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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Extracts from selected speeches and historical documents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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