American Literature – I (Prose and Poetry)

Paper Code: 
ENG 323-A
Credits: 
04
Periods/week: 
04
Max. Marks: 
100
Objective: 

  • The course will enable the students to:

    • Familiarize themselves with some significant and culturally diverse examples, both canonical and non-canonical, of American literature between the 17th and mid-19th centuries
    • Get introduced to different concepts like Transcendentalism, Puritanism and American Romanticism, along with glimpses of American culture, theory and Renaissance
    • Appreciate some of the major genres and modes employed by the writers of the period

     

  • Course Learning Outcomes
  •  Gain an understanding of the study of poetical works and prose-writings in relation to the historical and cultural contexts of American literature
  •  Get an insight into the issues, conflicts, themes and preoccupations of American writers in their works
  •  Acquire knowledge of how gender, race, class, ethnicity and geography, have shaped the formation of such literature

 

 

12.00
Unit I: 
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self-Reliance

Each and All

 

12.00
Unit II: 
Walt Whitman

Preface to the First Edition of Leaves of Grass

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

 

12.00
Unit III: 

Emily Dickinson

 Felt a Funeral

A Bird Came Down the Walk

I Heard a Fly Buzz

 

Langston Hughes

Mother to Son

I, Too

Democracy

 

12.00
Unit IV: 

 

Robert Frost

Mending Well

Birches

The Road Not Taken

 

Wallace Stevens

Of Modern Poetry

Sunday Morning

Anecdote of the Jar

 

12.00
Unit V: 

Amy Lowell

The Capture Goddess

September, 1918

Madonna of the Evening Flowers

 

Sylvia Plath

                                                                              Ariel

                                                                          Lady Lazarus

The Colossus

 

Source Books: 
  • Egbert, Oliver. ed.  Anthology of American Literature1890-1965. S. Chand, 2012 .

 

 

SUGGESTED READINGS: 
  •  Dauben, Miriam. Emily Dickinson: The Death Motif in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson. GRIN Verlag, 2013.
  • Ford, Boris. Ed. The New Pelican Guide to English Literature: American Literature (Vol.9). Penguin Books,1991.
  • John Jacob : History of America Literature . Sublime Publications,  2005.
  • Martin, Linda Wagner. Critical Essays on Sylia Plath. G.K. Hall, 1984.
  • Matthiessen, Francis Otto. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman . OUP, 1943.

 

Academic Year: 
2020-2021