Course Description

 This module provides a critical introduction to American literature of the nineteenth century. 

It addresses (1) the characteristic preoccupations and concerns of American writing, (2) the relation of writing and culture to the sustenance of nation and community, (3) the morality of culture, and the culture of morality, (4) the development of new literary perspectives, styles and techniques, (5) the formation of distinctive literary traditions, (6) the historicity of literary movements, and (7) the relation of criticism to literary canons and culture through the nineteenth century. 

The selection of texts to be studied for the module comprises non-fictional and fictional prose as well as poetry.

Primary Texts

  1  Ralph Waldo Emerson,  "The American Scholar” (1837), “The Poet” (1844)  

  2  Frederick Douglass,  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass… (1845)  

  3  Nathaniel Hawthorne,  The Scarlet Letter (1850)  

  4  Poetry selections,  (Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson)  

  5  Herman Melville,  Billy Budd (written 1891)  

 [All the above texts are found in the following book, which is recommended for      purchase]

  Julia Reidhead (ed),   The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume 1. 

  5^th edition (1998) ISBN: 0-396-95871-X

  Also check out the NORTON WEBSOURCE TO AMERICAN LITERATURE

   6  Mark Twain,   Huckleberry Finn (1884, Norton rpt., ed. Thomas Cooley)  ISBN: 0-393-96640—2  Or (rpt. Ed. Peter Coveney, Penguin, 1966) ISBN: 0-14-0430-18-0  

 7  One supplementary text for a Project (chosen from the list given below)

  Note:  Most texts are also freely and legally available for reading in electronic format on the internet, and students can follow up the links above to access texts on the web.

Assessment

 40%    Continuous Assessment: 1 Assignment, 1 Project.

  60%      End-of-semester Examination (2 hours duration)

 During the course of the semester, students will make one class presentation, and write two essays: the first (of approx. 1 words) on one of the prescribed texts, and the second as a longer project report (of approx. 2,000 words) relating one or more prescribed texts to a supplementary text from the list given below.

Supplementary Texts

  Edgar Allan Poe            Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1839)

  Herman Melville            Moby Dick (1851)

  Harriet Beecher Stowe  Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851)

  Henry David Thoreau    Walden (1854)

  Henry James                 Washington Square (1880)

  Stephen Crane             The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

  Kate Chopin                 The Awakening  (1899)

Recommended Secondary Reading

 General

 R.W.B. Lewis,  The American Adam (1959)

 F. O. Matthiessen,  American Renaissance (1968)

 David S. Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance : The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville (1989)

 Donald Pizer(ed), The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism : From Howells to London (1995)

 Harry Levin,   Power of Blackness: Hawthorne, Poe, Melville (1980)

 Sacvan Bercovitch (ed),  The Cambridge History of American Literature/Prose Writing 1820-1865 (Volume 2) (1995)

  Lawrence Buell (ed,  Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Collection of Critical Essays (1993)

 Douglass

 Houston A. Baker,  Blues, Ideology and Afro-American Literature (1984)

 Charles T. Davis & Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,  The Slave’s Narrative (1985)

 Eric J. Sundquist (ed),  Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays (1990)

 Hawthorne

 J. Donald Crowley,  Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Collection of Critical Essays (1975)

Claudia D. Johnson,   Understanding `The Scarlet Letter’ (1995)

 Whitman

 Francis Murphy (ed),  Walt Whitman (Penguin Critical Anthology, 1969)

 Betsy Erkkila & Jay Grossman,  Breaking Bounds: Whitman and American Cultural Studies (1996)

 Judith Farr,  Emily Dickinson: A Collection of Critical Essays (1992)

 Twain

 Harold Bloom (ed),   Huckleberry Finn: A Collection of Critical Essays (1989)

 Melville

 Louis J. Budd & Edwin H. Cady (ed),  On Melville (1988)

Web Links

Norton Websource

http://www.wwnorton.com/naal/

Voice of the Shuttle

http://vos.ucsb.edu/shuttle/eng-amer.html#19th

Paul P. Reuben PAL Site (Resources in American Literature)

http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/TABLE.HTML

Literary Resources – American

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Lit/american.html

American Literature 1865-1914    

http://www.nagasaki-gaigo.ac.jp/ishikawa/amlit/19re/overview_19re.htm

Dickinson Home Page – U. of Minnesota       

http://english.cla.umn.edu/Courseweb/1017/EmilyDickinson/home

                     Douglass Page                        

http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/HOME.html  

Frederick Douglass Museum

http://www.ggw.org/freenet/f/fdm/index.html

Slave Narratives

http://metalab.unc.edu/docsouth/neh/neh.html

Emerson Pages

http://miso.wwa.com/~jej/1emerson.html

http://www.transcendentalists.com/1emerson.html

http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transweb/authors.htm

Hawthorne Pages

http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/nh/hawthorne.html

http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap3/hawthorne.html

http://www.d.umn.edu/~sadams/hawthorn.htm

The Scarlet Letter

http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/nh/sl.html

Life & Works of Melville

 http://www.melville.org/

Mark Twain Page

http://marktwain.about.com/arts/marktwain/

Whitman page – U. of Minnesota

http://english.cla.umn.edu/Courseweb/1017/WaltWhitman/home  

Whitman Biography

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/whitman/biography/frameset.html

The Walt Whitman Hypertext Archive

http://www.iath.virginia.edu/whitman/  

American History Resources

http://www.nagasaki-gaigo.ac.jp/ishikawa/amlit/general/history.htm

Lecture Resources

 Lecture 1a - Timeline for American history

Lecture 1b - The Puritan Legacy

Lecture 2a - Emerson: `The American Scholar'

Lecture 2b - Emerson: `The Poet'

Lecture 3 -  Frederick Douglass

Lectures 4 & 5 -  Hawthorne

Lectures 6 & 7 - Whitman