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Course Question & AnswerThe American Renaissance
Purpose of Course showclose
As most famously defined by F. O. Matthiessen in his groundbreaking book, The American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (1941), the “American Renaissance” demarcates a period of tremendous literary activity between the 1830s and 1860s that marked the cultivation, for the first time, of a distinctively American literature. For Matthiessen and many other critics, its key figures—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville—sought to define and explore the new American identity, carving out new modes of expression and self-identification. In the years since Matthiessen’s important work and especially in the past several decades, this characterization of the literary period has been challenged on several fronts, for overstating the innovations of these few authors, for the exclusion of women, African-American, and more popular authors from its account of the United States during a period of social and cultural upheaval and transition, and for its acceptance of a myth of American exceptionalism.
We begin this course by taking a look at context: What was it in American culture and society that led to the dramatic outburst of literary creativity in this era? We then explore some of the period’s most famous works, approaching them by genre category. Finally, we attempt to define the emerging American identity represented in this literature.
Course Information showclose
Course Designer: Robert Bullington and Paul Gilmore
Primary Resources: This course is comprised of a variety of free online resources. Most of the material consists of literary texts from the mid-nineteenth century, some of it quite lengthy. Secondary materials (criticism, historical background, literary analyses) similarly come from a variety of free online resources. Some of the sources that appear most frequently include the following:
- Short essays by leading scholars from eNotes’ version of “American History through Literature”
- Thematic videos featuring leading scholars from the Annenberg Foundation’s “American Passages: A Literary Survey”
- A variety of materials compiled on Professor Ann Woodlief’s site (Virginia Commonwealth University-Richmond), “The Web of American Transcendentalism”
Requirements for Completion: In order to complete this course, you will need to work through each unit and all of its assigned materials. Your main task is to read the primary texts fully and carefully, using the secondary resources—introductory essays, video materials, and so forth—to help you understand the literary works more fully. At the end of the course, you will need to complete the final exam.
In order to “pass” this course, you will need to earn a 70% or higher on the final exam. Your score on the exam will be tabulated as soon as you complete it. If you do not pass the exam, you may take it again.
Time Commitment: This course should take you a total of approximately 118 hours to complete. Each unit includes a “time advisory” that lists the amount of time you are expected to spend on each subunit. These should help you plan your time accordingly. It may be useful to take a look at these time advisories to determine how much time you have over the next few weeks to complete each unit, and then set goals for yourself.
Tips/Suggestions: As noted above, much of the work in this course consists of reading long literary works (often novels). Determine what format allows you to read these materials most easily for comprehension. Consider taking notes, electronically or in longhand, as you read, and if you have questions after reading the texts, go back to the secondary materials for more sources and for clarification.
Learning Outcomes showclose
- Discriminate among the key economic, technological, social, and cultural transformations underpinning the American Renaissance,
- Define the transformations in American Protestantism exemplified by the second Great Awakening and transcendentalism.
- List the key tenets of transcendentalism and relate them to romanticism more broadly and to social and cultural developments in the antebellum United States.
- Analyze Emerson’s place in defining transcendentalism and his key differences from other transcendentalists.
- Analyze competing conceptualizations of poetry and its construction and purpose, with particular attention to Poe, Emerson, and Whitman.
- Define the formal innovations of Dickinson and their relationship to her central themes.
- Describe the emergence of the short story as a form, with reference to specific stories by Hawthorne and Poe.
- Distinguish among forms of the novel, with reference to specific works by Hawthorne, Thompson, and Fern.
- Analyze the ways that writers such as Melville, Brownson, Davis, and Thoreau saw industrialization and capitalism as a threat to U. S. society.
- Develop the relationship between Thoreau’s interest in nature and his political commitments and compare and contrast his thinking with Emerson and other transcendentalists.
- Analyze the different ways that sentimentalism constrained and empowered women writers to critique gender conventions, with reference to specific works by writers such as Fern, Alcott, and Stowe.
- Define the ways that the slavery question influenced major texts and major controversies over literature during this period.
Course Requirements showclose
√ Have access to a computer.
√ Have continuous broadband Internet access.
√ Have the ability/permission to install plug-ins or software (e.g., Adobe Reader, RealPlayer, or Flash).
√ Have the ability to download and save files and documents to a computer.
√ Have the ability to open Microsoft files and documents (.doc, .ppt, .xls, etc.).
√ Have competency in the English language.
√ Have read the Saylor Student Handbook.
√ Have completed ENGL101: Introduction to Cultural and Literary Studies (or its equivalent). (ENGL301: Introduction to Literary Theory is also highly recommended, but not required.)
Unit Outline show close
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Unit 1: The American Renaissance in Context
What was happening in society and culture that might have spurred the explosion of literary expression seen during the antebellum period of American history? (For those of you not up to speed on your U.S. history, "antebellum" refers to the period before the Civil War and is generally considered to span the years between 1781-1860, which in turn includes what is known as "The American Renaissance" period of literarature, between 1830-1860.) In this unit, we will situate the American Renaissance in its sociohistorical context. We start with a broad overview of the literary period and different ways of framing it before moving on to examine the economic, political, and social changes that were transforming the United States—industrialization and urbanization, the development of mass politics, the debate over slavery, Western expansion. Turning to American culture during this period, we then investigate the growth of literacy and the expansion of education, the religious revival sometimes called the second Great Awakening, and the emergence of urban popular culture. Finally, we look at transcendentalism, the religious-philosophical movement that gave rise to some of the most important literary figures of the period, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller.
Unit 1 Time Advisory show close
Unit 1 Learning Outcomes show close
- 1.1 An Introduction to the American Renaissance (1830-1860)
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1.1.1 American Renaissance: American Romanticism and Alternative Movements
- Reading: Kathryn VanSpankeren’s “The Romantic Period, 1820-1860: Essayists and Poets” from Outline of American Literature and The Saylor Foundation’s “Expanding and Revising the American Renaissance”
Links: Kathryn VanSpankeren’s “The Romantic Period, 1820-1860: Essayists and Poets” (PDF) from Outline of American Literature and The Saylor Foundation’s “Expanding and Revising the American Renaissance” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read Kathryn VanSpankeren’s overview of the romantic period in U. S. literature. Many use the labels "American Romanticism" and "the American Renaissance" interchangeably; as you dig into this course, ask yourself whether you see a potential distinction between these two terms and what they define. Then, please read the course-specific account of recent revisions to our understanding of the period.
Terms of Use: Kathryn VanSpankeren’s “The Romantic Period, 1820-1860: Essayists and Poets” from Outline of American Literature is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Kathryn VanSpankeren’s “The Romantic Period, 1820-1860: Essayists and Poets” from Outline of American Literature and The Saylor Foundation’s “Expanding and Revising the American Renaissance”
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1.1.2 The American Renaissance: Individuality, Conflict, Culture
- Reading: Project Gutenberg’s version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar” and Modern History Sourcebook’s version of Sojourner Truth’s “Ain't I a Woman?”
Links: Project Gutenberg’s version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar” (PDF) and Modern History Sourcebook’s version of Sojourner Truth’s “Ain't I a Woman?” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read Emerson’s and Truth’s famous orations in their entirety. In his speech, delivered at Harvard University in 1837, Emerson calls for a new creative spirit in America; America evidently responded in kind. Many consider this speech the rallying cry for the American Renaissance. Truth’s speech, at a Women’s Rights Convention in 1851, offers an alternative account of the challenges Americans—especially women and people of color—faced in defining themselves during this period. Consider how Emerson and Truth define self-making differently and similarly and ways of understanding those similarities and differences. This trope of "self-making" will resurface time and time again in the literature we read throughout this course, and should begin to inform the way you understand the "American Renaissance" as a literary genre or movement.
Terms of Use: This material is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Project Gutenberg’s version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar” and Modern History Sourcebook’s version of Sojourner Truth’s “Ain't I a Woman?”
- 1.2 The United States on the Move: Socioeconomic and Political Changes in the Antebellum Period
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1.2.1 A General Overview of Antebellum America: Major Events in the Young Republic and the Lead Up to the Civil War
- Reading: Digital History’s version of Professor David Brion Davis and Professor Steven Mintz’s Teaching Guide to the “Boisterous Sea of Liberty,” “Antebellum America,” and The Norton Anthology of American Literature’s “American Literature, 1820–1865: American Renaissance and Civil War”
Link: Digital History’s version of Professor David Brion Davis and Professor Steven Mintz’s Teaching Guide to the “Boisterous Sea of Liberty: Antebellum America” (HTML), and The Norton Anthology of American Literature’s “American Literature, 1820–1865: American Renaissance and Civil War” (HTML)
Instructions: These readings will provide you with important socio-economic contexts in which to read the works we are about to encounter. The first reading is a historical assessment crafted by two of the antebellum period’s leading historians: Professor David Brion Davis, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University, and Professor Steven Mintz, creator of the Digital History website, former Moores Professor of History at the University of Houston and respected author, and the second is the historical introduction to the literary period from the Norton Anthology of American Literature. Read both and take notes on any important events and movements that stand out to you.
Note that the next few resource boxes will contain history-heavy readings. You may be wondering: "What am I doing here? I thought this was an American Renaissance literature course!" However, this historical background will provide you with a useful frame for understanding the works you are about to read.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use displayed on the webpages above.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Digital History’s version of Professor David Brion Davis and Professor Steven Mintz’s Teaching Guide to the “Boisterous Sea of Liberty,” “Antebellum America,” and The Norton Anthology of American Literature’s “American Literature, 1820–1865: American Renaissance and Civil War”
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1.2.2 Economic Development
- Reading: Academic American History: Henry J. Sage’s “The John Quincy Adams Years and the American Economy”
Link: Academic American History: Henry J. Sage’s “The John Quincy Adams Years and the American Economy” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above, and read this summary of American economic growth of this period (1820-1860), provided by the historian Henry J. Sage.
This reading should take approximately 45 minutes to complete.
Terms of Use: The material “The John Quincy Adams Years and the American Economy” linked above has been reposted by the kind permission of Henry J. Sage and can be viewed in its original form here. Please note that this material is under copyright and cannot be reproduced in any capacity without explicit permission from the copyright holder.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Antebellum Economic Development and the Growth of Consumerism”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Antebellum Economic Development and the Growth of Consumerism” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above, and read this short overview of the emergence of consumerism in the nineteenth-century U. S.
This reading should take approximately 15 minutes to complete.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use displayed on the webpage above for “Antebellum Economic Development and the Growth of Consumerism”See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Academic American History: Henry J. Sage’s “The John Quincy Adams Years and the American Economy”
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1.2.3 Jacksonian Democracy and the Self-Made Man
- Reading: Academic American History: Henry J. Sage’s “The Life of Andrew Jackson” and The National Center for Public Policy Research’s version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance
Links: Academic American History: Henry J. Sage’s “The Life of Andrew Jackson” (PDF) and The National Center for Public Policy Research’s version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the first link above, and read Henry Sage’s short biography of Andrew Jackson. Then, click on the second link above, and read Emerson’s famous essay that reflects the character of self-confidence that defined the Jacksonian era. Note that Emerson’s oft-quoted essay, “Self-Reliance,” is considered one of the finest examples of the author’s style and a clear example of his thought. The essay was first published in 1841 in its entirety, but elements of the essay appeared in one of the author’s journal entries as early as 1832 and in various public lectures given in the intervening years. As such, “Self-Reliance” reflects the idea that individualism was a necessary ingredient for success popular during the 1830s and 1840s.
These readings should take approximately 1 hour to complete.
Terms of Use: “The Life of Andrew Jackson” linked above has been reposted by the kind permission of Henry J. Sage and can be viewed in its original form here. “Self-Reliance” is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Jacksonian Democracy and the Ideal of the Self-Made Man”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Jacksonian Democracy and the Ideal of the Self-Made Man” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above, and read this short essay on the development of the ideal of the self-made man in the context of Jacksonian democracy and American romanticism.
This reading should take approximately 15 minutes to complete.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Academic American History: Henry J. Sage’s “The Life of Andrew Jackson” and The National Center for Public Policy Research’s version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance
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1.2.4 Slavery: An Overview of Slavery, Its Legacy, and the Debate over Abolition
- Lecture: Arizona State University, Department of History’s “The Slave Trade Part 1”
Link: Arizona State University, Department of History’s “The Slave Trade Part 1” (iTunes U)
Instructions: Listen to this lecture, which discusses the origins and development of the transatlantic slave trade.
Listening to this lecture and pausing to take notes should take approximately 1 hour.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use displayed on the webpage above.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Resistance and Abolition”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Resistance and Abolition” (PDF)
Instructions: Read this article. Consider these questions as you read: In what ways did Africans resist slavery and what was the impact of this resistance? Who was involved in anti-slavery movements and how did the sentiment spread? What arguments did anti-slavery movements use to advance their cause?
Reading this article should take approximately 15 minutes.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Lecture: Arizona State University, Department of History’s “The Slave Trade Part 1”
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1.2.5 Manifest Destiny and the Expanding Western Frontier
- Reading: pbs.org’s essays on Manifest Destiny from its U.S.-Mexican War website: “Manifest Destiny: An Introduction,” “Native American Displacement Amid U.S. Expansion: A Conversation with R. David Edmunds,” Sam W. Haynes’ “Manifest Destiny,” and Robert E. May’s “Manifest Destiny”
Links: pbs.org’s essays on Manifest Destiny from its U.S.-Mexican War website: “Manifest Destiny: An Introduction,” (HTML) “Native American Displacement Amid U.S. Expansion: A Conversation with R. David Edmunds,” (HTML) Sam W. Haynes’ “Manifest Destiny,” (HTML) and Robert E. May’s “Manifest Destiny” (HTML)
Instructions: Please read these brief selections from a PBS series on the U.S.-Mexican War for a better understanding of the national forces which shaped America’s westward expansion.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use displayed on the webpages above.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Web Media: momentsinamericanhistory.com’s presentation of Lewis and Clark College-Portland: Dr. Robert Miller’s “Manifest Destiny”
Link: momentsinamericanhistory.com’s presentation of Lewis and Clark College-Portland: Dr. Robert Miller’s “Manifest Destiny” (Adobe Flash)
Instructions: Please watch this brief video presentation from Law Professor Dr. Robert Miller for a gloss of the idea of Manifest Destiny with accompanying images. To access the video, scroll through the offerings listed for the period, 1865–1945, and click on “Manifest Destiny.”
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use displayed on the webpages above.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: pbs.org’s essays on Manifest Destiny from its U.S.-Mexican War website: “Manifest Destiny: An Introduction,” “Native American Displacement Amid U.S. Expansion: A Conversation with R. David Edmunds,” Sam W. Haynes’ “Manifest Destiny,” and Robert E. May’s “Manifest Destiny”
- 1.3 The Democraticization of Culture: U. S. Cultural Transformation in the Antebellum Period
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1.3.1 The Establishment of American Publishers and the Passage of American Copyright Laws
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Publishing in the U. S., 1820-1860” and the Association of Research Libraries’ “Copyright Timeline: A History of Copyright in the United States”
Links: The Saylor Foundation’s “Publishing in the U. S., 1820-1860” (PDF) and the Association of Research Libraries’ “Copyright Timeline: A History of Copyright in the United States” (HTML)
Instructions: Please read the Saylor Foundation’s essay on the history of publishing in the United States from 1820 to 1860. Also read the introduction and the six sections covering 1787–1853 from the Association of Research Libraries’ excellent history of copyright law in the United States.
Terms of Use: The linked material “Copyright Timeline: A History of Copyright in the United States” has been reposted with the kind permission of the Association of Research Libraries and can be viewed in its original form here. (HTML)See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Publishing in the U. S., 1820-1860” and the Association of Research Libraries’ “Copyright Timeline: A History of Copyright in the United States”
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1.3.2 The Rise of Literacy and Public Education in the Young Republic
- Reading: Digital History’s “The Struggle for Public Schools” and StateUniversity.com’s “Common School Movement”
Links: Digital History’s “The Struggle for Public Schools” (HTML) and StateUniversity.com’s “Common School Movement (HTML)
Instructions: Please read the nine sections in order on “The Struggle for Public Schools” and the shorter overview on the “Common School Movement.”
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use displayed on the webpages above.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Digital History’s “The Struggle for Public Schools” and StateUniversity.com’s “Common School Movement”
- 1.3.3 Urban Popular Culture
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1.3.3.1 The Penny Press
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “The Penny Press and the Emergence of Urban Mass Culture”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “The Penny Press and the Emergence of Urban Mass Culture” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read the Saylor Foundation’s introductory essay on the emergence of urban mass culture.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “The Penny Press and the Emergence of Urban Mass Culture”
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1.3.3.2 Barnum
- Reading: The Lost Museum's “Barnum’s American Museum”
Link: The Lost Museum's “Barnum’s American Museum” (HTML)
Instructions: Please read this short overview of one of the most innovative and important popular institutions of the period, a site that made P. T. Barnum one of the best known Americans of the era.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use displayed on the webpage above.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Web Media: The Lost Museum’s “Explore the Museum”
Link: The Lost Museum’s “Explore the Museum” (Adobe Flash)
Instructions: Please explore this reconstruction of Barnum’s famous museum.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use displayed on the webpage above.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Lost Museum's “Barnum’s American Museum”
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1.3.3.3 Blackface Minstrelsy
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Blackface Minstrelsy”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Blackface Minstrelsy” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read the Saylor Foundation’s introductory essay on the development and history of blackface minstrelsy.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use displayed on the webpage above.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Blackface Minstrelsy”
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1.3.4 The Great Awakening and the Revitalization of Religion
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “The Second Great Awakening and Transcendentalism”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “The Second Great Awakening and Transcendentalism” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above, and read this account of the religious fervor that swept the United States in the early 1800s, transforming American culture and society and paralleling the emergence of transcendentalism.
This reading should take approximately 15 minutes to complete.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “The Second Great Awakening and Transcendentalism”
- 1.4 Transcendentalism
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1.4.1 The Emergence of Transcendentalism and the Background of Colonial Religion
- Reading: Bartleby.com’s version of Harold Clark Goddard’s The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume XV, Colonial and Revolutionary Literature; Early National Literature, Part I: “Chapter VIII, Parts 1–4”
Link: Bartleby.com’s version of Harold Clark Goddard’s The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume XV, Colonial and Revolutionary Literature; Early National Literature, Part I: “Chapter VIII, Parts 1–4” (HTML)
Instructions: Please click on the link above, and read the classic scholarly account taken from the 18-volume work that came out between 1907 and 1921. Read the first part and use the navigation tools (the arrow key at the end of the text) to continue through to read the following parts of Chapter VIII: New England Transcendentalism: A Phase of World Wide Movement; Religious rather than Political; Transcendentalism the Natural Sequel of Puritanism; and Channing.
Studying this reading should take approximately 30 minutes to complete.
Terms of Use: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Bartleby.com’s version of Harold Clark Goddard’s The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume XV, Colonial and Revolutionary Literature; Early National Literature, Part I: “Chapter VIII, Parts 1–4”
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1.4.2 Influence of European Romanticism—Romanticism Arrives in America: Key Features and Figures of European Romanticism
- Reading: Washington State University-Pullman: Dr. Paul Brians’ “Romanticism” and Bartleby.com’s version of William Wordsworth’s “The Prelude”
Links: Washington State University-Pullman: Dr. Paul Brians’ “Romanticism” (PDF) and Bartleby.com’s version of William Wordsworth’s “The Prelude” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the first link above, and read Dr. Brians’ subject specific overview of Romanticism (13 pages). Then, click on the second link above, and read the first stanza (lines 1–44) of The Prelude, “Book Twelfth, Imagination and Taste, How Impaired and Restored,” to appreciate the role that Nature played in the sensibilities of the Romantic writers and artists. Note that Wordsworth’s Prelude is a lengthy, autobiographical poem narrating, in the author’s words, “the growth of the poet’s Mind.” It is representative of the European Romantic tradition—centered upon the individual and his experience, reverent toward nature, and colloquial in language.
Studying these readings should take approximately 1 hour to complete.
Terms of Use: The linked material “Romanticism” above has been reposted with the kind permission Dr. Paul Brians, and can be viewed in its original form here. Please note that this material is under copyright and cannot be reproduced in any capacity without explicit permission from the copyright holder. “The Prelude” is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Washington State University-Pullman: Dr. Paul Brians’ “Romanticism” and Bartleby.com’s version of William Wordsworth’s “The Prelude”
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1.4.3 The “Transcendental Club” and The Dial
- Reading: Bartleby.com’s version of Harold Clark Goddard’s The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume XV, Colonial and Revolutionary Literature, Early National Literature, Part I: “Chapter VIII, Parts 5-11”
Links: Bartleby.com’s version of Harold Clark Goddard’s The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume XV, Colonial and Revolutionary Literature, Early National Literature, Part I: “Chapter VIII, Parts 5-11” (HTML)
Instructions: Please click on the link above, and read Parts 5-11 of the classic account of transcendentalism from The Cambridge History, using the navigation arrows at the end of each page to move to the next part.
This reading should take approximately 30 minutes to complete.
Terms of Use: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: American Transcendentalism Web’s versions of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The Editors to the Reader” and Sophia Ripley’s “Woman”
Links: American Transcendentalism Web’s versions of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The Editors to the Reader” (PDF) and Sophia Ripley’s “Woman” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the links above, and read Emerson’s and Ripley’s articles from The Dial, which appeared in July 1840 and January 1841, respectively. Note that Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson established the magazine, The Dial, in order to publish works by Transcendentalist authors in America and to promote their efforts for social reform, the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, and worker’s rights.
These readings should take approximately 30 minutes to complete.
Terms of Use: These materials are in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Bartleby.com’s version of Harold Clark Goddard’s The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume XV, Colonial and Revolutionary Literature, Early National Literature, Part I: “Chapter VIII, Parts 5-11”
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1.4.4 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Father of the Transcendental Movement: Key Works and Concepts
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Ralph Waldo Emerson” and American Transcendentalism Web’s version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Gnothi Seauton”
Links: The Saylor Foundation’s “Ralph Waldo Emerson” (PDF) and American Transcendentalism Web’s version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Gnothi Seauton” (PDF)
Instructions: First, please read The Saylor Foundation’s introduction to Emerson. Then, click on the link above to download the PDF file (4 pages). Please read the full text of Emerson’s poem “Gnothi Seauton.” Note that “Gnothi Seauton,” or “Know Thyself,” is a free-verse meditation on self-knowledge, loss, and spirituality.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use displayed on the webpages above. “Gnothi Seauton” is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Ralph Waldo Emerson” and American Transcendentalism Web’s version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Gnothi Seauton”
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1.4.5 Competing Visions of Reform
- Reading: Bartleby.com’s version of Harold Clark Goddard’s The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume XV, Part I: “Chapter VIII, Parts 10, 13, and 14;” George Mason University History Matter’s version of George Ripley’s “1840 Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson;” and Emerson’s Reply as Printed in O. B. Frothingham’s George Ripley (1882)
Links: Bartleby.com’s version of Harold Clark Goddard’s The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume XV, Part I: “Chapter VIII, parts 10, 13, and 14;” (HTML) George Mason University History Matter’s version of George Ripley’s “1840 Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson” (PDF) and Emerson’s reply as printed in O. B. Frothingham’s George Ripley (1882) (PDF)
George Ripley Also Available In:
Google Books
Instructions: Please click on the first link above, and read the short overview of George Ripley and Brook Farm from The Cambridge History. Use the navigation buttons to proceed to Parts 13 and 14. Then, please click on the second link above to read the exchange between Ripley and Emerson. Consider Emerson’s notion of reform as put forth in “Self-Reliance” (sub-subunit 1.2.3) in contrast to Ripley’s plan for Brook Farm. Note that in his letter to Emerson, Ripley—the founder of Brook Farm—lays out a number of core transcendental views on social reform, including humane relationships, respect for individual freedom, and the merging of values and ideas with spiritual events. He believed that Brook Farm would serve as a transformative model for society. For Emerson’s reply, please click on the last link above, and read just pages 314–318. As The Cambridge History points out, Emerson’s refusal to join the community represents the more individualistic and more famous side of transcendentalism. He emphasizes that the first and most important thing to reform is the self, and that all social and cultural reform will follow naturally once the self is reformed. While Emerson abstained from the Brook Farm project, he would later become increasingly involved in the anti-slavery movement, even as he consistently was skeptical of organized reform movements. Parts 13 and 14 of The Cambridge History discuss another leading transcendentalist, Theodore Parker, and his role as a leading critic of slavery and capitalist economic exploitation. Further, as we will see in later units when we examine Margaret Fuller and Orestes Brownson, many other transcendentalists offered trenchant social critiques on other issues, sometimes speaking in favor of specific social changes and political causes, even if they did not see Brook Farm as the vehicle for reforming society. Thus, while most leading transcendentalists did not participate in Brook Farm and many questioned its emphasis on community reform over individual reform, it represents a key element of transcendentalist thought: the attempt to link individual spiritual improvement to social reform.
Terms of Use: This material is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Bartleby.com’s version of Harold Clark Goddard’s The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume XV, Part I: “Chapter VIII, Parts 10, 13, and 14;” George Mason University History Matter’s version of George Ripley’s “1840 Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson;” and Emerson’s Reply as Printed in O. B. Frothingham’s George Ripley (1882)
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Unit 1 Assessment
- Assessment: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 1 Reading Questions”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 1 Reading Questions” (PDF)
Instructions: Please download the quiz linked above, and answer each question before checking your answers against The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 1 Guide to Responding” (PDF).See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Assessment: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 1 Reading Questions”
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Unit 2: Continuity and Change in Poetic Form
The American Renaissance explored older literary forms and developed new ones as it shaped and responded to the changing nature of American society. Following European romanticism, many American poets re-defined poetry less in terms of preconceived form than in terms of organic structure. Doing so led to some of the most important formal innovations of the time, especially those of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. At the same time, debates around poetry circulated around both form and content, as exemplified by Edgar Allan Poe’s influential criticism.
Unit 2 Time Advisory show close
Unit 2 Learning Outcomes show close
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2.1 Two Competing Poetics
- Reading: American Transcendentalism Web’s version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The Poet;” emersoncentral’s version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Threnody,” “The Rhodora,” and “The Snow-Storm;” and The Saylor Foundation’s “Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ‘The Poet’”
Links: American Transcendentalism Web’s version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The Poet” (PDF); emersoncentral’s version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Threnody” (PDF), “The Rhodora” (PDF), and “The Snow-Storm” (PDF); and the Saylor Foundation’s “Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ‘The Poet’” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read these important critical statements on poetry by Emerson along with a sampling of his poetry and the accompanying critical overview. This reading should take approximately two hours to complete.
Terms of Use: “The Poet,” “Threnody,” “The Rhodora,” and “The Snow-Storm” are in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The University of Virginia’s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition;” the Poe Museum’s version of “The Raven;” and The Saylor Foundation’s “Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Philosophy of Composition’”
Links: The University of Virginia’s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition” (PDF); The Poe Museum’s version of “The Raven” (PDF); and The Saylor Foundation’s “Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Philosophy of Composition’” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read this important critical statement on poetry by Poe along with his most famous poem and the accompanying critical overview. Note that Poe and Emerson are usually considered two of the most important American Romantics. They similarly felt that poetry marked humankind’s greatest artistic achievement, but they had distinctly different ideas about what constituted great poetry. This reading should take approximately an hour and a half to complete.
Terms of Use: “The Raven” and “Philosophy of Composition” by Edgar Allan Poe are in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: American Transcendentalism Web’s version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The Poet;” emersoncentral’s version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Threnody,” “The Rhodora,” and “The Snow-Storm;” and The Saylor Foundation’s “Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ‘The Poet’”
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2.2 The Question of Poetry’s Social Role
- Reading: The Maine Historical Society’s version of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Witnesses” and “The Quadroon Girl”; E Pluribus Unum Project’s version of John Whittier’s “The Christian Slave”; The University of Virginia’s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s Review of Longfellow’s Ballads: “Ballards and Other Poems,” and the Edgar Allan Poe Society’s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s Review of “Longfellow’s Poems”
Links: The Maine Historical Society’s version of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Witnesses” (PDF) and “The Quadroon Girl,” (PDF) E Pluribus Unum Project’s version of John Whittier’s “The Christian Slave,” (PDF) The University of Virginia’s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s Review of Longfellow’s Ballads: “Ballads and Other Poems,” (PDF) and the Edgar Allan Poe Society’s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s Review of “Longfellow’s Poems” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read the full text of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Witnesses” and “The Quadroon Girl.” Also read the E Pluribus Unum Project’s introduction to John Whittier and use the link below the introduction to read the full text with commentary of John Whittier’s “The Christian Slave.” Then read Poe’s review of Longfellow’s Ballads and his review of Longfellow’s poems. Note that one of Poe’s key contributions to poetic criticism was the idea that poetry should have no ulterior motive. As a self-identified Southerner, he took particular exception to anti-slavery poetry, such as that written by the popular Longfellow. These readings should take approximately 2 hours to complete.
Terms of Use: This material is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Maine Historical Society’s version of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Witnesses” and “The Quadroon Girl”; E Pluribus Unum Project’s version of John Whittier’s “The Christian Slave”; The University of Virginia’s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s Review of Longfellow’s Ballads: “Ballards and Other Poems,” and the Edgar Allan Poe Society’s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s Review of “Longfellow’s Poems”
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2.3 Walt Whitman, Free Verse, and the Poetics of Democracy
- Reading: Ann Woodlief’s version of Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
Link: Ann Woodlief’s version of Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read the full text of Whitman’s “When Lilac’s Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” This reading should take approximately 15 minutes to complete.
Terms of Use: “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Free Verse” and “Introduction to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass”
Links: The Saylor Foundation’s “Free Verse” (PDF) and “Introduction to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read the Saylor Foundation’s brief explanation of free verse and introductory essay to Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. This reading should take approximately 30 minutes to complete.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Bartleby.com’s version of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”
Link: Bartleby.com’s version of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read “Song of Myself” in its entirety. Note that Whitman’s expansive lyrical poem “Song of Myself,” the first poem in the original edition of his lifelong project, Leaves of Grass, is one of the most celebrated poems in the American canon. In the poem, Whitman breaks away from standard meter and regular rhyme schemes, freely expressing a sense of “self” in the American vernacular. This reading will take approximately 3 hours to complete.
Terms of Use: “Song of Myself” is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Web Media: Wikimedia Commons’ “Image of Walt Whitman from 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass”
Link: Wikimedia Commons’ “Image of Walt Whitman from 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass” (JPG)
Instructions: Please examine the famous steel engraving (from a daguerreotype) of Whitman, used to introduce his revolutionary volume of poetry, Leaves of Grass, in 1855. You should spend less than 15 minutes examining this image.
Terms of Use: This image is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Web Media: YouTube: University of California, Berkeley’s “Walt Whitman” Lecture
Link: YouTube: University of California, Berkeley’s “Walt Whitman” Lecture (YouTube)
Instructions: Please listen to this 50 minute lecture on Walt Whitman from a University of California, Berkeley course.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use displayed on the webpage above.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Ann Woodlief’s version of Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
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2.4 Emily Dickinson and the Personal Lyric
- Reading: Modern American Poetry’s version of Oakland University-Rochester: Professor Jane Donahue Eberwein’s “Emily Dickinson’s Life,” The City University of New York Brooklyn College-Brooklyn: Professor Lilia Melani’s “Emily Dickinson,” and her versions of Dickinson’s “I’m Nobody—Who Are You?,” “The Soul Selects Her Own Society,” I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died,” and “I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain”
Links: Modern American Poetry’s version of Oakland University-Rochester: Professor Jane Donahue Eberwein’s “Emily Dickinson’s Life” (HTML), The City University of New York Brooklyn College-Brooklyn: Professor Lilia Melani’s “Emily Dickinson” (HTML) and her versions of Dickinson’s “I’m Nobody—Who are You?,” (PDF) “The Soul Selects Her Own Society,” (PDF) “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died," (PDF) and “I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read the introductions to Dickinson provided by Professors Eberwein and Melani and then read the full texts and accompanying analyses of the selected Dickinson poems. These readings should take you approximately 3 hours to complete.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use displayed on the webpages above for “Emily Dickinson’s Life” and “Emily Dickinson.” “I’m Nobody-Who are You?,” “The Soul Selects Her Own Society,” “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died,” and “I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain” are in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Web Media: Matthew Payne-Funk’s version of Emily Dickinson’s “There’s a Certain Slant of Light,” Lynn Tomlinson’s version of Emily Dickinson’s “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died,” , and the Annenberg Foundation’s “Emily Dickinson”
Links: Matthew Payne-Funk’s version of Emily Dickinson’s “There’s a Certain Slant of Light” (YouTube), Lynn Tomlinson’s version of Emily Dickinson’s “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died” (Vimeo), and the Annenberg Foundation’s “Emily Dickinson” (Adobe Flash)
Instructions: Please watch these video interpretations of Dickinson’s poems, including an early work from award-winning animator and sculptor Lynn Tomlinson. Then watch the hour-long video, featuring twentieth-century writers such as Anthony Hecht, Adrienne Rich, and Joyce Carol Oates speaking of Dickinson, her life, poetry, and influence.
Note: Lynn Tomlinson is an independent animator and interdisciplinary artist. She teaches animation for Cornell University's Summer Session and at the Maryland Institute College of Art. For more information on her work, visit http://lynntomlinson.com.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use displayed on the webpages above.The Saylor Foundation does not yet have materials for this portion of the course. If you are interested in contributing your content to fill this gap or aware of a resource that could be used here, please submit it here.
- Reading: Modern American Poetry’s version of Oakland University-Rochester: Professor Jane Donahue Eberwein’s “Emily Dickinson’s Life,” The City University of New York Brooklyn College-Brooklyn: Professor Lilia Melani’s “Emily Dickinson,” and her versions of Dickinson’s “I’m Nobody—Who Are You?,” “The Soul Selects Her Own Society,” I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died,” and “I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain”
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Unit 2 Assessment
- Assessment: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 2 Reading Questions”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 2 Reading Questions” (PDF)
Instructions: Please download the quiz linked above, and answer each question before checking your answers against The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 2 Guide to Responding” (PDF).See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Assessment: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 2 Reading Questions”
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Unit 3: The Invention of the Short Story
While most critics and writers during the period continued to view poetry as the most important literary genre, the period is now better known for its prose works. The short story, as a form, first came into its own in the United States during this period, with writers such as Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and others exploring the aesthetic and thematic possibilities of compact prose works of fiction.
Unit 3 Time Advisory show close
Unit 3 Learning Outcomes show close
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3.1 “The Limit of One Sitting”: Concerns with Length
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “The Short Story”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “The Short Story” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read the Saylor Foundation’s introduction to the short story in general and to Edgar Allan Poe’s, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, and Herman Melville’s role in developing the form in particular. This reading should take approximately 15 minutes to complete.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The University of Virginia’s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s review of Twice-Told Tales and “The Cask of Amontillado,” Petri Liukkonen’s “Nathaniel Hawthorne” and Eldritch Press’s version of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil”
Links:The University of Virginia’s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s review of Twice-Told Tales (PDF) and “The Cask of Amontillado” (PDF), Petri Liukkonen’s “Nathaniel Hawthorne” (PDF) and Eldritch Press’s version of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read Poe’s influential review of Hawthorne’s collection Twice-Told Tales and one of Poe’s most famous short stories, “The Cask of Amontillado.” Then, read Petri Liukkonen’s short biography of Hawthorne and one of the stories Poe mentions in his review, “The Minister’s Black Veil.” Note that in his review of Hawthorne, Poe echoes the principles he outlines in “The Philosophy of Composition,” arguing for the short story’s artistic superiority to the novel. These readings should take approximately 2 hours to complete.
Terms of Use: Peter Liekkonen’s “Nathaniel Hawthore (1804-1864)” is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license(HTML). It is attributed to Petri Liukkonen and Ari Pesonen and the original version can be found here (HTML). “Twice-Told Tales,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Minister’s Black Veil” are in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “The Short Story”
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3.2 The Gothic: Suspense and the Macabre
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “The Gothic and the Antebellum American Short Story”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “The Gothic and the Antebellum American Short Story” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read the introductory essay on the Gothic in the antebellum American short story. This reading should take approximately 15 minutes.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Web Media: The University of Virginia’s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “Ligeia” and “The Imp of the Perverse;” ibiblio.org’s version of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” and Herman Melville’s “Hawthorne and His Mosses”
Links: The University of Virginia’s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “Ligeia,” and “The Imp of the Perverse;” (HTML) ibiblio.org’s version of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” (PDF) and Herman Melville’s “Hawthorne and His Mosses” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read these four famous gothic stories by two of the masters of the form, Poe and Hawthorne. Pay particular attention to Poe’s theorization of human psychology in “The Imp of the Perverse.” Then, read Melville’s “Hawthorne and His Mosses” for an account of Hawthorne’s power of suggesting the darkness of life despite a sunny veneer to his stories—an account as applicable to Melville himself as to Hawthorne. These readings combined should take approximately 2 hours to complete.
Terms of Use: These texts are in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “The Gothic and the Antebellum American Short Story”
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3.3 Building a New Genre: the Detective Story
- Reading: Duke University: Tawnee Sparling’s “Rationalism and Romanticism in Detective Fiction;” The University of Virginia’s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue;” Books and Writers: Petri Liukkonen’s “Herman Melville;” and books.mirror.org: Ken Robert’s version of Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno”
Links: Duke University: Tawnee Sparling’s “Rationalism and Romanticism in Detective Fiction;” (PDF) The University of Virginia’s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue;” (PDF) Books and Writers: Petri Liukkonen’s “Herman Melville;” (PDF) and books.mirror.org: Ken Robert’s version of Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read Tawnee Sparling’s essay on the relationship between romanticism and rationalism in detective fiction, and then read Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” a story often considered to inaugurate the modern detective story. Next, please read Petri Liukkonen’s short biography of Herman Melville, before continuing to Melville’s novella “Benito Cereno,” a mystery featuring an obtuse major character and a relevant political context. These readings combined should take approximately 4 hours to complete.
Terms of Use: The article “Rationalism and Romanticism in Detective Fiction” above is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 (HTML). It is attributed to Tawnee Sparling and the original version can be found here (PDF). Peter Liekkonen’s “Herman Melville (1819-1891)” is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license (HTML). It is attributed to Petri Liukkonen and Ari Pesonen and the original version can be found here (HTML).“Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe and “Benito Cereno” by Herman Melville are in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Herman Melville’s ‘Benito Cereno’”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Herman Melville’s ‘Benito Cereno’” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read this short essay from the Saylor Foundation, which provides an overview of recent interpretations of Melville’s story.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Duke University: Tawnee Sparling’s “Rationalism and Romanticism in Detective Fiction;” The University of Virginia’s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue;” Books and Writers: Petri Liukkonen’s “Herman Melville;” and books.mirror.org: Ken Robert’s version of Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno”
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Unit 3 Assessment
- Assessment: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 3 Reading Questions”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 3 Reading Questions” (PDF)
Instructions: Please download the quiz linked above, and answer each question before checking your answers against The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 3 Guide to Responding” (PDF).See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Assessment: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 3 Reading Questions”
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Unit 4: The Development of the Novel and its Various Forms
Just as the short story emerged as a new literary form due to cultural, social, and economic changes, the novel moved from being regarded as subliterary to being the most popular form by the end of the era. Works by writers such as Hawthorne continue to stand among the greatest novels in world history while those by authors such as George Thompson and Fanny Fern gained unprecedented popularity by mining sensation and sentimental sub-genres.
Unit 4 Time Advisory show close
Unit 4 Learning Outcomes show close
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4.1 The Popularity of the Novel Form
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation's "A Short History of the American Novel" and Washington State University-Pullman: Professor Donna Campbell’s “The Early American Novel: Introductory Notes
Link: The Saylor Foundation's "A Short History of the American Novel" (PDF) and Washington State University-Pullman: Professor Donna Campbell’s “The Early American Novel: Introductory Notes” (HTML)
Instructions: Please read this brief history of the American novel tradition and then read about the key features of the early American novel and its development as further described by Professor Donna Campbell. These readings should take approximately 30 minutes to complete.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use displayed on the webpage above.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation's "A Short History of the American Novel" and Washington State University-Pullman: Professor Donna Campbell’s “The Early American Novel: Introductory Notes
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4.2 The Romance: Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Reading: University of Massachusetts-Lowell: Professor Melissa McFarland Pennell’s “Introductory Essay on The Scarlet Letter,” Eldritch Press’s “Preface to The House of Seven Gables,” and ibiblio.org’s The Scarlet Letter
Links: University of Massachusetts-Lowell: Professor Melissa McFarland Pennell’s “Introductory Essay on The Scarlet Letter,” (HTML) Eldritch Press’s “Preface to The House of the Seven Gables,” (PDF) and ibiblio.org’s “The Scarlet Letter” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read Melissa McFarland Pennell’s short essay on Hawthorne’s famous novel. Then read Hawthorne’s preface to The House of the Seven Gables and then read The Scarlet Letter, starting with “The Preface” and “The Custom-House.” Note that in his preface to The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne offers his famous definition of the romance, as opposed to the novel. He continues to develop this definition in “The Custom-House,” his long introduction to this most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter. These readings should take approximately 8-10 hours to finish.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use displayed on the webpage above for “Introductory Essay on The Scarlet Letter.” “Preface to The House of the Seven Gables” and “The Scarlet Letter” are in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: University of Massachusetts-Lowell: Professor Melissa McFarland Pennell’s “Introductory Essay on The Scarlet Letter,” Eldritch Press’s “Preface to The House of Seven Gables,” and ibiblio.org’s The Scarlet Letter
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4.3 Sensationalism
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Sensationalism”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Sensationalism” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read this introduction to sensationalism in the antebellum period. The reading should take approximately 15 minutes to complete.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Project Gutenberg’s ebook version of George Thompson’s “Venus in Boston”
Link: Project Gutenberg’s ebook version of George Thompson’s Venus in Boston (PDF)
Instructions: Please read Thompson’s Venus in Boston, an incredibly popular, nearly pornographic short novel. The reading should take approximately 3 hours to complete.
Terms of Use: Venus in Boston is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Sensationalism”
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4.4 Sentimentalism
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Sentimentalism”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Sentimentalism” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above, and read this introductory overview of sentimentalism. The reading should take approximately 15 minutes to complete.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Washington State University-Pullman: Professor Donna M. Campbell’s “Domestic or Sentimental Fiction, 1820–1865” and Fanny Fern’s [Sara Payson Willis] Ruth Hall
Links: Washington State University-Pullman: Professor Donna M. Campbell’s “Domestic or Sentimental Fiction, 1820–1865” (PDF) and Fanny Fern’s [Sara Payson Willis] Ruth Hall (PDF)
Instructions: First, please click on the link to “Domestic or Sentimental Fiction, 1820-1865,” and read the introduction to domestic sentimentalism from Professor Campbell to expand on the ideas presented in the previous reading. Then, click on the second link above, and read Ruth Hall, the autobiographical novel by one of the most famous authors of the era, Fanny Fern, the pseudonym of Sara Payson Willis. Willis’s novel, as with much of her writing, both embraces and critiques domestic ideology (for more on this line of thinking, see subunit 6.1). She defends her autobiographical heroine’s foray into the public world of publishing in terms of her role as a mother, while simultaneously revealing, with caustic wit and satire, the hypocrisy of those who object to women taking a more active role in financially providing for themselves and their families. As such, her novel does not fit squarely within the category of domestic sentimental fiction but rather delineates some of the ideas behind such fiction as well as their limits.
These readings should take approximately 6 hours to complete.
Terms of Use: “Domestic or Sentimental Fiction, 1820-1865” linked above is reposted with the kind permission of Professor Donna Campbell and can be viewed in its original form here (HTML). Please note that this material is under copyright and cannot be reproduced in any capacity without explicit permission from the copyright holder. Ruth Hall is in the public domainSee a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Sentimentalism”
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Unit 4 Assessment
- Assessment: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 4 Writing Assessment”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 4 Writing Assessment” (PDF)
Instructions: Please download the quiz linked above, and answer each question before checking your answers against The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 4 Guide to Responding” (PDF).See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Assessment: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 4 Writing Assessment”
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Unit 5: Nature and Technology: Creating and Challenging American Identity
Writers in the American Renaissance sought to identify the promise and uniqueness of the American experience through various forms and genres. In this unit, we will look at ways in which these authors represented the new American identity—its voices, its landscapes, and its diversities. As often as they helped to construct long-standing ideals of the American self-made man, of upward mobility and economic progress, and of universal liberty and equality, they also criticized the ways that American society and its political and cultural institutions failed to live up to its ideals and the ways that economic and technological development came at a great price. In this and the following two units, we will look at ways in which these authors represented and questioned the new American identity and the forces and controversies transforming the young nation. Specifically in this section we will examine reactions to the industrial, economic, and technological transformation of the United States that was beginning to transform the nation from a rural, agrarian country to a modern, capitalist one.
Unit 5 Time Advisory show close
Unit 5 Learning Outcomes show close
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5.1 Technology and Class Division
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Technology, Industrialization, and Antebellum U. S. Literature”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Technology, Industrialization, and Antebellum U. S. Literature” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above to download the PDF, and read this introductory overview of antebellum U. S. literature’s relationship to technological development and industrialization during the era. The reading should take approximately 15 minutes to complete.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Orestes Brownson’s “The Laboring Classes”
Link: Orestes Brownson’s “The Laboring Classes” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above to download the PDF, and read one of the most powerful critiques of capitalism in the antebellum United States, Orestes Brownson’s “Laboring Classes” (25 pages). Note that Orestes Brownson was a leading transcendentalist, representing its more social-activist wing (as opposed, perhaps, to Emerson). In the years following the publication of this essay, though, he became increasingly conservative, renouncing his radical past and transcendentalism and converting to Catholicism. This reading should take approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete.
Terms of Use: “The Laboring Classes” is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Technology, Industrialization, and Antebellum U. S. Literature”
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5.2 Melville, Capitalism, and the Limits of Sympathy
- Reading: Project Gutenberg’s version of Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and the University of Virginia’s version of Herman Melville’s “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids”
Links: Project Gutenberg’s version of Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (PDF) and the University of Virginia’s version of Herman Melville’s “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the links above, and read Melville’s two most famous stories about economic change, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (30 pages) and “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids” (20 pages). Note that Melville’s “Bartleby” is one of the most famous American short stories and has increasingly been read in terms of the development of capitalism in the antebellum era. Melville’s diptych, “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids,” more clearly offers a critique of the division of labor (and leisure) during the period. These two stories should take approximately 2 hours to read.
Terms of Use: “Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Herman Melville and “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids” are in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Herman Melville’s ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Herman Melville’s ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above to download the PDF, and read this essay introducing some of the main lines of interpreting Melville’s famous short story. The reading should take approximately 15 minutes to complete.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Project Gutenberg’s version of Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and the University of Virginia’s version of Herman Melville’s “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids”
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5.3 The Move Toward Realism: Davis’ “Life in the Iron-Mills”
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Rebecca Harding Davis’s ‘Life in the Iron-Mills’”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Rebecca Harding Davis’s ‘Life in the Iron-Mills’” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above to download the PDF, and read this introductory essay to Davis’s important novella. The reading should take approximately 15 minutes to complete.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Project Gutenberg’s version of Rebecca Harding Davis’s “Life in the Iron-Mills”
Link: Project Gutenberg’s version of Rebecca Harding Davis’s “Life in the Iron-Mills” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above to download the PDF file, and read Davis’s novella in its entirety (26 pages). Note that Davis’s “Life in the Iron-Mills” was first published anonymously in the influential Atlantic Monthly and has been read as merging sentimentalism with an early realist attention to social conditions. The reading should take approximately 1 hour to complete.
Terms of Use: “Life in the Iron-Mills” is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Rebecca Harding Davis’s ‘Life in the Iron-Mills’”
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5.4 American Nature as Challenge to American Progress
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Henry David Thoreau and Walden”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Henry David Thoreau and Walden” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above to download the text, and read this short introductory essay on Thoreau. It should take approximately 15 minutes to complete.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and “Resistance to Civil Government”
Links: Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (PDF) and “Resistance to Civil Government” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read chapters 1–5, 11, and 17–18 of Thoreau’s masterpiece, Walden. Then, read his influential political manifesto “Resistance to Civil Government,” using the hypertext links to explore the text further. Note the following: Thoreau’s Walden denies most genre categories including the novel, autobiography, and narrative; instead, the work roams freely from subject to subject, discussing the cycle of seasons, the experience of solitude, and local attractions, among other things. “Resistance to Civil Government,” also known as “Civil Disobedience,” was written in response to the U.S.-Mexican War and the slavery controversy and influenced such twentieth-century leaders as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. These readings should take approximately 3 hours and 30 minutes to complete.
Terms of Use: Walden and “Resistance to Civil Government” are in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Henry David Thoreau and Walden”
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Unit 5 Assessment
- Assessment: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 5 Reading Questions”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 5 Reading Questions” (PDF)
Instructions: Please download the quiz linked above, and answer each question before checking your answers against The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 5 Guide to Responding” (PDF).See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Assessment: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 5 Reading Questions”
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Unit 6: The Question of Women's Place in U.S. Society
With the economic transformations sometimes called the market revolution, gender relations in the United States also changed. Where in a rural, agrarian economy, men and women often worked—even when divided along gender lines—side-by-side in the same location, the farm and the home, the move to a more professionalized, capitalist workplace more firmly established distinctions between male and female work (or for some classes at least). Alongside political changes that empowered all white men, these transformations coincided with an increasing emphasis on women’s importance in the private sphere in opposition to men’s dominance in the public realm. In this section, we examine some of the ways that the antebellum era saw the emergence of the modern feminist movement in the United States and increasing literary attention to the place of women in society.
Unit 6 Time Advisory show close
Unit 6 Learning Outcomes show close
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6.1 Overview of Developments in Women’s Rights in the Young Republic
- Reading: U.S. Department of State’s Women of Influence; The History Place’s version of Susan B. Anthony’s “On Women’s Right to Vote;” and Academic American’s version of the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (1848)
Links: U.S. Department of State’s Women of Influence (PDF); The History Place’s version of Susan B. Anthony’s “On Women’s Right to Vote” (PDF); and Academic American’s version of the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (1848) (HTML)
Instructions: Please click on the first link above, and read pages 11-16 of Women of Influence for an introduction to Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. Then, click on the remaining links above, and read the Susan B. Anthony’s suffragist statement as well as Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions.
These readings should take approximately 30 minutes to complete.
Terms of Use: Women of Influence, The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, and “On Women’s Right to Vote” are in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Women’s Sphere and the Emergence of the Women’s Rights Movement”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Women’s Sphere and the Emergence of the Women’s Rights Movement” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above, and read this overview of the domestic ideology and its relationship to the development of the women’s rights movement in US during the nineteenth-century.
This reading should take approximately 15 minutes to complete.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: U.S. Department of State’s Women of Influence; The History Place’s version of Susan B. Anthony’s “On Women’s Right to Vote;” and Academic American’s version of the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (1848)
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6.2 Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Peabody among the Transcendentalists
- Reading: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature’s “Margaret Fuller” and American Transcendentalism Web’s version of Margaret Fuller’s “The Great Lawsuit, Man versus Men, Woman versus Women”
Links: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature’s “Margaret Fuller” (PDF), and American Transcendentalism Web’s version of Margaret Fuller’s “The Great Lawsuit, Man versus Men, Woman versus Women” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read the scholarly assessment of Fuller’s contribution to literary history from the authoritative, 18-volume Cambridge history, and then read Fuller’s essay in which she applies transcendentalist thought to the question of women’s rights. Note that Fuller’s essay, “The Great Lawsuit,” was published in The Dial, which she co-edited with Emerson. She later expanded this essay into the book Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Fuller, as with many early feminists, connects the difficulties women face to the evil of slavery in making her case for women to develop their souls as freely and fully as they can. Further note that she makes few to no allusions to legal or political changes, as later feminists would insist upon.
This reading should take approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete.
Terms of Use: “Margaret Fuller” and “The Great Lawsuit, Man versus Men, Woman versus Women” are in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature’s “Margaret Fuller” and American Transcendentalism Web’s version of Margaret Fuller’s “The Great Lawsuit, Man versus Men, Woman versus Women”
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6.3 Depictions of Women: Law, Class, Marriage
- Reading: Project Gutenberg: Elizabeth Stoddard’s “Lemorne versus Huell”
Link: Project Gutenberg: Elizabeth Stoddard’s “Lemorne versus Huell” (PDF)
Instructions: Please read the entirety of Stoddard’s emotionally complex short story. Note that Stoddard’s story is told by the main character, who is trapped by her gender and her class. The story reveals the ways that law and society both enforced women’s subservience, even as it explores the complicity of the narrator’s own sexuality in her entrapment. This reading should take approximately 1 hour to complete.
Terms of Use: This material is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Project Gutenberg: Elizabeth Stoddard’s “Lemorne versus Huell”
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6.4 Depictions of Women 2: Little Women, Sentiment, Religion, and the Power of Womanhood
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Louisa May Alcott and Little Women”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Louisa May Alcott and Little Women” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above, and read this short introduction to Alcott and her most famous novel. The reading should take approximately 15 minutes to complete.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The University of Virginia Library’s version of Little Women
Link: The University of Virginia Library’s version of Little Women (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above to access the PDF, and read Alcott’s famous novel, in its two-volume version, set during the Civil War. Note that Alcott’s Little Women depicts the lives of four sisters and their relationships to one another, to men, and to their family. It offers a good cross-section of the experiences—domestic and otherwise—of the new American woman. Reading this novel will probably take between 10 and 12 hours.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use on the webpage displayed above.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Louisa May Alcott and Little Women”
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Unit 6 Assessment
- Assessment: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 6 Reading Questions”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 6 Reading Questions” (PDF)
Instructions: Please download the quiz linked above, and answer each question before checking your answers against The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 6 Guide to Responding” (PDF).See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Assessment: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 6 Reading Questions”
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Unit 7: The Slavery Controversy and Abolitionist Literature
Perhaps no controversy defined the antebellum period as much as slavery. Even as politicians repeatedly attempted to find ways to paper over sectional differences and quiet the controversy, the issue became more and more divisive, eventually becoming the leading cause of the Civil War. Throughout this course we have examined texts that investigate slavery. In this section, we will focus on abolitionist literature, looking at some of the founding statements of the radical abolitionist movement as well as some of the most popular texts of the era.
Unit 7 Time Advisory show close
Unit 7 Learning Outcomes show close
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7.1 Radical Abolition and The Liberator
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “David Walker, William Lloyd Garrison, and the Emergence of Radical Abolitionism”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “David Walker, William Lloyd Garrison, and the Emergence of Radical Abolitionism” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above, and read this short introduction to radical abolitionism, David Walker, and William Lloyd Garrison.
This reading should take approximately 15 minutes to completeSee a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: William Lloyd Garrison’s “The Liberator: To the Public” and Excerpts from “David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World”
Links: William Lloyd Garrison’s “The Liberator: To the Public” (PDF) and Excerpts from “David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the first link above, and read Garrison’s straightforward and uncompromising statement of aims from the first edition of the antislavery paper he published for more than 30 years. Then, click on the second link above, and read the excerpts from David Walker’s Appeal, aradical document by an African American living in Boston. Note that Garrison began his antislavery newspaper Liberator with a fiery introduction in which he stated his unequivocal abolitionist perspective and demanded that he be heard. Walker’s text appeared a few years before Garrison began The Liberator and called upon African Americans to resist slavery by any means necessary.
These readings should take approximately 30 minutes to complete.
Terms of Use: “The Liberator: To the Public” and “David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World” are in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Library of Congress’s African American Odyssey: “III. Abolition, Anti-Slavery Movements, and the Rise of the Sectional Controversy:” “Part 1 and Part 2”
Link: The Library of Congress’s African American Odyssey: “III. Abolition, Anti-Slavery Movements, and the Rise of the Sectional Controversy:” “Part 1 and Part 2” (HTML)
Instructions: Please click on the link above, read through Part 1, and click on the link to Part 2 to continue this reading. This text provides a short overview of abolition with related images from the Library of Congress.
Studying this reading should take approximately 30 minutes to complete.
Terms of Use: The readings above are in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “David Walker, William Lloyd Garrison, and the Emergence of Radical Abolitionism”
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7.2 The Slave Narrative
- Web Media: The Saylor Foundation’s “The Slave Narrative”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “The Slave Narrative” (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above, and read this introductory essay on the slave narrative. It should take you approximately 15 minutes to read.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Berkeley Digital Library’s version of Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and University of Virginia’s version of Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Links: Berkeley Digital Library’s version of Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (PDF) and University of Virginia’s version of Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (PDF)
Instructions: Please read Douglass’s incredibly influential work and Jacobs’ revisionary account of the life of a slave woman. Note that Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass became a best seller, providing a model for many other slave narratives. Jacobs’ narrative draws on and overturns many of the conventions of domestic sentimentalism embraced by midcentury American women.
Reading both slave narratives will take approximately 9 hours.
Terms of Use: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl are in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Web Media: The Saylor Foundation’s “The Slave Narrative”
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7.3 Uncle Tom’s Cabin
- Reading: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Link: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (PDF)
Instructions: Please click on the link above to download the PDF file, and read Stowe’s influential novel in its entirety (467 pages). Note that Stowe’s abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century and arguably played a major role in fueling antislavery commitments in the North. Drawing on sentimental tropes and the emotional fervor of nineteenth-century American Protestantism, it combines its antislavery arguments with idealized portraits of motherhood and stereotypes of African Americans.
Reading the novel should take approximately 10-12 hours to complete.
Terms of Use: Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is in the public domain.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s “Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (PDF)
Instructions: Read this short introduction to Stowe’s best-selling novel. The reading should take approximately 15 minutes to complete.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Reading: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin
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Unit 7 Assessment
- Assessment: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 7 Reading Questions”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 7 Reading Questions” (PDF)
Instructions: Please download the quiz linked above, and answer each question before checking your answers against The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 7 Guide to Responding” (PDF).See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Assessment: The Saylor Foundation’s “Unit 7 Reading Questions”
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Final Exam
- Final Exam: The Saylor Foundation's ENGL405 Final Exam
Link: The Saylor Foundation's ENGL405 Final Exam
Instructions: You must be logged into your Saylor Foundation School account in order to access this exam. If you do not yet have an account, you will be able to create one, free of charge, after clicking the link.See a broken link? Please let us know!
- Final Exam: The Saylor Foundation's ENGL405 Final Exam
