The Great Traditions in American Literature

Catalog description

Fred Lewis Pattee's career at Penn State marks the beginning of a heyday for the study of American literature. By the 1930s, prominent American critic Granville Hicks hailed what he dubbed "the great tradition of American literature" as a series of key themes in American writing, including folk traditions, politics, business, labor, social critique, fugitives, and flight. Since Hicks's time, literary scholars have contested the very notion of any "great tradition," because so many different authors have always participated in the American literary scene. This course examines American literature by looking at the dynamic and varied literary productions that, across time, have comprised the American literary canon, even as it calls into question the notion of whether America ever had a single literary canon, whether historically or in the present day. Students will learn how access to educational institutions, to writing equipment, and to printed and graphic materials all influenced who might become an author, and who, a reader. They will also learn how changing political and cultural institutions influenced writers' literary production and literary achievements. With text selection at the instructors' discretion, students will study poetry, fiction, non-fiction, oratory, and drama, and they will examine many of the most enduring themes in American literature: religion; moral and ethical ideals; the lure of mobility, especially upward mobility (or absence of it); gender dynamics; enslavement, abolitionism, and emancipation; race and ethnicity; the lure (and social complications) of the American West; American pragmatism; love and loss; hope and despair. Students will be asked to take up such questions as the following: Who has had a voice in American literary history? Why are some writers more frequently studied than others? Who determined what should be considered "great" literature inside the academy? In what ways does the study of American literary history uphold American values of freedom and freedom of expression? Who had access to publication, when, and under what circumstances? How does the publishing marketplace influence readers' choices regarding "great" American literature? How do educational institutions influence readers' choices? The course aims to provide a foundation for further study of American literature by equipping students with an understanding of the American literary past and its complex relationship to American culture and to American educational, political, and marketing institutions. Instructors might examine one or two key themes in the tradition, or they might ask students to learn about sweeping literary movements across time.