ENGLISH 182 SPRING 2004

"The Literature of California"

In c. 1510, Garci Ordóñez de Montalvo published a popular Spanish romance, The Adventures of Esplandiàn, in which he imagined a “fantastic island very near the Terrestrial Paradise.” The streets of his realm were paved with gold, and it was ruled over by the warrior Queen Calafia, a statuesque Amazon who captured unwary men for breeding and thereafter fed them (live) to her griffins. Ordóñez called his island “ California ,” and his romance named the state and offered the first mythic vision of the largest, most populous and most controversial political entity in the United States . This course examines literary treatments of the Golden State, ranging from Ordóñez' fantasy and early tales of the indigenous Indian peoples before “discovery,” to 19 th and 20 th century prose and poetry by Mark Twain, Helen Hunt Jackson, John Muir, Robinson Jeffers, Raymond Chandler, Joan Didion, Carolyn See and Gary Snyder. Readings include tall tales from the Gold Rush, the epic poetry of the stormy Pacific, tough guy noir detective fiction, lyric celebrations of the Great Central Valley, and a feminist science fiction narrative set in Malibu , after the big one falls. Films and author visits.

[TENTATIVE ONLY: TEXTS SUBJECT TO CHANGE]

Texts: The Literature of California , Volume I , ed Hicks, et al.

The Big Sleep , Raymond Chandler

Zoot Suit, Luis Valdéz

Golden Days , Carolyn See

Epitaph for a Peach David Masumoto

Devil in a Blue Dress , Walter Mosley