Introduction to North-American Literature

This course provides students with an overview of the literary history of the USA, which includes the discussion of specific texts written by some of its main representatives. The content list is designed to help students get acquainted with the main features of this literary tradition by providing them with the information necessary not only to interpret the literary trends and works which they are expected to read in this course, but also to undertake the more demanding analytical tasks which they are expected to develop in “Literatura norteamerica 1” and “Literatura norteamericana 2”. Unit 1 focuses on the colonial period and offers an introductory approach to the Native American oral tradition, the literary production of the exploration period and Puritan literature. Unit 2 deals with the essays, letters and poems written in the Revolutionary period. The main literary trends of the 19th century will be analyzed in Unit 3. And finally Unit 4 offers a general approach to some of the literary highlights which characterized the development of twentieth-century literature in the USA.

UNIT 1. PRECOLONIAL AND COLONIAL LITERATURE:

1.1 THE NATIVE AMERICAN TRADITION:
The Iroquois Creation Myth
1.2 LITERATURE OF THE EXPLORATION PERIOD:
John Smith: General History of Virginia [Selected excerpts]
1.3 PURITAN LITERATURE:
Anne Bradstreet: “To My Dear and Loving Husband” “The Author to Her Book”
Mary Rowlandson: A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson [Selected excerpts]

UNIDADE 2. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD

2.1 WRITERS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD
Benjamin Franklin: “Remarks Concerning the Savages of America”
2.2 LITERATURE IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC:
Philip Freneau: “The Wild Honeysuckle”
2.3 EARLY AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
Phillis Wheatly: “On Being Brought from Africa to America”

UNIDAD 3. THE 19TH CENTURY

3.1 ROMANTICISM AND TRANSCENDENTALISM
Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The American Scholar” [Selected excerpts]
Thoreau: “What’s the Railroad to Me?”
Walt Whitman: Selected poems
Emily Dickinson: Selected poems
Herman Melville: “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
3.2 SLAVE NARRATIVES
Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave [Selected excerpts]
Harriet Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl [Selected excerpts]
3.3 REALISM, NATURALISM AND LOCAL COLOR WRITINGS
Stephen Crane: “The Open Boat”
Mary Wilkins Freeman: “A New England Nun”
3.4 THE NEW WOMAN
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: “The Yellow Wallpaper”

UNIDADE 4: THE 20TH CENTURY

4.1 LITERATURE IN THE “JAZZ AGE” AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION: MODERNISM
The "Lost Generation": F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Babylon Revisited”
The Southern Renaissance: Katherine Anne Porter: “The Old Order”; Eudora Welty: “Clytie”
4.2 POSTMODERNISM AND THE MULTIETHNIC LITERATURE BOOM
African American Literature: Alice Walker: “Everyday Use”
Native American Literature: Sherman Alexie: “Flight Patterns”
Asian American Literature: Amy Tan: “Fish Cheeks”
Chicano/a Literature

This list of contents can be reduced if the lecturers estimate it necessary.

BASIC Bibliography:
*BAYM, Nina (ed) The Norton Anthology of American Literature New York: Norton, 2008 (5th ed.) [84 NORTO 1 & 2]
*BERCOVITCH Sacvan (ed), The Cambridge History of American Literature, vol. 1: 1590-1820, vol. 2: 1820-1865, Cambridge U.P., Cambridge, 1994. [82(73).09 BER 1; 82(73).09 BER 2]
*BRADBURY, Malcolm & Howard TEMPERLEY, eds. Introduction to American Studies. London: Longman, 1981. "Introduction", pp. 1-17. [62 BRAD 1]
*CONN, Peter, Literature in America: An Illustrated History, Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 1989.
*ELLIOTT, Emory (ed.), Columbia Literary History of the United States, Columbia University Press, Nova York, 1988.
*LAUTER, Paul (gral. ed.) The Heath anthology of American literature. Lexington, Massachusetts : Heath and Company, cop. 1990. [82 HEAT 1 1 & 2]
*RULAND, Richard & Malcolm BRADBURY, From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature, New York & London: Routledge, 1991. [82(73).09 RUL 2]

COMPLEMENTARY Bibliography:
*ADERMAN, Ralph M. (ed.), Critical Essays on Washington Irving, G. K. Hall, Boston, 1990.
*ALLEN, Gay Wilson, The Solitary singer: a critical biography of Walt Whitman, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985 [82.09 ALLEN-1]
*AMMONS, Elizabeth , "Writing Silence: 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'" Conflicting stories: American women writers at the turn into the twentieth century, pp. 34-43 e 207-208, Oxford University Press, Nova York, 1992 [82(73).09 AMM-1]
*BEER, Janet, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Studies in Short Fiction, St. Martin’s, Nova York, 1997. [82(73).09 BEE 1]
*BERCOVITCH Sacvan The Puritan Origins of the American Self New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975 [82(73).09 BER 4]
*BURLINGAME, Roger Benjamin Franklin: the first Mr. American. New York: the New American Library 1959 [Bibl. Xeral- BIBL. AMÉRICA: A 4246; R 39520]
*ELLIOTT, Emory“New England Puritan Literature.” En Sacvan Bercovitch, gral. ed, 1994, pp. 171-306. [82(73).09 BER 5  1]
*FERGUSON, Robert A. The American enlightenment, 1750-1820 Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1997 [Bibliotec América-B.Xeral  AR 15502]
*GAINOR, J. Ellen Susan Glaspell in context: American theater, culture and politics, 1915-48. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 2004. [82(73).09 GAI 1]
*GOLDEN, Katherine (ed.), The Captive Imagination: A Casebook on “The Yellow Wallpaper”, New York: The Feminist Press,, 1992. [82(73).09 GOL 1]
*GREENSPAN, Ezra (ed), The Cambridge companion to Walt Whitman. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress 1995 [82(73).09 GREEN 1]
*JOHNSON, Ivonne. The voices of African American women: the use of narrative and authorial voice in the Works of Harriet Jacobs, Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker. New York: Peter Lang, 1998. [82(73).09 JOH.Y 1]
*KILCUP, Karen L. (ed. lit.), Nineteenth-century American women writers: a critical reader, Blackwell, Oxford, 1998. [82(73).09 KILC 1]
*MARTIN, Wendy (ed), The Cambridge companion to Emily Dickinson, Cambridge UniversityPress, Cambridge, 2002 [82(73).09 MAR 2]
*PORTE, Joel & Saundra MORRIS (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Cambridge U.P., Cambridge, 1999. 82(73).09 BER 1; 82(73).09 BER 2
*PETRY, Alice Hall, “Freeman's New England Elegy” Studies in Short Fiction 21.1, 1984, pp. 68-70

CB1, CB2, CB3, CB4, CB5, CG3, CG5, CG6, CG7, CG8, CG9, CE5, CE6, CE7, CE8, CE9, CE10 of the Verified Report.

Combination of theoretical sessions, where students will be provided with information about the main literary trends in the USA, the main authors and their work, and practical sessions which will be devoted to the analysis of specific works and texts. The works on the reading list will be used either to exemplify the general features of the trends or authors mentioned in the expository sessions, or to analyze and discuss these features in more depth both in the expository and especially in the interactive sessions.

We shall encourage active participation in class discussions as well as the develoipment of individual critical interpretations of texts through the use of complementary bibliographic sources and the activities suggested in class.

(1) STANDARD ASSESSMENT SYSTEM

First opportunity (January)

Continuous assessment: 40%
Final exam: 60%

Attention: IF YOU DO NOT SCORE AT LEAST 3 POINTS OUT OF 6 IN THE FINAL EXAM, THE POINTS FOR THE CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT WILL NOT BE ADDED TO YOUR FINAL MARK.

Second opportunity (June)

The assessment system is the same.

Attention: NOTE THAT THE MARK OF THE CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT WILL BE THE SAME IN BOTH OPPORTUNITIES.

(2) EXTRAORDINARY ASSESSMENT SYSTEM FOR STUDENTS WITH OFFICIAL ATTENDANCE WAIVE

First opportunity:

Final exam: 100%

Second opportunity:

Final exam: 100%

(3) EXTRAORDINARY ASSESSMENT SYSTEM FOR REPEATERS AND STUDENTS WITH OVERLAPPING TIMETABLES

First opportunity:

Students resitting the subject [with or without overlapping timetables] and those having overlapping timetables which do not allow them to attend lessons on a regular basis, will be allowed to choose among the following options:

(A) Continuous assessment (40% of the final mark)+final exam (60% of the final mark). Attention: IF YOU DO NOT SCORE AT LEAST 3 POINTS OUT OF 6 IN THE FINAL EXAM, THE POINTS FOR THE CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT WILL NOT BE ADDED TO YOUR FINAL MARK.
(B) Final exam 100%.
(C) Continuous assessment of the previous year -2023-2024- (40% of the final mark)+final exam (60% of the final mark. Attention: IF YOU DO NOT SCORE AT LEAST 3 POINTS OUT OF 6 IN THE FINAL EXAM, THE POINTS FOR THE CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT WILL NOT BE ADDED TO YOUR FINAL MARK.

THOSE WHO CHOOSE EITHER OPTION (B) OR OPTION (C) MUST INFORM THE COORDINATOR OF THE SUBJECT BY OCTOBER 11TH, 2024. Otherwise, their assessment system will be (A).

Second opportunity (June)

The assessment system is the same.

For cases of fraudulent conduct over exercises or tests, what is included in the "Normativa de avaliación do rendemento académico dos estudantes e de revisión de cualificacións" will apply: " Fraudulent exams, tests or tasks required for the evaluation of a subject will imply a fail in the corresponding opportunity, regardless of the disciplinary process that may be opened against the offending student. Among others, plagiarised works or those obtained from sources accessible to the public without reworking or reinterpretation and without quotation to authors and sources will also be considered fraudulent". Therefore, the detection of the smallest plagiarism will mean a zero in the subject and the established disciplinary measures will be taken.

IN-CLASS expository sessions: 32 hours (2 h/week)
IN-CLASS interactive sessions: 16 hours (1 h/week)
IN-CLASS assessment sessions: 3 hours

In-class sessions: 51 hours (+3 tutorials)
Autonomous work: 96 hours
TOTAL: 150 hours (6 ECTS credits)

WEEK EXP. 1 EXP 2 INTERACTIVE
1 Introduction Unit 1 Unit 1
2 Unit 1 Unit 1 Unit 1
3 Unit 1 Unit 1/2 Unit 1
4 Unit 2 Unit 2 Unit 1
5 Unit 2 Unit 2/3 Unit 2
6 Unit 3 Unit 3 Unit 2/3
7 Unit 3 Unit 3 Unit 3
8 Unit 3 Unit 3 Unit 3
9 Unit 3 Unit 3 Unit 3
10 Unit 3 Unit 3 Unit 3
11 Unit 3 Unit 3 Unit 3
12 Unit 4 Unit 4 Unit 3/4
13 Unit 4 Unit 4 Unit 4
14 Unit 4 Unit 4 Unit 4
15 Unit 4 Unit 4 Unit 4

-Class attendance and active participation in class debates is highly recommendable.
-Reading the literary texts before their discussion in class is compulsory.
-Being up to date with work is highly recommendable.

The students' ability to synthesize, analyze and show critical skills will be highly evaluated, as well as the adequate structure of their essays/ presentations and the critical competence they show in the written and oral performances.