This course begins with an in-depth examination of Puritan writers, including William Bradford, John Winthrop, Anne Bradstreet, Cotton Mather. Here our concerns will be with the political and theological problems central to these authors, and with their approach to the aesthetic (with particular emphasis on their negotiation of typology with attention to the details of life in the colonies). We then will shift to examine the representation of the Puritan era in a series of historical novels from the nineteenth century by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Lydia Maria Child, among others. In these novels, the Puritans are reconfigured sometimes as honorable founders of America, and sometimes as disturbing caricatures who must be repudiated by the modern nation. We will also consider how the way in which Puritans perceived their world continues to structure the later era's understanding and representation of contemporary events. Format: lecture/discussion. Requirements: two five-page papers and a ten-page final paper. Prerequisites: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 25 (expected: 25). (1700-1900)

Hour: T. DAVIS