Prof. Scott Peeples
22-B Glebe St. Rm. 201 / 953-1993
peepless@cofc.edu / www.cofc.edu/~peeples/
Office Hours 4-5 TR and by appointment
Course Objectives: To better understand the literature of mid-nineteenth-century America, both through close reading of primary texts and consideration of various contexts, particularly the social, literary, and political networks in which these essays, fictions, and poems moved.
Texts:
Myerson, ed., Transcendentalism (Oxford)
Poe, Poetry, Tales & Selected Essays (Library of America)
Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (Norton)
Douglass, Narrative of the Life . . . (Norton)
Melville, Moby-Dick (Norton)
Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedience (Norton)
Other readings will be available online or through electronic or hard-copy reserve.
Requirements:
Attendance and participation ----- 20 pts.
Brief in-class writing assignments ----- 20 pts. (10 x 2)
Summary of supplemental reading1 ----- 10 pts.
Original presentation2 ----- 10 pts.
Short (5-page) essay2 ----- 30 pts.
Researched essay (due 6/28)3 ----- 100 pts.
Final exam (6/29) ----- 60 pts.
1 This assignment consists of a single-page outline of the main ideas from one of the supplemental readings and a presentation, lasting 5-10 minutes, in which you explain and elaborate on the outline for the class. You should make copies of the outline for everyone in the class. We'll schedule these presentations on the first day of class.
2 This assignment is to pose an interpretive question regarding the primary text and to develop a hypothesis that answers that question. You may use outside sources, including the supplemental reading for that day, but you are not required to do so. Your presentation should last 10-15 minutes. Fill out the presentation worksheet and turn it in on the day you present. Turn in a short paper, based on your presentation, the following class. We'll schedule these presentations and papers on the first day of class.
3 I'll distribute guidelines for the research paper early in the course.
Reading Schedule:
May 18: Thomas Cole: "A Painter," "Lago Maggiore"; Edgar A. Poe: "Israfel," "Romance"; William Cullen Bryant: "To a Waterfowl," "To an American Painter Departing for Europe"
May 20: Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature, "The Transcendentalist," "Self-Reliance," "The Divinity School Address," "Each and All," "Hamatreya," "Blight" "Give All to Love" (e); Andrews Norton, "The New School in Literature and Religion"; Lydian Jackson Emerson: "Transcendental Bible"
May 25: Sophia Ripley: "Woman"; Margaret Fuller: "The Great Lawsuit," "The Wrongs of American Women. The Duty of American Women"; Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Address at the Woman's Rights Convention"; Ripley / Emerson correspondence (307-13); "Brook Farm Association for Industry and Education, Constitutions (461-72); Charles Lane, "Brook Farm"; Charles Lane and A. Bronson Alcott: "The Consociate Family Life"
May 27: No class.
June 1: Edgar Allan Poe: "Stanzas," "The Raven," "The Philosophy of Composition," "Ms. Found in a Bottle," "Berenice," "Ligeia," "The Man that Was Used Up," "How to Write a Blackwood Article," "William Wilson," "The Oval Portrait"
June 3: Poe: "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Purloined Letter," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Black Cat," "The Angel of the Odd" "The Man of the Crowd"; Nathaniel Hawthorne: "Wakefield," "The Birthmark"
"Wakefield": http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/wake.html
"The Birthmark": http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/bm.html
June 8: Nathaniel Hawthorne: "The Custom House" and The Scarlet Letter
June 10: Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life; John Greenleaf Whittier: "The Haschish" (e); Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: "Bible Defense of Slavery" (e), "The Slave Auction" (e); Stephen Foster: "Old Folks at Home" (e); Henry D. Thoreau: "Resistance to Civil Government"
June 15: Herman Melville: Moby-Dick, through Ch. 70
June 17: Melville: Moby-Dick, complete
June 22: Henry D. Thoreau: Walden, through "Brute Neighbors"
June 24: Thoreau: Walden,
complete