Prepare a project that analyzes the meaning and importance of early American literature.Explain how the fiction and drama of the pre-Civil War (wk 5 on reading list) period relates to earlier literary
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LIT/255 Reading List
Be sure to refer to the Table of Contents and the How to Use This Digital Edition. Use the search button to enter the name of the author or title of the reading to navigate in your VitalSource text.
You will see that in most cases, if work by an author is assigned, a brief biography of the author is also assigned. As you review these, do not try to memorize dates; you will not be quizzed on the facts of these authors’ lives. However, do review the biographies for external factors that might shed light on the readings, or help you understand the context of creation, publication, and/or distribution of the pieces read. Week 1Modern Perspectives on First Encounters
Before you plunge into the first readings from the period in which Europeans and Native Americans first encountered one another, a broad perspective sketching key concepts is useful.
Read the following subsections of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1 located in the “Beginnings to 1820” section:
Introduction
Timeline
Native American World Views
The Native Americans did not share a single unified culture when the Europeans arrived, but their beliefs shared similarities, and addressed similar topics. Examining these groupings can give insight into Native culture.
Read the following sections of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1:
Beginnings to 1820
Native American Oral Literature
Stories of the Beginning of the World
Trickster Tales
Explorations, Encounters, and Interactions
The first Europeans to explore North American were not Americans. They thought of themselves as Spaniards, Englishmen, Christians, etc. That being said, those first encounters shaped European understanding of America, and the nation that would emerge.
Read the following sections of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1:
Beginnings to 1820
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)
Letter of Discovery
From Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (c.1490-1558)
From The Relation of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
First Encounters: Early European Accounts of Native America
John Smith (1580-1631)
From The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles
From New England’s Trials
Roger Williams (c.1603-1683)
From A Key into the Language of America
Colonial Leaders
While all of the European colonists in North America faced challenges, colonial leaders carried a particular weight: they had to think about their own fate, but also about how entire groups of people should live.
Read the following sections of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1:
Beginings to 1820
William Bradford (1590-1657)
Of Plymouth Plantation
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Biography
The Way to Wealth
Information to Those Who Would Remove to America
Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America
The Autobiography
Part One
Part Two
Colonial Ministers
Almost all of the colonists were Christian—a small number were Jewish—and many took their religion quite seriously. However, formal ministers had to both articulate their own faiths and speak to and for their communities.
Read the following sections of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1:
Beginings to 1820
John Winthrop (1588-1649)
Biography
A Model of Christian Charity
From The Journal of John Winthrop
Edward Taylor (c. 1642-1729)
Biography
From God’s Determinations
Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold
Huswifery
Cotton Mather (1663-1728)
Biography
From The Wonders of the Invisible World
From Magnalia Christi Americana
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
Biography
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Colonial Women
Some elements of the colonists’ experience was shared. Other elements were specific to women. Examining a set of readings by colonial women should give special insight into these aspects of colonial life.
Read the following sections of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1:
Beginings to 1820
Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612-1672)
Biography
The Prologue
To Her Father with Some Verses
The Flesh and the Spirit
The Author to Her Book
Before the Birth of One of Her Children
To My Dear and Loving Husband
Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House
Mary Rowlandson (c. 1637-1711)
Biography
A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
Ethnographic and Naturalist Writing
Sarah Kemble Knight
Biography
From The Private Journal of a Journey from Boston to New York in the Year 1704
Saturday, October the Seventh
From December the Sixth
Creating America
The North American continent had long existed, but for the United States of America to come into being, people had to define it. This set of readings helped do that.
Read the following sections of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1:
Beginnings to 1820
J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735-1813)
From Letters from an American Farmer
John Adams (1735-1826) and Abigail Adams (1744-1818)
From The Letters
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
From Common Sense
The Crisis, No. 1
From The Age of Reason
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
From The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson
From Notes on the State of Virginia
The Federalist
From The Federalist
No. 1 [Alexander Hmailton]
No. 10 [James Madison]
Olaudah Equiano (1745?-1797)
From The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African, Written by Himself
Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
The Wild Honey Suckle
The Indian Burying Ground
To Sir Toby
On Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man
On the Religion of Nature
Phillis Wheatley (c.1753-1784)
On Being Brought from Africa to America
To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth
To the University of Cambridge, in New England
On the Death of Rev. Mr. George Whitfield, 1770
Thoughts on the Works of Providence
To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works
To His Excellency General Washington
Letters
To John Thornton
To Rev. Samson Occom
Washington Irving (1783-1859)
From A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrick Knickerbocker
Rip Van Winkle
American Literature 1820-1865
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
The Pioneers
The Last of the Mohicans
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
Thanatopsis
To a Waterfowl
Sonnet – To an American Painter Departing for Europe
The Prairies
The Death of Lincoln
William Apess (1798-1839)
A Son of the Forest
An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man
The American Renaissance: Poetry
During this period, a number of poets emerged who earned international reputations—and money. Longfellow was the first American poet to make his living from his poetry.
Read the following sections of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1:
American Literature 1820-1865
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Nature
Self-Reliance
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Young Goodman Brown
The Minister's Black Veil
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
The Jewish Cemetery at Newport
My Lost Youth
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
The Hunters of Men
Ichabod!
Snow Bound: A Winter Idyl
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
The Raven
Annabel Lee
The Tell-Tale Heart
The Philosophy of Composition
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Resistance to Civil Government
Walden, or Life in the Woods
1. Economy
2. Where I Lived, and What I Lived For
5. Solitude
17. Spring
18. Conclusion
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Bartleby, the Scrivener
Period Perspectives on Racial Issues
In the decades leading up to the Civil War, race relations and slavery drew more and more attention, shaping politics, religious activity, and literature.
During this period the women’s rights movement arose, culminating in 1848 with the Seneca Falls Convention. The struggle between men and women took many forms, and appeared in literature as well as politics.
Read the following sections of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1:
American Literature 1820-1865
Native Americans: Removal and Resistance
Black Hawk
Petalesharo
Elias Boudinot
The Cherokee Memorials
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
A House Divided: Speech Delivered at Springield, Illinois, at the Close of the Republican State Convention, June 16, 1858
Address Delivered at the Dedicaiton of the Cemetary at Gettysburg, November 19, 1863
Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)
The Great Lawsuit
Review of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
Fourth of July
Things and Thoughts in Europe
Slavery, Race, and the Making of American Literature
Thomas Jefferson
David Walker
Samual E. Cornish and John B. Russworm
William Llyod Garrison
Angelina E. Grimké
Sojourner Truth
James M. Whitfield
Martin R. Delany
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly
Volume 1
Chapter VII. The Mother’s Struggle
Chapter IX. In Which It Appears That A Senator Is But A Man
Chapter XII. Select Incident of Lawful Trade
Fanny Fern (Sarah Willis Parton) (1811-1872)
Male Criticism on Ladies' Books
Fresh Leaves, by Fanny Fern
Harriet Jacobs (c. 1813-1897)
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself
What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
Midcentury Poetry
Though they lived very different lives, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickson were truly great poets, writers who reshaped American poetry and inspired both readers and writers.
Read the following sections of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1:
American Literature 1820-1865
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Preface to Leaves of Grass
Sea Drift
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
Drum-Taps
The Wound-Dresser
Memories of President Lincoln
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
259 [A Clock Stopped - ]
260 [I’m Nobody! Who are you?]
269 [Wild nights - Wild nights!]
320 [There’s a certain Slant of light]
339 [I like a look of Agony]
340 [I felt a Funeral, in my Brain]
355 [It was not Death, for I stood up]
359 [A Bird, came down the Walk - ]
365 [I know that He exists]
372 [After great pain, a formal feeling comes]
373 [This World is not conclusion]
409 [The Soul selects her own Society - ]
411 [Mine – by the Right of White Election!]
446 [This was a Poet - ]
448 [I died for Beauty – but was scarse]
479 [Because I could not stop for Death - ]
519 [This is my letter to the World]
591 [I heard a Fly buzz – when I died - ]
598 [The Brain – is wider than the Sky - ]
620 [Much Madness is divinest Sense - ]
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