Survey of American Literature I: Beginnings to the Romantics.

ENGL 2773

Course Readings

  • Christopher Columbus, “Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage,” “Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage”

  • Bartolomé de Las Casas, from The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies

  • Bernal Díaz del Castillo, from The True History of the Conquest of New Spain

  • Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, from The Relation of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca

  • John Smith, selections

  • William Bradford, from Of Plymouth Plantation

  • Thomas Morton, from New English Canaan

  • John Winthrop, from A Model of Christian Charity

  • Anne Bradstreet, selected poems and letter

  • Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

  • Edward Taylor, selected poems

  • Sarah Kemble Knight, from The Private Journal of a Journey from Boston to New York

  • William Byrd, from The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover; from History of the Dividing Line

  • Jonathan Edwards, Personal Narrative; Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

  • John Woolman, from Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes; from The Journal of John Woolman

  • Benjamin Franklin, “The Way to Wealth;” “Information to Those Who Would Remove to America;” “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America;” from The Autobiography, Part Two

  • Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur, from Letters from an American Farmer

  • Thomas Paine, selections

  • Thomas Jefferson, selections

  • Olaudah Equiano, from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African, Written by Himself

  • Phillis Wheatley, poems and letters

  • Judith Sargent Murray, “On the Equality of the Sexes”

  • Samson Occom, A Short Narrative of My Life

  • Susanna Rowson, Charlotte: A Tale of Truth

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar;” “Self-Reliance”

  • Margaret Fuller, “The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men. Woman versus Women”

  • Henry David Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government;” Walden, or Life in the Woods, chapter 2; “Life without Principle”

  • Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle;” “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

  • Edgar Allen Poe, “Ligeia;” “The Fall of the House of Usher;” “The Tell-Tale Heart;” “The Purloined Letter;” “The Imp of the Perverse;” “The Cask of Amontillado;” “The Philosophy of Composition”

  • Nathaniel Hawthorne, “My Kinsman, Major Molineux;” “Young Goodman Brown;” “The Minister’s Black Veil;” “The Birth-Mark;” “Rappaccini’s Daughter”

  • Herman Melville, “Hawthorne and His Mosses;” “Bartleby, the Scrivener;” Benito Cereno

  • Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself

  • Harriot Jacobs, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe, selected chapters fromUncle Tom’s Cabin

  • Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass; “Song of Myself”(1855); “Live Oak, with Moss;” “The Wound-Dresser;” “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”

  • Emily Dickinson, selected poems