EUROÜLIKOOL
TÕLKETEADUSKOND
USA KULTUURILUGU JA 20. SAJANDI
KIRJANDUS
AMERICAN STUDIES
Õppeaine kood Euroülikooli registris T3B1021
Õppekava kood HM registris: bakalaureuseõpe – tõlkija/tõlk, filoloog 554
Dotsent Liida Tsehanovskaja
Õppeaasta 2007/2008
Õppeaine programmi koostas:
L. Tsehanovskaja
Kinnitatud teaduskonna nõukogu otsusega
Teaduskonna koordinaator
Course description
The compulsory course AMERICAN STUDIES is designed for students majoring in
Translation and Interpretation.
Aims: to acquaint the students with American culture, its roots, diversity, and its literary
interpreters.
The course presents a history of American culture from the colonial times to the end of
the millennium. It traces the development of characteristic American ideas and attitudes
and their manifestation in the works of major American writers.
The organization of the material is chronological to provide a view of the national culture
in historical perspective. In its coverage of American literature the course includes the
major forms: the novel, the short story, and the poem, with the emphasis on the novel as
the most comprehensive genre expressing the complexity of human experience.
Throughout the course priority is given to presenting patterns rather than particulars – to
tracing and illustrating the main outlines of the novel’s development rather than assessing
all the authors who may have contributed to them. These patterns and outlines are
generally shown as shaped by two factors: literary history and history itself.
Course structure. The course duration comprises 20 double periods (40 academic hours),
the scope of credit points totaling 3.0 (4.5 ECTS). The course is scheduled for two
semesters with 20 academic hours and 1.5 credit points each. The first semester ends in a
credit test, whereas the second in an examination. Student independent work comprises
67%, involving obligatory reading of assigned literary texts.
Methodology. The material is delivered in the form of lectures. From the start, students
are supplied with a photocopied detailed syllabus and end-of-term credit test or
examination questions. The language of instruction is English.
Study materials. Several core textbooks, anthologies; literary works assigned for
obligatory reading.
SEMESTER I (20 CLASSES, OR 10 WEEKS)
Aim: to give a survey of the development of American culture from the colonial times to
the turn of the twentieth century; to present a history of American literature during the
same period.
1. Making of a Nation.
The discovery of America. The beginning of emigration from Europe to North America.
The first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. The arrival of
Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. Their motives for emigration. Puritanism
and its role in shaping the American thought. The earliest American literature as
promotion literature. John Smith. Religion as a major subject of colonial American
literature. The sermon, spiritual autobiography and spiritual journal as the dominant
genres. The War of Independence. The formation of the United States of America.
Enlightenment in America. The emergence of the notion of the American Dream based
on the belief in progress, in the attainability of success, in manifest destiny, in the
continual challenge of respective frontiers, in the American form of government of the
people, by the people, for the people as the sole guarantor of Liberty and Equality, the
belief that immigrants of different ethnic stock and different religious beliefs can be fused
into a new nation (the idea of the melting pot or multi-ethnicity). The cult of newness,
the glorification of youth, the belief in unhampered mobility and the chances for ever
new beginnings. The outstanding prose writers of the period: Michel-Guillaume-De
Crévecoeur, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin Franklin. Franklin as a
primary figure in the rise of American pragmatism and the creation of the cult of selfreliance.
Literature:
1. Olson, Keith W. An Outline of American History. 1988. The United States
Information Agency. Pp. 1-60.
2. Lemay J.A. Leo. An Early American Reader. 1988. The United States
Information Agency. Pp. 7-8: 28-35.
2. The Age of Romanticism.
The rapid progress of trade and industry. The emergence of American romantic attitudes
as an expression of opposition to, and denial of, capitalist progress. Transcendentalism as
the basis of American romanticism. The characteristics of American form of
romanticism: nationalism as expressed in the celebration of America’s landscapes; the
romance of man’s struggle with nature and his victory over it; the idealization of the
primitive life of Indians and the natives of the Pacific as a way of protest against the
industrial civilization; the desire for an escape from society and a return to Nature in
search of existential self-discovery; a growing interest in American character types,
speaking local dialects. A blend of critical tendencies and optimistic belief in social
progress in the works of early romantics – Washington Irving, Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, James Fenimore Cooper. The disappointment of the later romantic
writers (Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Melville) in American
democracy as expressed in themes of life as tragic, evil as huge and insurmountable.
Washington Irving (1783-1859) as a transitional figure from the traditions of the
Enlightenment to those of Romanticism. The comic periodical Salmagundi with its
disrespectful comment on local manners, fashions, culture, and politics. The ideals of the
Enlightenment – freedom, equality and happiness for all. Criticism of the statesmen who
sacrifice these ideals for personal welfare. A History of New York as a reflection of the
crisis of rationalism and the development of sentimentalism. Diedrich Knickerbocker as
an ironic chronicler of the old New York and the lives of its governors. Ridicule of the
‘democratic freedom’ of speech and conscience, of the Congress, the Court, the Press.
The European period of Irving’s literary career. The Sketch Book, Bracebridge Hall and
the Humorists, Tales of a Traveller as a new genre of travel notes. Geoffrey Crayon
making an issue of the contrast between the drabness, the plainness, the ordinariness, the
newness of America and life in Europe ‘encrusted with the accumulated treasures of age.’
Poeticizing the ordinary as the distinctive feature of Irving’s work. The Devil and Tom
Walker as an illustration of the facts of everyday life being more surprising than any
fantasy. Idealization of America’s past in Rip Van Winkle. A blending of realistic
description with humor and fantasy in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The romantic
tendencies in The Alhambra. Looking for refuge from American reality, with its lust for
money, in the picturesque world of the Spanish past. Washington Irving as the founder
of the short-story genre in American literature.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-185) as the creator of the American historical novel.
The three themes of his work: the Revolutionary Wars, the frontier, and life at sea. The
depiction of the struggle of Native Americans against the white colonizers in The Leather
Stocking Tales: The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder,
And The Deerslayer. Natty Bumppo as an archetypal Western hero. Idealization of the
old traditions of the white pioneers and the primitive life of Native Americans as a protest
against the advance of industrial civilization. Lack of refinement of style. Mark Twain’s
criticism of Cooper’s conventional plots of adventure, fantastic situations, flat, onedimensional characters, particularly idealized heroines, unreal dialogues, and divergence
into subjects only slightly relevant to the plot. Cooper’s talent in creating dramatic scenes
as well as suspense in his repeated use of flight, pursuit, and capture.
Literature:
1. Hart, James, Gohdes, Clarence. America’s Literature. 2000. New York: The
Dryden Press. Pp. 193-195; 221-222.
2. Blair, Walter, Hornberger Theodore. The Literature of the United States.
Volume I. 1966. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company. Pp. 571-573; 665666.
3. The Later Romantics. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849).
Poe the literary critic. Perceptive, independent and articulate. Objection to narrow
nationalism. Criticism of the poverty of the arts in America as a result of the national
preoccupation with materialistic pursuits. Use of the concepts of psychology in Poe’s
criticism. His belief that the critic’s sole responsibility is to judge the artistic, as
distinguished from the opinionative aspect of the work.
The difference of Poe’s literary output from that of his contemporaries; its contradictory
nature: admiration for human intellect and a sense of its tragic impotence; the logical
structure of his work and strivings to create a high emotional effect; sympathy with an
individual and contempt for the ‘mob.’ The motifs of death, decay, destruction. The
attempts of Poe’s hero to run away from the inhuman humanity surrounding him – the
practical world of ‘our anti-romantic national character.’ Two aspects of Poe’s thought:
scientific rationalism illustrated in Eureka, and aestheticism, according to which, the
purpose of writing is ‘pleasure, not truth.’ The object of poetry is ‘the rhythmical
creation of beauty.’ Informational poetry, poetry of ideas, or any sort of didactic poetry
is illegitimate. Poe’s preoccupation with form, with the exquisiteness of sound
combinations. His belief that the essence of poetry is beauty and that sadness is the
mood most in keeping with poetic beauty. Hence, the subject matter of his poetry – the
death of a beautiful woman. The aim of poetry is to elevate the human mind, bring it to
ecstasy, and then one can perceive the superior beauty, which in a normal state one
cannot perceive.
Poe the poet. His poetry as a romantic manifesto. His speaking of lands ‘haunted by ill
angels only,’ which are nowhere – ‘out of Space – out of Time (Dreamland). Sonnet – To
Science as an expression of the view that the realistic and analytic tendencies of science
destroy the ideal or romantic conceptions necessary to poetry. The contrast between the
perfect poetry of the angel Israfel and the imperfect poetry of a mortal poet in Israfel.
Musicality and strong narrative link of Poe’s later verse like Ulalume, Annabel Lee and
the Raven, musicality achieved by the use of alliteration, onomatopoeia, repetition and
internal rhyme.
Poe the prose writer. Poe’s classification of his tales into grotesque, arabesque, and
ratiocinative: the arabesque being those in which horror or another emotion in violent
suspense gives the tale its power (The Fall of the House of Usher); in the grotesque tales
the effect is achieved by a grim humor (The Masque of the Red Death); in the
ratiocinative the effect comes from the use of rational analysis in reconstructing a series
of events in the best manner of association psychology (The Murders in the Rue Morgue).
Metempsychosis as the theme of Ligeia. The triumph of the human mind over danger as
the subject of A Descent into Maelstrom. Auguste Dupin as the forerunner of Conan
Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. The minute realistic details woven into the fantastic pattern of
the story, which make the reader see the fanciful as if it were reality as the distinctive
feature of Poe’s prose.
Literature:
1. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Volume I. 1979. New York:
Norton & Company. Pp. 1202-1206.
2. Hart, James, Gohdes, Clarence. America’s Literature. 2000. New York: The
Dryden Press. Pp. 413-415.
4. The Later Romantics.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864).
Hawthorne’s preoccupation with guilt and conscience. The constant and overwhelming
fear of sin, fear of a wrathful God as a mystical background to the New England
mentality. The themes of the collection of stories Twice-Told Tales: man’s loneliness as
the consequence of pride (Lady Eleanor’s Mantle), selfishness (Ethan Brand) and secret
guilt; the destructive power of human isolation; the influence of the past upon the
present; the futility of social reforms (The Blithedale Romance), the impossibility of
eradicating sin from the human heart; the narrow separation between good and evil;
humanity’s foolish attempts to unlock the mysteries of Nature. Hawthorne’s belief that
the roots of the philistinism and hypocrisy characteristic of New Englanders are to be
found in early Puritan settlements as the subject of the novel The Scarlet Letter. The
House of the Seven Gables as a study of ancestral guilt and expiation. Sin as an element
in human education in The Marble Faun. The imperfection, mutilation, incompleteness of
Hawthorne’s characters. Hawthorne’s conception of the art of fiction as a picture, in
which individual characters function not as individuals, but in relation to each other and
to his total design.
Herman Melville (1819-1891). His concern with the darker side of human fate. The
contrast between the vices of civilization and the virtues of the natives of the Pacific in
Typee and Omoo. An exposure of the evils of industrialism in Mardie, and a Voyage
Thither. Moby Dick, or the White Whale as the first American philosophical novel. The
triumph of evil over good. The Bible as a system of imagery. The realistic side to Moby
Dick: the description of whaling as an industry and all kinds of whales found; the toil and
courage of the whaler crew. The combination of scientifically strict treatment of facts of
life with deep emotional shocks and strikingly fantastic circumstances acquiring
symbolic significance, which are found in Melville’s novel, can be traced back to Irving
and Poe and are now acknowledged as characteristic of the American romantic tradition.
Literature:
1. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Volume I. 1979. New York:
Norton & Company. Pp. 874-879; 2032.
2. Hart, James, Gohdes, Clarence. America’s Literature. 2000. New York: The
Dryden Press. Pp. 304-305; 512-514.
5. Transcendentalism in America.
Transcendentalism as an ethical protest against the harsh and unjust realities of the
industrial revolution. The recognition in man of the capacity of knowing the truth
intuitively, and of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of senses. The doctrine of
self-reliance. Optimism as to the course of human affairs. Opposition to external
authority. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) as the theorist of American
transcendentalism. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) and his attempt to test
transcendental values by withdrawing from social complexities to a life of solitude and
complete self-reliance. Walden as an account of Thoreau’s life at Walden Pond; as an
account of the flora and fauna of Concord, as the earliest example of modern prose. The
creation of a new genre – the nature essay. Thoreau’s constructive criticism of what is
considered ‘progress’ and ‘success,’ and the writer’s optimistic belief in a spiritual
renewal of mankind.
Literature of Abolitionism.
The Civil War (1861-1865) as a conflict over slavery and a conflict between two forms
of society: the democratic, industrial economy of the North and the aristocratic,
agrarian society of the South. The Southerners’ defeat and abolition of slavery.
William Lloyd Garrison, the founder of the periodical The Liberator – one of the most
effective antislavery organs. John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) and Harriet
Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) as the two chief representatives of antislavery literature.
Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the most powerful condemnation of the institution of
slavery. The religious message of the novel. The dubious conclusion of the story.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) as an innovator in poetry. Leaves of Grass as an
embodiment of the ideas of Transcendentalism and the new poetic techniques.
Literature:
1. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Volume I. 1979. New York:
Norton & Company. Pp.685-690; 1506-1512; 1850-1857.
2. Blair, Walter, Hornberger, Theodore. The Literature of the United States.
Volume I. 1966. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company. Pp. 1037-1040;
1164-1166.
3. Hart, James, Gohdes, Clarence. America’s Literature. 2000. New York: The
Dryden Press. Pp. 538-540.
6. The Age of Realism.
The quick growth of the country due to the abolition of slavery, the rapid advance to the
West, accompanied by building of railroads, the endless flow of immigrants from Europe,
the abundance of rich material resources. The emergence of the new literary school of
realism. The impact of the philosophy of pragmatism and the scientific method on
interpretation of life. A variety of forms of realism. William Dean Howells (1837-1920)
and genteel realism. Henry James (1843-1916) and psychological realism. Mark
Twain (1835-1910) and local color fiction. Mark Twain the humorist in The Jumping
Frog and Other Stories and The Innocents Abroad. Mark Twain the satirist in The
Gilded Age. Criticism of American social institutions in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Creation of a new narrative style in
Huckleberry Finn, which uses colloquial American English, setting aside British English
as the only appropriate idiom for serious literature. Demonstration of the superiority of
democracy to monarchy, reason to superstition, organized labor to servile workers in A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Twain’s hatred of all forms of intolerance,
tyranny an injustice. His love of freedom and contempt for the mean, the cruel, the petty.
Literature:
1. Blair, Walter, Hornberger, Theodore. The Literature of the United States.
Volume II. 1966. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company. Pp.386-389.
2. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Volume II. 1979. New York:
Norton & Company. Pp. 11-14.
7. Naturalism in American Literature.
Naturalism as an attempt to explain the development ob human society by biological
laws. A conception of man as a beast shaped by hereditary and environmental forces
beyond his control. Surface details to picture a drab, squalid setting. Emphasis on the
lower and coarser forms of life. Use of whatever language a sordid situation demands.
The emergence of new characters in literature: businessmen, salesmen, immigrant
workers and impoverished farmers.
Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) as a seminal figure for American literature. Introduction
of new themes: sex as an important part of human life and big business. Exposure of the
American myth that success and fame are to be achieved by work and virtue. The theme
of the rise of the great American millionaires of the second half of the 19th century in
The Trilogy of Desire. Exposure of American capitalism as a world of injustice,
selfishness, and cruelty. The illusoriness of America’s conception of life in An American
Tragedy. Clyde Griffiths as a victim of American society that teaches wrong values.
Literature:
1. Hart, James, Gohdes, Clarence. America’s Literature. 2000. New York: The
Dryden Press. Pp. 813-815.
2. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Volume II. 1979. New York:
Norton & Company. Pp. 939-941.
8. The United States between the Wars (1914-1945).
The impact of the First World War (1914-1918) on the life and consciousness of
Americans. The influence of European modernism on the American arts. An attempt to
overcome the sense of historical fracture and culture despair. The Poetic Renaissance.
Rebellion against conventional poetic techniques: against the older ideas about the
‘seriousness’ proper to poetry; against conventional versification; against conventional
‘poetic’ diction. Use of conversational language.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) as the national American poet of the 20th century. Frost’s
poetic principles: meter in form and coherence in content. The subject matter of Frost’s
poetry: moral choice, human solidarity, duality of nature – the life force and the life
cycle and the infinite strangeness, man’s attempt to penetrate this strangeness.
Acceptance of mortality and human limitations. The distinctive features of Frost’s
poetry: clarity and profundity; complexity and accessibility; uniqueness and
universality.
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961) as the creator of the style of 20th century literature. The
problems of the lost generation in the novels The Sun Also Rises, or Fiesta and A
Farewell to Arms. The Spanish Civil War in For Whom the Bell Tolls with emphasis on
human interdependence and solidarity. The Old Man and the Sea. The Hemingway hero,
his awareness of violence and death, his stoic endurance.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) and the Jazz Age (the twenties) – the brief era of
prosperity, the time of massive new technical developments: the automobile, the airplane,
the radio, the movie, and the skyscraper of the modern city. The Great Gatsby as an
exploration of the American Dream as it exists in a corrupt period – the possibilities of
life are conceived in material terms. The main character as a corrupt product of the
consumer society and its victim. The heartlessness of the rich and their ruinous effect on
those who come in contact with them in the novel Tender is the Night.
Literature:
1. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Volume II. 1979. New York:
Norton & Company. Pp.1099-1103; 1615-1618; 1665-1669.
2. Blair, Walter, Hornberger, Theodore. The Literature of the United States.
1966. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company. Pp. 915-917; 1204-1205;
1249-1250.
9. The Thirties in America.
The stock market crash of 1929; the period of depression, mass unemployment, hunger
marches, the rise of industrial unionism, a sharp leftward turn in American politics, the
influence of the Communist Party. Replacement of the gay, party mood by a new social
consciousness. Re-appearance of the social novel.
John Dos Passos (1896-1970. Criticism of the basic institutions of American society as
the writer’s central theme. Experiments with literary techniques. Three Soldiers as an
antiwar novel, the war seen as a capitalist plot to protect investment and stave off western
revolution, as a massive machine crushing individualism. The ruinous effect of
capitalism on human life in Manhattan Transfer. Use of collage and montage techniques
of filmmaking. The history of the United States from the beginning of the 20th century
with the Spanish-American War to the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927 in the
USA trilogy: The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money, showing the defeat of the
individual on all fronts. The symbolic nature of the ending of the trilogy – a young
nameless hitchhiker trying to thumb a lift along a highway that leads nowhere. The
invention of three devices accompanying the narrative, of which two – the Newsreels and
the Biographies – emphasize the documentary nature of the trilogy, the Newsreels being
a montage of newspaper headlines, extracts from newspaper reports, advertisements,
fragments of popular songs, quotations from official oratory with the aim of presenting a
panorama of events large and small, significant and trivial, against which the characters
move; the Biographies being brief, vivid sketches of important men and women who
typify the periods covered by the work, whose purpose is to measure the cost of success
– or of failure – in American life. The Camera Eye, employing the stream-ofconsciousness technique, presents the viewpoint of the author. The message of the
trilogy; American civilization destroys people.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968).
The writer’s critical attitude to the social order in his country. His belief that life goes on,
is indestructible, although its forms may change and vast numbers of individual lives
may be ruined by some cruel forces. The four periods of Steinbeck’s literary career. The
early writings (1929-1935) – A Cup of Gold, To a God Unknown, The Pastures of
Heaven, Tortilla Flat – being examples of literary naturalism, the reflection of the
author’s interest in the animal motivation underlying human conduct. The Depression
years (1935-1940) – In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath –
analyzing the conflict between capital and labor, demonstrating the significance of
social and economic factors in the life of the individual, stressing the spirit of
collectivism and the idea of solidarity. Postwar period (the fifties) - Cannery Row, The
Wayward Bus, East of Eden – marking Steinbeck’s retreat from social reality, which
took the form of the description of the countryside and its wildlife. The late fifties and
sixties with their social and racial conflicts – The Winter of Our Discontent, Travels with
Charlie - showing a renewal of the writer’s interest in social problems.
Literature:
1. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Volume II. 1979. New York:
Norton and Company. Pp. 1583-1586; 1685-1686.
10. The Southern Literary Renaissance.
The emergence in the middle decades of the 20th century of a rich and varied literature
about the South, writers from this area distinguishing themselves in poetry, fiction and
drama; in journalism; in literary criticism and editing; and a line of textbooks that has
changed the teaching of literature. The unique quality of the work of Southern writers
being a kind of historical vision – the ability to observe the South and its people in time,
as they were in the present and as they used to be in the past. The distinctive features of
Southern writing: a highly critical attitude to the present day American way of life,
intensified by traditional hate of the Yankee, a kind of regional loyalty to tradition, a
nostalgia for an aristocratic, non-urban life, an awareness of distinctive character, mores,
and beliefs peculiar to the Southern areas, exploration of the Southern myth, obsession
with the problem of Time, the treatment of the South as a land damned, the Negro
problem, awareness and acceptance of evil, pessimism concerning man’s potential, the
atmosphere of decay, destruction and frustration, a tendency to picture the
inharmonious, the ugly, the repulsive, preoccupation with mentally disturbed people,
the existential conception of the essential loneliness of man, the phenomenon of
violence, love of rhetoric, grim humor. The first generation of Southern writers:
William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, and Thomas Wolfe. Rejection of a typically
Southern heritage in the books of Katherine Anne Porter, Truman Capote, Carson
McCullers and Flannery O’Conner.
William Faulkner (1897-1962) as the greatest figure of the Southern Renaissance.
Invention of Yoknapatawpha County as the scene of his novels, embracing several
civilizations that range from the life of the Indian to that of the Negro slave; to the
disruption of Southern culture after the Civil War; to the cheap and corrupt materialism
of a later industrial society; to the fragmented twentieth-century life in which all
religious and moral codes have become mechanical rituals. Innovative techniques.
Despair and doom as recurring motifs because social and moral orders prove to be
founded on racial exploitation and violence. Major theme – the decline of the Southern
gentry, their inability to cope with the world about them and to save themselves – in The
Sound and the Fury. The rise of new Southerners – ruthless, cunning, unscrupulous – in
the trilogy comprising The Hamlet, The Town and The Mansion. The inability to accept
the black man as a human equal as the source of an individual tragedy and the tragedy of
the South in Absalom, Absalom! The problem of miscegenation in Light in August.
Faulkner’s belief that ‘the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and
pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of the past’ will enable men and women not
only to ‘endure’ the crisis of life but also to ‘prevail,’ expressed in his Nobel Prize
speech.
Literature:
1. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Volume II. 1979. New York:
Norton and Company. Pp. 1755-1761.
2. Blair, Walter, Hornberger, Theodore. The Literature of the United States.
1966. Pp. 1232-1234.
SEMESTER II (20 CLASSES, OR 10 WEEKS)
Aim: to trace the development of American culture and literature from the end of World
War II to the end of the millennium, with emphasis on the novel.
1. Postwar period in America.
The entrance of the United States into World War II following Japan’s surprise attack on
Pearl Harbor in December 1941. American use of an atomic bomb in warfare. The
beginning of the nuclear age. The American foreign aid program (Marshall Aid). The
emergence of new socialist states in Europe and the US entrance into military alliances
under NATO and SEATO as an attempt to stop the spread of communism. The
beginning of the Cold War. McCarthyism and the Age of Conformity. The Silent
Generation. The spread of Freudianism as a result of the growing exasperation with the
hypocrisies and cruelties of conventional morality: insistence on individual fulfillment,
satisfaction, and happiness. The sexual revolution. The influence of existentialist
philosophy. A flight from social-mindedness and a disillusion with progress.
The American Novel of the Second World War. The difference between the First
World War novel and the Second World War novel. Norman Mailer ‘s The Naked and
the Dead and its destruction of the ‘gallant knights in armor’ view of the American
soldier. Dos Passos’s influence on Mailer’s literary technique (Chorus, The Time
Machine). Mailer’s understanding of history as a series of random accidents. The role of
chance. War as a meaningless activity in which men die, as an opportunity to perfect the
military organization of force that will take over civilization when peace comes, as a field
for men to express their blood-lust, as a reduction of men to beasts.
The hypocritical anti-fascism of the Americans fighting against the Nazis in Europe in
Irwin Shaw’s The Young Lions and John O’Killens’s And Then We Heard the Thunder,
where Noah Ackerman, an American Jew, and Solly, a black American, fight against
anti-semitism and racism in the American army.
Literature:
1. Ruland, Richard, Bradbury, Malcolm. From Puritanism to Postmodernism.
1992. New York: Penguin Books. Pp. 369-373.
2. Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Volume
7. 1999. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 103-134.
2. The Beat Generation.
The emergence of the Beat Generation as a result of protest against conventional,
puritanical, and middle-class values. The meaning of the term beat (from beatitude).
Affirmation of personal liberation through wide experimentation with drugs, rejection
of sexual taboos, arts (especially jazz music), and Zen Buddhism. Change in the literary
use of language, which is the spoken word committed to writing. A tendency toward
combining poetry and prose.
Jack Kerouac (1922-1970).
On the Road (1957) as the most profound expression of the ideas of the beatniks. The
characters are a group of young people, who roam the American continent in a desperate
search for purpose. They feel defeated, emotionally disturbed, chronically
depressed, neurotically unbalanced, filled with despair. They seek intensity of
sensation through strong wine, mad music, the magical mood that marijuana gives, and
the ecstasy of sex. They refuse to be tied to steady jobs and do their best to avoid other
ties, such as marriage. They live as simply as possible, and act on the spur of the moment.
Since they do not believe in the future, they value relationships only as they tend to
reveal the truth of the present existence. The ending of the book as an illustration that
living without restraint leads nowhere.
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) as a ‘sidewalk bard’ of America.
Howl and Other Poems expressing rage and despair of living in a destructive, abusive
society. The influence of Walt Whitman on Ginsberg’s poetic technique.
Literature:
1. Ruland, Richard, Bradbury, Malcolm. From Puritanism to Postmodernism.
1992. New York: Penguin Books. P. 395.
2. Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Volume
7. 1999. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 183-184.
3. American Literature in the 1960s.
John Kennedy’s campaign for presidency and his subsequent election. The end of the
McCarthy’s era with its anti-Communism, cold war hysteria and investigation into ‘unAmerican’ activities. The emergence of SDS (Students for Democratic Society), and the
New Left. The struggle of Afro-Americans for civil rights. The New Feminist
Movement. The war in Vietnam and the antiwar movement. Political assassinations
(President John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King). The revolution of
consciousness. The emergence of a permissive society.
Postmodernism as a radical break with traditional beliefs concerning truth, knowledge,
power, the self, and language. Challenge of the existence of coherency and stability in
anything. Rejection of the notion of reality as single and ultimately knowable. Distrust of
science as the possessor of certain truths. An attempt to destroy the foundations of
language, so as to show that its seeming meaningfulness is illusory. Postmodernism as a
new socioeconomic stage of capitalism: postindustrialism. Computerization.
Emergence of mass consumer culture. Postmodern society as a society of
hyperconformists. The role of mass media in rendering the masses an apathetic silent
majority. Loss of Self. All-embracing relativism. Postmodernity as an attempt to reach a
point where one can live with what is left.
Postmodernism as a rule-breaking art. Fragmentation and eclecticism. Combination of
fact and fiction. Intertextuality. Art as a self-reflecting game. The spirit of play.
Parody as a typical form of postmodern art. Refusal of interpretation. Invitation to
participation.
New Journalism as a new genre to render the chaotic and violent quality of the reality of
the 1960s. A combination of accurate non-fiction and journalism with techniques
associated with novels and short stories, in order to excite the reader both intellectually
and emotionally. Tom Wolfe (1931- ) as the major theorist of the new genre.
Truman Capote (1924-1984) as the creator of the non-fiction novel In Cold Blood
(1966), a true-to-life account of the brutal murder of a farmer’s family in the village of
Holcomb in Kansas, the police investigation, the capture, the trial, and the execution of
the two young murderers. A combination of objectivity and a deep psychological
analysis of the mentality of the murderers. The message: American reality breeds crime.
Norman Mailer’s non-fiction The Armies of the Night subtitled as History as a Novel,
the Novel as History (1967); A Fire on the Moon (1970) The Prisoner of Sex (1971), The
Executioner’s Song (1979) subtitled as A True Life Novel as combinations of journalism,
private letters, records of court proceedings, face-to-face and telephone interviews,
conversations, autobiography, political commentary, fictional passages in a wide variety
of styles.
Literature:
1. Ruland, Richard, Bradbury, Malcolm. From Puritanism to Postmodernism.
1992. New York: Penguin Books. Pp. 370-373; 382.
2. Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Volume
7. 1999. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 242-244; 433-435.
4. The Black Humor Novel.
The existentialist view that life is meaningless, that man is a listless plaything in the
overall chaos. Instead of the existentialist scorn or rebellion as the only reasonable
response to the absurdity of the world, black humorists suggest that one should accept
reality in all its senselessness, to accept it freely, without fear, without illusions – and to
laugh at it. The controlling metaphor is the image of the world as waste land. The
characters as neurotic, physically and spiritually sterile, unable to love, alienated
and bored. Fable or parable as the form of the black humor novel. Ridiculous events as
symbolic of the absurdity of life. Rejection of the assumption that human beings can be
accurately formulated expressed in distorted, exaggerated, and caricatured
characters. Ironic use of the ‘exhausted’ (John Barth) forms of the past. Employment of
lexical distortion, meaningless puns, insistent repetition of empty words, clichés,
exaggerations, and juxtaposed incongruous details. The gallows humor.
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) as the most characteristic black humorist writer.
Slaughterhouse-Five: or the Children’s Crusade (1969) as a typical black humor novel.
The story of an American, Billy Pilgrim, captured by the Germans during World War II,
his presence in Dresden during its destruction by American fire-bombers, and the
consequences of these experiences on his later life. Vonnegut’s conception of war as a
children’s crusade. The events of the novel pointing to a world in which things happen
that are beyond man’s control. The main character as a plaything incapable of making a
decision. The role of physical, psychological and philosophical associations. The
message of the novel: the correlation between the ideal of absolute rationality realized on
the fantastic planet of Tralfamadore and the practice of the laws of rationality, which
exclude all moral considerations, in the United States of America. Vonnegut’s warning
that if mankind remains passive in the face of the advance of technocracy and scientism,
it might repeat the fate of those on Tralfamadore.
Literature:
1. Ruland, Richard, Bradbury, Malcolm. From Puritanism to Postmodernism.
1992. New York: Penguin Books. Pp. 381-382.
2. Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Volume
7. 1999. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 125-126.
5. The 1970s in America.
The end of the war in Vietnam. The failure of the movements for social change such as
minority rights, the New Left and Women’s Lib to achieve significant results. The
Watergate affair. A rightward shift in American politics. The New Right. Rejection of
the counter-culture of the 1960s. The spirit of moderation, a need for moral principles.
Neo-conservative ideology. Religious fundamentalism. The ideals of stability and
traditional family values. American writers’ analysis of the emotional and moral
experiences of the 1960s.
Joseph Heller (1923-1999). Something Happened (1974) as a spiritual portrait of the
America of the 1970s. The central motif as fear. Selfishness as the main characteristic of
the characters. The death of the protagonist’s son as symbolic of the fact that nothing
really humane can survive in the inhuman atmosphere of present-day America.
John Updike (1932- ) as a satirist and a celebrator of America. The subject matter:
ordinary people doing usual things – falling in love in high school, meeting a college
roommate, going to the eye-doctor, eating supper on Sunday night, visiting your mother
with your wife or son. His America is a land of sterile, empty, trivial lives centered on
TV and movies. His characters are searching for spiritual and religious meaning in life,
but they discover that, in their worlds, romantic love is a trap and a deceit, happiness is
brief, and life is dull as their pre-packaged meals. The Rabbit Tetralogy, comprising
Rabbit Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit is Rich (1981), and Rabbit at Rest
(1990), tell the story of Harry Angstrom, the Rabbit of the title, presenting at the same
time a social and emotional history of the United States over the last forty years. Each
novel rendering the sense of an era through the eyes of an average, unintellectual,
politically conservative figure.
John Gardner (1933-1982) as the author of moral fiction. Assertion of such eternal
verities in modern life as heroism, sacrifice, and purpose in Nickel Mountain: A Pastoral
Novel (1973) and October Life (1976). Advocacy of literature of affirmation. October
Light as an ecological novel. Emphasis on a feeling of membership in a natural
community and on the morally regenerative qualities of nature.
Literature:
1. Ruland, Richard, Bradbury, Malcolm. From Puritanism to Postmodernism.
1992. New York: Penguin Books. Pp. 377, 384.
2. Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Volume
7. 1999. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 189-193; 128.
6. Historiographic Metafiction.
The idea of history as a subjective construct. In this, history is comparable with fiction,
for they are both products of imagination. The term, coined in the late 1980s by Linda
Hutcheon, a Canadian literary theorist, reflects the paradoxical nature of the genre:
historiographic referring to reliable fact, whereas metafiction implying that it is a
fantasy.
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (1931- ). The idea of superiority of fiction over all other
forms of discourse because it admits that its stories are lies, while the discourse by social
scientists claims to be true. The ‘false documents’ composed by novelists are more valid
and more truthful than the ‘true’ documents of historians. Doctorow’s technique of
blending the fictional and the factual to question the status and nature of all historical
discourse and to prove that his version of the past events could be as ‘true’ as the
documented ones. Ragtime (1975) as an ironic depiction of America at the beginning of
the 20th century, starting in 1902 and concluding with World War I, the period marking
the epoch’s impressive technological achievements as well as acute social problems. The
central metaphor of the novel refers to the ragtime music of the title. The syncopated
rhythm of ragtime and its principle of fundamental repetition based on improvisation
shapes the novel’s content as well as its form. As a mixture of the formalized and the
improvised, the music reflects the typical tensions of the dynamic era marked by both
innovation and convention.
In the four parts of the novel reflecting the four themes of a musical rag, the author
interweaves three basic narratives: the lives of a wealthy New Rochelle family whose
money comes from the manufacture of American flags, bunting and fireworks; the
destruction of an immigrant family by poverty and their eventual rise; the story of
Coalhouse Walker, a black ragtime musician turned into a murderer due to the indignities
of racism, who seizes the great library of J. P. Morgan before being killed.
In order to illustrate that distinctions between fact and fiction are illusory, Doctorow
brings his fictitious characters into contact with real historical personages. The fictitious
characters are intended to stand for general personality types as well as anonymous
representatives of their era. The historical figures are employed to help recreate the
atmosphere of the era. The narrator’s constant comments on how the novel is being
constructed. Doctorow’s view of history as being circular as well as an unending
process of change.
Literature:
1. Ruland, Richard, Bradbury, Malcolm. From Puritanism to Postmodernism.
1992. New York: Penguin Books. Pp. 382-383.
2. Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Volume
7. 1999. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 747-748.
7. The 1980s and the 1990s in America.
De-industrialization. High unemployment rate. President Reagan’s SDI (Space Defense
Initiative) and the emergence of a state-influenced industrial sector while the recipients of
these monies being privately owned enterprises. Abandoning of social programs in
favor of a renewed emphasis on free enterprise and unhampered capitalism. The influx
of south-east Asians, partially a legacy of the American involvement in Indochina, and of
Hispanics from Chili to Puerto Rico changing the racial, ethnic, as well as linguistic
make-up of the country. Insistence of special interest groups on a hearing of their own
‘story’ of America: Women, Catholics, Jews, Afro-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Native
Americans, Gays and Lesbians.
Women’s Literature.
Development of feminism from the Civil War to the end of the millennium: from a
concentration on women’s literary subordination, mistreatment, and exclusion, to the
study of women’s separate literary traditions, to an analysis of the symbolic construction
of gender and sexuality within literary discourse. Gynocriticism. Female aesthetic.
Demand of a new literary history and criticism that combines the literary experiences of
both men and women, of a complete revolution in the understanding of the literary
heritage.
Kate Chopin (1850-1904). The Awakening (1899) as the first American feminist novel.
Examination of the institution of marriage. The heroine’s rebellion against domesticity,
submissiveness, piety, and purity – the most important attribute of True Womanhood.
Her suicide as symbolic of the impossibility of emancipation within patriarchal society.
‘The story of the awakening housewife’ as the main subject of women writers in the
1960s (Sue Kaufman’s Diary of a Mad Housewife, Alix Kates Shulman’s Memoirs of
an Ex-Prom Queen, Penelope Mortimer’s The Pumpkin Eater).
The Feminist Bildungsroman. Its confessional nature. A descent into the psyche in
search of psychic whole. (Marge Piercy’s Small Changes, Lisa Alther’s Kinflicks,
Marylin French’s The Women’s Room).
Mother-daughter relationship as one of the most important problems of the 1980s.
Deconstruction of the traditional myth of motherhood (Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying).
The view of the mother as a source of encouragement (Marylin French’s Her Mother’s
Daughter) or inspiration (Erica Jong’s Fanny: Being the True History of the Adventures
of Fanny Hackabout-Jones).
The problem of female friendship. The idea of sisterhood, the solidarity among women
based on shared experience and essential to progress in changing women’s status (Ella
Leffland’s Rumors of Peace, Mary Gordon’s The Company of Women, Gail Godwin’s
A Southern Family).
Feminist utopian writing and its idea of a perfect society where women are equal to
men (Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, Sally Miller Gearhart’s The
Wanderground).
Literature:
1. Ruland, Richard, Bradbury, Malcolm. From Puritanism to Postmodernism.
1992. New York: Penguin Books. Pp. 244-249; 289-291.
2. Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Volume
7. 1999. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 519-527.
8. Ethnic Literatures.
Ethnic writing playing an increasingly visible role in the landscape of American fiction at
the end of the 20th century.
Jewish-American Literature (Saul Bellow, Arthur Miller, Bernard Malamud, Norman
Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Joseph Heller, E. L. Doctorow, J. D. Salinger, Isaac Bashevis
Singer, Tillie Olsen, Cynthia Ozrick and many others).
The appearance of the first Jews on the American continent at the beginning of the 17th
century. Emigration from Russia in the 1880s-1920s. Nowadays the Jews making up six
million of the population of the USA playing a significant part in the cultural life of the
country.
Saul Bellow (1915- ), the Nobel Prize winner, and his role in bringing about the
recognition of Jewish-American fiction as an important part of the national literature. The
novel of ideas as Bellow’s favorite genre (Herzog, Mr. Sammler’s Planet, Humboldt’s
Gift, More Die of a Heartbreak, Henderson the Rain King The Victim). The protagonists
are highbrow intellectuals searching for the meaning of life. History as another
important subject of the meditations of Bellow’s heroes, for they have been witnesses of
major historical events of the latter half of the 20th century. Other problems of Bellow’s
fiction include ethics, the nature of art and the role of the artist in the modern world,
anti-Semitism in American society. The distinctive features of his writings: little outer
action, the real action being internal; a clash of contrary opinions; the prevalence of
dialogue and monologue; a great number of allusions (historical, philosophical, biblical,
mythological and literary); free use of scientific terms; a wide employment of foreign
words to stress Bellow’s intellectual hero’s erudition.
Literature:
1. Ruland, Richard, Bradbury, Malcolm. From Puritanism to Postmodernism.
1992. New York: Penguin Books. Pp. 378-379; 407.
2. Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Volume
7. 1999. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 254-260.
9. African-American Literature.
African Americans making ten percent of the population of the United States. The
problem of race discrimination in American society. The struggle of African Americans
for civil rights. Martin Luther King and his credo of non-violence. The role of Richard
Wright (1908-1960) and his books Uncle Tom’s Children (1938) and Native Son
(1940) in the development of black writing.
James Baldwin (1924-1987). His belief that the liberation of American blacks, their
achievement of full civil, social, political and human rights, and full opportunity for their
development, is a necessity for the white people as well in order to save democracy. His
books - Go Tell IT on the Mountain (1953), Another Country (1962), Tell Me How Long
the Train’s Been Gone (1968), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) – being sensitive
accounts of the complex spiritual and moral predicaments of the black intellectual.
Baldwin’s rejection of Richard Wright’s tradition of depicting the Negro only as a victim
of social injustice. Freudian and existentialist overtones of Baldwin’s writings.
Creation of a convincing black character endowed with the virtues common to all
mankind: the capacity for love, integrity, dignity, and social duty. Use of blues, jazz,
spirituals reflecting the writer’s view that only in music can the black man express
himself.
Toni Morrison (1931- ) as an African-American feminist writer. Her special interest in
black fiction. Morrison’s books – The Bluest Eye (1969), Sula (1973), Song of Solomon
(1977), Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992) and others – addressing such issues as black
victimization, the emotional and social effects of racial and sexual oppression, the
difficulties that African Americans face in trying to achieve a sense of identity in a
society dominated by white cultural values. Morrison’s female protagonists and their
quest for self. Their difference from the other members of the black community. The
impossibility for a black woman, striving for independence and self-fulfillment, to find
happiness in the world that is male-dominated, full of prejudice and superstition, old and
rigid conventions, and people who lack motivation for self-assertion. Morrison’s use of
the method of magic realism to portray the mentality of African Americans.
Literature:
1. Ruland, Richard, Bradbury, Malcolm. From Puritanism to Postmodernism.
1992. New York: Penguin Books. Pp. 380-393.
2. Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Volume
7. 1999. Pp. 266-269; 508-509.
10. Native American Literature.
Native American literature as the literature of the indigenous peoples of North America.
The history of their discrimination. Their outlook: a place-centered view of the physical
world and time, a reverence for the power of the world, kinship ties, a belief in the
importance of renewal of the world through rituals associated with seasonal cycles. Oral
literature as an essential part in revitalization and preservation of culture in contemporary
Native American settings and communities. The main genres of oral literature: myths,
legends, ritual songs, speeches, and tales. Trickster as a common Native American
mythic figure to teach proper behavior to children, to instruct and inspire adults, to
entertain through humor, to present a culture hero who saves people or otherwise makes
the world better by his brave acts, or to tell how the universe came to be as we know. The
most prominent authors: Samson Occom, David Cusick, George Copway, Peter Jones,
William Apes, Alex Posey and many others.
Scott Momaday (1934- ) as the first representative of the literary renaissance. Search for
national, cultural, and individual identity in House Made of Dawn (1968). The hero’s
belonging to two worlds and his tragedy in that he is treated as an alien by either side. His
feeling of alienation and frustration. Momaday’s affirmative treatment of the quest to
renew contact with tribal values.
Leslie Marmon Silko (1948- ). Her view of the white culture as cruel, artificial, dead,
cut off from nature, based on greed: of the traditional Indian culture as holistic, natural
communal. Ceremony (1977) as the story of a man’s recovery of meaning and selfhood
through his community’s ancient ceremonies which, as the author demonstrates, are not
merely rituals, but a means of achieving a proper place in the universe. The features of
Silko’ s style: absence of chapter breaks, which encourages the reader to perceive the
novel as one unified experience; the fragmented story structure to blur distinctions
between past and present; fusing Indian and Western aesthetic elements.
Louise Erdrich (1954- ). Her pentalogy including Love Medicine (1984), The Beet
Queen (1986), Tracks (1988), The Bingo Palace (1994), Tales of Burning Love (1996). A
Chippewa reservation as the setting of Erdrich’s books. The characters’ attempts to
integrate into white American culture. Erdrich’s use of oral tradition, many-voiced
narration, breakdown of chronological time, lack of plot in the traditional sense of the
term, concern with exploring the process of storytelling, the female trickster, the
mythological reality.
Literature:
1. Ruland, Richard, Bradbury, Malcolm. From Puritanism to Postmodernism.
1992. New York: Penguin Books. Pp. 29-31; 412-413.
2. Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Cambridge History of American Literature. 1999.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 633-644.