ENG 1926 - AMERICAN MYTHOLOGIES: MAIN STREET,AMERICA

credits: 3.0
The continuing success of Garrison’s Keillor’s fictional accounts of life in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, is only another reminder of our society’s mythic fascination with life in small-town America. While American writers since Hawthorne have unceremoniously sought to expose the darker sides of American small-town life, we nevertheless persist in imagining – and in fervently admiring – an ideal of archetypal American hometowns: neat clapboard houses with white picket fences, clustered about a quaint town square (complete with bandstand) and peopled with charming, folksy characters out of Norman Rockwell paintings. This course looks at different versions of the myth as portrayed in a variety of literary genres (fictional memoir, drama, poetry anthology, short story, novel) by a variety of American writers from throughout the Twentieth Century: Garrision Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, Minnesota; Thornton Wilder’s Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire; Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River, Illinois; Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio; Harper Lee’s Maycomb, Alabama; Sinclair Lewis; Gopher Prarie, Minnesota. We shall also examine at least one film version of the myth, Peter Bogdanovich’s Anarene, Texas (based on the novel by Larry McMurtry). Method of Instruction: Classes will consist of a mix of informal lecturing and general discussion. The course requires a considerable amount of reading, and thus students who regard daily reading as something of a burden are respectfully advised to consider taking a different course. Method of Evaluation: Regular reading quizzes and short reports (300-500 words), a mid-term exam and final exam (33%). Attendance and participation in class discussions will be regarded as measures of student interest, and short-comings in either or both will be reflected in final grades. Meets *WEP Distribution Requirements.