ENGL 265(S) Topics in American Literature: Tradition, Context and Beyond (Gateway) (W)
This course will explore three approaches to the concept of "American Literature." First, we will consider a group of texts in chronological order that share a preoccupation with the seductive powers of rhetoric. We will explore how colonial-era sermons, eighteenth-century political discourse, and nineteenth-century abolitionist literature constitute a literary tradition concentrated on the power of language to join persons together into a common cause. Second, we will look at stories by Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Charles Chesnutt, all written in the late nineteenth century, and explore how that particular time inflected the authors' realism. Third, we will look at a model of American literature that is bound neither by nation nor by historical era, considering connections between Emerson and the British writer Thomas Carlyle, and between Thoreau and the Bhagavad Gita. As we gather from these three course sections a sense of the richness of concerns and practices in American literature, we will also inquire into the stakes of each mode of organizing the study of a "national literature." What beliefs about the relationship of literature to nation lie beneath different approaches to American literature? What effects do our choices about conceptualizing American literature have on our sense of America today?
Format: seminar/discussion. Requirements: three 4-page papers and one 5-page final paper
Prerequisite: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 19 (expected: 19). Preference to sophomores considering the English major.
(1700-1900 or Pre-1700)
Hour: DAVIS