Mignon (Nebraska)

Texts

The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol.1.

Ideology and Classic American Literature, ed. Bercovitch and Jehlen.

Redefining American Literary History, ed. Ruoff and Ward.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel , The Scarlet Letter, ed. Murfin.

General Information

Abstract

This course is designed for those beginning to look ahead to the specific problems of teaching early American literature at a time when there is a great deal of curricular ferment in the air. The course will only begin the continuous formulation--by each person and in the group collectively--of solutions to the basic questions: what is American literature, what is the canon, what critical approaches are appropriate, and what will be the best methods of classroom presentation. To set up our work on answers, I propose:

Purposes

to consider the current issues of canon in American literature to 1865; to read primary materials, both canonical and non-canonical works in this period; to read selected secondary works relevant to these works and issues; to teach four sessions relating non-canonical to canonical works; and to prepare a draft outline (with a rationale and list of grouped readings) for an undergraduate course in the period. All these plans are related to building up your own perspective toward the material, and to beginning the process of growth toward the practice of teaching. To affect these aims, I propose:

Requirements

(1) four teaching sessions, any combination of twenty- and forty-minute periods; (2) a portfolio of summary reports (reproduced for each member of the class) from a list of secondary works, 10 to 12 pages total (one book, or the equivalent in sections of large books, chapters, or articles); this portfolio must include one summary on learning or development; (3) a draft outline with rationale for an undergraduate course in the period; (4) a reading journal (double-column: summary and response) of 50 pages (roughly 4 pages a week for 13 weeks); from time to time I will ask you to consider a few selected topics; and (5) a mid-term evaluation and a final course evaluation.

Format

for the purposes described above we will be adopting the workshop format. The key will be sharing: of information, and of all the ideas we come up with during the course both in regard to the material itself, and to our approaches to teaching it. (The result will not even be clear when we finish; things will probably come together only in actual practice later on when you have been assigned a class to teach.) At any rate, there will actually be five schedules: reading, journal, summary, teaching, and course outline.

First, the reading schedule. Your reading, both of the primary and secondary materials, is for reflection. No memorizing; you are building your own perspective. Included in this material you will find the "Guideline" schedule which divides the course (after the fourth week) into nine sections of primary material, roughly of 300 pages each. It would be unrealistic to expect ourselves, in the time we have, to read everything in every section, especially given the fact that we do have a certain amount of secondary reading as well. So my proposal is this: that, within each of the nine sections, we be responsible for the selective reading of works of two canon writers and of four non- canonical writers. (I will list the canon writers in each section.) This way we can all choose what we want to read and feel no obligation to "cover" or try to absorb everything. So, turn now to the "Guideline" schedule which is both the reading and the teaching schedule and have a look.

Next, the summary schedule, also included in this material. Turn to it. I have tried to arrange these readings so that they are relevant to the authors as they appear in the schedule, but summaries may be submitted at any time. For example, for the eighth week (Humor and the American Self), Smith-Rosenberg's Disorderly Conduct is especially relevant: her ideas on gender roles are very illuminating and relevant to writers in other sections like Cooper , de Crèvecoeur , Hawthorne , as well as to Fuller and Jacobs , and the Crockett Almanacs. So, a portfolio including summaries of chapters in her book would be quite useful. In any case, you will be free to range at will between sections to find your summaries. I also recommend that you include at least one work relevant to learning and development for summary; see the separate listing attached. You'll be xeroxing your summaries for the class so that everyone will have a file of summaries to be used for ideas about your course outline, etc.

The teaching schedule will begin for you at the fourth week when you will be taking over the class on subjects of your choice within the structure I provide you: combinations of works in the Heath Anthology. You will, with such tactics as you can invent, be guiding the rest of us (as your "class") on how to understand and read the materials you will have assigned us the previous week. The ground-rules are simple: the combination of works in each of your teaching sessions must include one canon work; you may range freely between sections to find your materials; and everyone has to respond to each other's efforts. For your third presentation you will prepare a rationale (1-2 pages) describing (1) some preliminary assumptions about how your students learn (see a list attached), (2) the purpose behind your activities, and (3) what specific changes in your students' minds you wish to make. As you begin to think about your teaching sessions any work on the rationale will help focus on the actual exercises you want your "class" to undertake. So, the real schedule for the course will be created by the class itself as it chooses the four sessions each (two twenty-minute periods in the fourth through the seventh week, and two forty-minute periods in the ninth through the fourteenth week of the course. Early in the semester I will provide you with a sign-up sheet, and I will fill in any slots that are left when everyone has chosen their times. (We can always flex around the times.)

Readings

Terms

"Guideline" schedule (reading and teaching) Numbers on the left indicate the weeks in the course; reading assignments for the first part of the course are due on the weekly meeting specified. From the third week onward all the section descriptions are from the Heath Anthology, Volume, 1 to guide us in our choices for teaching sessions.

The "Summary" schedule (keyed to secondary list) Some basic secondary readings for summary reports are included at the end of week's Guideline Schedule

Week #1

1 Introduction: rationale, presentation of the secondary lists and the reserve book list in the library, general bibliography; learning theory; specific justifications (why canon and non-canonicals); reading assignments

Week #2

The Reassessment of American Literature

The following readings on reserve:

- Robert E. Spiller, "The Cycle and the Roots: National Identity in American Literature," in Toward a new American Literary History, ed. Budd, Cady, and Anderson.

- Perry Miller, "Errand into the Wilderness" in his Errand into the Wilderness.

- William C. Spengemann, "Early American Literature and the Project of Literary History," in Prospects: A Conference on Early American Literature.

The following from Redefining American Literary History:

- Any one essay in the first section, "Redefining the American Literary Canon."

- Theresa Melendez, "The Oral Tradition and the Study of American Literature."

- Andrew Wiget, "His Life in His Tail...."

- Houston Baker, "Archaeology, Ideology, and African American Discourse."

Read also the first part (xxxiii-xxxviii) of "To the Reader" in the Heath Anthology.

Summary Readings

3a reassessment: Smith, 21 in Ideology and Classic American Literature (hereafter as ICAL); Pease, Chapter 1 in Visionary Compacts; Prologue in Kolodny's The Land Before Her; Epilogue in Jehlen's American Incarnation; Smith, 290 in the Virgin Land; "American Dream," 192 in Literary History of the U.S.; Introduction in Nash's Red, White, and Black; Fiedler, 29 in his Return of the Vanishing American; Chapters 1 and 5 in Reising's The Unusable Past; Chapter 1 in Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature; Smith-Rosenberg's "Hearing Women's Words" in her Disorderly Conduct; Kolodny's "A Map for Rereading: Or, Gender and the Interpretation of Literary Texts," New Literary History 6.3 (1980): 451-467

Week #3

- Since I will be presenting the material in the following section, I will hand out additional materials the second week in preparation for this class. But the basic reading is as follows: Native American Traditions: section introduction (Colonial Period to 1700, pp.3-21 in Heath) and Native American Traditions pp.22-66, Heath.

Summary Readings

3b Native American Traditions: Paula Gunn Allen, 55-75 in her Sacred Hoop; Graff, 91 in ICAL; Nash, Introduction and Chapter 4 in his Red, White, and Black; Chapter 1 in Gunn Allen's Studies in American Indian Literature; Chapters 6 and 7 in Lemay's book on John Smith; Wallace, 6-18 in The Way We Lived.

Week #4

- At the beginning of the fourth week in the semester you will be taking over the classes. The sections in the Heath Anthology which follow for each week comprise the reading materials from which you will be drawing for your teaching materials:

Literature of Discovery and Exploration: European Settlement: pages.67- 310. Canons: John Smith , William Bradford , Anne Bradstreet , Edward Taylor , and Cotton Mather

Summary Readings

Discovery, Exploration and Settlement: Baker, 145 in ICAL, and Introduction and Chapter 1 in Jehlen's, American Incarnation; Chapter 1 in Kolodny's Land; Chapter 1 in Tichi's New World, New Earth; VanDerBeets, The Indian Captivity Narrative (50-page book); Chapters 1, 2, and 3 in Nash's Red. White. and Black; the first five chapters as a unit in Drinnon's Facing West; Breen, 25-36, and Mintz and Kellogg, 43-54 in The Way We Lived.

Week #5

Seventeenth-Century Wit, American Voices in a Changing World Poetries before the Revolution: pages 311-677. Canon: Jonathan Edwards .

Summary Readings

Pre-revolutionary wit and poetries: Prologue in Kolodny's The Land Before Her; Chapter 2 in Tichi's New World, New Earth; Chapters 6 and 7 in Perry Miller's Errand; Chapter 2 in Lynen's Design; Bonomi, 82-93, and Young, 117-27 in The Way We Lived.

Week #6

Emerging Voices of a National Literature, and Enlightenment Voices, Revolutionary Visions: pages 678-1021. Canons: Benjamin Franklin , de Crevecoeur , Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson

Summary Reading

National Voices: Marx, 36 in ICAL; Jehlen, Chapter 2 in American Incarnation; Chapters 1-4 (one book) in Binder's The Color Problem in Early National America; Gates, 44 in Afro-American Literature; Chapter 3 in Tichi's New World New Earth; Gates, 44 in Afro-American Literature; Sollors, 181 in The American Identity: Fusion and Fragmentation; Mannix and Cowley, 60-75 in The Way We Lived

Week #7

United Voices and Myths, Tales and Legends: pages 1022-1425. Canons: Washington Irving , James Fenimore Cooper , Edgar Allan Poe.

Summary Reading

United Voices and Tales: Reynolds, Chapter 8 in Beneath the American Renaissance (hereafter as BAR); Pease, Chapter 5 in Visionary Compacts; Chapter 3 in Kolodny's Land; Ziff, Chapter 5 in Literary Decmocracy (hereafter as LD); Byer, 221 in ICAL; Renza, 58 in The American Renaissance Reconsidered; Thomas Goudge, "Philosophical Trends in Nineteenth-century America," UTO 16 (47): 133-42; William Charvat, Chapter 3 in The Profession of Authorship in America 1800-1870; Smith, 64 in Virgin Land; Tompkins, 94 in Sensational Designs; Chapters 1, 2, and 3 in Chase's The American Novel; Chapter 3, and 4 in Lynen's Design.

Week #8

Humor, and Explorations of an "American" Self: pages 1426-1751. Canons: Ralph Waldo Emerson , Frederick Douglass ; mid-term evaluation.

Summary Reading

Humor and the "American Self": Reynolds Chapter 1, 2, 15, and 16 in BAR; Ziff, Chapter 2, 3, and 11 in LD; Ruoff, 251 in Redefining American Literary History (hereafter as RALH); Pease, Chapter 6 in Visionary Compacts; Jehlen, Chapter 3 in American Incarnation; Baker, 157 in RALH; Chapter 6 in Kolodny's Land; Chapter 9 in Ziff's LD; Stepto, 178, O'Meally, 192, or Gates, 212 in Afro-American Literature; "Democratic Vistas," 345 in LHUS; Smith, 138 in Virgin Land; Kern, 245 in Transitions in American Literary History; Douglas, 313 and 331 in her Feminization; Reising, 256 in The Unusable Past; Smith-Rosenberg's "Bourgeois Discourse and the Age of Jackson," "Davy Crockett as Trickster" and (for Fuller et al.) "The Female World of Love and Ritual" in her Disorderly Conduct; Chapter 1 in Matthiessen's American Renaissance; Chapter 3 in Chase's The American Novel; Chapters 24-29 in Schlesinger's Age of Jackson (equals 2 articles); Faust, 262-75 in The Way We Lived.

Week #9

Pre-Civil War: Indian Voices and the literature of Abolition: pages 1752-1885. Canon: Abraham Lincoln .

Summary Reading

Indian Voices. Abolition: Allen "The Sacred Hoop" in Studies in American Indian Literature; Chapters 5 and 6 in Binder's The Color Problem in Early National America; Sundquist, "Slavery, Revolution, and the American Renaissance," in The American Renaissance Reconsidered; Nash, 183 in Red. White and Black; Smith-Rosenberg's "Beauty, the Beast, and the Militant Woman" in her Disorderly Conduct; Brown, 162-72 in The Way We Lived.

Week #10

Pre-Civil War: Women's Voices the Southwest, and Thoreau. Canon: Thoreau , pages 1886-2062.

Summary Reading

Women's Voices, the Southwest and Thoreau: Jehlen, 125 in ICAL; Chapter 6 in Tompkins's Sensational Designs (pay particular attention to the references in the footnotes in this chapter); Chapter 1 in Smith's Democracv and the Novel; Chapter 12 in Reynolds's BAR; Gilmore, 293 in ICAL; Chapters 12 and 13 in Ziff's LD; Chapters 6 and 7 in Reynolds's BAR; Chapter 4 in Matthiessen's American Renaissance; Kasson, 139-56, and Faragher and Stansell, 181-95 in The Way We Lived.

Weeks 11 & 12

The Flowering of Narrative. Canons: Hawthorne , Melville ; pages 2063-2637

Summary Reading

The Flowering of Narrative: Chapter 7 in Kolodny's Land; Chapter 10 in Ziff's LD; Chapters 1 and 5 in Tompkins's Sensational Designs; Chapter 4 in Jehlen's American Incarnation; Arac, 247 in ICAL; Chapters 8 and 9 in Kolodny's Land; the following in Murfin's edition of the Scarlet Letter: Diehl, 235, Leverenz, 263, Benstock, 288, Ragussis, 316, and Bercovitch, 344 ; Chapters 7 and 8 in Ziff's LD; Chapters 2 and 3 in Pease's Visionary Compacts; Chapters 4, 9, and 13 of Reynolds's BAR; Michaels, 156 in The American Renaissance Reconsidered; Chapter 2 in Smith's Democracy and the Novel; Chapters 1, 16, and 17 in Ziff's LD; Chapter 7 in Pease's Visionary Compacts; Royster, 313, and Kavanagh, 352 in ICAL; Pease, 113 in The American Renaissance Reconsidered; Chapters 5 and 10 in Reynolds's BAR; Chapter 3 in Smith's Democracy and the Novel; Hulme, 3 in Stallman's Critiques and Essays in Criticism: 1920-1948; Crews, 136 in his Sins of the Fathers; Douglas, 293, and 349 in her Feminization of American Culture; Milton Stern, "Towards 'Bartleby, the Scrivener'" in Duane MacMillan, ed., The Stoic Strain in American Literature (19-41); R.E.Watters, "Melville's Metaphysics of Evil," University of Toronto Quarterly 9 No . 2 (Jan 1940), 170-182; Nina Baym, "The Head, the Heart, and the Unpardonable Sin" NE 40 No .1 (March 1967), 31-47; Chapters 4 and 5 of Chase's The American Novel; Part 2 (counts for half a book) in Matthiessen's American Renaissance; Part 3 (counts for half a book) in Matthiessen's American Renaissance

Weeks 13 & 14

Emergence of American Poetic Voices. Canons: Whitman , and Dickinson ; pages 2638-2922.

Summary Reading

Emergence of American Poetic Voices: Chapter 6 in Tichi's New World, New Earth; Chapters 3, 11, and 17 in Reynolds's BAR; Grossman, 183 in The American Renaissance Reconsidered; Chapter 4 in Pease's Visionary Compacts; Chapters 14 and 15 in Ziff's LD; Chapter 14 in Reynolds's BAR; Smith, 47 and 246 in Virgin Land; Floyd Stovall, "Walt Whitman and the American Tradition," Virginia Quarterly Review 31 (Autumn 1955), 540-57; Charles R. Anderson, Introduction to Emily Dickinson in American Literary Masters Vol. 1, 1965; Alfred J. Gelpi, "Seeing New Englandly: From Edwards to Emerson to Dickinson" in his Emily Dickinson: The Mind of the Poet; Chapters 13 and 14 in Matthiessen's American Renaissance; Chapter 5 in Lynen's Design

Week 15

Present draft outlines for group discussion; hand in portfolios; evaluation