
Lecture Description
In this first lecture Professor Hungerford introduces the course's academic requirements and some of its central concerns. She uses a magazine advertisement for James Joyce's Ulysses and an essay by Vladimir Nabokov (author of Lolita, a novel on the syllabus) to establish opposing points of view about what is required to be a competent reader of literature. The contrast between popular emotional appeal and detached artistic judgment frames literary debates from the Modernist, and through the post-45 period. In the second half of lecture, Hungerford shows how the controversies surrounding the publication of Richard Wright's Black Boy highlight the questions of truth, memory, and autobiography that will continue to resurface throughout the course.
Course Index
- Introductions
- Richard Wright, Black Boy
- Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood
- Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood (cont.)
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
- Guest Lecture by Andrew Goldstone
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (cont.)
- Jack Kerouac, On the Road
- Jack Kerouac, On the Road (cont.)
- J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
- John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse
- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
- Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
- Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior
- Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
- Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (cont.)
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (cont.)
- Philip Roth, The Human Stain
- Philip Roth, The Human Stain (cont.)
- Philip Roth, The Human Stain (cont.)
- Edward P. Jones, The Known World
- Edward P. Jones, The Known World (cont.)
- Students' Choice Novel: Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated
- Students' Choice Novel: Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated (cont.)
- Review for Final Exam
Course Description
In this course, Professor Amy Hungerford gives 27 video lectures on "The American Novel Since 1945". Students will study a wide range of works from 1945 to the present. The course traces the formal and thematic developments of the novel in this period, focusing on the relationship between writers and readers, the conditions of publishing, innovations in the novel's form, fiction's engagement with history, and the changing place of literature in American culture. The reading list includes works by Richard Wright, Flannery O'Connor, Vladimir Nabokov, Jack Kerouac, J. D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth and Edward P. Jones. The course concludes with a contemporary novel chosen by the students in the class.