ENGL 640 Early American Literature and Culture

Early American Literature and Culture is a survey of American literature and culture from 1492 to 1800. The focus of our study in this course is a "mixture," the heterogeneous American literatures of the era. Our emphasis will be on the diversity of American social life in this period. We will read slave narratives, Indian captivity narratives, travel narratives, trial transcripts, sermons and spiritual autobiographies, journals and letters, political tracts and speeches, poems, confessions and diaries, histories, essays, newspaper articles, autobiographies, and three novels. We will read work written by Native peoples, slaves, explorers, women, Puritans, Quakers, Catholics, presidents and a first lady, patriots and loyalists, diplomats and soldiers, farmers and merchants, a famous inventor and diplomat (Benjamin Franklin), a weird Gothic novelist (Charles Brockden Brown), and more. Some of these figures are legendary—Christopher Columbus, Captain John Smith, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Boone, Tom Paine, etc. Others are not well known at all.

Our reading and discussion will be organized around different approaches to the study of American culture. Some sections of the schedule focus on an examination of the writings of different cultural groups and their contacts with other groups. See the "The People and the European Invasion" sections, for instance. The portions of the schedule devoted to Puritanism, the Revolution, and the Enlightenment emphasize the history of ideas and systems of thought. Popular culture is the center of other segments on the syllabus, especially toward the end of the semester when we will be reading sentimental, picaresque, and gothic novels. Some parts of the schedule may focus on the intersection of all three approaches—the "Indian Captivity Narratives" section, for example. The aim in organizing the course this way is to emphasize the variety of cultural approaches to American writing and life. American cultural studies is not simply the study of cultural groups and identities, or the study of theory and ideas, or the study of popular culture. It's all of those things. Moreover, the "canonical" authors of this era—Bradstreet, Edwards, Franklin, Jefferson, Wheatley, for example—are all represented.