Honors American Literature Tentative Syllabus
Unit #1: Modernist/Contemporary Literature
Summer Assignment/Reading (due first day of semester)
Introduction of Socratic Seminar
Unit Intro Moderns and Contemporaries section reading, pp. 522-36 and 902-18 Moderns/Contemporary Prose:
Willa Cather pp. 538-47 "A Wagner Matinee"
Katherine Porter pp. 702-12 "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"
James Thurber pp. 623-9 "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
William Faulkner pp. 713-25 "A Rose for Emily"
Earnest Hemingway pp. 650-60 "Soldier's Home"
Eudora Welty pp. 633-42 "A Worn Path".
Unit #2: American Drama
Unit Intro Drama section readings, pp. 810-24
The Crucible by Arthur Miller --A Bridge From The Present Back To The Beginnings!
text pp. 825-89 (Act I-pp. 825-49; Act II-850-62; Act III-863-77; Act IV-878-89)
DUE:______
Unit #3: Puritanism and the three R's--Rationalism, Reason and Romance
Unit Intro Beginnings section reading, pp. 1-18
Puritan essays and beginnings writings
Bradford pp. 26-35; Byrd pp. 48-55; de la Cruz 75-76
Rowlandson pp. 38-46; Taylor 72-4; Franklin pp. 84-95
Equiano pp. 56-66; Bradstreet pp. 68-71; Edwards pp. 77-83
------
Henry pp.100-5; Paine pp. 106-12; Wheatley p. 113
Jefferson pp.114-25
Native American mythology pp.19-25 and govt. parallels -inset pp.120-1
Unit Intro Romaticism section readings, pp. 136-50
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
DUE: ______
Longfellow-pp.175-80; Bryant-pp. 169-74; Whittier-pp 181-6; Holmes-pp. 187-93
Unit #4: Transcendentalism--The Light and the Dark
Unit Intro The American Renaissance section reading, pp. 204-14
Ralph Waldo Emerson pp. 216-29
Henry David Thoreau pp. 230-47
Edgar Allan Poe pp. 260-81
Nathaniel Hawthorne pp. 296-310
cont.
Honors American Literature Tentative Syllabus (cont.) 2
Unit Intro New American Poets section reading, pp. 340-6
Walt Whitman pp. 347-66
Emily Dickenson pp. 371-96
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
DUE: ______
Unit #5: Realism et al
Unit Intro Rise of Realism section reading, pp. 406-22
(Voices from the Civil War--476-83)
Stephen Crane pp. 486-94
Ambrose Bierce pp. 466-75
Kate Chopin pp. 435-45
Mark Twain pp.450-64
Jack London pp. 495-610
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
DUE: ______
Unit #6: Modernists and Beyond
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
DUE: ______
(authors from Moderns and Contemporary literature that we did not get to cover)
Harlem Renaissance pp. 733-67
James Weldon Johnson p 736-40; Gwendolyn Brooks p. 741; Claude McKay p. 743-5;
Countee Cullen pp. 746-9; Zora Neale Hurston pp. 750-59;Langston Hughes pp. 733 and
760-8;
Poetry Boot Camp
Frost pp. 558-75; Ransom pp. 577-9; Jeffers pp. 580-2; Robinson pp. 643-9; Eliot pp. 661-7;
Millay pp. 697-700 and handout Ballad of the Harpweaver; p.p. 769-72 Imagist readings;
pp. 778-81 Williams; pp. 792-9 Sandburg and Cummings.
(Additional readings-Wages of War Collection-p. 919 Stafford; p. 933 Jarrell;)
Final Novel Presentations