Annotation
The course is designed as a complementary mix of lectures and seminars. The lectures seek to acquaint the students with the basic genealogy of American literature from 17th through late 19th century, doing so against the backdrop of changing social climate and historical circumstances. The lecture is then followed by orchestrated close-reading sessions focused on epitomical samples of prose and poetry in the original English wording. Teaching units:
1. American literature in the Colonial and early Republican period Colonial American literature, Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor: selected poems, excerpts from Winthrop’s Journals, revolutionary and early republican period, the onset of Enlightenment, Benjamin Franklin: On the Slave Trade, Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America, Thomas Paine: Common Sense
2. American Romanticism I Historical context, general characteristics, emphasis on early US mythology and folklore, Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, early American gothic, Edgar A. Poe: The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Purloined Letter
3. American Romanticism II Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter, The Birthmark, American abolicionism as an accompanying feature of late Enlightenment and Romanticism, slave narratives, The Narrative of Frederick Douglass, American Transcendentalism, philosophical and political overtones of literature, Henry David Thoreau: Civil Disobedience
4. American Romanticism III 19th century American poetry, Walt Whitman: Song of Myself and other poems, Emily Dickinson: selected poems, the transition between Romanticism and Realism, Herman Melville: Moby Dick, Bartleby the Scrivener
5. American Realism and Naturalism General characteristics of late 19th century US society, Stephen Crane: The Red Badge of Courage (synopsis + two crucial chapters), C. D. Warner : The Gilded Age - A Tale of Today, American Realism in literature, Mark Twain: Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, American regionalism (local color), literature by women, emancipationist efforts, Kate Chopin: The Story of an Hour, The Respectable Woman, The Awakening, American Naturalism, Frank Norris: McTeague