ENGL 285-01, 02, Text and Context, Fall 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 read Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig—the first novel published by an African American woman—which exposes the brutalities of indentured servitude in the North. Next we’ll consider how the poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson reflects the gendering of the national body before turning to Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, an icy meditation on primitive life and environmental determinism. We’ll then read Edith Wharton’s Summer, a gripping story of female isolation and paternalism, and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, a devastating critique of the American Dream. After that, we’ll tackle Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God, a tale of depravity and violence in rural Tennessee, and 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.