American Literature and Composition Course Schedule

1. “The Earth on Turtle’s Back” (Onondaga)

2. “When Grizzlies Walked Upright” (Modoc)

B. The Puritan Way

1. Arthur Miller

a. Drama: The Crucible (written in 1953, but set in 1692, so we will study it here among the Puritan works.)

2. Jonathan Edwards

a. from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

3. Anne Bradstreet

a. “To My Dear and Loving Husband”
II. Early Nineteenth Century: American Romanticism 1800—1865

1. 
   Transcendentalism
   

1. 
   From Nature
   
2. 
   From “Self-Reliance”
   
3. 
   “World Soul”
   
4. 
   “The Rhodora”
   

2. 
   Henry David Thoreau
   

3. Walt Whitman

i. From Song of Myself

ii. “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”

iii. “By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame”

iv. “A Noiseless Patient Spider”

v. “I Saw in Louisiana a Live Oak Growing.”

vi. “I Hear America Singing”

vii. “I, Too” (Langston Hughes)

B. The Fireside Poets; selected poetry from:

a. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

i. “A Psalm of Life”

ii. “The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls”

iii. “The Cross of Snow”

b. Oliver Wendell Holmes

c. James Russell Lowell

d. John Greenleaf Whittier

C. The Dark Romantics

1. Edgar Allan Poe: Gothic Literature

a. “The Fall of the House of Usher”

b. “The Masque of the Red Death”

c. “The Oval Portrait”

2. Herman Melville

a. From Moby Dick

b. Short Answer Essay: Ahab Character Analysis: Courageous Captain or Obsessed Madman?

Formal extended analysis: Dark Romanticism Characteristics Analysis. Choose a story from the Dark Romantics unit, and drawing upon a careful examination of textual details, considering its structure, style, and themes, develop an extended literary interpretation of its merit as a representative of the Dark Romanticism (Gothic) genre. Response will be rewritten through the peer and teacher revision process.

3. Emily Dickinson

1. 
   Selected Poetry
   
2. 
   
   

1. 
   The Divided Nation
   

1. 
   Abraham Lincoln
   
   1. 
      “The Gettysburg Address” (speech)
      

1. Novel (excerpt): The Red Badge of Courage

a. Reflective Essay: Personal Test. In the Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming’s personal test comes in war. In a reflective essay, discuss a personal test that you faced.

2. Stephen Crane: Selected Poetry

3. Jack London

a. “To Build a Fire”

C. Regionalism

1. Mark Twain

a. “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”

b. Novel: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

c. Timed, In-class Essay: Huckleberry Fin; essay prompt TBA

C. New Perspectives

1. Kate Chopin

a. “The Story of an Hour”

b. Formal extended analysis: Social Criticism Draw upon careful examination of textual details in these two feminist works to interpret and evaluate the social, historical, and/or cultural criticism they exhibit.

2. Chief Joseph

a. “I Will Fight No More Forever” (speech)

A. Toward Modernism

1. Edgar Lee Masters

a. From Spoon River Anthology (Poetry)

2. Robert Frost

a. Selected Poetry

3. Edna St. Vincent Millay

a. Selected Poetry

B. Literary Experimentation

1. Selected Poetry from: Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams,

e.e. cummings, Carl Sandburg and T.S. Eliot.

2. Katherine Anne Porter

a. “The Jilting of Grannie Weatherall”

C. Earnest Hemingway

1. “Hills Like White Elephants”

2. “Cat in the Rain”

3. “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”

a. Timed, in-class response: Symbols Through the close examination of textual details, students will develop an extended interpretation of symbolism and its affect on themes in one of the Hemingway works studied in this unit.

D. F. Scott Fitzgerald

1. Novel: The Great Gatsby

a. Formal Extended Analysis: various novel-related topics

E. The Harlem Renaissance

1. Various Poetry Selections

2. Novel: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

a. Timed, in-class response: Conflict There are four main types of conflict: Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Society, and Inner Conflict. Through the close examination of textual details create an extended interpretation of conflict in the novel, providing one example for each conflict type, and concluding with a summative evaluation of the conflicts’ effect on Janie as a dynamic character.

F. John Steinbeck

1. “The Chrysanthemums”

G. James Thurber

1. “The Catbird Seat”
V. Contemporary Period: 1945-Present

A. Poetry

1. Selected Poems by: Sylvia Plath, William Stafford, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Gary Snyder, Gary Soto, Gwendolyn Brooks, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Garrett Hongo

B. Southern Gothic:

1. Flannery O’Conner

a. “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”

2. William Faulkner

a. 2. “A Rose For Emily” (1930)

3. Eudora Welty

a. “A Worn Path”

C. Modern Gothic:

1. Joyce Carol Oates

a. “Where is Here?”

D. Selected Prose:

1. Kurt Vonnegut

a. “Epicac”

2. Ray Bradbury

a. Selected Short Stories

3. Tim O’Brien

a. From The Things They Carried

4. Martin Luther King

a. “I Have a Dream”

E. Novel: The Catcher in the Rye

a. Formal extended analysis: various novel-related topics

a. Formal extended analysis: various novel-related topics