I.  ENGL 221       American Literature I        3 credit hours      Fall 2001

II.  Professor: Elizabeth Lamont      email: elamont@inetlmu.lmunet.edu

     Office: Avery 113            Phone: 869-6271    

     Office Hours:  MWF: 11-12; T, TR: 9:30-10:30

III. Prerequisite:  ENGL 112 or 122

IV. Course Description:  English 221 examines the emergence and progress of American literary genius from the colonial period to 1865.

V.   Course Objectives: 

1.      To explore how America’s great writers shaped our emerging literary consciousness, and how the facts of the American experience shaped them

      and their imagination.

2.      To discover the unique and effective ways American writers used different literary forms to achieve their particular purposes and effects.

3.      To become more conscious of the particular social, religious, and political contexts surrounding writers’ works.

4.      To increase appreciation of and sensitivity to metaphor, symbol, language, theme, structure, style, and world view in the works of the major writers who comprise our nation’s literary heritage.

VI.   Text:  The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume I (5th edition)

VII.       Course Content/ Units of Instruction:

1.      Early American Lit: Bradstreet, Taylor, Franklin, Irving, Cooper

2.      Transcendentalism: Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, Whitman

3.      Dark Romanticism: Poe, Hawthorne, Dickinson

VIII.  Methods of Instruction and Learning: reading and writing, class lecture and discussion, film.

IX.  Course Requirements and Evaluation:

1.      More than 3 absences will result in a lowered final grade and, possibly, failure of the course. Students who miss a class are expected to find out what they missed and come prepared to the next class.  ABSENCE is NOT an EXCUSE for lack of preparation.

2.      Work turned in late without prior permission will be marked down one full grade.  The instructor reserves the right to refuse to accept work handed in more than two days late.

3.      Students will be required to write 3 papers, take frequent reading quizzes, to take 3 exams (essay and objective).

4.      Evaluation will be as follows: each paper (15%), each exam (15%), quiz average (10%). 

5.      Plagiarism will result in failure of course.

 

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