ENG 3110 American Literature I: Books

Presents a critical assessment of Anne Bradstreet as a major poet of the seventeenth century.

In this book based on his 2002 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the Library of Congress, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., explores the pivotal roles that Wheatley and Jefferson have played in shaping the black literary tradition.

Letters from an American Farmer was published in London in 1782, just as the idea of an "American" was becoming a reality. Those epistolary essays introduced the European public to America's landscape and customs and have since served as the iconic description of a then-new people.

It is the intention of this work to show that all Irving's books are readable today, that many are worth reading, and that a few demand reading and rereading. It is also its intent to demonstrate that Irving was not a short-story writer, but a composer of books: thus, a story in one of his books is more than that story alone, for it gains meaning from what came before and gives meaning to what will follow.

In ReWriting White, Todd Vogel looks at how America has racialized language and aesthetic achievement. To make his point, he showcases the surprisingly complex interactions between four nineteenth-century writers of color and the "standard white English" they adapted for their own moral, political, and social ends.

Demonstrating with unique detail how these authors worked to transform venerable myths and icons of American identity, Indian Nation chronicles Native American participation in the forming of an American nationalism in both published texts and speeches that were delivered throughout the United States.

This book provides a critical, interpretive study and explication of the Poe's works, a brief biography, an accessible chronology outlining Poe's life, work, and relevant historical background, and aids for further study -- complete notes and references, a selected annotated bibliography and an index.

Drawing upon decades of original research with never-before-seen archival sources, Yellin creates a complete picture of the events that inspired Incidents and offers the first rounded picture of Jacobs's life in the thirty-six years after the book's publication. Jean Yellin brings to life the struggles and triumphs of this extraordinary woman whose life reflected all the major changes of the nineteenth century, from slavery to the Civil War to Reconstruction to the origins of the modern Civil Rights movement.

Professor Johnson examines the narrative strategies, with particular emphasis on the authorial and narrative voices, of three texts written by African American women: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

This book examines the techniques the slave narrative writers used to authorize and rhetorically create themselves in their writings. By examining such issues as voice and identity formation, the volume demonstrates how identity may be seen as a cultural fabrication.

In this text, students of Emily Dickinson can find a source of accurate, up-to-date information on the poet's life and works, her letters and manuscripts, the cultural climate of her times, her reception and influence, and the current state of Dickinson scholarship.

The complex author of the quintessential American masterpiece is demystified by a leading contemporary critic. Hardwick's novelistic flair reveals a former whaleship deck-hand whose voyages were the stuff of travel romances that seduced the public.

This volume offers students, scholars, and the general reader a collection of fresh interpretations of Emerson's writing, milieu, influence, and cultural significance. All essays are newly commissioned for this volume, written at an accessible yet challenging level, and augmented by a comprehensive chronology and bibliography.

Tracing the parallel careers of Emerson and Whitman, the author shows how each served his literary apprenticeship, moved beyond his vocation, prospered, and, finally, declined in his literary achievements. In both cases, Loving follows his subject from vision to wisdom and, along the way, examines the aspects of the relationship that have aroused controversy.

Explores how four American writers responded to the overwhelming fragmentation of their 19th-century world by drawing on a romantic ideal of diversity. Finds that Emerson and Melville had a segmentary vision of reality, which emphasizes multiplicity and abundance; while Whitman and Dickinson had an

Contains letter from 1493-1503.

In these never-before-published essays, fourteen prominent Wheatley scholars consider her work from a variety of angles, affirming her rise into the first rank of American writers. Together, these essays reveal the depth of Phillis Wheatley's literary achievement and present concrete evidence that her extant oeuvre merits still further scrutiny.

Gain an intimate understanding of one of the key figures in American history in this detailed biography of Thomas Jefferson. Author Gilbert Chinard offers an exhaustively researched account of Jefferson's life and work that will please fans of American history and biography lovers alike.

A Companion to Thomas Jefferson presents a state-of-the-art assessment and overview of the life and legacy of Thomas Jefferson through a collection of essays grounded in the latest scholarship. Explores Jefferson's wide range of interests and expertise, and covers his public career, private life, his views on democracy, and his writings.

Focusing on autobiographical writings and critical essays, as well as communally authored and political documents, The People and the Word explores how the Native tradition of nonfiction has both encompassed and dissected Native experiences.

Discusses portrayals of domestic violence in six major works of mid-nineteenth-century literature.

This book helps readers understand understand Hawthorne and his works through the historical background from which his stories arose. This includes considering the development behind the Puritan perception, as well as the prevailing opinion on nature during the writer's lifetime; and understanding the man behind the stories in order to analyze the tales themselves.

In Edgar Allan Poe,Kevin J. Hayes argues that Poe's work anticipated many of the directions Western thought would take in the century to come, and he identifies links between Poe and writers and artists such as Walter Benjamin, Salvador Dalí, Sergei Eisenstein, and Jean Cocteau.

From the eighteenth century on, appeals to listeners' and readers' feelings about the sufferings of slaves were a predominant strategy of abolitionism. This book argues that expressions of feeling in those texts did not just appeal to individual readers' inclinations to sympathy but rather were inherently political.

Focusing on Fuller's development of a powerful language that paired cultural critique with mythmaking, Steele shows why her writing had such a vital impact on the woman's rights movement and modern conceptions of gender. This groundbreaking study pays special attention to the ways in which Fuller's feminist consciousness and social theory emerged out of her mourning for herself and others.

Now, in this brief but bountiful volume, David S. Reynolds offers a wealth of insight into the life and work of Whitman, examining the author through the lens of nineteenth-century America. Reynolds shows how Whitman responded to contemporary theater, music, painting, photography, science, religion, and sex.