123031 VO Literature Survey 2 (2011W)

This lecture course aims at tracing the development of American perspectives through the content, style, and genres of American writings from the early colonial periods to the end of the 19th century. By using canonical and less canonical texts of the respective periods, the course attempts to approach the major political, social, and religious concerns of Puritan America, Colonial America, and pre-Civil War America, and the America of the Gilded Age. We will define the major elements of Puritanism, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Unitarianism, and Transcendentalism and explain how these philosophies affected (early) American literature.