The module “Study of literary texts” is intended for third-year students. It introduces students to major literary theories, to different movements, to many literary devices and techniques that enrich both the English prose as well as poetry. Besides, this module guides too students throughout the process of understanding and analyzing literature by using the main literary elements as plot, setting, characterization, themes and figurative language.
Teacher of Conferences: Dr. Souad Berbar
Teacher of TD: Dr. Imene SEBIANE CHIKH
Email: ch.imene.seb@gmail.com
University Institution: University of Abou Bekr Belkaid – Tlemcen -
Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Foreign Languages
Target audience: Third Year Students – English Department
Module: Study of Literary Texts
Course Title: African American Literature
Type of the Course: Conference/ TD
Coefficient: 03
Duration: 3 hours per week
Method of Evaluation: the evaluation is carried out according to two methods:
A- The final exam: is written and it represents 60%.
B- The continuous evaluation represents the remaining 40%, each student is allowed to earn points throughout the whole semester and this continuous evaluation is done throughout different forms:
An essay to be written at home/10, regular attendance and participation/05: 25%
A quiz to be taken in class/05: 15%
The main objective of this course is to demonstrate the way the concept of Orality is integrated within the field of the African American Modernist literature. To be precise, this course follows four major objectives:
1. To provide an introduction to modernism, to the study of the African American literature and its relation to Ebonics and oral Black culture.
2. To combine Ebonics as a dialect with the Standard English within the African American literature
3. To exhibit the importance of oral culture in the Afro American Modernist literary writings
4. To depict how the African American literature contributes to the persistence of the Black oral heritage.
The Mental Map of the
Course
First Chapter: An Overview of the African American Literature
1. Introduction
2. First Section: American Modernism
2.1. Introduction to Modernism
2.2. American Modernist Literature
3. Second Section: African American Modernist Literature
3.1. Harlem Renaissance
3.2. Zora Neale Hurston, A Modernist Feminist and Folklorist Novelist
The Second Chapter: The Notion of Orality in the African American Literature
1. Introduction
2. First Section: the Cultural and Linguistic Aspects of Orality
2.1. The Cultural Aspects of Orality
2.2. The Linguistic Aspect of Orality
3. Second Section: the Use of Orality in Hurston's Novel Their Eyes Were Watching God
3.1. The Analysis of the Cultural Aspects of Orality in Hurston's Novel Their Eyes Were Watching God
3.2. The Analysis of the Ebonics Used in Hurston's Novel Their Eyes Were Watching God
To conclude, we can say that the African-American author has always tried to voice the complaints and sorrows of his Black community’s daily life in the form of poems and narratives in which he/she has integrated some aspects of his/her Black oral lore that has been expressed in a special diction called Ebonics. Accordingly, this Black author has included the concept of Orality to his/her literary writings as a way to preserve his/her Black culture and strengthened it within the literary field.
Books
Awkward, Michael. New Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Cambridge University Press. 1990, p. 16
Gates, Henry Louis Jr., and Nellie Y. McKay, eds. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. 2nd ed. W.W. Norton &Company, 2004
Harris, Joyce Braden. African and African-American Traditions in Language Arts. Portland Public Schools, 1986.
Hemenway, Robert. Zora Neale Hurston and the Eatonville Anthropology in the Harlem Renaissance Remembered. Edited by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, Dodd Mead & Company, 1972
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. (1937). Harper Perennial Library, 1999
MortadSerir, Ilhem..“A View of Dialect and Folklore in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Global Journal of Human Social Science, vol. 14, no. 4, 2014
Werlock, Abby H. P. "Modernism." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009.
Web Page
Rickford, John Russell. “What is Ebonics? (African American Vernacular English).” Linguistic Society of America, 2003, www.lsadc.org/
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