American Literature (Course)
Contents
Essential Questions for Course
- What does it mean to be an American?
- How has the United States lived up to its original promise?
- How do history, culture, and literature inform and influence one another?
Units
Encounters and Adventures (1607-1765)
The Colonial Period to the Stamp Act
The colonial period begins in 1607 with the founding of the Jamestown colony in Virginia and ends with the passage of the Stamp Act by the British Parliament.
Essential Questions
Potential Texts
Bradstreet, Anne (1617-1672) Selections from The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650)
- "Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House"
- "A Love Letter to Her Husband"
- "Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House"
- "To my Dear and Loving Husband"
A list of her poems, along with links to their texts, can be found here.
Rowlandson, Mary (c. 1636 - c. 1711)
- Selections from A Narrative of the Captivity, Sufferings, and Removes of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682)
Edwards, Jonathan (1703-1758)
- Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Bradford, William (1590-1657)
- Selections from Of Plymouth Plantation (1620)
Taylor, Edward (1642?-1729)
- "Huswifery"
Byrd, William (1674-1744)
- Selections from The History of the Dividing Line (c. 1728)
Dekanawida
- Selections from The Iroquois Constitution
Nation Building (1765-1830)
The Revolutionary and Early National Periods
Essential Questions
- What could cause a people to fight for their independence?
- How do you create a new national identity?
Potential Texts
Wheatley, Phyllis (1753-1784)
Equiano, Olaudah (c. 1745-1797)
- Selections from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789)
Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790)
- Selections from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
- Selections from Poor Richard's Almanack
Henry, Patrick (1736-1799)
- "Speech to the Virginia Convention" (1765)
- "Liberty or Death" speech (1775)
Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)
- Selections from The Rights of Man (1791)
- Selections from Common Sense (1776)
- Selections from Notes on the State of Virginia
- Selections from The Age of Reason (1794, 1796)
- Selections from The Crisis
Jefferson, Thomas (1743-18260
- Selections from A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)
- Selections from Notes on the State of Virginia
- Selections from The Autobiography
- Selections from "The Declaration of Independence"
Dreams and Nightmares (1830-1865)
The Romantic Period through the Civil War
New Frontiers (1865-1914)
Realism, Regionalism, and Naturalism
Stepping Onto the Stage (1914-1945)
Modernism
The Center Cannot Hold (1945-?)
Postmodernism
