ENGL 2020 - [Literature in English II: 1750 to the Present]

(ALC-AS)

Spring. Not offered: 2024-2025. Next offered: 2025-2026. 3 credits. Student option grading.

E. Foster.

Groucho Marx once said, “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” What is the literary significance of comedy? Why do we use it, and why do we enjoy it? What’s funny—and who decides what classifies as funny? Does humor bring us together—spanning the gaps between cultures, identities, and time periods—or does it set us further apart? This course will use comedy as a lens through which to explore the development of literatures in English from 1750 to the present. To investigate these questions, we’ll be studying texts by celebrated humorists, such as Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Kurt Vonnegut, and Ali Wong. We will also explore the uses and effects of humor in works by less traditionally comedic authors, including Dean Mohamed, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Vladimir Nabokov, Shirley Jackson, Carmen Maria Machado, Larissa FastHorse, and Helen Oyeyemi.