Limits of Reality: American Poetry in the Mid-Century - AAA500330

• Title: Meze reality: Americká poezie v polovině století
• Guaranteed by: Ústav anglistiky a amerikanistiky (21-UAA)
• Faculty: Faculty of Arts
• Actual: from 2008
• Semester: winter
• Points: 2
• E-Credits: 5
• Examination process: winter s.:
• Hours per week, examination: winter s.:0/2, C [HT]
• Capacity: unknown / unknown (unknown)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: not taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Guarantor: doc. Justin Quinn, Ph.D.

Annotation

OBJECTIVES
This course begins with an analysis of what Robert Lowell called the ?tranquilized fifties?, that is, the post-war United States
at the onset of the Cold War, by examining the way that different novelists analyse the construction of that reality. Themes
such as sexuality, race and foreignness will arise as lines of demarcation, deciding what is real (i.e., socially and culturally
acceptable) and what is unreal (i.e., threatening to the status quo). In the first part of the course we will look at a wide range
of materials, including paintings and music, demonstrating that the 1950s were not quite so tranquilized as Lowell had them.
Following this, we will look at the rather limited and restrained early work of the New Critical poets, and then the explosive
poetics of Allen Ginsberg, who recuperated the tradition of inclusive radical American patriotism from Whitman. We will
conclude with a consideration of the variety of 1960s poetry.

ASSESSMENT
Record of attendance will be kept and to receive their credit students will be expected to submit an essay of 3,000 words.

Last update: UAAZNOJE (30.05.2008)

Teaching methods

seminář

Last update: UAAZNOJE (30.05.2008)