106-426 Post-War American Fiction

Formerly available as 106-080. Students who have completed 106-080 are not eligible to enrol in this subject.

Usually admission to the postgraduate diploma or fouth year honours in English, see Honours entry.

This subject provides for a critical study of a number of highly influential fictional works in the postwar 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 postwar 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 postwar American fiction, an understanding of the representation of specific social and cultural issues, including racial, political, gender and aesthetic.

• be able to apply research skills and critical methods to a field of inquiry;

• be able to develop persuasive arguments on a given topic;

• be able to communicate oral and written arguments and ideas effectively and articulately.

An essay of 5000 words for 4th year students or 6000 words for masters students 100% (due at the end of semester).

A subject reader will be available.

• J Baldwin, Go Tell it on the Mountain. Penguin.
• S Bellow, Mr Sammler's Planet. Penguin.
• J Cheever, Bullet Park. Vintage.
• D De Lillo, Libra. Penguin.
• B Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible. Abacus.
• T Morrison, Beloved. Picador.
• V Nabokov, Lolita. Penguin.
• T Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49. Vintage.
• J Updike, Couples. Penguin.