Class Calendar and Schedule of Assignments
Week Date Class Topics Reading Assignment Due Writing Assignment Due
1 8/26 First Class
Welcome!
Course Overview
The Listserv Assignment
1 8/28 Emerson and the Roots of American Romanticism Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Nature”
Reading Post A1
2 9/2 Labor Day — No Class
2 9/4 Emerson and the Life of the Mind
The Individual’s Relationships to Society and the Past
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The American Scholar”
“History”
Reading Post B1
3 9/9 Emerson vs. Emerson
A Tale of Innocence and Experience
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Self-Reliance”
“Experience”
Reading Post C1
3 9/11 Hawthorne and Allegory
Hawthorne and Womanhood
Hawthorne and Men of Science
Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Young Goodman Brown”
“The Minister’s Black Veil”
“The Birthmark”
“Rappaccini’s Daughter” (available on Blackboard)
Reading Post D1
Synthesis Post B1 due Friday, 9/13
4 9/16 Hawthorne and the Burden of History
Narrative Voice
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter
Preface and “The Custom House”
Reading Post A2
4 9/18 Narrative Voice, continued
Symbolism and Foreshadowing
Pearl as
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter
Chapters I-VIII
Reading Post B2
Synthesis Post D1 due Friday, 9/20
5 9/23 Hawthorne as Psychological Writer
Hester as Heroine
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter
Chapters IX-XV
Reading Post C2
5 9/25 Hawthorne’s Vision
Sophia Hawthorne’s Headache
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter
Chapters XVI-XXIV
Reading Post D2
Close Reading Essay or Literary Context Essay on Hawthorne’s short fiction due Thursday, 9/26 by midnight
Synthesis Post A1 due Friday, 9/27
6 9/30 The United States’ Original Sin
Narrative Reliability
Melville’s Sense of Audience

Ralph Waldo Emerson
“An Address . . . on . . . the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies”
Herman Melville
Benito Cereno
Pages 35-67, ending at the word “Patience.”
Reading Post B3
6 10/2 Melville’s Use of History
Situational Irony

Herman Melville
Benito Cereno
Pages 67-107
Reading Post A3
Close Reading Essay or Literary Context Essay on Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter due Thursday 10/3 by midnight
Synthesis Post C1 due Friday, 10/4
7 10/7 Emerson and Spirituality
The Poet as Prophet, the Prophet as Poet
Emerson as Whitman’s John the Baptist
Mythic Whitman
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“An Address Delivered Before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Sunday Evening, 15 July, 1838”
“The Over-Soul”
“The Poet”
Letter to Walt Whitman, 21st July, 1855
Walt Whitman
1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass
Reading Post D3
7 10/9 A New American Bible
The Self as Poem, the Poem as Universe, the Self as Universe
Walt Whitman
1855 untitled poem later titled “Poem of Walt Whitman, an American,” [1856], then “Walt Whitman” [1860], and eventually “Song of Myself” [1881-82]
Reading Post C3
Close Reading Essay or Literary Context Essay on Melville’s Benito Cereno due Thursday, 10/10 by midnight
Synthesis Post B2 due Friday, 10/11
8 10/15 The 1855 Leaves of Grass continued

Note: as part of the fall break, Monday classes are held Tuesday; Tuesday classes are not held this week

Walt Whitman
Other Poems from the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, all of which are untitled in this edition:
[“A Song for Occupations”]
[“To Think of Time”]
[“The Sleepers”]
[“I Sing the Body Electric”]
[“Europe: The 72nd and 73rd Years of These States”]
[“Who Learns My Lesson Complete”]

Reading Post A4
8 10/16 Whitman’s Erotic Democracy

Walt Whitman
Poems originally published in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass, reproduced here from the 1891-92 “Deathbed” edition

From Enfans d’Adam or Children of Adam beginning on page 252 in your volume, in which the individual poems are titled, though they are only numbered in the 1860 edition.“To the Garden the World,” “From Pent-Up Aching Rivers,” Poem of the Body” the 1856 version of the poem called “I Sing the Body Electric” [note: this version is substantially different from the one in the 1855 version you have already read, but also different in some ways from the version in your text], “A Woman Waits for Me,” “Spontaneous Me,” “One Hour to Madness and Joy,” “We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d,” “O Hymen! O Hymenee!” “Native Moments,” “Once I Pass’d through a Populous City,”“I am He That Aches with Love,” “As Adam Early in the Morning.”

From Calamus, beginning on page 274 in your volume. Again, the individual poems are titled, though they are not in the 1860 edition.“In Paths Untrodden,” “Sented Herbage of My Breast,” “Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand,” “These I Singing in Spring,” “Calamus. 5” on page 769,“Not Heaving from My Ribbed Breast Only,” “Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances,” “Calamus 8.” on page 755, “Calamus. 9” on page 756, “Recorders Ages Hence,” “When I Heard at the Close of Day,” “Are You the New Person Drawn toward Me?” “Calamus. 16” on pages 754-55, “Of Him I Love Day and Night” on pages 580-81, “City of Orgies,”“I Saw in Lousiana a Live-Oak Growing,” “To a Stranger,” “This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful,” “I Hear It Was Charged Against Me,” “Here the Frailest Leaves of Me,” “A Glimpse”

Reading Post B4


Synthesis Post D2 due Friday, 10/18
9 10/21 Whitman: War and Retreat
The Great American Elegy

Walt Whitman
Selections from Specimen Days:
“National Uprising and Volunteering,” “Down at the Front,” “Hospital Scenes and Persons,” “An Army Hospital Ward,” “Two Brooklyn Boys,” “The Wounded from Chancellorsville,” “A Night Battle Over a Week Since,” “Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier,” “A New York Soldier,” “Some Specimen Cases,” “Abraham Lincoln,” “A Glimpse of War’s Hell-Scenes,” “Releas’d Union Prisoners from the South,” “The Real War Will Never Get in Books”

From Drum-Taps, beginning on page 430 in your volume. I recommend you read in this order, rather than the order in your text:
“Cavalry Crossing a Ford,” “Song of the Banner at Day-Break,” “The Dresser” (compare to “The Wound-Dresser” in your text), “Beat! Beat Drums!” “Come Up from the Fields Father,” “City of Ships,” “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night,” “A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown,” “A Sight in the Day-Brak Gray and Dim,” “Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice,” “To a Certain Civilian,” “Hymn of Dead Soldiers” (not in your text)

“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”

Reading Post C4
9 10/23 Backgrounds Personal and Historical
Ishmael as Narrator
Herman Melville
Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale
“Etymology,” “Extracts,” Chapters 1-15
Reading Post D4
Close Reading Essay or Literary Context Essay on any of Whitman’s 1855 poems due Thusday, 10/24 by midnight.
Note that by this point you must have submitted one of the essays.
Synthesis Post A2 due Friday, 10/25
10 10/28 Issues of Genre
Characterization
Herman Melville
Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale
Chapters 16-35
Reading Post B5
10 10/30 Issues of Genre, continued
Ahab
The Whale
Ishmael as Narrator, continued
Herman Melville
Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale
Chapters 36-52
Reading Post A5
Close Reading Essay or Literary Context Essay on any of Whitman’s later poems or on Specimen Days due Thursday, 10/31 by midnight.
Synthesis Post C2 due Friday, 11/1
11 11/4 Whales Represented
Whales Anatomized
The Question of Aesthetic Unity
Herman Melville
Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale
Chapters 53-80
Reading Post D5
11 11/6 Melville and Burlesque
Whales: Anthropomorphism vs. Allegory
Herman Melville
Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale
Chapters 81-99
Reading Post C5
Synthesis Post B3 due Friday, 11/8
12 11/11 Ahab Redux Herman Melville
Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale
Chapters 100-124
Reading Post A6
12 11/13

Melville and Romanticism
Character as Destiny

Herman Melville
Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale
Chapters 125-Epilogue
Reading Post B6
Synthesis Post D3 due Friday, 11/15
13 11/18 Emily Dickinson Biography
Dickinson Textual History
Poems on Nature
Poems on Poetry and Fame

Emily Dickinson
22, 70, 207, 236, 260, 359, 409, 448, 465, 519, 536, 569, 675, 721, 788, 930, 962, 1096, 1263, 1268, 1702, 1779 (all Franklin numbering)

Reading Post C6
13 11/20 Dickinson on Love, Sex, and Human Relationships (Society)
Dickinson on the Brain, Consciousness, and Madness

Emily Dickinson
103, 175, 180, 232, 267, 269, 279, 320, 340, 355, 407, 409, 423, 445, 563, 598, 620, 656, 675, 709, 867, 1094

Reading Post D7
Close Reading Essay or Literary Context Essay on Melville’s Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale due Sunday, 11/24 by midnight.
Synthesis Post A3 due Friday, 11/22
14 11/25

Dickinson on Pain
Poems on Other or Unclear Topics

Emily Dickinson
109, 112, 168, 178, 181, 314, 339, 372, 411, 458, 466, 515, 550, 552, 588, 760, 764, 861, 960, 1080

Reading Post B7
Synthesis Post C3 due Friday, 12/6
14 11/27 No Class — Happy Thanksgiving
15 12/2 Dickinson on Faith, God, and the Afterlife Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Circles”
Emily Dickinson
132, 143, 215, 128, 202, 283, 396, 437, 521, 544, 601, 632, 633, 711, 973, 1050, 1240, 1768, 1773
Reading Post A7
15 12/4 Dickinson on Death and Dying

Emily Dickinson
62, 77, 78, 156, 432, 461, 479, 591, 599, 648, 890, 1108, 1132

Reading Post D7
Optional Synthesis Post for all groups due Sunday, 12/8
(This post will replace either your lowest scoring synthesis post or your lowest scoring reading post of the semester, whichever benefits you more)
 
Close Reading Essay or Literary Context Essay on Emily Dickinson’s poetry due Thursday, 12/12 by midnight.
 
The final examination will take place Monday, 16 December, from 1:30 to 4:15.
 
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