Martin Luther King (1929 – 1968) - King was a pivotal figure in the non-violent civil rights movement. During the 1950s and 1960s, he sought to improve race relations and overturn discrimination in American society. He is remembered for his powerful speeches which sought to bring about a united society - where race did not act…
This module provides a broadly chronological view of American poetry from the start of the twentieth century to the present day. It wonders about what the consequences might be if we consider seriously Emerson s claim (made in 1844), that America might be seen as a poem. Through detailed examination each week of groups of three…
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Last month in this space, historian Steven Mintz previewed his forthcoming history of modern American adulthood by taking up recent commentaries on the death of adulthood in American culture. Below, Mintz turns to American literary treatments of grown-up life, which have more often depicted coming of age as a struggle against…
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Lindsay Duguid, the fiction editor of the Times Literary Supplement, concedes that although lists are “intrinsically vulgar”, it is good for novelists to know that their names are appearing somewhere other than on a dust jacket. And Lorin Stein, the editor of the Paris Review agrees. “The list is a good snapshot of what the…
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This week, with The Red Badge of Courage, my list of 100 great novels in the English language, in chronological order, is almost one third complete, with a growing weekly readership that s approaching 200, . Each week since we started the project last year, I ve found that there s always a steady percentage of my readers who…
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As the second-largest country in the world, it is always odd to hear banter about the limitations of Canada. Some may point out its subservience to the United States or it’s deadly climate, but what most forget is that Canada has one of the richest and varied histories of any country in the New World, and that its landscape…
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Set in the waning years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the first volume in The Transylvanian Trilogy is a moody, atmospheric masterpiece, replete with misty mountains, dense forests, magnificent castles, and a cast of misbehaving aristocrats struggling with themselves, one another, and the violent, inexorable passing of an…
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The Library of Congress created an exhibit, Books that Shaped America,that explores books that have had a profound effect on American life. Below is a list of books from that exhibit that have been banned/challenged. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 1884 The first ban of Mark Twain’s American classic in Concord…
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The days of defining African Literature within the confines of the poverty porn tradition seems to be at a distance; this year, we witnessed a surge in theme-defying works of fiction and poetry. Most of the novels that were released were from first time writers with fresh new voices that added to the already impressive collection…
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What we love about big novels is that you have to get really comfortable with them. A big page count usually equals a big chunk of time, meaning you need to be a serious reader without a fear of commitment, but with books like Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch , and Sergio de la Pava’s A Naked Singularity…
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Not sure what Classic and Modern would mean but here is a list wait, this is a hopeless task. Actually I started to write this and figured what is the point. American literature in the 20th Century is not like Russian Literature in the 19th Century when a list of giants like Gogol and Tolstoy can be listed. The 20th Century…
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Welcome to the massive, anguished, exalted undertaking that is the ALL TIME 100 books list. The parameters: English language novels published anywhere in the world since 1923, the year that TIME Magazine began, which, before you ask, means that Ulysses (1922) doesn’t make the cut. In May, Time.com posted a similar list, of 100…
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