We will look at divergent views of
what literature in the 20th and 21st centuries should or
can do. (a) REALISM VS. NON-REALISM-
What in our reading shows realism with a social purpose? Where do you see non-realism used also to
make a point about society? Where do you
see non-realism for aesthetic play? (b)
RETURN TO MYTH- Are cultural myths being used ironically or straight in our
works, for comfort or as a measure of something lost? (c) ART AS SOCIAL INTERACTOR OR CLOSED
SYSTEM- Can art record history? Can it
change anything? Does it have social
responsibility or only aesthetic responsibility? Is it dangerous? Is it healing? (e) How have colonized peoples
who didn’t ask for English, managed to make it uniquely their own (India,
Philippines, Hawai’i, Caribbean, Africa, Native American)?
Required Texts:
We’ll read a
wide variety of fiction, poems, and a play or two, some in a Course
Reader. Longer works will include
William Faulkner’s novella The Bear, Raja Rao’s novel Kanthapura
(about Gandhi’s followers in India of the 1930s), and Caryl Churchill’s play Far
Away. Authors of shorter works
include E. E. Cummings, Flannery O’Connor, Chinua Achebe, and Lois-Ann
Yamanaka.
Assignments:
Students
will write four 3-5-page papers, two 2-page papers, a midterm, and a
final. Class participation counts.