ENGL 226 - American Literature, 1865-1925

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Study of the major developments in American literature and culture from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. This course provides exposure to the diverse group of authors who wrote during the 1865-1925 period and who belong to no school. True, some were realists, naturalists, and modernists, but these terms and even general themes, such as “individualism,” do not apply to all. The one term that defines the period is “difference” (read variously as contention, invidious comparison, change, diversity, gender dissidence). This course simulates the great rupture between nineteenth-century prose styles and those of the twentieth century, but you discover an earlier radical streak in American fiction where gender, sexuality, race, and class figure. Works studied are drawn from such authors as Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, W.E.B. Du Bois, William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jean Toomer. Zachary Roberts

This course satisfies the REGS or pre-1900 requirement for the English major.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS