AMERICAN LITERATURE OF THE 19TH CENTURY (Winter 2022-2023) (ΛΕ118)
Βασίλειος Δεληογλάνης
This course will aim to examine various forms of American literature that developed in the nineteenth century. It will concentrate on the diversity of nineteenth-century American literature, highlighting the solidification of a distinctive American national voice. In a period when American literary production captures the efforts of the newly-emergent United States to achieve cultural and political independence, significant figures of American tradition critically approach the social and political contradictions of their time and challenge dominant ideologies through their writing. The course will delve into the historical, political and social issues that shape American identity and history in the nineteenth century. Lectures will underscore the dynamic relationship between literature and history, and will consider a variety of topics, including the shifting pressures of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. The course will also expose students to the main principles and ideology of Puritanism, the movements of Transcendentalism, Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism. At the same time, it will connect such texts with the literary currents of the nineteenth century, but also with American traditional modes of writing.
ΛιγότεραThis course will aim to examine various forms of American literature that developed in the nineteenth century. It will concentrate on the diversity of nineteenth-century American literature, highlighting the solidification of a distinctive American national voice. In a period when American literary production captures the efforts of the newly-emergent United States to achieve cultural and political independence, significant figures of American tradition critically approach the social and political contradictions of their time and challenge dominant ideologies through their writing. The course will delve into the historical, political and social issues that shape American identity and history in the nineteenth century. Lectures will underscore the dynamic relationship between literature and history, and will consider a variety of topics, including the shifting pressures of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. The course will also expose students to the main principles and ideology of Pur
This course will aim to examine various forms of American literature that developed in the nineteenth century. It will concentrate on the diversity of nineteenth-century American literature, highlighting the solidification of a distinctive American national voice. In a period when American literary production captures the efforts of the newly-emergent United States to achieve cultural and political independence, significant figures of American tradition critically approach the social and political contradictions of their time and challenge dominant ideologies through their writing. The course will delve into the historical, political and social issues that shape American identity and history in the nineteenth century. Lectures will underscore the dynamic relationship between literature and history, and will consider a variety of topics, including the shifting pressures of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. The course will also expose students to the main principles and ideology of Pur
Περίγραμμα
Course objectives:
Upon completion of the course students should have either learned or reinforced the following objectives:
- An appreciation for the full range of American literary and artistic production during the nineteenth century, along with specific knowledge of certain works and authors.
- An awareness of major historical events and socio-cultural developments that provided material, themes, and inspiration for writers of this period.
- Good understanding of the main aesthetic goals and the tropes used by Romantic,
Realist and Naturalist writers in their attempt to produce American literature and tackle social issues.
- The ability to critically engage a variety of texts, to ask interpretive questions, to formulate arguments and claims, and to react to others’ ideas about literary devices, styles, and structures.
- The skills to research critical responses, synthesize them with their own, and produce persuasive pieces of academic writing.
Upon completion of the course students should have either learned or reinforced the following objectives:
- An appreciation for the full range of American literary and artistic production during the nineteenth century, along with specific knowledge of certain works and authors.
- An awareness of major historical events and socio-cultural developments that provided material, themes, and inspiration for writers of this period.
- Good understanding of the main aesthetic goals and the tropes used by Romantic,
Realist and Naturalist writers in their attempt to produce American literature and tackle social issues. - The ability to critically engage a variety of texts, to ask interpretive questions, to formulate arguments and claims, and to react to others’ ideas about literary devices, styles, and structures.
- The skills to research critical responses, synthesize them with their own, and produce persuasive pieces of academic writing.
Introduction to the historical, cultural and literary background of the period
Primary Texts:
George Washington Parke Custis – Pocahontas, or The Settlers of Virginia (1830) (play)
Sarah Winnemucca – from Life Among the Piutes (1883) (Chapter 8) (memoir)
Zitkala-Ša – from The School Days of an Indian Girl (1900) (Chapter 2) (autobiography)
Secondary Reading:
William Apess – “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man” (1833)
Primary Texts:
Ralph Waldo Emerson – “Brahma” (1851) (poem)
Henry David Thoreau – “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849)
Primary Text:
Nathaniel Hawthorne – from The Scarlet Letter (1850) (“The Custom-House” & Chapters 1, 2, 5, 6, 12, 13)
Primary Text:
Nathaniel Hawthorne – from The Scarlet Letter (1850) (Chapters: 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24)
Secondary Reading:
Joel Pfister. “Hawthorne as Cultural Theorist.” The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. Richard H. Millington. 2004. pp. 35-59.
Primary Text:
Harriet Beecher Stowe – from Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or Life among the Lowly (1852) (Chapter 7)
Primary Text:
Kate Chopin – The Awakening (1899)
Primary Text:
Kate Chopin – The Awakening (1899)
Secondary Reading:
Per Seyersted. “Kate Chopin and the American Realists.” The Awakening: An Authoritative Text, Biographical and Historical Contexts, Criticism. 1994. pp. 202-207.
Primary Text:
Stephen Crane – Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893)
Secondary Reading:
Malcolm Cowley. “Naturalism in American Literature.” American Naturalism. 2004. pp. 49-80.
Stephen Crane - Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893)
Primary Texts:
Walt Whitman – from Democratic Vistas (1871)
Emily Dickinson – poem 764 [My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun - ] (1863)
