SPRING SEMESTER,
2012–2013
COURSE CODE: BTAN3025MA
THE MODERNISTS AND OTHERS: SELECTED TOPICS
IN 20TH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERARY AND
CULTURAL HISTORY
TIME & PLACE:
M. 10.00-11.40;
Országh seminar room (#119);
[1] Gabriella Varró
Office: Room #116/1, Main Bldg, U of D
Phone: (52) 512–900 (ext. 22152)
INSTRUCTOR:
Office hours: M. 13.00–14.00, Tu. 11.00–12.00,
116/1
E-14.
E-mail: gabriella.varro@gmail.com
DESCRIPTION, COURSE GOALS
The thematic range of the lectures has been designed to foreground selected literary and
cultural historical processes, peaks of development, theoretical issues, authorial achievements,
as well as major shifts and turning-points for a period of half a century in the literary culture
of 20th-century America. Representative examples of selected themes will include varieties of
American thought in U.S. literature and American expressiveness in the early 20th century,
paradigm shifts in American culture, the special problematic and contradictory impulses
within American naturalism (as opposed to European naturalisms), peaks of literary maturity
(for instance, the 1930s), the Muckraking Movement, Muckraking fiction and nonfiction, the
Roaring Twenties, the Lost Generation, the Depression Era, 20th-century “American
Renaissances,” the Revolt from the Village, the New Poetry, Imagism, the Modernist
movement in Europe and America, the Modernist aesthetic, favored Modernist techniques,
“mythical methods,” cultural myths in America, the cultural situation of the American writer,
canonicity, the restructuring of U.S. literature, institutions of the literary culture, literary
awards, etc.
The formal conclusion of the course will be an oral exam during the examination session in
June/July.
SCHEDULE OF CLASSES:
(1) Febr. 11: Defining modernism, modernist sensibility, modernist techniques.
(2) Febr. 18.: The New Poetry Movement: New Englanders: ROBERT FROST AND EDWIN
ARLINGTON ROBISON
(3) Febr. 25.: The New Poetry Movement: The Midwesterners: EDGAR LEE MASTERS
(4) March 04: The New Poetry Movement: EZRA POUND
(5) March 11: Modernism in American prose writing I: WILLIAM FAULKNER
(6) March 18. Modernism in American prose II: ERNEST HEMINGWAY
(7) March 25: Modernism in American prose III: F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
(8) April 01. CONSULTATION WEEK
(9) April 8. The coming of age of American drama: EUGENE O’NEILL and the Little Theater
Movement
(10) April 15. The Harlem Renaissance: LANGSTON HUGHES AND OTHERS
(11) April 22. Celebrating racial identity: ZORA NEALE HURSTON
(12) April 29. Trends and tendencies in short fiction writing: from JACK LONDON to WILLA
CATHER
(13) May 06: Naturalism and Beyond: THEODORE DREISER
(14) May 13: New Tendencies in Poetry: WALLACE STEVENS AND e.e.cummings
(15) May 20: PENTECOST—NO CLASSES
SUGGESTED BACKGROUND READING, SECONDARY SOURCES,
CRITICISM, COMMENTARY
(1) Ruland, Richard, and Malcolm Bradbury. From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History
of American Literature. New York: Viking, 1991.
(2) Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed., The Cambridge History of American Literature. vols. 1–8.
Cambridge/New York: Cambridge UP, 2005.
(3) Stauffer, Donald Barlow. A Short History of American Poetry. New York: Dutton, 1974.
(4) Virágos, Zsolt K. The Modernists and Others. 7th edition, Debrecen: IEAS, 2010.
(5) Chase, Richard. The American Novel and Its Tradition. Amherst, MA: The Johns Hopkins
UP, 1989.
(6) Fiedler, Leslie A. Love and Death in the American Novel. Stein and Day, 1960.
(7) Sundquist, Eric J. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature.
Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993.
(8) Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York:
Knopf, 1993.
REQUIRED READING for the end-of-the-semester ORAL EXAM1
I. POETRY:
(1) Edwin Arlington ROBINSON, "RichardCory,” "Miniver Cheevy"
(2) Robert FROST, "The Wood-Pile," "Stopping by Woods," "The Road Not Taken," "The
Death of the Hired Man," "After Apple-Picking," "Birches," "Fire and Ice," "West-Running Brook," "Blueberries"
(3) Carl SANDBURG, "Chicago," "The People, Yes," "I Am the People," "Gone," "Grass",
"Happiness", "Cool Tombs"
(4) Vachel LINDSAY, "General William Booth Enters into Heaven," "Abraham Lincoln Walks
at Midnight"
(5) Edgar Lee MASTERS, selections from Spoon River Anthology → "Elsa Wertman,"
"Hamilton Greene," "Shack Dye," "Yee Bow," "Mrs. Charles Bliss," "Benjamin
Pantier," "Mrs. Benjamin Pantier," "Reuben Pantier," "Dora Williams," "Emily
Sparks," "Trainor the Druggist," "Deacon Taylor," "Lucinda Matlock," "Anne
Rutledge"
(6) Amy LOWELL, "Patterns"
(7) Ezra POUND, "Canto I," "Canto XLV," "In a Station of the Metro"
(8) E.E. CUMMINGS, "If There Are Any Heavens," "[my sweet old etcetera]," "[Buffalo
Bill's]," "[anyone lived in a pretty how town]," "["next to of course god america i],"
"Up into the Silence the Green," "[l(a]"
(9) Langston HUGHES, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "Mother to Son," "Weary Blues,"
"Dream Boogie", "Harlem," "Green Memory"
(10) Marianne MOORE, "A Grave," "Poetry," “The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing," "In Distrust
of Merits," "A Jelly-Fish"
(11) Archibald MACLEISH, "Ars Poetica," "You, Andrew Marvell"
(12) Countee CULLEN, "Heritage"
(13) Wallace STEVENS, "Sunday Morning," "The Idea of Order at Key West," "Not Ideas
about the Thing but the Thing Itself," "Of Modern Poetry"
(14) William Carlos WILLIAMS, "The Yachts," "Queen-Ann's-Lace," "Spring and All,"
"The Red Wheelbarrow"
II. SHORT PROSE NARRATIVES:
TALES & SHORT STORIES:
(1) Jack LONDON, "To Build a Fire" (1908)
(2) O.HENRY, "The Roads We Take"
(3) Willa CATHER, "Neighbor Rosicky" (1932)
(4) William SAROYAN, "Seventy Thousand Assyrians"
1
This is the list of the texts that you are supposed to have read by the time of the oral examination. Most of these
should be familiar to you from previously completed BA-level U.S. literature seminars. Those which are not or
which you think need refreshing, you should read or re-read.
(5) Conrad AIKEN, "Silent Snow, Secret Snow" (1950)
(6) William FAULKNER, "A Rose for Emily" (1930), "Dry September" (1931),
"Delta Autumn" (1942)
(7) Ernest HEMINGWAY, "Big Two-Hearted River" (1925), "The Killers" (1927),
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (1936), "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"
(1936)
(8) Zora Neale HURSTON, "The Gilded Six-Bits" (1933)
(9) Richard WRIGHT, "Big Boy Leaves Home" (1940)
III. NOVELS: FICTION and AUTOBIOGRAPHY
(1) Theodore DREISER, Sister Carrie (1900)
(2) Sinclair LEWIS, Main Street (1920)
(3) F. Scott FITZGERALD, The Great Gatsby (1925)
(4) Ernest HEMINGWAY, The Sun Also Rises (1929)
(5) William FAULKNER, The Sound and the Fury (1929)
IV. DRAMA
(1) Eugene O'NEILL, Mourning Becomes Electra (1931)
(2) Thornton WILDER, Our Town (1938)
V. MISCELLANEOUS PROSE (essay, review, address, etc.)
(1) W. CATHER, "The Novel Démeublé" (1922)
(2) R. WRIGHT, "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow" (1937)
(3) W. FAULKNER, "Address upon Receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature" (1950)
!!IMPORTANT NOTICE!!:
Students are kindly requested to download and print the syllabi, and turn up at the first
lecture class with the hard copy of this syllabus. 2
Vg.
2
To download, please click on the hyperlinks.