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Syllabi
Completed Courses
American Novelists On Film
Through The Eyes of A Child: Representing Adolescence in American Literature
Chief American Writers
American Presidential Rhetoric
Text and Tradition: Special Focus in CompositionProposed courses
American Novelists On Film
American Literature 313: American Novelists on Film
Course Syllabus
Adam Sonstegard, PhD Office hours: M 1 -2; T & R 10 - 11
Summer 2002, June 10 - July 12 Office: Duncker 007
Class meetings: MTWRF, 11:00 - 12:45 Phone: (W) 935 5190; (H) 367 8289
Classroom: Duncker 003 Email: atsonste@artsci.wustl.edu
I. Course Description:
This course explores the ways film makers have adapted American novels to film, as well as American writers' responses to photography and cinematography as art forms that sometimes complemented -- and sometimes competed with -- written literary art. We will begin by comparing written works that antedate the camera with their modern film adaptations (Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans). Then we will briefly survey American writers' reactions to early photography (Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables and several antebellum articles and short stories); examine subsequent intersections of literary and photographic art (James Agee and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, selections from Dos Passos's U.S.A.); and study the film adaptations of American novels written during the age of film (Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, and Toni Morrison's Beloved). Our guiding questions: Do American novelists "see" any differently, and therefore construct or narrate their stories any differently, in light of the advancing technology of the camera? What can the novel as an art form do for writers or for viewers that cinematography cannot do, and vice versa?
II. Required Reading:
Agee and Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men; Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel; Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables; James, The Turn of the Screw; Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird; Morrison, Beloved; Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath; Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs; Wharton, Ethan Frome
III. Course Schedule:
**Asterisks indicate readings to be distributed in class. All others appear in one of the texts listed above.
WEEK ONE: The Appearance of Photographs (June 10 - June 14)
View The Last of the Mohicans [excerpts]
Read a. **Poe, "The Daguerreotype," "The Oval Portrait"; Hawthorne, "Prophetic Pictures"
b. Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables
c. Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs, Prologue and Chapter 1
WEEK TWO: Narration and Adaptation (June 17 - June 21)
Read a. **Howells, Woolf, Capote, Faulkner
b. **Lindsay, from The Art of the Moving Picture
c. James, The Turn of the Screw
e. Wharton, Ethan Frome
View The Innocents and Ethan Frome
WEEK THREE: The Camera and the Documentary (June 24 - 28)
Read a. **Riis, How the Other Half Lives [excerpts]
b. Dos Passos, The Forty-Second Parallel
c. Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs, Chapter 5
d. Agee and Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Write: First paper (See assignments below)
WEEK FOUR: Classic Adaptations (July 1 - 5)
Read a. Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
b. Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
View The Grapes of Wrath and To Kill a Mockingbird
WEEK FIVE: Modern Adaptations (July 8 - 12)
Read Morrison, Beloved
View Beloved
Write Second Paper (See assignments below)
Present a talk of 15 - 20 minutes (See assignments below)
IV. Assignments:
First writing assignment: (due in class June 28)
In a well-crafted argument of at least four complete pages, discuss the interaction of photographic art and literary art in one or two works from the first three weeks of the semester. What does it seem that photographers or photographs themselves can "do" in the work(s) you have chosen, that writers or that works of fiction cannot do, and what implications does this have for the work of fiction in question? Show the feats that photographers seem capable of, for well or for ill, in the work(s) you have chosen, as well as the writer's attitude toward those feats (be it admiration, disdain, or envy). We will discuss this assignment in class, and I would be happy to clarify the assignment or to discuss possible responses in office hours. If you choose a work of fiction that we have discussed at length in class, please be certain to extend or complicate, and not merely restate, the arguments we advance about the text in class.
Second writing assignment: (due in class July 12)
In a review of at least four complete pages, discuss the movie adaptation of an American novel drawn from the list on the following page. You may also choose an American novel that does not appear on the list, provided it has been adapted for the film, and provided that you have my approval by July 1. Your review should show critical analysis of the novel as well as its adaptation. Try to answer questions such as the following: Is the adaptation true to the spirit, if not to the letter, of the original novel's text? Do the screenwriter and director work to the best of their abilities, and within the limitations of the film medium, to make a responsible adaptation, or do they take too many liberties with the written text? How many liberties are "too many liberties," and why? Does the historical interval between the composition of the novel and the adaptation of the story to the screen account for some of the film makers' decisions?
Presentation: (to be made during the last week of class)
In an informal talk of approximately twenty minutes, present your second paper to the class. You may show a key scene or small series of scenes from your movie during your presentations, but please devote more time to your speech than to your movie. The best presentations will answer some of the questions listed under the second assignment above, and will engage some of the course's questions about the interactions of written, photographic, and cinematographic art.
V. Grading:
Your final grade will be an average of the following: two paper grades; one presentation grade; one general participation grade; and one total score for reading quizzes (quizzes given as needed).
VI. List of novels for second writing assignment:
(The following are listed in approximate order of increasing difficulty.)
Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
Henry James, Daisy Miller
Henry James, Washington Square
Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
Joseph Heller, Catch 22
Alice Walker, The Color Purple
Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James, The Wings of the Dove
VII. Videos on reserve:
The age of innocence [videorecording] / Columbia Pictures Olin 24 Hour Reserve -- PN1995.9 L5 A54 1993 -- NOT CHECKD OUT
Catch-22 [videorecording] / Paramount Pictures Olin 24 Hour Reserve -- PN1995.9 L5 C39 1991 -- NOT CHECKD OUT
The Color purple [videorecording] / Warner Brothers. Olin 24 Hour Reserve -- PN1995.9 L5 C64 1991 -- NOT CHECKD OUT
Daisy Miller [videorecording] / Paramount Pictures ; the Dir Olin 24 Hour Reserve -- PN1995.9.L5 D35 1994 -- NOT CHECKD OUT
Ernest Hemingway's the old man and the sea [videorecording] Olin 24 Hour Reserve -- PN1995.9.L5 O42 1996 c.2 -- NOT CHECKD OUT
Ethan Frome [videorecording] / American Playhouse Theatrical Olin Level 3 Videos -- PN1995.9.L5 E85 1996 -- NOT CHECKD OUT
The Fall of the House of Usher [videorecording] / executive Olin 24 Hour Reserve -- PN1995.9 H6 F34 1993 -- NOT CHECKD OUT
The Grapes of wrath [videorecording] Olin Level 3 Videos -- PN1995.9.L5 G71 1988 -- NOT CHECKD OUT
The Great Gatsby [videorecording] / Paramount Pictures ; pro Olin 24 Hour Reserve -- PN1995.9.L5 G732 1991 -- NOT CHECKD OUT
The Heart is a lonely hunter [videorecording] / Warner Bros. Olin 24 Hour Reserve -- PN1995.9 L5 H35 1993 -- NOT CHECKD OUT
The innocents [videorecording] / Twentieth Century Fox ; scr Olin Level 3 Videos -- PN1995.9 H6 I56 -- NOT CHECKD OUT
The Last of the Mohicans [videorecording] / Twentieth Centur Olin Level 3 Videos -- PN1995.9.L5 L37 1999 c.2 -- NOT CHECKD OUT
The Portrait of a lady [videorecording] / Polygram Filmed En Olin 24 Hour Reserve -- PN1995.9 L5 P67 1997 -- NOT CHECKD OUT
To kill a mockingbird [videorecording] / directed by Robert Olin Level 3 Videos -- PN1995.9 D7 T63 1987 -- NOT CHECKD OUT
Washington Square [videorecording] / Hollywood Pictures pres Olin 2 Hour Reserve -- PN1995.9.L5 W38 1998 c.2 -- NOT CHECKD OUT
The wings of the dove [videorecording] / Miramax films prese Olin 24 Hour Reserve -- PN1995.9.L5 W56 1997 -- NOT CHECKD OUT
