Instructor:       Mr. Cantrell                            Office Hours:    By appointment
Room:              P-9 
Phone:             237-3333                              E-mail:   AC68@aol.com
Go To Mr. Cantrell's British Literature Page

General Course Content:

I. The New Land (To 1750)
Representative works including:

  • "Upon the Burning of Our House" and "To My Dear and Loving Husband"

    • —Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
  • from The General History of Virginia —John Smith (1580-1631) 
  • from Of Plymouth Plantation —William Bradford (1590-1657) 
  • "Huswifery" and "Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold" —Edward Taylor (1642-1729) 
  • from The History of the Dividing Line —William Byrd (1674-1744) 
  • from "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" —Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) 
  • from The Wonders of the Invisible World —Cotton Mather (1663-1728) 


II. The Colonial Period (1750-1800)
Representative works including:


  • from The Autobiography and Poor Richard's Almanack —Benjamin Franklin (1706-1800) 
  • from The Crisis, Number 1 —Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
  • "The Declaration of Independence" —Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
  • from Letters from an American Farmer —Michel-Guillame Jean de Crèvecoeur (1735-1813)


III. A Growing Nation (1800-1840)
Representative works including:


  • "To a Waterfowl" and "Thanatopsis" —William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
  • The Devil and Tom Walker —Washington Irving (1783-1859)
  • from The Praire —James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
  • "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Raven", and other works by Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)


IV. The New England Renaissance (1840-1955)
Representative works including:


  • "The Skeleton in Armor" —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
  • from Nature and Self-Reliance —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
  • from Walden and Civil Disobedience —Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
  • "The Minister's Black Veil" and "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" —Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
  • from Moby Dick —Herman Melville (1819-1891)
  • Works by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)


V. Division, War, and Reconciliation (1855-1865)
Representative works including:


  • "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard", "Bloom'd", and Other Works by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
  • from My Bondage and My Freedom —Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895)
  • "The Gettysburg Address" and "Letter to Mrs. Bixby" —Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)


VI. Realism and the Frontier (1865-1915)
Representative works including:


  • from Life on the Mississippi, The Boys' Ambition, 

    • from Roughing It, Lost in a Snowstorm, and 
    "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" —Mark Twain (1835-1910)
  • "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" —Bret Harte (1836-1902)
  • "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" —Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
  • "The Story of an Hour" —Kate Chopin (1851-1904)
  • "To Build a Fire" —Jack London (1876-1916)
  • The Red Badge of Courage, War is Kind, and Think as I Think —Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
  • "Luke Havergal", "Miniver Cheevy", and Richard Cory —Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) 


VII. The Modern Age (1915-1946)
Representative works including:

  • "In Another Country" —Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
  • "Winter Dreams" —F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
  • "Flight" —John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
  • "The Bear" —William Faulkner (1897-1962)
  • "In a Station of the Metro", "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter",
    "Canto 13" —Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
  • "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" —T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
  • "Mending Wall" and "Nothing Gold Can Stay" —Robert Frost (1874-1963)
  • "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" —Langston Hughes (1902-1967)


VIII. Contemporary Writers (1946-Present)
Representative works including:
  • "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" —Flannery O' Connor (1925-1964)
  • "Expect Nothing" —Alice Walker (1944-    )
  • "Gold Blade" and "Evening Hawk" —Robert Penn Warren (1905-     )
  • "Mirror" —Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
  • "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota" —James Wright (1927-1980)
  • "The Observer" —Adrienne Rich (1929-     )



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