2º Período 2024-1

(text taken from the political pedagogical project of the course): Ementa: Panorama histórico-cultural da literatura inglesa e de expressões culturais do século XX e XXI, considerando a expansão da língua inglesa como língua de comunicação internacional a partir da herança colonial inglesa, e da posição geopolítica dos Estados Unidos a partir do período pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial. Desenvolvimento de uma consciência crítica dos processos de mediação ideológica, com ênfase nas questões de poder, classe, raça, gênero e identidade negociadas nas formas culturais.

Concepts: modernity, postmodernity, migration, fragmentation, postcolonialism, feminism, queer theory, New Journalism, postmodern parody, simulacrum. Literary historiography: England, America, and English language overseas. The Edwardian period: war literature. The Modernist period. The Beat Generation in America. The Postmodernist and contemporary period. The theater of the absurd. Comparative literature: other media and pop culture (cinema).

Syllabus

 

Introduction:

1. Reality is selection: the “bricoleur”. Modernism: wars and destruction. 2. Post-modernism: borders, minorities, and deconstruction.

 

Britain, rise and fall of the “Commonwealth”: The Edwardian Period (1901–1914)

3, and 4. Joseph Conrad: The Heart of Darkness. 5. Concept: Ashcroft on The Empire Writes Back. 6. Rudyard Kipling. Thomas Findley: “Stones”. William Butler Yeats: “Leda and the Swan”. 7. James Joyce: “A Painful Case”. 8. Margaret Laurence: “The Tomorrow Tamer”. Ruth Jhabvala: “In the mountains”. 9. Reviewing and evaluation.

 

The Modern Period, literatureS in English (1914–?)

 

10. Concept: gender, feminism, and queer theory. 11. Virginia Woolf: Orlando. 12. Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea. 13. Robert Frost: “The Road not Taken”. Ezra Pound: A Pact. William Carlos Williams: “The red wheelbarrow”. 14. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby. 15. T.S. Eliot: “Gerontion”. William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily. 

 

The Beat Generation in America (1944–1962)

 

16. Henry Miller. William Burroughs. 17. Concept: the New Journalism. Jack Kerouac: In Cold Blood. 18. Reviewing and evaluation.

 

The Postmodernism Period and Contemporaneity: literature$ in English (1945-?)

 

19. Concept: power and societies of control. 20. Aldous Huxley. 21. George Orwell. 22. Women re-writing: Margaret Atwood on The Handmaid’s Tale. 23. The postcolonial re-writing: Salman Rushdie on Haroun and the Sea of Stories. 24. The postmodern revisting His-tory: 25. Ursula LeGuin: The Left Hand of Darkness. 26. Concept: simulacrum. Angela Carter: The Passion of the New Eve. 27. John Fowles: The French Lieutenant’s Woman. 28. Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-5. 

 

29 and 30. Poetry: W.H. Auden, on “The Unknown Citizen”. Margaret Atwood, “Siren Song”. Elisabeth Bishop: “The Fish” / “One Art”. Sylvia Plath: “Daddy”. Anne Sexton: “Sylvia’s Death”.

31. Julia Alvarez: From ¡Yo! 32. Autobiographical narcissism: Alejandro Jodorowsky on The Sacred Mountain. 33. “Pop-art”, or “art-pop”: Andy Warhol. Lady Gaga: “911”, talking about her-self. 34. John Updike: “Separating”. 35. Myth of the returning warrior. Samuel Beckett: the absurd on Waiting for Godot. 36. Reviewing and evaluation.