Order this Assignment Now: £69

To introduce students to some major themes in American Studies through readings of a number of the most significant literary works written in the `New World,` primarily North America, between 1492 and 1900;

Introduction to American Literature to 1900

Unit code	AMER10021
Credit rating	20
Unit level	Level 1
Teaching period(s)	Semester 1
Offered by	English and American Studies
Available as a free choice unit?	No

Overview

This course unit surveys American literature from its earliest periods to the end of the nineteenth century. It will introduce you to the major genres and movements of early American literature, including narratives of captivity, seduction, and escape, fiery sermons and revolutionary oratory, gothic tales, sentimental fiction, and transcendental essays, as well as poetry in a variety of forms. In particular, we’ll explore the rise of feelings—in the form of ecstatic religious experience, sentimental reform, the culture of sensation, and national sentiment—as a vital literary and cultural force in America; we’ll also track the relationship between form and reform (most especially between social movements and antebellum literary genres) and closely attend to texts and counter-texts—the ways that American writers speak back to and rewrite one another, drawing on older forms to issue new calls for change, but also recasting familiar genres and styles for their own literary purposes. We’ll read a mix of canonical and popular authors alongside and against the shifting geographical borders and cultural controversies of their time, tracking our key threads across texts that chart (and lay claim to) the development and formation of “American” literary traditions. And we’ll conclude our study by turning to the way U.S. writers sought to reunite and reinvent “America” in the aftermath of the Civil War, Reconstruction and its failure, a rapidly changing urban scene and a closing (but paradoxically expanding) frontier.

Aims

Learning outcomes