AML 5017 Fall 2018 Moore

Yep, there's currently a renaissance underway focusing on early American literature and history. In that context, and in synch with growing attention to the history of the book, we'll explore the growth of prose fiction in the century or so preceding the so-called American Renaissance of the early 1850s. We'll read Jürgen Habermas's Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Cathy Davidson's brilliantly expanded edition of Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America, as well as such early examples as The Power of Sympathy, Charlotte Temple, The Coquette and one of Charles Brockden Brown's titles from the end of the 1790s, the wild Wieland, working our way toward Hope Leslie. We'll see what all the fuss was about, in Hawthorne's prefaces, about distinctions between novel and romance. In preparation for writing a 15-page research paper, each student will prepare an annotated bib, then a prospectus, then a full draft; there'll be no mid-term, then, but we'll close with a take-home exam. Meanwhile, for background on that renaissance in scholarship on early American culture, get yourself to https://theasa.net/communities/caucuses/early-american-matters-caucus and to www.societyofearlyamericanists.org.