ENG 203: Survey of American Lit I

Course Objectives

The authors we will read this semester lived in a season full of optimism and despair, of unbounded possibilities and intractable problems.  The American colonies and the new nation they formed promised a land of freedom and opportunity for people from all different parts of the Old World, and yet it was also a place of slavery and oppression.  America was a new Eden, nature’s nation, where people in contact with the earth would be loosed from centuries of cultural baggage and set free to worship God and pursue true happiness.  Or was it?  Each of these authors addresses questions at the core of the American experiment: What is freedom?  What are we free for?  Over the course of this semester, we’ll explore the way various authors attempted to form democratic readers, readers free to participate in religious, political, and scientific interpretations of authoritative texts.

Ideally, as we read through these texts, we will accomplish three related goals: provide you with a historical and cultural framework through which to understand the particular, colonial and antebellum American texts we read together; train you to read and interpret these texts; and teach you to make careful arguments about these texts. At the end of this course, you should have a historical paradigm, a set of analytical tools, and the rhetorical sophistication to read, analyze, and think about whatever literary works you encounter in the future.  Along the way, you just might discover why these skills are important, and why God used the forms of literature, stories and language, to tell us about himself.

In order to accomplish these objectives, you will need to carefully read the assigned reading before each class and turn in well-written reflection writings.  The practice of writing regular reflections should prepare you to come to class ready to discuss the text. 

Grades

• 30% –  10 Pre-Class Reflections (300 wds. each) and reading quizzes
• 10% – Scholarly Essay Review and Presentation
• 10% –  Poetry Memorization and Analysis
• 10% –  Midterm
• 20% –  Final Essay
• 20% –  Final Exam

Texts

• The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. ISBN: 9780393264890
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass.  ISBN: 9780345478238
• Hope Leslie: or, Early Times in the Massachusetts, by Catharine Maria Sedgwick. ISBN: 9780140436761
• Walden, by Henry David Thoreau.  ISBN: 9780140390445
• Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. ISBN: 9781586174163
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain. ISBN: 9780140430646
• Nineteenth-Century American Poetry. ISBN: 9780140435870
• Other texts will be provided via a link. Please print these off to bring to class.

Course Calendar

Course meets TT 9:30-10:45 (section A) and 11:00-12:15 (section B) in HAL 216. This schedule is subject to change.

Week 1

• Tuesday 8/29: Introduction
• Thursday 8/31: Edwards, “Personal Narrative” Emerson, Nature (Just read the following sections: Introduction, Nature, Commodity, Language, Idealism pt. 2, and Prospects); “On Imagination”
  • Cole, Phyllis. “From the Edwardses to the Emersons.” CEA Critic, vol. 49, no. 2/4, 1986, pp. 70–78.

Week 2

• Tuesday 9/5: Sedgwick 1-83; “On Virtue”
  • Carolyn L. Karcher’s introduction to Hope Leslie
• Thursday 9/7: read Sedgwick 84-177
  • Castiglia, Christopher. “In Praise of Extra-Vagant Women: Hope Leslie and the Captivity Romance.” Legacy, 1989, pp. 3–16.

Week 3

• Tuesday 9/12: Sedgwick 178-276; “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”
  • Weierman, Karen Woods. “Reading and Writing Hope Leslie: Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Indian Connections.” The New England Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 3, 2002, pp. 415–43.
• Thursday 9/14: Sedgwick 277-371; “Thanatopsis,” 10
  • Beaudry, Anna E. “Provocation: Magawisca’s Light: A Recuperative Approach to Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie.” Early American Literature, vol. 57, no. 2, July 2022, pp. 367–86.

Week 4

• Tuesday 9/19: Hawthorne, Preface-chapter 4; “Slavery,” 134
  • Ryan, Michael. “‘The Puritans of Today’: The Anti-Whig Argument of The Scarlet Letter.” Norton Critical Edition pp. 437-454
• Thursday 9/21: Hawthorne, chapter 5-13; “Grace” 34
  • Bell, Millicent. “The Obliquity of Signs: The Scarlet Letter.” Norton Critical Edition pp 473-484

Week 5

• Tuesday 9/26: Hawthorne, chapter 14-end; “The Poet,” 26
  • Boudreay, Kristin. “Hawthorne’s Model of Christian Charity.” Norton Critical Edition pp. 296-324
• Thursday 9/28: no class (Liberating Arts); Douglass 1-60; “The Haschish,” 81
  • Royer, Daniel J. “The Process of Literacy as Communal Involvement in the Narratives of Frederick Douglass.” African American Review 3 (1994): pp 363–374.

Week 6

• Tuesday 10/3:  Douglass 61-119; “Official Piety,” 80
  • Stepto, Robert B. “Narration, Authentication, and Authorial Control in Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of 1845.” Norton Critical Edition pp 146-157
    
• Thursday 10/5: Equiano, chapters 4, 8, and 10; “To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth”
  • Potkay, Adam. “Olaudah Equiano and the Art of Spiritual Autobiography.” Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 27, no. 4, 1994, pp. 677–92.

Week 7

• Tuesday 10/10: Midterm
  • Midterm Study Guide
  • Midterm Questions
• Thursday 10/12: Thoreau 43-123 (“Economy”); “The First Atlantic Telegraph,” 135
  • Meyer, Michael “Introduction.” pp 7-36

Week 8

• Tuesday 10/17: Thoreau 124-199 (through “Visitors”); “Beat! Beat! Drums!,” 239; “As I Lay with my Head in Your Lap Camerado,” 240
  • Bush, Sargent. “The End and Means in Walden: Thoreau’s Use of the Catechism.” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 1 (1985): 1–10.
• Thursday 10/19: no class; fall break

Week 9

• Tuesday 10/24: Thoreau 200-284 (through “Brute Neighbors”); “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” 225
  • Walls, Laura Dassow. “‘As You Are Brothers of Mine’: Thoreau and the Irish.” New England Quarterly 88.1 (2015): pp 5-36.
• Thursday 10/26: Thoreau 285-382; “This Compost”
  • Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York: Oxford UP, 1964. 242-265.

Week 10

• Tuesday 10/31: Melville 1-82 (through chapter 9); “Three Quatrains,” 432
  • Introduction by Andrew Delbanco
• Thursday 11/2: Meet with Kim Marks in the library–follow these directions; read Melville 83-173 (through chapter 31); “Misgivings,” 266

Week 11

• Tuesday 11/7: Melville 174-269 (through chapter 47); “Immolated,” 265
  • Bennett, Stephen J. “’A Wisdom That is Woe’: Allusions to Ecclesiastes in Moby-Dick.” Literature and Theology 1 (2013): 48-64.
• Thursday 11/9: Melville 270-389 (through chapter 73, but skip 53, 54, 56, 57); “Richard Cory,” 435
  • Heimert, Alan. “Moby-Dick and American Political Symbolism.” American Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 4, 1963, pp. 498–534.

Week 12

• Tuesday 11/14: Melville 403-513 (through chapter 100 but skip 74-77 and 84-85); “Tartarus,” 124
  • McGuire, Ian. “‘Who Ain’t a Slave?’: ‘Moby Dick’ and the Ideology of Free Labor.” Journal of American Studies, vol. 37, no. 2, Aug. 2003, pp. 287–305.
• Thursday 11/16: Melville 536-650 (to the end but skip chapters 101-105); “709,” p. 382; “To own the Art within the Soul.”
  • Alexander, Robert. “Apocalyptic Readings of Moby-Dick: What Ishmael Returns to Tell Us.” Moby-Dick Mary R. Reichardt. 661-678.
  • Poetry Analysis due. Be sure to recite your poem to me before turning in your essay!

Week 13

• Tuesday 11/28: Twain 27-105 (chap 10); “49,” p. 353; “622,” p. 372; “915,” p. 385; “1433,” p. 392
  • Kaplan, Justin, “Introduction.” 9-23.
• Thursday 11/30: Twain 106-180 (chap 20); “Publication is the Auction,” 382; “I’m Nobody Who Are You”
  • Fulton, Joe. “Thomas Carlyle’s” Bucket of Blood”: New Mark Twain Marginalia in “The French Revolution“.” American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, vol. 29, no. 3, 1997, pp. 49–63.
  • Paper Proposal Meetings due; make appointment here

Week 14

• Tuesday 12/5: Twain 181-251 (chap 26); “Some Keep the Sabbath”
  • Phillips, Christopher N. “Keeping the Sabbath at Home: Emily Dickinson and the Rise of Private Hymnody.” Above the American Renaissance: David S. Reynolds and the Spiritual Imagination in American Literary Studies, edited by Harold K. Bush and Brian Yothers, University of Massachusetts Press, 2018.
• Thursday 12/7: Twain 252-321 (chap 34); “Four Trees Upon a Solitary Acre”
  • Berkove, Lawrence I. “A Connecticut Yankee: A Serious Hoax.” Essays in Arts and Sciences 19 (1990): 28-44.

Week 15

• Tuesday 12/12: Twain 322-410; “A Precious Mouldering Pleasure” (counts as Thursday reflection opportunity)
  • Hasty, Will. “Revolutions and Final Solutions: On Enlightenment and Its Dialectic in Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” Arthuriana, vol. 24, no. 2, 2014, pp. 21–42.

Final Exam

• Final Exam Study Guide

• Final Exam Essay Questions

• Tuesday, Dec. 19 1-3 (section A)
• Tuesday, Dec. 19 6-8 (section B); Final essays are due at the final exam