Course Unit Title: AMERICAN FICTION

Course Unit Code: ENG377

Type of Course Unit: Optional (Compulsory/Optional) Level of Course Unit: Bachelor (1st Cycle) (first, second or third cycle) Year of Study: 4

Semester when the unit is 7 delivered: Number of ECTS credits 6 allocated: Name of lecturer(s): TBA

Learning Outcomes of the course unit:

Upon successful completion of this course students should be able to:  Identify unique traits and tropes of American writing  Assess the impact of factors such as ethnicity, gender and location on American authors  Write about the relationship between history, society and literature in post-war America  Discuss America as both national and transnational space  Discuss America as both nation state and abstract ideal

Mode of Delivery: Distance Learning

Prerequisites and co- ENG 220 or permission of the instructor requisites: Recommended optional None program components: Course Contents:

Objective: The course focuses upon selected extracts, short fiction and novels by authors in the 20th century, a vibrant period for American prose. Attention is given to the range of the writers’ concerns, and to connections, disjunctions and stylistic similarities both within and between works.

Description: The early part of the course leads in with a brief overview of turn-of-the-century writers like Henry James. Reading continues by looking at struggles for regeneration and authenticity after World War I. The writings of Soldier's Pay, Dos Passos USA, e.e. cummings The Enormous Room and Hemingway A Farewell to Arms are representative. Between wars novels like F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, 's Gone with the Wind, and 's capture the ambiguities of this period. Similarly The Naked and the Dead, Flannery O'Connor Wise Blood, Truman Capote Other Voices, Other Rooms, J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye and Herzog reflect the post World War II mood.

In the late 1950s and the 1960s the questioning of modern society, its instability and dehumanizing elements, is reflected in works by Joseph Heller Catch-22, Jack Kerouac On , and Ken Kesly One flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Contemporary fiction can include studies from Dorothy Allison Bastard out of California; The New York Trilogy; , Jazz; Richard Ford Independence Day.

Required or Recommended Reading(s): Reading material will be allotted by the instructor and the choice of some works (see above) will be rotated.

Planned learning activities and teaching methods: Virtual lectures, workshops, group work, assignments, and

exams

Assessment methods and criteria: Examinations 50% Ongoing Evaluation Activities 50%

100%

Language of Instruction: English

Work Placement(s): No

Place of Teaching: Blackboard Virtual Platform