ENGL 40749 - Fictions of Vietnam: The War in the American Literary Imagination

Institution:

University of Notre Dame

Subject:

English

Description:

More than thirty years after its official conclusion, the Vietnam War remains a specter that continues to haunt the sphere of American political and cultural discourse. Though it is often cited as a foundational moment in modern American history, these persistent and often conflicting references to the "lessons of Vietnam," the "legacy of Vietnam," or even "the Vietnam Syndrome," suggest that, even now, we may have to yet to fully come to terms with the American war in Indochina - that we remain fundamentally uncertain about its real cultural meaning. If Vietnam can indeed be considered a kind of national trauma, then have we as a nation ever really been able to "move on"? This course will examine how American writers have attempted to assign some kind of meaning to the American experience in Vietnam and to put that experience in conversation with a broader narrative of American history. It will call attention to the ways in which the subject of the Vietnam War compels these writers to revisit certain fundamental themes - the question of American identity, American exceptionalism, the morality of violence and war, identity and the definition of self, our relationship to nature, the Puritan "errand in the wilderness" - that have always been at issue in American literature. In addition to dealing with the work of several of the standard, or canonical, commentators on Vietnam - Tim O'Brien, Larry Heinemann, Philip Caputo, Graham Green, John M. Del Vecchio - this course will also look at some of the more recent attempts to revisit the legacy of Vietnam undertaken by writers such as Denis Johnson and Bobbie Ann Mason within the past decade.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.nd.edu

Phone Number:

(574) 631-5000

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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