New World Genres Reconsidered

The challenges, issues, and agendas involved in settling the New World gave rise to striking new or transformed literary genres. The development of these genres has in turn influenced the transcultural American society's (self-)images and its ideologies. For example, the jeremiad of the New England Puritans, a type of 'God bless America' sermon, re-emerges in presidential rhetoric, even in Obama’s speeches. The tall tale with its frontier humor entered mainstream American literature in Mark Twain's works and in combination with 20th-century cultural movements has produced playfully critical novels and films in our own time. As an example, we will read Daniel Wallace's Big Fish (1998) and compare it to Tim Burton's movie adaptation. The vibrant African American heritage is indebted to the controversial 19th-century slave narratives. The ethnic bildungsroman is the -genre supreme” of ethnic writers, both male and female, and has blurred the line between novel and autobiography; we will read Sherman Alexie’s prize-winning The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2008) in its entirety. In connection with the nonfiction novel (e.g. Truman Capote's -In Cold Blood-), this tendency to dramatize authentic events can even be seen as one source of the 'reality TV' trend. And who can imagine modern society without the short story, specifically the detective story, propagated by Edgar A. Poe? Daniel Wallace, Big Fish (any edition) Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (any edition) All other material will be contained in the semester reader. Anglistik - Sprachpraxis BA-LKM: Modul 1 abgeschlossen Universität Siegen SoSe 2011 Ph.D. Waegner Cathy Ph.D