Ovidius University Constana

Faculty of Letters

Course instructor: Prof. Dr. Adina Ciugureanu

Seminar: Andrei Vlad

American Literature
2nd year American Studies
2013-2014
2 hour-lecture/week; 1 hour-seminar/week
(5 ECTS)
Course description: This is a one year course following the study of American culture which started the
previous year. It roughly covers the first half of the 20 th century (1900-1950) and focuses on the major
American modernist writers of this period: T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Wallace
Stevens and Marianne Moore, e. e. cummings, Hart Crane (poetry), Henry James, Theodore Dreiser,
Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck (fiction). During the first
semester, the students will be familiarized with the main features of English-American Modernism, the
general cultural background of both Europe and America at the turn of the century and with the later
developments of the trend between the two wars as well as with the contributions that each of the poets
and fiction writers under scrutiny brought to the formation of the movement. During the second semester,
they will continue the discussion of the Modernist movement, but they will also be introduced to AfricanAmerican, Asian-American, Chicano and Native-American fiction and poetry through a number of texts
that were published at the time. By the end of the year the students will have been encouraged to develop
the skills of responding critically to, and writing coherently on, the works discussed during both the
lectures and the seminars.
Assessment:

course and seminar attendance (10%) + participation (10%);

seminar essay or presentation on one of the topics suggested (30%); (students are
required to produce one essay and one presentation per year);
final examination (written and oral - 50%).

Semester I
Week 1 (Oct, 1st): Course, bibliography and requirements presentation
Week 1 (Oct 3rd):
Henry James: The Ambassadors (seminar)
Week 2 (Oct 8th):
Henry James and (Pre)modernism in Fiction (lecture)
Week 3 (Oct 15th): Realism and Naturalism in fiction;
Theodore Dreiser: An American Tragedy (lecture)
Week 3 (Oct 17th):
Theodore Dreiser: An American Tragedy (seminar)
Week 4 (Oct 22nd): Modernism in Fiction: Themes and Techniques (lecture)
Week 5 (Oct 29th):
F.S. Fitzgerald and the Chronicle of the Jazz Age:
The Great Gatsby (lecture)
Week 5 (Oct. 31st):
F.S. Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (seminar)
Week 6 (Nov 5th):
William Faulkner and Modernism in Fiction (lecture)
Week 7 (Nov 12th): Imagism and early modernism in poetry;
T.S. Eliot - The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (lecture)
th
Week 7 (Nov 14 ):
William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury (seminar)

Week 8 (Nov 19th): High Modernism: T.S. Eliots The Waste Land (lecture)
Week 9 (Nov 26th): T.S. Eliots The Waste Land (lecture)
Week 9 (Nov 28th):
T.S. Eliots The Waste Land (seminar)
Week 10 (Dec 3rd):
Ezra Pounds Modernism: The Cantos (lecture)
Week 11 (Dec 10th): William Carlos Williams and the Objectivist movement (lecture)
Week 11 (Dec 12th):
William Carlos Williams selection of poems (seminar
Week 12 (Dec 17th): William Carlos Williams Paterson (lecture)
Week 13 (Jan 7th):
Wallace Stevens, Jazz and Modernism (lecture)
th
Week 13 (Jan 9 ):
Wallace Stevens selection of poems (seminar)
Week 14 (Jan 14th):
Revision and exam preparation
Essay Topics
POETRY (Your essay should be between 1,700 and 2,000 words. Any essay shorter or longer will be
penalized 1 point)
1. Ezra Pounds Imagism: Theory into Practice in ... (discuss the image or the imagist principles in his
early poetry; refer to one or two texts and mention them in the title of your essay).
2. Imagist Principles in H.D.s Poetry (focus on one or two principles and specify which texts will be
analyzed in the title of your essay).
3. Amy Lowells Imagism in ... (discuss the ways in which Amy Lowells poetic image departs from
imagism; refer to one or two texts and mention them in the title of your essay).
4. Modernist themes in one of the texts studied. Choose one: the journey into the subconscious;
revisiting the past; the sea voyage; metamorphosis with T.S. Eliot / Ezra Pound (focus on one theme
and one text and specify them in the title of your essay).
5. Modernist techniques in one of the texts studied. Choose from the following: quotation and allusion
with Ezra Pound / T.S. Eliot; cultural overlaying with Ezra Pound; juxtaposition and collage with T.S.
Eliot (with specific reference to one text or excerpt).
6. Forms of palimpsests at All Levels in T. S. Eliot / Ezra Pounds Poetry (refer to one text or excerpt
only and mention it in the title of your essay).
7. The Myth-Reality Relationship with Ezra Pound (refer to one text or excerpt only).
8. The Ideogrammatic principle in Pounds Canto IV (define the concept in the beginning of your essay
and refer to one text or excerpt).
9. Time and Memory in T.S. Eliots Early Poems (specify which elements you will refer to and choose
one or two texts).
10. The Objective Correlative in T.S. Eliots Poetry (discuss one text and mention it in the title of your
essay; define the concept in the beginning of your essay).
11. Apply T.S. Eliots principle: Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, it is an escape from emotion
to one of his poems (find an appropriate title for your essay).
12. The I/You Relationship in T.S. Eliots The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
13. Water / Fire / Air / Earth as Symbols in The Waste Land (choose one symbol for analysis. You may
refer to one part of the poem only).
14. Tiresias Myth or Symbol with T.S. Eliot? (define the concepts in the beginning of your essay by
using a dictionary of literary terms).
15. Improper Desire in The Waste Land (start your analysis from, and comment upon, Harriet Davidsons
article included in Moody, David, ed. The Cambridge Companion to T.S.Eliot. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994).
16. William Carlos Williams Modernism in his Everyday Life Compositions (refer to one or two texts);
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17. The Objectivist Principles in Williams Poetry (focus on one or two principles and specify which texts
will be analysed in the title of your essay).
18. The Fragmentary Self with William Carlos Williams / Wallace Stevens (refer to one text).
19. Discuss Hillis Millers critical opinion according to which some of Stevens long poems make up a
continuous meditation (use the article included in Elliott, Emory, ed. Columbia Literary History of
the United States. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988; find an appropriate title for your
essay; refer to one text).
20. The I/Eye Relationship in Wallace Stevenss The Comedian as the Letter C.
FICTION (Your essay should be between 1,700 and 2,000 words. Any essay shorter or longer will be
penalized 1 point)
1. Discuss the idea that the character is a process, an unfolding with H. James. Refer to one character
only.
2. The opening of The Ambassadors promises its central consciousness Lambert Strether the first note
of Europe. What does Europe represent for James? How does Strethers perception of Europe
change his perception of life?
3. Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with
our fellow-men beyond the bonds of our personal lot. Discuss the relationship fiction reality with
H. James in the light of this statement. Refer to one novel or short story.
4. Discuss the concept of coincidence with H. James. In what ways does he depart from Victorianism?
Refer to David Lodges The Art of Fiction.
5. Explain the selective omniscience point of view by analyzing one of H. Jamess texts (chapter of a
novel or short story) very closely.
6. Discuss Naturalist elements in T. Dreisers novel. (Choose two elements and apply them to the text.)
7. Richard Lehan considers that Clyde is torn between people who represent vastly different ways of
life. Discuss the character in view of this statement.
8. The Great Gatsby is usually related to the Jazz Age. How is the age mirrored in the novel? Refer to
the text.
9. In Echoes of the Jazz Age F.S. Fitzgerald says that the word jazz in its progress toward respectability
has meant first sex, then dancing, then music. Is this statement applicable to the novel? (Discuss the
stages in the novel in relation to this statement.)
10. F.S. Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby has been considered by critics as the American equivalent to T.S.
Eliots The Waste Land. Do you agree? (Bring in arguments for your analysis.)
11. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy they smashed up things and creatures and they
retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.... How does the narrative reflect this
statement?
12. Discuss Nick Carraway as character and narrator. Is he a bridge between the West and the East, the
two worlds in the novel? Explain the narrative technique used by F.S. Fitzgerald.
13. William Faulkner is the representative of a distinguished American modernism. Discuss his narrative
techniques that support this statement and find instances in the text to illustrate the fragmented
chronology and the constant oppositions that inform his work.
14. As a reflection upon the American Dream, The Sound and the Fury shows the South as a closed,
fallen or parodied Eden. Attempt a demonstration of this opinion through close analysis of the novel.
15. Starting from the idea that time is both a major theme and a technique with Faulkner, identify the
ways in which the writer evinces his preoccupations with the latest theories of his age and in which he
makes time one of the main concerns of his fictional world. Jean Paul Sartres study on Faulkner
could be a point of departure.
16. Discuss the effects which Faulkners complexity of perspective brings to the novel by looking at each
consciousness section by section, and then by addressing the novel as a whole.
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Bibliography
(BU Biblioteca Universitara; BJ Biblioteca Judeteana; DL English Department Library, Room 133;
PH Photocopied; AC American Corner; AT ask your teacher)
Poetry
Compulsory Reading
A. Primary Sources

Eliot, T.S. Collected Poems 1909-1962. London: Faber and Faber, 1974. (extracts PH)
Pound, Ezra. The Cantos. New York: New Directions, 1973. (extracts PH)
Stevens, Wallace. Collected Poems. London: Faber and Faber, 1984. (extracts PH)
B. Secondary Sources

on Eliot
Ciugureanu, Adina. Modernism and the Idea of Modernity. Constanta: Ex Ponto, 2004. 69-96.
Southam, B.C. A Students Guide to The Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot. London: Faber and Faber, 1991.
94-145. (PH)
on Pound
Ciugureanu, Adina. Modernism and the Idea of Modernity. Constanta: Ex Ponto, 2004. 39-68.
Terrell, Carroll. A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1980. 1-15. (PH)
on Stevens
Cook, Eleanor. The Man with the Blue Guitar. A Readers Guide to Wallace Stevens. Princeton,
Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. 112-131 (PH)
Tomlinson, Charles. Wallace Stevens and the Poetry of Scepticism. The New Pelican Guide to
English Literature. American Literature. Ed. Boris Ford. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1991.
393-409. (PH)
Fiction
Compulsory Reading
A. Primary Sources

Faulkner, William. The Sound and The Fury. New York: Vintage International, 1984. (DL)
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, The Great Gatsby. New York: Macmillan Collier Books, 1992. (DL)
James, Henry. The Ambassadors. Greenwich: Fawcett Publications, 1960. (DL)
B. Secondary Sources

on Faulkner
Bradbury, Malcolm. The Modern American Novel. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1993. 115-118.
(DL)
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Lester, Cheryl. Racial Awareness and Arrested Development: The Sound and the Fury and the Great
Migration. The Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner. Ed. Philip Weinstein. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995. 123-145. (PH)

on Fitzgerald
Bradbury, Malcolm. The Modern American Novel. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1993. 83-92.
(DL)
Fitzgerald, F.S. Echoes of the Jazz Age. The Fitzgerald Reader. Ed. Arthur Mizener. New York:
Charles Scribners Sons, 1963. 323-331. (PH)
Tanner, Tony. The American Mystery. American Literature from Emerson to DeLillo. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000. 166-200. (PH)
on James
Bradbury, Malcolm. The Modern American Novel. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1993. 37-41.
(DL)
James, Henry. The Art of Fiction. Literary Criticism. Vol. I. New York: The Library of America,
1984. 44-65. (PH)
Lubbock, Percy. Point of View in The Ambassadors. Henry James. The Ambassadors. An
Authoritative Text. Criticism. Ed. S.P. Rosenbaum. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1994. 415-422.
(PH)

Further Reading
A. Primary Sources

Dreiser, Theodore. An American Tragedy. New York: A Signet Book, 1981. (DL)
Williams, William Carlos. Selected Poems. New York: New Directions, 1969. (extracts PH)
B. Secondary Sources

on Dreiser
Bradbury, Malcolm. The Modern American Novel. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1993. 25-33.
(DL)
Lehan, Richard. Theodore Dreiser: His World and His Novels. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1974. 142-169. (PH)
on Frost
Pritchard, William. The Designs of Robert Frost. The New Pelican Guide to English Literature.
American Literature. Ed. Boris Ford. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1991. 354-367. (PH)
on Williams
Ciugureanu, Adina. Modernism and the Idea of Modernity. Constanta: Ex Ponto, 2004. 97-136.