American Literature

1
American Literature
2
Meeting of Cultures

• Amerind creation myths
• Earth on Turtles Back
• When Grizzlies Walked Upright
• Iroquois Constitution
• Columbus (1492)/Retort (1542)
• Columbus Journal of the First Voyage
• Bartolome de Las Casas Legacy of Columbus
• Cabeza de Vaca (1557)
• A Journey through Texas
• Olaudah Equiano (1789)
• The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano

3
Colonists

• John Smith (1624)The General History of
  Virginia
  
• William Bradford (1630) Of Plymouth Plantation
• Anne Bradstreet (1612 1672) was a writer and
  the first notable American poet and the first
  woman to have her works published in Colonial
  America. To My Dear and Loving Husband
• Jonathan Edwards (1703 1758) preacher,
  theologian, and missionary to Native Americans.
  Edwards "is widely acknowledged to be America's
  most important and original philosophical
  theologian. Known as one of the greatest
  American theologians and revivalists. His
  fire-and-brimstone sermon Sinners in the Hands of
  an Angry God, emphasized the just wrath of God
  against sin and contrasted it with the provision
  of God for salvation the intensity of his
  preaching sometimes resulted in members of the
  audience fainting and swooning.

4
Revolutionaries

• Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
• Autobiography
• Poor Richards Almanac
• Speech in the Convention
• Thomas Jefferson Declaration (1776)
  Constitution (1789)
  
• Thomas Paine (1737-1809) The Crisis, Number 1
  Common Sense
  
• Phyllis Wheatley (175384), Poems on Various
  Subjects (1773). Born in Senegal, sold into
  slavery at seven. Brought to America, she was
  owned by a Boston merchant. By 16 she had
  mastered English. Poetry praised by George
  Washington for a poem in his honor. Many white
  people found it hard to believe a Black woman
  could write poetry. Had to defend herself in
  court.
• Patrick Henry ( 1736-1799) Speech in the
  Virginia Convention
  
• Martin Luther King, Jr. ( 1929-1968) Letter from
  Birmingham City Jail I Have a Dream

5
Early Lit

• Washington Irving (1783-1859)
• Legend of Sleepy Hollow
• Rip Van Winkle
• The Devil and Tom Walker
• Fireside Poets
• Longfellow (1807-82) Hiawatha Evangeline Paul
  Revere
  
• Bryant (1794-1878) Thanatopsis
• Holmes (1809-94) Old Ironsides
• Lowell (1819-91) First Snowfall
• Whittier (1807-92)Snowbound
• Edgar Allen Poe (1809-49)Fall of the House of
  Usher, The Raven
  
• Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64)
• The Ministers Black Veil
• The Scarlet Letter
• Herman Melville (1819-91)
• Moby Dick
• Bartleby, Typee, Benito Cerino, Omoo, Billy Budd
• Emily Dickinson (1830-86)

6
Transcendentalists

• Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82)
• The Dial
• Nature
• Self-Reliance
• Henry David Thoreau (1817-62)
• Civil Disobedience
• Walden
• Walt Whitman (1819-92)
• Leaves of Grass
• I hear America Singing
• I Sing the Body Electric

7
Civil War

• Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
• Gettysburg Address
• Speech from the Second Inaugural
• Frederick Douglass (1818-95)
• Autobiography
• Fourth of July speech
• My Bondage and My Freedom
• Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
• Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
• Killed at Resaca
• Chickamauga
• The Devils Dictionary
• Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
• Red Badge of Courage
• An Episode of War

8
Late 19th Century

• Amerind Writers
• Chief Seattle (1786-1866)
• Chief Joseph (1840-1904) I Will Fight No More
  Forever
  
• Black Elk (1863-1950)
• Regionalists
• Mark Twain (1835-1910)
• Bret Harte (1836-1902) Outcasts of Poker Flat,
  Luck of Roaring Camp
  
• Jack London (1876-1917) White Fang Call of the
  Wild To Build a Fire
  
• Kate Chopin (1851-1904) Story of an Hour The
  Awakening
  
• Willa Cather (1873-1947) O Pioneers (1913)
• Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872-1906) We Wear the
  Mask Douglass
  
• E. A. Robinson (1869-1935) Richard Cory
• Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950) Spoon River
  Anthology (1915)
  
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) The Yellow
  Wallpaper (1892)

9
Early 20th Major Novelists

• Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)
• Winesburg, Ohio (Corn Planting)
• F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
• Great Gatsby
• This Side of Paradise Tender Is the Night
  Winter Dreams
  
• John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
• Grapes of Wrath
• Of Mice and Men Cannery Row Tortilla Flat, Red
  Pony Travels with Charlie East of Eden
  
• Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
• The Killers Hills Like White Elephants The
  Snows of Kilimanjaro In another Country
  
• The Sun Also Rises The Old Man and the Sea
  Farwell to Arms

10
Early 20th Major Novelists

• Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
• Ethan Frome
• Age of Innocence
• William Faulkner (1897-1962)
• As I Lay Dying Sound and the Fury Light in
  August Sanctuary
  
• A Rose for Emily Dry September Race at Morning

11
Early 20th Poets

• E.E. Cummings (1894-1962)
• anyone lived in a pretty how town
• Old age sticks
• W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
• The Unknown Citizen
• Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
• Of Modern Poetry
• Anecdote of the Jar
• Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982)
• Ars Poetica
• Marianne Moore (1887-1972)
• Poetry

12
Early 20th Poets

• T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
• Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1910)
• The Wasteland (1922)
• Imagist Poets
• Ezra Pound (1885-1972) Father of Modernist
  poetry
  
• In a Station of the Metro
• William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
• The Red Wheelbarrow
• The Great Figure
• This Is Just to Say
• HD (1886-1861)
• Pear Tree
• Heat

13
Early 20th Poets

• Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
• Chicago
• Grass
• Lincoln biography
• Robert Frost (1874-1963)
• Birches
• Mending Wall
• Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
• After Apple Picking
• The Road Not Taken

14
Harlem Renaissance

• Langston Hughes poet, I, Too, Sing America, Let
  America Be America Again
  
• Zora Neal Hurston novelist, Their Eyes Were
  Watching God
  
• Claude McKay poet, If We Must Die, The Tropics
  of New York, The White House
  
• Countee Cullen poet, Incident, The Wise
• Later Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man), Richard
  Wright (Native Son), Lorraine Hansberry (Raisin
  in the Sun)

15
Other

• James Thurber (1894-1961)
• The Night the Ghost Got In
• The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

16
Post WWII

• John Hersey Hiroshima
• Flannery OConnor The Life You Save
• Bernard Malamud The First Seven Years
• John Updike The Brown Chest
• Arthur Miller The Crucible, Death of a Salesman
• Tennessee Williams Streetcar Named Desire
• Edward Albee American Dream, Zoo Story
• Joseph Heller Catch 22

17
Beats

• William Burroughs Naked Lunch
• Jack Kerouac On the Road
• Alan Ginsburg Howl
• Gary Snyder Turtle Island
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti Coney Island of the Mind

18
Hippies

• Robert Heinlein Stranger in a Strange Land
• Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse5
• Richard Braughtigan Revenge of the Lawn
• Eldridge Cleaver Soul on Ice
• Jerzy Kosinski The Painted Bird,
• Hunter Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
• Tom Wolfe The Right Stuff, Electric Kool-Aid
  Acid Test
  
• Phillip Roth Portnoys Complain
• Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

19
Contemporary 

• Anne Tyler Accidental Tourist
• Louise Erdrich Love Medicine, Beet Queen
• Alice Walker Color Purple
• Truman Capote In Cold Blood
• Toni Morrison The Bluest Eyes, Sula,
• Ian Frazier Humorist
• Sandra Cisneros House on Mango Street
• Amy Tan Joy Luck Club, Kitchen Gods Wife