- Code
- ELL 313
- Name
- American Literature I
- Semester
- 5
- Lecture hours
- 3.00
- Seminar hours
- 0.00
- Laborator hours
- 0.00
- Credits
- 3.00
- ECTS
- 5.00
- Description
-
This course introduces the movements, periods and principal authors of American literature from its beginnings to naturalism. It covers the major genres of prose, poetry and drama. Literary texts are analyzed in their historical social, contexts and their unique cultural value is elucidated.
- Objectives
- Java
- Tema
- 1
- American literature as a conversation about what it means to be an American. Introduction to American Literature, Colonial Period to 1790, Puritanism: J. Smith, A. Bradstreet, J. Edwards, W. Bradford, (selected passages)Introduction to American Literature, The Colonization Period to 1790, Puritanism: J. Smith, A. Bradstreet, J. Edwards, W. Bradford, (Selected Readings) This lecture deals with the literary currents that make up American literature, the characteristics and representative writers of these currents. This lecture gives an overview of literary creativity from Puritanism to realism and early modernism.1-33
- 2
- The New Republic (1790-1820): B. Franklin, Th. Paine, T. Jefferson, De Crèvecoeur (selected passages)Birth of a New Republic (1790-1820): B. Franklin, Th. Paine, T. Jefferson, De Crèvecoeur (selected readings) This lecture deals with the laying of the foundations of a democratic republic and the way in which democratic developments in America influenced the use of science and literary creations which did not have at their core the reason for universal truths and the struggle for leadership. The lecture deals in detail with the political pamphlets and writings of a number of authors who at the same time aimed at disciplining the reason and morality of Americans in order to lay a solid foundation for a democratic society.33-45
- 3
- The flowering of Romanticism (1820-1865): W. Irving, J. F. Cooper; E.A. Poe Romanticism, which reached American from Europe in the early 19th century, appealed to Americans as it emphasized an emotional, individual relationship with God as opposed to the strict Calvinism of previous generations.46-57
- 4
- The Romantics: H. Melville. H. B. Stowe Transcendentalism: R.W. Emerson, H.D. Thoreau, N, Hawthorne Transcendentalism was a religious, literary, and political movement that evolved from New England Unitarianism in the 1820s and 1830s. An important expression of Romanticism in the United States, it is principally associated with the work of essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson; journalist and feminist theorist Margaret Fuller; Unitarian minister and antislavery advocate Theodore Parker; and essayist, naturalist, and political theorist Henry David Thoreau. In their initial phase, the transcendentalists extended the Unitarian theological rebellion against Puritan Calvinism, moving toward a post-Christian spirituality that held each man and woman capable of spiritual development and fulfillment. They developed literary as well as theological forms of expression, making perhaps a stronger impact on American literary and artistic culture than they did on American religion. When Emerson delivered two controversial addresses at Harvard, “The American Scholar” (1837) and the Divinity School Address (1838), he emerged as the central figure of a loose coalition of ministers and aspiring authors who questioned religious doctrines, such as the New Testament miracles and the supernatural nature of Jesus, and embraced German Romantic writers and the British Romantics.58-69
- 5
- Civil War Period (The Gilded Age): W. Whitman and the Traditionalist (The Bostonian Brahmin): H.W. Longfellow Until the post-Civil War period, American literature was dominated by the gentlemanly New Englanders, most of all by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Both of these major writers lived until 1882 but they had not been active for some years. The field was now open to a new generation, not centered in the Boston area, and more representative of the changed nation. New forces and influences were at work. The evolutionary theories of Darwin offered some writers an exciting way to look at life through literature. It seemed especially appropriate to them when applied to a continental nation, developing industrially at a fantastic rate and completing the conquest of the West. A growing trend toward realism was reinforced by the new problems caused by urban growth and strife between capital and labor. Finally, the sections of the country-old New England, the South, the Middle West and the new, raw West-produced writers concerned with local themes.
- 6
- Regional writing and Local Colour: The Afro-American Slavery Literature through the works of O. Equiano & F. Douglas Slave narrative, an account of the life, or a major portion of the life, of a fugitive or former slave, either written or orally related by the slave personally. Slave narratives comprise one of the most influential traditions in American literature, shaping the form and themes of some of the most celebrated and controversial writing, both in fiction and in autobiography, in the history of the United States. From 1760 to the end of the Civil War in the United States, approximately 100 autobiographies of fugitive or former slaves appeared. After slavery was abolished in the United States in 1865, at least 50 former slaves wrote or dictated book-length accounts of their lives. 93-110
- 7
- Revising: Discussion on the American Literature from the Colonial Period to the end of the 19th century (beginnings -1865) Review before the mid term exam
- 8
- Midterm Exam
- 9
- The Continental Nation: Realism (1865-1900): Mark Twain, E. Dickinson. The Realistic Period (1865–1900) As a result of the American Civil War, Reconstruction and the age of industrialism, American ideals and self-awareness changed in profound ways, and American literature responded. Certain romantic notions of the American Renaissance were replaced by realistic descriptions of American life, such as those represented in the works of William Dean Howells, Henry James, and Mark Twain. This period also gave rise to regional writing, such as the works of Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, Bret Harte, Mary Wilkins Freeman, and George W. Cable. In addition to Walt Whitman, another master poet, Emily Dickinson, appeared at this time.113-127
- 10
- Realism & Naturalism : K. Chopin; H. James, S. Crane, J. London, The Naturalist Period (1900–1914) This relatively short period is defined by its insistence on recreating life as life really is, even more so than the realists had been doing in the decades before. American Naturalist writers such as Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, and Jack London created some of the most powerfully raw novels in American literary history. Their characters are victims who fall prey to their own base instincts and to economic and sociological factors. Edith Wharton wrote some of her most beloved classics, such as "The Custom of the Country" (1913), "Ethan Frome" (1911), and "The House of Mirth" (1905) during this time period.128-146
- 11
- Progressive Era (1900-1945) : American Literature up to the end of the World War II: R. Frost, E. Pound, T.S Eliot, W. Stevens, E.E. Cummings, J. Steinbeck, R. Wright The Modern Period (1914–1939) After the American Renaissance, the Modern Period is the second most influential and artistically rich age of American writing. Its major writers include such powerhouse poets as E.E. Cummings, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Langston Hughes, Carl Sandburg, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Novelists and other prose writers of the time include Willa Cather, John Dos Passos, Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, Sinclair Lewis, Thomas Wolfe, and Sherwood Anderson. The Modern Period contains within it certain major movements including the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Lost Generation. Many of these writers were influenced by World War I and the disillusionment that followed, especially the expatriates of the Lost Generation. Furthermore, the Great Depression and the New Deal resulted in some of America’s greatest social issue writing, such as the novels of Faulkner and Steinbeck, and the drama of Eugene O’Neill.147-159
- 12
- Lost Generation Mainstream : F. S. Fitzgerald, W. Faulkner, E. Hemingway Lost Generation, a group of American writers who came of age during World War I and established their literary reputations in the 1920s. The term is also used more generally to refer to the post-World War I generation. The generation was “lost” in the sense that its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world and because of its spiritual alienation from a United States that, basking under Pres. Warren G. Harding’s “back to normalcy” policy, seemed to its members to be hopelessly provincial, materialistic, and emotionally barren. The term embraces Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings, Archibald MacLeish, Hart Crane, and many other writers who made Paris the centre of their literary activities in the 1920s. They were never a literary school160-220
- 13
- The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a Black cultural mecca in the early 20th Century and the subsequent social and artistic explosion that resulted. Lasting roughly from the 1910s through the mid-1930s, the period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance and art.221-250
- 14
- Great Depression As John Steinbeck was developing as a writer, events taking place in the United States provided him with plenty of material to write about. In October 1929 the U.S. stock market crashed, sparking the Great Depression. Banks collapsed. Businesses closed. By 1933, a quarter of the population was unemployed.hen environmental catastrophe struck as well. From 1930 to 1936, severe drought plagued the Great Plains of the American Midwest, which at the time were mostly farmland. The drought killed crops, and with no plants to hold down the soil, the dry dirt swirled up into suffocating dust storms when the winds kicked in. The entire region became known as the Dust Bowl.251-267
- 15
- Revising: Discussion on the American Literature from the Colonial Period to the beginning of modernism Review before final exam
- 16
- Final Exam
- 1
- Njohja me rrymat më të rëndësishme të letërsisë Amerikane nga fillimet deri në romantizëm
- 2
- Aftësimi i studentëve për të lexuar, analizuar dhe interpretuar letërsinë dhe për të hulumtuar lidhjen që ajo ka me vlerat dhe përvojat e tyre.
- 3
- Aftësimi i studentëve për të analizuar veprat dhe idetë e autorëve të kësaj periudhe
- Quantity Percentage Total percent
- Midterms
- 1 20% 20%
- Quizzes
- 0 0% 0%
- Projects
- 1 20% 20%
- Term projects
- 1 20% 20%
- Laboratories
- 0 0% 0%
- Class participation
- 0 0% 0%
- Total term evaluation percent
- 60%
- Final exam percent
- 40%
- Total percent
- 100%
- Quantity Duration (hours) Total (hours)
- Course duration (including exam weeks)
- 16 3 48
- Off class study hours
- 14 4 56
- Duties
- 2 2 4
- Midterms
- 1 0 0
- Final exam
- 1 5 5
- Other
- 0 0 0
- Total workLoad
- 113
- Total workload / 25 (hours)
- 4.52
- ECTS
- 5.00