The rise and development of American fiction, from early nineteenth-century works by Hawthorne and Poe to Chopin’s The Awakening. The issues that we’ll explore will include: (1) varieties of American literary voice ranging across class, racial, ethnic and gender differences; (2) remembering American history in an era given to celebrating progress and change; (3) the self in and out of history; (4) industrial revolution, national expansion, and imperialism; and (5) the influence of literary and philosophical movements such as Romanticism, Naturalism and Pragmatism on fictional themes and techniques. Your performance will be based on a series of five–page papers as well as journal entries twice a week to accompany assigned readings.

Texts: Readings in Poe, Melville, Gilman available on e-reserve; also, purchase Hawthorne, The Portable Hawthorne; Davis, Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories; Twain, Huckleberry Finn; Chopin, The Awakening and Selected Stories; Crane, The Portable Stephen Crane; James, The Portable Henry James