HENB01352U English - Elective 1, topic 2: Author - Text - Reader in American Literature

This course focusses on some of the themes and concepts that are central in contemporary American literature and theory. We will begin by discussing the notion of literature itself partly with a view to determining the boundaries between fact and fiction; then move on to notions of language followed by an examination of the roles of the author and the reader; all of which will finally culminate in a discussion of verbal and visual texts.

The course provides an introduction to some of the more important schools of thought and modes of writing in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, such as modernism, structuralism, the post-structuralist and postmodern perspectives. A provisional reading list includes Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time, 1925 and Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, 1973. Final reading list will be uploaded on Absalon.