[PDF] Highlights of American Literature

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AMERICAN LITERATURE

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Highlights of American Literature

1995 · Cité 43 fois — range of American literature, from its beginnings to the modern period Each section begins with a general duce a torrent of household eloquence Rip had but one way of replying to all 

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DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 417 420CS 216 258

AUTHOR

Bode, Carl

TITLE

Highlights of American Literature.

INSTITUTION

United States Information Agency, Washington, DC. Bureau of

Educational and Cultural Affairs.

PUB DATE

1995-00-00

NOTE

291p.; "First published 1981; this edition reprinted 1995."

PUB TYPE

Guides - ClassroomLearner (051)GuidesClassroom

Teacher (052)

EDRS PRICE

MF01/PC12 Plus Postage.

DESCRIPTORS

*Authors; Discussion (Teaching Technique); English (Second Language); Literary History; Literary Styles; *Novels; *Poetry; Questioning Techniques; *Reading Materials;

Secondary Education; *United States Literature

IDENTIFIERS

Historical Background

ABSTRACT

Intended for high-intermediate/advanced level students of English as a foreign language, this book contains selections from the wide range of American literature, from its beginnings to the modern period. Each section begins with a general introduction to the literary period, and then presents essays about individual authors, selections from the author's writings, discussion questions at the end of each prose selection or group of poems, and discussion questions at the end of each chapter. The "National Beginnings" section discusses Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Philip Freneau, William Cullen Bryant, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The "Romanticism and Reason" section discusses Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, and Henry James, "The American Short Story: 19th Century Developments" section discusses Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane, Edgar Allan Poe, and Frank R. Stockton. The "Realism and Reaction" section discusses Theodore Dreiser, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Carl Sandburg, Sinclair Lewis, Henry L. Mencken, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John Steinbeck. The "Modern Voices in Prose and Poetry" section discusses Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Robert Frost, Archibald Macleish, William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, Katherine Ann Porter, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Robert Lowell, Theodore Roethke, Randall Jarrell, and James Wright. The "Modern American Drama" section presents two short plays: "Return to Dust" (George Bamber) and "The Other Player" (Owen G. Arno). Suggestions to the teacher conclude the book.(RS) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made* *from the original document.* 0 aU S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Office of Educational Research and Improvement

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION

CENTER (ERIC)

This document has been reproduced asreceived from the person or organization originating it

Minor changes have been made to

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HIGHLIGHT

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Dean Curry, General Series Editor

HIGHLIGHTS

OFAMERICANLITERATURE

Based upon a core manuscript by

Dr. Carl Bode, University of Maryland

English Language Programs Division

Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs

United States Information Agency

Washington, D.C. 20547

3

Highlights of American Literature

Published by the Materials Branch

English Language Programs Division

U.S. Information Agency

Washington, D. C. 20547

First published 1981. This edition reprinted 1995.

Cover Photo: A view of Chicago skyscrapers

from the 110th floor of the Sears Tower.

Source: USIA

4

CONTENTS

National Beginnings

Introduction

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter HI

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VIIPage

5

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

10

Washington Irving (1783-1859)

16

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)22

Philip Freneau (1752-1832)

29

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

33

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

39

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

44

Romanticism and Reason

Introduction

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI52

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

57

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

64

Herman Melville (1819-1891)

71

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

77

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

82

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

90

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

97

Stephen Crane (1871-1900)104

Henry James (1843-1916)

112
The American Short Story: 19th Century Developments

Introduction

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Realism and Reaction

Introduction

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV119

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

120

Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

127

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

135

Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902)

140
145

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)

150

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

156

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

163

Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)

169
J

Chapter XXV

Henry L. Mencken (1880-1956)175

Chapter XXVI

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)181

Chapter XXVII

John Steinbeck (1902-1968)185

Modern Voices in Prose and Poetry

Introduction

196

Chapter XXVIII

Ernest Hemingway201

Chapter XXIX

William Faulkner207

Chapter XXX

Robert Frost214

Chapter XXXI

Archibald MacLeish, William Carlos Williams and

Langston Hughes221

Chapter XXXII

Katherine Ann Porter231

Chapter XXXIII

Saul Bellow238

Chapter XXXIV

Ralph Ellison244

Chapter XXXV

Robert Lowell, Theodore Roethke, Randall Jarrell

and James Wright249

Modern American Drama

Introduction

261

Chapter XXXVI

Return to Dust262

Chapter XXXVII

The Other Player270

Suggestions to the Teacher282

Acknowledgments287

NATIONAL BEGINNINGS

The first American literature was neither

American nor really literature. It was

not American because it was the work mainly of immigrants from England. It was not literature as we know itin the form of poetry, essays, or fictionbut rather an interesting mixture of travel accounts and religious writings.

The earliest colonial travel accounts are

records of the perils and frustrations that challenged the courage of America's first settlers. William Bradford's History of

Plimmoth Plantation describes the cold

greeting which the passengers on the ship

Mayflower received when they landed on the

coast of America in 1620:

Being thus arrived in a good harbor, and

brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element...

But here I cannot stand half amazed at this

poor people's present condition; and so I think will the reader, too, when he well considers the same. Being thus passed the vast ocean, ... they had no friends to welcome them nor Inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; nor houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succour.

If the American wilderness did not provide

a hearty welcome for the colonists, it nevertheless offered a wealth of natural resources. "He is a bad fisher [who] cannot kill on one day with his hooke and line, one, two, or three hundred Cods" is a claim made by Captain John Smith in A Description of

New England (1616). "A sup of New

England's air is better than a whole draft of

old England's ale" is a testimonial given by

Francis Higginson in his New-England's

Plantation (1630). Higginson adds:

Besides, I have one of my children that was

formerly most lamentably handled with sore breaking out of both his hands and feet of the king's evil, but since he came hither he is very well over [what] he was, and there is

5hope of perfect recovery shortly, even by the

very wholesomeness of the air.

Poor Higginson did not fare as well as his

son; he died the same year the

New-England's Plantation was published.

Other writers echoed the descriptions and

exaggerations of Smith and Higginson. Their purpose was to attract dissatisfied inhabitants of the Old World across the ocean to the New.

As a result, their travel accounts became a

kind of literature to which many groups responded by making the hazardous crossing to America. The earliest settlers included

Dutch, Swedes, Germans, French, Spaniards,

Italians, and Portuguese. Of the immigrants

who came to America in the first three quarters of the seventeenth century, however, the overwhelming majority was English.

The English immigrants who settled on

America's northern seacoast, appropriately

called New England, came in order to practice their religion freely. They were either

Englishmen who wanted to reform the Church

of England or people who wanted to have an entirely new church. These two groups combined, especially in what became

Massachusetts, came to be known as

"Puritans," so named after those who wished to "purify" the Church of England.

The Puritans followed many of the ideas of

the Swiss reformer John Calvin. Through the

Calvinist influence the Puritans emphasized

the then common belief that human beings were basically evil and could do nothing about it; and that many of them, though not all, would surely be condemned to hell,

Over the years the Puritans built a way of

life that was in harmony with their somber religion, one that stressed hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety. These were the Puritan values that dominated much of the earliest

American writing, including the sermons,

books, and letters of such noted Puritan clergymen as John Cotton and Cotton Mather.

During his life Cotton Mather wrote more than

450 works, an impressive output of religious

writings that demonstrates that he was an example, as well as an advocate, of the

Puritan ideal of hard work.

7

HIGHLIGHTS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE

During the last half of the seventeenth

century the Atlantic coast was settled both north and south. Coloniesstill largely

Englishwere established. Among the

colonists could be found poets and essayists, but no novelists. The absence of novelists is quite understandable: the novel form had not even developed fully in England; the Puritan members of the colonies believed that fiction ought not to be read because it was, by definition, not true.

The American poets who emerged in the

seventeenth century adapted the style of established European poets to the subject matter confronted in a strange, new environment. Anne Bradstreet was one such poet.

Born and educated in England, Anne

Bradstreet both admired and imitated several

English poets. The influence of these English

poets did not diminish when Mrs. Bradstreet, at age eighteen, came to America in 1630. The environment in which she wrote, however, did not remain constant; a developed nation was exchanged for a relative wilderness. That this exchange brought its hardships is evident in these lines from Bradstreet's Some Verses on the Burning of Our House":

When by the ruins oft I past

My sorrowing eyes aside did cast,

And here and there the places spy

Where oft I and long did lie:

Here stood that trunk, and there that chest,

There lay that store I counted best.

My pleasant things in ashes lie,

And them behold no more shall I.

Mrs. Bradstreet lessens this despair by

asserting that earthly possessions are no more than "dunghill mists" when compared to the "richly furnished" house of Heaven. In her rejection of wordly riches, Anne Bradstreetquotesdbs_dbs18.pdfusesText_24