Syllabus Spring 2024
内容
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《美国文学史》 课程大纲
History of American Literature
Noam Chomsky
Prof. Junsong Chen office: FLB 421
Spring 2024 office hrs: TU 1:00pm-3:00pm
Email: jschen@english.ecnu.edu.cn or by appointment
Course Description:
This course introduces to students the literary landscape of the United States, ranging from the Colonial period to late twentieth century. Our focus will be placed on the major periods, school, trends, masters and masterpieces. The texts chosen will cover all the major genres (autobiography, poetry, short story, novel, drama, etc.). Attention will also be paid to the historical and cultural contexts in which those literary texts were produced.
Objectives:
- to help students understand the major literary events, trends, periods, and writers in the literary history of America;
- to develop their capacity in interpreting literary texts;
- to strengthen their understanding of American history, culture, religion, and values through reading literature.
Methods of delivery: lectures, oral presentations, group discussions, films, etc.
Textbook:
Wu, Weiren. History and Anthology of American Literature. 2 Volumes. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2013.
Recommended Texts
Gray, Richard. A Brief History of American Literature. Beijing: Higher Education Press, 2014.
Toming. A History of American Literature. Revised and Expanded Edition. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2008.
Wu, Dingbo. An Outline of American Literature. 2nd Ed. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2011.
Assessment:
- Attendance and participation 10%
- Reading response,quizzes, and oral presentation 30%
- Final exam 60%
Requirements:
- Students are expected to read the required texts on time and actively participate in class discussions.
- Each student is responsible for an oral presentation with a partner on an American writer or literary work of his or her own choice.
Course Schedule:
Week 1: Course Introduction; “A Psalm of Life”
Week 2: Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography
Week 3: Early Romanticism I
Washington Irving: “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Week 4: Early Romanticism II
James Fenimore Cooper: The Last of the Mohicans
Week 5: Edgar Allan Poe: “Israfel”; “Annabel Lee”
Week 6: New England Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Self-Reliance”; “The American Scholar”
Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Week 7: Romantic Novel I
Nathaniel Hawthorne: “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment”
The Scarlet Letter
Week 8: Romantic Novel II
Herman Melville: Moby-Dick (Chapter 84)
Week 9: Romantic Poetry I
Walt Whitman: “Song of Myself”; “I Hear America Singing”
Week 10: Romantic Poetry II
Emily Dickinson: “Because I could not stop for Death”;
“I heard a Fly buzz-when I died”
Week 11: American Realism I
Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Week 12: American Realism II
Henry James: Daisy Miller
Week 13: Imagism
Ezra Pound: “A Pact”; “In a Station of the Metro”
Week 14: Robert Frost: “The Road Not Taken”;
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Week 15: Modern Fiction I
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
Week 16: Modern Fiction II
Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms
Week 17: Literature of the American South
William Faulkner: “A Rose for Emily”
Week 18: Final Exam