This course aims to examine the development of American fiction from the establishment of the Republic in the last quarter of the eighteenth century to the aftermath of the Civil War. The course will explore the emergence of a distinct American literary tradition, which reflects aspects of an inherent American ideology, as well as the particular aesthetic discourses of the time.
TEXTS will include works by Brockden Brown, Hawthorne, Jacobs, Beecher Stowe.
WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS: midterm exam or paper, final exam