American Literature to 1865

Catalog description

This course offers students a broad introduction to key moments and authors in the literary traditions that shaped US literature up to 1865. While individual authors and works discussed in class will vary, the course addresses the overall development of literatures in the United States by time periods and genres that may range from pre-Columbian oral traditions to American fiction and poetry published until the end of the Civil War. The class may feature the study of representative examples of both oral traditions and written works. In addition to highlighting enduring literary voices, the class may also highlight the development of specific genres (such as slave narratives), literary movements (such as Transcendentalism), periods of literary production (such as the American Renaissance) or other groupings of authors (such as the Fireside Poets) over the course of US literary history. Likewise, the class may include works both by authors who were popular at the time when they published their works (and thus able to impact American literature and culture during their lifetime) and those whose contributions to literary history were recognized only later. While it should be expected that no version of this course will be able to cover all authors whose works emerged before 1865, selected authors and works might include the following: examples of Native American, African American, and other oral traditions; excerpts from works by authors such as Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Cotton Mather, Phillis Wheatley, Samson Occom, Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendel Holmes, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, or Emily Dickinson.