ENGL 645 Nineteenth-Century American Literature & Culture | Gregory Eiselein | Spring 2008
Essay 3: The Cultural Analysis of Nineteenth-Century America
This assignment asks you to write a critical essay that includes the
cultural analysis of a text or texts. This assignment is built on the
premise that understanding a particular cultural context will help us
to better appreciate and comprehend a culture's literary
productions, just as a careful reading of a literary text may lead us
to better understand the culture from which it emerged.
For the purposes of this assignment, the definition of "cultural
analysis" is large and open-ended. It means making connections
between the texts we have read and the cultural contexts in which
those texts emerged; it means making connections between texts
and the cultural contexts in which those texts circulate. It does not
exclude the formal or internal analysis of a text (indeed some of the very best cultural criticism
uses formal analysis of literary texts); but cultural analysis moves beyond the boundaries of the
text itself to establish links among texts, values, institutions, groups, practices, and people.
Here are some examples of the questions (some of them borrowed from Stephen Greenblatt) that
a critic developing a cultural analysis might ask:
• What kinds of behavior does this text seem to enforce?
• What are the social purposes or functions of this text?
• Why might readers at different times and different places find this text compelling?
• Are their differences between my values and the values implicit in the text I am reading?
• Upon what social understanding does the text depend?
• How might this text affect the freedom or movement of a person?
• How is this text connected to larger social structures?
These are just examples. The specific questions, form, and content of you paper should be
tailored to your own talents and interests. In other words, you will develop your own topic for
this paper. It also means that some of these papers may be deeply informed by cultural theory;
others may not. Some will want to develop a very precise idea of what "cultural analysis" means;
others will not. Some will use a great deal of historical research; others only a little. Some papers
will use mostly primary documents to construct an understanding of an early American cultural
context; others will rely on secondary sources; and others may use a mix of both. All these
papers, however, must use documents and sources beyond the literary text itself.
