American Literature Resources

Introduction to the Course

• Why Study American Literature
• Asking Questions of Texts (Heuristic Device)
• Aspects of Periods in the Western, Euro-American Tradition

Emily Dickinson

• The Perplexing Faith and Doubt of Emily Dickinson

Samuel Clemens

• Samuel Clemens, Local Color
• The Nature of Humor
• Issues of Concern in Historical Remembrances
• A Christian Response to Mark Twain

Henry James

• James'  The Turn of the Screw: Models and Interpretative History
• Notes Toward a Biblical View of the Supernatural and Demonic

Edith Warton and Stephen Crane

• The Adaptation of Genre and Spiritual Suppression

Willa Cather

• Ten Propositions Concerning Cather's Fiction
• Death Comes to the Archbishop & Painterly Sight
• Northrop Frye's Monomyth
• Three Rival Versions of Pursuing Truth

T.S. Eliot

• Eliot on Tradition, Poetry, Faith, and Culture
• "Burnt Norton" Commentary
• "East Coker" Commentary
• "The Dry Salvages" Commentary
• "Little Gidding" Commentary
• The Structure of  The Four Quartets
• Tradition and Eternity in  Little Gidding

Flannery O'Connor

• Flannery O'Connor and the Theology of the Grotesque

Chaim Potok

• Tradition, Suffering, and Art
• Paintings by Potok
• Artists Referred to in  My Name is Asher Lev
• A Life Apart: Hasidiam in America
• A Glossary of Basic Jewish Terms and Concepts

Ron Hansen

• An Introduction to Magical Realism
• Graced Occasions: Sacramental Realism

Dana Gioia

• Dana Gioia Online
• "Can Poetry Matter?"

Archive of Earlier Semesters

Colonial America

• Lecture Material (from a 3301 course)

W. D. Howells

• W. D. Howells and the Purpose of Fiction

Henry James

• "Daisy Miller": The Tragedy of the Autonomous Self
• The Wings of the Dove: Bks 1-4, Exposition
• The Wings of the Dove Bks 5-7, Complication Continued
• The Wings of the Dove, Bks 8-10: Crisis & Climax

Henry Adams

• Henry Adams' Dualisms

Ezra Pound

• Some Aspects of Ezra Pound's Theories of Poetry and Translation

Stevens, Williams, and Moore

• The Poetics of Gnosticism, Materialism, and the Incarnation

Harlem Renaissance

• The Harlem Renaissance and Cultural Representation

William Faulkner

• Animistic Mysticism in Faulkner's "The Bear"
• Faulkner's Style
• The Curse on the Land

Momaday and Erdrich

• Memory & Magic

Robert Penn Warren

• Fall and Redemption: The Self, Time, and The Past

Richard Wilbur

• Richard Wilbur's Lyrics of Christian Sensibility

Annie Dillard

• Annie Dillard' Ambivalent Mysticism