American Romanticism: Midterm Assignment 2008

Take-home Midterm Exam

Due: By the end of the weekend following 9 October--that is, by sometime the following weekend

Length: 1200-2000 words, equivalent to 5-7 double-spaced pages.

Transmission: Email exam to whitec@uhcl.edu. Instructor posts submissions to webpage.

Topic: Describe an aspect of American Romanticism by interpreting three or more texts in terms of a course objective.

Course objectives are copied below. Choose any objective, any part of one, or any combination. Past exams often focused on a specific aspect of Objective 1a or 1c such as the gothic, the sublime, nature, the Romantic hero/ine, the romance narrative, etc. You may range beyond these possibilities or focus more specifically on a specific aspect of the gothic, the romance, or Romantic spirit, for instance.

You are required to review and cite a midterm from a previous semester--a quotation or idea that relates to your theme or subject.

Other ways to approach or develop topic:

Relate your interests beyond the class to its themes and texts--for instance, Dawlat's web highlights showed connections between women's studies and the Romantic heroine.

Or . . .

Start with previous understandings or notions of Romanticism, then trace how they've developed, extended, or changed with our readings. Use the objectives for terminology.

 

Midterm Sample Answers from American Romanticism Model Assignments

Sample 2006 midterms

Sample 2005 midterms

Sample 2003 midterms

Sample 2002 midterms (also not featuring Last of the Mohicans)

You may cite external sources, but this assignment does not have an outside research requirement.

A Works Cited is not required.

A cover page is not required.

Grading standards:

You are expected to incorporate major ideas from class lecture and discussion. A member of this class should recognize your ideas and references as relevant to our course as it has developed thus far. You can’t simply express the ideas you walked in with; you must demonstrate learning.

Combine your unique responses with the course's prevailing interests. The best exams energize or extend our familiar terms and examples with fresh insight, expression, and readings.

Not only content but stylistic competence and flair may factor into your grade. Write a unified essay with careful transitions and consistent thesis. Chronic grammatical, spelling, punctuation, or organization problems must detract. Welcome to confer, as everyone learns their way a little at a time.

 

Course Objectives

Objective 1: Literary Categories of Romanticism

  Objective 1a. Romantic Spirit or Ideology

  • To identify and criticize ideas or attitudes associated with Romanticism, such as desire and loss, rebellion, nostalgia, idealism, the gothic, the sublime, the individual in nature or separate from the masses.
     

  • Romance narrative: A desire for anything besides “the here and now” or “reality," the Romantic impulse, quest, or journey involves crossing physical borders or transgressing social or psychological boundaries in order to attain or regain some transcendent goal or dream.
     

  • A Romantic hero or heroine may appear empty or innocent of anything but readiness to change or yearning to re-invent the self or world--esp. the golden boy and fair lady; their darker counterparts are the dark lady and the Byronic hero

 

Objective 1b. The Romantic Period

  • To observe Romanticism’s co-emergence in the late 18th through the 19th centuries with the middle class, cities, industrial capitalism, consumer culture, & nationalism.
     

  • To observe predictive elements in “pre-Romantic” writings from earlier periods such as “The Seventeenth Century” and the "Age of Reason."
     

  • To speculate on residual elements in “post-Romantic” writings from later periods incl. “Realism and Local Color,” "Modernism," and “Postmodernism.”

 

Objective 1c: Romantic Genres

To describe & evaluate leading literary genres of Romanticism:

  • the romance narrative or novel (journey from repression to transcendence)

  • the gothic novel or style (haunted physical and mental spaces, the shadow of death or decay; dark and light in physical and moral terms; film noir)

  • the lyric poem (a momentary but comprehensive cognition or transcendent feeling—more prominent in European than American Romanticism?)

  • the essay (esp. for Transcendentalists—descended from the Puritan sermon?)

 

Objective 2: Cultural Issues:

America as Romanticism, and vice versa

2a. To identify the Romantic era in the United States of America as the “American Renaissance”—roughly the generation before the Civil War (c. 1820-1860, one generation after the Romantic era in Europe).

 

2b. To acknowledge the co-emergence and convergence of "America" and "Romanticism." European Romanticism begins near the time of the American Revolution, and Romanticism and the American nation develop ideas of individualism, sentimental nature, rebellion, and equality in parallel.

 

2c. Racially divided but historically related "Old and New Canons" of Romantic literature:

  • European-American: from Emerson’s Transcendentalism and Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age

  • African American: from the Slave Narratives of Douglass and Jacobs to the Harlem Renaissance of Hughes, Hurston, and Cullen

  • American Indian: conflicted Romantic icon in Cooper and Zitkala-Sa.

  • (Mexican American Literature is not yet incorporated into this course—seminar will discuss.)

 

2d.  Economically liberal but culturally conservative, the USA creates "Old and New Canons" also in terms of gender

  • masculine traditions: freedom and the frontier (with variations)

  • feminine traditions: relations and domesticity (with variations

  • Also consider “Classical” and “Popular” literature as gendered divisions.

 

2e. American Romanticism exposes competing or complementary dimensions of the American identity: is America a culture of sensory and material gratification or moral, spiritual, idealistic mission?

 

2f. If "America" and "Romanticism" converge, to what degree does popular American culture and ideology—from Hollywood to human rights—represent a derivative form of classic Romanticism?

 

 

 

 

 

Texts (refer to at least three)

Columbus, N 24-28

Selections from Genesis (web post)

John Smith, N 43-53.

Mary Rowlandson, N 117-134.

Thomas Jefferson, N 338-346.

Jonathan Edwards, N 168-170 (introduction), 194-205 (Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, esp. beginning and end), 170-180 (Personal Narrative)

Susanna Rowson, selections from Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth (web post)

Washington Irving, N 453-466 ("Rip Van Winkle"), "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (web post).

James Wright, "A Blessing," N 2613

Edgar Allan Poe, N 671-75, 679-702 (“Ligeia” & “Fall of the House of Usher”)

William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily" N 2218-24.

Poe, "Anabelle Lee," N 678

Nathaniel Hawthorne, N 589-592, 605-622 (“Young Goodman Brown,” “May-Pole of Merry Mount,” & “Minister’s Black Veil”)

Sylvia Plath, "Blackberrying," N 2658