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EN 470L: NEW ENGLAND LITERATURE & CULTURE (MWF Wheatley 1-0058)
SPRING/2013
Shaun O’Connell
shaun.oconnell@umb.edu
Office Hours (W-6-027): Monday & Wednesday, 12:00-1:00 & by appointment:
EN 470l website: create account at http://engl470-oconnell.wikispaces.umb.edu/
JAN/FEB
FEB
28 – 1
4-8
11-15
18
FEB/MAR
APRIL
Introduction
Boston: Voices & Visions: “Boston: From Winthrop to Hawthorne”
Hawthorne: Selected Tales: “Mrs. Hutchinson,” “Young Goodman Brown,”
“The May-Pole of Merrymount,”
PRESIDENTS DAY
20-22
“My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” The Minister’s Black Veil”
25 – 1
Miller: The Crucible
4- 8
B:V&V: “Boston and the American Renaissance”
11-15
Dickinson, Frost & other N.E. poets (posted on website)
18-22
SPRING VACATION
25-29
B:V&V: “Post Civil War Boston”
1–5
PAPER TOPICS
CR #2
PAPER THESIS
Freeman: A New England Nun and Other Stories
CR #3
8
10-12
EXAM
NO CLASS: ACIS CONFERENCE
15
17-19
PATRIOTS DAY
Wilder: Our Town & O’Neill: Desire Under the Elms
22-26
Wharton: Ethan Frome
APRIL/MAY 29 – 3
CR#1
CR #4
PAPER THESIS REVISED
B:V&V: “Turn-of-the-Century Boston”
6 -10
B:V&V: “The ‘Other” Bostonians”
13-15
B:V&V: “There It Was”
22
FINAL EXAMS DUE
CR #5
RESEARCH PAPERS DUE
FOCUS
This course examines the New England tradition in literature and culture from the 17th century to the near present,
emphasizing works written from the mid-19th century, when writers contested differing versions of native grounds,
reinventing the New England image and idea in their works. Writers articulated visions of a renewed New England,
revised New England’s Puritan past and redefined the covenant of purpose, piety and passionate expression which has
characterized the life and literature of New England.
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REQUIREMENTS
1)
2)
3)
4)
Attendance: no more than three cuts allowed.
Participation in class discussion.
Mid-term exam (in-class).
Five one-paragraph critical responses (CR), posted on the course website, addressing this question:
How is your own sense of the idea of New England amplified or modified by your readings in this course?
Each week compose a one-paragraph entry in this threaded discussion on how one or more of the authors
discussed that week modify or amplify your sense of New England. Note how they did it -- that is their use
of literary techniques to articulate their visions of the region. Make your entries before we take up these
authors in class and bring a copy of what you wrote to class.
5) One research paper, approximately 2,000-2,500 words.
6) Final Exam (take-home).
GRADING
Five 1 graph responses (20%). Research paper (40%). Midterm Exam (20%). Final Exam (20%).
Grade reduced by absences and lack of classroom participation. Note: the minimum penalty
for academic dishonest in this course is a grade of F.
RESEARCH PAPERS
This is a capstone course. As such, it requires a research paper on a topic that is developed out of the readings in this
course. Topics on authors, themes, genres, etc. should in some fashion address the larger theme of the course: how the
evolving and debatable idea of New England has been shaped into literary works. A research paper requires that
secondary sources be integrated: among these might be literary criticism, literary theory, biography, history and other
source areas that refine or amplify the paper’s argument. Topics will be discussed in class and student proposals for
original topics are welcome.
Topic suggestions: a paper of approximately 3,000/12 pp.):
1]
2]
3]
A study of single New England author.
A study of a New England place or type of place treated by two or more authors.
An introduction to a new edition of one of the texts or writers discussed in this course or a New England
author outside the assigned readings. The following items should be included in a well-integrated essay:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
4]
A discussion of the stated or implied intentions of the author;
An account of the text (editions, publishing history, etc.);
A report on the social context (literary, political, etc.) of the work's publication, its initial reception
as reflected in reviews, its subsequent critical standing and the lines of interpretation that have
developed around the work;
A comparison, style and substance, of two treatments in the same genre of the New England idea;
A discussion of the work’s relevancy to contemporary New England readers;
Your assessment of the value, literary and thematic, of a New England work.
Propose a topic of your own on how New England has been imagined and, with approval, write on it.
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TEXTS
O’Connell, ed.
Freeman
Wharton
Miller
Wilder
O’Neill
Hawthorne
Boston: Voices and Visions
UM Press
A New England Nun and Other Stories
Penguin
Ethan Frome
Penguin
The Crucible
Penguin
Our Town
Perennial
Desire Under the Elms
D’arts Pub.
Nathaniel Hawthorne: Selected Tales and Sketches Penguin
978155498204
0140437398
0140187367
0140481389
0060807792
0981967345
014039057x
ASSIGNMENT
February 1st: A three paragraph essay: graf 1] your favorite New England place; graf 2] your reason for choosing
that place; graf 3] what you think that place represents to New England. Link paragraphs. Text: 12 point, double
spaced. Take Ira Gershwin’s advice: “The title is vital; once you’ve it, prove it.” Send essays as Word attachments to
shaun.oconnell@umb.edu.
OVERVIEW
An examination of the New England tradition in literature and criticism from the mid-nineteenth century to the
near present. Nathaniel Hawthorne shaped a new conception of New England’s Puritan past in his romances; he
also influenced the novels of Henry James, who wrote the first sustained study of Hawthorne in 1979. James, in
turn, influenced T.S. Eliot, who wrote a tribute to James in 1918; William Dean Howells, who was inspired by
Hawthorne to come to Boston; and Edith Wharton, who imagined New England as another country, far from
New York City. Wharton also defined her art in opposition to the New England women realists, particularly
Sarah Orne Jewett. Robert Frost experienced and articulated another version of New England, North of Boston.
Immigrant and minority writers—African-American writers from W.E.B. DuBois to Malcolm X; the IrishAmerican writer, Edwin O’Connor; the Jewish-American writer, Nat Hentoff, for example—brought fresh
perspectives to their portrayals of the region. The diminishing authority of old-family Bostonians is dramatized
by Henry Adams, George Santayana, John P. Marquand, John Cheever, Samuel Eliot Morison and others, but
the Yankee-Brahmin tradition is reinvigorated in the poetry of Robert Lowell. The fiction of John Updike and
others shows that the New England literary tradition persists. In addition, this course will examine the rich
critical heritage which honors this literature: selections drawn from Samuel Eliot Morison, Perry Miller, F.O.
Matthiessen, Van Wyck Brooks, Richard Brodhead and others.
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THEMES & QUESTIONS
How is your own sense of the idea of New England amplified or modified by your readings in this course? Consider
the following comments:
“The newcomers who began to arrive in appreciable numbers over a century ago, and who now rule all the
cities and most of the public institutions of New England, have contributed very little to the main currents of
New England intellectual life, although they manage to make some native intellectuals very unhappy. Our
imported ideas have come from England, France, and Germany, rather than from the nations of our immigrant
peoples. New England differed from the other English colonies in that it was founded largely for the purpose
of trying an experiment in Christian living.” “The intellectual life of New England was determined by the top
layers of society; it was no proletarian cult welling up from the common people.” This “small group of people”
strove “manfully, even heroically, to achieve an ideal—an ideal not merely religious, though permeated by
religion; an ideal of transmitting a civilization, and of planting in the New World the very vines whose fruit
they enjoyed in the Old.” – Samuel Eliot Morison, The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England (1936)
“New England haunted the minds of Americans, who tried to read its riddle, as if for their souls’ good they
must know what it meant. What was the truth about it? -- and there were reasons for this obsession, for,
generally speaking, Americans had a stake in New England. They were deeply implicated in it, as the seat of
their deepest, their stoutest, their greatest tradition. Their blood was mixed perhaps with other strains, and
perhaps they had long lived in other regions, but New England was their ark of the covenant still? How fared
this ark? Into what hands had it fallen? Were these hands strong and good, so much the better. Were they good
but weak, they must be supported. Were they strong but evil, they must be corrected. For it meant much to
Americans that this old region should fare well, as their palladium of truth, justice, freedom and learning.
They could not rest until they were reconciled to it, and until it was reconciled to them.” – Van Wyck Brooks,
New England: Indian Summer (1940)
“Starting in the 1830s, with Hawthorne’s first great New England tales and Emerson’s Nature, as well as the
first volume of Bancroft’s History of the United States and Prescott’s Ferdinand and Isabella, the BostonConcord authors produced over the course of half a century so much of the important literature of the New
England Renaissance that insiders and outsiders alike began to refer more than ever to Boston as a synecdoche
for all New England. ‘The literary theories we accepted,’ remembered the Ohio-born William Dean Howells,
‘were New England theories, the criticism we valued was New England criticism, or, more strictly speaking,
Boston theories, Boston criticism.’ Van Wyck Brooks’s Flowering of New England follows the Howellsian
line, rarely straying west of the greater Boston area. Brooks and Howells oversimplified, however, in equating
the hegemonic with the total literary result. Although the New England literary establishment became
increasingly Boston-centered during the antebellum years, it by no mean had a monopoly on creative
production, even in its own backyard.” – Lawrence Buell, New England Literary Culture: From Revolution
through Renaissance (1986)
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ENGLISH DEPARTMENT POLICIES
Writing Goals:
Students can employ close reading to study the literary elements of texts.
Students can interpret literary works with reference to their historical contexts.
Students can develop strong arguments using two or more texts.
Plagiarism is defined by UMass Boston’s Code of Student Conduct
(http://www.umb.edu/life_on_campus/policies/code/ ); “an act of academic dishonesty, plagiarism can include
actions such as presenting another writer’s work as your own work; copying passages from print or internet
sources without proper citation; taking ideas off the internet, modifying them, and presenting them as your
own; or submitting the same work for more than one course. If you plagiarize, you will fail this course.
Plagiarism cases will be referred to the Chair of the English Department. Also note that plagiarism can result
in further academic sanctions such as suspension.”
--Code of Student Conduct: http://www.umb.edu/life_on_campus/policies/code/
Incompletes: Incompletes are rarely offered, as they are reserved for students who are unable to complete a
small portion of the course at the end of the term due to an extreme circumstance such as illness. Incompletes
are not allowed to replace a significant amount of coursework or absences. If you are awarded an Incomplete,
you must sign a contract with your instructor outlining the work to be done and work due dates. Although an
INC automatically turns into an F after a year, your Incomplete work will typically be due before the
year’send.
--Incomplete policy: http://www.umb.edu/registrar/academic_policies/incomplete_policy/
Civility in and out of the classroom: An educational institution is a unique cultural space: here, the open
sharing of ideas is not only possible, but valued above all else. Intellectual exchange depends on showing
respect for your instructor and peers, taking responsibility for your own course contributions, and
demonstrating a mature understanding that learning can involve disagreement over ideas and assessment. If
you engage in uncivil behavior, such as making inappropriate comments to your professor or fellow students
in the classroom, out of the classroom, or via email or social networking sites, you can be referred to the Chair
of the English Department for sanctions that can include the lowering of your course grade. You can also be
referred to the Dean of Students.