ENG 335LEC
19th-C US Fiction

Examination of developments in the short story and novel in the U.S., including work by such authors as Brown, Cooper, Poe, Stowe, Hawthorne, Melville, Jacobs, Alcott, Davis, Twain, and James. For example: Prof. K. Dauber, Romance to Naturalism This course will survey the American novel from its beginning through the end of the nineteenth century. We will start with Benjamin Franklin's "Autobiography" as it provides a model for American narrative and proceed, historically, through the development of American fiction from romance to realism to naturalism. Writers that we will read include Charles Brockden Brown, the first professional novelist in the country; James Fenimore Cooper, the inventor of the cowboy-and-Indian story; Harriet Beecher Stowe, the most popular woman novelist of the era; Hawthorne and Melville, the climax of American fiction before the Civil War; Henry James and Mark Twain, who exhibit the twin poles, high and low, of American realism, and some beyond. For example: Prof. K. Dauber, The Idea of America This course surveys American Literature during its "classic" period in the nineteenth century. We will discuss such issues as the idea of the American, the form of the American novel, the poetics and politics of community formation, and democratic writing. Writers will include Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Poe, Stowe, Douglass, and some others.

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