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 William 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

Course coordinators

Term 2026Z:

Grzegorz Kość

Term 2025Z:

Marek Wilczyński

Type of course

obligatory courses

Mode

Classroom

Prerequisites (description)

The subject matter of this series of lectures is history of American literature from the early colonial period (17th century) till the end of the 19th century.

Learning outcomes

Upon completion of the course, the student:

KNOWLEDGE
Knows and understands:

- the main trends and works of American literature, literary genres typical of American literature, its major representatives, in relation to literature of the USA up to the Civil War
- the connections between US culture and American literature
- interdisciplinary contexts of American literature up to the Civil War, its social and political contexts
- basic trends in the evolution of American literature up to the Civil War and their cultural, social, and political context
- terminology used in the history of American literature
- the diversity of American literature up to the Civil War
- how the development of American literature was shaped by social and political changes in the United States and how American literature reflected these changes

SKILLS
Is able to:

- utilize knowledge of American literature up to the Civil War to describe and analyze cultural phenomena in the USA during this period
- interpret works of American literature up to the Civil War in the context of broadly understood American culture
- identify and discuss the major literary movements, genres, and conventions of the period, including the Puritan sermon, spiritual autobiography, slave narrative, essay, Gothic romance, sentimental novel, Romantic poetry, and Transcendentalist prose;

SOCIAL COMPETENCES
Is ready to:

- use acquired interdisciplinary knowledge in the field of American literature up to the Civil War to formulate own opinions, and recognize its importance in solving cognitive and practical problems
- recognize the importance of American literature up to the Civil War for understanding contemporary debates on national identity, race, gender, religion, democracy, freedom, and social exclusion;
- critically assess the cultural and ideological conditions of literary texts and recognize their connection with broader historical and social processes.

Assessment criteria

Final written exam will contain quote-recognition questions, multiple-choice questions, and open-ended questions.

Grading scale:
0–50% 2 fail
51–60% 3 satisfactory / pass
61–70% 3+ satisfactory plus
71–80% 4 good
81–90% 4+ good plus
91–96% 5 very good
97–100% 5! excellent / outstanding

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:

Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Vols. 1–4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994–2004.

Castronovo, Russ, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Hayes, Kevin J., ed. The Oxford Handbook of Early American Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Kerkering, John D. The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Matthiessen, F. O. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1941.

Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.