FYS 13 Because Each Believes Himself Inspired: Individualism and the Birth of American Literature
In “The American Scholar,” Ralph Waldo Emerson urged the spirit of a young nation to pour its novelty into its cultural production, so as “to look from under its iron lids, and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill.” In the half century following this invocation, American literature more than fulfilled the charge, establishing itself as a unique and prosperous field through meditations on Emerson’s notion of individuality. This course will look at this first great explosion of American letters as it unfolds in the context of Emerson’s call to arms, from the Romantic movement that Emerson founded, through realism and regionalism, to the birth of modernism. Beginning with the foundation of individualism, it will consider other crucial downstream themes, such as the education of women, the problem of slavery, and the growing modernization of the nation, in the context of writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Frederick Douglass, Kate Chopin and Emily Dickinson.
Prerequisite
Open only to first year frosh