Mapping the Transatlantic

1. Mapping the Transatlantic HUM 3285: British and American Literature Spring 2011 Dr. Perdigao April 27, 2011

3. Multiculturalism • Netherland • Original settlers • Idea of American identity • Walcott’s “The Season of Phantasmal Peace,” multitude of nations • Dimock’s idea of an American literature and identity • Brathwaite on “nation language” • Rushdie on English as “Indian literary language” • Harlem Renaissance, constructions of race • “Recitatif” and the removal of codes • Playing in the Dark and ideas of the “other”

4. Reconfiguring terms • Postcolonial revisions • From Conrad to Achebe • Mrs. Dalloway to The Hours • The Great Gatsby to Netherland • Change in protagonist—from central authoritative account of British society, American society—to ambiguity, uncertainty • Destabilizing perspective, allowing for gaps between stories, uncertainties in identity along the lines of race, class, gender, sexual orientation • Examining gaps within language, between representations • Play with possibility and questioning of limitations

5. Changing Perspectives DeLillo’s sense of starting at the towers: Falling Man Dimock’s idea of an “American literature” and identity O’Neill’s play with negating position of being survivor and eyewitness Changes everyone feels in 21st century, shared experience alongside singularity of event Nostalgia for past, recognition of contemporary times Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” centre cannot hold Mrs. Dalloway and Netherland—idea of London The Hours and Netherland—idea of New York at the turn of the century and twenty-first century

6. Expatriating Center as British and American identities Destabilized along the lines of race, class, gender, sexual orientation Crosby’s “Harry Crosby’s Reasons for Expatriating” Fitzgerald and Hemingway for the moderns; Cunningham and O’Neill for the postmoderns What does it mean to be an American, when outside of that culture—Fitzgerald, Hemingway, even O’Neill (as Hans loses sense of belonging anywhere after living in NY) Passing—ways of negotiating ideas of fixed identities; “Recitatif” as passing Ways to reconceive, remap identity?

7. Retellings “Lost in the Funhouse”—revising conventions of traditional literature Metafiction, self-consciousness of the act of constructing and interpreting narrative What are the possibilities for storytelling after World War I? Shift to realism with Owen and Sassoon as counters to Brooke (Hugh Grant)? WWII—Spiegelman Ideas about American involvement in Vietnam in poetry—Bly, Komunyakaa, Levertov American culture—Ginsberg Post-9/11 narratives—DeLillo, O’Neill, Rothberg, Baudrillard

8. Memory and Rememory Memorialization—from WWI poetry to Lowell to Netherland’s “aftermath” What is this “postmortem” peformed in the twenty-first century, ways to assess where cultures are, what they have been? What can art do? Ekphrasis—represent the visual, as performance How do we represent experience? How do those retellings reshape identity and place?

9. Rises and falls Mrs. Dalloway—Septimus’ choice, role as “visionary”; crisis in text; party barely escapes Passing—Irene’s choice or accident? Erasure from story, narrative, blacking out The Hours—Richard’s death—defining own terms; brings characters together; party revised to become that for the “as yet undead” Netherland—Mehmet’s fall; evaded death; return “home” to avert crisis; loss of meaning with wings that don’t work “Flying Home”—Todd navigating Icarus storyline; fall back to the past; storytelling rather than literal flight Ulysses—Stephen Dedalus (sorry!) Auden poem on painting of Icarus Falling Man—constructing art or perversion of reality?

10. Recovery Smith—waving or drowning, or both? Rich—diving into the wreck, trying to find treasures and remains Plath—Lady Lazarus rising from the dead Netherland—Chuck’s body recovered at the beginning Heaney—recovering bog bodies, transformation in poetry What is the survivor’s story? What has been lost? What can art do in that space?