Akademia Świętokrzyska
Zakład Neofilologii
Dr Andrzej Diniejko
RODZAJ ZAJĘĆ: Literatura amerykańska: 2 godz. Co drugi tydzień w semestrze
IV
FORMA ZALICZENIA: zaliczenie
CEL ZAJĘĆ: Zapoznanie studentów z rozwojem literatury amerykańskiej w
kontekście historycznym i społecznym.
PROGRAM ZAJĘĆ: PROGRAM ZAJĘĆ: Kurs obejmuje rozwój literatury
amerykańskiej
od literatury kolonialnej; wpływ literatury purytańskiej na kulturę i
estetykę; rozwój powieści, opowiadania; główne postaci amerykańskiego
odrodzenia; zmiana na scenie literackiej i kulturalnej po wojnie domowej;
rozwój realizmu.
RODZAJ ZAJĘĆ: wykład
FORMA ZALICZENIA: uczestnictwo w zajęciach, prezentacje, testy
Egzamin końcowy po V semestrze
Semestr IV
I. THE COLONIAL OR EARLY AMERICAN PERIOD, 1607-1776
1.Early Puritan literature: genres, major motifs, language and style, social
function of Puritan
literature
2. Puritan sense of history: W. Bradford’s and J. Winthrop’s writings.
3. Puritan poetry: A. Bradstreet, E. Taylor
4. The idea of “Great Awakening “ in Jonathan Edward’s writing.
II. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD (AMERICAN ENLIGHTENMENT),
1776-1790
1. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and the American Enlightenment
2. Crevecoeur’s concept of America
3. Literary significance of Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography
III. THE RISE OF NATIONAL LITERATURE, 1790-1820
1. Beginnings of national literature: Washington Irving’s preromanticism
2. James Fenimore Cooper and literary domestication of America in the
Leatherstocking Tales
IV. THE ROMANTIC PERIOD, 1820-1865
1. The achievement of Edgar Allan Poe: prose, poetry and literary criticism
2. American Transcendentalists: basic tenets of Transcendentalism and their
implications for
literature: Emerson and Thoreau
5 .Waldo Emerson’s essays as declarations of America’s literary independence
6. H. D. Thoreau: his concepts of individualism, nonconformism, and civil
disobedience
7. Impact of Transcendentalism upon later American literature.
8. Walt Whitman as a poet of the nation and democracy.
9. The Boston Brahmins; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
10. Emily Dickinson as a rebel against social and literary conventions.
13 The achievement of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter as a
“romance”.
14. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick – various interpretations; fact and symbol.
15. Hawthorne’s and Melville’s dispute with the Transcendentalists; the
Party of Hope
and the Party of the Past.
V. THE REALISTIC PERIOD, 1865-1900
1. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn as an American classic; American dreams,
and myths in
the novel, the significance of Huck’s narratorship; Twain’s humour
2. The achievement of Henry James. Daisy Miller as a study of characters
and manners.
3. James’s and Twain’s contrasting perceptions of Europe and America.
VI. THE NATURALISTIC PERIOD, 1900-1914
4. Kate Chopin as a representative of the turn of the century women writers
- their concerns
and literary methods
5. Stephen Crane as an early American naturalist, philosophical and social
background of
naturalism in America
6. Theodore Dreiser’s work, his vision of man and society, the socially
conscious literature in
America of the 30s and 40s.
TEXTS:
1. William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (fragment).
2. Anne Bradstreet: “To My Dear and Loving Husband”
3. Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (fragment).
4. St. Jean de Crévecoeur, from Letters from an American Farmer: “What
Is an American”.
5. Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (fragment, Part I).
6. Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle.
7. James Fenimore Cooper, Preface to the Leather-Stocking Tales, The
Deerslayer (fragment),
8. Edgar Allan Poe: “The Raven”, The Fall of the House of Usher
9. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Self-Reliance (fragment).
10. Henry David Thoreau: from Walden: „Civil Disobedience”.
11. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter.
12. Herman Melville, Moby Dick (fragments)
13. Walt Whitman, Song of Myself (1, 2, 5-11,15), “I Hear America
Singing”, When Lilacs in the Door-yard Bloom’d”, “O Captain! My Captain”.
14. Emily Dickinson: poems: ”I Never Saw a Moor”, „There is No Frigate
Like a Book”, „Hope”, ”I am Nobody”
15. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
16. Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage or The Open Boat
17. Henry James, Daisy Miller.
18. Kate Chopin, The Awakening
19. Theodore Dreise, An American Tragedy (fragments)
References:
Diniejko, Andrzej. Introduction to the Study of Literature in English, 2005.
Outline of American Literature, USIA, 1994.
Gottessman, R. et al. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 1979
Mazur Krzysztof. The College Anthology of American Literature, 2004.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dr Andrzej Diniejko
Akademia Świętokrzyska w Kielcach
Zakład Neofilologii
LITERATURA AMERYKAŃSKA - ZAGADNIENIA DO EGZAMINU
LICENCJACKIEGO 2006/2007
(Student wybiera cztery pytania – dwa z każdej części i odpowiada na dwa
(jedno z każdej części).
PART ONE
1. Early Puritan literature: genres, major motifs, language and style,
social function of Puritan literature. Define some of the basic tenets of
Puritan ideology. Puritan poetry: Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor.
2. The idea of “Great Awakening “ in Jonathan Edward’s writing.
3. Benjamin Franklin and the American Enlightenment. The elements of
the American Dream in Franklin’s Autobiography.
4. Literature in the service of politics: Thomas Paine, Thomas
Jefferson and Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur as makers of American national
myths.
5. Beginnings of national literature: Irving’s preromanticism. The
fiction of James Fenimore Cooper.
6. Edgar Allan Poe’s exploration of the human psyche in his poems and
stories.
7. The Scarlet Letter as a “romance”; allegory, symbol and ambiguity in
The Scarlet Letter.
8. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick – various interpretations; fact and
symbol.
9. American Transcendentalists: basic tenets of Transcendentalism and
their implications for literature; Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David
Thoreau.
10. Walt Whitman’s innovative and visionary poetry as an expression of
America’s democratic spirit.
11. Emily Dickinson as a rebel against social and literary conventions.
Religious influences of Dickinson’s poetry: Puritanism and
Transcendentalism.
12. Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn as an American classic; American
dreams, and myths in the novel, the significance of Huck’s narratorship;
Twain’s humour.
13. Psychological realism at the turn of the century: Henry James’s
Daisy Miller as a study of characters and manners. James’s narrative
strategy.
14. Kate Chopin as a representative of the turn of the century women
writers - their concerns and literary methods.
15. American Naturalism: Stephen Crane as an early American naturalist,
philosophical and social background of naturalism in America. Theodore
Dreiser’s work, his vision of man and society, and the socially conscious
literature in America of the 30s and 40s.
Part II. MODERNISM, POSTMODERNISM AND EXPERIMENTATION
1. Transitional poetic figures between post-romanticism and modern
poetry; Masters, Sandburg, Jeffers.
2. Robert Frost as an anti-romantic poet; dramatic monologue and
the language of New
England in Frost’s poetry.
3. Anglo-American Modernism. Ezra Pound as the teacher of
Modernists; distinctive features of Modernist
poetry; significance of Imagism. T.S. Eliot’s role in shaping
American modernism.
6. The “Lost generation” writers and other major American novelists
before World War II. F. Scott
Fitzgerald as the chronicler of the Jazz Age. Ernest
Hemingway’s status in American Literature
9. The South in William Faulkner’s writing.
10. The Harlem Renaissance.
11. Major trends in the post-war American novel, major figures of the
realistic novel: Robert Penn Warren, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, Saul
Bellow, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Ken Kesey, Vladimir Nabokov. (Discuss
the work of one writer).
12. The theatre of Eugene O’Neill.
13. Changes in the American prose in the 60s and 70s;
postmodernism, metafiction.
14. Tennessee Williams and his thematic innovations.
15. American myths in Arthur Miller’s plays.
16. Edward Albee and the theatre of absurd.
17. Post-war poetry: the Beat Generation; the confessional school
in poetry: Sylvia Plath; diverse concepts
of poetry: Robert Lowell, Theodore Roethke, Robert Creely,
Robert Bly.
20. Contemporary American postmodern and ethnic literature: John
Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Raymond
Carver, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker (discuss the work of one
writer).
TEXTBOOK AND MATERIALS:
1. The Norton Anthology of American Literature; 2. Andrzej Diniejko,
Introduction to the Study of Literature in English (2005)