English literature : Reading Roads in American Literary Texts [ LGERM2724 ]

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An introductory knowledge of English literature and a good proficiency in English (advanced level, B2 + in terms of the Common European reference framework)

The course traces the evolution of a particular theme in twentieth-century English literature. Through analyses of works taken from various historical and aesthetic contexts, students explore what kind of role the chosen theme(s) play in the modern imagination. The course also includes the showing and discussion of adaptations for film and television.

- Students will be expected to show their ability to relate the themes that have been selected to the historical and literary contexts explored in the course.

- They will have to produce an analysis that demonstrates their familiarity with the issues raised in the course, and with the poetics through which those issues are articulated.

- The course is also indirectly meant to increase the students' lexical skills. Their analyses will therefore have to reflect a command of the English language that corresponds to their level (Masters), as well as a good grasp of the various cultural concepts discussed in the course.

Students will prepare readings and write a final paper. Oral exam.

Interactive lectures. This course includes references to several cinematic productions.

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.

- Bakhtin, M.M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Edited by Michael Holquist. Translated by C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.

- Bluefarb, Sam. The Escape Motif in the American Novel: Mark Twain to Richard Wright. Ohio State UP, 1972.

- Dickstein, Morris. "On and Off the Road: The Outsider as Young Rebel." Prose Writing 1940-1990. The Cambridge History of American Literature Vol. 8. Ed. Sacvan Bercovitch. Cambridge University Press, 1996.

- Talbot, Jill Lynn. This is Not an Exit. The Road narrative in Contemporary American Literature and Film. PhD, 1999.

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