NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE
One semester survey course
I.
THE COLONIAL PERIOD. Beginnings to 1810
1. Puritan Literature (1620-1743). Genre development: history and
chronicle, theological writing; poetry and prose
2. The Age of Reason (1743-1810): Benjamin Franklin
3. The Great Awakening: Jonathan Edwards
4. Emergent national literature: political writing, poetry, prose in the
early Republic.
II.
THE POST-REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 1810-1865
5. Early Romanticism: Washington Irving and the Knickerbocker Group.
James Fenimore Cooper.
6. Poetry: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson.
7. Late Romanticism: Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman
Melville .
8. Abolitionist Literature and Slave Narratives: Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Frederick Douglass.
III.
THE POST-CIVIL WAR PERIOD (1865-1919)
9. The Problem of American Realism: Mark Twain, Sarah Orne Jewett.
10. Psychological Realism and Experimentation: Henry James, Kate
Chopin.
11. American Naturalism: Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore
Dreiser.
12. Women’s Literature: Edith Wharton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I.LITERARY HISTORIES
1. Bercovitch, Sacvan. Gen.ed. The Cambridge History of American Literature,
1995
2. Elliot, Emory, general ed. Columbia Literary History of the United States, 1988
3. Brooks, Cleanth and Robert Penn Warren. American Literature: The Makers and
the Making, 1973
4. Spiller, Robert. A Literary History of the United States
5. Berkovitch, Sacvan, ed. Reconstructing American Literary History, 1986
6. Hutner, Gordon, ed. The American Literary History, Reader, 1995
II. BACKGROUND STUDIES
1. Horton, Rod. Backgrounds of American Literary Thought
2. Wilson, Edmond. The Shock of Recognition
3. Parrington, Vernon L. Main Currents in American Thought (3 vol.)
4. Goldman, Arnold. American Literature in Context
III. WRITERS, TRENDS, PERIODS
1. Brodhead, R. Hawthorne, Melville and the Novel
2. Matthiessen, F. O. American Renaissance
3. Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance, 1988
4. Bell, Michael Davitt. The Development of American Romance, 1986
5. Chase, Richard. The American Novel and its Tradition
6. Sundquist, Eric. American Realism: New Essays
7. Bell, Michael Davitt. The Problem of American Realism, 1996
8. Walcutt, Cl. Naturalism: A Stream Divided
9. James, Henry. The Art of Fiction
10. Bell, Bernard. The Afro-American Novel and its Tradition
11. Tanner, Tony. City of Words: American Fiction 1950-1970
12. Olderman, Raymond. Beyond the Wasteland: The American Novel in the 60s
13. Bigsby, C.W.E. An Introduction to 20th c. American Drama (3 vol.)
14. Essays in American Studies, ed. by K. Slavova, M. Danova, Dept. of English and
American Studies