English 254-01 Frederick Buell American Literature Survey II Klapper 631 Spring 2012 997-4666 MW 3:05-4:20, Kiely 173 buell@warwick.net #4908 Course Description: In this course, we will read selections of short fiction, poetry, autobiography, and essays as a way of exploring the growth and development of American literature from the time of the Civil War to the early 20 th century. A time of vital change in American literature, the writing of this period embarks on a voyage of societal and psychological discovery and transformation. We will see how, during the period we are studying, prevailing literary styles mutated at least three times, changing from romanticism to realism to naturalism. We will discuss how, in the wake of the civil war and with the rise of realism, literature began treating old American themes of personal and national identity differently. A romantic writer like Walt Whitman sought to put unique qualities of the American experience and imagination on the literary map as a means of establishing a culture for the new nation. Subsequent realist writers began, on the other hand, aggressively to explore and urge the diversity, rather than the unity, of that culture. Women s literature, African- American literature, regional literature (literature of hitherto culturally remote areas in New England, the West, the South, the Midwest), native literature, and immigrant literature all contested their marginal status and sought to become major parts of US literary tradition. We will also explore how, during this period, literature reflected and reflected on the stresses and possibilities of another set of important changes: the rapid growth in size, wealth, and power of the nation, thanks to rapid industrialization, advancing commercialization and capitalism, expanded immigration, and increasing urbanization. Our last readings will take us to the brink of the societal and cultural transformation these changes brought about a transformation we are still a part of: the emergence of a selfconsciously modern world. New technology, new social attitudes and movements, new art and new thought all established 20 th century modernity in people s minds as an age that had not just left the 19 th century and Victorian era behind, but broken significantly with all prior human history. Requirements for the class are: 1) Attendance, as much of our work will be done in class discussion; 2) participation in discussion (including having the texts we re talking about with you); 3) a mid term and a final; and 4) a final paper due at the last class, 6-7 pages. A 5 th and last requirement is that you will sign up in mostly 2-person groups for one project to be presented on the day on which the text(s) it deals with are to be discussed. Different projects will involve different skills: analytic, theatrical, creative, political, anthropological, and literaryhistorical. Each project will involve analytic understanding of the material coupled with a way of engaging the class in discussion of it; the chief goals of all projects are to involve your peers in an exploration that uncovers a set of genuinely significant ideas about the texts.
After the presentation, each group member will write individually a short paper (approx. 3-4 pg., due the following week), using and going beyond what he/she learned in the preparation for and carrying out of the project. The resulting paper must be a formal analytic paper focused on a specific topic. You pick the topic; let what interested you most about your report and the discussion that followed be your guide. This paper must have a significant thesis and discuss at least four significant and connected points discovered about the text(s), grounding each in concrete reference(s) to it/them. Grading: Your oral presentations plus your regular class participation (including project presentation, attendance, preparedness, and vigorous participation) counts 1/3; your midterm and final count 1/3; and your project paper and your final paper (the final paper weighted twice as much as the project paper) counts 1/3. Learning Goals for the Course: 1) I want you all to become active interpreters in class discussion and in writing of the wide range of literary texts required by the syllabus. 2) I also want you to be able to build larger patterns from concrete interpretations of them, so that you are aware of how, and able to speculate on why, both literary themes and styles change and develop throughout the course of the latter half of the 19 th century and early 20 th. 3) Being able to pair these developments with important social conflicts and changes going on during this period is a third important goal. 4) Further, I want you to become comfortable giving oral presentations and capable of reflecting on them and using them to advance your own knowledge and understanding. Cautionary Notes: The first I am sure will apply to none of you, but I must caution that plagiarism on the written work will mean automatic failure in the course. If you have a question about the need to give an attribution for something, please ask me. The second is that, though you ll find me eager to discuss with, argue with, and generally respond to you, I must make an exception for one thing: I don t want to be e-mailed with requests for what the next reading, group assignment topic/date, exam date, paper date, or paper topic is namely basic information that was missed because someone wasn t in class. Don t miss a class, but, if you do, get the information from a classmate. I want to keep all my time for meaningful exchanges with you. Book for the course: The one text for the course, available at the College bookstore, is: Nina Baym, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume C: 1865-1914 (seventh edition), W.W. Norton & Co. (ISBN 0 393-92741-5). Course Readings: List of readings. Note that I have listed each with a number and a date; our key reference will be to the assignment number, as the date that follows is the date on which I expect that particular assignment to be discussed. At the beginning (or end) of each class, I will confirm what the readings for the next class are. Note: Please make a habit of reading the anthology s headnotes for each author, along with reading the specific texts assigned below.
Romanticism: 1. 1/30. Introduction to course. 2. 2/1. Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, sections 1-26 (pp.30-49). Read sign-up sheets. 3. 2/4. Walt Whitman, To A Locomotive in Winter and excerpt from civil war poems. (Xeroxes) 4. 2/8. Emily Dickinson, The Bible is an Antique Volume (Xerox); #207 I taste a liquor never brewed (p. 80); #236 Some keep the Sabbath going to Church (p. 81); #269 Wild Nights Wild Nights! (p. 82); #598 The Brain is wider than the Sky- (p. 88); #359 A bird came down the Walk (p. 84); #320 There s a certain Slant of light, (p. 82); #241 I like a look of Agony, (p. 82); #340 I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (p. 84); #372 After great pain, a formal feeling comes (p. 85); #591 I heard a fly buzz when I died (p. 87); #1096 A narrow Fellow in the Grass (p. 90); #1773 My life closed twice before its close; (p. 91); and #112 Success is counted sweetest (p. 79). From Romanticism to Realism: 5. 2/15. Sarah Orne Jewett, A White Heron (pp. 520-528 Realism 6. 2/21. The elite tradition. Henry James, Volume C, Daisy Miller: A Study, 388-428; Henry James, From The Art of Fiction, pp. 918-9 (i.e. just the first of the 3 excerpts). 7. 2/22. Edith Wharton, Roman Fever (pp. 843-52). 8. 2/27. Henry James, The Real Thing (pp. 429-446); William Dean Howells, From Henry James, Jr. (pp. 913-5). 9. 2/29. Regionalism: The West: Mark Twain, Volume C, The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, (pp. 100-107); Bret Harte, The Luck of Roaring Camp (pp. 324-32). 10. 3/5. Regionalism: The South: Kate Chopin, The Storm, (pp. 529-34). 11. 3/7. New England: Mary Wilkins Freeman, The Revolt of Mother, (pp. 635-64). 12. 3/12. Women s writing: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (pp. 806-820). 13. 3/14. Mary Hunter Austin, The Walking Woman (pp. 886-892). 14. 3/19. African American Writing. Booker T. Washington, all 3 selections from Up from Slavery, (pp. 663-687); W.E.B. DuBois, all selections from The Souls of Black Folk, (pp. 893-910). 15. 3/21. Charles W. Chesnutt, The Passing of Grandison, (pp. 704-715). 16. 3/26 Charles W. Chesnutt, The Wife of His Youth, (pp 696-703). 17. 3/28. MIDTERM EXAM 18. 4/2. Immigrant Writing, Jewish-American and Chinese-American. Emma Lazarus, 3 poems (516-519); Sin Sin Far, In the Land of the Free (pp. 879-885); Introduction to Debates over Americanization (pp. 1147-8). 19. 4/4. Immigrant Writing continued: Abraham Cahan, The Imported Bridegroom (pp. 762-805); Theodore Roosevelt, From American Ideals (pp. 1153-1156). 20. 4/16 Mexican-American Writing: Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, The Squatter and the Don (pp. 92-99); Corridos (pp. 1132-1139). 21. 4/ 18 Native American Writing. The Navajo Night Chant (pp. 371-376); Zitkala Sa, Impressions of an Indian Childhood all selections (pp. 1105-1131). Naturalism 22. 4/23. Jack London, To Build a Fire (pp. 1057-1066). Theodore Roosevelt, From The Strenuous Life (1156-1159). 23. 4/25. Jack London, The Mexican (pp. 1067-1083); Frank Norris, A Plea for Romantic Fiction (pp. 923-6); Jack London, From What Life Means to Me (928-930). 24. 4/30. Kate Chopin, The Awakening (pp. 535-624).
25. 5/2. Kate Chopin, The Awakening continued. 26. 5/7. Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie, both selections (pp. 938-953). Preview of Modernism 27. 5/9. Xeroxed poems by T.S. Eliot and Langston Hughes. 28. 5/14 Review
Sign-up sheet for English 254 Prof. Buell N.B. Read this sheet carefully and make three choices before class #2. We will assign people to their topics in that class. I have listed the topics below in the order they will come up. Note that different topics call on different skills that, as much as the literature they engage, should be your guide in choosing. Different topics emphasize, for example, acting skills, dramatic skills, creative skills, analytic skills, political skills, literary-historical skills. ALL REPORTS ARE TO BE GIVEN ON THE DAYS THAT THE MATERIAL THEY REFER TO IS TO BE DISCUSSED. 1. Emily Dickinson s poems are remarkable for, among other things, the voices of their speakers as well as what those speakers say; it is as if Dickinson has given expression to a number of different, distinctive personalities and indicates their presence by her remarkable control of tone of voice. I d like a group of actors/dramatically inclined folk to take three of her poems, I taste a liquor never brewed--, A bird came down the Walk, and I like a look of Agony and try to fully flesh out in their imagination the different personality behind each so much so that they are able to write a character sketch of that person. Then I d like them to perform the poem, emphasizing the tones of voice and the personality behind them the poem wishes to convey. Having done that, I want them to engage the class first in seeing if they heard from the performance what the actors intended if they can describe the complex personality behind the voice. Then the group should lead the class in seeing if other interpretations are possible and discussing the relative merits (with concrete reference to the poem) of the possibilities that emerge. _ 2. Henry James Daisy Miller: A Study is all about Daisy and Winterbourne or, rather, about the maddeningly ambiguous truths about Daisy that Winterbourne is trying to get to the bottom of. Just what are these truths is the question for this project, but I want the group to stimulate the class to the pursuit of it in an unconventional way. I want the group to pick out 3 crucial places in the story where Daisy is most ambiguous to Winterbourne; for each, I want one person to first be Daisy s attorney, making the case for her being a genuinely admirable figure, deserving Winterbourne, perhaps far better than him. I want another to make the opposite case, condemning her. Both must appeal to evidence in the story concretely. As they argue about each place in the story, I want them to turn to people in the class and engage them in deciding the issue which of course means really drawing them too into the argument. (If it s 3 person group, the attorneys for each place in the story can change, and the person not then playing an attorney can engage the class.) 3. Wharton s Roman Fever is a magnificent piece about a power game. For yourselves, analyze the story closely with an eye to figuring out what all the weapons are that each woman wields in this conversation that is, in reality, a mano a mano no-holds-barred fight one that takes place, however, without any of that violence showing in a way that would rupture the surface of an apparently civil conversation between the genteel and well-born. Pick key places in the text in which you see this battle raging and particular weapons wielded; read them dramatically to the class; then stop and get different class members figuring out what really is happening and what those weapons are. Pay closest and slowest attention to the last page.
4. Henry James story The Real Thing wittily engages not only the question of what is real, but also the rather slyer question of what is realism. I would like the group taking this topic to first to do a dialogue with each other about all they ways in which they can imagine these two terms as differing all the ways in which the real can be one thing and the realistic another, perhaps even its opposite. In doing this, please be specific: use both moments in/passages from the story and situations that you can think of to separate the two terms realism (the term for a specific literary and painterly/photographic style) and reality as far as you can. Then try to elicit still other examples from the class. Finally, turn to the class to ask what James the author does literarily and stylistically to be realistic and how that differs from Whitman s or Cather s romanticism. (This is a question that has many possible answers). 5. Kate Chopin s story The Storm clearly comes from a different social and geographical world than James or Wharton s. Prompt the class to discuss that today marks elite and nonelite cultural voices; imitations also help as examples here! Then turn to the class and get them to figure out exactly what the mores and manners of the elite world (as represented in James and/or Wharton) and those of the non-elite characters Chopin sketches in are. Then turn to the contrast between the elite character in Chopin; how does he differ from the characters in James and Wharton? (Elites are not all the same; they re clearly different in different cultures and regions.) Finally turn to the issue of his sexual mores and codes: what just are the sexual codes governing elites and non-elites in Chopin s society? 6. [On the day we discuss The Revolt of Mother ]. What would Twain s Simon Wheeler have to say about Mary Wilkins Freeman s Father? Think of all the ways he would think of Father as a very odd kind of man. Then lead the class in a discussion in which you try to enumerate a long list of differences between Wheeler and the Father, and see if you can get the class to relate these differences somehow to their different regional identities i.e. differences between rural New England people and far western ones. 6. If a battle rages in Roman Fever, another war, perhaps a bitterer and certainly a more unconscious one, is being fought under the surfaces in The Yellow Wallpaper. The group taking on The Yellow Wallpaper needs to single out a series of loaded exchanges between the wife and the husband and/or passages of where the wife is thinking about and imagining the husband, and then read them aloud, trying to catch the voice(s) involved as accurately as possible. Another/other group members should stand behind the reader(s), so that when they pause at the end of the passage they can tell the class what, in fact, the wife and the husband were really feeling at these moments, what their real (if unconscious) motives were. Then the group as a whole should engage the class in discussion of what the end of the story really means (consciously and unconsciously) just how it resolves or heightens or decisively changes the struggle between the two. 7. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois give two very different analyses of the condition of African-Americans in the U.S. and urge different versions of social change. I want the group taking this to figure out 2 or 3 important ways in which their analysis of the condition and their prescriptions for change differ. I want group members to present these in dialogue,
spending enough time with each point and each man s arguments so as to be able to flesh their positions fully out. At the end of each point, turn to the class and ask several different people in it to decide who is right and to explain their decision. THEN lead the class in trying to come up with 2 or 3 ways in which Washington s and Dubois s presentations of themselves differ and how these might be related to the differences between their social views. 8. In Charles Chesnutt s story The Passing of Grandison, what is really going on in Grandison s mind and in the minds of white characters (Dick Owens and Colonel Owens) at different points in the story? Select 3 or 4 points where you think Chesnutt is having particular fun with the differences between the thoughts and understandings of the characters and either the reality or appearance of the situation. Read/perform the sections you pick out and get the class discussing what the characters are actually thinking and why. 9. Charles Chesnutt s story The Wife of His Youth has at least three dominant themes. One is race; a second is class; a third gender. Prepare three arguments to be given by separate people (if the group is only two, let each collaborate in making all three arguments). Each of these arguments should outline how the theme pervades the whole text and is woven fundamentally into the dilemma and the transformation of the main character. Each should try to convince the class that his/her theme is the most important one in the story. After doing this, lead the class in discussing 2 questions: first, which theme really is the most important in the story and why; and, second, does the end of the story resolve the three themes or not (and if so how). 10. In The Imported Bridegroom, the prodigy is brought back as a coveted bridegroom for Flora by her immigrant father Asriel, who is disturbed by her loss of her roots and assimilation to American ways. Explore the idea of assimilation first with the class: what just does it mean to be fully assimilated in America? To what sort of model are immigrants induced/forced to assimilate? Are there viable alternatives to assimilation now and were there at the time of the story? Get a lot of ideas on this subject and try to sort them out in some way. Then involve the class in a discussion as to whether the prodigy does in fact assimilate or whether he in fact does not. Make exponents of each side refer concretely to the story. See if they can answer each other s arguments. Then decide the winner. 11. Single out a succession of places at least four in which Zitkala-sa feels intense cultureconflict in her transportation to the school and induction into it. With each incident, play the anthropologist from somewhere in outer space, and lead the class into an understanding of the perspective of both Zitkala-sa and of the whites she encounters; try not to seem as if you were a member of either society. Both societies are strange and curiously interesting to you. Enlist the class help in this. After you have done this, engage the class in the project of coming up with (as anthropologists used to do) an explanation of each culture that unifies its very different traits and puts them together into some sort of whole picture. 12. (To be done the week when London s second story, The Mexican, is discussed). Both of London s stories involve the survival of the fittest. First lead the class in analyzing precisely how and why the character in To Build a Fire is not deemed fit after all, he doesn t
survive. Then lead the class in analyzing how and why the Mexican is the fitter of the two boxers in the final context and try to figure out when in the story we start to know that he is the fittest and will win the bout, and why we feel that way. Then lead the class in the largest discussion of all: elicit a number of different views about what would constitute similar fitness in today s society. If you all agree, great but if you don t, what do we make of that? Is survival of the fittest a genuinely elemental biologically-determined drive that governs peoples relationships to nature and to each other, or is it an ideology that conceals deeper truths?