English 23: American Traditions in Literature to 1865                           Summer 2002

 

Instructor: Marc DiPaolo                                                           E-mail: mdipaolo@drew.edu

Mondays and Wednesdays from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Office Hour – Wednesdays from 5:30 to 6:30 in SW Bowne Hall, Room 115   

 

Course Description:  Perspectives on such topics as transcendentalism, slavery, the woman question, American Gothic fiction & the role of the artist in society. 

 

Any Pre-requisites:  English 9 or any equivalent class.

 

Required Texts: The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 5th edition Vol 1 –

Edited by Nina Baym.  ISBN: 039395871X

 

Assignments:

-         An informal in-class presentation on an author/work (10 – 15 minutes)

-         Two critical papers (6 – 8 pages)

-         Solid attendance and class participation ******* (more than 2 unexcused absences = failure)

 

Tentative Class Schedule:

 

Monday, May 20 – Introduction to class

 

Wednesday, May 22 – Edgar Allan Poe.  Come to class having read The Raven,

Annabel Lee, Ligeia, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart,

William Wilson, The Purloined Letter, and The Philosophy of Composition.             Last day to join class.

 

Friday, May 24 – last day to withdraw with 50 % refund

 

Monday, May 27 – Holiday.  No class.

 

Wednesday, May 29 – Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Nature, The American Scholar,

The Divinity School Address, Self-Reliance, Experience.

 

Monday, June 3 – Henry David Thoreau.  Resistance to Civil Government,

Slavery in Massachusetts, Walking, Walden (Chapters 1-6, 10, 11, 18)

 

Wednesday, June 5 – Walt Whitman.  Read selections from pages 2076 – 2150

plus When I Heard The Learn’d Astronomer, and When Lilacs Last in the

Dooryard Bloom’d.  

 

 

 

 

Monday, June 10 – Margaret Fuller – selections (1590-1642),

Louisa May Alcott – Transcendental Wild Oats (2560-2573),

Washington Irving – Rip Van Winkle and

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (934-969).

 

Wednesday, June 12 – Harriet Jacobs – Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

(pages 1717 – 1739),

Frederick Douglass – Narrative of the Life (pages 1990 – 2076)

 

Friday, June 14 – First paper due by 5 p.m.  Leave in box in hall of English

Department (S.W. Bowne)

 

Monday, June 17 – Herman Melville – Moby Dick (selections from pages 2273-

2330), Bartleby, The Scrivener & Billy Budd

 

Wednesday, June 19 – Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Young Goodman Brown, The

Minister’s Black Veil, The Birthmark, Rappaccini’s Daughter, My

Kinsman, Major Molineux, plus Wakefield.  (Please rate stories in order of

preference – especially consider Wakefield and The Birthmark.)

 

Monday, June 24 – Hawthorne.  The Scarlet Letter.

 

Wednesday, June 26 – Poems of Emily Dickinson (pages 2488 – 2526)

 

Monday, July 1 – Second Paper Due by 5 p.m.  Leave in box in hall of English Department (S.W. Bowne)