This survey class will examine how a variety of American writers struggle with “transcendent” questions of being, knowing, truth, and belief. In Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, for example, this struggle is realized as a search for a new historical mode, while H.D.’s Trilogy is focused on the poet’s project of forging her own religion in the wake of the devastation of the Second World War. Is there a common impetus that connects these projects? Is there perhaps a “metaphysical” quest that subtends much of the American literature of the past two centuries? This course will investigate these issues (and more) by considering literature from Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, H.D., Wallace Stevens, Susan Howe, and perhaps others. The reading will be very challenging, but equally rewarding. Class grades will be based on daily participation, frequent quizzes, and mid-term and final exams. In addition, students will be asked to complete between 12 and 15 pages of writing, in the form of three short essays, which they will have a chance to develop and revise over the quarter.

Texts:

• William Faulkner. Absalom, Absalom!
• H.D. Trilogy. New Direction, 1998, 1998.
• Herman Melville. Clarel. Northwestern UP, 1991.
• Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass. (1855).
• T.S. Eliot. Collected Poems 1909-1962. Harcourt Brace, 1991.
• Susan Howe. Souls of the Labadie Tract. New Directions, 2007.
• coursepack.