English 130B

Book List

Douglass, Frederick: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass ; Emerson, Ralph Waldo: Nature and Selected Essays ; Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlet Letter ; Melville, Herman: Moby-Dick; Thoreau, Henry David: Walden and Civil Disobedience ; Whitman, Walt: Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition

Description

In the mid-nineteenth century, the U.S., a nation that had barely come together, was splitting apart. The fission helped to produce the remarkably energetic works we will be studying over the course of the semester. I will focus primarily on questions of freedom, cruelty, desire, and loss in my lectures, attempting to understand the relation between these abstract human experiences and the particular historical situation framing them. I will also emphasize the striking, baroque, often bizarre formal innovations attempted in these works.

Two ten-page essays and a final exam will be required, along with regular attendance.