Scott Fitzgerald is best known for The Great Gatsby, a staple of American Literature classes and the source material for multiple film adaptations. However, he authored other full-length works that enjoyed greater critical/commercial success. In this course students will read and discuss two of these other works: This Side of Paradise (1920), Fitzgerald’s first published novel and the recipient of rave reviews upon initial release, and Tender is the Night (1934), the last novel Fitzgerald completed before his death in 1940. The latter is a work whose reputation has appreciated with the passage of time. We will focus special attention on Fitzgerald’s talent for merging the autobiographical with the sociohistorical in his writings.
Text: F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise and Tender is the Night.
Any available paperback edition.
Cecilia Donohue retired in 2013 following a 25-year career of undergraduate instruction, graduate teaching, and academic administration. She now resides in rural Tennessee, with her husband Bill and their menagerie of horses, cat, and dog. Cecilia has written extensively on America’s southern authors and poets, notably Robert Penn Warren. She is currently an associate editor of The Steinbeck Review.