AMERICAN LITERATURE (2)
Highlights of 20th-century American prose writing
COURSE CODE: BTAN23001BA, BTAN28005BA
TIME & PLACE: Wed 18. 00 – 19. 40 in Rm 121, Main bld.
INSTRUCTOR: Tóth Ágnes, agnestoth.dr@gmail.com
OFFICE HOUR: Friday 13.45-14.30 in Room 108/1 Main bld.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This highly selective course invites you to a journey of exploration of significant texts starting
with iconic texts of American literary modernism, ethnic and minority writing as well as
experimental writings of the post-modern era. Since both the term modernism and postmodernism are highly complex concepts, we will attempt to find a path among definitions and
interpretations, and – hopefully – arrive at the destination of familiarity and clearer insight into
these highly complex sets of issues.
This primarily prose-fiction course offers students the scrutiny of some highly significant texts
by such iconic authors as the then expatriate Ernest Hemingway, the nativist F. Scott Fitzgerad,
authors of the Southern Renaissance (William Faulkner), the Harlem Renaissance (Langston
Hughes), and Zora Neale Hurston, who shares the terrain with the Southern and the intellectual
roots with the Harlem Renaissance. Post-war ethnic or minority writing will be represented by
Saul Bellow and Sandra Cisneros, experimental writing by Thomas Pynchon and Roland Barth.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Attendance and active participation in class discussions is imperative. Please, do come to class
prepared and ready for discussion!
Random quizzes on the assigned readings.
Midterm paper will include text recognition tasks as well as brief essay questions pertaining
to the material covered up to that time.
End-term paper will rely on your familiarity with the works and their contexts discussed
during the entire semester.
EVALUATION CRITERIA
Class participation 20% ; Quizzes 10%; Midterm paper 30%;
End-term Paper 40%
COURSE SCHEDULE
(1) Feb 17
Orientation;
Setting the stage: definitions, concepts;
(2) Feb 24
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
(3) March 2 THE SHORT STORY (I)
Ernest Hemingway, “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot” (1925) “The Killers” (1927), “The Snows of
Kilimanjaro” (1936)
(4) March 9
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926)
(5) March 16 THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE; Langston Hughes. “The Negro Speaks of
Rivers,” “Mother to Son,” “The Negro Mother”; Countee Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel”;
Zora Neale Hurston, “The Gilded Six.Bits” (1933),
(6) March 23 Mid-term paper
(7) March 30 Consultation week
(8) April 6 THE SHORT STORY (II)
William Faulkner, “ A Rose for Emily,” “Delta Autumn”
(9) April 13 Saul Bellow, Seize the Day (1956)
(10) April 20 Roland Barth, Lost in the Funhouse (1967)
(11) Apr 27
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1984)
(12) May 4
Thomas Pynchon, “Entropy” (1984)
(13) May 11 End-term paper
(14) May 18
Summing up and closing down
Required Texts
AN 305 Course packet and the novels are available in the Institute library.
A Short List of Suggested Secondary Sources
Bollobás, Enikő. Az amerikai irodalom története. Osiris, 2005.
Horton, W. Rod and Herbert W. Edwards. Backgrounds of American Literary Thought. New
York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1967.
Országh, László and Virágos Zsolt. Az amerikai irodalom története. Eötvös, 1997.
Virágos, Zsolt. The Modernists and Others: The American Literary Culture in the Age of the
Modernist Revolution. Debrecen: Institute of English and American Studies, 2006.
N.B. The Institute Library holds a large number of reference books as well as monographs on
the authors selected for the course.
Fleming, Robert E. "Hemingway's" The Killers": The Map and the Territory." New Critical
Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. ed. Jackson J. Benson. Duke UP,
1990. 309-13.
McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. Taylor nad Francis e-book, 2004, pp. 1-40.
Absences: If you must miss a class because of illness or emergency, please let me know, and
arrange to complete any work missed. If you miss more than three classes, your course will
have to be regarded incomplete.