English 52A-CC, \u201cU.S. Fiction, 1900 to 1950\u201d
\nFall 2014, TTh 1:15pm \u2013 2:30pm, LPAC 301
\nProfessor Peter Schmidt<\/p>\n
Course Description<\/strong> Here\u2019s an overview of the English 52A readings for you. <\/p>\n We will begin the course by considering L. Frank Baum\u2019s Dorothy as a heroine, using a xerox excerpt from Baum\u2019s sequel to The Wizard of Oz<\/em>, The Emerald City of Oz<\/em> (1912), which gives us a fascinating supplement to the portrait of Dorothy. You probably know Dorothy not from Baum\u2019s children\u2019s novels (immensely popular in their day), but from the great Hollywood movie, The Wizard of Oz<\/em> (1939), based on the first Oz novel. (If you\u2019re one of the three people in the world who haven\u2019t seen the movie, watch it this summer!) We\u2019ll ask what makes Dorothy a powerful heroine.<\/p>\n Next up: Jack London\u2019s White Fang<\/em> (1906). This was my favorite book when I was 12 years old, eclipsing Treasure Island discovered the year before. When I reread it recently I was delighted to find that it\u2019s still a great reading experience about survival against tough odds\u2014and its unforgettable protagonist, a dog-wolf, is more admirable than many human characters I could name. Older now, I notice all kinds of other interesting things going on in the text, such as a meditation on what makes for real masculinity and strength, as opposed to false versions of this. It\u2019s a fascinating exploration of how animals (including humans?) learn, especially whether fear or love is the better teacher. It\u2019s also an investigation of whether genetic and cultural hybridity (White Fang is not just a \u201cmixed breed,\u201d but he\u2019s raised by both Nature and then by a variety of human masters) provides strengths that either \u201cpure\u201d genetics or a single environment does not. In its complex approach to questions of genetics and the environment, the book in fascinating ways begins to seem an allegory about the early twentieth-century U.S., engaging with views that saw the nation\u2019s racial and cultural heterogeneity as a strength, vs. white supremacist narratives that argued that the racial or cultural \u201cmulatto\u201d was dangerous and needed to be mastered by white Anglo-Saxon males. The novel certainly doesn\u2019t provide a simple answer to this debate\u2014one reason why its relevance endures.<\/p>\n Willa Cather, My Antonia<\/em> (1918). Cather\u2019s moving novel celebrates both the strengths of the pioneers \u201csettling\u201d the Great Plains and offers an elegy for the past, a vanished natural world, and all that has been lost in the name of \u201cprogress.\u201d It\u2019s also, surprisingly, a study of the role played by towns<\/em> in the Midwest; it\u2019s not just a rural novel. Cather considers how the pioneer experience and new opportunities in town life radically changed gender roles in the U.S., especially for women. Like London, she writes eloquently about the influence of Nature on the soul and has a complex take on what makes for good vs. corrupt societies. The book\u2019s also on the syllabus because Antonia and Jim are two of the best characters in American literature; you\u2019ll never forget them.<\/p>\n Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence<\/em> (1920). This is definitely not Ethan Frome<\/em> (a novel some of you may have had to study in high school). It\u2019s a delicious social satire of high society in Old New York in the late nineteenth-century, a world that Wharton was born into, knew well, and rebelled from. Age of Innocence<\/em> (the title is ironic) also functions as a kind of anthropologist\u2019s study of the \u201ctribe\u201d of economic elites and how taboos, ostracism, gossip, money, and marriage contracts function in order to allow \u201cthe 1%\u201d to maintain their dominance even as they adapt to rapid social change.<\/p>\n Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes<\/em> (1926). Speaking of social satire, Loos\u2019 spirited work from the \u201cRoaring Twenties\u201d is one of the most influential satires ever created by a U.S. writer. Loos was a successful Hollywood screenwriter as well as novelist. With Lorelei Lee, Loos gives us both a hilarious version of the \u201cdumb blonde\u201d stereotype (yet is she really as dumb as she appears, despite her hilarious malapropisms?) and a sharp look at men behaving badly. With Lorelei\u2019s friend Dorothy, this novel also features one of the best wise-cracking sidekick characters in literature. Very little like the famous Marilyn Monroe movie of the same name. Two of the biggest fans of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes<\/em> were Edith Wharton and James Joyce (!). Maybe you will agree with them.<\/p>\n Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms<\/em> (1929). Frederic and Catherine try to construct a healing relationship in the context of the violence of World War I. One of the most powerful and influential war novels (or anti-war novels) ever written. We\u2019ll also discuss why in the Oscar-winning movie Silver Linings Playbook<\/em> Bradley Cooper\u2019s character, Pat Solitano, should perhaps not<\/em> have thrown this novel out the window in his shock and frustration over its famous ending, which Hemingway rewrote over two dozen times until he got it devastatingly right.<\/p>\n Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon<\/em> (1930). One of the best detective stories ever written, and the source for the later superb John Huston movie starring Humphrey Bogart, Sidney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre, this novel is a very noir-ish look into \u201cwhat dreams are made of\u201d and what people will do to each other in pursuit of those dreams. We\u2019ll also use this opportunity to reflect on why the genre of the detective story is so enduring and such a central part of U.S. modernist fiction.<\/p>\n Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God<\/em> (1937). The greatest novel to come out of the Harlem Renaissance was, perhaps surprisingly, set in Florida, first in a black-run small town (modeled on Hurston\u2019s own birthplace, Eatonville), and then in the \u201cmuck,\u201d an agricultural field workers\u2019 camp before it is obliterated by a hurricane. It features as narrator and heroine one of the great figures in all of American literature, Janie Crawford.<\/p>\n Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding <\/em>(1946). McCullers\u2019 masterpiece, one of the most profound, and saddest, coming-of-age stories in U.S. literature. It stars the 12-year-old tomboy Frankie Addams, a fascinating mix of introvert and extrovert, as she learns that she cannot will the world to conform to her dreams and hopes. A significant subplot raises the issue of racial justice and injustice in the South on the verge of a new phase of the Civil Rights movement.<\/p>\n John Steinbeck, Cannery Row<\/em> (1945). If you know Steinbeck only from Of Mice and Men<\/em> or The Grapes of Wrath<\/em>, you\u2019re in for a surprise. This later novel is more comic and perhaps also more hopeful about humans\u2019 ability to build a working society in the midst of economic hardships. Set in a community of \u201cbums\u201d who work when they must in the sardine canneries around Monterey, California, Steinbeck\u2019s tale explores the possibilities for American democracy and individuality in the post-World War II era. Plus, through its portrait of Doc, modeled on Steinbeck\u2019s friend Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist, the novel uses the ecology of tidal pools as an analogy for how successful communities, like ecosystems, adapt to change and stress.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" English 52A-CC, \u201cU.S. Fiction, 1900 to 1950\u201d Fall 2014, TTh 1:15pm \u2013 2:30pm, LPAC 301 Professor Peter Schmidt Course Description This course focuses on some of the well-known and newly recognized novelists important for this period: Baum, London, Wharton, Cather, … Continue reading
\nThis course focuses on some of the well-known and newly recognized novelists important for this period: Baum, London, Wharton, Cather, Hemingway, Hurston, Loos, Hammett, McCullers, and Steinbeck. See more details below about these writers and books. There will be attention to innovations in the novel as a literary form and to the ways in which writers engage with their historical context, particularly regarding issues of immigration, race, community, and redefinitions of gender roles and the meaning of \u201cAmerican.\u201d <\/p>\n