• Amacher, Richard E. “Benjamin Franklin.” American Colonial Writers, 1606-1734. Ed. Emory Elliott. Detroit: Gale Research, 1984. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 24. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 6 Dec. 2010.
• Hornberger, Theodore. “Benjamin Franklin.” American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies. Ed. Leonard Unger. Vol. 2. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 6 Dec. 2010.
• Lemay, J.A. Leo. Benjamin Franklin: A Documentary History. 1997. Web. 12 October 2008.

Thomas Paine

• Klemetti, Erik, et al. “Thomas Paine”. Ushistory.org. 5 July 1995. Web. 15 October 2010.
• Levernier, James A. “Thomas Paine: Overview.” Reference Guide to American Literature. Ed. Jim Kamp. 3rd ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Oct. 2010.
• Kreis, Steven. “Thomas Paine, 1737-1809.” The History Guide: Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History. 11 Oct. 2006. Web. 15 Oct. 2010.

J. Hector St. Jean de Crévecoeur

• Arch, Stephen Carl. “The ‘Progressive Steps’ of the Narrator in Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer.” Studies in American Fiction 18.2 (Autumn 1990): 145-158. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Edna Hedblad. Vol. 105. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 Oct. 2010.
• Grabo, Norman S. “Crèvecoeur’s American: Beginning the World Anew.” William and Mary Quarterly 48.2 (Apr. 1991): 159-172. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Edna Hedblad. Vol. 105. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 Oct. 2010.
• McElroy, John Harmon. “Michel Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur.” American Writers of  the Early Republic. Ed. Emory Elliott.  Detroit: Gale Research, 1985. Dictionary of  Literary Biography Vol. 37. Literature  Resource Center. Web. 18 Oct. 2010.
• Richards, Jeffrey H. “Revolution, Domestic Life, and the End of ‘Common Mercy’ in Crèvecoeur’s ‘Landscapes,’.” William and Mary Quarterly 55.2 (Apr. 1998): 281-296. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Edna Hedblad. Vol. 105. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 Oct. 2010.

Phillis Wheatley

• Bennett, Paula. “Phillis Wheatley’s Vocation and the Paradox of the ‘Afric Muse.’” PMLA 113.1 (1998): 64-76. JSTOR. Web.

Frederick Douglass

• “Frederick Douglass: A Light in Darkness.” Black History Bulletin 69.2 (2006): 4-7. Web. 26 Oct 2010.
• McClure, Kevin. “Frederick Douglass’ Use of Comparison in his Fourth of July Oration: A Textual Criticism.” Western Journal of Communication 64.4 (2000): 425-460. Web. 26 Oct 2010.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Moore, Paul Elmer. ”Emerson.” The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. New York: Putnam, 1907-21. Bartleby.Com. 2000. Web. 28 Oct. 2010.
• Richardson, Robert. “Ralph Waldo Emerson.” Brandeis University. n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2010.

Margaret Fuller

• Kolodny, Annette. “Inventing a Feminist Discourse: Rhetoric and Resistance in Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century.” New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation 25.2 (Spring 1994): 355-382. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Kathy D. Darrow. Vol. 211. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 6 Dec. 2010.
• Poe, Edgar A. “Sarah Margaret Fuller.” Godey’s Lady’s Book 33.5 (Aug. 1846): 72-75. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Laurie Lanzen Harris and Sheila Fitzgerald. Vol. 5. Detroit: Gale Research, 1984. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 6 Dec. 2010.
• Woodlief, Ann. “[Sarah] Margaret Fuller.” American Transcendentalism Web. n.d. Web. 8 Nov. 2010.

Henry David Thoreau

• Walls, Laura Dassow. “Henry David Thoreau.” The American Renaissance in New England: Second Series. Ed. Wesley T. Mott. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 223. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Nov. 2010.

Washington Irving

• Ferguson, Robert A. “Rip Van Winkle and the Generational Divide in American Culture.” Early American Literature 40.3 (2005): 529-44. Print.
• Pollard, Finn. “From Beyond the Grave and Across the Ocean: Washington Irving and the Problem of Being a Questioning American, 1809-20.” American Nineteenth Century History 8.1 (2007): 81-101. Print.
• Ringe, Donald A. “New York and New England: Irving’s Criticism of American Society.” American Literature 38.4 (1967): 455-67. Print.
• Wyman, Sarah. “Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle: A Dangerous Critique of American Society.” ANQ 23.4 (2010): 216-22. Print.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Becker, John E.: Hawthorne’s Historical Allegory. Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1971.
• McKeithan, D. M. “Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown’: An Interpretation.” Modern Language Notes 67.2 (1952): 93-96. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 6 Dec. 2010.
• Doubleday, Neal Frank. “Hawthorne’s Use of Three Gothic Patterns.” College English. 7.5 (1946): 250-62. JSTOR. Web. 8 December 2010.
• Paulits, Walter J. “Ambivalence in ‘Young Goodman Brown’.” American Literature 41.4 (Jan. 1970): 577-584. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Anna J. Sheets. Vol. 29. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 6 Dec. 2010.

Herman Melville

• Felheim, Marvin.”Meaning and Structure in Bartleby.” College English. 23.5 (1962): 369-76. Web. JSTOR. 29 Nov 2010.
• Mordecai, Marcus. “Melville’s Bartleby as a Psychological Double.” College English. 23.5 (1962): 365-68. Web. JSTOR. 29 Nov 2010.

Walt Whitman

• Allen, Gay Wilson. “Introduction.” Leaves Of Grass. 150th Anniversary ed. New York: Signet Classics, 2005. xxvii-lvii. Print.
• Pannapacker, William A. “Chronology of Whitman’s Life.” Walt Whitman         Archive (1998): Web. 1 Dec 2010.

Emily Dickinson

• Christopher, Tom. “Emily Dickinson, Gardener.” Humanities 31.4 (2010): 16-52. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 2 Dec. 2010.
• Farr, Judith. The Gardens of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. Print.
• Lundin, Roger. Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1998.
• Zapedowska, Magdalena. “Wrestling with Silence: Emily Dickinson’s Calvinist God.” ATQ 20.1 (2006): 379-398. America: History & Life. EBSCO. Web. 2 Dec. 2010.

• What does Whitman’s poem reveal about his understanding of American identity?
• How does Whitman’s sense of self compare to the visions of self-reliance articulated by Emerson, Fuller, and Thoreau?
• How does Whitman’s view of others compare to Melville’s narrator? How might Whitman respond to Bartleby if he were a character in Melville’s story? What is Whitman suggesting about human relationships in this poem?
• One of Emerson’s ideas in “Self-Reliance” is the importance of inhabiting the present as fully as possible. Where do you see Whitman exploring this theme? How is his message distinct from Emerson’s?
• The publication date for our text is 1855. Some of the major historical issues we’ve discussed for this period include race relations and women’s rights. How does Whitman address these themes?
• What seems most distinctive about Whitman’s view of nature? How would you characterize his view of the natural world in relation to other authors we’ve read?

What I want to focus on today is the general sympathy in our class toward the narrator and the feeling of exasperation many seemed to feel toward Bartleby. To be sure, Melville’s narrator is a more compassionate employer than the average boss in today’s corporate workplace. What I find notable about his evaluation of Bartleby (and his estimation of Nippers and Turkey) is his reductive view of them as valuable commodities. Despite Turkey’s recklessness in the afternoon hours, the narrator concludes that he is a “most valuable person,…accomplishing a great deal of work in a style not easy to be matched.” Nippers, likewise, is a “very useful man” to the narrator, since he “[writes] in a neat, swift hand” and is “not deficient in a gentlemanly sort of deportment,” which the narrator appreciates since it “reflect[s] credit on [his] chambers.” In this vein, despite Bartleby’s initial resistance to menial tasks, the narrator tolerates his behavior because he is “useful” and a “valuable acquisition” in whose hands the most important documents are safe. It is only when Bartleby’s behavior becomes a liability, “scandalizing [the narrator's] professional reputation,” that the lawyer decides to “for ever rid [himself] of this intolerable incubus,” as if Bartleby is a demonic presence in his office.

One question Melville poses is how far our responsibilities to fellow humans extend. Surely we cannot expect the narrator to keep Bartleby in employment if he does no work, but does the end of employment mean the end of human interest? Are we, as customers or customer service, as bosses or employees, as teachers or students, so defined by our professional identities that our private lives have no relevance to our daily work? If someone gets cancer or falls into mental illness or suffers brain damage in an injury and is thus made “useless” to the marketplace, does this make him/her useless to humanity?

If we assess one another based on our utility, how useful we are, it would seem that we have lost even the guilt that Melville’s narrator feels about fleeing from Bartleby. Our culture glorifies competition, and so we glorify the superhuman, the overachiever, the self-reliant hero. This Nike ad sums up that sentiment:

I wonder, though, if what some might see as the “inner coward” could actually be the kind of lost purpose that we find in a character like Bartleby. While the paralyzing state that leads to Bartleby’s demise is terrifying, it seems too easy to dismiss it as mere apathy or laziness. There are larger forces at work in his character, a life story that informs his malaise. The narrator concludes: “I might give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him, it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.” What can we say to the “forlornest of mankind,” to those whose soul-sickness is so great that they cannot find meaning in our present society?

The conclusion to “Bartleby” does not give us any heartwarming answers, because it suggests that the narrator’s fascination with Bartleby stems, in part, from the dark message that his story suggests for humanity. Could the corporate world, where humans are reduced to commodities, where relationships are judged by their usefulness for business, be another version of the Dead Letter Office? “On errands of life,” Melville concludes, “these letters speed to death.” While we might not conclude, as Bartleby does, that the modern world is so bereft of meaning that extreme withdrawal is necessary, even to the point of death, there is a cautionary image here in Melville’s story, a picture in the mirror of his fiction that is worth considering in an age when, as this 1999 study suggests, “tens of millions of Americans suffer from major depression every year” and roughly 16% of Americans have experienced major depression at some point in their lives. What are the causes of this psychic distress? Melville seems to suggest that part of the answer lies in our commercial workplace.

Questions for “Bartleby, the Scrivener”:

1. So far, we’ve considered two branches of American Romanticism: Gothic literature and Transcendentalism. Where does Melville fit in this conversation? What is Romanticism, according to Melville? Where does his style seem most Romantic, in the literary sense?
2. What do you learn about the narrator from his observations of the other characters? What makes him reliable or unreliable? How does the narrator’s personal philosophy compare with Thoreau’s?
3. Bartleby is perhaps the most enigmatic character we’ve seen. What do you learn about Bartleby through the contrasts that Melville sets up with Ginger Nut, Turkey, and Nippers? How do you explain Bartleby’s behavior? What transformations do you see in his character throughout the story?
4. What do you think you would have done if you had been faced with the narrator’s dilemma? What do you think might have been the most ethical response to Bartleby’s situation?
5. What does Melville add to the larger conversation about American identity in the course readings?

Questions to consider:

1. Whom should we trust in this story? A simpler way of putting this is: Who are the good guys/gals in this story, and who are the villains? Hawthorne, like Irving, begins the story with a fictional allusion to history (a common convention among 19th-century writers). But each of the characters have aspects of unreliability. Which character do you think is most trustworthy, and why?
2. What does Hawthorne reveal about his attitude toward science in this story? What do you learn from the interactions between Dr. Rappaccini, Giovanni, Beatrice, and Dr. Baglioni about differing views of the relationship between science and humanity?
3. Keep watching for examples of Dark Romanticism or Gothic imagery, including emphasis on the subconscious, descriptions of death or destruction, gloomy settings, suspense, frightening scenes, or dramatic juxtapositions.
4. Dr. Rappaccini: Hawthorne’s Parson Hooper has a deathbed message that encapsulates his reasons for wearing the Black Veil. What do you learn in Rappaccini’s final monologue about his reasons for transforming Beatrice’s and Giovanni’s physiology? How does he rationalize this?

Michael Sandel’s article, “The Case Against Perfection: What’s Wrong with Designer Children, Bionic Athletes, and Genetic Engineering,” could be a useful reference for “Rappaccini’s Daughter.”

1. Some were suggesting on Friday that Goodman Brown was a hypocrite for judging others while behaving badly himself. How does Parson Hooper compare to Goodman Brown in terms of integrity, likeability, character complexity, and rationality?
2. We’ve considered how American Romanticism commingles spirituality and rationality, as illustrated in the dance between the real and the imaginary in Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown.” How does the narrator of “The Minister’s Black Veil” weave these two points of view together? How can we distinguish what is real from what is imaginary in this story, and when does Hawthorne seem to deliberately blur the distinctions between the two?
3. What, in particular, does the black veil symbolize? What other metaphorical dimensions do you see in this story?
4. Hawthorne’s view of human nature is worth exploring further. We know that Goodman Brown is an unreliable narrator who goes to extremes, but there is enough truth in his vision of universal corruption to provoke thought. What view of human nature do we get from Parson Hooper? Why does he wear the veil, and what might this have to do with his position as a minister?
5. If you were a creative writing professor and Hawthorne were a student in your class, how might you grade him on his character development, plot complexity, foreshadowing, concrete details, irony, or other literary devices? Perhaps pick three or four aspects of literary style to evaluate.

Questions:

1. Fact/fancy: Hawthorne seeks to take the reader to an imaginative space that he describes in the prologue to The Scarlet Letter as a moonlit room of the mind, “where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other.” The Romantic writer, he believed, should “dream strange things, and make them look like truth.” How can we distinguish between fact and fancy, or the real and the imaginary, in “Young Goodman Brown”?
2. Irving’s protagonists are likeable but not characters one would emulate. How does Goodman Brown compare to Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane in this regard?
3. What examples of symbolism do you seen in “Young Goodman Brown”?
4. American Identity: Both Irving and Hawthorne illustrate the maturity of American literature, as the nation had finally begun to develop its own mythology or explanation of its origins. It seems significant that Irving would want to create conflict in his stories between rational and superstitious thinkers (perhaps deliberately personifying the Enlightenment and Puritan eras). Hawthorne is more subtle, though he is obviously making some allusions to American history. Why do you think “Young Goodman Brown” is an important American story?
5. How does Goodman Brown’s view of nature compare to that of other characters? 
6. Hawthorne is a master stylist, as well. What do you admire about the design and artistry of this short story?

Questions to consider:

1. What is Irving saying about gender in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”?
2. The myth/history theme will be useful, as well. What is Irving saying about colonial America?
3. What metaphorical dimensions do you see in this story? If myth is, as we said earlier, a building block of culture or a story to live by, what is Irving telling us about how we ought to live (or how we ought not to live), particularly as Americans?
4. Let’s keep watching for examples of Romanticism, especially Gothic imagery. Intertextual links with “Thanatopsis” and “Rip Van Winkle” will add depth.
5. Today we considered the ways in which Irving uses his preface and postscript to help nudge readers toward a metaphorical or symbolic reading. What is he trying to accomplish in the postscript to this story?
6. Some folks have been blogging about freedom as a unifying theme for the course material. What do we learn from Irving about freedom in this story?

Burton’s film (1999) takes considerable liberties with the text of Irving’s story, but does preserve the spirit of mystery and humor in the narrative:

Schellerup’s film (1980) plays up Brom Bones’s character considerably more than Burton’s. Just for fun, whom do you prefer as Ichabod Crane: Johnny Depp or Jeff Goldblum?

And, of course, there is the Disney version (1958):

Questions:

1. What kind of Romanticism do you see in ”Rip Van Winkle”? The criteria that I presented from Abrams may or may not fit Irving exactly. We’ll want to watch for some overlap with eighteenth-century literature while also noting the ways in which Irving is breaking new ground.
2. How would you characterize Irving’s literary style? Among the writers we’ve studied, who do you think might have been Irving’s influences? And which writers contrast most dramatically with Irving’s style?
3. We began the course with discussions about myth and history that will help us notice some of the subtle nuances in Irving’s work. Why does Irving include the italicized preface and postscripts? What relevance do those authorial comments have to the story? You find this reflection on Rip Van Winkle and American Mythology useful.
4. What does Rip Van Winkle tell us about American identity? Which moments in the story seem most symbolic of an emerging American identity? How do Irving’s views compare with those of writers from the Early National Period?
5. Nature is a theme that could encompass all of the course material. How does Irving portray the natural world in “Rip Van Winkle,” in comparison to other writers? What relationships exist between humans and nature, according to Irving?