Aranda (Brown University)

General Information

Abstract

In this survey of early American Literature, we will embark on an examination of texts written and/or printed in North America with the particular assignment of asking what they reveal about their own construction. Our aim in this course will be to supplement our canonical readings of these texts with a sensitivity to the historical and cultural conditions under which the authors of these texts wrote. In turn, we will examine how these historical and cultural conditions affect the production of these texts and what this might tells us about the "literacy" of its readers. Finally, we will isolate a few texts that enjoyed a considerable readership in their own time. While unfamiliar to present readers, these "popular" texts will allow us to focus concretely on the issue of construction; consequently, not only will they reveal their historical and cultural conditions, they will help us to reconfigure our understanding of what constitutes American Literature. Thus, questions of what America represents and how it is represented--the City upon the Hill, We the People, Land of Opportunity, etc.--will invariably surface as tantamount to understanding the evolution of a literate culture in America.

Population

The class met every Tuesday and Thursday for one hour and twenty minutes. It is a concentration requirement for the English major and very often a concentration elective for majors in American Civilization. Of the twenty-five slots allotted to this time period, fifteen students took this course. Over half the class was made up of majors from English and American Civilization. Although open to freshmen, sophomores and juniors are more likely to take this course. This course also attracts a fair number of non-majors, especially from the sciences.

Bibliography

Required Texts

The Heath Anthology of American Literature Vol. 1, Paul Lauter ed. et. al. Mass.: D. C. Heath & Company, 1990.

Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland. or The Transformation: An American Tale (1798), eds. S. J. Krause and S. W. Reid. Kent State: Kent State University Press, 1988.

Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette: or The History of Eliza Wharton: A Novel Founded on Fact (1797), ed. Cathy N. Davidson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Catherine Maria Sedgwick, Hope Leslie: Or. Early Times in Massachusetts (1827), ed. Mary Kelley. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987.

Additional Texts

Unit 1: Cathy Davidson: "Toward a History of Books and Readers" Reading In America; "Introduction: Toward a History of Texts"; "Afterword: Texts as Histories" Revolution and the Word). Miller: "Errand into the Wilderness" Errand into the Wilderness) Kribbs: "Printing and Publishing in America from Daye to Zenger" Puritan Poets and Poetics). Monaghan: "Literacy Instruction and Gender in Colonial New England" Reading In America). Lowance, Jr.: "Religion in Puritan Poetry: The Doctrine of Accommodation" Puritan Poets and Poetics). Walker: "In the Margin: The Image of Women in Early Puritan Poetry" Puritan Poets and Poetics). Karlsen: "New England's Witchcraft Beliefs" The Devil in the Shape of a Woman).

Unit 2: Dunn: "Servants and Slaves: The Recruitment and Employment of Labor" Colonial British America). Stepto: "I Rose and Found My Voice: Narration, Authentication, and Authorial Control in Four Slave Narratives" From Behind the Veil). Davidson: "Ideology and Genre"; "Literacy, Education, and the Reader" (Revolution and the Word). Baym: "Minority Reading of Wieland" (Critical Essays). Rosenthal: "The Voices of Wieland" Critical Essays).

Unit 3: Commodity" American Romanticism and the Marketplace. Salvino: "The Word in Black and White" Reading in America). Cronon: "Looking Backward: The View from Walden" Changes in the Land). Unit 4: Hook: "Walt Whitman (1819-92)" American Literature in Context). St. Armand: "Dickinson, God, and Folk Forms" (Emily Dickinson). Gilmore: "To Speak in the Marketplace" Am. Romanticism).

Reserve Texts

Cathy N. Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Michael T. Gilmore, American Romanticism and the Marketplace. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1988.

Reading Schedule

Unit #1

The Rudiments of New Historicism

A Round of Introductions and Mechanics Squared Off: Cathy Davidson: "Toward a History of Books and Readers." Assign. Read Cathy Davidson's "Introduction: Toward a History of Texts" & "Afterword: Texts as Histories," from Revolution and the Word.

A New Historical Processing of Literature

Sedgwick 's Hope Leslie, vol. 1, pp. 1-169: What the novel claims to be; Hope Leslie, vol. 2, pp. 173-350. Detailing historical anachronisms.

An American Lexicon of New World Experience

Morton , Winthrop , Bradford ; pp. 1 76-232; Roger Williams , The Bay Psalm Book , The New England Primer ; pp. 232-256, pp. 295-310.

The Writing on the Wall

Wigglesworth , Mather ; pp. 282-295, pp. 399-423; Anne Bradstreet ; pp. 256-281; Edward Taylor ; pp. 342-385.

Unit #2

An Emerging Discourse of Commodity

Sarah Knight pp. 472-490, Edwards pp. 527-540, 555-566, Ashbridge pp. 579-590; Franklin pp. 810-881, Crèvecoeur pp; 890-925. Workshop: term project.

Marginal Voices in Concert

Women Poets Before the Revolution, pp. 641-677; Hammon , Hall , Equiano , Wheatley , Occom , Aupaumut ; pp. 678-756.

The Novel Founded on Fact

Foster's The Coquette.

The Novel as the Site for Transformations

Brown 's Wieland.

Unit #3

Writing in American Aesthetics

Emerson ; pp. 1467-1580; Fuller ; pp. 1580-1637.

We the People

Douglass ; pp. 1637-1704; Jacobs ; pp. 1723-1750.

The Dispossessed Speaking

Native Americans Apes , Boudinot , Seattle, Ridge ; pp. 1752-1780; Frances Ellen Watkins Harper ; pp. 1915-1944. Thoreau ; pp. 1964-2016; Workshop: Parameters of final project to be discussed. Final Project Prospectus due, 1-2 pgs.

Unit #4

Whitman/Dickinson/Hawthorne

8 class sessions

Whitman ; pp. 2709-2838; Dickinson ; pp. 2838-2921; Hawthorne 's Scarlet Letter: A History Twice-Written;

Pedagogies

Final Projects

Option A:

Due to the nature of a survey course, we can only hope to scratch the surface of available texts or do justice to those authors deemed necessary or important to read. To compensate for whatever might be omitted, students are encouraged to adopt an author or a text for close study during the semester. Although the selection of an author or text will vary from student to student, its analysis will depend on and will develop from the agenda of this course as a whole. In short, our purpose here is to give a New Historicist reading: a method that historicizes an author and/or text as a cultural phenomenon and contextualizes its correspondences to other texts or authors. 8-10 pgs.

Option B:

Reconstructing a 19th Century View of the Puritan Experience. Our objective here will be to synthesize a cultural perception of what the New England Puritans meant to a 19th century audience. The principal texts in this project will be Sedgwick 's Hope Leslie and Hawthorne 's Scarlet Letter. Although we concede that these two diverse authors hardly constitute a consensus, these texts are nevertheless divergent in ways that pique a New Historicist desire to ask the question: Are they so different afterall? Because any stab of this question will be necessarily long and involved, students are encouraged to begin early in their research. 8-10 pgs.

In summary, options A and B are only general parameters for the term project. The final shape of either project will ultimately depend on the student's own research and thesis. Variations on these parameters will undoubtedly occur.