SELECTED TOPICS IN 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN
LITERARY AND CULTURAL HISTORY
BTAN3023MA1
Time and Place: Wednesday, 14-15.40, Room 55.
Instructors: Zsolt Virágos
Judit Szathmári (Office: 116/1; szathmarijudit@gmail.com)
Office hours: Monday 14-15, Tuesday 9-10. Main building 116/1 or by appointment
This retrospective course has been designed to offer students of American Studies in the MA
program an extension of previously acquired knowledge pertaining to the literary culture of
the United States from 1800 to the end of the 19th century. Thus the principal objectives of
this lecture course are both the consolidation of earlier exposure to cultural/literary awareness
and the broadening of horizons. The thematic range of the lecture has been designed to
foreground selected literary and cultural historical processes, peaks of development,
theoretical issues, authorial achievements, as well as major shifts and turning-points in the
literary culture of 19th-century America. Representative themes will include: Romanticism,
New England Transcendentalism, the American Gothic tradition, yea sayers v nay sayers,
American Indian literary legacy, representation of gender and race, American expressiveness
and paradigm shifts in American culture.
The formal conclusion of the course will be an oral exam during the examination session in
December/January.
W
1
DATE
Sept. 17
TOPIC
An Overall Assessment of the Literary Culture in the 19th century: From
Romanticism to Naturalism.
Generations, groups, coteries. The Legacy of New England Puritanism. Puritanism
versus Transcendentalism.
Kinds of Romanticism
American Indian Literature: Creation Stories, Trickster Cycles, Histories and
Autobiographies
2
Sept. 24
3
4
Oct. 1
Oct. 8
5
Oct. 15
Benjamin Franklin and the Myth of the Self-Made Man (vertical mobility, the
Horatio Alger formula). The Making of American Myths (II): The Myth of the
Frontier in the Age of Industrialization
6
Oct. 22
7
Oct. 29
Edgar Allan Poe and the Beginnings of Literary Theory: “The Poetic Principle,”
“The Philosophy of Composition.”
READING WEEK: NO CLASS
8
Nov. 5
Emerson, The Foundations of Transcendental philosophy, Transcendentalism and
Utopia, Brook Farm, Fruitlands, Walden, and other reform
experiments/movements: labor, anti-slavery, education
Thoreau: Notions of progress, social development and social change
Nathaniel Hawthorne, allegories of Puritan America
The great poets of the 19th century: Walt Whitman v Emily Dickinson
Feminist writing and women’s literature in 19th-century America: the Feminist
Movement, Margaret Fuller, Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
9
10
11
12
Nov. 12
Nov. 19
Nov. 26
Dec. 3
13
Dec. 10
Aspects of African American thought (Phyllis Wheatley, Harriet A. Jacobs,
Frederick Douglass), the genre of the slave narrative.
14
Dec. 17
Branches of regional humor and Mark Twain.
REQUIRED READING for the ORAL EXAM
Poetry:
Edgar Allan POE, "The Raven," "Ulalume," "Annabel Lee," “To Helen," "The Conqueror
Worm"
Emily DICKINSON, poems numbered 49, 67, 214, 258, 303, 328, 341, 441, 449, 453, 478,
511, 585, 712, 829, 986, 1072, and 1175
Walt WHITMAN, "Song of Myself" (paragraphs 1-21, 24, 33, 40, 41, 51, 52), "Out of the
Cradle Endlessly Rocking," When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"
Prose:
Kate CHOPIN: The Awakening (1899), “The Story of an Hour,” “The Storm”
Stephen CRANE: The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
Frederick DOUGLASS: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, A Slave (1845)
Charlotte Perkins GILMAN: “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Nathaniel HAWTHORNE: The Scarlet Letter (1850), “The Birthmark”
Samuel OCCOM: “Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian”
(http://www.learner.org/amerpass/archive/9000s/9024.pdf)
Henry David THOREAU: Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854)
Mark TWAIN: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
excerpts from the WINNEBAGO TRICKSTER CYCLE,
(http://www.hotcakencyclopedia.com/ho.TricksterCycle.html 4 stories)
Miscellaneous:
Ralph Waldo EMERSON: “Nature,” “Self-Reliance,” “The American Scholar,” “Divinity
School Address,” “The Poet”
Edgar Allan POE: “Poetic Principle,” “The Philosophy of Composition”
Henry David THORAU: “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”
Walt WHITMAN: “Preface to Leaves of Grass”
SUGGESTED READINGS
Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed. The Cambridge History of American Literature. vols. 1–8.
Cambridge/New York: Cambridge UP, 2005.
Bollobás, Enikő. Az amerikai irodalom története. Budapest: Osiris, 2005.
Chase, Richard. The American Novel and Its Tradition. Amherst, MA: The Johns Hopkins
UP, 1989.
Elliot,Emory, et.al. Columbia Literary History of the United States. New York: Columbia U
P, 1988.
Erdoes, Richad, and Alfonso Ortiz, eds. American Indian Myths and Legends. New York:
Pantheon, 1985.
Fiedler, Leslie A. Love and Death in the American Novel. Stein and Day, 1960.
Lawrence, D. H. Studies in Classic American Literature. New York: Seltzer, 1923.
Matthiessen, F. O. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and
Whitman London: Oxford UP, 1941.
Radin, Paul. The Trickster. A Study in American Indian Mythology. London: Rutledge, 1956.
Ruland, Richard, and Malcolm Bradbury. From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of
American Literature. New York: Viking, 1991.
Sarbu, Aladár. The Reality of Appearances: Vision and Representation in Emerson,
Hawthorne, and Melville. Budapest: Akadémia, 1996.
Slotkin, Richard. The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of
Industrialization, 1800-1890. Oklahoma.: U of Oklahoma P, 1999.
Sundquist, Eric J. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature.
Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993.
Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction. New York:
Oxford UP, 1986.
Virágos, Zsolt K. Portraits and Landmarks: The American Literary Culture in the 19th
Century. 7th edition, Debrecen: IEAS, 2010.