LALL 831 - 19th Century American Writers

3 credits

From the Gothic darkness of Edgar Allan Poe to Stephen Crane’s Red Badge, from Irving’s mystic Sleepy Hollow to Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, from Thoreau’s idyll on Walden Pond to Melville’s terror rounding Cape Horn, from Whitman’s barbaric shout to Emily Dickinson’s lyric whisper, from Emerson’s ‘Self-Reliance’ to Mark Twain’s despairing loss of innocence, the trajectory of American Literature in the 19th century traces a movement from the past to the future. This course looks at the major writers of 19th century America, a fascinating and revolutionary period in American art, where an American past becomes an American Voice and our Original Sins form our future.

Prerequisites LACR*102 or LACR*103