English 130A

Other Readings and Media

Lauter, P., ed.: The Heath Anthology of American Literature (vol.1); Miller, P., ed.: The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry; Rowson, S.: Charlotte Temple; Brown, C. B.: Edgar Huntly; Photocopied Reader

Description

"This course will offer a survey of the literature produced in North America before 1800: European accounts of ""discovery"" and exploration; competing Puritan versions of settlement; conversion, captivity, and slave narratives; diaries and journals; eighteenth-century poetry by women; Native American oratory; autobiography; letters, essays, political debate; and novels. Arching across this survey will be concerns linking literature and history, language and politics. What are the ""stories"" of America? What are their shapes, sounds, and trajectories? Who tells them, when, and why? Some of the crucial narrative junctures to be explored will be the ""discovery"" of America, the Antinomian Crisis, the Pequot War, the declaring of independence, and the 1793 yellow fever epidemic. Two midterms and one final examination will be required. "