ENGL 4700 - Course Overview

Prerequisite: (ENGL 2310 or ENGL 2320 or ENGL 2330 or ENGL 2340 or ENGL 2400) and (ENGL 2310 or ENGL 2320 or ENGL 2330 or ENGL 2340 or ENGL 2400 or CMLT 2111 or CMLT 2210 or CMLT 2212 or CMLT 2220).

The literary engagement with cultural pluralism in Colonial America. Writers may include Bradford, Mather, Bradstreet, Taylor, Cooke, Rowlandson, Byrd, Jefferson, Franklin, Brown, and Irving.

Instructor: David H. Payne, Ph.D., Academic Professional, The University of Georgia.

Texts: Baym, ed., The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1: 1680-1865, 5th ed., Norton, 1998; Brown, Edgar Huntly: or Memoirs of a Sleepwalker, Penguin, 1988; Turner, ed., , Penguin, 1977.

Course Overview

Introduction

The subject of this course is American literature before 1865, but its major emphasis lies with the imaginative works preceding the "American Renaissance" of the 1850s. Though the course touches on Melville, Thoreau, and other writers of the mid-nineteenth century, those writers will, it is hoped, reveal their debt to the colonial and early-national writers with whom you will spend most of your time. Most readers, myself once included, begin believing that we understand the more famous of the American writers by learning about them alone, but only a little attention placed on, for example, the Puritans—about whom Hawthorne wrote many of his stories—will demonstrate that we do not understand Hawthorne well at all until we know almost as much about his predecessors as we know about him. American literature, viewed in this sense, is a sort of archaeology of a familiar subject—America itself.

My emphasis in this course might be described as an American history of ideas—not because such things are the most important element in literature but because students’ understanding of American intellectual history is usually the weakest of the skills that they must apply to literature. I will ask that you recall a number of themes as we move from era to era—America as imagined Eden, the place of the Native American in the "American Dream," the frontier’s contrast to civilization in the American imagination, the relationship of science and race, and the interrelationship of privileged and excluded groups in the American mind. Perhaps a better word to describe the ideas that haunt American literature is preoccupations, as when Puritan concerns about the covenant between civil authority and those they govern gets so violently wrenched in Cromwellian times, presaging an anxiety about rebellion that continues through the American Revolution also. We’ll also take note of the rationalist belief in "cruel lenity" (a cruel act with a larger, benevolent design), which shows itself to be more a product of the unconscious than conscious mind by the time we finish Edgar Huntly. We’ll also examine the early American belief in the readability of the two prime books—nature and the Bible—which comes more into question in the nineteenth century, as the power of the hieroglyphic image arrests the American imagination.

Many of the better-known early American writers saw America with a thorough-going optimism that often belied the events that paralleled their works. To gain an accurate perspective on such writers, you must bring all you know of American history to bear; the result may reveal a cultural blindness in some writers, but it could also reveal a subtlety that you have not seen before in other figures.

An immediate difficulty will be both the subject matter and prose style of the earlier American writers. The best solution is to read the introductory material on each author in Baym with great care; turn to a fuller source to make certain of your understanding of any of the terms used in those early pages (see "Textbooks," below). A greater familiarity with subject matter will make most seemingly style-based problems vanish. Nothing will erase the fact that pre-nineteenth century writing requires more careful reading.

With the aid of some of the reference materials listed in the "Supplementary Reading" section and your own background, you will be able to form your own opinions about the structure, intent, and value of what you read. You should, in fact, develop your own, defensible interpretations of these works since there will be no fountain-of-opinions (a teacher) available to prod you in this vein. Concerning the Norton Anthology of American Literature, let me make a particular request—do not ignore the fact that each of the selections within the anthology has had its own appearance in print, its own special concerns about audience, author’s motives, and in some cases the marketplace. You must work particularly hard to reconstruct the situation, for example, that William Bradford finds himself in as leader of the Plymouth Puritans, writing both to indicate what place in sacred history they hope to occupy and how Bradford as manager has fulfilled his contract or covenant with the investors who sent them to America.

Your written work will present new challenges also; as a result, this course may at times seem like the most demanding literature class you have ever taken. You must answer the questions with a greater clarity than is demanded in the classroom since we will have no chance for an interchange that might explain your intent. For the same reason, you must proofread your answers closely for such ambiguity-producing errors as broad pronoun references and lost apostrophes. Further cautions will appear in the "Lesson Preparation: section below.

Textbooks and Supplementary Reading

In addition to the required textbooks, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, the North American Indian Reader, and Edgar Huntly, you will need to have access to the following reference books:

1. A good desk dictionary such as a recent edition of Webster’s Collegiate or the American College Dictionary.

2. A handbook of literary terms: A good choice is Holman, C. Hugh. A Handbook to Literature. New York: Odyssey Press. Any recent edition.

While this course makes no specific requirements for secondary reading, you will profit from background works such as those listed in the bibliographies at the end of your textbook. If you are having particular problems with the assignments, you should ask me to recommend books that will address those problems. A useful reference work covering terms and figures in American literature is James D. Hart’s The Oxford Companion to American Literature, 5th ed. (New York: Oxford, 1983). A study guide that is especially strong on biographical facts about early American writers is Darrel Abel’s American Literature: Volume One; Colonial and Early National Writing (Woodbury, NY: Barron’s Educational Series, 1963). This guide will be of utmost value to anyone planning to teach American literature. If you develop specific interests that press you toward further reading, you may find Louise K. Barnett on Indian captivity ( The Ignoble Savage: American Literary Racism, 1790–1890, Westport: Greenwood, 1975) of value. In like manner, Richard Slotkin on violence ( Regeneration Through Violence, Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 1973), Douglas Anderson on domesticity ( A House Undivided: Domesticity and Community in American Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), Cathy Davidson’s Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (NY: Oxford, 1986), and Roy Harvey Pearce’s Savagism and Civilization: A Study of the Indian and the American Mind (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1965) will offer broad insights that explain much about early America’s character and literature.

Additionally, if you have access to the Internet, you can find more information on my page at http://parallel.park.uga.edu/~davidp/payne.html

Lesson Preparation

Written work in this course comes in three formats, each determined by the nature of the material under discussion.

1. Questions. These require brief and specific answers to questions of detail. Answer the questions asked without rambling. Never re-tell the plot of a work until the question asks you to do so specifically.

2. Topics for discussion. These require answers of several paragraphs (approximately 300-500 words for each topic). The topics aim to bring together similar information from several works or to inquire deeply about a single work. Do not let the breadth of such a topic prompt you to avoid specific ideas and details.

3. Essays. These assignments demand that you link one or more authors on the basis of themes or other ideas. In a sense, they are reviews of materials covered in briefer questions or topics, but will be most effective when you look again in the works discussed for new illustrative details, instead of merely linking old answers with new transitions.

Note that some of the assignments ask for particular rhetorical forms in response. A "compare and contrast" question, for example, cannot be answered by a list of facts about one author, followed by a list of facts about another author; it can only be answered by juxtaposing parallel features and contrasting features of each author. A contrast of the fact that Melville wrote sea stories and Thoreau wrote about the woods offers only apples and oranges until we find a point of juxtaposition ("Both authors viewed nature closely; Melville described the sea in frightening detail, but Thoreau offered a calmer, more optimistic portrait of the woods.").

You need not re-write the question at the beginning of each answer, but other efforts toward clarity will pay off. Use complete sentences, even for the briefest answers. Aim to include concrete, illustrative details in even the most far-reaching answers. If you suspect that your handwriting will be especially murky, consider typing or word-processing your answers. Feel free to add questions or comments of your own, but do not let them take the place of your answers—if a question seems ambiguous, answer it as well as you can and offer your doubts at the end of your answer.

Your answers should be written at the same level of editing and proofreading as would be expected in a college-level composition course.

Grading and Final Examination

The final examination will consist of identification, short answer, and essay questions. Further information about the examination can be found in "About the Final Examination" in this course guide. The final examination will count one-third of your course grade and your written assignments will count for the remaining two-thirds.

You must pass the final to pass the course, regardless of grades earned on lessons. You are responsible for knowing and abiding by Independent Study policies and procedures. See your Student Handbook for detailed information.