ENGL 209(F) American Literature: Origins to 1865 (Same as American Studies 209)
In this course, we will trace the development of American literature from its marginal, esoteric origins to its arrival as a moneymaking and nation-building enterprise. We will begin by reading the poetry and autobiography of early New Englanders (Shepard, Bradstreet, Rowlandson) against the backdrop of everything in seventeenth-century North-American life that remained indifferent or hostile to the spirit of that literature. We will then turn to the beginnings of literature in the South (Byrd, Jefferson) and the literature that emerged from the general cultural upheaval of the Great Awakening, including the first African-American literature (Edwards, Ashbridge, Wheatley). The second half of the course will cover the anxious, Gothic, sentimental fiction of the early-national period (Brown, Rowson, Irving) and the growth, between 1830 and 1865, of a literature about growth-about the teleology of expansion and all the anxieties, Gothicisms, and sentiments that it must, but cannot, drive out (Emerson, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Douglass, Whitman, Dickinson). Requirements: pre-class email responses to readings, two short papers, and one longer paper. Prerequisite: a 100-level English course, except 150 (formerly 103). Enrollment limited to 40. (Pre-1800)