TRANSCENDENTAL VISIONS

Catalog description

This course examines American Transcendentalism, the literary movement that emerged over the nineteenth century in protest to the intellectual, cultural, and national status quo. We will examine the canonical authors of the period, including Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe, to establish the period’s continuities. Additionally, we will examine writers like Blackhawk, Margaret Fuller, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Wilson, and Rebecca Harding Davis to tease out its contradictions. Along the way, we will interact with modern day culture to consider how this early American narrative tradition holds contextual meaning as well as contemporary resonance. Prerequisite: Completion of an English sequence (4 credits)