20th and 21st Century American Literature

Dr. Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru, Associate Professor

3rd year English Minor (Letters 2nd series) – Spring 2023
Thursday, 10:00-12:00 in Room 6, 7-13 Pitar Moș St.
[email protected]

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This survey of Twentieth-Century American literature will combine a historical and

contextual approach with an analysis of form and technique in representative literary works
by mainstream American authors or authors coming from marginal(ized) backgrounds who
have become part of the mainstream. While aiming to serve a historicizing function and treat
the twentieth century as a whole on which we can now look back from a comfortable
distance, we will do so through the lens of the present. We will question the changes in the
reading of literary works brought about by various new trends in criticism, as well as by the
changes in perspective triggered by social events and movements. The starting point will be
modernist fiction. This will be followed by the transition from modernism to postmodernism
and various ways of negotiating realist techniques and marginality in fiction and poetry, to
conclude with the major trends in twentieth century American drama. Even though this
course is about the American literature written in the twentieth century as a complete
historical period, glimpses into present-day developments will be used to invite contemporary
readings of the recent literary past.

Grading:
Students will be expected to read all required (unstarred) readings listed below on a weekly
basis. By the end of term, every compulsory text should have been covered, as this will be
checked in the final written exam. Starred texts are optional. Students are expected to attend
at least 50% of the lectures, but better attendance is strongly recommended in the interest of
appropriate exam performance. Seminar attendance is compulsory (min. 75%). Students will
be graded on the basis of seminar activity (a short presentation and a final test) and a final
written exam as follows: seminar mark 50%; final written exam (consisting of one course-
related topic and a second text-based topic) 50%. The mark obtained in the final exam will
have to be minimum 5 for the respective student to pass, even if the exam-seminar average is
above 5 and irrespective of the seminar mark.

Students who plagiarize in the written test or final exam cannot will have to resit the exam at
a later time. In this case they will receive one extra seminar-related question in lieu of a
seminar test. Irrespective of circumstances, students who do not have a minimum of 75%
attendance in seminars (or, in exceptional cases, who haven’t done additional seminar work
to make up for the missed class(es), as discussed with the seminar tutor in advance) will be
unable to take the exam this summer.

LECTURES:
1. Modernism overview. Modernist Poetry Recap (with a main focus on Wallace
Stevens).
2. Modernism in Fiction 1: The Lost Generation. E. Hemingway and F. Scott-Fitzgerald
3. Modernism in Fiction 2: W. Faulkner and the American South. Alternative Faulkners
 4. From Modernism to Postmodernism: Vladimir Nabokov. Cognitive approaches to
Lolita. Main Trends in Post-War American Poetry: Confessional Poetry (Robert
Lowell and Sylvia Plath)
5-6. Postmodernity and Postmodernism. Postmodernist Self-Reflexive Fiction, the
Literature of Replenishment and the Worlds Next Door: K. Vonnegut, T. Pynchon.
Poetry and Protest: The Beat Generation (Allen Ginsberg). Confessional Poetry and
Formal experiment: Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath
7-8. Representations of difference in fiction (T. Morrison, S. Bellow, R. Ellison, Alice
Walker, G. Vizenor, S. Alexie, M. H. Kingston). Recent Developments in American
Fiction. Jhumpa Lahiri, Salman Rushdie, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Yaa Gyasi.
9. Main Trends in Twentieth Century American Poetry: J. Ashbery, G. Brooks, A. Rich.
Poetry and Protest: The Beat Generation (Allen Ginsberg). Recent Developments in
American Poetry: The Poetry Foundation Today
10. Main Directions in American Drama (E. O’Neill, T. Williams, A. Miller). Glimpses
into Recent American Theater (Tony Kushner, Angels in America).

Reading List

The highlighted texts below are in the graduation exam bibliography for English minor
(British Studies) students, so they are to be given particular attention. However, it is
mandatory that students read all unstarred texts and it is the function of seminars and of the
final exam to check this. Titles marked N5 can be found in vol. 2 of the Norton Anthology of
American Literature, Fifth edition (and later), see Room 4 library. Titles marked N2 can be
found in the Second edition of the Norton anthology, see BCU downstairs library in Pitar
Mos. Most titles can also be found in newer editions. Novels are available in the American
Studies Center Library (which holds multiple copies of some of them) and in the downstairs
library in Pitar Mos. Most course materials are in the electronic coursepack that will be
distributed. Handouts to be used in the course and theoretical and author specific critical
material to be referred to will often be emailed to students in advance of each lecture, so
please check your email regularly. Please also check the following link regularly for the most
relevant course materials:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CVcaTJ42UwDJmfmQYFqq7oINYdUhsPED

Fiction:

Ernest Hemingway, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (N2, N5), The Sun Also Rises.*
Francis Scott-Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49,* “Entropy” (N5), Mason and Dixon,* Against the
Day*
Saul Bellow, “Looking for Mr Green”, Seize the Day*, Humboldt’s Gift*
Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man (“Prologue”, “Chapter 1”, N2 and N5)
Toni Morrison, Beloved; Love*; God Help the Child*
Gerald Vizenor, “Almost Browne” (N5)
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior (“No Name Woman”, “A Song for a Barbarian
Red Pipe”)
Leslie Marmon Silko, “The Man to Send Rain Clouds”, https://www.onelimited.org/ss-
marmonsilko-01
Salman Rushdie, “The Firebird’s Nest”, *Fury
Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies* (a story of your choice)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing around Your Neck* (one story of your choice) or
Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing* (one chapter of your choice)
Domnica Radulescu, “How I lost my memory and never got it back”, *Train to Trieste

Poetry (see Norton anthologies or online sources such as http://www.poetryfoundation.org/):

Ezra Pound, “Portrait d’une femme”; “A Pact”; “In a Station of the Metro”; “Hugh Selwyn
Mauberley (Life and Contacts)”
Wallace Stevens, “A High-Toned Old Christian Woman”; “Anecdote of the Jar”; “Thirteen
Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”; “Of Modern Poetry”
William Carlos Williams, “Portrait of a Lady”; “The Red Wheelbarrow”; “Landscape with
the Fall of Icarus”
Robert Lowell, “Skunk Hour”; “For the Union Dead”; “Robert Frost”
Sylvia Plath, “The Applicant”; “Lady Lazarus”; “Ariel”; “Daddy”
John Ashbery, “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”; “Paradoxes and Oxymorons”;
“Introduction”
Gwendolyn Brooks, “A Song in the Front Yard”; “Kitchenette Building”; “The Leaders”
Adrienne Rich, “Snapshots of a Daughter-in Law”; “The Roofwalker”; “Diving into the
Wreck”
Allen Ginsberg, “Howl (I)”; “A Supermarket in California”
Sherman Alexie, “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel”,
(http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/how-to-write-the-great-american-indian-novel/) or
“The Place of Ghosts of Salmon Jump”,
https://www.gritfish.com/index.php/deep-ecology/wisdom-of-indigenous-peoples/955-that
place-where-ghosts-of-salmon-jump

Drama:
Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night (N2 and N5)*
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire (N5)
Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (N2, N5)*
Tony Kushner, Angels in America*

Selected Critical Bibliography (the content of the course makes use of these secondary
sources; they are to be used by students for reference, according to need):

Ashton, Jennifer. From Modernism to Postmodernism: American Poetry and Theory in the
Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Connor, Steven, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004.
Connoly, Julian W., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005.
Dalsgaard, Inger H., Luc Herman and Brian McHale, eds. The Cambridge Companion to
Thomas Pynchon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Draga, Maria-Sabina. Conditia postmoderna: spre o estetica a identitatilor culturale.
Bucuresti: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2003.
Draga Alexandru, Maria-Sabina. Identity Performance in Contemporary Non-WASP
American Fiction, Bucuresti: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2008.
---. ‘Love as Reclamation in Toni Morrison’s African American Rhetoric’, European
Journal of American Culture 27.3, 2008, pp. 191-205.
---. Cultura românească în perspectivă transatlantică. Co-edited with Teodora Serban-
Oprescu. Bucuresti: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2009.
Duvall, John N. The Cambridge Companion to Don DeLillo. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008.
Elliot, Emory, gen. ed. Columbia Literary History of the United States. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1988.
Gill, Jo. The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006.
Glissant, Edouard. Faulkner, Mississippi (1996). Trans. Barbara Lewis and Thomas C. Spear.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. Ohio State University Press, 1987.
Hassan, Ihab. The Postmodern Turn.
Kalaidjian, Walter, ed. The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Krasner, David, ed. A Companion to Twentieth-Century American Drama. Oxford:
Blackwell, 2005.
Levenson, Michael, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999.
MacGowan, Christopher. Twentieth-Century American Poetry. Oxford and NewYork: Wiley-
Blackwell 2004.
Marcus, Greil and Werner Sollors. A New Literary History of America. Cambridge, MS and
London: Harvard University Press, 2009.
McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. London and New York: Routledge, 1987.
Mihaila, Rodica. Spatii ale realului in proza americana. Intre autobiografie si evanghelia
postmoderna. Brasov: Concordia, 2000.
---. Turning the Wheel. The Construction of Power Relations in Contemporary American
Women’s Poetry. Bucuresti: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 1995.
---. The American Challenge. An Introduction to the Study of American Civilization.
Bucuresti: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 1994.
Natoli, Joseph and Linda Hutcheon, eds. A Postmodern Reader. State University of New
York Press, 1993.
Parini, Jay, ed. Columbia History of American Poetry. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1993.
Pizer, Donald. The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Tally, Justine, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2007.
Wagner-Martin, Linda. A History of American Literature: 1950 to the Present. Oxford and
Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2013.
Weinstein, Phillip M. The Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Zunshine, Lisa. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Ohio State University
Press, 2006.