American Literature Thematic Units
While it is important to look at American literature chronologically, one
can also study its common themes. This year, you will study American
literature by the five themes listed below. The works are from various
literary time periods. While the history will not be completely chronological,
we will still consider what is happening during the time period that the
literary work was written.
Web sites to Consider for Literary Time Periods
A
Summary of Time Periods in American Literature
A
Timeline of American Literature and History
A SENSE OF PLACE
Of
Mice and Men--John Steinbeck
Of
Plymouth Plantation--William Bradford
The Native Americans
Nature--Ralph Waldo Emerson
Walden--Henry
David Thoreau
"Life on the
Mississippi"--Mark Twain
"A Wagner Matinee"--Willa Cather
The
Poetry of Edgar Lee Masters
"Recuerdo"--Edna St. Vincent Millay
"A Rose for Emily"--William Faulkner
"Chicago"--Carl Sanburg
"Shine, Perishing Republic"--Robinson
Jeffers
SIN AND ALIENATION
The Crucible--Arthur Miller
The Scarlet Letter--Nathaniel
Hawthorne
"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry
God"--Jonathan Edwards
"The Ropewalk"--Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow
"The Raven"--Edgar
Allan Poe
"The
Minister's Black Veil"--Nathaniel Hawthorne
Moby Dick--Herman Melville
"The Black Cat"--Edgar
Allan Poe
THE AMERICAN DREAM
The Great
Gatsby--F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Raisin in the Sun--Lorraine
Hansberry
"Speech to the Virginia Convention"--Patrick
Henry
Crisis, No. 1--Thomas Paine
The Declaration of Independence--Thomas
Jefferson
"Old Ironsides"--Oliver Wendell
Holmes
The Poetry
of Walt Whitman
"Soldier's Home"--Ernest Hemingway
"Speaking of Courage"--Tim O'Brien
"Winter Dreams"--F. Scott Fitzgerald
THE IMPORTANCE OF VALUES
To Kill a Mockingbird--Harper
Lee
The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn--Mark Twain
"Upon the Burning of Our House"--Anne
Bradstreet
The Autobiography--Benjamin
Franklin
"Thanatopsis"--William Cullen Bryant
"The Chambered Nautilus"--Oliver
Wendell Holmes
"Self-Reliance"--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Resistance to Civil Government"--Henry
David Thoreau
"The Death of a Hired Man"--Robert
Frost
"Birches"--Robert Frost
"A Worn Path"--Eudora Welty
The Harlem Renaissance
"Black Boy"--Richard Wright
"The Cross of Snow"--Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow
"The Battle with Mr. Covey"--Frederick
Douglass
REALITY VS. ILLUSION
The
Catcher in the Rye--J.D. Salinger
Death of a Salesman--Arthur
Miller
"Rip
Van Winkle"--Washington Irving
"Snowbound: A Winter Idyll"--John
Greenleaf Whittier
The Poetry of Emily Dickinson
"A Pair of Silk Stockings"--Kate
Chopin
"The Mystery of Heroism"--Stephen
Crane
"Richard Cory" and "Miniver Cheevy"--Edwin
Arlington Robinson
"The Lovesond of J. Alfred Prufrock"--T.S.
Eliot
"The Red Wheelbarrow" and "The
Great Figure"--William Carlos Williams
"Poetry"--Marianne Moore
The Poetry of e.e. cummings
"Mirror"--Sylvia Plath