Παρουσίαση/Προβολή

(63ΛΕ197 - 2026-2027) -  Isavella Vouza

Περιγραφή Μαθήματος

The course examines American Romanticism as a literary movement from the late eighteenth to the mid nineteenth century. It explores its affinities with Romanticism as a transnational movement, and the elements that differentiate American literature from its European counterpart. The course centers influential Romantic writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, and lesser known writers such as Margaret Fuller and Harriet Jacobs.

Engaging with diverse literary genres, such as novels, short stories, poems, manifestos, essays, and genre fiction such as gothic fiction, students will explore the aesthetic articulation of key problematics in this era, including democracy and the birth of the American nation, the role of the individual in relation to the state, slavery, and the role of nature and urban experience in shaping human subjectivity. Students will also reflect on questions such as: What gave rise to such a unique period in American letters? How did American Romanticism help create a new national literary canon and what is its contribution to American (and world) literary history?

The class will finally be encouraged to examine the contemporary relevance of these concepts, drawing connections between notions such as nature or individualism and issues such as the current environmental crisis or personal freedom amidst global political crises.  

Ημερομηνία δημιουργίας

Σάββατο 26 Σεπτεμβρίου 2026