Course Title:
| American Literature: Beginning to 1885 | |
Course Materials:
| The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume I, 4th Ed, edited by Paul Lauter. | |
Course Description:
| Prerequisite: WRTG 101. A close study of some masterpieces of American literature, covering the period from the beginning of American literature to 1865. | |
Course Goals/Objectives:
| The course is designed to provide a solid appreciation for the development of early American literature as well as a background for later American literature and to examine authors and works that have been traditionally outside the canon of American literature, in particular Native American Readings and works by African Americans. Common themes in the literature will also be explored. Class discussions of assigned readings and written analyses of selected readings will be a major part of the course. Students will also learn to identify the developmental stages and individual elements that constitute the genres of poetry, the short story, and the novel. | |
Course Introduction:
| Considers a wide range of readings in early American literature, to include the Native American oral tradition (both narrative as well as poetry); the Puritan writers, such as William Bradford, Jonathan Edwards, and Anne Bradstreet; readings from the so-called American Enlightenment, to include Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Jefferson; slave narratives and the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley; short stories by American Transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau; fiction by Nathanial Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe; and poetry by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. | |
Grading Information and Criteria:
Paper #1 20%
Paper #2 20%
Mid-Term Exam 30%
Final Exam 30% | |
Other Information:
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Project Descriptions:
| Students will write two analytic papers of 1,000 words each and take a mid-term and a final exam. | |
Academic Policies:
Cases of plagiarism are handled consistent with current UMUC guidelines.
See the UMUC policies at the following URL:
http://www.umuc.edu/policy/ | |
Course Schedule:
Session 1 Introduction
Session 2 The Puritans: Bradford, Bradstreet, Sewall,
Edwards, and Wheatly.
Session 3 The Enlightenment: Franklin.
Session 4 The Enlightenment: Crevecouer, Paine,
Jefferson.
Session 5 Men of Letters: Irving.
Session 6 Poetry: Poe.
Session 7 Mid-term exam
Session 8 Hawthorne
Session 9 Hawthorne
Session 10 Melville Paper due
Session 11 Melville
Session 12 Emerson
Session 13 Thoreau
Session 14 Thoreau Paper due
Session 15 Lincoln
Session 16 Final Exam | |
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