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

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.

Course coordinators

Marek Wilczyński

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

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

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:

Description of 4219-AW003 in USOSweb