ANG 070001; ANGA 052101
Fall 2008
Dr. Vöő Gabriella
Tuesday 8 – 9
E 323 (A/342)
Survey of American Literature 1
(from the beginnings to the second half of the 19th century)
Theme
Colonial encounters:
Native American oral traditions.
The literature of travel and exploration.
Christopher Columbus, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca.
The captivity narrative 1. Captain John Smith.
2.
The legacy of Puritanism 1:
16 Sept. The Puritan conception of history. William
Bradford, John Morton, John Winthrop, Cotton
Mather.
1.
9 Sept.
3.
The legacy of Puritanism 2:
23 Sept. The captivity narrative 2. Mary Rowlandson. The
Jeremiad. The Great Awakening. Jonathan
Edwards.
4.
The beginnings of American poetry:
30 Sept. Puritan poetry. Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor.
Poetry in the South. Ebenezer Cooke and William
Byrd II.
5.
The literature of the Enlightenment and
7 Oct. Republicanism:
Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine,
St. Jean de Crevecoeur.
Enlightenment poetry. Philip Freneau and Phillis
Wheatley.
The beginnings of American drama.
6.
14 Oct.
7.
28 Oct.
8.
4 Nov.
The emergence of a national literature:
The romance of the frontier. James Fenimore
Cooper. The imaginative romance. Washington
Irving and Edgar Allan Poe.
Literary Transcendentalism:
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau
Reform movements and feminism: Margaret Fuller
The prose writing of the American Renaissance 1:
The tale and the novel: Nathaniel Hawthorne and
Herman Melville.
9.
The prose writing of the American Renaissance 2:
11 Nov. The sentimental novel. Harriet Beecher Stowe.
The slave narrative. Olaudah Equiano,
Frederick Douglass and Harriet Ann Jacobs.
10.
Romantic poetry:
18 Nov. William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe,
Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.
Reading
Columbus: The Third Voyage: “The Terrestrial
Paradise”
Captain John Smith: from The Generall Historie of
Virginia. . ., Book III, Ch. II: [Captain Smith’s
Captivity]
Bradford: from Of Plymouth Plantation. Book I,
Ch. IX [“Of Their Voyage. . .”]
Winthrop: excerpt from “A Model of Christian
Charity”
Mather: from Magnalia Christi Americana (“The
Witchcraft trials in Salem”)
Rowlandson: from A Narrative of the Captivity . . .
(“The twentieth remove”)
Edwards: Personal Narrative
Bradstreet: “Before the Birth of One of Her
Children,” “Upon the Burning of Our House”
Taylor: “Huswifery,” “Meditation 8”
Jefferson: “The Declaration of Independence”
Franklin: from The Autobiography (the end of Part
II, the list of Moral Virtues)
Crevecoeur: Letters from an American Farmer,
Letter III: “What is an American?”
Paine: from Common Sense (“Thoughts on the
Present State of American Affairs”)
Freneau: “On the Emigration to America,” “The
Wild Honey Suckle”
Wheatley: “On Being Brought from Africa to
America”
Irving: “Rip Van Winkle”
Cooper: “Preface” to The Leatherstocking Tales
Poe: “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The
Murders in the Rue Morgue”
Emerson: the essay “The American Scholar”
Thoreau: from Walden: “Where I Lived, and What I
Lived For”
Fuller: from The Great Lawsuit: “Two Kinds of
Slavery,” “Four Kinds of Equality”
Hawthorne: “Young Goodman Brown,”
“The Minister’s Black Veil”
Melville: “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” “Bartleby,
the Scrivener,” Benito Cereno
Stowe: from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Chapter XL: “The
Martyr”
Douglass: from Narrative of The Life of Frederick
Douglass, Chapters I, VII, X.
Bryant: “To a Waterfowl”
Longfellow: “A Psalm of Life,” “Nature”
Poe: “To Helen,” “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee”
11.
The Rise of Realism 1:
25 Nov. Mark Twain, Native American literature: John
Rollin Ridge and Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins.
Whitman: “One’s Self I Sing,” “Out of the Cradle
Endlessly Rocking,” “Passage to India”
Dickinson: 303, 324, 435, 448, 613
Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
12.
2 Dec.
The Rise of Realism 2:
Henry James and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
James: “Daisy Miller”
Gilman: “The Yellow Wallpaper”
13.
9 Dec.
Naturalism and Impressionism:
Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin, Theodore Dreiser.
Crane: “The Open Boat”
Chopin: The Awakening
Students are kindly requested not to come late for class.
Reading
1. Students are kindly requested to read all the primary texts assigned in the syllabus.
All texts assigned are included in the following anthologies:
The Harper Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1, 2 or The Concise Edition
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1, 2 or The Concise Edition.
For the earlier texts, you may also consult the
Anthology of American Literature: Colonial through Romantic.
2. Section introductions and authors’ biographies from the American anthologies are also essential required
readings, and will be checked by the midterm and end-term tests.
There are several copies of these anthologies in the library reading room; most of the texts assigned are brief, and
possible to read at one sitting. All the texts are available online through NETTING AMERICA,
http://www.pccd.hu/hefop51
Note: For primary texts, study notes and criticism you may consult the Chadwyck (Literature Online) database,
as well as NETTING AMERICA and CooSpace.
Assessment
Final test during the exam period.
Grading
Marks will be calculated on a 100-point (40+60) scale.
Reference
1. Lecture notes. Abstracts can be downloaded from the site www.btk.pte.hu/tanszekek/angol/vogabi
2. Section introductions and the introductions to individual authors from the anthologies of American literature.
3. The “Knowledge Notes” section of the Chadwyck (Literature Online) database.
4. Books:
Bercovitch, Sacvan (general editor). The Cambridge History of American Literature. Vols. I, II.
Bollobás Enikő. Az amerikai irodalom története. Osiris kiadó, Budapest, 2005.
Bradbury, Malcolm and Howard Temperley. Introduction to American Studies. New York: Longman, 1989.
Elliott, Emory (ed.) The Columbia Literary History of the United States. New York: Columbia UP, 1988.
—. The Columbia History of the American Novel. New York: Columbia UP, 1991.
Ruland, Richard and Malcolm Bradbury. From Puritanism to Postmodernism. New York: Penguin Publishers,
1991 (do not use the Hungarian translation: the original is available in the library and in bookshops).
Országh László, Virágos Zsolt. Az amerikai irodalom története. Eötvös József Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1997.
Virágos Zsolt. Portraits and Landmarks: American Literary Culture in the 19 th Century. U of Debrecen, 1993.
The following authors and topics included into the Final Exam in English and American Literature will be
covered by this lecture course:
1. The Literature of Colonial America
The literature of travel and exploration. Puritanism: doctrines and doctrinal controversies. Puritan narratives: the
captivity narrative, the sermon; diary, biography, history and the spiritual narrative. The typological view of
history. The “Jeremiad.” The Great Awakening and the conversion narrative. Puritan poetry. The significance of
typology in the poetry of Taylor.
Readings: John Smith: from The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles: “Captain
Smith’s Captivity.” Mary Rowlandson: A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.
William Bradford: a chapter from Of Plymouth Plantation (e.g. “Of their Voyage . . . ”); John Winthrop: extract
from “A Model of Christian Charity”; Cotton Mather: extract from Magnalia Christi Americana (e.g. “The
Witchcraft Trials in Salem”); Jonathan Edwards: Personal Narrative; two poems by Anne Bradstreet (e.g.
“Before the Birth of One of Her Children,” “Upon the Burning of Our House”) and Edward Taylor (e.g.
“Huswifery,” “Meditation 8”).
Reference: Sacvan Bercovitch: “The Puritan Vision of the New World. The Columbia Literary History of the
United States. 33-44.
2. The Literature of Enlightenment and Republicanism
The impact of enlightened and revolutionary ideas on literature; the “republic of letters.” The literature of
persuasion. Utilitarian thought; satire and irony. The Enlightenment autobiography. The quest for national
identity; the literature of political and national consensus. Enlightenment poetry: Phillis Wheatley and Philip
Freneau.
Readings: Thomas Jefferson: “The Declaration of Independence”; Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography, Part
1; Tom Paine: extracts from Common Sense (“Introduction” and “Thoughts on the Present State of American
Affairs”); St. John Crevecoeur: Letters from an American Farmer, Letter III; two poems by Phillis Wheatley
(e.g. “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” “On Imagination”) and by Philip Freneau (e.g. “On the
Emigration to America,” “The Wild Honey Suckle”).
Reference: Robert A. Ferguson: “The Literature of Public Documents.” The Cambridge History of American
Literature, Vol. I. 470-95. Claudia Johnson: “A New Nation's Drama.” The Columbia Literary History of the
United States. 324-41.
3. The Emergence of a National Literary Culture
The fictional works of Washington Irving and James F. Cooper; the tales and poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. The
anxiety of the artist in nineteenth-century America. The romance of the Frontier and the imaginative romance.
The Gothic. Symbolism and parody in the tales of Poe. The characteristics of early Romantic poetry. Drama and
theater in 18th and 19th-century America.
Readings: Cooper: “Preface” to The Leather-Stocking Tales and The Last of the Mohicans. Irving: “Rip Van
Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Poe: two short stories (e.g. “The Fall of the House of Usher” and
“Ligeia”). “The Raven” and two other poems (e.g. “To Helen,” “Annabel Lee”), and the essay “The Philosophy
of Composition.”
Reference: Haskell Springer: “Washington Irving and the Knickerbocker Group.” The Columbia Literary History
of the United States. 229-39, and Malcolm Bradbury: From Puritanism to Postmodernism: “American
Naissance” IV. 131-38.
4. Literary Transcendentalism
The religious and intellectual roots of Transcendentalism. Views on man, nature and society. Social reform and
feminism. The quest for American cultural independence: the cultural manifestos of Emerson. Characteristic
genres: the essay and the journal. The political thought of Henry David Thoreau, the principle of civil
disobedience. The Walden experiment and the autobiographical mode.
Readings: Ralph Waldo Emerson: the essays “Self-Reliance,” “The American Scholar,” “The Poet” and two
poems (e.g. “The Rhodora,” “Days”); Thoreau: “Resistance to Civil Government” and selections from Walden
(“Economy” and another chapter, e.g. “Where I Lived and What I Lived For” or “Reading”), Margaret Fuller:
selections from The Great Lawsuit (“Two Kinds of Slavery,” “Four Kinds of Equality”).
Reference: Malcolm Bradbury: From Purtianism to Postmodernism: “American Naissance” III. 117-130. Rod
W. Horton and Herbert Edwards: “Unitarianism and Transcendentalism.“ Ch. V of Backgrounds of American
Literary Thought. 112-130.
5. The Prose Writing of the American Renaissance
The cultural and literary “Renaissance” in America. The romance. Historical romance and moral allegory in the
work of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The romance as philosophical quest in the work of Herman Melville. The slave
narrative: the representative autobiographies of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs.
Readings: Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter and two short stories (e.g. “Young Goodman Brown” and “The
Minister’s Black Veil”); Melville: Moby-Dick or three short stories (“Bartleby the Scrivener,” “Benito Cereno”
and “Billy Budd”). Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Chs. I, VII, X) or
Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Chs. 10, 16, 21).
Reference: Sacvan Bercovitch: “The A-Politics of Ambiguity in The Scarlet Letter.” New Literary History 19:3,
Spring 1988. 629-54. Robert Milder: “Herman Melville.” The Columbia Literary History of the United States.
429-447.
6. Romantic and Proto-Modern Poetry
The “Fireside Poets”: William Cullen Bryant and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poetry of Walt Whitman
and Emily Dickinson. Radical innovations in poetic language and technique. Whitman’s democratic universalism,
the unity of body, self and community. Dickinson’s focus on the inner self, consciousness and metaphysical
experience. Public and private personae and modern conceptions of selfhood.
Readings: Bryant: “To a Waterfowl,” “The Prairies,” “The Poet”; Longfellow: “A Psalm of Life,” “Nature” and
“The Cross of Snow”; Whitman: “Preface” to Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself” and two other poems (e.g. “Out
of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” “Passage to India”) and a selection of at least six poems by Dickinson, e.g.
“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” (216), “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain” (280), “The Soul Selects Her Own
Society” (303), “Some Keep the Sabbath Going to church” (324), “I died for Beauty—but was scarce” (449),
“Much Madness is Divinest Sense—“ (435), “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass” (986).
Reference: Jerome Loving: “Walt Whitman.” and Wendy Martin: “Emily Dickinson.” The Columbia Literary
History of the United States. 448-62 and 609-26.
7. Realism in American Prose Fiction
The Civil War and the Gilded Age. The works of Mark Twain, Henry James and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Issues of race and gender. Social satire in the work of Twain. National and international themes. Twain as a
journalist. The psychological realism of James and his theory of fiction. The feminist agenda of Gilman. The
crisis of the American Dream in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath: mythic naturalism and experimental
structure. The adaptability of the literary term “epic” to novels that portray social groups and/or representative
individuals to capture the totality of the American experience in its variety and complexity.
Readings: Twain: Huckleberry Finn. James: the essay “The Art of Fiction,” a novel (e.g. The Portrait of a Lady)
and a short story (e.g. “Daisy Miller” or “The Beast in the Jungle”). Gilman: “The Yellow Wallpaper”,
Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath.
Reference: Robert Schulman: “Realism.” The Columbia History of the American Novel. 160-88.
8. Naturalism and Impressionism in Fiction
Social differences and the development of new cultural contexts; interest in the world of the lower classes,
“muckraking” literature. Fiction and the science of society: heredity and environment, fate and determinism.
Literary impressionism: narrative modes, point of view, symbolism. The use of naturalism, colours, descriptions
of exotic spectacle, metaphors and key symbolic structures in the works of Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin and
Theodore Dreiser.
Readings: Crane: The Red Badge of Courage; Dreiser: Sister Carrie or An American Tragedy. Chopin: The
Awakening.
Reference: Lee Clark Mitchell: “Naturalism and the Languages of Determinism.” The Columbia Literary History
of the United States. 525-45.