Antebellum American Literature

Catalog description

This course studies various aspects of American literature from around 1820 to the Civil War and explores literature as a tool against the institution of enslavement. To this end, topics may include, but are not limited to, the transition from republicanism to Jacksonian democracy, the influences of romanticism, the canonization of the American Renaissance, sentimental narrative, the literary marketplace, transcendentalism, the rise of literary journalism, and debates surrounding the romance and the novel as generic distinctions.