Course Description:
In this course, we will investigate various late nineteenth-century and twentieth-century efforts to construct different canons of American literature according to different criteria. Our concern will be with the individual and institutional imperatives, aims, mechanisms, and rhetoric of canon-formation. Throughout the semester, I hope we will pay especial attention to the political and cultural contexts of different proposals for the canonization and teaching of American literature. In so doing, our emphasis will be on how naturalized critical convictions and practices about American literature--for example, formalist, biographical, sociological, and historical orientations--are shaped by broader assumptions and practices. We will thus be following some ideological critics of American literary study who have given up the search for the canon in order to investigate how various canons are extensions of and circumscribed by larger networks of cultural and political relations. As we construct a historicized genealogy of various notions of American literature, we will bring a great deal of recent scholarship to bear on a number of documents including novels, literary histories, anthologies, bibliographical tools, and scholarly editions.
Course Goals:
Students will investigate various late nineteenth-century and twentieth-century efforts to construct different canons of American literature in order to understand how literary canons are extensions of and circumscribed by larger networks of cultural and political relations. I hope that you will leave the class with a historicized genealogy of various notions of American literature
Course Policy:
One's final grade for the semester will be based upon the grades from your reading notes (20%), ten short 10-15 minute oral reports (30%) and one 15-20 page research paper exclusive of notes and a list of works cited (50%). On March 2nd, you must also submit a prospectus for your research paper, but it will not receive a grade.
Your Reading Notes (20%) will consist of 1 single-spaced, typed sheet of commentary for the week's reading assignment. The 1-page commentary for each work will be due the week before we discuss that assignment. Each sheet should be a collection of sentences and paragraphs rather than a completely unified response. In these notes, you should feel free to connect your reading of the assignment to any number of topics (e.g. American literature; the modern novel; issues of race, class, or gender; critical approaches). You may ask questions, but you should also try to suggest possible answers. I'm hoping that these notes will focus your reading and enliven our classroom discussion. Each page of commentary will receive a grade of either Y or N. Y means that the report is acceptable, whereas N means that it is not. A missed or late page of commentary will receive an N. Your final grade for your reading notes will be determined as follows: 10-9 Y = A; 8-7 Y = B; 6-5 Y = C; 4 Y = D.
In each of your ten short 10-15 minute oral reports (30%), you should quickly and concisely summarize an assigned essay or book chapter. Then you should discuss and comment on some of the piece's assumptions, contexts (literary, historical, social), and critical methods where issues of canon-formation are involved. You will then field some questions from the class. Each oral report will receive a grade of either Y or N. Y means that the report is acceptable, whereas N means that it is not. A missed or late report will receive an N. Your final grade for your oral reports will be determined as follows: 10-9 Y = A; 8-6 Y = B; 5 Y = C; 4-3 Y = D; 2-0 Y = F. Please do not read your oral presentations: instead you should plan to work from notes. You may also consult with me after each class to find out the grade for your report.
Since you will be spending an entire semester working on your research paper (50%), your work should be publishable in a professional journal and will be evaluated as such. I strongly encourage you to discuss your research plans with me before the prospectus is due and to show me early drafts, no matter how rough, of your work. You may utilize any approach you find congenial or appropriate: new critical, biographical, feminist, marxist, cultural, psychoanalytical, poststructuralist, genetic, etc. In writing about canon formation, you may deal with any American author or authors you like--Stephen Crane's _The Red Badge of Courage _ (1895), Kate Chopin's _The Awakening _ (1899), and Toni Morrison's _Beloved _ (1987) are excellent examples--provided that I am familiar with them. You may also decide to make materials such as literary histories, anthologies, criticism, and editions the center of your paper. Whatever topic or approach you use, please make it clear in your paper how you are entering the scholarly conversation on your subject. Your prospectus for your paper should consist of a 1-page proposal that specifically addresses the following: the subject, your argument about the subject, your critical approach or methodology, the significance or value of the argument, and some of the relevant scholarship.
I will evaluate your written work in terms of structure, argument, use of scholarly sources, correct documentation, grammar, punctuation, spelling, style, and appearance. Documentation for all written assignments must be presented in the form of parenthetical citation with a list of works cited as found in _The MLA Handbook_. Papers which are not written according to this format will not be accepted. Please consult me if you are unsure of how to use the MLA style. Papers should be professionally executed with honest margins and spacing and no onionskin paper. Please make copies of all work that you submit to me.
General Policies:
I do not have an official attendance policy, but I prefer that you attend class. You are, of course, responsible for all work done and all materials handed out in class. To prepare for both oral reports and written work, I both expect and welcome your telephone calls at my office and at home to discuss possible topics and to arrange office appointments. Please plan to consult with me in advance of the due date for an assignment. All oral reports, reading notes, and written work are due on the date indicated on the syllabus. If you cannot finish an assignment on time, please contact me before class starts. No late research papers will be accepted, but I do give incompletes for good reasons.
Faculty and/or staff may no longer drop students from classes because of absences. Should you decide to drop the class, please do so formally so that you do not receive an "F" at the end of the semester.
Academic dishonesty is a crime. If I suspect you of dishonest academic conduct, I will refer your case to the Vice-President for Student Affairs. You will be given an incomplete in the course until your case is resolved. Forms of academic dishonesty include collusion, fabrication, and plagiarism. Collusion is lending your work to another person to submit as his or her own. Fabrication is deliberately creating false information on a works cited (bibliography or references) page. Plagiarism is passing off as your own work the words or ideas of another. If you borrow the words of another person, you must quote and properly credit your source. If you borrow the ideas of another and put them into your own words, you still must properly credit that person or source for those ideas. Exceptions are pieces of information written in your own words that you might gather from any number of readily available or common reference sources. More specific or less common information and quoted information from encyclopedias and dictionaries must still be properly documented, along with specific or quoted information from other sources. See Simon & Schuster: _Handbook for Writers_, Chapter 31, and _Perspectives on Argument_, pages 324-337, to avoid plagiarizing.
Important: please be sure to get the large packet of xeroxed materials from Joe's Copies, 305 S. West Street (275-3992).
Syllabus:
Jan. 22: Syllabus; Research Tools
Jan. 29: The Institution of Literature:
Gerald Graff: _Professing Literature_, Wallace Douglas: "Accidental Institution: On the Origin of Modern Language Study," Elizabeth Renker: "Resistance and Change: The Rise of American Literature Studies," and C. Hugh Holman: "American Literature: the State of the Art."
1st Oral Report:
Everyone is responsible for one on Graff, concentrating more on critique and evaluation than on summary.
Feb. 5: Canon Formation and Critical Approaches:
Frederick Crews: Introduction and "Whose American Renaissance?" from _The Critics Bear It Away_
American Studies: Leo Marx: "Sleepy Hollow, 1844" from _The Machine in the Garden_, R.W.B. Lewis: "Prologue: The Myth and Dialogue" from _The American Adam_
Formalist: Helen Vendler: "Anxiety of Innocence" and F.O. Matthiessen: "Method and Scope" from _American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman_
Feminist: Nina Baym: "Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction Exclude American Authors" and Introduction and "The Form and Ideology of Women's Fiction" in _Woman's Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-1870_
Marxist: Richard Ohmann: "The Shaping of a Canon: U.S. Fiction, 1960-1975"
Multi-cultural or Multi-ethnic: "Paul Lauter: "Race and Gender in the Shaping of the American Literary Canon: A Case Study from the Twenties," and "The Literatures of America: A Comparative Discipline" ( Ruoff and Ward volume)
Cultural Studies: Jane Tompkins: "Introduction: The Cultural Work of American Fiction" and "But Is It Any Good?: The Institutionalization of Literary Value" from _Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860_
Mythological: Leslie Fiedler: "From Ethics and Aesthetics to Ecstatics" from _What Was Literature?: Class Culture and Mass Society_
2nd Oral Report:
Crews: Marx, Lewis: Matthiessen, Vendler: 2 Bayms: 2 Lauters; Ohmann, Fiedler: 2 Tompkins:
Feb. 12: American Literary History and American Literary Histories:
Robert Spiller: "Address to the Reader" from _Literary History of the United States_, Annette Kolodny, "The Integrity of Memory: Creating a New Literary History of the United States," Sacvan Bercovitch: "America as Canon and Context: Literary History as Dissensus," Lawrence Buell: "Literary History Without Sexism? Feminist Studies and Canonical Reception," Emory Elliott: "The Politics of Literary History," Emory Elliott: Preface and General Introduction to _Columbia Literary History of the United States_, William Spengemann: "American Things/Literary Things: The Problem of American Literary History" from _A Mirror for Americanists_. Peter Carafiol: "The New Orthodoxy: Ideology and the Institution of American Literary History."
Note: Meet in Library 203 to break into groups and examine scholarly histories of American literature. Try to consider how your assigned American literary history defines those three words as well as issues of canon-formation.
Tyler, Moses Coit: _A History of American Literature, 1600-1775,_ (?)
Pattee, Fred: _History of American Literature_, 1896
Trent, William Peterfield: _A History of American Literature_, 1903
Trent, William Peterfield, ed: _Cambridge History of American Literature_, 3 vols., 1922
Halleck, Reuben: _History of American Literature_, 1911
Cairns, William: _A History of American Literature_, 1912
Boynton, Percy: _A History of American Literature_, 1919
Vernon Parrington: _Main Currents in American Thought_, 3 vols., 1927-1930
Norman Foerster: _The Reinterpretation of American Literature_, 1928
V.F. Calverton: _Liberation of American Literature_, 1932
Lewisohn, Ludwig: _Expression in America_, 1932.
Hicks, Granville: _The Great Tradition: An Interpretation of American Literature Since the Civil War_, 1933.
Spiller, Robert, ed: _Literary History of the United States_, 1948
Emory Elliott, ed: _Columbia Literary History of the United States_, 1988
3rd Oral Report:
Spiller: Kolodny: Elliott Politics, Preface: Buell: Bercovitch: Spengemann: Carafiol:
Feb. 19: Anthologies of American Literature:
Paul Lauter, et al.: "Forum: What Do We Need to Teach?", Alan Golding: "A History of
American Poetry Anthologies," and Hershel Parker: "The Price of Diversity: An
Ambivalent Minority Report on the American Literary Canon"
Note: Meet in Library 203 to Examine Anthologies of American Literature
Feb. 26: Textual Scholarship and the Editing of American Literature:
Cathy Davidson: "The Life and Times of Charlotte Temple: The Biography of a Book"
Note: Meet in Library 203 to Examine Commercial and Scholarly Editions (and Facsimiles) of Hawthorne, Stowe, Twain, Faulkner, Hurston
Mar. 5: Multiculturalism in American Literature: Prospectus Due From Ruoff and Ward, _Redefining American Literary History_: Harold Kolb: "Defining the Canon," Jarold Ramsey: "Thoreau's Last Words--and America's First Literatures," Robert Hemenway: "In the American Canon," Theresa Melendez: "The Oral Tradition and the Study of American Literature," Nicolas Kanellos: "Orality and Hispanic Literature of the United States"
Also Arnold Krupat: "Native American Literature and the Canon" and Henry Louis Gates: "Canon-Formation, Literary History, and the Afro-American Tradition: From the Seen to the Told"
4th Oral Report:
Kolb: Ramsey: Hemenway: Melendez: Kanellos: Krupat: Gates:
Mar. 12: No Class
Mar. 19: Spring Break
Mar. 26: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter:
F.O. Matthiessen: "The Scarlet Letter" in Norton Critical Edition of _SL_, Richard Chase: "Novel vs. Romance" and comments on _The Scarlet Letter _ in _The American Novel and Its Tradition_; R.W.B. Lewis: "Hawthorne: The Return Into Time," Sacvan Bercovitch: "Hawthorne's A-Morality of Compromise," Jane Tompkins: "Masterpiece Theater: The Politics of Hawthorne's Literary Reputation" from _Sensational Designs_
5th Oral Report on Critical Reception: You do not have to read the NCE criticism unless you are doing an oral report on some of it. PP. 181-90, 249-78: PP. 279-315: PP. 315-61: PP. 361-402: PP. 402-33: Chase, Lewis: Matthiessen and Tompkins:
Apr. 2: Harriet Beecher Stowe, _Uncle Tom's Cabin_:
Leslie Fiedler: "The Many Mothers of Uncle Tom" from What Was Literature? (in the Fiedler material), Jane Tompkins: "Sentimental Power: _Uncle Tom's Cabin _ and the Politics of Literary History" in _Sensational Designs._
6th Oral Report on Critical Reception: You do not have to read the NCE criticism unless you are doing an oral report on some of it. Fiedler and Tompkins: Criticism from Norton _Uncle Tom:_ PP. 442-53, 459-77: PP. 478-94, 495-501: PP. 523-42: PP. 542-68: PP. 568-84:
April 9: No Class
April 16: Mark Twain, _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:_
Richard Chase on _Huck Finn _ (in Chase material);
Leo Marx on _Huck Finn _ from
Steven Mailloux: "Reading _Huckleberry Finn:_ The Rhetoric of Performed Ideology"
7th Oral Report on Critical Reception: You do not have to read the NCE criticism unless you are doing an oral report on some of it. PP. 285-317: PP. 318-62: PP. 363-420: PP. 421-50: Chase and Marx: Mailloux:
Apr. 23: William Faulkner, _The Sound and the Fury_:
Lawrence Schwartz: pp. 1-37,73-112, 142-210 from _Creating Faulkner's Reputation_ ;
Frederick Crews: "Faulkner Methodized" from _The Critics Bear It Away_
8th Oral Report on Critical Reception: You do not have to read the NCE criticism unless you are doing an oral report on some of it. Cont. Reviews (Bassett) and Crews: Schwartz (1-37): Schwartz (73-112)): Schwartz (142-210) Norton Criticism: PP. 218-36, 253-68: PP. 268-311: PP. 311-39: PP. 339-78: PP. 378-414:
Apr. 30: Zora Neale Hurston, _Their Eyes Were Watching God_:
Michael Awkward, "Introduction"
9th Oral Report on Critical Reception:
Contemporary Reviews: 1970-1974:
1975-1979: 1980-1984:
1985-1989: 1990-Present:
Paper Due On or Before This Date
May 7: The End of American Literature?
William Spengemann: "What is American Literature?" from _A Mirror for Americanists_, Annette Kolodny: "Letting Go Our Grand Obsessions: Notes Toward a New Literary History of the American Frontiers," Peter Carafiol: "Commentary: After American Literature," Gregory Jay: "The End of 'American' Literature: Toward a Multicultural Practice," "Comment and Response" to Gregory Jay, Robert Dale Parker: "Material Choices: American Fictions, the Classroom, and the Post-Canon"
10th Oral Report: Spengemann: Kolodny: Carafiol: Parker: Jay, Comment and Response:
Required Texts:
Clemens, Samuel L. _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_. 1884. Rpt. 2nd ed. Eds. Sculley Bradley, et al. New York: Norton, 1977.
Faulkner, William. _The Sound and the Fury_. 1929. Rpt. 2nd ed. Ed. David Minter. New York: Norton, 1993.
Gibaldi, Joseph. _The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers_. 4th ed. New York: Modern Language Association, 1995.
Graff, Gerald. _Professing Literature: An Institutional History_. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. _The Scarlet Letter_. 1850. Rpt. Ed. Seymour Gross, et al. 3rd. ed. New York: Norton, 1988.
Hurston, Zora Neale. _Their Eyes Were Watching God_. 1937. Rpt. New York: Harper Collins, Harper Perennial, 1990.
Ruoff, A. LaVonne Brown and Jerry W. Ward, Jr., eds. _Redefining American Literary History_. New York: Modern Language Association, 1990.
Schwartz, Lawrence H. _Creating Faulkner's Reputation: The Politics of Modern Literary Criticism_. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1988.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. _Uncle Tom's Cabin._ 1852. Rpt. Ed. Elizabeth Ammons. New York: Norton, 1994.
Tompkins, Jane. _Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860_. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.
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