Westra (Grand Valley St. U.)
General Information
Course Focus
This course will examine the emergence and progress of
authentic
American literary genius and creativity from the early
discovering and colonizing of America to the mid-nineteenth
century. In addition to many of the writers who already have
name recognition (for example, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin
Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe) we'll be reading
writings by women, Native Americans, Hispanics, and African
Americans who until very recently were omitted from the body of
works called American literature.
Course Goals
1. To gain an awareness of the variety of cultures within the
American culture and how this variety is reflected by American
writers from many ethnic and national backgrounds.
2. To explore how these writers shaped our emerging nation
and
how our emerging nation influenced them.
3. To be conscious of the particular social, political, and
religious contexts surrounding a writer's work.
4. To discover the unique and effective ways American writers
used different literary forms (journal, narrative, sermon, essay,
folk tale, drama, poetry, short story, novel) to achieve their
particular purposes and effects.
5. To increase in sensitivity to metaphor, symbol, language,
themes, structure, style, and world view in the works of the
writers who comprise our nation's literary
heritage.
READINGS
WEEK 1
Sept 3: Course Introduction, Overview,
and Syllabus
Native Americans and European Views of the New World (we look
at
several handouts and selections from our text)
WEEK 2
Sept 10: Spanish, French, and English
Arrivals in America
Columbus 67-80; Cabeza de Vaca 89-99; Pedro de Aviles 106-11;
Samuel de Champlain 131-136; John Smith 149-160; Richard
Frethorne 172-175.
WEEK 3
Sept 17: English Settlers
Thomas Morton
176-77 and
179-188;
William Bradford
210-11 and
215-229 (chp IX-XXXIII);
John Winthrop
188-90, "Journal" 204-210,
and "John Winthrop's Christian Experience" 199-203;
Roger
Williams
--"To the Town Of
Providence" 254-55 (we'll skim the rest
of his work in class)
WEEK 4
Sept. 24: Cultural Tensions in the
Colonies
Anne Bradstreeet
256,
"The Prologue" 258, "The Flesh and the
Spirit" 269-71, some personal poems, 272-77;
Edward
Taylor
342-
46, "The Preface," 349-50, "The Souls Groan" 350-51, "Huswifery"
363, "Upon Wedlock, Death of Children" 363-65, "Prologue," 366-
67;
Mary Rowlandson
317-342
A Narrative of the Captivity and
Restauration
(captivity narrative): John Williams 425-30,
from
The Redeemed Captive;
Returning to
Zion
WEEK 5
Oct. 1: Social and Religions Tensions
Sarah Kemble Knight
472-90, Journal of Madame Knight;
Jonathan
Edwards
512-16, "Resolutions"
516-20, "Personal Narrative" 544-
55, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" 555-66;
John Woolman
590-92, Journal 593-604;
Elizabeth Ashbridge
579-90;
Women's
Poetry Before the Revolution 641-42; Jane Colman Turell 642;
Bridget Richardson Fletcher 643-46; Lucy Terry 654-55; Poems
Published Anonymously 674-77
WEEK 6
Oct. 8: What's An American?
Olaudah Equiano
694, from
Interesting Narrrative of the Life of .
. . Vassa, the African. Written by Himself
695-712;
Occom
(Mohegan Indian) 728 "A Short Narrative of My Life" 730-35;
Aupaumut
(Mahican Indian
chief) 751-756;
Fray Carlos Delgado
756-
61;
Thomas Jefferson
957-64;
J. Hector de Crevecoeur
890-91, 892-
907 excerpts from
Letters from an American Farmer,
especially
Letter III "what is an American?";
Phillis wheatley: 712-4, 714-
15, 718 "On Being Brought from Africa to America," 720, letter on
727-728.
WEEK 7
Oct 15: Creating American Identities
Royall Tyler
:
The
Contract
1089-1133;
Benjamin
Franklin
776-780,
also excerpts from
The Autobiography
823-81
WEEK 8
Oct 22: Slavery and Abolitionism
Frederick Douglass
1637-39,
Narrative of the Life of an American
Slave
1647-1682;
Harriet Ann Jacobs
1723-24, 17250-50;
Lydia
Maria Child
1795-97, "Slavery's
Pleasant Homes" 11809-12;
Harriet
Beecher Stowe
2307-10, from
Uncle Tom's Cabin
2311-23.
WEEK 9
Oct 29: American Versions of
Transcendentalism
Margaret Fuller
1580-81,
Woman in the Nineteenth Century
1604-26;
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1467-70,
from
Nature
1474-86;
Henry Thoreau
1964-66, from
Walden
1981-2008
WEEK 10
Nov 5: American Fiction Begins to
Blossom
Edgar Allan Poe
1322-25, "The
Fall of the House of Usher" 1344-
57; "The Oval Portrait" 1362-64; "Masque of the Red Death" 1364-
68; "The Tell-Tale Heart" 1369-72; "The Purloined Letter"
1372-85
WEEK 11
Nov. 12: Sentimental and Epistolary
Novels
Hannah Webster Foster
1131,
from
The Coquette; or, the History of
Eliza Wharton, 1133-1152;
Catharine Maria Sedgwick
1308, from
Hope Leslie
1309-22
WEEK 12
Nov. 18: More Varieties of American
Fiction
Nathaniel Hawthorne
2065-69; "Young Goodman Brown"
2082-91; "The
Minister's Black Veil" 2092-2100; "The Birth-mark" 2101-211;
"Rappaccini's Daughter" 2112-23
WEEK 13
Nov. 26: Responses to
Transcendentalism
Herman Melville
2400-04;
"Benito Cereno" 2464; "Bartleby, the
Scrivener" 2405
WEEK 13
Dec. 3: American Poetic Voices
Philip Freneau
1041, "The
Wild Honey Suckle," 1062; "On Observing
a Large Red-Streak Apple" 1066;
Edgar Allan Poe
"The Raven" 1403;
"Annabel Lee" 1410;
Aztec Poetry
"The Singer's Art" 2663; Walt
Whitman 2709-12 (Song of Myself) lines 1-256 and 1225-end;
Emily
Dickinson
2838; poems 219, 249,
258, 303, 315, 324, 441, 465
Paper #1: Paper Topics
[Note: This is a short
paper relating to the first part of the course; the style and
format is left open to the students as long as they engage
closely with one or more readings, or issues of the
readings.]
PAPER #2: Paper Topics
[Note: This second paper
encompasses the entire course, and students can draw from any of
the readings, provided that they do not duplicate earlier
choices.]