12:20p-1:10p MWF (30) 3 cr.
This course will explore the conjunction of the most significant
cultural concerns, literary
initiatives, and individual literary accomplishments of the period
between the end of the
Civil War and the beginning of World War I in the United States. The
cultural concerns were
America’s rapid transformation from an agricultural to an industrial
economy; its
geographical expansion from an Eastern seaboard dominated by
English-derived citizens and
aristocratic class divisions to a farflung continental empire of
immigrants, farmers, and a
spirit of working-class equalities; the broadening of notions of
citizenship and personhood
to incorporate the Afro-African, the foreign-born, the female; and the
intellectual and
social implications of the replacement of a God-centered universe with
mechanical and
evolutionary explanations for the system of things.
We will approach these issues by focusing on the literary productions
associated with
regionalism (writing, especially short stories and especially
by women, focused on
the unique environments and customs of specific places and
communities), realism
(intent on depicting authentic human psychology in the context of
actual human problems
rather than of literary conventions), and naturalism (treating
human behavior as
premised by instinct and shaped by environment rather than by free
will and rational
independence). These literary initiatives were
interrelated–regionalism both generated
realism and increasingly responded to it, naturalism consciously
rejected the human motives
of realism while employing its strategies–and many of the important
writers produced work
identifiable with several of them. We shall pay particular attention
to the regionalists
Mary Noailles Murfree, Grace King, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Sarah Orne
Jewett, and Kate Chopin;
the realists Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Henry James, and Edith
Wharton; and the
naturalists Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, and Theodore
Dreiser.
Course activity will proceed primarily by discussion, with class
sessions organized around
discussion questions. These same questions will also serve from time
to time as the basis
for in-class writing and out-of-class responses. Each student will
also participate in a
small-group presentation on a relevant topic, and will write two
longer, formal essays (5-7
pages). No examinations.
Texts will include Judith Fetterley and Marjorie Pryse, eds.,
American Women
Regionalists, 1850-1910; James Nagel and Tom Quirk, eds., The
Portable American
Realism Reader; and individual texts of novels by Chopin, Twain,
James, Wharton, Crane,
and Dreiser.