"Gertrude Stein's Paris Salon and Its Satellites:
Avant-Garde and Non-Avant-Garde Innovators"
AMERICAN LITERATURE (2)
COURSE CODE: AN23001BA, AN3301OMA
TIME & PLACE: Wed 8:00 – 9:40 Rm 54, Mbld; and Wed 10:00-11:40Rm 54, Mbld
INSTRUCTOR: Lenke Németh,
Office phone: (52) 512-900/22069
Office Hours: Wed 12: 00 – 12:50 and Fri 9:00 – 9:50, Rm 118, Mbld
COURSE DECRIPTION
A fabled place where American expatriate writers met the distinguished group of avant-garde artists, painters, composers, dancers, and film directors of the interwar years, Gertrude Stein’s by now legendary salon at 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris played a pivotal role in shaping the modernist movement both in Europe and the U.S. in the 1920s. The “Mother of Modernism,”mentor and critic of a whole generation of young and fledgling American authors, Stein had a formative influence on American literary modernism.
This multigenre course aims at discussing significant modernist literary works by writers who clearly benefited from Stein’s guidance (Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald) or were harbingers of modernism (Susan Glaspell and Kate Chopin). Innovative voices in poetry and drama (Edwin Arlington Robinson, Carl Sandburg, e. e. cummings, Thornton Wilder, among others) will also be included. By constantly pointing to the interchange between different forms of artistic expressions (visual arts, music,and literature) the course will acquaint students with the vigor and vibrancy of the cultural and intellectual scene that inspired the modernist sensibility.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Attendance and active participation in class discussions.
Quizzes on the assigned reading.
Midterm paper will include text recognition tasks as well as brief essay questions pertaining to the material covered up to that time.
Endterm paper will check your familiarity with the works and their contexts discussed during the semester.
Oral Presentation is a 5-10-minute commentary on some aspect of a selected literary work or critical study related to the assigned readings on the agenda. The presentation should be delivered in front of the class in a manner that your fellow students will focus on what you present and how you present. The topic of the presentation will be negotiated with the tutor; yet, you will need to find relevant material for an effectively delivered presentation.
EVALUATION CRITERIA
Students are advised that the quality of theirwritten and spoken performance will count significantly toward their final grade.
Class participation 20%
Quizzes 10%
Presentation 20%
Midterm paper 20%
Endterm Paper 30%
N. B. No re-sit for the in-class papers.
COURSE SCHEDULE
(1) Feb 14Orientation
(2) Feb 21POETRY SAMPLE (I)
E. A. Robinson (1869-1935), "Richard Cory," “Miniver Cheevy"
Robert Frost (1874-1963), "After Apple-Picking," "The Road Not Taken," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,"
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), Chapters I and II in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)
(3)Feb 28Susan Glaspell(1876-1948),Trifles (1916)(web)
(4) March 7Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), The Great Gatsby (1925)
(5)March 14THE SHORT STORY
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), “The Killers” (1927), “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (1936),Willa Cather (1873-1947), "Neighbor Rosicky" (1932), Kate Chopin, (1850-1904), “A Respectable Woman” (1894)
(6) March 21Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926)
(7) March 28 POETRY SAMPLE (II) The Midwesterners
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), "Chicago," "The People, Yes," I am the People, the Mob," "Cool Tombs," "Gone,” “Grass”
Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950), a selection from SpoonRiver," Benjamin Pantier," "Mrs. Benjamin Pantier," "Emily Sparks," "Trainor, the Druggist,” “Elsa Wertman,” “Hamilton Greene,” “Lucinda Matlock”
(8)Apr 4CONSULTATION WEEK
(9) Apr 11Mid-term paper
(10) Apr 18William Faulkner (1897-1962), The Sound and the Fury (1929)
(11) Apr 25Thornton Wilder, Our Town (1938)
Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)
Chapter VII
(12) May 2POETRY SAMPLE (III)
Ezra Pound (1885-1972), "In a Station of the Metro"
Amy Lowell (1874-1925), "Patterns" E. E. Cummings (1894-1962), "anyone lived in a pretty how town," "Up into the Silence the Green," William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), "Spring and All," "The Red Wheelbarrow," Langston Hughes (1902-1967), “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “Mother to Son,”
(13) May 9Screening of Midnight in Paris (2011, dir. Woody Allen)
(14) May 16Endterm Paper
Required Texts
AN 305 Course packet and the novels are available in the Institute library.
Chopin, Kate, “ A Respectable Woman” (1894)
Glaspell, Susan. Trifles (1916)
Stein, Gertrude. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)
A Short List of Suggested Secondary Sources
Horton, W. Rod and Herbert W. Edwards. Backgrounds of American Literary Thought. New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1967.
Országh, László and Virágos Zsolt. Az amerikai irodalom története. Eötvös, 1997.
Virágos, Zsolt. The Modernistsand Others: The American Literary Culture in the Age of the Modernist Revolution. Debrecen: Institute of English and American Studies, 2006.
N.B. The Institute Library holds a large number of reference books as well as monographs on the authors selected for the course.