104年第2學期-0185 文討：美國寫實、美國生活 課程資訊

評分方式

評分項目	配分比例	說明
Response papers	30
Midterm paper	20
Final paper	20
Background report	15
Discussion questions	15

教育目標

1. To broaden their understanding of a crucial period of modern fiction in a specific culture. 2. To sharpen their critical reading, writing, and speaking skills. 3. To gain a finer understanding of the trajectory of American literature.

課程概述

The United States in the late nineteenth century was a nation experiencing dramatic change – and great paradoxes. The Civil War had finally brought an end to slavery, but millions of African-Americans faced the harshness of racial segregation. The War had also left nearly a million casualties and widespread devastation. Some cities needed to be rebuilt, and others swelled as the displaced population sought work in an increasingly industrialized and urbanized economy. During the final decades of the century and into early years of the twentieth century, advances in industry and technology brought hope of progress to ten of millions of immigrants. The newcomers arrived in the U.S. expecting a better life, but many lived in urban squalor hardly better than the world they had left behind. The same period brought countless women their first taste of economic freedom, and they struggled to match that growing independence with political and civil rights. Concurrent with this transformation of American society, American literature was undergoing its own revolution. Realism – broadly defined as a turning away from the overly sentimental in favor of a portrayal of life as it truly presents itself – flourished during these years. Writers working in this mode created innumerable stories that mirrored the changes sweeping American society. We will read representative samples of this short fiction, with an eye toward examining parallel changes in American society and American art.

基本資料

選修課，學分數：0-2
上課時間：四/8,9[LAN214]
修課班級：外文系3,4
修課年級：年級以上
選課備註：1.須填系內申請單2.學生畢業前須至少修兩門文討課程

參考書目

American Realism (1999).
Bret Harte, “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
Mary Wilkins Freeman, “A Church Mouse”
R. Cooke, “How Celia Changed Her Mind”
Kate Chopin, “Athénaïse” (novella)
J. Harris, “Free Joe and the Rest of the World”
Charles W. Chesnutt, “The Sheriff’s Children”
Hamlin Garland, “The Return of a Private”
Harold Frederic, “My Aunt Susan”
Stephen Crane, “The Men in the Storm”