufinancován Evropským sociálním fondem a státním rozpočtem České republiky.


    Twentieth-Century American Literature


    Welcome to this course in twentieth-century American literature. There are three units, and your job will be to complete each unit in advance of the three tuition sessions we will have together during the semester.

    The structure will be two-fold: first, you will have to read the relevant chapters of Lectures on American Literature, 3rd ed., and then read the excerpts from the relevant literature (in files below). This will form the basis for your online peer discussion forums, which are a required part of the course.

    The excerpts are prefaced by dates relating to the given writer's life and career and then arranged under different headings. Your job will be to try to connect these thematic headings with the excerpts that follow. In each case, you must ask yourself and your peers (in the discussion forums) do you understand the connection. What are the possible explanations? Can I connect the excerpts with what I read in the course book?

    In many cases, you may not see the connection, but remember that frustration is an integral part of learning. If everything's easy, one falls asleep and learns nothing. The teaching sessions will give you the chance to air these frustrations and questions, as well as present your ideas. We learn by overcoming our frustration, and the teacher's job is to help you achieve this.

  • American Literature to 1945

    These are the writers we will be covering in this unit.

    Ernest Hemingway

    F. Scott Fitzgerald

    William Faulkner

    Wallace Stevens

    Robert Frost

    T. S. Eliot

    Eugene O'Neill


    Reading

    Chapters 18 & 19 of Lectures on American Literature

    F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (first 4 chapters)

    Wallace Stevens , ‘The Snow Man’, ‘Anecdote of a Jar’, ‘Sunday Morning’, ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’, ‘The Plain Sense of Things’, ‘The Idea of Order at Key West’

    Robert Frost, ‘Death of a Hired Man’, ‘The Road Not Taken’, ‘Provide, Provide’, ‘The Gift Outright’, ‘Spring Pools’, ‘Desert Places’, ‘The Wood-Pile’
  • Post-War Drama & Prose

    These are the writers we will be dealing with
    Arthur Miller
    Tennessee Williams
    Flannery O'Connor
    Ralph Ellison
    Philip Roth
    John Updike
    Toni Morrison


    Reading

    Chapter 20, Lectures in American Literature

    T. S. Eliot, ‘The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock'

    Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (Introduction, Prologue and first 6 chapters)


  • Post-War Poetry

    & Contemporary Fiction


    Poets
    Elizabeth Bishop
    Robert Lowell
    Allen Ginsberg

    Novelists
    Raymond Carver
    Richard Ford
    Thomas Pynchon
    Don DeLillo

    Reading

    Chapter 21, Lectures in American Literature
    A
    llen Ginsberg, ‘Howl’, ‘Kral Majales’
    Elizabeth Bishop, ‘The Bight’, ‘Sestina’, ‘In the Waiting Room’, ‘The Moose’, ‘One Art’
    Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49