ENGL 285-01, Text and Context, Spring 2015

Abstract

This course emphasizes the close reading of literary texts in relation to their cultural contexts. In order to expose students to a variety of texts/contexts, our readings will cover a wide range of American literature and literary genres. We’ll begin by analyzing how Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables record the horrors of historical haunting, antebellum racial anxieties, and aristocratic decline. Then we’ll consider how the poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson reflects the gendering of the new national body. Next we’ll read Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig, which exposes the brutalities of northern indentured servitude, and Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, an icy meditation on primitive life and environmental determinism. We’ll then turn to Edith Wharton’s Summer, a gripping tale of female isolation and paternalism, and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, a devastating critique of the American Dream. We’ll also read some stories by John Cheever about the pathologies of postwar suburbia as well as Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God, a tale of depravity and violence in rural Tennessee. After that, we’ll jump into Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City, a fast-paced portrait of decadence in 1980s New York. A few other texts will be sprinkled in along the way. Note: This course assists prospective majors and minors in acquiring the necessary tools for middle- and upper-division classes in English.