Classics of American Literature

Pt.1. Introduction

Benjamin Franklin's autobiography: the first American story

Washington Irving: the first American storyteller

Ralph Waldo Emerson's yesterday: America's coming of age

Emerson today: architect of American values

Emerson tomorrow: deconstructing culture and self

Henry David Thoreau: countercultural hero

Thoreau: stylist and humorist extraordinaire

Walden: yesterday, today, tomorrow

Edgar Allan Poe: Poete Maudit

Edgar Allan Poe: ghost writer

Poe's legacy: the self as "Haunted Palace".

Pt.2.Nathaniel Hawthorne and the American past

The Scarlet Letter: Puritan romance

Hawthorne's "A": interpretation and semiosis

The Scarlet Letter: political tract or psychological study?

Hawthorne our contemporary

Herman Melville and the making of Moby-Dick

The biggest fish story of them all

Ahab and the white whale

Moby-Dick: tragedy of perspective

Melville's "Benito Cereno": American (mis)adventure at sea

"Benito Cereno": theater of power, or power of theater?

Walt Whitman: the American bard appears.

Pt.3. Whitman: poet of the body

Whitman: poet of the city

Whitman: poet of death

The Whitman legacy

Uncle Tom's Cabin: the unread classic

Stowe's representation of slavery

Freedom and art in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Emily Dickinson: in and out of nature

Dickinson's poetry: language and consciousness

Dickinson: devotee of death

Dickinson: "Amherst's Madame de Sade"

Dickinson's legacy.

Pt.4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: American paradise regained

Huckleberry Finn: the banned classic

Huckleberry Finn: A child's voice, a child's vision

Huckleberry Finn, American Orphan

Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson: black and white charade

Henry James and the novel of perception

The turn of the screw: do you believe in ghosts?

Turning the screw of interpretation

Stephen Crane and the literature of War

The Red Badge of Courage: brave new world

Stephen Crane: scientist of human behavior

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: war against patriarchy. Pt. 5. "The Yellow Wallpaper": descent into hell or free at last?

Robert Frost and the spirit of New England

Robert Frost: "At Home in the Metaphor"

Robert Frost and the fruits of the earth

T.S. Eliot: unloved modern classic

T.S. Eliot: "The Waste Land" and beyond

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: American romance

The Great Gatsby: a story of lost illusions?

Fitzgerald's trimph: writing the American dream

Ernest Hemingway's The Sun also Rises: novel of the lost generation

The Sun Also Rises: spiritual quest

Ernest Hemingway: wordsmith

Pt.6. Hemingway's The Garden of Eden: female desire unleashed

The Garden of Eden: combat zone

William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury: the idiot's tale

The Sound and the Fury: failed rites of passage

The Sound and the Fury: signifying nothing?

Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!: Civil War epic

Absalom, Absalom!: the language of love

Absalom, Absalom!: the overpass to love

The Grapes of Wrath: American saga

John Steinbeck: poet of the little man

The Grapes of Wrath: reconceiving self and family

Invisible Man: black bildungsroman. Pt.7. Invisible Man: reconceiving history and race

Invisible Man: "What did I do to be so black and blue?"

Eugene O'Neill: great god of American theater

Long Day's Journey into Night: there's no place like home

Tennessee Williams: managing libido

A Street named Desire: the death of romance

Death of Salesman: death of an ethos?

Death of Salesman: tragedy of the American dream

Toni Morrison's Beloved: dismembering and remembering

Beloved: a story of "thick love"

Beloved: Morrison's writing of the body

Conclusion.