ENG.3100 Americans Abroad: Transatlanticism and the 19th-Century Novel
This seminar course surveys the early American novel from a transatlantic perspective, concerning itself specifically with stories of American travelers confronting what Henry James once called "the denser, richer, warmer European spectacle." Looking at a variety of "American abroad" narratives by Cooper, Hawthorne, James, Twain, and Wharton, we will consider how these authors worked to define the cultural and novelistic traditions of America over and against those of Europe. Our focus on scenes of intercultural encounter in European cities-of Americans exploring the sites, citizenry, and customs of the Old World-will allow us to investigate how the formation of national, literary, and individual identity often begins in the anxious effort to understand our relation to and difference from others. Just what distinguishes an American novel from the European models from which it derives will be foremost among the questions we will asking this term. This query will require that we cultivate a facility in explicating the intricacies of language and narrative structure, which, in turn, will help us to perform analyses that use textual evidence in support of our arguments about these works and their broader cultural context.
LA