English 500: American Canon(S)

 
 
 
Professor Robert Dunne
318 Willard Hall
832-2768
dunne@ccsu.edu

Required Texts:


Willa Cather, "Neighbour Rosicky" (handout)
William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (Vintage)
Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall (Rutgers UP)
Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette (Oxford UP)
Mike Gold, Jews Without Money (Carroll & Graf)
Nella Larsen, Quicksand and Passing (Rutgers UP)
Herman Melville, "Benito Cereno" (Dover)
Thomas Nelson Page, In Ole Virginia (John Sanders)

Articles or Brief Excerpts from (handouts):


Nina Baym, Feminism and American Literary History (1992)
Sacvan Bercovitch, "The Problem of Ideology in American Literary History."  Critical Inquiry12 (1986):631-53
Peter Carafiol, "The New Orthodoxy: Ideology and the Institution of American Literary History." American Literature 59 (1987):626-38
Robert Dunne, "Avoiding Labels: Recasting a Canon Via Myth Criticism."  College Literature 19 (1992): 136-41
Henry Louis Gates, Loose Canons (1992)
Philip Gura, "The Study of Colonial American Literature."  William and Mary Quarterly 45 (1988): 305-41
Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds (1942, 1982)
Paul Lauter, Canons and Contexts (1991)
Lauter, "Melville Climbs the Canon."  American Literature 66 (1994): 1-24
Frank Lentricchia, Criticism and Social Change (1983)
F. O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance (1941)
V. L. Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought (1927)
David S. Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance (1989)
Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Contingencies of Value (1988)
Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence (1973)
Werner Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity (1986)
Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs (1985)
Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (1940)

Introductions to literary histories and anthologies:


Moses Coit Tyler, A History of American Literature (1879)
Henry S. Pancoast, An Introduction to American Literature (1898)
Walter C. Bronson, A Short History of American Literature (1900)
William Peterfield Trent, et al., ed., The Cambridge History of American Literature (1917)
Robert E. Spiller, et al., ed., Literary History of the United States (1946)
Emory Elliott, gen. ed., Columbia Literary History of the United States (1988)
Sacvan Bercovitch, gen. ed., The Cambridge History of American Literature (1994)
Nina Baym, et al., ed., The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 4th ed. (1994)
Emory Elliott, gen. ed., American Literature: A Prentice Hall Anthology (1991)
Paul Lauter, gen. ed., The Heath Anthology of American Literature, 2nd ed. (1994)
 

COURSE OBJECTIVES
The American literary canon has been the subject of intense critical debate for the last two decades.  Beginning with introductory readings in early and recent theories of canon-making in American literature, we will grapple with such deceptively simple terms as "American," "literary," and "canon," in light of the primary texts listed above, which will be thematically paired off according to their canonical and non-canonical status.  At the conclusion of the course, I hope you will understand why some primary texts have "always" been in the canon, why others fade into obscurity, and why others emerge from obscurity into prominence; moreover, I hope you will become aware of the contentious theoretical and political struggles that lie behind the neatly packaged covers of American literary histories and anthologies.

Assignments:
There will be two brief (10-15 minute) informal oral reports, the first on a particular critical reading chosen from either the attached secondary reading list or on your own, and the second on one of the literary works.  By informal, I mean no research is required, only your own critical views.  For the first report, you will describe the main points(s) of the critical reading and your reaction to it, after which you should open up class discussion with questions for us to consider.  For the second report, you will discuss a literary work in the context of one of the interpretive methodologies studied in class.  The oral reports should not be dramatically different from your everyday classroom discussions--informed, conversational, brilliant.
There will also be three 5-page papers, typed according to the MLA format.  Two of the papers will be polished or expanded versions of your oral reports; the third will be on either a literary or critical work of your choice from among those studied in class.  No additional outside reading is required for these papers, the deadlines of which will be determined by you (mainly depending on when you give your presentations).
Finally, there will be a 20-page research paper, in which you will "pair off" either canonical and non-canonical works not discussed in class or one outside text with one studied in class.
 

page last updated: 27.09.02