106-080 Post-War American Fiction

Note

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually admission to Fourth Year Honours, see Honours entry.

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

This subject provides for a critical study of a number of highly influential fictional works in the post-war period. Each writer is chosen on the basis of stature and the representative nature of their writing, whether it be modernist, postmodernist, humanist or political. The subject is also concerned with selected post-war literary 'movements', such as Beat writing, the rise of 'black' writing, and New Journalism, and with the reaction to them in cultural debates. On completion of the subject students should have gained, through a close study of a significant body of post-war American fiction, an understanding of the representation of specific social and cultural issues, including racial, political, gender and aesthetic.

Assessment

Written work totalling 5000 words.

Prescribed Texts

• J Baldwin, Another Country. Penguin.
• S Bellow, The Dean's December. Penguin.
• J Cheever, Bullet Park. Vintage.
• D De Lillo, Mao II. Vintage.
• N Mailer, Advertisement for Myself. Panther.
• T Morrison, Beloved. Picador.
• V Nabokov, Lolita. Penguin.
• F O'Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge. Methuen.
• W Stegner, Crossing to Safety. McPhee Gribble.