American Literary History, Spring 2003



		DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH · INSTITUTE OF LANGUAGE LITERATURE AND CULTURE

American Literary History

Revised course programme, spring 2003

The course comprises thirteen sessions. Each session is structured as a one-hour introductory Introductory lecture: combined with a two-hour seminar focusing on specific texts.

The required reading for the course is based on the one-volume Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Fifth Edition (1999) or the Shorter Sixth Edition (2003), comprising, (a) the critical introductions to the literary-historical periods (referred to below as INTRO) as well as to the authors dealt with in the course; (b) the selection of texts listed below; together with Don Delillo's novel, White Noise. The weekly reading assignment should be completed before attending the introductory Introductory lecture.

As in the British literary-history course, M.H. Abrams's A Glossary of Literary Terms, Seventh Edition, will be used as critical-terminological textbook.

Colonial, pre-revolutionary or pre-independence American literature was dealt with in session 9 of the British-literary-history course ("Anglo-American Puritanism").

Course programme for the second semester of the British Literary History course can be found here: http://www.hum.au.dk/engelsk/pages/lithist_eng.html

Spring semester 2003
Sessions 1-13

[All references are to the Norton Anthology Fifth Edition, except in the case of some of the Introductory material where differently named but parallel passages in the Norton Sixth Edition are noted. The specified literary texts may be found in both editions of the Norton. 'Handout' indicates material available on photocopy sheets in the lecture. Texts other than Norton are: Delillo, White Noise]

Session 1: The Making of Americans

INTRO: "The American Crisis", "The Pursuit of Happiness" (82-85)/Sixth Edition: "Imperial Politics", 175-77; "The Pursuit of Happiness", 177-79.

Crèvecoeur	from Letters from an American Farmer. From "Letter III. What Is an American" (293-302)
Thomas Jefferson	from The Declaration of Independence (324-29) from Notes on the State of Virginia (330-38)

Glossary: "Periods of American Literature", "Enlightenment"

Introductory lecture: Dale Carter

Session 2: The Beginnings of a National Literature

INTRO: "American Literature, 1820-1865" (409-23)

James F. Cooper	from The Pioneers [Chapter III: The Slaughter of the Pigeons] (442-49)
Ralph W. Emerson	from Nature: Introduction and chapters 1-3 (496-504) "The American Scholar" (525-38)
Henry D. Thoreau	Walden, or Life in the Woods: "1. Economy" (868-878 [that is, up to the paragraph starting "As this business was..."])

Glossary: "Transcendentalism in America", "Primitivism and Progress"

Introductory lecture: Per Serritslev Petersen

Session 3: Hawthorne and Poe

Nathaniel Hawthorne	"The Minister's Black Veil" (630-39)
Edgar Allan Poe	"The Raven" (701-04) "The Fall of the House of Usher" (717-30) "The Philosophy of Composition" (752-60)

Glossary: "Allegory", "Gothic Novel"

Introductory lecture: Ib Johansen

Session 4: Other Narratives of American Emancipation

Harriet Beecher Stowe	from Uncle Tom's Cabin: Chapter VII. The Mother's Struggle (793-802)
Harriet Jacobs	from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Chapters I, VII, X (828-38)
Frederick Douglass	from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave: Chapters I, VI, VII (970-78).

Introductory lecture: Ib Johansen

Session 5: Melville

Herman Melville

Benito Cereno (1134-90)

Introductory lecture: Inger Dalsgaard

Session 6: Whitman and Dickinson

Walt Whitman	from Song of Myself: Sections 1-33 (1057-84)
Emily Dickinson	Poems 216 (1196), 258 (1197), 465 (1202) 712 (1206-07), 754 (1207), 1129 (1208-09), 1624 (1209) Letters to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1210-11)

Glossary: "Free Verse"

Introductory lecture: Peter Mortensen

Session 7: Varieties of Realism

INTRO: "American Literature, 1865-1914" (1241-55)

Rebecca H. Davis	Life in the Iron-Mills (1213-39)
Mark Twain	Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Chapters I-V (1265-79)
W.D. Howells	"Editha" (1468-77)
Jack London	"To Build a Fire" (1744-55)

Glossary: "Realism and Naturalism"

Introductory lecture: Karl-Heinz Westarp

Session 8: Varieties of Modernism

Charlotte Perkins Gilman	"The Yellow Wallpaper" (1657-69)
Henry James	"The Beast in the Jungle" (1551-80)
Kate Chopin	"The Storm" (1612-19)

Glossary: "Modernism and Postmodernism", "Feminist Criticism"

Introductory lecture: Ib Johansen

Session 9: Poets of Modernity

INTRO: "American Literature between the Wars, 1914-1945" (1799-1809)

Robert Frost	"The Oven Bird" (1867), "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (1870)
Wallace Stevens	"Sunday Morning" (1892-94), "The Idea of Order at Key West" (1899-1900)
William C. Williams	"The Red Wheelbarrow" (1926-27), "This Is Just to Say" (1927)
Ezra Pound	"In a Station of the Metro" (1935) from The Cantos: I, XLV (1936-39)
H.D.	"Helen" (1942-43)

Glossary: "Imagism"

Introductory lecture: Inger Dalsgaard

Session 10: The African-American Renaissance

W. E. B. Du Bois	from The Souls of Black Folk: I. Of Our Spiritual Strivings (1686-92)
Zora Neale Hurston	"How It Feels to Be Colored Me" (2084-87)
Langston Hughes	"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (2225) "I, Too" (2226-27) "Song for a Dark Girl" (2228) "Silhouette" (2229)
Ralph Ellison	from Invisible Man: Chapter I (2359-69)

Glossary: "Black Arts Movement"

Introductory lecture: Ib Johansen

Session 11: Lost Generations in Short Stories and Drama

INTRO: "American Prose since 1945" (2261-69)

William Faulkner	"A Rose for Emily" (2169-75)
Ernest Hemingway	"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (2208-24)
Tennessee Williams	A Streetcar Named Desire (2285-2348)

Introductory lecture: Per Serritslev Petersen

Session 12:

Don Delillo

White Noise (Picador)

Introductory lecture: Dominic Rainsford

Session 13: A Mosaic of Contemporary Poetry

INTRO: "American Poetry since 1945" (2581-2590)

Elizabeth Bishop	"The Moose" (2620-24)
Robert Lowell	"For the Union Dead" (2657-59)
Allen Ginsberg	"Howl" (2698-2705)
Adrienne Rich	"Diving into the Wreck" (2736-38)
Sylvia Plath	"Lady Lazarus" (2749-51) "Blackberrying" (2753-54)
Li-Young Lee	"Persimmons" (2813-15) "Eating Alone" (2815-16) "Eating Together" (2816)

Introductory lecture: Per Serritslev Petersen

Aidan Day, Coordinator, December 2002

TOP OF PAGE · DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

Comments and suggestions to the webeditors

Last modified: January 31, 2003