ENGL 260-02, Survey of American Literature, Fall 2007

Abstract

This course will be a broad survey of important intellectual, thematic and formal trends in American literature from the late eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth. I realize this is a long period of time to cover in one semester. I have, therefore, arranged the course around larger aesthetic categories such as "Romanticism," "Realism," and "Modernsim." I have done so in order to give you a clear sense of how the formal and thematic evolution of American literature is understood by scholars, but I find it equally useful to attend to the larger contemporary cultural and historical debates in which these literary texts are participating. Of course, though we will immerse ourselves in these larger movements, we will also bear in mind that each text is an imaginative artifact that also needs to be examined closely and individually. By the end of the semester, you will hopefully have a good sense of the myriad ways American literature has historically contributed to our complex national identiy.