SNRSCH1225 - ENG 2502 - Introduction to American Writing

Course Description

This course surveys the development of American literature from approximately 1840 to close of the Twentieth Century. Never far from the initial search for the “New Eden” of the Puritan founders, Manifest Destiny in the nineteenth century justified a mode of territorial, cultural, and individual expansion. Yet, as the land became hemmed in by the century’s closing, so too did the individual’s mobility, freedom, and flexibility as hierarchies became fixed and crises of any sort international. As Toadvine reflects in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, “You wouldnt think a man would run plumb out of country out here, would ye?” (McCarthy 285). The demarcation of the frontier’s limits signaled a threat to the freedom of movement and the opportunity that had once brought a nation together into the mindset of a collective independence. After the trauma of the Depression and the World Wars there was an increasing anxiety concerning how the expansive spirit of American exceptionalism could survive in an age evermore integrated and confined by capital’s “hidden currents” (Keynes 166), technology’s binding circuitry, and weaponry’s ever-growing efficiency and radius. Faced with a growing subjugation to outside limitations and systems, a greater need emerged for Americans to turn inward in an attempt to redefine and re-envision their identity. Throughout the semester, while focusing on narrative literature, we will explore a diverse array of texts, genres, and forms. In turn, we will seek how these tactics reflect and engage with American anxieties of identity and place as we seek an understanding of American literature and American conception of self after the trauma of civil and global war.