American Literature I is a survey of American literary history through the Civil War at Stony Brook University. The Spring 2018 syllabus is structured through Nathaniel Hawthorne’s historical novel The Scarlet Letter (1850), which is set in Massachusetts during the 1640s. We will trace several of the novel’s principal themes in some of Hawthorne’s source materials from early New England, through the colonial and early national periods, to its nineteenth-century context and beyond.
Contents
I. “‘A writer of story books!’” Antebellum Authorship
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864), The Scarlet Letter (1850)
- Irving, Washington (1783-1859). From The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (1819)
- “The Author’s Account of Himself” (1819)
- “Rip Van Winkle” (1819)
- Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849).
- “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839)
- Melville, Herman (1819-1891).
- “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853)
II. “Whatever utopia of human virtue and happiness”: American Exceptionalism
- The Scarlet Letter, Chapter 1
- Winthrop, John” (1587-1649).
- “A Modell of Christian Charitie” (1630)
- Cotton, John (1585-1652).
- “God’s Promise to His Plantation” (1630)
- Freneau, Philip (1752-1832).
- Barlow, Joel (1754-1812).
- “The Hasty-Pudding” (1796)
III. “Wives and Maidens”: Colonial Women
- The Scarlet Letter, Chapters 2-5
- From “The Examination of Anne Hutchinson” (1637)
- Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
- “The Prologue” (1650)
- [“in silent night when rest I took”] (1666)
- Rowlandson, Mary (1637-1711)
- Mather, Cotton (1663-1728).
- Wonders of the Invisible World (1693)
- [Trial of Susannah Martin] (1692)
- Wonders of the Invisible World (1693)
IV. “His Own Unworthiness”: New England Souls
- The Scarlet Letter, Chapters 6-12
- Taylor, Edward (1642-1729)
- Occom, Samson(1723-1792)
- “A Short Narrative of My Life” (1768)
- “Sermon on the Death of Moses Paul” (1772)
- Wheatley, Phillis (1753-1784)
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)
- “Self-Reliance” (1841)
V. “The Whole Race of Womanhood”: Female Virtue in The Antebellum United States
- The Scarlet Letter, Chapters 13-19
- Stowe, Harriet Beecher (1811-1896)
- Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
- Jacobs, Harriet (1813-1897)
VI. “When the world should have grown ripe for it”: Radicalism and Gradualism
- The Scarlet Letter, Chapters 20-24
- Thoreau, Henry David (1817-1862)
- “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” (1849)
- Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)
- Whitman, Walt (1819-1892)
- “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1856)
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