2008 MM What We Talk about when We Talk about Neo-Realist Fiction

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 !ROOM CHANGE!

This class will take place in room A06 0-001.

Winter Term 2007/08

Lecturer: Christina Meyer

Office Hours: We 3:00-4:pm; A06 2-212b

Fon: 0441-798-4570

E-Mail: christina.meyer@uni-oldenburg.de



Comment

This course aims to deepen our understanding of the origins and developments of ‘realism’ in American literature between the Civil War and WWI, and the developments of ‘neo-realism’ or minimalist fiction in the 1980s. We will place literary works in their historical and cultural contexts, while also surveying connections between the works’ philosophical undercurrents, forms, and narrative techniques. Principal readings: W. D. Howells, Raymond Carver and Bobbie Ann Mason. Further readings (excerpts): Henry James, Ann Beattie, Winfried Fluck, Philip Simmons, Jean Baudrillard

Please purchase W.D. Howells’s The Rise of Silas Lapham (Norton Critical Edition; approx. 13 Euros at amazon), Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (Vintage edition, approx. 10 Euros) as well as Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country (approx. 12 Euros); all other texts will be made available in a reader.

Prerequisites for participation (general): regular attendance, active participation, group work, in-class oral presentation (approx. 15 minutes), Prerequisites for certificate: all of the above, periodic homework (written assignments), final paper (10-12 pages, approx. 5000 words) Starting on: April 07, 2008 Language in class: English

Syllabus

  • April 07, 2008 Organization

Part I: Realism

  • April 14, 2008 America in the 19th Century – A Socio-Historical Overview

Presentation: “Major Events/Social Transformations During the 19th Century”

Texts: Paul S. Boyer, Clifford E. Clark, Jr. et al., eds. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. Concise 4th ed. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002. (pp. 207-222 and 264-284)

  • April 21, 2008 America in the 19th Century – A Socio-Historical Overview, Part II

Presentation: “Literary Movements: From Romanticism to Naturalism”

Texts: A) Louis J. Budd, “The American Background,” The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism, Howells to London, ed. Donald Pizer (Cambridge, UK, New York et al.: Cambridge UP, 1995) 21-46. B) Richard Lehan, “The European Perspective,” Pizer 47-73.

  • April 28, 2008 William D. Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham

Text: Augusta Rohrbach, “‘You’re a Natural-Born Literary Man’: Becoming William Dean Howells, Culture Maker, and Cultural Marker,” The New England Quarterly 73.4 (Dec. 2000): 625-653.

  • May 05, 2008 William D. Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham, cont’d

Presentation: “Issues of Race and Class in Howells’s The Rise of Silas Lapham” Written Assignment I (topic will be distributed in class)

  • May 19, 2008 William D. Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham, cont’d


Part II: Neo-Realism

  • May 26, 2008 Entering the (Postmodern) 1980s

Presentation: “The 1980s – History, Politics, and (Popular) Culture”

Text: 1) Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” New Left Review 146 (1984): 53-92.

  • June 02, 2008 Surface or Depth – History, Knowledge and Postmodern Culture

Presentation: “Introducing Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation”

Text: 1) Winfried Fluck, “Surface Knowledge and ‘Deep’ Knowledge: The New Realism in American Fiction,” Neo-Realism in Contemporary American Fiction, ed. Kristiaan Versluys (Amsterdam: Rodopi; Antwerpen: Restant, 1992) 65-85. * June 09, 2008 Bobbie Ann Mason, In Country

  • June 16, 2008 Bobbie Ann Mason, In Country, cont’d

Presentation: “Minimalism in Art, Architecture and Literature”

  • June 23, 2008 Bobbie Ann Mason, In Country, cont’d

Written assignment II (topic will be distributed in class)

  • June 30, 2008 Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Text: 1) Raymond Carver, “Principles of a Short Story.” Prospect (September 2005): 32-34.

  • July 07, 2008 Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Round-Up

Reading Requirements/Suggestions

  • Abramson, Daniel. “Maya Lin and the 1960s: Monuments, Time Lines, and Minimalism.” Critical Inquiry 22.4 (Summer 1996): 679-709
  • Arms, George. “The Literary Background for Howells’s Social Criticism.” American Literature 14.3 (Nov. 1942): 260-276.
  • Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. 1994. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 2006.
  • Berces, Francis Albert. “Mimesis, Morality, and The Rise of Silas Lapham.” American Quarterly 22.2 Part I (Summer 1970): 190-202.
  • Bercovitch, Sacvan, gen. ed. Prose Writing 1940—1990. Cambridge, UK, et al.: Cambridge UP, 1999. Vol. 7 of The Cambridge History of American Literature. 8 vols. to date. 1994-
  • Bethea, Arthur F. “Raymond Carver’s Inheritance from Ernest Hemingway’s Literary Technique.” The Hemingway Review 26.2 (Spring 2007): 89-104.
  • Boorstin, Daniel J. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. Rev. Ed. 1961. New York: Atheneum, 1987.
  • Boyer, Paul S., Clifford E. Clark, Jr. et al., eds. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. Concise 4th ed. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.
  • Bramen, Carrie Tirado. “William Dean Howells and the Failure of the Urban Picturesque.” The New England Quarterly 73.1 (March 2000): 82-99.
  • Budd, Louis J. “The American Background.” Pizer 21-46.
  • Carver, Raymond. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. 1974. New York: Vintage, 1989.
  • ---. “Principles of a Short Story.” Prospect (September 2005): 32-34.
  • Chénetier, Marc. Beyond Suspicion: New American Fiction Since 1960. Trans. Elizabeth A. Houlding. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1996
  • Clark, Miriam Marty. “Contemporary Short Fiction and the Postmodern Condition.” Studies in Short Fiction 32.2 (Spring 1995): 147-159.
  • Claybaugh, Amanda. “The Autobiography of a Substitute: Trauma, History, Howells.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 18.1 (2005): 45-65.
  • Crowley, John W. “Howells in The Heath.” The New England Quarterly 72.1 (March 1999): 89-101.
  • Dieckmann, Katherine. “Electra Myths: Video, Modernism, Postmodernism.“ Art Journal 45.3. Video: The Reflexive Medium (Autumn 1985): 195-203.
  • Diller, Christopher. “‘Fiction in Color’: Domesticity, Aestheticism, and the Visual Arts in the Criticism and Fiction of William Dean Howells.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 55.3 (Dec. 2000): 369-398.
  • DoCarmo, Stephen N. “Bombs From Coke Cans: Appropriating Mass Culture in Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country.” Journal of Popular Culture 36.3 (Winter 2003): 589-599
  • Edwards, Herbert. “Howells and the Controversy over Realism in American Fiction.” American Literature 3.3 (Nov. 1931): 237-248.
  • Feuer, Jane. Seeing Through the Eighties: Television and Reaganism. Durham & London: Duke UP, 1995.
  • Fischer, William C., Jr. “William Dean Howells: Reverie and the Nonsymbolic Aesthetic.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 25.1 (Jun. 1970): 1-30.
  • Fluck, Winfried. Inszenierte Wirklichkeit – Der amerikanische Realismus, 1865-1900. München: Fink, 1992.
  • ---. “Surface Knowledge and ‘Deep’ Knowledge: The New Realism in American Fiction.” Neo-Realism in Contemporary American Fiction. Ed. Kristiaan Versluys. Amsterdam: Rodopi; Antwerpen: Restant, 1992. 65-85.
  • Grossberg, Lawrence. “Rockin’ with Reagan, or the Mainstreaming of Postmodernity.” Cultural Critique 10 (Autumn 1988): 123-149.
  • Grodin, Debra and Thomas R. Lindlof, eds. Constructing the Self in a Mediated World. Thousand Oaks, CA, London & New Delhi: Sage, 1996.
  • Heisinger, Brent. “American Minimalism in the 1980s.” American Music 7.4 (Winter 1989): 430-447.
  • Hoffman, Warren. “The Rise (and Fall) of David Levinsky: Performing Jewish American Heterosexuality.” Modern Fiction Studies 51.2 (Summer 2005): 393-415.
  • Howells, William Dean. The Rise of Silas Lapham. Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Don L. Cook. New York: W.W. Norton, 1982.
  • Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” New Left Review 146 (1984): 53-92.
  • Lehan, Richard. “The European Perspective.” Pizer 47-73.
  • Leypoldt, Günther. “Reconsidering Raymond Carver’s ‘Development’: The Revision of ‘So Much Water so Close to Home.’” Contemporary Literature 43.2 (Summer 2002): 317-341.
  • London, Barbara. “Video: A Selected Chronology, 1963-1983.” Art Journal 45.3. Video: The Reflexive Medium (Autumn 1985): 249-262.
  • Krasteva, Yonka. “The South and the West in Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country.” The Southern Literary Journal 26.2 (1994): 77-90.
  • Mason, Bobbie Ann. In Country. New York: Perennial Library, 1985.
  • May, Charles E. “‘Don’t You See What I’m Saying?’ The Inadequacy of Explanation and the Uses of Story in the Short Fiction of Raymond Carver.” The Yearbook of English Studies 31. North American Short Stories and Short Fictions (2001): 39-49.
  • Medovi, Leerom. “Mapping the Rebel Image: Postmodernism and the Masculinist Politics of Rock in the U.S.A.” Cultural Critique 20 (Winter 1991/92): 153-188.
  • Nesset, Kirk. “‘This Word Love’: Sexual Politics and Silence in Early Raymond Carver.” American Literature 63.2 (Jun. 1991): 292-313.
  • Palmer, Stephanie C. “Realist Magic in the Fiction of William Dean Howells.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 57.2 (Sept. 2002): 210-236.
  • Pizer, Donald, ed. The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism, Howells to London. Cambridge, UK, New York et al.: Cambridge UP, 1995.
  • Puskar, Jason. “William Dean Howells and the Insurance of the Real.” American Literary History 18.1 (Spring 2006): 29-58.
  • Rohrbach, Augusta. “‘You’re a Natural-Born Literary Man’: Becoming William Dean Howells, Culture Maker, and Cultural Marker.” The New England Quarterly 73.4 (Dec. 2000): 625-653.
  • Saltzman, Arthur M. “To See a World in a Grain of Sand: Expanding Literary Minimalism.” Contemporary Literature 31.4 (Winter 1990): 423-433.
  • Simmons, Philip E. Deep Surfaces. Mass Culture & History in Postmodern American Fiction. Athens & London: The U of Georgia P, 1997.
  • Simpson, James Wesley. Editor's Study by William Dean Howells. Troy, N.Y.: Whitston Press, 1983.
  • Troy, Gil. Morning in America. How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton UP, 2005.
  • Versluys, Kristiaan, ed. Neo-Realism in Contemporary American Fiction. Amsterdam: Rodopi; Antwerpen: Restant, 1992.
  • Weimann, Robert. “Realism, Ideology, and the Novel in America (1886-1896): Changing Perspectives in Mark Twain, W.D. Howells, and Henry James.” boundary2 17.1 New Americanists: Revisionist Interventions into the Canon (Spring 1990): 189-210.
  • Wells, Gerald K. “The Phoenix Symbol in The Rise of Silas Lapham.“ South Atlantic Bulletin 40.2 (May 1975): 10-14.
  • White, Leslie. “The Function of Popular Culture in Bobbie Ann Mason’s Shiloh and Other Stories and In Country.” Southern Quarterly: A Journal of the Arts in the South 26.4 (1988): 69-79.
  • Wilde, Alan. “Shooting for Smallness: Limits and Values in Some Recent American Fiction.” boundary2 13.2/3. On Humanism and the University II: The Institutions of Humanism (Winter/Spring 1985): 343-369.
  • Wonham, Henry B. “Writing Realism, Policing Consciousness: Howells and the Black Body.” American Literature 67.4 (Dec. 1995): 701-724.
  • Wooster, Ann-Sargent. “Why Don’t They Tell Stories Like They Used To.“ Art Journal 45.3. Video: The Reflexive Medium (Autumn 1985): 204-212.
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