Department of English

The latter decades of the nineteenth century saw the rise and triumph of realism in this country and then a challenge to its dominance by the movement we call naturalism. Realistic and naturalistic fiction will be the principal subject of this course, with assignments in the novels and shorter narratives of Rebecca Harding Davis, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Sarah Orne Jewett, Charlotte Perking Gilman, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and Edith Wharton. We shall also give attention to the poetry of the period, which witnessed the appearance of our greatest poet, Emily Dickinson, and interesting experiments by Crane and a few other figures. Three papers, two quite short, the third ten or twelve pages, a midterm, and a final will determine grades.