ENGL 059. 19th Century American Novels

When we think of 19th century American literature, we tend to think of novels: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, and so on. But the novel was still a new and somewhat dubious genre in the nineteenth-century U.S., and its identity was not yet settled. In this course, we will read some of the “big” books of the period, but we will try to read them as they might have been read at the time, as experimental controversial works. Texts may include Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables, William Wells Brown’s Clotel, and Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona, in addition to those listed above.
18th/19th c.
Humanities.
1 credit.
Catalog chapter: English Literature
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature

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