Considerations of one or two of the major aesthetic trends in American literature. These trends include: Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, Postmodernism, Contemporary/Genre Fiction. If two trends are studied, they are the two parts of a historically-progressive dyad (e.g.; Modernism & Postmodernism). Although the course is usually taught as an expansive sampling of various authors, it may also be taught with a narrower focus upon two or three extremely influential authors (e.g.: Hawthorne and Melville). (American)