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American Literature (Course)

From OdleWiki

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.

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

  1. What could cause a people to fight for their independence?
  2. 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