de Romanet (SUNY Geneseo)

Texts

Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol. I, Paul Lauter, ed., et. al.

Kate Chopin, The Awakening

Nella Larsen, Quicksand

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night

Readings

Week # 1

Native American Narrative Native American Traditions , 3-40, 52- 59.

Week # 2

Literature of Discovery and Settlement

Christopher Columbus , 67-80; Cabeza de Vaca , 89-99; Champlain ,131-36; John Smith , 146-63; Pérez de Villagrá , 121-31; William Bradford , 210-232.

Week # 3

Anne Bradstreet, 256-81; Edward Taylor, 342-83; Mary Rowlandson , 317-42; John Williams, 423-30; The Pueblo Indian Revolt , 431-45.

Week # 4

Colonial Period 1700-1800, 448-69; Sarah K Knight , 470-90; Jonathan Edwards , 512-79; Colonial Poetry by Women, 611-14;641-74; John Woolman , 590-610 African-American Voices: Olaudah Equiano , 694-711.

Week # 5

Benjamin Franklin 774-881;

African-American & Native Voices:

Jupiter Hammon 679-85; Phillis Wheatley 712-28; Prince Hall 685-94; Hendrick Aupaumut, 751-56; Delgado , 756-61.; Crèvecoeur , 890-925.

Week # 6

Voices of the Revolution

John and Abigail Adams , 925-36; Thomas Paine , 936-57; Thomas Jefferson , 957-994; The Federalist/Anti-Federalist Papers , 1007-21.

United Voices, a National Literature:

Hannah W. Foster , 1022-24; 1131-52.

Week # 7

Narrative/Emerson

Washington Irving , 1238-80; James F Cooper , 1280-1307. Edgar Allan Poe , 1344-57; 1372-90; 1392-1410; 1417-25; Ralph Waldo Emerson , 1467-1527; 1536-1551

Week # 8

Slavery/Native American

Frederick Douglass , 1637-1723; Harriet Ann Jacobs ,1723-1751; George Copway , (Ojibwe), 1450-66; Chief Seattle, 1770-72; William L. Garrison , 1792-95; Lydia Maria Child , 1795-1812* 1781-2

Week # 9

Voices of Freedom/Thoreau

The Grimké Sisters, 1825-38, 1886-93; Abraham Lincoln , 1882-85. Wendell Phillips, 1847-58; Thomas W. Higginson ,1858- 73. Henry D. Thoreau, 1964-2062.

Week # 10

Narratives of Slavery

Harriet Beecher Stowe : Uncle Tom's Cabin, 2062-65, 2307-75, 2384-93; Herman Melville , Benito Cereno, 2464-2522, 2400-04.; William Wells Brown , Clotelle, 2584-95.

Week # 11

Walt Whitman ; Emily Dickinson;

Kate Chopin , The Awakening

Week # 12

Kate Chopin , The Awakening

T.S. Eliot and Modernism

Week # 13

The Harlem Renaissance Jean Toomer , Langston Hughes ; Nella Larsen , Quicksand

Week # 14

F. Scott Fitzgerald , Tender is the Night.

Paper Topics

Paper #1

This paper covers weeks #1 thru #4

1. In the Introduction to the section entitled "American Voices in a Changing World" the editors of the Heath Anthology of American Literature note that the writers from the colonial period "suggest the immense social and religious transformations that resulted from the increased peopling of the colonies and the new economic and political patterns....While ostensibly recording the events of the day, these writers spoke about themselves, thus making themselves the subjects of the narratives. From [their texts] we learn as much about how these writers wished themselves to be seen as we do about the changing life of the XVII-XVIIIth Centuries." (470)

Choosing four of the following writers:

Anne Bradstreet, William Bradford, Sarah Kemble Knight, Samuel Sewall, Mary Rowlandson, Jonathan Edwards, Phillis Wheatley, John Woolman and Olaudah Equiano

discuss the changes (social, spiritual and political) in colonial America which specific texts by these four authors point to. Indicate also how each of these four authors presents him/herself, and whether they are writing for an audience or not; if so, what is the nature of this audience, and does it change as the society changes?

You will need to focus on specific passages which support your comments, in order to compare (or to contrast) these four authors' perspectives. Make sure to use clearly-marked quotes from the texts.

2. In the most famous passage from his Letters, Crèvecoeur asks the question: "What Is an American?" and answers that "He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new code of life he has embraced. . . [In America] individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims... they will finish the great circle" Heath Anthology 97).

Following our readings of texts by Columbus, John Smith, William Bradford, Don Diego de Vargas, Sarah Kemble Knight, Jonathan Edwards, Olaudah Equiano, Hendrik Aupaumut, Benjamin Franklin, Crèvecoeur and Thomas Jefferson:

Choose five of the mentioned writers and say how you would characterize the emerging American personality as it is portrayed by these writers from the early days of exploration to the eve of the American Revolution. Do you note some common traits and themes about what it means to "be an American" in the texts of such a diverse group of writers? If so, indicate them, and develop your discussion in a comparison of the way these specifically "American" traits evolve from one text to the other. If on the other hand, you cannot locate common traits between these five texts, do the differences between them still characterize a specific "Americanness" within these texts?

Paper #3

1. In her introduction to the Penguin American Library edition of Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Sandra Gilbert notes that "an escape 'from tradition and authority,' as much as a liberation from the comfortable age of bourgeois matrimony, was to be both problem and solution for Kate Chopin and her most famous heroine" (12). Fitzgerald's Tender is the Nighton the other hand focuses on issues of gender relationships and identity in the post-Freudian era and how they affect his three main characters.

Taking into account the texts we have studied in our class -- with special attention to those dealing with issues of gender and women's place and identities in their respective societies -- in addition to Chopin and Fitzgerald, choose one author from the pre-Revolutionary era, and one from the 19th century. Discuss how each text discusses specific gender/women's issues; pay attention to any continuity of problems and themes from one era to the next. In this light, how do The Awakening and Tender appear: as heirs to older debates and issues, or as distinct beacons of the problems and discussion of the modern age? You might want to choose among the following authors:

Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Jacobs, the Grimké Sisters, Lydia Maria Child, Sarah Kemble Knight, Hannah Webster Foster, Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman.

2. Deborah E. McDowell notes in her introduction to Larsen 's Quicksand that "the novel, like its protagonist, would seem to want two lives as well: as female sexual confession and novel of racial uplift". In view of our readings and discussions of;

Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Wendell Phillips, William Wells Brown (as well as other texts you might be familiar with such as Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God)

how does Larsen's novella fit into a specific tradition of racial (and gender) consciousness within American literature? In addition to Quicksand, focus on two other texts and discuss their similarities as well as the author's idiosyncrasies. Make sure to use several specific/relevant examples and quotes from each text.

3. Tender is the Night, as well as The Awakening and Quicksand address specific aspects (radical, psychological, gender-related, social) of the "malaise" of the Modern Age. Their protagonists, especially the female ones, all confront pressing issues of identity even as they face rigid social constraints and expectations. Pick 2 of these texts develop how each one develops one or several of these issues of the modern era "malaise". Use several relevant and specific examples from each text while comparing and contrasting them.