*Indicates new selection
**Indicates new author and new selection
LITERATURE TO 1750
INTRODUCTION
America before Columbus
Map: Native American Peoples, 1492
Christianity, Islam, and the Lure of Asia
Conquest and Colonization in the New World
Map: Early European Explorations
The Protestant Reformation and the Puritan "Errand into the Wilderness"
Literature and Cultural Diversity in Colonial America
Comparative Timeline
NATIVE AMERICAN ORIGIN AND CREATION STORIES
INTRODUCTION
Iroquois Confederacy ,
"Origin of Folk Stories" (Seneca)
Cherokee
"How the World Was Made"
**Choctaw
"Nanih Waiya (The Choctaw Creation Legend)"
**Potawatomi
"The Creation of the World"
Lakota
"Wohpe and the Gift of the Sacred Pipe"
Akimel O’odham (Pima)
"The Story of the Creation"
**Navajo
"The Navajo Origin Legend: The Story of the Emergence"
Hupa
"The Boy Who Grew up at Ta’k’imiding
Native American Origin and Creation Stories through a Modern Lens
N. Scott Momaday (b. 1934)
"The Becoming of the Native: Man in America before Columbus," 1993
EXPLORATIONS AND EARLY ENCOUNTERS
INTRODUCTION
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)
Letter of Columbus, Describing the Results of His First Voyage"
Álvar NúnÞez Cabeza de Vaca (c. 1490-c. 1557)
The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca
Proem
Chapter 14: The departure of four Christians
Chapter 15: What befell us among the people of Malhado
Chapter 16: The Christians leave the island of Malhado
Chapter 19: Our separation by the Indians
Chapter 20: Of our escape
Chapter 21: Our cure of some of the afflicted
Samuel de Champlain (c. 1570-1635)
from The Voyages of Samuel de Champlain
COLONIAL SETTLEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
Captain John Smith (1580-1631)
The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles
The Third Book, Ch. 2, "What happened till the first supply"
Jamestown through a Modern Lens
Paula Gunn Allen (b. 1939)
"Pocahontas to Her English Husband, John Rolfe," 1988
**Richard Frethorne (birth and death dates unknown)
[Letter to His Father and Mother], March 20, 1623
William Bradford (1590-1657)
From Of Plimoth Plantation
[From Booke I ]
From Chapter 1
Chapter 4 Showing the reasons & causes of their remoovall
Chapter 9 Of their vioage...and of their safe arrivall at Cape Cod.
Chapter 10 Showing how they sought out a place of habitation . . .
From Booke II
The remainder of Anno: 1620 [The Mayflower Compact; The Starving Time; Indian Relations]
From Anno: 1621 [The First Thanksgiving]
From Anno Domini: 1632 [Prosperity Brings Dispersal of the Population]
Plymouth Plantation through a Modern Lens
Wamsutta (Frank B.) James (1923-21)
"Suppressed Speech on the 350th Anniversary of the Pilgrims’ Landing at Plymouth Rock, September 10, 1970"
John Winthrop (1588-1649)
A Modell of Christian Charity
Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
"The Prologue [To Her Book]"
"In Honor of that High and Mighty Queen Elizabeth of Happy Memory"
"An Epitaph on My Dear and Ever-Honored Mother Mrs. Dorothy Dudley"
"To Her Father with Some Verses"
"The Flesh and the Spirit,"
"The Author to Her Book"
"Before the Birth of One of Her Children"
"To My Dear and Loving Husband"
"A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment"
"Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th 1666. Copied Out of a Loose Paper"
*"In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Anne Bradstreet Who Deceased June 20, 1669, Being Three Years and Seven Months Old"
"As Weary Pilgrim"
*"To My Dear Children"
Bradstreet through a Modern Lens
Rose Shade, "Puritan Woman," 1971
Mary Rowlandson (1636-1711)
The Sovereignty and Goodness of God
*AMERICAN CONTEXTS
The Salem Witchcraft Trials
Introduction
**Deodat Lawson (?-?)
A Brief and True Narrative
Cotton Mather (1663-1728)
*From The Wonders of the Visible World
**Thomas Brattle (1658-1713 )
From "Letter of Thomas Brattle, 1692"
Samuel Sewell (1652-1730)
*From The Diary of Samuel Sewell
Edward Taylor (c.1642-1729)
From Prepatory Meditations:
"Prologue"
"Meditation 8"
"Meditation 38"
From God's Determinations
"The Preface"
"The Joy of Church Fellowship Rightly Attended"
From Miscellaneous Poems:
"Upon Wedlock and Death of Children"
"Upon a Spider Catching a Fly"
"Huswifery"
"A Fig for Thee, Oh! Death"
Francis Daniel Pastorius (1651-c.1719)
Letter Sent from Philadelphia, May 30, 1698
Sarah Kemble Knight (1666-1727)
*The Journal of Madam Knight
William Byrd (1674-1744)
From The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
"On Sarah Pierpont"
Personal Narrative
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
From Images or Shadows of Divine Things
Edwards through a Modern Lens
Robert Lowell (1917-1977)
"Mr. Edwards and the Spider," 1946
AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1750-1830
INTRODUCTION
Print Culture and the Road to Revolution
Map: The Thirteen Colonies in 1775
Society and Culture in the New Nation
Map: The Missouri Compromise
The Emergence of an American Literature
Comparative Timeline
WRITING COLONIAL LIVES
INTRODUCTION
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
*Part I
*Part II
Elizabeth Ashbridge (1713-1755)
*Some Account of the Fore Part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge
John Woolman (1720-1772)
The Journal of John Woolman
Chapter 1 [Early Life and Vocation]
From Chapter 3 [Business Became My Burden]
Samson Occom (1723-1792)
A Short Narrative of My Life
Occom through a Modern Lens
Jim Ottery
"The Diary of Samson Occum," 21
Olaudah Equiano (1745?-1797)
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself
From Chapter 1 [Introductory Remarks]
Chapter 2 [Kidnapping, Enslavement, and the Middle Passage]
From Chapter 3 [Virginia Plantation, Purchase by Captain Pascal, Voyage to England]
From Chapter 4 [Learning to Read, Baptism, Voyage to Gibraltor, Purchase by Captain Doran and Embarking for the West Indies]
From Chapter 5 [Purchase by Mr. King, a Quaker]
From Chapter 6 [Loaned to Captain Farmer in the West Indies, Working as a Merchant]
From Chapter 7 [Voyage to Philadelphia, the Preaching of Rev. George Whitfield, Return to the West Indies and Purchase of Freedom]
AMERICAN CONTEXTS
"To Begin the World Over Again": The Emerging Idea of "America"
Introduction
Hector St. John De Crevecoeur (1735-1813)
Letters from an American Farmer
From Letter III, "What is an American?"
John Dickinson (1732-1808)
"The Liberty Song," 1768
Hannah Griffitts (1727-1817)
"The Female Patriots," 1768
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
From Common Sense, 1776
John Adams (1735-1826) and Abigail Adams (1744-1818)
Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, March 31, 1776
Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 14, 1776
Letters from John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
Draft of the Declaration of Independence, 1776
From Notes on the State of Virginia
"Query XVII. Religion"
From "Query XVIII. Manners" [On Slavery]
George Washington (1732-1799)
Letter to the Touro Synagogue, Newport, Rhode Island, 1790
Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820)
*From "On the Equality of the Sexes," Part 1, 1790
Absalom Jones (1746-1818)
"Petition of the People of Colour, free men . . . of Philadelphia," 1799
Tecumseh (1768-1813)
Speech of Tecumseh to Governor Harrison, 1810
LITERATURE FOR A NEW NATION
INTRODUCTION
Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
"On the Emigration to America"
"The Wild Honey Suckle"
"The Indian Burying Ground"
"To Sir Toby"
Phillis Wheatley (c.1753-1784)
"On Being Brought from Africa to America"
"To the University of Cambridge, in New England"
"To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth"
"To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works"
"A Farewell to America"
"To His Excellency General Washington"
"Liberty and Peace"
Letter to Samson Occum, 11 February 1774
Wheatley through a Modern Lens
Kevin Young (b. 1970)
"Homage to Phillis Wheatley," 2
**Sarah Pierce (1767-1852)
"Verses, written in the Winter of 1792, & addressed to Abigail Smith Jr."
Washington Irving (1783-1859)
The Sketch Book
"The Authors Account of Himself"
"The Wife"
"Rip Van Winkle"
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
*The Pioneers; or the Sources of the Susquehanna
From Chapter 1 [The Changing Face of the Country]
Chapter 21 [The Hardships of the Early Settlers]
Chapter 22 [The Slaughter of the Pigeons]
Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789-1867)
"Cacoethes Scribendi"
Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1790-1870)
"Georgia Theatrics"
"The Dance"
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
"Thanatopsis"
"The Yellow Violet"
"To a Waterfowl"
"To Cole, the Painter, Departing for Europe"
"The Prairies"
Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (18-1841)
"Mishosha, or the Magician and His Daughters"
AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1830-1865
INTRODUCTION
Technology, Transportation, and the Growth of the Literary Marketplace
Religion, Immigration, and Territorial Expansion
Sectionalism and the Coming of the Civil War
Map: The Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
Comparative Timeline
THE ERA OF REFORM
INTRODUCTION
AMERICAN CONTEXTS
"I Will Be Heard": The Rhetoric of Antebellum Reform
Introduction
*The Cherokee Memorials, November 5, 1829
David Walker (1785-1830)
From An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, 1829
William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879)
"To the Public," 1831
Orestes Brownson (1803-1876)
From The Laboring Classes, 1840
Catherine Beecher (18-1878)
From A Treatise on Domestic Economy, 1841
The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments, 1848
Sojourner Truth (1795-1883)
Speech to a Women’s Rights Convention, 1851
William Apess (1798-1839)
"An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man"
*From "Eulogy on King Philip"
Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880)
"Letter from New-York" [The Trial of Amelia Norman]
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
*Nature
"The American Scholar"
"Self-Reliance"
"Circles"
"Experience"
Emerson’s Poetry
"The Rhodora"
"The Snow Storm"
"Hamatreya"
"Days"
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)
*From Woman in the Nineteenth Century
"New Year's Day"
"Our City Charities"
"Things and Thoughts in Europe," Number 18
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
"Trials of a Housekeeper"
"The Seamstress"
"The Freeman's Dream: A Parable"
"Preface" to Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897)
"Letter from a Fugitive Slave," New-York Tribune, 1853
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
"Preface by the Author"
"I. Childhood"
"VII. The Lover"
"X. A Perilous Passage in the Slave Girl’s Life"
"XIV. Another Link to Life"
"XVII. The Flight"
"XXI. The Loophole of Retreat"
"XLI. Free at Last"
Henry Thoreau (1817-1862)
"Resistance to Civil Government"
Walden
From "Economy"
"Where I Lived, and What I Lived For"
"The Bean Field"
"The Village"
"Spring"
"Conclusion"
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Douglass through a Modern Lens
Robert Hayden (1913-1980)
"Frederick Douglass," 1962
African-American Slave Songs (18-1865)
"Roll, Jordan, Roll"
"Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Had"
"Many Thousand Gone"
"Swing Low Sweet Chariot"
"Steal Away"
"Go Down, Moses"
AMERICAN FACTS AND AMERICAN FICTION
INTRODUCTION
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
"The Wives of the Dead"
"My Kinsman, Major Molineux"
"Young Goodman Brown"
*"Wakefield"
"The Minister’s Black Veil"
*"Rappaccini’s Daughter"
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
"Ligeia"
"The Fall of the House of Usher"
"The Tell-Tale Heart"
"The Purloined Letter"
Poe’s Poetry
"Sonnet--to Science"
"To Helen"
"The Raven"
"Annabel Lee"
Fanny Fern (Sara Willis Parton) (1811-1872)
*"Hints to Young Wives"
"The Tear of a Wife"
*"The Sober Husband"
*"Male Criticism on Ladies’ Books"
*"A Law More Nice than Just"
"Blackwell’s Island," Numbers I-III
"The ‘Coming’ Woman"
*"Independence"
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
"Bartleby, the Scrivener"
"The Paradise of Bachelors and The Tartarus of Maids"
Donald Grant Mitchell ("Ik Marvel") (1822-1908)
"A Bachelor’s Reverie"
Elizabeth Stoddard (1823-1902)
"Lemorne versus Huell"
Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910)
Life in the Iron Mills
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)
"The Brothers" ["My Contraband"]
NEW POETIC VOICES
AMERICAN CONTEXTS
The Native Muse: Poetry at Mid-century
Lydia Sigourney (1791-1865)
"Indian Names" and "To a Shred of Linen"
Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806-1893)
"The Unattained" and "The Drowned Mariner"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
"The Jewish Cemetery at Newport" and "My Lost Youth"
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
"The Hunters of Men" and "The Farewell"
**Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)
"Old Ironsides," "The Chambered Nautilus," and "Cacoethes Scribendi"
**James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)
"To the Dandelion" and "After the Burial"
Frances E.W. Harper (1825-1911)
"The Slave Mother" and "Ethiopia"
Rose Terry Cooke (1827-1892)
"Here," "Captive," and "‘The Harvest Is Past’"
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Leaves of Grass [1891-92 Edition]
From Inscriptions
"One’s Self I Sing"
*"Thou Reader"
"Song of Myself"
From Children of Adam
"Once I Pass’d through a Populous City"
"As Adam Early in the Morning"
From Calamus
"In Paths Untrodden"
"City of Orgies"
"I Saw in Louisiana a Live Oak Growing"
"Here the Frailest Leaves of Me"
*"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"
From Sea-Drift
"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"
From By the Roadside
"When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer"
"I Sit and Look Out"
"The Dalliance of the Eagles"
From Drum Taps
"Beat! Beat! Drums!"
"Cavalry Crossing a Ford"
"Vigil Strange I Kept on a Field One Night"
"A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim"
"The Wound Dresser"
"Reconciliation"
From Memories of President Lincoln
"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d"
From Whispers of Heavenly Death
"A Noiseless Patient Spider"
From Songs of Parting
*"As the Time Draws Nigh"
Whitman through a Modern Lens
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
"Old Walt," 1954
Allen Ginsburg (1926-1997)
"A Supermarket in California," 1956
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
J130 [Fr122], Manuscript Version and Version from Poems (1890)
J130 [Fr122], "These are the days when Birds come back—"
-----------------------
J49 [Fr39], "I never lost as much but twice"
J67 [Fr112], "Success is counted sweetest"
J84 [Fr121], "Her breast is fit for pearls,"
J185 [Fr202], "‘Faith’ is a fine invention"
J199 [Fr225], "I’m ‘wife’—I’ve finished that—"
J211 [Fr205], "Come slowly—Eden!"
J214 [Fr207], "I taste a liquor never brewed"
J216 [Fr124], "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers" (1859 version)
J216 [Fr124], "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers" (1861 version)
J241 [Fr339], "I like a look of Agony"
J249 [Fr269], "Wild Nights—Wild Nights!"
J252 [Fr312], "I can wade Grief—"
J258 [Fr320], "There’s a certain Slant of light"
J271 [Fr307], "A solemn thing—it was—I said—"
J280 [Fr340], "I felt a funeral, in my Brain"
J288 [Fr260], "I’m Nobody! Who are you?
J303 [Fr409], "The Soul Selects her own Society—"
J324 [Fr236], "Some keep the Sabbath going to Church—"
J327 [Fr336], "Before I got my eye put out"
J328 [Fr359], "A Bird came down the Walk—"
J338 [Fr365], "I know that He exists"
J341 [Fr372], "After great pain, a formal feeling comes—"
J357 [Fr615], "God is a distant—stately Lover—"
J401 [Fr675], "What Soft—Cherubic Creatures—
J409 [Fr545], "They dropped like flakes—"
J435 [Fr620], "Much Madness is divinest Sense—"
J441 [Fr519], "This is my letter to the World"
J444 [Fr524], "It feels a shame to be Alive"
J448 [Fr446], "This was a Poet—It is That"
J449 [Fr448], "I died for Beauty—but was scarce"
J465 [Fr591], "I heard a fly buzz—when I died—"
J501 [Fr373], "This World is not Conclusion"
J502 [Fr377], "At least—to pray—is left—is left—"
J508 [Fr353], "I’m ceded—I’ve stopped being Theirs—"
J510 [Fr355], "It was not Death, for I stood up"
J512 [Fr360], "The Soul has Bandaged moments—"
J605 [Fr513], "The Spider holds a Silver Ball"
J632 [Fr598], "The Brain--is wider than the Sky"
J640 [Fr706], "I cannot live with You"
J650 [Fr760], "Pain—has an Element of Blank"
J657 [Fr466], "I dwell in Possibility—"
J675 [Fr772], "Essential Oils—are wrung—"
J709 [Fr788], "Publication—is the Auction"
J712 [Fr479], "Because I could not stop for Death—"
J754 [Fr764], "My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—a"
J883 [Fr930], "The Poets light but Lamps—
J986 [Fr1096], "A Narrow fellow in the Grass"
J1052 [Fr8], "I never saw a Moor"
J1072 [Fr194], "Title divine—is mine!"
J1078 [Fr1108], "The Bustle in a House"
J1082 [Fr1044], "Revolution is the Pod"
J1129 [Fr1263], "Tell all the Truth but tell it Slant—"
J1463 [Fr1489], "A Route of Evanescence"
J1545 [Fr1577], "The Bible is an antique Volume"
J1624 [Fr1668], "Apparently with no surprise"
J1651 [Fr1715], "A Word made Flesh is seldom"
J1732 [Fr1773], "My life closed twice before its close—"
J1737 [Fr267], "Rearrange a ‘Wife’s’ affection!"
J1739 [Fr586], "Some say goodnight—at night—"
J1760 [Fr1590], "Elysium is as far"
Letters:
Exchange with Susan Gilbert (Dickinson), 1861
To Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 7 June 1862
Dickinson through a Modern Lens
Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
"‘I Am in Danger—Sir—’," 1966
Cathy Song (b. 1955)
"A Poet in the House," 21
AMERICAN CONTEXTS
"Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory": The Meanings of the Civil War
John Brown (18-1859)
Speech to the Court, 1859
Jefferson Davis (1808-1889)
Inaugural Address, 1861
Civil War Songs: "Dixie’s Land," 1859; "John Brown’s Body," 1861; and
"Battle-Hymn of the Republic," 1862
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)
"Men of Color, to Arms!" 1863
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
"The House-top"
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
The Gettysburg Address, 1863; and Second Inaugural Address, 1865
Henry Highland Garnet (1815-1882)
From "A Memorial Discourse Delivered . . . February 12, 1865"
Mary Chesnut (1823-1886)
From A Diary from Dixie
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
"The Death of Lincoln," 1865
Sarah Piatt (1836-1919)
"Arlington Heights" 1866
Henry Timrod (1828-1867)
The Charleston "Ode," 1866
Frances E. W. Harper (1825-1911)
"Learning to Read," 1873
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
From Memoranda During the War