Dr Julia Fiedorczuk

Survey of American Literature Fall 2008

Lecture One
Native American Oral Narratives. Spanish Accounts of Exploration. Puritanism. The Enlightenment
Readings:
Anne Bradstreet (1612 – 1672), “The Author to Her Book”
Edward Taylor (1642 - 1729), “Huswifery”
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

Lecture Two
Nineteenth-Century Prose
Readings:
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) , “Self-Reliance”
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), “Civil Disobedience”
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), “My Kinsman, Major Molineux”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) “The Fall of the House of Usher”

Lecture Three
Nineteen-Century Poetry. Realism
Readings:
Walt Whitman (1819-1892), „Song of Myself” (parts 1-6), „From Pent-up Aching Rivers”, „Once I
Pass’d through a Populous City”, „When I Heard at the Close of the Day”
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) 258, 712, 986
Mark Twain (1835-1910), The Adventures of Hukleberry Finn

Lecture Four
Realism-continued. Naturalism. Modernist Poetry.
Readings:
Henry James (1848-1916), “Daisy Miller”
Stephen Crane (1871-1900). “The Blue Hotel”
Ezra Pound (1885–1972), “The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), “Love Song”, “Portrait of a Lady”
Marianne Moore (1887-1972), “Poetry”, “The Pangolin”

Lecture Five
Modernist Fiction. American Fiction of the 30’s. American Drama
Readings:
Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), The Great Gatsby
Arthur Miller (1915 – 2005), Death of a Salesman (Norton)

Lecture Six
Post-War American Fiction and Poetry
Readings:
Bernard Malamud (1914-1986), “Naked Nude”, “The Magic Barrel”
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), “America”
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), “The Man-Moth”
John Ashbery (b. 1927), “Paradoxes and Oxymorons”

Lecture Seven
Postmodern Fiction. Ethic Writing in America
Readings:
Don DeLillo (b 1936), “The Airborn Toxic Event” from: White Noise
Leslie Marmon Silko (b. 1948), “Lullaby”
Sherman Alexie (b. 1966), “The Search Engine”