123250 AR Literature Course - Literature Course - Literature 1/2 (MA) American/North American (2013S)

Contents: The focus in this interactive course will be on travelogues and fiction by US American and Canadian writers who traveled to various countries of Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries and observed the different mores, manners, and values in the countries visited. The rapid development of tourism in the 19th century and the appeal of Europe to North Americans as the site of culture and history engendered a productive type of text, the “international novel”, and a multiplicity of travelogues. The participants in the course will discuss a selection of such texts as well as the consequences of organized “migration” in the two World Wars, and will consider the expatriation of large numbers of US Americans and Canadians in the aftermath of the Great War and their sojourns in the cultural capitals of the Old World. They will also examine the impact on the alter egos of the writers or the protagonists of their exposure to countries (such as Italy or the German-speaking countries of Europe) deeply affected by disastrous political developments in the 20th century and then by the ravages of the Wars.
The course will encourage participants to analyze the complex factors which shaped narratives and travel sketches presenting the more traditional societies of Europe, partly under the influence of prior “knowledge” and established stereotypes (as studied by Imagology), and will induce them to examine the personal consequences of the experiences and their imaginative representation.
Authors discussed will include: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, several modern Southern writers and contemporary Canadian authors.