ENG212 Engelskspråklig litteratur og kultur
ENG252 Bacheloroppgave i engelskspråklig litteratur og kultur med
semesteroppgave
Alternative I: Turn-of-the-century Multicultural American Literature
Fulbright professor Cathryn Halverson
The turn of the century in the United States has been characterized as “a time of deepening
segregation, revived imperial adventurism, and growing immigration restriction.” Yet it is
also an era that saw unparalleled publishing opportunities for “ethnic” writers, as an
understanding of what constituted American literature expanded to include the work of
African Americans, Asian Americans, European immigrants, and Native Americans. William
Dean Howells, the influential critic and novelist, declared, “Gradually, but pretty surely, the
whole varied field of American life is coming into view in American fiction.” This course will
explore, if not “the whole varied field” of multicultural American writing, then at least some
of its better-known productions. Our readings will consider issues of home, mobility, and
regional and national identification; the difference that place, class, and gender makes; and
conflict both across and within ethnic groups. We will locate the texts we read within a
historical and cultural context, most notably a slave past and racist present, Native removal
policies, and the discourse of assimilation, even as we pay close attention to the language and
complexities of the narratives themselves as aesthetic productions. Together, we will consider
the resonances among these diverse works, the “conversation” they conduct about America.
Required Reading
Charles Chestnutt, A Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line
Abraham Cahan, The Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories of the New York Ghetto
Nella Larsen, Quicksand
Zitkala Sa, American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings
Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs
Sui Sin Far, Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Other Stories
Course Compendium
1. Selected documents
WEB Dubois, “The Coming of John”
Paul Dunbar, selected poetry
Charles Eastman, “The Way Opens” and “My First School Days.” (From the Deep Woods to
Civilization)
“Songs from Gold Mountain”
2. Theoretical and Cultural readings
Robert M. Dowling. “Ethnic Realism.” (A Companion to American Fiction)
Richard Brodhead. “Jewett, Regionalism, and Writing as Women’s Work” and “‘Why Could
Not a Colored Man?’: Chestnutt and the Transaction of Authorship.” (Cultures of
Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America)
Amy Ling. “Creating Themselves and Asian American Literature: Sui Sin Far and Onoto
Watanna”
Additional Texts for 300-level students
James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Anzia Yezierska, “The Lost ‘Beautifulness’”
Nella Larsen, Passing (recommended)
Onoto Watanna, “An Unexpected Grandchild.”
A. Robert Lee, “Epilogue: Fictions of Whiteness” (Multicultural American Literature)
Alternative II: The Journey Motif in Literature or the Literary Journey
ENG 212 / 252, spring 2009, Alternative II
Thursdays 1215 - 1400
Sydnesplassen 12-13, Undervisningsrom 210
Heidi Silje Moen
heidi.moen@if.uib.no
In this course we will investigate a variety of texts that, however different, can be said to have
one thing in common: the journey motif. The course will investigate various ways of thinking
about journeys. Starting out with the Odyssey and the Metamorphoses and moving on to texts
that are positioned in the uneasy territory between modernism and post-modernism will open
up for comparisons and questions concerned with physical as well as psychologically
transformative journeys. We will discuss the texts on the syllabus with a focus on structure,
narrative, authority, and origins: what uses have been made of the journey motif; how is it
brought out, and to what effects?
To assist our understanding and reading of these literary journeys we will discuss
some theorists’ thinking about narration.
Required Reading
*The texts with an asterisk are in the course compendium available at STUDIA.
*Auerbach, Erich. “Odysseus’ Scar.”
Bakhtin, M. M. “Epic and Novel.”
*Brooks, Otis. “The Plan of Ovid’s Epic”
*Robert Browning: “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”.
T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land / “Journey of the Magi”. Collected Poems 1909
– 1962. London, Boston: faber and faber, 1963.
D.H. Lawrence. The Rainbow. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 1995.
Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness. Penguin Popular Classics, 1994.
Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot. Second Edition. London, Boston: faber
and faber, 1965.
*Ezra Pound: Ends and Beginnings of The Cantos.
David Malouf. An Imaginary Life (1978). Vintage, 1999.
Derek Walcott: Omeros (1990). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
1992.
Background / Reference Literature:
Homer: The Odyssey. Translation and introduction by Richmond
Lattimore. 2007.
Ovid: Metamorphoses. Translation and introduction by Horace Gregory.
2001
Secondary Literature: Course Compendium
Theoretical Reference Literature:
Aristotle, Poetics. Trans. Richard Janko. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, 1987.
Lothe, Jakob. Narrative in Fiction and Film. An Introduction. Oxford
2000.
Brooks, Peter. “Reading for the Plot,” “Narrative Desire”. Reading
for the Plot. Design and Intention in Narrative. Harvard UP, 1992.
Preliminary Seminar Overview:
1: Homer: The Odyssey.
2: Ovid: Metamorphoses.
3: Robert Browning: “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”.
T. S. Eliot. “Journey of the Magi.”
4: T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land.
5: D.H. Lawrence: The Rainbow.
6: Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness.
7. Postmodern / postcolonial approaches
8: Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot.
9: Ezra Pound: Beginnings and Endings of The Cantos of Ezra Pound.
10: David Malouf: An Imaginary Life.
11: Derek Walcott: Omeros.
12: Summing up