Literature 5931.2 American Romanticism   
Thursdays 7:00-9:50, Bayou 1235

Course webpage: http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4232

Instructor: Craig White    

Office / phone: Bayou 2529-8; 281 283-3380;  

Office hours: TBA & by appointment.

email: whitec@uhcl.edu

Caveat: All items on this syllabus are subject to change with minimal notification.

Texts

Baym, Nina, et al, eds. Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th Shorter Ed. 2008.

Cooper, James Fenimore. The Last of the Mohicans.  1826. NY: Penguin, 1986.

Grades and Assignments:

Note on grading standards

final grade report

Student presentations:

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.

 

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?

 

American Romanticism 2008 Schedule of readings:
This schedule is subject to change.

N = Norton Anthology of American Literature, shorter 7th edition (2008)

Course Introduction

Thursday 28 August: Syllabus / webpage review; introduce assignments & objectives; students indicate presentation preferences; sample poems.

Pre-Romantic Writings: American Origins

Thursday 4 September: Columbus, N 24-28; Selections from Genesis (web post); John Smith, N 43-53. Mary Rowlandson, N 117-134. Thomas Jefferson, N 338-346.

text-objective discussion leader: Tanya Stanley

poetry: Anne Bradstreet, “To my Dear and Loving Husband,” N 108.

poetry reader / discussion leader: Matt Richards

Pre-Romantic & Early Romantic Writings

Thursday 11 September: 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).

poetry: James Wright, "A Blessing," N 2613

poetry reader / discussion leader: Donny Wankan

web highlight (midterms): Dawlat Yassin

Early Romanticism: James Fenimore Cooper

Thursday 18 September: James Fenimore Cooper, N 460-469. Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, through ch. 11 (through p. 110 Penguin edition); Mark Twain, “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences” (web post); : D. H. Lawrence on Cooper's Leatherstocking novels (web post)

Guide to Last of the Mohicans

text-objective discussion leader (Mohicans w/ Twain & Lawrence): Larry Finn

poetry: Cathy Song, "Heaven," N 2844

poetry reader / discussion leader: Cory Owen

Early Romanticism: Last of the Mohicans & non-fiction Indians

Thursday 25 September: Complete Last of the Mohicans + American Indian texts: “The Iroquois Creation Story,” N 17-21; “The Cherokee Memorials,” N 580-85; William Apess, N 482-88.

text-objective discussion leader: Kate Hebert

web highlight (midterms): Laurie Forshage

Romanticism: Southern Gothic

Thursday 2 October: Take-home midterm exam due within 72 hours of class meeting. Edgar Allan Poe, N 671-75, 679-702 (“Ligeia” & “Fall of the House of Usher”); William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily" N 2218-24.

text-objective discussion leader ("A Rose for Emily"): Ron Burton

text-objective discussion leader (Poe stories): Laurie Forsage

poetry: Poe, "Anabelle Lee," N 678

poetry reader / discussion leader: Rachel Zock

Romanticism: New England Gothic

Thursday 9 October: Nathaniel Hawthorne, N 589-592, 605-622 (“Young Goodman Brown,” “May-Pole of Merry Mount,” & “Minister’s Black Veil”)

text-objective discussion leader ("Young Goodman Brown"): Christine Ford

text-objective discussion leader ("May-Pole" and/or "Black Veil"): Amy Sidle

poetry: Sylvia Plath, "Blackberrying," N 2658

poetry reader / discussion leader: Bundy Fowler

Romanticism & Abolition: The Slave Narrative

Thursday 16 October: Research Proposal Due within 72 hours of class. Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, N 804-825. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life . . . , N 920-991.

text-objective discussion leader: Cory Owens

poetry: Robert Hayden, "Those Winter Sundays," N 2424

poetry reader / discussion leader: Telishia Mickens

web highlight (final exams or research projects): Larry Finn

Romanticism & Abolition, 2nd meeting

Thursday 23 October: Monday: Abraham Lincoln, N 732-36. Harriet Beecher Stowe, selections from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, N 764-799. Thoreau, N 825-844 (“Resistance to Civil Government”).

text-objective discussion leader: Rachel Zoch

poetry: Theodore Roethke, "I Knew a Woman," N 2323

poetry reader / discussion leader: Amy Sidle

Romanticism & Transcendentalism

Thursday 30 October: Ralph Waldo Emerson, N 488-97, 520-25, 532-37 (introduction & opening sections of Nature, The American Scholar, & Self-Reliance). (Try to finish at least one of these essays.) Margaret Fuller, N 736-47.

text-objective discussion leader: Kristin Hamon

poetry: Denise Levertov, "The Jacob's Ladder," N 2553

poetry reader / discussion leader: Dawlat Yassin

web highlight (final exams or research projects):

Romantic Free-Style: Whitman and descendents

Thursday 6 November: Walt Whitman, N 991-96, 1057-62 (“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”), 1071-77 (“When Lilacs . . . “); “There Was a Child Went Forth“ (web post). Carl Sandburg, N 1987-90. Allen Ginsberg, N 2590-2602. Jack Kerouac, 2542-2551.

text-objective discussion leader: Matt Richards

poetry: Whitman, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” N 1067

poetry reader / discussion leader: Amy Smith

Post-Romanticism: High Realism

Thursday 13 November: Henry James, N 1491-1532 (Daisy Miller: A Study)

text-objective discussion leader: Katie Breaux

poetry: Elizabeth Bishop, “The Fish,” N 2399

poetry reader / discussion leader: Kristin Hamon

web highlight (final exams or research projects): Telishia Mickens

Post-Romanticism: Harlem Renaissance & Jazz Age

Thursday 20 November:

Harlem Renaissance: Claude McKay, N 2-2086. Zora Neal Hurston, N 2157-61. Jean Toomer, N 2179-84. Langston Hughes N 2263-68. Countee Cullen, N 2283-87 + "From the Dark Tower" & "For a Poet" (web posts)

text-objective discussion leader (Harlem Renaissance): Ayme Christian

Jazz Age: F. Scott Fitzgerald, N 2184-2201 (“Winter Dreams”)

text-objective discussion leader (Fitzgerald): Laurie Forshage

web highlight (final exams): Tanya Stanley

Thursday 4 December: Final exam. Students may take final exam in-class or by email.