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English 23/English 123/American Studies 150

American Literature and Culture to 1855

Judith Richardson

Lectures: TuWTh10-10:50, Dinkelspiel G10

Office Location:Bldg 460 (Margaret Jacks Hall), Room 323

E-mail: ; Phone: 723-2724

This course surveys American literature and culture from the early colonial period to the Civil War. Texts include poetry, sermons, captivity narratives, autobiographies, novels, slave narratives, and short stories. Lectures will situate textual readings in relation to historical contexts.

Text: The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition, Volumes A (Beginnings to 1820) and B (1820-1865). Available at the Stanford Bookstore. Unless otherwise noted, readings can be found in this anthology. Please have read the texts before the relevant class date. Check the CourseWork website for more specific reading instructions each week.

Schedule of Readings and Lectures

Week 1:

Introduction: America, Through the Looking Glass

Days 2-3: Mount versus Hill: Some Colonial Models:

  • Thomas Morton, New English Canaan
  • William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, all selections from Book I, and “The Remainder of Anno 1620”; “Mr. Morton of Merrymount”; “War with the Pequots”; and “A Horrible Truth” from Book II
  • John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity”

Week 2: Puritan Delights and Dilemmas

  • Edward Taylor, selections from Sermon VI (handout), and selected poems.
  • Anne Bradstreet, selected poems
  • Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
  • Cotton Mather, “The Wonders of the Invisible World”

Week 3: Enlightenments and 18th Century Selves

  • Jonathan Edwards, “Personal Narrative” and “A Divine and Supernatural Light.”
  • Benjamin Franklin, “The Way to Wealth” and The Autobiography Parts I, II, and part of Part III

Week 4: Revolutionary Sentiments: Affection, Seduction, and the Female Subject

  • Phyllis Wheatley, selected poems
  • Hannah Foster, The Coquette; or, The History of Eliza Wharton

Week 5:Tell a Tale of Haunting

  • Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
  • Edgar Allan Poe, “The Black Cat”

Week 6: A New England Primer

  • Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

Week 7: Expansive Americans

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
  • Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

Week 8: A Week in the Woods

  • Henry David Thoreau, Walden (selected chapters)

Week 9: Constricted Americans

  • Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
  • Harriet Jacobs, selections from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Week 10: Loopholes.

  • Jacobs, cont’d.
  • Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener”

Requirements:

All students are required to attend and participate fully in lecture and section, and to submit any section assignments (i.e. response papers or focus points).

  • Students taking the course for 5 units will write:
  • a midterm essay of 5-7 pages
  • a final essay of 8-10 pages.
  • Students taking the course for 3 units will have the option of writing either one essay of 7-8 pages or two essays of 3-4 pages.