American Literature I 4219-AW003
Lecture topics:
1. Reformation in Britain and the rise of Puritanism
2. Puritan culture in New England in the 17th and 18th century; culture of the colonies in the South
3. The decline of Calvinism and the Enlightenment in the colonies
4. American poetry and fiction at the turn of the 19th century: ideas and forms
5. Cultural nationalism of the Early Republic
6. Dark Romanticism: E. A. Poe and the Gothic
7. Antebellum American fiction and history
8. American Transcendentalism: R. W. Emerson and the “intellectual Declaration of Independence”
9. Transcendentalism as a literary and political movement
10. Popular culture and literature before the Civil War
11. Minority voices: African slave narratives and W. Apess
12. The continuity of American poetry from W. C. Bryant to H. W. Longfellow
13. New York as a cultural center and the career of H. Melville
14. The poetry of W. Whitman and E. Dickinson
Type of course
Mode
Prerequisites (description)
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Knowledge: A graduate possesses comprehensive knowledge and understanding of:
- the significance of cultural studies and religious studies within the scholarly system, including their specific subjects and methodologies, relationships with other disciplines and fields, and future development directions
- major trends and works of American literature, essential foundations of American literary history that are an integral part of studying North American culture, as well as theoretical and methodological basics of literary studies
Skills: A graduate is able to:- interpret works of American literature in the context of broadly understood American culture
- apply principles of effective communication necessary in the context of exchange between two cultural systems
Social Skills: A graduate is able to:
- utilize interdisciplinary knowledge acquired in American Studies concerning the United States to formulate own opinions and recognize its significance in solving cognitive and practical problems
- develop professionally, continue learning and engage in the development of American Studies
Assessment criteria
Written final test: 4 open questions (5 points for each answer)
Grading: 20-19/5, 18-16/4, 15-11/3, 10-0/2
Practical placement
None
Bibliography
1. Primary literature:
John Winthrop, “A Modell of Christian Charity” (fragments)
Samuel Danforth, “New-England’s Errand into the Wilderness” (fragments)
Edward Taylor, “Upon a Spider Catching a Fly”
Jonathan Edwards, “Personal Narrative”
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, Part II
Phillis Wheatley, “An Hymn to Humanity”
Philip Freneau, “Lines occasioned by a Visit to an old Indian Burying Ground”
Charles Brockden Brown, “Somnambulism”
Walter Channing, “Essay on American Language and Literature”
Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle,” “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Edgar Allan Poe, “Berenice,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat,” “The Premature Burial”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown,” “The Gray Champion,” “Endicott and the Red Cross,” “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” (The Scarlet Letter as home assignment)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (Introduction, Chapter I), The American Scholar (fragments), “Self-Reliance” (fragments)
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (fragments of “Economy”), Civil Disobedience
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (fragments)
William Cullen Bryant, “The Prairies”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “A Psalm of Life”
Herman Melville, “Bartleby,” Billy Budd, Sailor
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” (fragments), “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
Emily Dickinson, selected poems
2. Secondary literature
Andrzej Kopcewicz, Marta Sienicka, Literatura amerykańska do 1900 roku w zarysie. Warszawa 1983
Viola Sachs, Idee przewodnie literatury amerykańskiej. Warszawa 1992
Malcolm Bradbury, Richard Ruland, From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature. New York 1992
Richard Gray, A Brief History of American Literature. Chichester 2011
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: