Unit information: New England's Dreaming: American Literature from Emerson to James in 2010/11

Unit name	New England's Dreaming: American Literature from Emerson to James
Unit code	ENGL29025
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Emeritus Professor. Karlin
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None.
Co-requisites	None.
School/department	Department of English
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

The 'idea of America' is a motivating force, and animating presence, in American literature from its earliest period. This unit concentrates on how the answer to Crevecoeur's famous question, in Letters from an American Farmer (1782), 'What then is the American, this new man?' shapes the literature produced in New York and New England during the so-called 'American Renaissance' by a group of exceptional writers and thinkers, among them Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Henry Thoreau, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Henry James. The literary and cultural ferment of American Transcendentalism, the Abolitionist Movement, the reaction to 'progress' and the expansion of the frontier, the trauma of the Civil War, and the disenchantment of post-Civil War society, all feature in the unit as significant contexts, but the focus will be on detailed readings of novels, poems, essays, and works of criticism by the primary authors.

Aims:

• To teach students about significant texts and contexts of American literature from (roughly) 1830-1890.

• To develop students research skills.

• To develop students skills in oral and written communication.

Intended Learning Outcomes

• Knowledge of significant texts and contexts of American literature, 1830-1890.

• Ability to analyse complex literary works at the level of context, structure, and style, and reflect critically on the relation between literary history and the history of ideas.

• Ability to conduct appropriate research in textual, electronic, and online resources.

• Ability to articulate ideas clearly and correctly in both oral and written form.

Teaching Information

One x 2 hour seminar per week, plus one-to-one discussion in consultation hours where desired.

Assessment Information

Two summative essays: one of up to 2000 words (one third of weighting 33.3%) and one of up to 4000 words (two thirds of weighting 66.7%).

Reading and References

• Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

• Emerson, Essays

• Thoreau, Walden

• Whitman, Leaves of Grass

• Dickinson, selected poems

• James, The Bostonians