God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end. You have been weighed in the balancesand found wanting. Your kingdom is given to the Medes and Persians

اثر هنری که مشاهده میکنید از Rembrandt به نام King Belshazzar’s Feast است که ناگهان در مهمانی دست خداوند ظاهر می شود و پیام بالا را به روی دیوار می نویسد .

 

Course Overview The purpose of this course is to investigate major literary movements in the American and British traditions. The course intends to provide a limited yet sufficient understanding of the literary movements, their shared traits and origins, and their connections with one another and other schools of thought/fine arts. However, it must be noted that a single semester could not provide enough capacity for the most comprehensive of investigations regarding this subject matter. Prominent figures and masterpieces of each school will be introduced. Moreover, selected literary works and films will be scrutinized. The main focus of this course will be on major works and influential figures. Therefore, social, historical, and political contexts are not going to be of primary concern in our readings throughout the course.

Course Objectives/Outcomes • Analyzing literary works and address prominent features of each literary movement. • Promoting students’ awareness of the texts and their relationships with the movements and the shared characteristics of movements. • Increasing class’ understating of concepts such as school, movement, and aesthetics. • Addressing the influence of the movements on other forms of arts, and of course, how these literary movement could have possibly been influenced by other fine arts. • Addressing the connections between the movements and the field of literary criticism.

Required Texts Primary: Abrams, Meyer Howard, and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. Secondary: Cuddon, John A., and Rafey Habib. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Penguin Books, 2014. Galens, David. Literary Movements for Students Presenting Analysis, Context and Criticism on Literary Movements. Gale, 2002. *Literary works’ PDFs will be sent to students.

Schedule Week 1: • Key concepts: Literary movements and schools of thought. • Classicism and Medieval Mystics. Week 2: • Renaissance, Humanism, Metaphysical School of Poetry. • Text(s): George Herbert’s ‘The Collar’. Milton’s ‘On His Blindness’. Week 3: • Neoclassicism and Enlightenment. • Text(s): A. Pope’s ‘An Essay on Criticism’ Part One. Week 4: • Romanticism (Gothic Literature) and Transcendentalism. • Text(s): Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ and Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘Annabel Lee’. Week 5: • Symbolism, Aestheticism and Decadent Movement. • Text(s): Dante Gabriel Rossetti Week 6: • Bildungsroman, Colonialism, Naturalism and Realism. • Motion Picture(s): The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) directed by Stephen Norrington. Week 7: • Modernism and Imagism. • Motion Picture(s): Mrs Dalloway (1998) directed by Marleen Gorris. Week 8: • Expressionism and Impressionism. • Motion Picture(s): Pollock (2000) directed by Ed Harris. Week 9: • Dadaism, Surrealism. With An Introduction to Magic Realism. • Paintings created by figures of these movements. Week 10: • Beat Movement and Harlem Renaissance. • Motion Picture(s): The Cotton Club (1984) directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Week 11: • Absurdism and Postmodernism. • Motion Picture(s): Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) directed by George Roy Hill. • Text(s): John Barth’s ‘Autobiography: A Self-Recorded Fiction’. Week 12: • Postcolonialism and Smaller Movements. What is ‘after theory’? • Science Fiction and Fantasy. Week 13: • Review.