The Romance of Fiction:
History and Society in Nineteenth Century
American Literature
Module Number:
Module Co-ordinator:
Session:
AMS-20064
Ian Bell
Autumn Semester I 2015-2016
This module analyses the major form of the American novel in the Nineteenth
Century, defined as ‘Romance’ to distinguish it from the European novel which
expresses itself predominantly in realistic form. Congruent with political and social
ambitions for democracy, the ‘Romance’ suggests liberations of various kinds,
principally a freedom from the constraints of too close an allegiance with the visible
world, and as an alternative, proposes an arena of imaginative free-play which
questions the seeming givens of that visibility. Here, the form is strongly bound up
with providing alternative views and understanding of history.
The module introduces students to the work of some of the major canonical writers of
the Nineteenth Century. These writers have often been said to work in the
genre/tradition of the ‘Romance’, and the module seeks both to define that term and to
analyse what ideas or literary strategies they held in common. In the work of postWW2 literary critics, there has been an assumption that ‘Romance’ was primarily
interested in questions of individual psychology; the module explores some of the
ways in which ‘Romance’ forms may also be seen interested in questions of history.
Week 1:
Introduction: Form and Debates
Week 2:
Romancing the Past: Washington Irving, “The Adventure of the
German Student” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Week 3:
Gothic Ghosts: Edgar Allen Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “On
Imagination”, and “The Masque of the Red Death”.
Week 4:
Romantic Heroism: James Fennimore Cooper, The Deerslayer
Week 5:
Romantic Science: Herman Melville, “The Bell-Tower”; Nathaniel
Hawthorne, “The Birthmark” and “Rappacini’s Daughter”
Week 6
Romancing the City: Edgar Allen Poe, “The Man of the Crowd”,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Wakefield”.
Week 7
Individual Study and Consultation Work
Week 8
Race and Innocence: Herman Melville, “Benito Cereno” and “Bill
Budd”
Week 9
The Body of Labour: Walt Whitman, Selections from Leaves of Grass
Week 10
The Fate of the Female, I: Henry James, Daisy Miller
Week 11
The Fate of the Female, II: Henry James, Washington Square
Week 12
Conclusion and Overview