These works of literature can be viewed as explorations of the American identity in their respective time periods.
These works of literature can be viewed as explorations of the American identity in their respective time periods. American literature reflects many aspects of American life. Choose texts from at least three periods on the reading list below to show the evolution of one element central to American life, such as love and marriage, school, family, community, or work. Through close textual analysis, illustrate how this element changes over time in response to a changing America. Colonial & Early National Period James Fenimore Cooper: The Last of the Mohicans Mary Rowlandson: A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson Johnathan Edward: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God Thomas Paine: Common Sense Romantic & Dark Romantic Period Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Washington Irving: Rip Van Winkle Washington Irving: The Devil and Tom Walker Edgar Allan Poe: The Cask of Amontillado Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter Transcendentalism Period Ralph Waldo Emerson: Self Reliance Henry David Thoreau: Walden Henry David Thoreau: Civil Disobedience Walt Whitman: Song of Myself Realism in American Literature Frederick Douglass: A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin Modernist Prose in American Literature F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying John Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men Modernist Poetry in American Literature T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock The Harlem Renaissance Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God The Contemporary Period Tennessee Williams: The Glass Menagerie Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman Richard Wright: Black Boy J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye Jack Kerouac: On the Road Maya Angelou: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Sandra Cisneros: The House on Mango Street
