Course: History of English Drama from Mass to City Play (2P/1S, 6 ECTS)
Status: elective
Teacher: Tamara Petrić, assist.
Semester: Fall term 2012/ 2013
Lecture and seminara
Language: English
The final grade in this course will depend on the following considerations: (1) a short essay/ term paper; (2) regular attendance and active participation; and (3) two exams.
Objectives.: The purpose of this study—unit is to introduce students to the immediate social contexts of English medieval and renaissance drama and enable them to map out England’s political and economic interests at various points in history. Staging conditions of the Easter mass, medieval drama’s liturgical beginnings, provide insight into the role of Benedictine monasteries – the place of origin of liturgical drama — in England’s international wool and cloth trade, while the processional form and mercantile display of the Corpus Christi play helps us follow bouts of inter—class conflict and cooperation within regional market towns of late—medieval East Anglia and Yorkshire. The cultural and imaginative geography of the Levant/ the Eastern Mediterraneani and the Middle East, as well as the Baltic in the miracle or saint’s play betrays the increasing importance of foreign trade to Plantagenet economy, while Tudor, Elizabethan and Jacobean Mediterranean plays help us map out England’s political and economic interests in an increasingly global world of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly England’s stake in the eastern Mediterranean and Atlantic trades and the Ottoman threat to the preeminence of Venice as a key mediator in Mediterranean trade. Morality plays construe an idealized feudal contract in the face of an emerging early modern state and the shift toward market dependency, Tudor comedies are concerned with import—export imbalance in inflation—plagued England, while the Jacobean city comedy censures the increasing social mobility facilitated by an influx of money due to piracy and Atlantic slave trade.
Outcomes: In addition to its function as an advanced introduction to early English drama, this course is designed to help students develop their abilities as readers, researchers, writers, and thinkers. By the end of the semester, students should be able to demonstrate their proficiency with such skills as close reading, library research, use of evidence, and argumentative logic.

Tentative schedule of readings and assignments.
Weeks 1 & 2. An Easter Resurrection Play from the Regularis Concordia of St Ethelwold (c. 965—975) and a Pantomime for Easter Day performed in the Abbey Church/ Monastical Church at Durham (England)
– “The Crusades and Eastern Europe, ca. 1100—1550”, in Mortimer Chambers, Raymond Grew, David Herlihy et al, The Western Experience (1974), 2 vols, 5th ed, New York, St Louis, San Francisco et al: McGraw—Hill, 1991; 381—415.
– “The Quem Quaeritis Trope”, “A Pantomime for Easter Day”, “An Easter Resurrection Play”, and “The Orleans Sepulcher”, Medieval and Tudor Drama (1963), ed. John Gassner, New York: Bantam Books, 1987; 33—43.
– John M Wasson, “The English Church A Theatrical Space”, A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan, New York: Columbia UP, 1997; 25—37.
– Roger E. Reynolds, “The Drama of Medieval Liturgical Processions”, Revue de Musicologie, Vol. 86, No. 1 (2000); 127—142.
Weeks 3 & 4. The Wakefield Second Shepherds’ Play
– Second Shepherds’ Play/ Secunda Pastorum, in ‘Everyman’ and Medieval Miracle Plays, ed. A. C. Cawley, London: J. M. Dent, 1956; 81—107.
– Edna Eileen Power, “The English Wool Trade in the Reign of Edward IV”, Cambridge Historical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1926); 17–35.
– Anne Higgins, “Streets and Markets”, A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan, New York: Columbia UP, 1997; 77—92.
Weeks 5 & 6. The Croxton Play of the Sacrament
– The Play of the Sacrament, in Early English Drama (An Anthology), ed. John C. Coldewey, New York, London: Garland Publishing, 1993; 274—305.
– Lisa Lampert, “The Once and Future Jew: The Croxton ‘Play of the Sacrament’, Little Robert of Bury and Historical Memory”, Jewish History, Vol. 15, No. 3 (2001), 235—255.
Weeks 7 & 8. The Summoning of Everyman; mid—term exam (in—class).
– The Somonynge of Eueryman/ Summoning of Everyman, in An Anthology of English Drama Before Shakespeare, ed. Robert B. Heilman, New York, Toronto: Rinehart, 1954; 73—104.
– Roger Ladd, “‘My condicion is mannes soule to kill’ — Everyman’s Mercantile Salvation”, Comparative Drama, Vol. 41, No. 1 (2007), 57–78.
– Suzanne Westfall, “’A Commonty a Christmas gambold or a tumbling trick’: Household Theater”, A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan, New York: Columbia UP, 1997; 39—58.
Weeks 9 & 10. Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great
– Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, ed. J. W. Harper. London: Ernest Benn, 1971.
– Jonathan Burton, “Anglo—Ottoman Relations and the Image of the Turk in Tamburlaine”, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 30.1 (2000), 125—157.
Weeks 11 & 12. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
– William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, in William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, New York: Penguin Putnam, 2002; 293—323.
– Jennifer Rich, “The Merchant Formerly Known as Jew: Redefining the Rhetoric of Merchantry in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.”, Early Modern Literary Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3 (January, 2008) 2. 01—19.
– Alan Stewart, “‛Come from Turkie’: Mediterranean Trade in Late Elizabethan London”, Remapping the Mediterranean World in Early Modern English Writings, ed. Goran Stanivukovic, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; 157—177.)
– Weeks 13 & 14. Arden of Feversham
– Arden of Feversham, in English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology, ed. David Bevington, Lars Engle, Katharine Eisaman Maus, and Eric Rasmussen, New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2002; 421–482.
– Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr, “’Arden Lay Murdered in That Plot of Land’: Surveying, Land and Arden of Faversham”, English Literary History, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), 231—252.
Week 15. Elizabethan playhouses; concluding remarks; final exam.
– John Orrell, “The Theaters”, A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan, New York: Columbia UP, 1997; 93—112.

Course title: Shakespeare
Instructor: Prof. Janja Ciglar-Žanić.
ECTS credits: 6.
Status: elective.
Semester: 4^th or 6^th semester.
Enrollment requirements: completed 3^rd or 5^th semester.
Course description: The course will be concerned with a selected number of Shakespeare’s plays viewed in the light of new theories of literature and culture. A study of the new strategies of reading, developed in the last few decades (new historicism, cultural materialism, feminism, postcolonialism), will introduce the course. Each of the selected plays will be accompanied by different film productions of the corresponding play and the discussions will centre on the relationship between text and its visual presentations. Special attention will be paid to the reinscriptive practices in both textual criticism and film productions.
Objectives: The main objective of the course is to shed a new light on the traditional understanding and reading of the plays as well as on the plays themselves. An additional objective is to examine how Shakespeare’s texts function in a medium non-existent in Shakespeare’s time and how in both their textual and visual medium they are related to our present concerns.
Course requirements: Continuous evaluation: Class work (regular attendance at lectures and active class participation), a seminar paper (with an oral presentation), and two quiz– and essay—style exams on issues raised by plays covered in class and social and cultural issues as they relate to Shakespeare’s plays.

Week by week schedule:
Week 1: Introduction: Strategies of reading.
Week 2: Strategies of reading (continued).
Week 3: Shakespearean stage.
Week 4: Hamlet: various readings with the emphasis on new historicist, psychoanalytic, and political interpretations. Footage from films directed by G. Kozintsev, L. Olivier, T. Richardson and K. Branagh.
Week 5: Hamlet (continued).
Week 6: Antony and Cleopatra: different readings with the emphasis on feminist interpretation. Film clips: J. Scoffield.
Week 7: Antony and Cleopatra (continued).
Week 8: Mid—term exam.
Week 9: A Midsummer Night’s Dream: various reinscriptive practices in textual criticism and performance. Film clips: A. Noble, M. Hoffman, A. Popovski (Gavella Theatre production).
Week 10: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (continued).
Week 11: The Tempest: different readings with the emphasis on postcolonial interpretation Film clips: (the BBC production), D. Jarman, P. Greenaway (Prospero’s Books).
Week 12: The Tempest (continued).
Week 13: The Tempest (continued).
Week 14: Concluding remarks.
Week 15: End—term exam.

Required reading:
-Orgel, Stephen, i A. R. Braunmuller (ur), The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, New York: Penguin, 2002.
– Barker, Francis, i Peter Hulme, “Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish: The Discursive Con–Texts of The Tempest”, u: Drakakis, John (ed), Alternative Shakespeares. London i New York: Routledge, 1985; 191-205.
– Carter, Ronald, «The Renaissance: 1485-1660», u: Carter, Ronald, i John McRae (ur). The Routledge History of Literature in English. London & New York: Routledge, 1997; 57-126.
– Ciglar-Žanić, Janja, “Antikolonijalna Oluja: teorija i praksa suvremenih reinskripcija Shakespearea”, u: Neka veća stalnost: Shakespeare u tekstu i kontekstu, Zagreb: Zavod za znanost o književnosti Filozofskog fakulteta, 2001; 125-151.
– Coddon, Karin S, «‘Suche Strange Desygns’: Madness, Subjectivity, and Treason in Hamlet and Elizabethan Culture», u: Wofford, Susanne L (ur), Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism: William Shakespeare, ‘Hamlet’. New York: Bedford Books, 1994; 380-402.
– Desmet, Christy, “Character Criticism”, u: Wells, Stanley, i Lena Cowe Orlin (eds), Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003; 351-372.
– Fitz, Linda T, “Egyptian Queens and Male Reviewers: Sexist Attitudes in Antony and Cleopatra Criticism.”, u: Drakakis, John (ur), New Casebooks: Antony and Cleopatra, Houndmills [itd.]: Macmillan, 1994; 182-211.
– French, Marilyn, “Antony and Cleopatra”, u Shakespeare’s Division of Experience, London: Abacus, 1983; 251-265.
– Girard, René, “The Course of True Love”, u A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare; New York & Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991; 29-79.
– Greenblatt, Stephen J, “Learning To Curse: Aspects of Linguistic Colonialism in the Sixteenth Century”, u Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture, New York & London: Routledge, 1992, 16-39.
– Gurr, Andrew, «The Shakespearean Stage», u: Greenblatt, Stephen (ur), The Norton Shakespeare, New York i London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1997; 3281-3301.
– Harrison, G. B, “Materials for the Life of Shakespeare”, in Introducing Shakespeare (3. izd), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966; 29-75.
– Holderness, Graham, «Bardolatry: or, The cultural materialist’s guide to Stratford—upon—Avon», u: Holderness, Graham (ur), The Shakespeare Myth, Manchester: Manchester UP, 1998; 02–15.
– Jones, Norman, “Shakespeare’s England”, u: Kastan, David Scott (ur), A Companion to Shakespeare, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999; 25-41.
– Kott, Jan, “Titania and the Ass’s Head”, u: Shakespeare Our Contemporary, prev. Boleslaw Taborski, New York: Doubleday, 1966; 213-236.
– Loomba, Ania, “‘Travelling thoughts’: Theatre and the Space of the Other”, u: Drakakis, John (ur), New Casebooks: Antony and Cleopatra, Houndmills [itd]: Macmillan, 1994; 279-307.
– Neill, Michael, “Hamlet: A Modern Perspective”, in Mowat, Barbara A. & Paul Werstine (eds), The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, New York [etc]: The New Folger Library Shakespeare, 1992; 307-326.
– Tatspaugh, Patricia, “Performance history: Shakespeare on the stage 1660-2001”, u: Wells, Stanley, & Lena Cowe Orlin (eds), Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003; 525-549.

Recommended reading:
– Barber, C. L, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and its Relation to Social Custom, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972.
– Bradley, A. C, Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, London: Macmillan, 1904.
– Brooker, Peter, i Peter Widdowson (ur), A Practical Reader in Contemporary Literary Theory, Harlow [etc.]: Prentice Hall, 1996.
– Bulman, James C (ur), Shakespeare, Theory and Performance, London i New York: Routledge, 1996.
– Ciglar-Žanić, Janja, Domišljato stvoren svijet: Barok u engleskoj književnosti, Zagreb: Slap, 2008.
– Ciglar-Žanić, Janja, Neka veća stalnost: Shakespeare u tekstu i kontekstu, Zagreb: Zavod za znanost o književnosti Filozofskoga fakulteta u Zagrebu, 2001.
– Cox, John D, i David Scott Kastan (ur), A New History of Early English Drama, s uvodnom riječju Stephena J. Greenblattaa, New York: Columbia UP, 1997.
– De Grazia, Margreta, i Stanley Wells (ur), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.
– Dollimore, Jonathan; i Alan Sinfield (ur), Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism, Manchester i New York: Manchester UP, 1985.
– Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957.
– —   A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance, New York i London: Columbia UP, 1965.
– —   Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy, Toronto [itd]: University of Toronto Press, 1996.
– Greenblatt, Stephen (ur), The Norton Shakespeare, New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1997.
– Harrison, G. B, Introducing Shakespeare (3. izd), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966.
– Hattaway, Michael; Boika Sokolova, i Derek Roper (ur), Shakespeare in the New Europe. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994.
– Kastan, David Scott (ur), A Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
– Kermode, Frank (ur), Shakespeare: King Lear. 1969.
– Kott, Jan, The Bottom Translation: Marlowe and Shakespeare and the Carnival Tradition. Prev. Daniela Miedzyrzecka i Lillian Vallee. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern UP, 1987.
– Loomba, Ania, Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama, Bombay [itd]: Oxford UP, 1992.
– Lupić, Ivan, Prijetvorni subject: transtekstualni okviri Shakespeareovih soneta, Zagreb: L biblioteka Zavoda za znanost o književnosti Filozofskog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, 2007.
– McDonald, Russ, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents (2. izd), Boston i New York: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2001.
– Parker, Patricia, i Geoffrey Hartman (ur), Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, London: Methuen, 1985.
– Schoenbaum, Samuel, William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life, New York i Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987.
– Selden, Raman; Peter Widdowson, i Peter Brooker (ur), A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, London [itd.]: Prentice Hall, 1997.
– Styan, John Louis, The Shakespeare Revolution: Criticism and Performance in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1977.
– Swift Lenz, Carolyn Ruth; Gayle Greene; i Carol Thomas Neely (ur), The Woman’s Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1980.
– Tillyard, E. M. W, The Elizabethan World Picture, London: Chatto & Windus, 1943.
– Torbarina, Josip, “Predgovor”, in Shakespeare, William, San ivanjske noći. Transl. Milan Bogdanović. Redigirao Josip Torbarina. Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 1970.
– Vickers, Brian, English Renaissance Literary Criticism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.
– Weimann, Robert, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater: Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function. Schwartz, Robert (ur). Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1987.
– Wells, Stanley, i Lena Cowe Orlin (ur), Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003; pp. 391-410.

Course title: The American Bildungsroman of the 19th and the 20th Century
Instructor: Assoc. Prof. Jelena Šesnić
Spring 2012/13, 2018/19
BA program

Course description:
Bildungsroman as a genre addresses the process of the acquisition of social and cultural identity taking as its representative figure the bourgeois subject in the making. Another significant fault line operating in the genre deals with the issue of different paths of emergence for male and female subjects, respectively, showing interesting parallels and exemplary divergences. These parallel developments will be pursued in a number of representative texts while simultaneously offering a chronological line of development of the genre within US-American literature. Cultural models of the “invention of childhood” (Ph. Ariès ), psychoanalytic models of subject formation and generic criticism will be the dominant methods of approach to the novels that retain their focus on fascinating processes of individual identity formation.

Primary works:
1. Horatio Alger: Ragged Dick (1868)
2. Louisa May Alcott: Little Women (1868, 1869)
3. Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
4. Paule Marshall: Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959)
5. Bobbie Ann Mason: In Country (1985)
6. Colson Whithead: Sag Harbour (2009)

Secondary readings:
– Ariès, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood. New York: Vintage, 1962. (selection)
– Bakhtin, Mikhail. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin: U of Texas P, 1986. (selection)
– Moretti, Franco. The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture. 1987. New ed. London: Verso, 2000. (selection)

– Reader for the course containing additional secondary sources.

Grade break-down: Grades in the seminar are based on the system of continuous evaluation: tests (midterm and final: 40%); seminar paper (6-7 pp.; 30%); attendance and participation (10%); assignments (20%).

Course title: American literature and culture 2: American Non-Fiction Writing, 1580-1880
Instructor: Prof. Douglas Ambrose
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: 4^th or 6^th semester
Status: elective
Enrolment requirements: completed Introduction to English literature, enrolment in the 4^th or 6^th semester

COURSE PURPOSE: This course provides an introduction to American history through various forms of non-fiction writing. Beginning with sixteenth-century English accounts of the New World, we will explore the development of certain themes and genres that came to characterize American non-fiction, including the jeremiad, the captivity narrative, social and physical mobility, “manifest destiny” and providentialism, the slave narrative, nature writing, and the promise of “the west.”  We will follow a chronological narrative through American history, recognizing throughout the political and social contexts of the texts while paying close attention to the internal development of the genres to which they belong. 

COURSE STRUCTURE:  Students must complete the readings for the week prior to our Monday meetings.  Each Monday meeting will begin with a brief quiz on that week’s materials.  Each student must bring the week’s readings to class each week.  Although I will occasionally lecture in order to situate the texts, class discussion of the readings will constitute the bulk of our meetings.  A successful class requires the participation of all students.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS: In addition to regular attendance, preparation, and participation, students will write three short papers (500-750 words each) and take a midterm and final exam.  Beginning with Week 2 and continuing for every subsequent week through week 15, I will provide a question at the conclusion of Tuesday’s meeting.  Students will pick three of these questions to write on.  Papers are always due the following Monday.  I will not accept any late papers, so choose wisely.  The midterm exam will take place on either 15 or 16 April.  The final exam will take place on either 10 or 11 June.

COURSE SCHEDULE
Week 1: Envisioning America. Read Thomas Harriot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588/1590).
Week 2: Planting a “New England.” Read John Cotton, “God’s Promise to His Plantation” (1630); John Winthrop, “Model of Christian Charity” (1630).
Week 3: Exhorting America: The Jeremiad and its Meanings. Read Samuel Danforth, New England’s Errand into the Wilderness (1670); Increase Mather, An Exhortation To the Inhabitants of New England (1676).
Week 4: Captivity, Identity, and Redemption. Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (1682).
Week 5: Becoming American.  Read Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (1791).
Week 6: The Transformation of Political Discourse. Read Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776); Samuel Sherwood, “The Church’s Flight into the Wilderness” (1776).
Week 7: Midterm exam.
Week 8: Explaining America. Read Hector St. John de Crevecour, Letters From an American Farmer (1782) Read “Advertisement and Dedication,” Letter I, Letter III, and Letter IX; Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1787). Read “Front Matter,” Query 8, Query 11, Query 14, and Query 17.
Week 9: Exploring America. William Bartram, Travels (1791). Read Part IV, Chapters  I-VI; Lewis and Clark, Journals (1814). Read July 30, 1804; August 25, 1804; September 24 & 25, 1804; October 8, 9, 10, 11, & 12, 1804; October 27, 1804; October 29, 1804; October 31, 1804; November 4, 1804.
Week 10: American Destiny. Read Lyman Beecher, A Plea for the West (1832); and John L. O’Sullivan, “The Great Nation of Futurity” (1839).
Week 11: The Beginnings of African American Political Writing.  Read David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829).
Week 12: Narrating American Slavery and American Freedom. Read William Wells Brown, Narrative of William Wells Brown, A Fugitive Slave (1847); Josiah Henson, The Life of Josiah Henson . . . (1849).
Week 13: The “Other America”: The South.  Read James Henley Thornwell, “The Christian Doctrine of Slavery” (1850); Louisa McCord, “Woman and Her Needs” (1852); George Fitzhugh, “Southern Thought” (1857), on Omega.
Week 14: A New Birth: Postbellum America.  Read Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address” (1865); Horace Bushnell, “Our Obligations to the Dead” (1865) on Omega; Frederick Douglass, “What the Black Man Wants” (1865); and “Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln” (1876).
Week 15: Final Exam.

Course title: American literature and culture 1: The Old South
Instructor: Prof. Douglas Ambrose (Fulbright Scholar)
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Status: Elective
Semester: 3^th or 5^th
Enrolment requirements: completed Introduction to English Literature
_________________________________________________________________________________________

COURSE GOALS:
Tell about the South. What’s it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all.
                                                                                        William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!

COURSE DISCRIPTION:
In this course we will “tell about the South.”  We will focus on the development and consolidation of the slave society and culture of the Old South and its relation to northern society and culture.  Through selected readings, lectures, and discussions, we will explore how the South developed a distinctive social order that found itself by the 1850s locked in a life and death struggle with the North.  What were the historical origins of this powerful, complex, and changing regional society?  What role did slavery play in southern social, cultural, economic, and political life?  How did a society of different and often antagonistic races and classes maintain stability and order down to the War for Southern Independence?  How did Africans and African Americans accommodate to and resist their enslavement?  How did white and black southerners perceive and relate to each other?  What characterized elite and non-elite white culture?  How did southern literary expression—novels, poetry, scholarship, religious literature—both participate in a broad “American” culture and reflect a distinct “Southern” cultural movement?  By addressing these questions, and others, we will gain a better understanding of how this region and its people affected the course of American history and culture.
FORMAT:
Although primarily a lecture course, I encourage questions and comments at all times.  On certain occasions, we will conduct class entirely as a discussion-based seminar.  Students should always complete all readings for the week before the Wednesday meeting so that they can offer informed and thoughtful contributions to class discussions.
ASSIGNMENTS:
You will have two written assignments, each of approximately 1000-1250 words. There will also be a final examination.
EVALUATION:
I will evaluate your performance based on your attendance, participation, and performance on the papers and the exam.
REQUIRED READINGS:
Nearly all of the materials for the course will be either on the class’s Omega site or available online.  Students should obtain a hard copy of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Course title: The Nineteenth-Century American Novel
Instructor: Assoc. Prof. Jelena Šesnić
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: Semester 3 to 6
Status: elective
Course description: The novel figures as one of the key literary genres in the development of US national literature. The course proposes to chart a development and diversification of the American novel in the nineteenth century, as it sustains the idea of American specificity on one hand, while,  on the other, reflects derivation from and postcolonial cultural dependence on the European (English) literary models.  The growing sense of American cultural consciousness will be traced on the exemplary novels in the course of the 19th century that are still important cultural landmarks. In addition, the development of the novel suggests changes of literary styles and periods ranging from neo-classicist to romantic to realist and beyond. At the same time, these novels exemplify the most common sub-genres of the American novel at the time. The proposed primary texts include:  Herman Melville’s Moby Dick  (romance/ the philosophical novel; with some ommissions); E . A. Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (the adventure/ gothic novel); Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (the sentimental novel); and William Dean Howell’s A Hazard of New Fortunes (the realist novel).

Reading:

The novels (listed above)

Criticism, prefaces, reviews, manifestoes:
– Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The Poet“
– Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Prefaces (selection)
– Howells, William Dean. “A Call for Realism“
– James, Henry. The Art of the Novel (selection); The American Scene (selection)
– Melville, Herman. “Hawthorne and His Mosses“
– Twain, Mark. “James Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses“
– Buell, Lawrence. “The Unkillable Dream of the Great American Novel: Moby-Dick as Test Case“. American Literary History 20. 1-2 (Spring-Summer 2008): 132-55.
– Chase, Richard. The American Novel and Its Tradition. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957. 1-28.
– Cheyfitz, Eric. „A Hazard of New Fortunes: The Romance of Self-Realization“.  American Realism: New Essays. Ed. Eric Sundquist. Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1982. 42-65.
– Goddu, Teresa. Gothic America: Narrative, History, and Nation. New York: Columbia UP, 1997. (selection)
– Jehlen, Myra. «The Novel and the Middle Class in America». Ideology and Classic American Literature. Eds. Sacvan Bercovitch and Myra Jehlen. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. 125-44.
– Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860. New York, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985. 122-46.

Additional reading:
– Armstrong, Nancy and Leonard Tennenhouse. “The American Origins of the English Novel“. American Literary History 4.3 (Autumn 1992): 386-410.
– Buell, Lawrence. “American Literary Emergence as a Postcolonial Phenomenon”. American Literary History 4.3 (Autumn 1992): 411-42.
– Castronovo, Russ. Beautiful Democracy: Aesthetics and Anarchy in a Global Era. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2007. (selection)
– Fisher, Philip. Hard Facts: Setting and Form in the American Novel. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986. (selection)
– Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957. (selection)
– Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1964. (selection)

Requirements: Regular attendance and active participation in the seminar (10 % of the grade); oral presentation (10% ); seminar paper (30 %); written tests (mid-term and final: 50 %). Seminar grade is based on continuous assessment comprising all the above elements.