ENGL 345 On Tyranny in American Literature before 1900
This course examines the increasing centrality of the theme of "tyranny" to American literature before 1900. Most people know the founders justified the American Revolution as a response to Britain's tyranny during the colonial period. Fewer know that "tyranny" became a watchword for national debates over race, gender, and class conflicts. What happens to the idea of "tyranny" when it refers to threats within a nation rather than outside forces? What happens when the calls for revolution that founded the nation are asserted once again, to save the nation from its worst self? The political and ethical political implications of this 18th and 19th century conflict reverberate today. Only a multi-genre approach, incorporating a wide range of authors, could do justice to these questions. For these reasons, we will examine revolutionary pamphlets, speeches, essays, freed-persons narratives, and poetry from authors as diverse as Joseph Warren, Phillis Wheatley, Phillip Freneau, Harriet Jacobs, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. Finally, this course listens to voices too often obscured by our focus on well-known characters in American history: the unofficial soldiers of the American Revolution, the freed-persons who emancipated themselves from slavery, the conflicted Civil War Veterans, and the working-class Americans trying to find their place in Reconstruction-era America.
Major Requirement Met: Group II
Prerequisite
One 100-level or 200-level English course