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Academic Year 2004/2005

19th-Century American Literature: Hybrid Narratives
ENGL 266 SP
Crosslistings:
AMST 265

In this course, we will be exploring the mid- through late-nineteenth-century authorial concern with the split, divided, or hybrid self. We will explore this idea by beginning with the externalization of a gendered other in Henry James' "The Beast in the Jungle" (1901) and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892) and by tracing the internalization of this other in the poetry of Emily Dickinson and the prose of Henry David Thoreau. Next, we will examine questions of racial hybridity and its relation to self and national authoring in the works of Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman, and Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton. We will also be exploring the role of the split self and its relation to miscegenation, racial science and Reconstruction in literature by Charles Chesnutt, Pauline Hopkins, and Mark Twain.

MAJOR READINGS

Charles Chesnutt, THE MARROW OF TRADITION (1901)
Charlotte Perkin's Gilman, THE YELLOW WALLPAPER (1892)
Pauline Hopkins, OF ONE BLOOD, OR, THE HIDDEN SELF (1902-03)
Edgar Allen Poe, THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM (1838)
Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT? (1872)
Mark Twain, PUDD'NHEAD WILSON (1894)

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Five very short reaction papers (1 pp.); two papers (6-7 pp.; and 10-13 pp.); class participation.

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture/Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL    Grading Mode: Graded   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-21-2005

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