Comparative Literature of the Americas (AM404)

Module Tutor: Professor John King
Office: H334, Humanities Building

We will meet weekly from 9.15am in Room H4.22/4

 

Aims and Objectives

 
Does the Americas have a common literature? This module seeks to explore the similarities and differences in literary development in North America, Latin America and the Caribbean through a comparative analysis of selected texts. Areas covered include: 'the first encounter' in the Americas; civilisation and barbarism; slavery; the novel of childhood; indigenous literature; Faulkner and Latin America; the 'American poet'; gender and ethnicity.

 

Term 1

Week 1 - Introduction - What is Comparative Literature?

Introductory books on Comparative Literature

  • S. Bassnett, An Introduction to Comparative Literature
  • Siegbert Prawer, Comparative Literary Studies: An Introduction
  • Claudio Guillen, Literature as System
  • R. Stallkecht and H. Frenc, Comparative Literature
  • Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics
  • Belle Gale Chevigny & Gari Laguardia, Reinventing the Americas
  • G. Perez Firmat, ed., Do the Americas have a Common Literature?

Unit 1: European Images of the Americas, Weeks 2, 3 and 4

Texts

  • M. de Montaigne, 'On Cannibals'
  • W. Shakespeare, The Tempest

Please refer to your first year text, Bernal Diaz, The Conquest of New Spain

Juan José Saer, The Witness

Secondary Sources

  • A. Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man (especially first 2 Chaps.)
  • E. Said, Orientalism. read at least the introduction
  • E. Said (ed.) Literature and Society. Read the essay by Steven Greenblatt on language and power.
  • Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden. Chapers on the pastoral and on The Tempest
  • T. Todorov, La conquête de l'Amerique, English translation also available in library.
  • Lee Huddleston, Origins of the American Indians. Europeans Concepts 1942-1729
  • Irving Leonard, Books of the Brave
  • Hugh Honour, Consult his catalogue on images in the library.
  • George Lamming, The Pleasures of Exile
  • Leslie A. Fiedler, The Stranger in Shakespeare
  • Paul Brown, "This Thing of Darkness I acknowledge Mine" in Political Shakespeare, ed J. Dollimore, A.Sinefield
  • Eldred Jones, Othello's Countrymen
  • P. Brockbank, "The Tempest: Conventions of Art and Empire" in Stratford-upon-Avon Studies Vol. 8
  • Steven Greenblatt, Marvellous Possessions
  • Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters

You will be expected to see the video of Nelson Pereira dos Santos, How Tasty was My Little Frenchman

Unit 2: Civilisation and Barbarism, Weeks 5 and 6

North America

Texts

  • J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur's initial Letters to an American Farmer
  • J. Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers

Criticism

  • R. Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence
  • G. Lukacs, The Historical Novel (On Walter Scott)
  • L. Fiedler, Love and Death in the American Novel
  • Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden
  • R.W.B. Lewis, The American Adam
  • J.M. Porte, The Romance in America
  • D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature
  • M. Bradbury & H. Temperley (ed.) Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth
  • R. Pearce, The Savages of America
Spanish America
  • Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Facundo: Civilisation and Barbarism (Penguin)

Criticism

  • C. Jones, D.F. Sarmiento, Facundo
  • G. Martin, Journeys Through the Labyrinth
  • W. Rowe & V. Schelling, Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America
  • E. Fishburn, The Portrait of the Immigrant in Argentine Fiction
  • T. Halperin Donghi etc. Sarmiento: Author of A Nation
  • G. Kirkpatrick et al, Sarmiento: Architect of a Nation
  • You will also be expected to see the video by María Luisa Bemberg Camila

Unit 3: The Search for an American Epic, weeks 7 and 8

Texts

  • W. Whitman, Leaves of Grass
  • P. Neruda, The Heights of Macchu Picchu

Criticism

  • Gordon Brotherston, Latin American Poetry
  • Mike Gonzalez, D. Treece, The Gathering of Voices
  • David Gallagher, Modern Latin American Literature
  • C. Perriam, The Late Poetry of Pablo Neruda
  • E. Rodriguez Monegal, Pablo Neruda
  • Doris Sommer, 'Supplying demand: Walt Whitman' in Chevigny, Laguardia, Reinventing
  • Mark Van Doren, 'Introduction to The Portable Walt Whitman
  • John C. Broderick ed., Whitman, the Poet
  • Pelman, Folson, Campion eds., Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song
  • C. Bush, The Dream of Reason

Unit 4: Novels of Childhood as a metaphor for the development of a nation, weeks 9 and 10

North America
  • M. Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  • Secondary reading by Twain, Tom Sawyer
  • ' The United States of Lyncherdom'

and

  • 'Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences' in, Bernardo de Voto (ed.) The Portable Mark Twain

Bibliography

Essential to read the chapters in Marx, Nash Smith and Fiedler, above.

also

  • Philip Foner, Mark Twain: social critic
  • W. Gibson, Mark Twain
  • Henry Nash Smith, Mark Twain
Latin America
  • R Guiraldes, Don Segundo Sombra

Bibliography

  • Introduction to P. Beardsall's critical edition of D.S.S.
  • Article by Beardsall in Forum for Modern Language Studies Spring 1981
  • Jean Franco, The Modern Culture of Latin America
  • Jorge Luis Borges, 'The Argentine Writer and tradition' in Labyrinths
  • Christopher Leland, The Last Happy Men
  • Carlos Alonso, The Spanish American Regional Novel
  • Edition of DSS by Gwen Kirkpatrick (University of Pittsburg Press, 1995)