Posted by Steven
on 22/9/2009, 12:10:16
76.187.110.226
I just remembered that I had promised to post some summary observations about the free online course from Yale. For those who may not have seen the original discussion, this is a series of video recordings of an actual undergraduate course taught at Yale by Professor Amy Hungerford. I believe Joffre was the one who first discovered it on YouTube, but the videos and transcripts can also be downloaded from the university web site at: http://oyc.yale.edu/english/american-novel-since-1945
There were 14 books to read for the class, and they were read in chronological order. Three of them weren't technically novels (two memoirs and one collection of short stories). All of them were by well-known authors. You can see the list by following the course link above.
The reading selections reflect Hungerford's thesis that the predominate theme in American fiction of the period is what she calls the "Identity Plot." The protagonist ia a member of a minority, but is also in some way alienated from his minority group as well as from the majority.
Hungerford's lectures focused on very close readings of the text and on themes and issues that seemed to me to be somewhat conjectural at times. For example: noting that in The Known World a bird flies from left to right, taking this as a symbol of the act of reading, and deriving its importance from the fact that the author's mother is illiterate.
There was very little mention in the course of authors outside the syllabus, and only brief discussion of general trends in modern literature. This disappointed me. On the other hand, the demonstration of the power of close reading was very valuable, if somewhat daunting.
At the end of the course one of the students asked Hungerford which authors were her favorites. She mentioned several that were part of the course: Roth, Robinson, McCarthy and Jones, but one who was not: Dave Eggers.
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