American Literature (Course)

Essential Questions for Course

1. What does it mean to be an American?
2. How has the United States lived up to its original promise?
3. 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.

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

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