English 130D

Book List

Eliot, T. S.: The Waste Land, Prufrock and Other Poems; Faulkner, William: Light in August; Frost, Robert: Early Poems; Hammett, Dashiell: Red Harvest; Hemingway, Ernest: The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway; Hughes, Langston: Selected Poems of Langston Hughes; Wharton, Edith: The House of Mirth

Description

This course traces the formal and thematic development of American literature from 1900 to 1945, focusing on innovations in literary forms as they engage with history, identity, race, class, and gender. A principle goal of this course is to bring you to an almost fatal fascination with the choices the writers we study make (the striking stylistic, rhetorical, and structural features of the writing, including word choice and order, style, symbol, metaphor, structure, and narrative). We will also want to consider the writers' lives, prevailing beliefs, and the various environments (literary, geographical, political, etc.) within which these writers worked.