Course: History of American Literature I - Lecture

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Course title History of American Literature I - Lecture
Course code UAN/7PAM1
Organizational form of instruction Lecture
Level of course Bachelor
Year of study 2
Semester Summer
Number of ECTS credits 3
Language of instruction English
Status of course Compulsory
Form of instruction Face-to-face
Work placements This is not an internship
Recommended optional programme components None
Course availability The course is available to visiting students
Lecturer(s)
  • Nagy Ladislav, doc. PhDr. Ph.D.
  • Machová Mariana, doc. PhDr. Ph.D.
Course content
Roots of American Literature: Puritans, Colony, Independence (Bradstreet, Taylor, Edwards, Jefferson, Franklin) American Romanticism: Cooper and the Topos of the Frontier (The Last of the Mohicans) Image of the Indian in American Romantic Literature. Bryant, Cooper, Sedgewick (Hope Leslie) Transcendentalism: Emerson (Nature) and Thoreau (Walden) Edgar Allan Poe and "Black Romanticism" (stories, "The Raven", "Philosophy of Composition") Puritan Heritage: Nathaniel Hawthorne and History (The Scarlet Letter) Hawthorne's Revision of the Transcendentalist vision (stories) Herman Melville ("Bartleby, the Scrivener", Moby-Dick) Walt Whitman a zrod moderní americké poezie (Song of Myself). Emily Dickinson (poems) Realism, regionalism and local color. Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) Naturalism and the End of Century: Crane (The Red Badge of Courage) and Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie) Situation of Women in American Literature: Chopin (The Awakening), Gilman

Learning activities and teaching methods
Monologic (reading, lecture, briefing)
Learning outcomes
The course offers the introduction to the key works, authors and movements of older American literature, the main focus being the 19th century. The lecture puts the particular works and authors into a broader literary-historical and literary-theoretical context, and it suggests possible approaches to the interpretation of the texts required for reading. The aim of the course is to provide the students with an overview of the history of older American literature, and to introduce the selected writers and their works.
The students will learn about the history of American literature from its beginning till the end of the 19th century.
Prerequisites
As the class is taught in English, the students are expected to have adequate language skills.

Assessment methods and criteria
Essay, Student performance assessment

Participation in class, reading of the assigned works, written exam.
Recommended literature
  • Primární texty dle sylabu.
  • The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 2007.
  • Bercovitch, Sacvan,; Patell, Cyrus R. K. The Cambridge history of American literature. Volume 2, 1820-1865. 1st pub. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-30106-8.
  • Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Cambridge history of American literature. Volume 3, Prose writing : 1860-1920. 1st pub. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-30107-6.
  • Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Cambridge history of American literature. Volume 4, Nineteenth-century poetry : 1800-1910. 1st pub. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2004.
  • Crane, G. The Cambridge Introduction to The Nineteenth-Century American Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  • Gray, R. A History of American Literature. 2nd edition. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
  • Lawrence, D. H. Studies in Classic American Literature (1923). Ed. by Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
  • Matthiessen, F. O. American renaissance : art and expression in the age of Emerson and Whitman. London : Oxford University Press, 1968. ISBN 0-19-500759-X.
  • Quinn, J. (ed.). Lectures on American Literature. Praha: Karolinum, 2011.
  • Ruland, R., Bradbury, M. From Puritanism to Postmodernism. A History of American Literature. London: Penguin Books, 1991.
  • Ruland, Richard; Bradbury, Malcolm. Od puritanismu k postmodernismu : dějiny americké literatury. 1. vyd. Praha : Mladá fronta, 1997. ISBN 80-204-0586-0.
  • Ward, G. The Writing of America. Literature and Cultural Identity from the Puritans to the Present. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002.


Study plans that include the course
Faculty Study plan (Version) Category of Branch/Specialization Recommended year of study Recommended semester