ENG 431SEM—Authors

The content of this course is variable. Concentrated and detailed study of the works, biography, and milieu of a single author, chosen by the instructor. For example: Prof. N. Schmitz, Ernest Hemingway In addition to Hemingway’s great works, this course will engage Hemingway’s relation to Gertrude Stein, see what she says about him in the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and what he says about her in A Moveable Feast. We might gaze upon some of her sentences written in the teens, note their swing, their simplicity, and see that same thing in early Hemingway. For example: N. Schmitz, Hemingway/Stein/Faulkner Triple trio, a concert of early modern masters of American literature, three writers, three works each. Ernest Hemingway: In Our Time, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and A Farewell to Arms. Gertrude Stein: Tender Buttons, Lifting Belly, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, William Faulkner: Go Down, Moses (counts as three). Pam Laws, Floridian soul singer, gives us her angry version of the hymn Go Down, Moses. There is erotic merriment (the best of all joys) in Lifting Belly and the best of all deaths in For Whom the Bell Tolls. From text to text we engage, we relish, three classical styles, each distinctive, each inimitable.