English 448: 19th-Century American 
Pop Novels And Social Intolerance


 

 

Professor Robert Dunne
318 Willard Hall
832-2756
dunne@ccsu.edu

 

Required Texts:
Thomas Dixon, The Clansman (1905)
Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall (1855)
Hannah Webster Foster, The Coquette (1797)
Frances Harper, Iola Leroy (1892)
John Hay, The Bread-Winners (1884)
Henry Keenan, The Money-Makers (1884)
Maria Monk, Awful Disclosures by Maria Monk of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal (1836)
Hugh Quigley, The Cross and the Shamrock (1853)
Mary A. Sadlier, Confessions of an Apostate (1864)

Excerpts from (all on Reserve):
Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (1954)
Nina Baym, Novels, Readers, and Reviewers: Responses to Fiction in Antebellum America (1984)
Baym, Woman's Fiction: A Guide to Novels By and About Women in America, 1820-1870 (1978)
Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800-1860 (1938)
Susan Coultrap-McQuin, Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century (1990)
Cathy N. Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (1986)
W.E.B. DuBois, Souls of Black Folk (1902); Black Reconstruction (1935)
George Frederickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on  Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914 (1971)
Michael Gilmore, American Romanticism and the Marketplace (1985)
Walter Fuller Taylor, The Economic Novel in America (1942)
Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs (1986)
Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture & Society in the Gilded Age (1982)
Forrest Wood, Black Scare: The Racist Response to Emancipation and Reconstruction (1970)
 

COURSE OBJECTIVES
 

America has been in large part the answer to the problem of what happens when unlimited human energy meets illimitable natural resources, especially under historical and political conditions which permit of unprecedented individual freedom of action.
    —James Truslow Adams, The American: The Making of a New Man (1943)
This statement characterizes the general perspective of American history taught to generations of Americans.  But the United States was never so rosy a place as James Truslow Adams depicted, and racial, gender, ethnic, and class conflicts did not suddenly gain widespread public attention in the turbulence of the 1960s.  On the contrary, many of these conflicts blossomed in the nineteenth century; in fact, antagonism against specific groups consigned to society's margins was so prevalent in the 1800s that it flourished in novels that were actually best sellers in their day.  For instance, while Melville's Moby-Dick was quickly fading into obscurity almost as soon as it was published in 1851, Maria Monk's anti-Catholic Awful Disclosures was enjoying its twentieth printing.
 The literary works of the nineteenth century that are now enshrined in the American canon often had a brief shelf-life when they were first published.  Most of the novels we will be studying, however, were popular--and some, critical--successes when published.  The purpose of this course is not to appreciate the "great" works of nineteenth-century American literature, but to examine why some novels openly intolerant of groups on society's margins were so popular with mainstream society.  In addition, we will also examine novels written by members of representative marginalized groups.
 Today we might consider the mainstream and the marginalized novels listed in the syllabus to be racist and sexist or otherwise insensitive, but, mindful of our own contemporary responses, we must situate these works in their historical and cultural context in order to understand why they were so embraced by their respective (sub)cultures; then, perhaps, we may better understand why they were so influential and determine, too, whether traces of these cultural conflicts remain with us at the end of the twentieth century.
 In our examinations of nineteenth-century novels on Catholics, African Americans, women, and labor movements, we will explore some of the causes behind their success, analyze how popular novels defined for the mainstream public what it meant to be both American and un-American, and examine the strategies behind the responses in fiction by these marginalized groups.  With the help of several critical supplemental readings, we will better grasp the historical and political context of the novels, as well as remain inquisitively aware throughout our readings and discussions that these novels were read by more people when published than any nineteenth-century works now enshrined in the American literary canon.
 

Assignments:
There will be three 5-page papers, in which you will discuss specific, focused issues in the primary texts and/or supplemental readings of your own choosing.  In addition, there will be a research paper (15 pages), in which you will discuss at least one outside work from the 1800s or early 1900s that treats a marginalized group (preferably) not discussed in class (such as Native Americans, Jews, Asians, other European immigrants).  Finally, there will be a brief (5-10 minute) presentation of your research paper during the last class.