350:315
Colonial American Literature

01   TTH5   CAC   31954    IANNINI      MU-212

This course focuses on literature written in and about the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. Our readings will span the turbulent period between the emergence of the “Scientific Revolution” and trans-Atlantic slave trade in the mid 1600s, through the rise of evangelical culture and Creole independence movements in the late 1700s. We will attempt to cover the full range of literary genres produced and circulated in colonial America, including travel narratives, sermons, essays, poems, plays and captivity narratives. We shall approach these writings as tentative and often unstable efforts to depict the “contact zones” of the New World —the social spaces in which competing cultures clash and/or commingle. We will examine texts authored by European settlers, Native Americans, Creole planters, slaves and former slaves, and itinerant ministers. While we will devote most of our attention to texts originally published in English, we will also study a selection of French and Spanish colonial writings in translation. Requirements include two papers, two in-class exams, and active class participation.