Description

KRISHNA KANTA HANDIQUI STATE OPEN UNIVERSITY
Padmanath Gohainbaruah School of Humanities
HOME ASSIGNMENT FOR MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH
4th SEMESTER, 2025
(CBCS in Accordance with NEP 2020)
The last date of submission is 25-09-2025

COURSE 3: AMERICAN LITERATURE
Course Code: PGEG S4-03 (DSC 12)
Each question carries 10 marks Total Marks: 50
[Assignments are required to be written in your own language. Copying in toto from the learning materials will carry less score. The Home Assignments are to be submitted at your Study Centre]
1. In what ways does Hemingway’s depiction of nature function beyond mere setting, serving instead as a site of existential struggle, aesthetic minimalism, and symbolic meaning?
2. To what extent did economic ambition, religious ideals, and political motivations shape the narratives of early American settlers, and how have these narratives been mythologized in American literary history?
3. Why did Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms provoke controversy at its first staging, and what does this reveal about prevailing cultural taboos, gender dynamics, and moral anxieties in early 20th century America?
4. How did Transcendentalism challenge the established religious and social paradigms of 19th century America, and in what ways did it influence the development of a uniquely American literary voice?
5. How do American Realism and Modernism differ in their treatment of truth, subjectivity, and narrative experimentation, and what historical and cultural forces drove this aesthetic shift?