[ENGL 503] American Literature 1600-1900

Course Title: American Literature 1600-1900

Course Description

This course focuses on the representative pre-1900 works of American literature, politics, and culture that engage with important socio-economic and cultural issues in American life and letters such as nation building, women's rights, and race relations. Students will explore the ways in which American thoughts and values have evolved over time.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Acquire comprehensive knowledge of pre–1900 American life and letters.
• Explore constitutive relationships between literary imagination and national imaginary.
• Trace the evolution and development of social, political and cultural values as reflected in and shaped by literary works.
• Locate and interpret literary expressions within the broad historical context.

Course Contents

Unit I: The Beginning: Forging the Nation (9 Hours)

1. Heath Introduction "Colonial Period to 1700" (pp. 1–15)
2. William Bradford, from Of Plymouth Plantation (pp. 324–48)
3. John Winthrop, from A Model of Christian Charity (pp. 309–17)
4. Mary Rowlandson, from A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration (pp. 437-68)
5. Anne Bradstreet, "The Author to her Book" (p. 402); "Before the Birth of One of Her Children" (p. 406); "Verses upon the Burning of Our House" (p. 409)
6. Edward Taylor, 4. "Huswifery"; 6. "Upon Wedlock, & Death of Children" (pp. 479–80)
7. Jonathan Edwards, "Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God" (p. 666)
8. Sarah Kimble Knight, "The Journal of Madam Knight" (pp. 584–601)

Unit II: Voices of Revolution and Nationalism (9 Hours)

1. Handsome Lake (Seneca), "How America Was Discovered" (pp. 802–03)
2. Benjamin Franklin, "The Way to Wealth" (808); "Remarks Concerning Savages of America" (pp. 821-24) and Autobiography (Part 1, 2) (pp. 828–86)
3. J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, from Letters from an American Farmer (I, II, III)
4. Thomas Paine, from Common Sense (pp. 959–965)
5. John Adams, "Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams"; "Letters from Abigail Adams to John Adams" (pp. 979–83)
6. Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence (pp. 1057–61)
7. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, The Federalist 6, Federalist 10
8. Judith Sargent Murray "On the Equality of Sexes" (pp. 1193–99)
9. Philip Freneau, "The Indian Burying Ground" (p. 1223)
10. Phillis Wheatley, "On Being Brought from Africa to America" (p. 1247)
11. Hannah Webster, from The Coquette (pp. 1340-59)

Unit III: From Romance to Transcendentalism (9 Hours)

1. Heath Introduction "Early Nineteenth Century, 1800–1865" (pp. 1392–1420)
2. Washington Irving, "Rip van Winkle" (pp. 2153–65)
3. Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown" (pp. 2258–67)
4. Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven" (253 – 42); "The Fall of the House of Usher" (pp. 2472–86)
5. Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney, "The Suttee" (p. 1563); "The Indian's Welcome to the Pilgrim Father" (pp. 1571–72)
6. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature"
7. Henry David Thoreau, "Resistance to Civil Government" (pp. 1738–53)
8. Walt Whitman, "A Woman Waits for Me" (2991–92); "Crossing the Brooklyn Ferry" (pp. 2995-3000)
9. Herman Melville, "Benito Cereno" (pp. 2269–27)
10. Emily Dickenson, from Poems "I like a Look of Agony"; "I Felt a Funeral in My Brain"; "My Life–Stood a Loaded Gun"; "This World is No Conclusion"

Unit IV: Freedom, Equality, and Slavery (9 Hours)

1. William Apess, "An Indian's Looking Glass for the White Man" (pp. 460–65)
2. Sarah Moore Grimké, "From Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Women" (p. 2082)
3. Francis Ellen Harper, "The Slave Mother" (p. 1999); "Free Labor" (p. 2001); "An Appeal to American People" (pp. 2003–04)
4. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (pp. 1882–1946)
5. Abraham Lincoln, "Address at the Dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery" (p. 2078)
6. Sojourner Truth, "Speech at the Akron, Ohio"; "Speech at New York City Convention"; "Address to the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association" (pp. 2096–99)
7. Elizabeth Cody Stanton, "Declaration of Sentiments" (pp. 2113–16)

Unit V: From Realism to Naturalism (12 Hours)

1. Introduction "Late Nineteenth-Century: 1865-1910" from Heath. Vol. C. (pp. 7–35)
2. Mark Twain, "A True Story" (pp. 67–70)
3. Charles Chesnutt, "The Goophered Grapevine" (pp. 126–35)
4. William Dean Howells, "Editha" (269–79)
5. Henry James, Daisy Miller: A Study (281-320); "Art of Fiction" (pp. 320–35)
6. Kate Chopin, "Désirée's Baby" (pp. 359–63)
7. Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat" (pp. 497–513)
8. Jack London, "South of the Slot" (pp. 526–37)
9. Standing Bear (Ponca), "What I Am Going to Tell You Here Will Take Me Until Dark" (pp. 540–42)
10. Abraham Cahan, from Yekl
11. Edith Maud Eaton, "Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian"
12. Onoto Watanna (Wilfred Eaton), "A Half Caste"
13. Zitkala-Sa, from The School Days of an Indian Girl
14. Jose Marti, "Our America"

Evaluation Scheme

Internal Evaluation (40 Marks)

External Examination (60 Marks)

Prescribed Text

Paul Lauter, ed.
Heath Anthology of American Literature. Vol A, B & C, Houghton Mifflin, 2006.