Description
This course is designed to offer students a survey of the rise of the American novel from its beginnings into the period of American realism. We will begin with the sentimental tradition, examining the controversies surrounding novels and the alleged dangers associated with reading novels, particularly for women readers, and why virtually no novels were published in colonial American before the Revolution. We will examine the ways in which novels were used as didactic conduct books, the moral/social pressures imposed on authors, and the ways in which early American authors were beginning to define and question issues of national, personal, social, racial, gender, etc. identity. As we progress into the nineteenth century, we will look at authors who were beginning to be able to make a living as writers, and some of the major novelists of the American Renaissance, as well as some very popular, but until relatively recently, under-acknowledged authors. We will then examine the abrupt