English 130B

Other Readings and Media

Lauter, P., ed.: The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol. I; Fern, F.: Ruth Hall; Jacobs, H.: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Melville, H.: Moby-Dick; Thoreau, H.: Walden; course reader

Description

"Reading Poe, Longfellow, Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, Jacobs, Fern, Melville, Whitman, and Dickinson, we will pay particular attention to literary form and technique, to social and political context, and to the ideological formations and transformations during the antebellum period. We will be concerned with issues of ""self"" (the search for transcendence and the entanglement in relations); sexuality; landscape; the Puritan legacy; the nature and role of the emotions; the efforts to reform the American character; the democratic experiment; and the struggles over the rights and roles of women, African Americans, and Native Americans in the expanding nation. Two midterms and one final examination will be required. "