Instructor information

Objectives:

• --to gain familiarity with and basic critical understanding of selected major American literary works written before 1900;
• --to understand the context and fundamental characteristics of American colonial literature, Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism, and to recognize their typical forms and expressions;
• --to consider the significance of voices on the margins of the dominant culture (for example those of women, African Americans, and Native Americans, among others) in the literature of this era;
• --to explore the pervading conflicts in all American literature as they appear in this time of the individual and society, the wilderness and civilization, materialism and the religious impulse, and realism and idealism.

Required texts:

Lauter, Paul, et al., eds. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 3rd ed., v. 1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Packaged with Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (both also required, though you're welcome to use other editions--including complete editions found on the internet).
 
 
 

Recommended text:

Lauter, Paul, et al., eds. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 3rd ed., v. 2. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. There will be only a few selections from this volume this semester, but it will also be the required text for the "Twentieth Century Literatures in English" course in the spring.
 
 
 

Requirements:

Three 750-1,000 word papers on assigned topics (250 pts.); one 2,500 word paper on assigned topic (400 pts.); weekly quizzes (100 pts.); comprehensive final examination (150 pts.); class participation and exercises for group work (100 pts.).
 
 

Note: Page numbers refer to The Heath Anthology, vol. i.