Spring 2008

Spring08  ENL
British Authors: Beginnings to 1800  
  

Survey of important English literary works intended for students in Liberal Studies and those exploring a literature major. Among the authors typically considered are Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton.

Spring08 AML2010 01
American Authors to 1875  
Cristobal Silva 644-1771, WMS 229, csilva@fsu.edu

This course is a survey of American literary history from the European conquests to the mid-nineteenth century. While the course is intended to help students develop their close reading and critical writing skills, we will do so by continually interrogating our notions of what "America" is, of how writers and thinkers have tried to express what it means to be American, and of what it is that literary critics do. Authors we will read include Winthrop, Bradstreet, Rowlandson, Franklin, Equiano, Wheatley, Murray, Emerson, Hawthorne, Douglass, Melville, Dickinson, and Whitman.

Spring08 AML2600 
African-American Literary Tradition  
  

A survey of the canonical works of African Americans, typically including Douglass, Chesnutt, Hurston, Wright, Ellison, Baldwin, Morrison, and Walker.

Spring08 AML3041 
American Authors Since 1875  
  

Significant works by representative Realists, Literary Naturalists, Modernists, and contemporary writers. Authors typically covered include Twain, James, Crane, Chopin, Eliot, Hemingway, Frost, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Wright, Baldwin, Morrison, and O'Connor.

Spring08 AML3311 02
Major Figures in American Literature – Slavery  
Ned Stuckey-French 644-2638, WMS 419, nstuckey-french@fsu.edu

The problem of race, specifically the problem of slavery, lies at the heart of the American experience. America was built in large part by the labor of slaves, it was nearly destroyed by a civil war fought over the issue of slavery and the effects of slavery persist today. In this course we will read nine works of fiction and nonfiction that are connected by the theme of slavery and written by American literary authors now generally considered to be "major."

Students will write short responses to the readings and two papers, as well as take occasional reading quizzes, a midterm exam and a final exam.

Texts:
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Norton) 1845
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Harvard) 1861
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (Norton) 1852
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Norton) 1885
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (Norton) 1901
W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (Norton) 1903
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (Harper) 1937
Richard Wright, Black Boy (American Hunger) (Harper) 1945
Toni Morrison, Beloved (Plume) 1987

Spring08 AML3311 
Major Figures in American Literature  
  

Examination of selected works of major American writers.

Spring08 AML3630 
Latino/a Literature  
  

Spring08 AML4111 
19th c. American Novel  
  

This course introduces students to the American novel, from Charles Brockden Brown and James Fenimore Cooper to Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, and Crane.

Spring08 AML4121 
The 20th-Century American Novel  
Timothy Parrish 644 4059, WMS 221, tparrish@fsu.edu

Beginning with Faulkner's Light in August, this course will examine the relationship between self and history in twentieth-century American literature. Other authors we will be reading include: Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Ralph Ellison, Philip Roth, Kurt Vonnegut, Saul Bellow, and Denis Johnson.

Spring08 AML4261 
Literature of the South: The Undead Past  
  

Spring08 AML4604 
The African American Literary Tradition  
  

Spring08 CRW3110 
Fiction Technique  
  

Analysis of and exercises in the elements of fiction: point of view, conflict, characterization, tone, and image.

Spring08 CRW3311 
Poetic Technique  
  

For aspiring poets and critics. Study of the elements of poetry, some practice in writing poetry.

Spring08 CRW3410 
Dramatic Technique  
  

Spring08 CRW4120 02
Advanced Fiction Workshop  
Barbara Hamby 644-4131, WMS 459, bhamby@fsu.edu

Students will write 14 poems and present 7 in class. We will also study many aspects of craft using anthologies and the work of individual poets, including the first books of several writers who are close in age to workshop participants. Each student will write a short response paper to the 5-6 books we look at in class.

Spring08 CRW4120r 
Poetry Workshop  
  

Prerequisite: Permission of instructor. For poets who approach excellence and aspire toward publication. May be repeated for a total of twenty-four (24) hours credit.

Spring08 ENC1101 
First-Year Composition and Rhetoric  
  

This course is designed with the major purpose of helping students grow as writers and critical thinkers. The major text for the course is the students' own writing. Students write either four papers taken through a series of drafts, or in some sections, they write three papers and complete a multi-media project, for a total of 22-25 pages of polished writing by the end of the semester. Students receive frequent written and oral feedback to their writing from both their teacher and peers and spend class time discussing readings from the common text, Wendy Bishop's On Writing, working on invention exercises, workshopping each others' writing, and working on in-class writing exercises. Teachers meet with students twice each semester in individual conferences. Regular class attendance and participation is required in this class in which students are active participants and learners.

Spring08 ENC1102 
First-Year Writing, Reading, and Research  
  

This course is designed to focus on helping students grow as writers and thinkers by learning to critically read and analyze the texts of their lives that bombard them each day: billboards, websites, paintings, photos, essays, poems, memoirs, movies, tv shows, advertisements, etc. Students typically write three papers taken through a series of drafts for a total of 22-25 polished pages of writing and often complete a multi-media project which might include an electronic portfolio of their writing. The course includes a research component that offers instruction in how to conduct research and write an essay in which the student correctly refers to outside sources, includes parenthetical documentation, and constructs a works cited page. Students receive frequent written and oral feedback to their writing from both their teacher and peers and spend class time discussing readings from the common text, Robert Atwans' Convergences, working on invention exercises, workshopping each others' writing, and working on in-class writing exercises. Teachers meet with students twice each semester in individual conferences. Regular class attendance and participation is required in this class in which students are active participants and learners.

Spring08 ENC3310 
Article and Essay Workshop  
  

Writing of nonfiction prose. Papers totaling 8,000 words. Five private conferences. For students above the freshman level. May be repeated to a maximum of six (6) semester hours.

Spring08 ENC4311 01
Advanced Article and Essay Workshop  
Kristie Fleckenstein 644 3530, WMS 447, kfleckenstein@fsu.edu

This configuration of ENC 4311 will focus on what Robert Root, Jr., and Michael Steinberg call the fourth genre: creative nonfiction, a loose category of writing that includes memoir, literary journalism, the nature essay, and others. Phillip Lopate labels such writing the ?personal essay? because creative nonfiction is marked by the intimate connection between writer and reader. Relying on visual, digital, and textual selections, we will read and analyze various configurations of the personal essay; your final creative project will consist of an original personal essay.

Spring08 ENC4311 04
Advanced Article & Essay Workshop  
Ned Stuckey-French 644-2638, WMS 419, nstuckey-french@fsu.edu

This is a course in the writing of creative nonfiction. Within this large and sometimes unwieldy genre we will focus on the personal essay and begin to explore its range and flexibility by means of discussions of our own work and that of published essayists. Students will write exercises that focus on various techniques, responses to the readings, critiques of each other's work and drafts of two essays, one of which they will revise and expand.

Texts:
Kitchen & Jones, eds., In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction (Norton)
Kitchen & Jones, eds., In Brief: Short Takes on the Personal (Norton)
Atwan & Oates, eds., Best American Essays of the Century (Houghton Mifflin)

Spring08 ENC4311 05
Adv. Article and Essay  
Michael Neal 644 4024, WMS 444, michael.neal@fsu.edu

Section 5 of Adv. Article and Essay workshop will focus on inquiry and multi-media composition. Students will develop questions which will prompt their extended investigation into selected topics. In considering rhetorical situations, students will design and compose texts in a variety of media (e.g., electronic portfolios, blogs, digital photos and video, etc.). This section does not require previously acquired computer expertise, though a willingness to experiment with readily accessible composing technologies is essential.

Spring08 ENC4942 
Editing Internship  
  

Spring08 ENG3014 04
Critical Issues in Literary Studies: An Introduction to Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory  
Robert Patterson 645 6863, WMS 445, rjpatterson@fsu.edu

In this introductory course, we will consider how theoretical frameworks help us make meaning of texts. Exploring some of the key theorists, theories, and critical practices that have been employed to study literature, we will examine theoretical approaches and frameworks, including psychoanalysis, structuralism and post-structuralism, Marxism, deconstruction, modernism and post-modernism, (black) feminism, signifyin(g), and cultural studies. Furthermore, we will apply these approaches to texts in order to understand the ways in which readers produce meaning from texts. To aid us in this application, we will read Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour," Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada, and excerpts from Louis Erdrich's Love Medicine. Students enrolling in this section should expect daily quizzes, attendance, classroom discussion, an in-class group presentation and paper, 2 examinations, and 1 paper to determine their course grade.

Required texts include:

Spring08 ENG3310 
Film Genres  
  

Film as a means of exploring the problems of genre studies: relationship to literary genres, historical continuity, transformation of genre in the film medium.

Spring08 ENG4020 
 Rhetorical Theory and Practice 
Kristie Fleckenstein 644 3530, WMS 447, kfleckenstein@fsu.edu

ENG 4020 introduces students to the range and power of rhetorical theory. It includes a historical overview of various theories and provides opportunities for an application of those theories. The focus of analysis for this configuration of English 4020 is popular culture, which means, literally, the culture of the people. Pop culture, frequently cast as an opposite or binary of high culture, includes an array activities, texts, and media that appeal to a broad spectrum of people. Thus, pop culture includes everything from soap operas to malling, from Sin City to Barbie dolls, from Harlequin romances to hairstyles, from rock to rockabilly, from World of War Craft to MySpace. We will analyze pop culture to uncover the way it functions persuasively.

The subject matter of the course will be three-fold: We will

The goals of the course include

Spring08 ENG4932 
Topics in English  
  

Spring08 ENG4934 
Senior Seminar: The Poet in the City 
Joann Gardner 644 1881, WMS 426, jgardner@fsu.edu

This course will discuss the poet's relationship to community, beginning with Plato's Republic and ending with Spoken Word. Expect to study both traditional and nontraditional texts, in the form of poetry and critical essays, and including such writers as Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Allen Ginsberg and Adrienne Rich. A field work component will complement class discussions, oral presentation and exams.

Spring08 ENG4934 02
Senior Seminar: The Supernatural in African Diaspora Fiction  
Jerrilyn McGregory 644 3161, WMS 458, jmcgregory@fsu.edu

Any number of approaches to African Diaspora fiction can be identified. In this course the focus is on the supernatural as it manifests itself in various forms of fiction in contemporary works. I use the word "supernatural" expansively to include not only the usual indications of phenomena beyond the natural world and the scope of human action, but conjuration, "speculative fiction," "magic realism," and manipulations of time and historical periods that create an "unnatural, realistic" novel form.

This class will explore belief systems that traditionally have informed the particularistic worldview of many people of African descent. The course privileges an experience-centered analysis of belief systems as they inform writings within the African Diaspora. The objective is to develop a high context for some core supernatural beliefs that operate as a recursive strategy in African Diaspora literature(s).

REQUIRED TEXTS:
Tina McElroy Ansa, Baby in the Family
Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters
Octavia Butler, Kindred
Charles Chesnutt, The Conjure Woman
August Wilson, The Piano Lesson
Jacques Roumain, The Masters of the Dew
Gloria Naylor, Mama Day
Nalo Hopkinson, Brown Girl in the Ring

Spring08 ENG4934 03
Senior Seminar Identity, Ideology, Conquest, Colonisation: Interpreting Early English 
Elaine Treharne WMS 422, etreharne@mac.com

This course will examine the foundations of English Literature, culture and subjectivity, employing pertinent approaches, such as colonial and postcolonial theories, trauma theory, feminisms, and identity politics. By investigating texts and their manuscripts from c. 900 to 1400, plus some later reinventions of the medieval era, we shall seek to determine how identity might be perceived through the written word; how the ideological implications of the writings of the dominant elite can be interpreted and understood, especially through manuscript form; how conquest affects those who are conquered; and how cultures and individuals can be appropriated and deliberately rewritten. Among the texts that we'll read will be the words of kings, religious utterances of damnation and salvation, the great Arthurian legends, women's songs, quests for personal and spiritual understanding, and revelations of divine inspiration. Intermingled with this stimulating and entertaining textual panoply, we shall hear the (usually silenced) voices of the common person, the lamentations of the exiled, the acerbic attacks of the satirist, and the imaginative recreations of modern writers and editors, setting their anthologies, novels, poetry and films in new settings (with some alarming results!).

By the end of the module students will be able to

Assessment:
Students will present a seminar paper (25%); and submit a three-part research paper on a topic of the student's choice. The latter paper will be comprised of an analytical bibliography (25%); an outline of the proposed research methodology and hypothesis (25%); and the paper itself, shaped by the feedback on the bibliography and research methodology (25%).

Course Textbook (required)
Elaine Treharne, ed., Old and Middle English, 890-1400, 2nd edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003)

Spring08 ENG4934 
Senior Seminar Caribbean Gothic 
Candace Ward 644-1833, WMS 113, candace.ward@fsu.edu

As Markman Ellis observes in History of the Gothic, Great Britain's position as the dominant slave trading nation during the eighteenth and nineteenth century exerted a clear influence on the development of gothic fiction. In this course, we will read a variety of texts that demonstrate the intersections between the gothic and the "horrors" of slavery-works published before and after the abolition of that institution. Texts to be covered include "Isle of Devils" and excerpts from Journal of a West Indian Proprietor by Matthew Lewis, author of one of the most famous eighteenth-century gothic novels, The Monk; the little known Caribbean novel, Hamel the Obeah Man (1827), which deals with colonial anxieties over African religious practices and slave insurrections; Jane Eyre, with its (Creole) madwoman in the attic and Jean Rhys's Creole reply, The Wide Sargasso Sea; Florence Marryat's Blood of the Vampire (1896) with its horror over miscegenation; The White Witch of Rosehall (1929), a persistently popular twentieth-century Jamaican gothic potboiler; Anthony Winkler's hilarious critique of Jamaican and American culture, The Duppy; and, finally, Jamaica Kincaid's Autobiography of My Mother and Pauline Melville's Migration of Ghosts, contemporary works whose gothic overtones reflect the haunting legacy of slavery and colonialism. We'll also watch White Zombie, starring Bela Lugosi and set in Haiti, and A High Wind in Jamaica.

Spring08 ENG4934 
Senior Seminar in Literature: "Experiments in the Novel"  
Timothy Parrish 644 4059, WMS 221 tparrish@fsu.edu

Beginning with Don Quixote we'll be examining novels (and a handful of short stories) that challenge their own status as narrative artifacts. That's a fancy way of saying we won't be reading realist novels but books that emphasize formal experimentation. Other authors we will be reading include: Diderot, Borges, Cortazar, Nabokov, Kafka, Robbe-Grillet, Moravia, Bernhard, Sebald, Hrabal and Saramago (a recent Nobel Prize winner). Almost without exception, these books make the reader--you--part of the text they create. They are fun and I hope the class will be too.

Spring08 ENG4934 
Senior Seminar: Fear, Identity & Gender in Lit and Film 
Linda Saladin-Adams 644 5569, WMS 429, lsaladin@fsu.edu

This class will examine the surfacing of fear, anxiety, and trauma in selected written texts and films, but mostly films. What, in fact, makes us determine a movie to be a "horror" film? While Freud located identity formation in the emotion of fear--principally fear of castration--subsequent thinkers see identity and anxiety as far more complex and use definitions that are less sexist and rigid. The information we gather will be speculative and as a group, we will redefine terms to suit our applications of them. Course requirements minimally include written responses, a term paper, and a presentation.

Spring08 ENG4938 
Honors Seminar: Emerson, Poe, and Prophecy  
David Kirby 644-1534, WMS 420, dkirby@fsu.edu

The class will examine and then extend the ideas of two writers who, between them, predicted America: Emerson, the cerebral cheerleader who dreamed into being an America that is confident, diverse, and sprawling, the America of Whitman and Ella Fitzgerald and John Kennedy; and Poe, the dark fantasist whose nightmares spawned William S. Burroughs, Marilyn Manson, and the prison at Abu Ghraib. The first part of the course will be devoted to the major works of these two seminal writers; after that, we will examine contemporary manifestations of their ideas. Intensive research and in-class presentations are key components of this course. There will be two shorter and more general papers, one on each writer, that will take a structuralist approach, as well as a longer ?totalizing?paper examining a modern manifestation of the ideas of either or both thinkers; this longer paper can be devoted to music, film, foreign policy, celebrity culture, mall life, television, plastic surgery, even literature.

Spring08 ENG4996 
Apps Critical Theory  
  

Spring08 ENL2022 
British Authors: 1800-Present  
  

Survey of important English literary works intended for students in liberal studies and those exploring a literature major. Among the authors typically considered are Wordsworth, Dickens, and Conrad.

Spring08 ENL3210 
Medieval Lit in Translation  
  

Literature of the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman periods: Beowulf, Romance of the Rose, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and others.

Spring08 ENL3334 
Introduction to Shakespeare (Honors)  
A. E. B. Coldiron 645 7630, WMS 431, acoldiron@fsu.edu

This course will introduce major and lesser-known plays of Shakespeare and read each of them using four main critical perspectives: 1) performance and performativity: we'll consider the plays in terms of the history of staging and in terms of contemporary theories of performativity; 2) textuality and textual theory: we'll read the plays in terms of book history and textual theories; 3) early modern imitatio and intertextuality: we'll read sources, analogues, and imitations of the plays in terms of Renaissance ideas about literary authorship, which were very different from the post-Romantic and modern ideas about "originality" in literature that we now may take for granted; 4) historicism and topicality: we'll read the plays in terms of their historical, political, and social contexts, using sixteenth- and seventeenth-century documents to do so. These are certainly not the only approaches available to interpreters of Shakespeare (for instance, psychoanalytic, post-structuralist, post-colonial, and new-aesthetic approaches will come up); but the critical matrix of the course is performance/text/imitatio/historical contexts. Likely course activities: performance projects, papers, discussion, midterm, final.

Spring08 ENL3334 10
Introduction to Shakespeare  
David Gants WMS 316, dgants@fsu.edu

We will approach the study of Shakespeare's plays not from any one overarching perspective but rather from numerous (and sometimes contradictory) avenues: literary, theatrical, historical, linguistic, theoretical, and aesthetic. The overall aim of the course will be to acquire a broad familiarity with Shakespearean texts and contexts. Along the way we will engage in a number diverse activities: short lectures, in-class discussions, informal and formal writing, student presentations, casting exercises, short quizzes, database inquiries, and video viewings. Just how the balance of goals and activities will work out in the end depends on the unique interests, tastes, and talents of the class, but by April we should all have a deeper and more fulfilling understanding of the plays we read and discuss.

Spring08 ENL4122 01
Nineteenth-century British novel  
Meegan Kennedy 644-7771, WMS 413, meegan.kennedy (at) fsu.edu

The nineteenth century is sometimes considered the golden age of the novel. Reading domestic or historical fiction, romance or realism, silver fork novels or Newgate novels, sensation novels or condition of England novels, New Woman novels or scientific romances - nineteenth-century readers experienced a roller coaster of novel genres equal only in pace and variety to the rapid changes transforming British society. While we can't fit in all the genres I mention above, we will tackle six great (good as well as big) novels, in an effort to understand something of the pleasures and compulsions of nineteenth-century novel readers and writers. Authors include Austen, Scott, Dickens, Gaskell, Eliot, and Haggard.

Spring08 ENL4132 
Modern British Novel  
  

Typically includes Conrad, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Greene, Spark, and Lessing.

Spring08 ENL4220 
Renaissance Poetry and Prose  
Elizabeth Spiller 645-1543, WMS 427, espiller@fsu.edu

This course returns to the last great age of English kings and queens: we will begin with the remarkable Henry VIII, turn to his daughter Elizabeth, whom Henry had once declared illegitimate and who transformed the liability of being a female prince into a source of power, follow the rise of the Stuart monarchs under James I, and end with the aftermath to shocking execution of King Charles, the head of England, Scotland, and Ireland, in 1649. We will study how these monarchs saw themselves not just as princes and patrons but also as poets. These princes tried to use the language of poetry to consolidate their power, but poets of the period also make monarchy one of their key subjects. Beginning with Machiavelli?s advice for making princes and ending with Milton?s arguments for beheading them, we will see how writers such as William Shakespeare, Thomas More, Thomas Wyatt, Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson, and John Milton praised, scolded, and counseled the royal families of England. In doing so, we will explore the complex interrelationships between literature and politics during this key moment in English history.

Spring08 ENL4220 03
Renaissance Poetry and Prose  
David Gants WMS 316, dgants@fsu.edu

This course will cover the poetry and prose of Britain from the end of the War of the Roses to the beginnings of the English Civil War. We will organize our readings around three different manifestations of Love: 1) Love of God, or the varieties of religious experiences found in literature from this time; 2) Romantic Love, or the various ways in which writers have represented the relations between men and women; and 3) Love of Community, or the literature celebrating tribal, civic, national, and political identities. Our discussions of these varied writings will evolve through a variety of mechanisms: brief lectures, in-class dialogue and presentation, short quizzes, blog reading responses, formal and informal writing assignments, and a collaborative group project.

Spring08 ENL4251 01
Victorian British Literature  
Meegan Kennedy 644 7771, WMS 413, meegan.kennedy (at) fsu.edu

This course explores the literature of Queen Victoria's reign, an era very close to our own in its interests and anxieties, and a period that prompted a strong reaction from twentieth-century writers and artists. Students will read poetry, essays, fiction, and drama in this survey of some of the major figures of the time. The course also examines the explosion of print culture; the vexed divide between high and low culture; the literary negotiation of issues like voting rights, women's role in society, and the growing British empire; and how Victorians became increasingly interested in the relationship between word and image. Authors include Browning (both), Tennyson, Dickens, George Eliot, Rossetti, Kipling, Arnold, Wilde.

Spring08 ENL4251 02
Victorian British Literature  
Barry Faulk 644 6530, WMS 219, bfaulk@fsu.edu

The course surveys 19th century British literature, with a special focus on texts from the period of 1880-1910. We study the new theories of art, gender, science, and politics that emerged in the period. Along with novels by Oscar Wilde, A.C. Doyle, R.L. Stevenson, we'll also read controversial journalism from the period by W.T. Stead, polemical essays on the New Woman by Sarah Grand and Ouida, and end of the century literature on British imperialism by Joseph Conrad and Rider Haggard. Required texts include Literature and Culture at the Fin-de-Siecle, ed. Talia Schafer, Stoker's Dracula, Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did.

Spring08 ENL4333 
Advanced Shakespeare  
A. E. B. Coldiron 645 7630, WMS 431, acoldiron@fsu.edu

This course studies the later plays of Shakespeare, focusing on the tragedies and romances. Among the questions that will occupy us: issues in genre, language, and cultural and social backgrounds. We'll also try to understand and demystify the processes of canon-construction (and "bardolatry") that have acted on these plays. Likely course activities: panels, performance projects, papers, discussion, midterm, final.

Spring08 LIT2010 
Introduction to Fiction  
  

This course introduces students to such narrative elements as point of view, characterization, setting, theme, and symbolism in the works of longer prose fiction. It also provides an introduction to the basic interpretive skills necessary to conduct literary analysis.

Spring08 LIT2020 
Introduction to the Short Story  
  

This course is an introduction to the art of the short story that focuses on such issues as tone, narration, form, and theme in representative short stories.

Spring08 LIT2030 
Introduction to Poetry  
  

This course engages students in the art of understanding and analyzing poetry as a genre. It looks closely and critically at the forms, themes, techniques, and devices in selected poems from a variety of historical periods.

Spring08 LIT2081 
Contemporary Literature  
  

Poetry, fiction, drama from WWII to the present. For beginning students.

Spring08 LIT2230 
Introduction to Global Literature  
  

Introduction to English-language literature from countries that were former British colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.

Spring08 LIT3043 
Modern Drama  
  

Spring08 LIT3383 
Women in Literature  
  

An examination of the representation of women in literature.

Spring08 LIT4033 01
Modern Poetry  
Joann Gardner 644 1881, WMS 426, jgardner@fsu.edu

The purpose of this course is to familiarize the student with important works of poetry and poetic trends of High Modernism -- that is, poetry produced in the last half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, generally associated with the free verse movement. This will include gaining an historical sense, learning about new techniques and values, discovering the principal themes and interests and becoming acquainted with the major figures of this time period. Poets studied will include Pound, Eliot, Stevens, HD and Williams.

Required Texts:
The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Third Edition. Volume 1. Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, Eds.

Spring08 LIT4093 
Currents in Contemporary Literature  
  

Diverse, resurgent, and oppositional trends in literature since 1945; Mailer, Brautigan, Bellow, and others.

Spring08 LIT4093 
Currents in Contemporary Literature  
Timothy Parrish 644 4059, WMS 221 tparrish@fsu.edu

Postmodern fiction generally does three things: it blurs the line between fact and fiction, it challenges one's belief in a coherent self, and it rewrites history as something made (created) and not found (merely inherited). Beginning with Kafka (because he sets up the themes of the course and remains disturbingly contemporary), we will be addressing these three claims through the works of DeLillo (Libra), Didion (Democracy), Sciascia, Lampedusa, Robbe-Grillet, Bernhard, Philip Roth, Sebald, McCarthy (The Road) and Saramago (Blindness). In these marvelous works, we will also catch the occasional glimpse of the nightmare that was the twentieth century. As we shall see, these marvelous novels provide consolation if not relief from history's ravages.