|
COLONIAL LIT--RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
(5 Class Sessions) The Puritans: excerpts from Bay Psalm Book , John Cotton: "The Preface" (298-300), "Psalm 23" (305). New England Primer 308-10; John Winthrop : "Christian Experience" (199-203). Jonathan Edwards : "Resolutions" (516-24); excerpts from Diary (521-26); excerpts from Personal Narrative (544-55). Ann Bradstreet : "The Flesh & the Spirit" (269-71).
Edward Taylor : "Upon a Spider Catching a Fly" (361); "Huswifery" (363); "The Ebb & Flow" (365); "Another Meditation..." (367); "A Fig for thee Oh! Death" (384-85). Bradstreet : "The Prologue" (258-59); "The Author to Her Book" (260); "To Her Father With Some Verses" (260-61). Taylor : "Prologue" (366-67); "Meditation 26" (373-74);
18th C. Sarah Kemble Knight : Journal (473- 90). John Woolman : Journal (593-604). Elizabeth Ashbridge : from Some Account of the...Life(581-90).
COLONIAL LIT--CONFRONTATIONS
(4 Class Sessions) Indians: Cabeza de Vaca : excerpts (89-97); Gaspar de Villagra : excerpts from History of New Mexico (121-131) Mary Rowlandson : excerpts from Narrative of the Captivity... (318-42). Catharine Maria Sedgwick (18th C): from Hope Leslie (1309- 1322).
Civil: Thomas Morton : from New English Canaan (178-87; William Bradford : from Of Plymouth Plantation (221-25). John Winthrop : excerpt from Journal (204-8). Nathaniel Hawthorne "Ann Hutchinson" (2273-78).
Witchcraft: Cotton Mather : "The Devil Attacks" (401-3); "The Trial of Marther Carrier" (403-6). Benjamin Franklin : "A Witch Trial at Mount Holly" (790-91). Hawthorne (l9th C): "Young Goodman Brown" (2082-91).
Individualism in 18th & 19th C; 7 Class Sessions J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur : from "What is an American?" (895-899). Franklin : from Poor Richard's Almanacks (780-84); from Autobiography 823-35). Franklin : from Autobiography (871-81). Ralph Waldo Emerson (l9th C): "Self- Reliance" (151128); "Hamatreya" (1573-74). Emerson : "Circles" (1528-36); "Brahma" (1578); "Compensation" (1569-70); "Experience" (1551-67). Henry David Thoreau : from Walden (1981-2016).
MYTHS, TALES, LEGENDS
(4 Class Sessions) Jane Johnston Schoolcraft : "Mishosha, or the Magician & His Daughter;" (1217-22); "The Forsaken Brother" (1222- 24). Hispanic Southwest Tales : "La comadre sebastiana" (1230-31); "Los tres hermanos" (1232-36); "El obispo" (1236); "El indito de las cien vacas" (1237-38). Washington Irving : "Rip Van Winkle" (1248-60); "Sleepy Hollow" (1260-82). Edgar Allan Poe : "The Purloined Letter" (1372-85); "Ligeia" (1333-44); "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1344-57); "The Masque of the Red Death" (1364-68).
Reform Movements
(16 Class Sessions)
Abolition (6 Class Sessions): Crevecoeur : "Description of Charles Town..." (899-907). Phillis Wheatley : "On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield (714-15); "On Being Brought from Africa to America" (718); "To the University of Cambridge" (720); Letters (726-28). Harriet Beecher Stowe : from Uncle Tom' s Cabin (2311-58).
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper : "Slave Mother" (1918-19). Frederick Douglass : Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1640-1704). "Songs of the Slaves" (2673- 79). Harriet Jacobs : from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1726-50). William Wells Brown : from Clotelle (2587-96).
Harriet E. Wilson : from Our Nig (2129-37). Harper : from Iola Leroy (1934-41). Lydia Maria Child : Preface (1798); "Slavery's Pleasant Homes" (1809- 12). John Greenleaf Whittier : "The Hunters of Men" (1815-16); "The Farewell" (1816-19). Sojourner Truth (1911-15). Stowe : "Sojourner Truth the Libyan Sibyl" (2184-93).
Women (9 Class Sessions):
Hannah Griffiths: "On Reading... " (646). Mercy Otis Warren: "A Thought On the Inestimable Blessing of Reason" (650-52). Lucy Terry: "Bars Fight" (655). Annis Boudinot Stockton: "To Laura" (656); "To the Same" (656); "An Extempore Ode... " (657). Sarah Wentworth Morton: "African Chief" (670-72); "Ode Inscribed to Mrs. M. Warren" (672-73; "Momento" (674). Anonymous: "The Lady's Complaint" (674); "Verses Written by a Young Lady" (675-76); "Impromptu" (677). Hannah Webster Foster : from The Coquette (1133-52). Susanna Haswell Rowson : from Charlotte; A Tale of Truth (1154-63).
Oral Reports; 3 Class Sessions
Women (cont.): Caroline Kirkland : from A New Home_Who'll Follow? (2288-2307). Stowe : "Miss Asphyxia" (2393-2400). Hawthorne : "The Birth-mark" (2101-12); "Rappaccini's Daughter" (2112-32). Fanny Fern : articles (1901- 8). Elizabeth Stoddard : "The Prescription" (2616-28). Jane Tompkins: from Sensational Designs (handout). Judith Sargent Murray : "Desultory Thoughts..." (102729). Sarah Grimké : "The Condition of Women in the U.S." (1886-90). Margaret Fuller : from Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1604-26); letter (1583-85); "A Short Essay on Critics" (1586-90). Child :"Women's Rights" (1806-9). Elizabeth Cady Stanton : "Eighty Years & More" (1895-97); "Declaration of Sentiments" (1897-98).
Native Americans (1 Class Session): William Apes : "An Indian's Looking Glass for the White Man" (1755-60). Elias Boudinot : "An Address to the Whites" (1761-69). Speech of Chief Seattle (1770-73).
Several weeks before the research papers are due students give five-to- ten minute reports on their topics; after each presentation, other class members ask questions and offer comments. These presentations serve several purposes: they encourage students to organize their ideas and express them coherently; they give me an opportunity to suggest ways in which students can supplement their research and clarify their topics; and they provide the class with additional information on various literary issues. Students are also assigned brief position papers which they read to the class; these papers facilitate discussion.
American Individualism: what is it? an outworn cliche? a trite phrase? a twentieth-century myth? Or does it accurately reflect an aspect of American culture? What--if anything--does an individualism mean to the Native Americans, the Puritans, the eighteenth-century writers, and the Transcendentalists? Write an essay in which you discuss the concept of the individual as it appears (or doesn't appear) in the literature we've read for this course. You will probably want to consider some of the following: How do you define American individualism? How do the worldviews (i. e. , the beliefs about human nature, nature, society, and the divine) of the various writers we have studies influence their concepts of the individual?
Women: What images of women develop from reading these poems (Griffitts, Warren, Stockton, Morton, Terry, etc.? Should Rowson and Foster be studied in a literature course? How are women portrayed in these Kirkland and Hawthorne stories? Do you agree with Fuller's views of critics? Why or why not?
Native Americans: Contrast these writers' style with those of the abolitionists & women's rights advocates.
Write a paper (approximately ten typed pages) on one of the following topics:
1. Utopian communities (utopia): Emerson wrote in 1840, "We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform. Not a reading man but has a draft of a new community in his waistcoat pocket." Explore some of the many such communities e.g., the Shakers, Fruitlands, Brook Farm, New Harmony, Oneida, the Phalanxes, Hopedale. Read Emerson's essay "New England Reformers" and Louisa May Alcott's "Transcendental Wild Oats," and other commentaries by outsiders. You'll probably want to read Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance. Things you might consider: What attitudes toward reform and social structure inspire the communities? What threat or challenge do they seem to the general society? Compare the historical accounts with their literary counterparts.
2. The domestic ideal (domesticity): The domestic ideal ruled on both sides of the Atlantic in the nineteenth century. In England a reigning monarch enshrined the virtues of home, marriage, and family, an example that was widely eulogized in less exalted spheres. In America the idea was no less a part of the national mythology, although the harsher realities of frontier life and general domestic privations created a countermyth. Consider the myth and its counters. Compare the public assumptions with the daily lives of a range of women: read a year of letters or diaries of women in various regions and classes. Examine readings in etiquette books, household guides, fashion or domestic magazines. What implicit cultural assumptions do these how-to-do-it books reveal? Or, examine how these cultural assumptions are portrayed and or transformed in the literary works of nineteenth-century women writers (such as Fanny Fern's Ruth Hall, Louisa May Alcott's Work, Susan Warner's Wide, Wide World, etc).
3. Colonial America: Analyze some aspect of the Colonial heritage reflected in Hawthorne's tales and The Scarlet Letter. You may focus on a theme, motif, or historical incident, or on Hawthorne's attitude toward a particular aspect of the Colonial heritage. The purpose of this assignment is to stimulate you to think about the similarities and differences between the Puritan and eighteenth- century worldview and the nineteenth-century worldview.
Questions you might want to consider as you formulate your thesis: To what extent is Hawthorne an heir of Puritanism? a critic of it? a rebel against it? a victim of it? To what extent does he perceive his forefathers accurately? Here are some possible themes or subjects: The witchcraft delusion; the American Revolution; the Calvinist doctrine of innate depravity; Indian wars; the founding Fathers; the wilderness; the City on a hill; the devil; sin and guilt; the American dream.
4. Transcendentalism: Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller were all major participants in Transcendentalism, but each emphasized different features of the movement. Take some aspect of their thought or writing and explore the similarities and differences their works exhibit. You must discuss at least two of these writers. Where appropriate, you should relate the Transcendentalists to earlier writers. In the process, you should arrive at a clearer understanding of how Transcendentalism both breaks with earlier American religious ideas and translates them into new forms.
Here are some possible topics: Self-reliance in Emerson, Fuller, & Thoreau; Emerson's & Thoreau's visions of nature (comparisons with the Puritans & Edwards would be useful); the theme of American destiny in Fuller and Emerson; individualism in Emerson & Thoreau (comparisons with Franklin appropriate); the attitude toward the "fathers" in Emerson, Thoreau, & Fuller (comparison with Hawthorne perhaps useful); the individual vs. society in Emerson, Thoreau, & Fuller (perhaps compare with Winthrop); the idealized vision of America in Thoreau & Fuller; the critique of America in Fuller & Thoreau; Emerson's influence on Fuller & Thoreau (what is Emersonian in their thinking? where has each modified his ideas?; the political evolution of Thoreau & Fuller from Transcendentalism toward political activism; unresolved contradictions in Emerson & Thoreau; the theme of "higher law," or private conscience, in Emerson, Thoreau, & Fuller (comparisons with Puritans especially Ann Hutchinson appropriate); attitudes toward the body & sexuality in Emerson, Thoreau, & Fuller; the attitude toward philanthropy, social reform, & slavery in Emerson, Thoreau & Fuller (this can include women's rights); Mysticism in Emerson & Thoreau.
5. Slavery: Douglass's Narrative, Stowe's UncIe Tom's Cabin, & Jacob's Incidents all expose the evils of slavery and seek to refute or subvert the racist assumptions on which slavery and discrimination against Blacks were based. Choose some aspect of slavery that all three writers focus on, and compare and contrast their treatment of it. In order to give your paper historical depth, you must research the institution of slavery. Assess how accurately each author portrays the specific aspect of slavery you have chosen to consider.
Here are some possible topics: Religion & slavery (can include the indictment of the churches' hypocrisy, the uses of Biblical quotations to support & condemn slavery, the authors' religious ideals, the theme of apocalyptic judgment); the contrast between the masters' & slaves' viewpoints; a comparative analysis of the writers' rhetorical techniques & purposes; the refutation of racist arguments; the portrayal of Blacks & of relationships among slaves; effects of slavery on slaves, masters, & the nation (perhaps compare the three authors' central metaphors for what slavery means to them).
6. Native Americans: Compare and contrast some aspect of the Native Americans' worldview with that of the Puritans and or Transcendentalists. Topics you might want to consider: Nature; the supernatural (this includes but is not limited to human beings' interaction with the divine); Human nature; women; conduct of living (for both religious & social life); concepts of individualism & community; language & the written word.