EN31820 - AMERICAN LITERATURE 1835-1895

Module Identifier	EN31820
Module Title	AMERICAN LITERATURE 1835-1895
Academic Year	2001/2002
Co-ordinator	To Be Arranged
Semester	Intended for use in future years
Next year offered	N/A
Next semester offered	N/A
Course delivery	Seminar	20 Hours 10 x 2 hour workshop seminars
Assessment	Continuous assessment	2 essays (2,500 words each)	100%
	Resit assessment	Resubmit any failed elements and/or make good any missing elements.

Outline syllabus

The main goals of this module are to provide an introduction to the self-consciously American literature of the ante-bellum period and to show how that literature responded to the various social, political and economic factors which culminated in the Civil War, and which initiated the post-war period sometimes referred to as the 'Gilded Age'. Attention will be drawn to the impact of the Abolitionist movement on literature, as well as to the different visions of American destiny offered by male and female traditions of writing. In addition to the anti-slavery movement and the struggle for women's rights, emphasis will be placed on the ideological conflict engendered by the rival claims of religion and science, and the vexed question of the development of an American individualism will be explored. The option will conclude by contrasting the fictional visions of the rural South and the urban North in two texts written in the late nineteenth century. Except where otherwise stated, the texts will be available in the ground-breaking Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1 (1990). This anthology allows students to engage in a range of further reading beyond what is actually stipulated in the list below, and to become aware of the variety of different voices which demanded to be heard in the United States of the nineteenth century. The option will be taught by means of a lecture and a seminar each week throughout the semester.

The Making and Myth-Making of America:- Required reading: Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle; Further reading: The James Fenimore Cooper and Issues and Visions in Pre-Civil War America - Indian Voices sections in the Heath anthology
The Unmaking of America: Disintegrations Comic and Gothic:- Required reading: Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Purloined Letter; Further reading: The rest of the Poe section in the anthology
Reform Movements I: Abolitionism:- Required reading:The Literature of Abolition sections in the anthology; Further reading: Harriet Ann Jacobs in the anthology
Reform Movements II: Religion and Science:- Required reading: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rappaccini's Daughter; Further reading: The Minister's Black Veil and Young Goodman Brown, and The Scarlet Letter
Reform Movements III: The Woman Question:- Required reading: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance (Penguin); Further reading: Sarah Margaret Fuller, in the anthology
The Expansion of the American Self:- Required reading: Walt Whitman, Song of Myself; Further reading: Walt Whitman, from Democratic Vistas
The Contraction of the American Self:- Required reading: Herman Melville, Bartleby, The Paradise of Bachelors and The Tartarus of Maids; Further reading: Benito Cereno and the Fanny Fern section in the anthology
The Isolation of the American Female:- Required Reading: Emily Dickinson's poetry in the anthology; Further reading: Dickinson's letters
The Escape of the American Male:- Required reading: Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Penguin); Further reading: Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Penguin)
Southern Dream, Southern Nightmare, Northern Hell:

Brief description

This course examines the efforts of American writers to declare their independence as citizens of the United States of America and ends with the disruption of these efforts in the American Civil War, Reconstruction and its aftermath.