English literature: in-depth study of a theme [ LGERM2724 ]

In the American imagination, the road embodies ideals of freedom and the fascination with adventure and survival. It is associated with Route 66, the conquest of the West, social rebellion, and the pursuit of the American Dream. This course addresses the characteristics and development of the road trope via the analysis of several (excerpts from) novels (Salinger, Nabokov, Kerouac, among others), poems, songs and short stories written by American creative writers. What do protagonists ultimately discover at the end of the road or within the American wild landscape? How have contemporary fiction and film challenged the white male tradition of the road narrative? How have ethnic groups experienced the road?

This course focuses on the road narrative as a genre (mixing travelogue, journey, Bildungsroman, and picaresque literature) offering insights into the national, historical and cultural American identity, which relies on dislocation, movement and landscape, and oscillates between the vision of a New Jerusalem and an apocalyptic struggle with natural powers. More specifically, the class starts with earlier road narratives and culminates with an examination of McCarthy's Pulitzer-prize winning novel The Road (2007) as an anti-road narrative in which the road has become, not a place of escape and freedom but an imprisoning body that is haunted by traumatic and apocalyptic visions of the future. While it highlights the spatialization that characterizes the American imagination as well as the postmodern anxieties reflected in the road trope, the course stresses important changes, from road to anti-road narrative, from road to highway and street narrative between conquest and celebration of the wilderness. The course mainly uses extracts and follows the following modules: 1. From the Conquest of the West to the 1930s- 2. From the Great Depression to the affluent 1950s - 3. The postwar Road narrative of Escape, the Beat Generation and the Post-Easy Rider figure- 4. The Great Migration and African-American creative writing- 5. The Road to Tears: Native American's Misplacements- 6. The Female Road Trip - 7. Chicano writing and border roads - 8. Postmodern, Post-Road, Post-Apocalyptic or Anti-Road Narratives: the Fall of the American Dream? - 9. Road vs Landscape ' 10. Roads, streets, highways- Conclusion.