THE UNIVERSITY OF BAMENDA

DEPARTMENT: ENGLISH
LITA 2103: Course Outline
COURSE TITLE: SURVEY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
CREDIT VALUE: 6
VENUE OF LECTURE: PBA05 Thursday 8:30 – 10:00
NAME(S) OF COURSE INSTRUCTOR AND OFFICE HOURS JUA/ NGES/ BEH MONDAY 11:00-12:00, WEDNESDAY 11:00-12:00 and by
appointment.

Course Description: This survey course in American Literature from the 1500 to the 20C introduces students to the major trends and
texts of a multi-ethnic America from the colonial period through the age of Reason and Revolution, Romanticism, Realism to the 20th
century. Diverse voices constructed by gender, race, nationality and religious persuasion are studied using essays, letters, poems,
short stories and plays. Some texts articulate ancient native traditions and myths, others come to terms with experiences of migration,
conflict, and slavery. Central to the course are questions of national identity, individualism and the role literature plays in both
constructing and communicating an “American experience.” In trying to cover over 400 years, we ask ourselves several questions
among which are:
            What constitutes literature and how does it change over time?
            What does it mean to call this literature “American?”
            What social and cultural factors affect this literature and how it is produced and understood?
Our approach will be historical to allow us situate the various texts. Students who sign up for this course come prepared to work, to
read from day one as the outline demonstrates. All readings for each class are done before the class.

Student Performance Objectives: As a result of successful completion of this course, a student will be able to:
1. Comprehend significant literary works written by a representative cross-section of authors in the United States.
2. Analyze the literary works of the various writers for meaning, style, period characteristics, and cultural influences.
3. Compare and contrast the ideas, methods, styles and cultural backgrounds of the different writers within the historical
periods.
4. Comprehend the relationship between the literary works studied and the significant social, religious, and/or political events
of each period.
5. Understand how a literary tradition emerges from the interaction and writings of diverse groups.
OUTCOMES: Upon completion of this course, successful students will (be able to):
1. Understand the beginnings of American Literature and its broader implications
2. Appreciate various forms of significant literature through a close reading of the text.
3. Delineate the major themes in American Literature and the periods
4. Define the major themes in American Literature
5. Identity what defines the Literature and make comparisons whether between writers or these and other Literatures
 6. Trace the development of major questions such as Individualism, Realism, Naturalism, Modernism

EVALUATION: Daily quizzes as the Lecturer deems necessary; 1st Structural Test 5 weeks into the semester; 2nd Test, part
Structural/part Essay 10 weeks into the semester. All groups are commonly tested and each test is 15pts.

WEEK SLOT TOPICS ACTIVITY

Day Time L T P
Thursday 11-13h General Introduction to the course: Origins of United States Literature √
(Overview of the Reformation/Renaissance/Emergence of Puritanism).
1 Readings
In Class: Ann Bradstreet, “The Prologue”, “Contemplations”
At Home (compulsory): John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity”
Review the Reformation and the Renaissance. What are the characteristics of
Puritanism?
Friday 11-13h Introduction continued: The colonial period to contemporary America √ √
Readings
In Class: Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
At Home (compulsory): Cotton Matter, “The wonders of the Invisible
World”
Topic: How does Puritanism foster the rise of American Individualism?
Thursday 11-13h The Literature of Reason and Revolution √
Readings
2 In Class: Phylis Wheatley “On Being Brought from Africa to America”,
“On Imagination”
At Home (compulsory): Benjamin Franklin “Poor Richard Improved”
Topic: Examination of self-reliance
Friday 11-13h Enlightenment and Deism √ √
In Class: Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” “The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow”
At Home (compulsory): Thomas Jefferson: Declaration of Independence
Crevecoeur: Letter III (What is an American)
Topic: Compare and contrast themes, techniques, and style
Thursday 11-13h Literature of the age of Romanticism √ √
Readings
WEEK SLOT TOPICS ACTIVITY

Day Time L T P
3 In Class: Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown”
“The Minister’s Black Veil”
At Home (compulsory): Edgar Allan Poe, The Philosophy of Composition
Topic: Importance of setting; Individualism/American Vistas and a coming of

Age
Friday 11-13h Age of Romanticism continues/What is a short story? √ √
Readings
In Class: Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Birth Mark”
At Home (compulsory): Edgar Allan Poe, “Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel
H.”
“The Poetic Principle”
Topic: Importance of Setting/Imagery/Symbols/Romantic thought
Thursday 11-13h Age of Romanticism continued √ √
Readings
4 In Class: Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”
“The Raven”
At Home (compulsory): Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-tale Heart”
Topic: Allegory and undermining Puritan allegorical premise. What is the

Unpardonable Sin?
Friday 11-13h The Brook Farm Experiment and the emergence of Transcendentalism. More √ √
focus on the Unpardonable Sin
Readings and the importance of irony
In Class: : “The Cast of Amontillado”
At Home (compulsory): “Rappaccini’s Daughter”
Topic: Writers as prophets and seers, constructing the American experience
Thursday 11-13h American Gothicism √ √
Readings
5 In Class: Herman Melville, “Billy Budd”
At Home (compulsory): “Ligeia”
Topic: Characteristics of Gothic literature. Importance of Symbols, etc
WEEK SLOT TOPICS ACTIVITY

Day Time L T P
Friday 11-13h Romanticism continues incorporating Gothicism √ √
Readings
In Class: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “A Psalm of Life”
“My Lost Youth”
“Nature
At Home (compulsory): Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener”
Topic: Study of the evolution of fiction; Identify commonalities in the

literature

Continuous Assessment Test 1

Thursday 11-13h Romanticism continues, American pop culture and the manipulation of √ √
allegory
6 Readings
In Class: Emerson “Nature”
At Home (compulsory): Teachings of Transcendentalism
Topic: Compare and Contrast Themes, Technique, style of writers
Friday 11-13h Romanticism continues √ √
Readings
In Class: Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
At Home (compulsory): The Philosophy of the Over Soul
Topic: Transcendentalism as a literary movement
Thursday 11-13h Transcendentalism continued √ √
Readings
7 In Class: Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
At Home (compulsory): “American Scholar”
Topic: The effect of Transcendentalism on American life and art
Friday 11-13h Transcendentalism/Individualism gone wild and free verse form √ √
Readings
In Class: Walt Whitman, “To a Locomotive in Winter”
WEEK SLOT TOPICS ACTIVITY

Day Time L T P
At Home (compulsory): “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
Topic: Realism and the social and artistic revolution in America
Thursday 11-13h Western Comic Realism and Mark Twain √ √
Readings
In Class: Emily Dickinson, “I like to lap the miles”
“There’s a certain slant of light”
8 “Some Keep the Sabbath going to church”
“I felt a Funeral in my Brain”
“A narrow Fellow in the Grass”
At Home (compulsory): “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”
Topic: Regionalism and literary expression of social thought
Friday 11-13h The Emergence of Modern American Literature √ √
Readings
In Class: Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”
“The Road not taken”
“Fire and Ice”
At Home (compulsory): “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
“Acquainted with the Night”
“Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking”
Topic: /Literary Renaissance and Social Challenge
Thursday 11-13h Naturalism and Expressionism √ √
Readings
9 In Class: Eugene O’Neill, The Hairy Ape
At Home (compulsory): “A clock stooped”
“The soul selects her own society”
“This is my letter to the world”
Topic: Alienation and the modern literary tradition
Friday 11-13h Realism and Naturalism: The Turn of the 20th Century and the American √ √
Dream
Readings
In Class: T.S. Eliot, “The Wasteland”
At Home (compulsory):
WEEK SLOT TOPICS ACTIVITY

Day Time L T P
T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
“Journey of the Magi”
Topic: The wasteland, Literature and the construction of the American
experience
Thursday 11-13h 20th Century, 20th Century and the Lost generation/Modernism and post- √ √
modernism
10 Readings
In Class: Ernest Hemingway, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”
At Home (compulsory): William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily”
Topic: Tragic heroes/Tragic protagonists
Friday 11-13h Harlem Renaissance √ √
Readings
In Class: Claude McKay, “If We Must Die”
“America”
Langston Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
Countee Cullen, “Yet do I Marvel”
At Home (compulsory): Zora Neale Hurston, “Sweat”
Langston Hughes, “Mother to Son”
Topic: Alain Locke, The New Negro
Continuous Assessment Test 2

11 Thursday 11-13h Realism, Naturalism, Modernism √ √

Readings
In Class: Margaret Walker, “For My People”
Gwendolyn Brooks, “The Chicago Defender sends a Man to Little Rock”
At Home (compulsory): Gwendolyn Brooks, “Riot” and “We Real Cool”
Topic: The Negro and “double consciousness”
Friday 11-13h Spill over, Revision starts √ √
WEEK SLOT TOPICS ACTIVITY

Day Time L T P
12 Thursday 11-13h Revision continued √ √

Friday 11-13h Revision √ √

Thursday 11-13h Revision √ √
13 Friday 11-13h Revision √

Course Instructor: GHES/BEH

Course Master: Jua
HOD: Mbuh Tennu Mbuh
NOTES; L = Lecture, T = Tutorial, P = Practicals

RECOMMENDED TEXT

Concise Anthology of American Literature, Second Edition by George McMicheal or any other Anthology but not
an abridged edition

References
Leslie A. Fielder, Love and Death in the American Novel
Perry Miller, The New England Mind
Daniel Hoffman, Form and Fable in American Fiction
Richard Chase, The American Novel and its Tradition
Leon Edel, The Psychological Novel
Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature
Marcus Klein, After Alienation: American Novels in Mid-century
F.O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman
COURSE EVALUATION: Continuous Assessment (30 percent, two tests) and End-of-Semester Examination (70
percent).