Final Project Annotated Bibliography

Mallika Dhaliwal

Professor Jimmie Wilson

English Writing 001B-09Y

8 December 2011

Annotated Bibliography

Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7^th ed. 5 vols. New York: Norton, 2007. Print.

Nina Baym is an American literary critic who has written hundreds of scholarly articles on American literature. She was also an Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign before her retirement. This anthology, which she edited, is particularly useful because it includes biographies of authors and descriptions of literary periods to contextualize the texts compiled. For example, Walt Whitman’s poetry would be accompanied by his biography, an account of the time in which he lived, and a portrait of American Romanticism and Transcendentalism.

Greenblatt, Stepehen, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8^th ed., New York: Norton, 2006. Print.

Stephen Greenblatt is a professor of English at The University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University. He is often considered one of the founders of “New Historicism,” a movement analyzing the cultural and historical contexts of a poem in order to better criticize it. The Norton anthology he edited is useful in the same way that Baym’s anthology of American literature is helpful: Greenblatt provides significant insight into the society and movements occurring during the time in which various poets were writing.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. 1850. New York: Random House, 2000. Print.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American author best known for pioneering American dark Romanticism, or American Gothic. He was a troubled and agitated man often haunted by his family’s dark history in the Salem Witch Trials. His most famous novel, The Scarlett Letter, depicts the battle between what is inherent in human nature and what is expected by society. Hester makes her home in the wild, untamed region of pre-Revolutionary Massachusetts after she is disgraced. When she changes herself to adhere to societal conventions, her beauty and fire are considerably lessened and she becomes another woman altogether. This edition included an enlightening introduction as well as footnotes and endnotes that lend fullness to the text.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. New York: Norton, 1996. Print.

Shelley wrote her seminal novel, Frankenstein, as the result of a wager between the greatest writers of her time when she was only eighteen years old. Of course, this chilling and cautionary account of a man’s attempt to defy the laws of God and nature won the competition and has earned its place in the Western cannon. The novel stresses the anxieties of the scientifically-inclined modern world yet describes the natural world as an innocent garden of Eden in which all humans and all beings are free from sin and judgment. The downfall of man occurs only when he attempts to harness powers greater than what has been allotted to him since the dawn of time. This Norton edition includes extremely interesting scholarly essays and articles on Frankenstein, illuminating Shelley’s intentions to a greater extent.

Oerlemans, Onno. Romanticism and the Materiality of Nature. 2002. University of Toronto, 2002. Print.

Oerlemans is a Professor of English at Hamilton College in Upstate New York who earned his Ph.D. from Yale University. He has published articles on the form and function of lyric in Whitman, Milton, and Wordsworth, on literary theory and Henry James, and on animal rights and taxonomy in romanticism. This particular book establishes a connection between the ideas of Romanticism and the ideals of modern environmentalism, but stresses the differences due to the changes in environmental theory and practice over time. However, he does establish that Romantics were among the first to realize the dangers of industrial development by drawing from their works, discussions, and personal correspondences.