ENG5057 Hawthorne, Melville, Poe

This seminar examines in depth the short stories and the novels of Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe, focusing on their shared literary techniques and their relationship to earlier American thought. Special emphasis will be placed on the ways in which they developed or diverged from Emerson's use of symbolism as a literary technique and as a means of shaping one's understanding of reality.