Sylabus
The syllabus will be made available on Moodle.
Anotace
In line with its title, the course focuses on close reading of selected works of American literature (or excerpts from such works) but also aims to provide sufficient context that would enable the students to situate the texts studied within a broader framework of development. In the first two-thirds, the course will progress chronologically, introducing important representatives of particular literary currents, mostly through poems, short stories or excerpts from longer works that will be made available on Moodle. The last third of the course will focus on a comparative and contrastive analysis of three pairs of novels (plus a novel and a play) that share certain elements such as a common theme, and in some cases also a type of protagonist, but originated in different periods or differ in other important aspects like e.g. composition or narrative strategies. The students were informed of the requirement to read these longer works in advance (with questions and themes for discussion or supplementary materials provided on Moodle) and will be expected to be familiar with these texts by mid-April (16th) when the last four weeks of the course begin.
The credits for the course will be awarded on the basis of active participation (and minimum 75 % attendance), a written exam consisting of 6-7 open-ended questions and a subsequent discussion over each student's exam paper that may draw further on course readings.