English 180N

Other Readings and Media

Wharton, E.: The House of Mirth; Johnson, J.W.: The Autobiography of An Ex-Coloured Man; Fitzgerald, F.S.: The Great Gatsby; Faulkner, W.: The Sound and the Fury; West, N.: The Day of the Locust; Nabokov, V.: Lolita; Pynchon, T.: The Crying of Lot 49; DeLillo, D.: White Noise; Morrison, T.: Beloved; McCarthy, C.: Blood Meridian

Description

A survey of the American novel since 1900: its forms, patterns, techniques, ideas, cultural context, and intertextuality. Special attention will be paid to questions of aesthetics, epistemology, and ethics—what is beautiful? how do we know? what ought we do?—in the American milieu as it develops in the twentieth century. Average 250 pages reading per week. Two papers (5-8 pages); ID midterm and final.