Professor Karen Ford
English 650-36913
Tuesday 9:00-11:50
fordk@uoregon.edu
530 PLC
541-346-1314
Office Hours: Tuesday 11:00-12:30
Wednesday 11:00-12:30
NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY
TEXTS
UO Duck Shop Bookstore
American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century (1-volume college edition). Ed. Hollander. Library
of America, 1996.
Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson (1-volume reading edition). Ed. Franklin.
Harvard UP, 1999.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Prose and Poetry. Ed. Porte & Morris. Norton, 2001.
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. Ed. Moon. Norton, 2002.
Online Archives and Resources
Dunbar, http://www.libraries.wright.edu/special/dunbar/
Emerson, http://www.transcendentalists.com/emerson_poems.htm
---. http://www.transcendentalists.com/emerson_essays.htm
Higginson, “Letter to a Young Contributor,” Atlantic Monthly 9.54 (1862): 204-11.
http://www.emilydickinson.org/higgyc/yc.html
Longfellow, http://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_front.php
---, Kavanagh
http://xtf.lib.virginia.edu/xtf/view?docId=2005_Q4_1/uvaBook/tei/eaf261.xml;chunk.id=d9;toc.
depth=1;toc.id=;brand=default
Poe, http://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/index.htm
Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
Sigourney, http://archive.org/details/traitsaborigines00sigorich
Thoreau, http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/index.html
ASSIGNMENTS & GRADING
Close Reading (3-5 pages)
Recitation and presentation (10 minutes)
Abstract for seminar paper (1-2 pages)
Annotated bibliography for seminar paper
Seminar paper (12-15 pages)
Revised seminar paper (12-15 pages)
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10%
10%
5%
15%
20%
40%
Assignments must not exceed page or time length (including Notes and Works Cited), and
written work must be printed (not submitted electronically) single sided in Times New
Roman 12 or Courier 10 with one-inch margins all around in MLA style.
Submit written work in my English Department mailbox (118 PLC) or under my office door
(530 PLC) by 5:00 on the due dates.
Incompletes will be given for documented medical emergencies only.
If you have a documented disability and anticipate needing accommodations in this course,
please make arrangements to meet with me soon.
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English 670-36913
Nineteenth-Century American Poetry
AP = Library of America Anthology
 = Blackboard
 = Worldwide Web
Dickinson, Emerson, & Whitman by individual volume unless otherwise noted
Date
Readings
Assignment Due
Week 1 - This Puzzle the New World
4/3
Course Introduction: 19th-Century Poetry
and Poetics
First-Day Poems 
Week 2 - Fireside & Schoolroom
4/10
Bryant, AP 56-70, Poetry in Its
Relation , Originality and Imitation
Longfellow, AP 148-85, Defense of
Poetry ; Whittier, AP 186-228,
American Literature ; Holmes,
AP 257-63; Lowell, AP 315-16
4/13
Close Reading due
Week 3 - Dream-Land
4/17
Poe, AP 229-52, Philosophy
of Composition , Letter to B 
Dickinson 146, 348, 381, 448,
455, 600, 627, 654, 797
Week 4 - Edge of the Sky
4/24
American Indian Poetry, AP 783-818;
Longfellow, AP 164-66; Sigourney,
AP 49-50; Bryant, AP 66-69; Whitman,
“Song” section 10; Whittier, “How the
Robin Came” ; Dickinson, 477, 525
(Further reading: Longfellow, The Song of
Hiawatha ; Sigourney, Traits of the
Aborigines of America )
4/27
Abstract due
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Date
Readings
Assignment Due
Week 5 – The World-Soul
5/1
Emerson, Poems, The Poet, American
Scholar; Thoreau, AP 302-06;
Whitman, Out of the Cradle
Week 6 - Paths Untrodden
5/8
Whitman, Song of Myself, Calamus,
1855 Preface
5/11
Annotated bibliography due
Week 7 - Battleground
5/15
Horton, AP 83-85; Longfellow,
Poems on Slavery ; Harper, AP 529-30,
Aunt Chloe poems ; Dickinson, F247,
F353, F360, F451, F465, F518, F649,
F788, F836, F1064
Week 8 - Graveyard
5/22
Melville, AP 458-67; Whitman, Drum
Taps, Memories of President Lincoln
Week 9 - Further Heaven
5/29
Dickinson, Letters: 238, 260, 261, 265,
268, 271 ; Poems: Severely Selected
13-533
(Further reading: Higginson, Letter
to a Young Contributor )
6/1
Seminar paper due
Week 10 - Reticent Volcano
6/5
Dickinson, Letters: 316, 330, 330a,
342, 342a, 342b 444, 444a ;
Poems: Severely Selected 536-1788
6/12
Tuesday of finals week
Revised Seminar paper due
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