ENGL 607d – “A Nation of Mourners”: The Redemptive Tragedy of American Literature (F26)

“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Tragedy speaks twice from one mouth, bewailing our frailty in the light of our splendor. American literature has learned both refrains. The purpose of this course will be to enrich our understanding of American liberty and patriotism through informed and earnest discussion. Beginning with our heritage in English literature and proceeding through the current age, this course will contemplate a practical approach to liberty worked out in our best books. The earliest American authors embarked on a project of taming the wilderness with law, regarding our Western heritage as a civilizing restraint on man’s wayward nature. By way of introduction, we will examine how the practical sobriety of our first writers informs their celebration of a newly free society. Yet, as America begins to thrive, we will see this initial practicality eclipsed by the light of the American dream. We will close, then, with a sober examination of conscience, rooted in our earliest American works and arising from the conflict between the stain of our frailty and the beauty of our liberty. Is it better to cling to a beautiful promise or to acknowledge a truthful reality? Our goal in this course will be to reconcile the two through a clear understanding of James Fenimore Cooper’s patriotic conception of “a nation of mourners.”