Marrs, Cody
MWF 1 :50 PM
Park Hall 0136
The American Renaissance was one of the most significant and consequential events in American literary history. This movement—the first fully-fledged literary movement in the early United States—set the stage for the future development of American art, culture, philosophy, fiction, and poetry. This course explores the literature and the legacies of the American Renaissance. Focusing on the movement’s most prominent and influential authors (i.e., Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman), we will study their artistry, philosophy, and the relationship between their life and their work. Throughout the semester, we will pay particularly close attention to these writers’ shared interests and ideas regarding language, art, spirituality, identity, the environment, and human nature.