EN 762 Reading and Teaching American Renaissances

James D. Wallace

Carney Hall 453 E-mail: wallacej@bc.edu

Office Hours: M, 1-2:30 & Th, 12-1:30, and by arrangement Phone: 2-3712

The American Renaissance is traditionally conceived as the first full flowering of American culture in the 1850s in the writing of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson. This course juxtaposes those authors to other "renaissances" occurring in the same period: in African-American writing, womenís writing, and popular literature. Among the questions engaged will be the difference between "high" and "low" writing, literature and culture, and race, class, and gender in the formation of American culture. Students will be do a series of short assignments which will address pedagogical issues, and a final short (12-15pp.) research paper or set of lesson plans for teaching a text not covered in the course.
 
 

Texts

Emerson, Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems (Bantam)
Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance (Penguin)
Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Dover)
Fern, Ruth Hall (Rutgers)
Hollander, American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century (Library of America)
Douglass, Narrative of the Life (Dover)
Jacobs. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Penguin)
Walker, David Walker's Appeal (Black Classic Press)
Melville, Great Short Works (Harper)
Thoreau, Walden (Signet)
Schneider, Approaches to Teaching Thoreau's Walden (MLA)
Kummings, Approaches to Teaching Whitman's Leaves of Grass (MLA)
 

Internet Resources for this course

Short Assignment List

Sept. 6 Introduction

The Transcendental Core

13 Emerson: Nature, "American Scholar," "Circles," "Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies," "Woman."

Poetry: William Cullen Bryant, all selections; Christopher Pearse Cranch, all selections; Thoreau, all selections; Margaret Fuller, all selections; William Ellery Channing, all selections.
20 Thoreau, Walden; Approaches to Ö Walden

27 Whitman's Poetry (Hollander, 342-456); Approaches to Ö Leaves of Grass

The "Woman Question" and Feminism

Oct. 4 Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Poetry: Maria Gowen Brooks, "Composed at the BehestÖ"; Sarah Helen Whitman, "To ---"; William Wetmore Story, "Cleopatra"; Julia Ward Howe, "My Last Dance"; Phoebe Cary, "When Lovely Woman" and "Advice Gratis"; Rose Terry Cooke, Blue-Beard's Closet" and "Arachne"; Edgar Allan Poe, "To Helen," "Ulalume," and "Annabel Lee"; Emily Dickinson, all selections.
11 Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance

18 Fern, Ruth Hall

Slavery, Race, Rebellion

25 "The Confessions of Nat Turner," David Walker's Appeal

Poetry: John Pierpont, "Fugitive Slave's Apostrophe"; George Moses Horton, "On Liberty" and "On HearingÖ"; James Monroe Whitfield, "America"; George Boyer Vashon, "from Vincent Ogé"; Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, "Bible Defense of Slavery" and "Slave Auction"; Albery Allson Whitman, "from Twasinta's Seminoles" and "Lute of Afric's Tribe"; John Greenleaf Whittier, "Astræa" and "What the Birds Said"; Herman Melville, "The House-Top" and "Formerly a Slave"; George Washington Cable, Creole Slave Songs.
Nov. 1 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

8 Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

The Example of Melville

15 Melville, "Bartleby, the Scriviner," "Cock-A-Doddle-Doo!" "The Two Temples," "Poor Man's Pudding," "The Happy Failure."

22 Thanksgiving Break

29 Melville, "Benito Cereno," "The Paradise of Bachelors," The Encantadas Sketch Eighth: Norfolk Isle and The Chola Widow,

Dec. 6 Melville, Billy Budd

Final paper or project due Friday, December 14.