Professional Documents
Culture Documents
28 1
4-8
11-15
18
FEB/MAR
APRIL
Introduction
Boston: Voices & Visions: Boston: From Winthrop to Hawthorne
Hawthorne: Selected Tales: Mrs. Hutchinson, Young Goodman Brown,
The May-Pole of Merrymount,
PRESIDENTS DAY
20-22
My Kinsman, Major Molineux, The Ministers Black Veil
25 1
4- 8
11-15
18-22
SPRING VACATION
25-29
15
PAPER TOPICS
CR #2
PAPER THESIS
CR #3
8
10-12
EXAM
NO CLASS: ACIS CONFERENCE
15
17-19
PATRIOTS DAY
Wilder: Our Town & ONeill: Desire Under the Elms
22-26
APRIL/MAY 29 3
CR#1
CR #4
6 -10
13-15
22
CR #5
RESEARCH PAPERS DUE
FOCUS
This course examines the New England tradition in literature and culture from the 17 th century to the near present,
emphasizing works written from the mid-19th century, when writers contested differing versions of native grounds,
reinventing the New England image and idea in their works. Writers articulated visions of a renewed New England,
revised New Englands Puritan past and redefined the covenant of purpose, piety and passionate expression which has
characterized the life and literature of New England.
2
REQUIREMENTS
1)
2)
3)
4)
4]
Propose a topic of your own on how New England has been imagined and, with approval, write on it.
3
TEXTS
OConnell, ed.
Freeman
Wharton
Miller
Wilder
ONeill
Hawthorne
978155498204
0140437398
0140187367
0140481389
0060807792
0981967345
014039057x
ASSIGNMENT
February 1st: A three paragraph essay: graf 1] your favorite New England place; graf 2] your reason for choosing
that place; graf 3] what you think that place represents to New England. Link paragraphs. Text: 12 point, double
spaced. Take Ira Gershwins advice: The title is vital; once youve it, prove it. Send essays as Word attachments to
shaun.oconnell@umb.edu.
OVERVIEW
An examination of the New England tradition in literature and criticism from the mid-nineteenth century to the
near present. Nathaniel Hawthorne shaped a new conception of New Englands Puritan past in his romances; he
also influenced the novels of Henry James, who wrote the first sustained study of Hawthorne in 1979. James, in
turn, influenced T.S. Eliot, who wrote a tribute to James in 1918; William Dean Howells, who was inspired by
Hawthorne to come to Boston; and Edith Wharton, who imagined New England as another country, far from
New York City. Wharton also defined her art in opposition to the New England women realists, particularly
Sarah Orne Jewett. Robert Frost experienced and articulated another version of New England, North of Boston.
Immigrant and minority writersAfrican-American writers from W.E.B. DuBois to Malcolm X; the IrishAmerican writer, Edwin OConnor; the Jewish-American writer, Nat Hentoff, for examplebrought fresh
perspectives to their portrayals of the region. The diminishing authority of old-family Bostonians is dramatized
by Henry Adams, George Santayana, John P. Marquand, John Cheever, Samuel Eliot Morison and others, but the
Yankee-Brahmin tradition is reinvigorated in the poetry of Robert Lowell. The fiction of John Updike and others
shows that the New England literary tradition persists. In addition, this course will examine the rich critical
heritage which honors this literature: selections drawn from Samuel Eliot Morison, Perry Miller, F.O.
Matthiessen, Van Wyck Brooks, Richard Brodhead and others.