Preface
I. The Colonial Period and 17th Century Literature of Puritanism
The Historical Background
The Development of Literature
II. The Period of Enlightenment
The Historical Background
The Development of Literature
Benjamin Franklin
from Autobiography
Philip Freneau
To the Memory of the Brave Americans
The Wild Honey Suckle
III. New England Transcendentalism and the Romantic Age
A. Period of Pre-Romanticism
The Historical Background
The Development of Literature
Washington Irving
from Rip Van Winkl
William Cullen Bryant
Thanatopsis
To a Waterfowl
B. Period of Post-Romanticism
The Historical Background
The Development of Literature
Edgar Allan Poe
To Helen
The Raven
Ralph Waldo Emerson
from Nature
The Rhodora
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlte Letter
Chapter XIX
Walt Whitman
from Song of Myself
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A Psalm of Life
The Tide Rises,the Tide Falls
Harriet Beecher Stowe
from Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Emily Dickinson
……
IV. The Age of Realism
V. American Naturalism
VI. American Modernism
VII. American Literature since 1945
Index
Main Reference Books