American Literature – I (Prose and Poetry)

Paper Code: 
ENG 323-A
Credits: 
4
Periods/week: 
4
Max. Marks: 
100
Objective: 

Course Objectives:

The course will enable the students to:

  • Identify significant and culturally diverse examples, both canonical and non-canonical, of American literature between the 17th and mid-19th centuries
  • Recognise different concepts like Transcendentalism, Puritanism and American Romanticism, along with glimpses of American Culture, Theory and Renaissance
  • Appreciate the major genres and modes employed by the writers of the period

Course  Outcomes -

The students will:

  • Analyse the study of poetical works and prose-writings in relation to the historical and cultural contexts of American literature
  • Recognise 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
  • Evaluate the literary trends in the literature of the age

 

 

12.00
Unit I: 
Unit I

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self-Reliance

Each and All

 

12.00
Unit II: 
Unit II

Walt Whitman

Preface to the First Edition of Leaves of Grass

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

 

12.00
Unit III: 
Unit III

Emily Dickinson

I 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: 
Unit IV

Robert Frost

Mending Wall

Birches

The Road Not Taken

 

Wallace Stevens

Of Modern Poetry

Sunday Morning

Anecdote of the Jar

 

12.00
Unit V: 
Unit V

Amy Lowell

The Capture Goddess

September, 1918

Madonna of the Evening Flowers

 

Sylvia Plath

Ariel

Lady Lazarus

The Colossus

 

Source Books: 

Source Book:

Egbert, Oliver. ed. Anthology of American Literature1890-1965. S. Chand, 2012.

 

SUGGESTED READINGS: 

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 Publication, 2005.

Martin,Linda Wagner.Critical Essays on Sylvia Plath. G.K. Hall, 1984.

Matthiessen, Francis Otto. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman . OUP, 1943.

 

Academic Year: 
2021-2022