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Syllabus: English 201, Spring 2000
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Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life: Youth,
1842, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington
This class investigates how mid-nineteenth century American nationalism is constructed and invoked in the diverse literary genres of the American Renaissance. We will use the theories of Homi Bhabha, Benedict Anderson, Werner Sollors, and others to examine the role of narrative strategies and issues such as Transcendentalism, immigration, urbanization, religion, race, feminism, domesticity, masculinity, and nature in the formation of a "national" identity and culture. Throughout the semester we will be analyzing the ways in which art, architecture, urban planning, philosophy, tourism, music, and historical texts from this period enrich our understanding of American Romanticism.
Click here for a list of hypertexts for the course
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The Paradox of Self Reliance |
T 1/25 Introduction: What is the
American Renaissance?
R 1/27 The Nation 1830-65: What is a Nation?
Primary Texts: Emerson, "American Scholar"
(Reader)
Channing,
"National Literature" (Reader)
Ernest Renan, "What is a Nation?" (Nation and Narration, ed.
Homi Bhabha: 8-22)
In-class: Thomas Cole's The
Course of Empire &
Voyage
of Life (slides)
Week 2: Romanticism, Transcendentalism, Nature, and Independence
T 2/1 Transcendentalism and the Narrative of Romanticism
Primary Texts: Shelley, "Mont Blanc"
(Reader)
Hedge, "Coleridge" (Reader)
Coleridge, "On the imagination" (Reader)
Samson Reed, "Oration on Genius" (Reader)
Carlyle, "The Everlasting Yea" (Reader)
Brownson, "Everlasting Yes" (Reader)
R 2/3 Transcendentalism and the Narratives of Independence
Primary Texts: Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
(Reader)
Godey's
Lady's Book (on line: Museum of
Material Culture Web Site)
Essays: Byrde, "The Romantic Spirit: Women's Dress 1825-1850"
(Nineteenth Century Fashion: 38-52)
Week 3: Inventing an American Heritage Through Landscape
T 2/8 Transcendentalism and the Narrative of Nature
Primary Texts: Emerson, "Nature"
(Reader)
Bryant, "A Forest Hymn" (Reader)
Hudson River School Painters (on line: Art Gallery Web Site)
On-line Essay: "Nature
and the American Identity"
R 2/10 The Culture of American Landscape: Men on the Move
Primary Texts: Hawthorne, "The Great Stone
Face," "My Visit to Niagara" (Reader)
Nineteenth-Century
Art on Landscape and Niagara Falls
Essays: Dona Brown, "The Uses of Scenery: Scenic Touring in the White
Mountains," (Inventing New England)
Wayne Booth's "Distance and Point-of-View: An Essay in
Classification" Essentials in the Theory of Fiction, pp.
116-33
Week 4: Othering American Space, Othering the Nation
T 2/15 The Female Self in Motion
Primary Texts: Margaret Fuller, Summer
on the Lakes (Chapters 1-4)
Essays: Fuller's Women in the Nineteenth-Century, pp. 247-58,
309-313, 341-end
Showalter, "Towards a Feminist Poetics" (**OLD 1998 EDITION on
reserve**Essentials of the Theory of Fiction, pp.
380-402).
R 2/17 Otherness and the Narratives of Nation
Primary Texts: Margaret Fuller, Summer
on the Lakes (Chapters 5-7)
George
Catlin's Paintings and Drawings of American
Indians
Essays: Sollors, The Invention of Ethnicity, pp. ix-xx,
226-235
E.M. Forster, "Flat and Round Characters" (Essentials of the Theory
of Fiction)
T 2/22 The Economics of Experience
Primary Texts: Thoreau, Walden,
Chapters 1-3
Essays: Miller, "The Iconography of Wrecked…Boats," American
Iconography, pp. 186-208
Recommended: Edward Said's Beginnings: Intention and Method.
NY: Basic Books, 1975: 3-26
R 2/24 American Manhood
Primary Texts: Thoreau, Walden
Essay: David Leverenz, Manhood and the American Renaissance
(9-41)
Class: Web Workshop--meet in Library 18
Evening Film: A River Runs Through It
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Week 6: Utopian Fantasies: Brook Farm
T 2/29 The Idea of Community
Primary Text: Hawthorne, The Blithedale
Romance (Bedford Cultural Edition, 1-47; the introduction is
highly recommended )
Essays: "The Idea of Community" (pp. 333-40, 347-52, Bedford
Cultural Edition, BR)
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities pp. 1-36 (1991ed., or
pp. 11-40 1983 ed.)
R 3/2 Life at Brook Farm
Primary Text: Hawthorne, The Blithedale
Romance (47-109)
Essays: "Life at Brook Farm" (403-457)
Eve Sedgwick, "Chapter 1: Gender Asymmetry and Erotic Triangles,"
Between Men
S 3/4 Landscape Paper Due: Setting & Narrator (4-5 pages)
Week 7: Domesticity & The (Un)Happy Community
T 3/7 Domestic Interiors and
Interiority
Primary Text: Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance (109-end)
Essay: Katherine Grier, "Introduction" & "Chapter 1: Imagining
the Parlor," Culture & Comfort, 1-63.
R 3/9 The Laboring Classes & the Ideal State
Primary Text: The Lowell Offering
Introduction & "Mill and Boardinghouse," pp.
13-112
Primary Texts: Brownson, "The Laboring Classes," (234-47)
Susan Lanser, "Toward a Feminist Narratology," Essentials of the
Theory of Fiction
Images of Nineteenth-Century Mills (including Lowell, MA)
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Weeks 8 -10: The War With Mexico and the Search for a National Form
T 3/14 Moby-Dick and
1848
Primary Text: Melville, Moby-Dick, pp. 1-100
R 3/16 Moby-Dick
Primary Text: Melville, Moby-Dick, pp. 100-175
F 3/16 Landscape Paper Revision &/or web page due
Spring Break March 18-26
T 3/28
Moby-Dick
Primary Text: Melville, Moby-Dick, pp. 175-250
R 3/30 Moby-Dick
Primary Text: Melville, Moby-Dick, pp. 250-350
T 4/4
Moby-Dick
Primary Text: Melville,
Moby-Dick, pp. 350-425
R 4/6 Moby-Dick
Week 11 : Slavery and the Domestic Narrative
T 4/11 Haunting the House: Domestic Terror and National Decay
Texts: Poe, "Ligeia," "The Fall of the
House of Usher," "Murders in the Rugue Morgue" (Reader)
Essay: Henry Ward Beecher, "The Strange Woman" (Reader)
William Freedman, "The Literary Motif" (Essentials of the Theory
of Fiction, pp. 200-12)
R 4/13 The American Self Reconsidered
Primary Texts: Frederick Douglass,
Narrative of the Life
Sorrow Songs (on line: Museum of Material Culture Web Site)
Essay: Stepto, "I Rose and Found My Voice"
U.S.
Historical Documents Concerning Slavery
Thomas
Jefferson on Slavery
The
Bible (?) and Slavery
Also: Nineteenth-Century
American Art by and about African Americans
Nineteenth-Century
American Images of American Indians
Art,
Material Culture, and Resources on Slavery
Weeks 12 & 13 Roots of An African American Narrative Tradition
T 4/18 African Narratives in the National Narrative
Primary Texts: Frederick Douglass,
Narrative of the Life
Essay: Gates, "The Trope of the Talking Book" (Siginifying
Monkey)
R 4/20 Transgressing the Body
Primary Text: Craft, Running a Thousand
Miles for Freedom
Essay: Garber, Marjorie B., Vested Interests, pp. 1-17,
267-285
S 4/22 Research Paper on Narrative Strategies Due
T 4/25 Revisioning the Woman's Place
Primary Text: William Wells Brown,
Clotel
Essay: L. Hutcheon, "The Pastime of Past Time," Essen. of the
Theory of Fiction, pp. 473-91
R 4/27 Writing Across the Color Line
Primary Text: William Wells Brown, Clotel
S 5/8 Final Draft & Web Version of Research Paper Due