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American Literature. Introduction. Course Description. This course will survey American literature from the Colonial period to the Post-World War II period. Readings will include poems, novels, essays, autobiographies, short stories, and philosophical writings, originating in different
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Course Description This course will survey American literature from the Colonial period to the Post-World War II period. Readings will include poems, novels, essays, autobiographies, short stories, and philosophical writings, originating in different regions and social settings across the country. Some works are chosen from their historical importance, others for their aesthetic virtues. Taken as a whole, they form a rich collection of imaginative and critical writings.
Our goal will be to analyze these works as diverse representations of American experience, ideas, and values. As it is created, literature in its widest sense can function as moral instruction, personal expression, and casual entertainment. Much classroom discussion will involve close textual commentary upon the assigned works.
Course Outline 1.Literature of Colonial American 2.Early Romantics 3.Transcendentalism 4.High Romantics 5.Realism 6.Local Color Fiction 7.Naturalism 8.Modern Poetry 9.Modern Fiction Before 1945
10.Postwar Realism in Fiction 11.Beat Generation 12.Women Writers in America 13.Black Literature 14.Southern Literature 15.Modern Drama
“The first American literature was neither American nor really literature. It was not American because it was the work mainly of immigrants from England. It was not literature as we know it---- in the form of poetry, essay, or fiction---- but rather an interesting mixture of travel accounts and religious writings”
An inventor, scientist, printer, political statesman, diplomat, exemplary self-made man, revolutionary hero, author.
---- Having faith in human accomplishment and progress ---- Believing that an individual with industry and thrift will improve himself and his community, a self-mad man and an archetypal American success story that has since become part of American popular culture ---- Almost the first example of achieving the “American Dream”
A forerunner of American Romanticism or a transitional figure towards Romanticism.
Wild Honeysuckle a lyrical lament for the mutability of nature and an expression of faith in man’s ability to learn universal truths from nature. An indirect eulogy of America predicting Whitman
Learning Points • Distinct Features • Representatives • Conclusion
Distinct Features 1. American Romanticism is in a way derivative.
2. American Romanticism is in essence the expression of “a real new experience” and contains “an alien quality” for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place” is radically new and alien.
3. Different from their European counterparts, American Romanticism tended to moralize, to edify rather than to entertain. It presented an entirely new experience alien to European culture.
Representatives • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Washington Irving • Ralph Waldo Emerson • Henry David Thoreau • Nathaniel Hawthorne • Edgar Allan Poe • Herman Melville • Walt Whitman • Emily Elizabeth Dickinson • James Fenimore Cooper
Conclusion • imagination • sensibility and tuition over reason • primitivism • love of nature • sympathetic interest in the past • mysticism • individualism
The Secret of the Sea In this poem the sea symbolizes life and the moral of the poem lies in the line of “Only those who brave its dangers comprehend its mystery.”
one of America’s earliest naturalist poets “the American Wordsworth”
To a Waterfowl the poet in self-doubt and despair a lonely bird-- flying to--its destination-- by Power the poet-- walking to-- destination-- by Power too
Works by Washington Irving 1. Rip Van Winkle 2. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow 3. The Sketch Book
Father of American literature the dominant spirit of the age the proponent of “the American newness”
On July 4, 1845, he began living in a hut (built on Emerson’s land) by the Walden Pond. There he lived simply and deliberately, devoting his time to observations and reflections.
Walden, or Life in the Woods a reflection of his readings, concerns and thinking, a mixture of politics and philosophy.
Annabel Lee Thematically speaking, this poem not only mourns the death of a beautiful girl but also celebrates the timeless love.
I hear America Singing The poem presents an image of America: an image of proud and healthy individualists engaged in productive and happy labor.
There Is a Certain Slant of Light The poem itself conveys the oppressive mood that the weather creates. With her uncommon creativity and imagination on the poet associates the winter sunlight with the image of death.
