Università Roma Tre

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Modernism: The “Novel of Attractions,” The Flapper, and Film

The aim of this course is to acquaint students with the basic tools needed to critically address an American literary text and familiarize them with major theoretical schools originating in the USA. This year I will offer a fine-grained analysis of the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I will address the latest approaches in Modernism scholarship to single out the experimental quality of Fitzgerald’s prose style. Together we will discuss the influence of William James and Friedrich Nietzsche on the early Fitzgerald, the author’s delight in the language of film, vaudeville, and jazz, and his bold assimilation of photography and advertisement techniques.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (1920); F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned (1922); F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925); F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up (1945), edited by Edmund Wilson; F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night (1934); F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Love of the Last Tycoon (1941), edited by Edmund Wilson; Paul Strand e Charles Scheeler, Manhatta (http://archive.org/details/Manhatta), 1921.

PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF THE FOLLOWING:
-- I will announce secondary sources during the term and publish a complete list on my webpage at the end of the course.
-- Students who are not able to attend classes are expected to study this same syllabus, secondary sources included.