Frederic Church, Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights)

English 772: The Romantic Period in American Literature ____________________ Reading Schedule III. Abolitionist Literature of Slavery & Freedom ____________________           Reading  Schedule  I           Reading  Schedule II           Course Requirements           Research  Resources           Nichols Home Page

NOTE:  Written Reports are due the week the oral presentation is given.

REVISED:  Week 9-Week 13
 

Week Nine (Mar. 13) The Soul Selects Its Own Society

• Finish discussing Thoreau
• Emily Dickinson, poems--the poems at this site are listed by numbers.
  • The (Woman) Poet:
    #593 I think I was enchanted;   #613 They shut me up in prose;  #303 The Soul Selects;  #508 I'm ceded;  #657 I dwell in possibility;  #569 I reckon; #675 Essential Oils are wrung.
  • Responses to Emersonian Nature:
    #214 I taste a liquor never brewed;   #324 Some keep the Sabbath;   #130 These are the Days;   #219 She sweeps with many-colored Brooms;  #291 How the old Mountains drip;  #328 A Bird Came Down the Walk;   #822 This Consciousness that is aware.
  • Dickinson Gothic: 
    #670 One need not be a chamber; #258 There's a certain slant of light;  #280  I felt a Funeral in my Brain;  #341 After Great Pain;  #465 I heard a fly buzz; #577 If I may have it when its dead; #712 Because I could not wait for Death.
  • Desire and Renunciation:
    #211 Come slowly Eden;  #249 Wild Nights; #640  I cannot live with you;  #732 She rose to His Requirement;  #742 Renunciation;  #631 Ourselves were wed;  #754 My Life had stood.
• Report:  Brook Farm and Other Utopian Communities
• Documented Comparison Paper assigned.  Due by end of semester.

Online Resources: optional, but recommended.
Dickinson biography--longer 
Dickinson criticism--short excerpts from scholarly studies
Emily Dickinson's Horizons--book review of Farr's The Passion of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson and her Sacraments by Klein--good article on the spiritual language in her poetry.
Many Dickinson links here (scholarly articles) and here (biography and other information).

Week Ten (Mar. 17-25)  Spring Break

Week Eleven (Mar. 27) Solitary Souls vs Communal Utopias

• Report:  Spiritualism, Mediums, and Spirit-rappers
• Finish discussing Emily Dickinson
• Nathaniel Hawthorne, Blithedale Romance

Online Resources: optional, but recommended.
Study Questions on Blithedale; more study questions.
"Dreams and Sexual Repression in The Blithedale Romance" --abstract; trace these ideas in the novel.
Did Hawthorne Throw The Wrong Woman In The River? --this seems to be a rough draft, but the ideas are interesting and provocative.
Links on Hawthorne--lots of them

Week Twelve (Apr. 3) The Poet of Democracy and Nature

• Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
• Report:  The Abolitionist Movement and the Slave Narrative
• Take-home exam handed out.
• Begin reading Melville, "Benito Cereno" (to be discussed next class period)

Online Research: optional, but recommended.
Common Questions on Whitman--covers some basic issues
Walt Whitman--helpful study notes by Heath
Walt Whitman Hyper Archive
Development of Leaves of Grass
Amistad incident

Week Thirteen (Apr. 10) The Middle Passage

• Take-home exam due
• Video:  Cinque
• Herman Melville, "Benito Cereno"

Online Resource: optional, but recommended.
Heath Guide to Melville--good study questions on Benito Cereno near bottom of the page.
Benito Cereno--good commentary on the story; some study questions at the end
More links on Benito Cereno

Week Fourteen (Apr. 17)  Narratives of Slavery and Freedom

• Frederick Douglass, Life of . . . an American Slave
• Harriet Ann Jacobs, selections from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl:  Ch. 1 Childhood;  Ch. VI Jealous Mistress;  Ch. X Perilous Passage;  Ch. XVI Scenes at the Plantation;  Ch. XXI Loophole of Retreat;  Ch. XLI Free at Last  (or  find the same chapters here).
• Report:  Backgrounds and Influences of Uncle Tom's Cabin

Online Resources: optional, but recommended.
Douglass Biography
Many more links on Douglass
Jacobs Biography--Since you are only reading "selections," you should read this biography.
Heath Guide to Jacobs--good study notes
Many more links on Jacobs

Week Fifteen (Apr. 24) The Best-Seller of the 19th Century

• Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Vashti; Aunt Chloe (or here); Aunt Chloe's Politics; Learning to Read; Save the Boys; Fishers of Men (or here)
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (read 1/2)-

Online Resources: optional, but recommended.
Stowe Biography
Study Aid for Uncle Tom's Cabin--consult "Character Analysis" and "Themes"
Harper biography
 

Week Sixteen (May 8) 

• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (finish novel)
• Take-home Exam due (may be handed in by Friday)
• Documented Paper due (may be handed in by Wednesday, Final Exam week)
• Course evaluation

Reading Schedule I    /    Reading Schedule II    /    Course Requirements 

Research Resources     /      Nichols Home Page

Comments/suggestions: knichols@pittstate.edu                      Posted:  1-15-02                      Background by: www.graphicsbyrhiannon.com