The Stuyvesant High School Online Course Guide

Early and Later American Literature E5EA and E6LA

The American experience has always been about possibilities. Those who first came here could not have endured the exhausting enterprise of founding a nation if they had not profoundly believed in a future writ largely and gloriously if they toiled with a visionary zeal. However, as the authors of our early literature realized, this kind of ambition came at a price. Why so many people were willing to pay it and what the legacy of that payment is lie at the core of the readings we will undertake in Early American Literature, a period that we loosely define as the early seventeenth century to the late 19th century.

What impulses drove the early settlers here in the first place? Part of that answer can be found in The General History of Virginia, John Smith's lively - if often exaggerated - account of the hard times he and his fellow explorers endured on their expedition of 1607. Similar hardships, as well as conflicts of faith and volition, are recounted in William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, in which his small group of Puritan Separatists leaves England for North America. The grueling crossing they undertake and the challenges of the untamed wilderness they encounter when they arrive in North America form the basis of this narrative. And the difficulties of establishing a democracy and defining oneself are evident in Common Sense by Thomas Paine and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin respectively.

In addition to shedding insight into the experiences of early Americans, the course also introduces us to an array of fascinating historical figures - Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass - as well as some unforgettable fictional characters - Huckleberry Finn, Hester Prynne and Uncle Tom. We will also consider the writings of two giants of American letters - Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

The idea, then, behind the course is to ask us to consider how we became the people and the nation we are today. What did those early settlers envision? How did they view the world and their place in it? What issues were the writers of the period compelled to write about? These questions - these possibilities - will be our signposts throughout the term.

Texts studied may include: