Engl 250D:
Hawthorne and Melville
Course
Description
Literary comrades, Berkshire neighbors, partners in drink:
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville forged a complex
friendship during the period in which they produced many of
their major works. This course will examine those works
(and others) and discuss them in the context of the rise
and fall of American Romanticism, the mounting sectional
crisis, and the growth of the cult of domesticity. In
addition to an in-depth study of the primary texts, we will
also sample important critical works.
Primary
Readings are likely to include:
Nathaniel Hawthorne:
"My Kinsman, Major Molineux"
"Young Goodman Brown"
"Endicott and the Red Cross"
"Roger Malvin's Burial"
"Rappaccini's Daughter"
"The Artist of the Beautiful"
"Wakefield"
The Scarlet Letter
The House of the Seven Gables
The Blithedale Romance
The Life of Franklin Pierce
(Excerpts)
Herman Melville:
Moby-Dick
Benito Cereno
Bartleby the Scrivener
Billy Budd