This course centers on American writing from the quarter century before the Civil War. In the first half of the next century, a consensus emerged about who ought to be celebrated as the great writers of the earlier period, and the idea of the "American Renaissance" was born. But such judgments are never final, and we need to be concerned with how they are made. Some of the writers we shall take up are the Transcendentalists and their allies (Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman); some had visions considerably darker than those of the Transcendentalists (Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson); some registered the impact of slavery on contemporary notions of America and the American self (Jacobs, Stowe). We shall consider all these authors, and the experiments in literary form that their visions entailed. Format: lecture/discussion. Requirements: one 4- to 5-page paper, one 6- to 8-page paper, and a final exam. Prerequisite: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 25 (expected: 25). (1700-1900)