Unit information: New England's Dreaming: American Literature from Emerson to James in 2014/15

Unit name	New England's Dreaming: American Literature from Emerson to James
Unit code	ENGL29025
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Dr. Matthews
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None.
Co-requisites	None.
School/department	Department of English
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

The ‘idea of America’ is a motivating force, and animating presence, in American literature from its earliest period. This unit concentrates on how the answer to Crevecoeur’s famous question, in Letters from an American Farmer (1782), ‘What then is the American, this new man?’ shapes the literature produced in New York and New England during the nineteenth century by a group of exceptional writers and thinkers, beginning with Washington Irving and concluding with Henry James. The literary and cultural ferment of American Transcendentalism, the Abolitionist Movement, the reaction to ‘progress’ and the expansion of the frontier, the trauma of the Civil War, and the disenchantment of post-Civil War society, all feature in the unit as significant contexts, but the focus will be on detailed readings of novels, poems, essays, and works of criticism by the primary authors.

Aims:

• To teach students about significant texts and contexts of American literature from (roughly) 1830-1890.

• To develop students' research skills.

• To develop students' skills in oral and written communication.

Intended Learning Outcomes

• Knowledge of significant texts and contexts of American literature, 1830-1890.

• Ability to analyse complex literary works at the level of context, structure, and style, and reflect critically on the relation between literary history and the history of ideas.

• Ability to conduct appropriate research in textual, electronic, and online resources.

• Ability to articulate ideas clearly and correctly in both oral and written form.

Teaching Information

One x 2 hour seminar per week, plus one-to-one discussion in consultation hours where desired.

Assessment Information

Two summative essays: one of up to 2000 words (one third of weighting 33.3%) and one of up to 4000 words (two thirds of weighting 66.7%).

Reading and References

Reading for the unit is based on the Norton Anthology of American Literature, 7th edition, volume B (1820-1865) which contains the set reading for most of the primary texts.

Primary texts:

Washington Irving, The Sketch-Book (‘The Author’s Account of Himself’, ‘Rip Van Winkle’)

James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

Ralph Waldo Emerson, selected essays

Margaret Fuller, selected writings

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Herman Melville, ‘Benito Cereno’

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855) and selections from Drum-Taps (1865)

Emily Dickinson, selected poems

Henry James, The Bostonians