Lecture Description
Professor Wai Chee Dimock continues her discussion of For Whom the Bell Tolls by analyzing the contrast Robert Jordan draws between “distant homes” and the on-site environment of the Spanish Civil War. She juxtaposes his invocations of Paris and Missouri to the rooted communities of the guerillas, and reads analogies of racial and ethnic conflict--specifically, the references to the Moors in Spain and persecuted blacks in America--as a point of tension, an ironic commentary on the coexistence of the distant home and the on-site environment. She concludes with a reading of the American Civil War as a temporally distant home which Jordan tries to recuperate in the present moment of European conflict.
Course Index
- Introduction
- Hemingway's In Our Time (Part I)
- Hemingway's In Our Time (Part II)
- Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (Part I)
- Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (Part II)
- Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (Part I)
- Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (Part II)
- Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (Part III)
- Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (Part IV)
- Hemingway's To Have and Have Not (Part I)
- Hemingway's To Have and Have Not (Part II)
- Fitzgerald's Short Stories
- Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (Part I)
- Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (Part II)
- Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (Part III)
- Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part I)
- Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part II)
- Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part III)
- Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part IV)
- Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (Part I)
- Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (Part II)
- Faulkner's Light in August (Part I)
- Faulkner's Light in August (Part II)
- Faulkner's Light in August (Part III)
- Faulkner's Light in August (Part IV)
Course Description
This course examines major works by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner, exploring their interconnections on three analytic scales: the macro history of the United States and the world; the formal and stylistic innovations of modernism; and the small details of sensory input and psychic life.
Warning: Some of the lectures in this course contain graphic content and/or adult language that some users may find disturbing.