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20th Century American Literature
Week
1
"The Land of the free" [F.S. Key]:
American rhetoric and the american dream
Extracts from selected speeches and historical documents
week
2
"treading on leaves' [frost]:
Robert frost and the woods of New England
'The Road not Taken' (1916) and 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' (1923)
WEEK
3
"A Rediscovery of beauty" [Lowell]:
Amy Lowell and imagism
Poems selected from Pictures of the Floating World (1919)
WEEK
4
"There is no such things as was, only is"
[Faulkner]: William Faulkner and modernism
Extracts from As I Lay Dying (1930)
WEEK
5
"never ending highway" [Guthrie]:
John Steinbeck and the Great Depression
Extracts from The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
WEEK
6
"mad to talk, mad to live, mad to be saved"
[Kerouac]: jack Kerouac and jazz
Extracts from On the Road (1957)
WEEK
7
"just go on your nerve" [O'Hara]:
Frank O'Hara and personism
Poems selected from Lunch Poems (1964)
WEEK
8
"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
[Jefferson]: Toni Morrison and slavery
Extracts from Beloved (1987)
WEEK
9
"If you can't fix it, you've got to stand it" [Proulx]: Annie Proulx and narratives of place
'Brokeback Mountain' (1999)
WEEK
10
"there's no more nature" [Beckett]:
Cormac Mccarthy and post-9/11 America
Extracts from The Road (2006)
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