Syllabus II:
English 241/241H: The Text in Its Historical Moment
This course explores the relationship between texts and their historical
circumstances, addressing the question of how literary works are enmeshed in their
material, economic, social, and political conditions. The course examines how we
define and reconstruct historical moments, and the various ways in which we
interpret texts in relation to their moments. Readings include a wide range of kinds
of material, including texts traditionally considered literary or imaginative and
those traditionally considered documentary or factual, as well as other cultural
objects like films or works of material culture. The course focuses on at least two
historical moments and includes material from before 1800 and after 1800, as well
as material from at least two national literatures.
The course would begin with a theoretical introduction on the way in which social
and political struggles are engaged in literary as well as non-literary texts, with
readings from Kenneth Burke ("Literature as Equipment for Living"), R.S. Crane
(Critical and Historical Principles of Literary History), Stephen Greenblatt (Practicing
New Historicism) and Franco Moretti (Graphs, Maps, Trees).
This particular version of the course would focus on questions about history by
looking at the literature of two loosely connected historical moments in two
different ways. The first half of the course (after the theoretical introduction)
engages with the beginnings of puritanism as they are reflected--both by its
practitioners and by their opponents. The second half of the course deals with one
particular descendant of New England puritanism--John Brown--and with his
impact in his own day and in following eras.
(1) English and American literature of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries centering on the conflict, starting around 1590, between orthodox and
radical ("puritan") protestantism and its political and cultural consequences before
the English Civil War. Texts might include some of the following:
Thomas Nashe: The Unfortunate Traveller, or the Life of Jack Wilton
William Shakespeare: Henry IV; Twelfth Night
Ben Jonson: Bartholomew Fair
Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker: The Family of Love
The Martin Marprelate Letters
William Bradford: Of Plimouth Plantation
Francis Bremer: Puritanism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP 2009).
(2) American literature of a variety of periods focusing on a single historical event
that not only made a difference in its time but reverberated in later periods: the raid
led by John Brown on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859. Texts include
imaginative literature and history, and might include some of the following:
Literary Responses:
Henry David Thoreau: "A Plea for Capt. John Brown" (1859)
Herman Melville: "The Portent" (1859)
Stephen Vincent Benet: John Brown's Body (1928)
Russell Banks: Cloudsplitter (1998)
James McBride: The Good Lord Bird (2013)
Histories:
Frederick Douglass: "John Brown" (1881)
W.E.B. Du Bois: John Brown (1909)
David Reynolds: John Brown, Abolitionist (2005)
Assignments
Two 4-6 page essays
An in-class midterm examination (short answer and essay format)
An in-class final examination (short answer and essay format)