Chapter I American Colonial and Early National Literature (1620-1820)
1. Native American Voices
Literary Review Native American Literature
Selected Reading How the World Began
2. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
Literary Review Anne Bradstreet's Poetic Voices
Selected Reading Verses Upon the Burning of Our House
3. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Literary Review Unspeakable Practices, Writable Acts: Franklin's Autobiography
Selected Reading The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Chapter II Romanticism (1820-1865)
4. Washington Irving (1783-1859)
Literary Review Washington Irving and the Comic Imagination
Selected Reading Rip Van Winkle
5. James Fenimore Cooper(1789-1851)
Literary Review Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Novels
Selected Reading The Last of the Mohicans
6. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Literary Review Forever the American Scholar
Selected Reading The American Scholar
7. Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864)
Literary Review Hawthorne's Pearl: Symbol and Character
Selected Reading The Scarlet Letter
8. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Literary Review Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart"
Selected Reading The Tell-Tale Heart
9. Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Literary Review What I Feel about Walt Whitman
Selected Reading Song of Myself (1881)
I Hear America Singing
10. Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Literary Review Trying All Things: An Introduction to Moby Dick
Selected Reading Moby Dick
11. Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Literary Review Why Dickinson Didn't Title
Selected Reading 249 Wild Nights--Wild Nights!
288 I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
Chapter III Realism (1865-1914)
12. Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Literary Review Mark Twain
Selected Reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
13. Henry James (1843-1916)
Literary Review Early James: Social Realism and the International Scene
Selected Reading Daisy Miller: A Study
14. Theodore Dreiser(1871-1945)
Literary Review Cultural and Historical Contexts for Sister Carrie
Selected Reading Sister Carrie
Chapter IV Modernism (1914-1945)
15. Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Literary Review "A Preview" to Robert Frost
Selected Reading Mending Wall
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
16. William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
Literary Review William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens
Selected Reading The Red Wheelbarrow
This Is Just to Say
17. Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
Literary Review Pound's China/Pound's Cathay
Selected Reading In a Station of the Metro
The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
18. Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953)
Literary Review Eugene O'Neill at Full Tilt
Selected Reading The Hairy Ape
19. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Literary Review Some Notes on F. Scott Fitzgerald
Selected Reading The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
20. William Faulkner (1897-1962)
Literary Review We all said, "she will kill herself": The Narrator/Detective in William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"
Selected Reading A Rose for Emily
21. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
Literary Review Spatial Confmement in Hemingway's "Cat in the Rain"
Selected Reading Cat in the Rain
22. Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
Literary Review The Portrait of the Artist as a Black American in the Poetry of Langston Hughes
Selected Reading Theme for English B
23. John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
Literary Review Introduction to The Portable Steinbeck
Selected Reading Breakfast
Chapter V Postmodernism (1945-2000)
24. Arthur Miller (1915-2005)
Literary Review Precision and Pseudo Precision in The Crucible
Selected Reading The Crucible
25. Robert Lowell (1917-1977)
Literary Review Robert Lowell: The Poetry of Cancellation
Selected Reading Skunk Hour
26. Joseph Heller (1923-1999)
Literary Review Postmoderns and Others
Selected Reading Catch-22
27. James Baldwin (1924-1987)
Literary Review Black on White
Selected Reading Sonny's Blues
28. Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)
Literary Review Flannery O'Connor, Sin, and Grace: Everything That Rises Must Converge
Selected Reading A Good Man Is Hard to Find
29. Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)
Literary Review A Lion in Our Living Room
Selected Reading Howl
30. Toni Morrison (1931-2019)
Literary Review Award Ceremony Speech
Selected Reading The Beloved
Appendix: Expanding Reading
31. Gary Snyder(1930- )
32. Maxine Hong Kingston(1940- )
33. Louise Gliick (1943- )
34. Leslie Marmon Siiko(1948- )
35. Sandra Cisneros(1954- )
Bibliography