ENG 3010 - 19TH CENTURY AMERICA: THE AMERICANRENAISSANCE

credits: 3.0
This course offers an in-depth exploration of five major writers working between 1835 and 1865: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson. Will track the philosophical, literary, and scientific influences on these writers as they renovate the essay, the poem, the short story, and the novel to address long-standing questions in a new American context. Will also consider the relationships between writers, their engagements with antebellum American politics, issues of genre and the canon, and the implications of labeling this period of American literary history a “renaissance.” Students taking the course for graduate credit will be assigned additional primary and secondary readings and will be required to meet weekly with the instructor. Objectives: A) To familiarize students with an influential period of early American literary history, its major figures, and its philosophical and political underpinnings and B) To engage students in a broader conversation about the construction of literary history and the literary canon. Method of Instruction: Lecture and discussion. Method of Evaluation: Four short essays (three pages each), discussion leader, final research paper (eight-ten pages) and formal presentation of research. Meets *WEP Distribution Requirement.