Introduction to American Literature (KIK-EN221/Eng223)

Book Exam Reading ListAutumn 2018 / Spring 2019

Instructor: Howard Sklar, PhD

E-mail: howard.sklar@helsinki.fiOffice: Metsätalo C611Office Hour: Monday, 15:00-16:00, and by appointment

About the Exam

· Autumn: Mon 22.10.2018, 12:00-15:00, Metsätalo, Sali 1· Spring: Monday, 6.5.2018, 12:00-15:00, Metsätalo, Sali 1· Length of Exam: 3 hours· The autumn 2018 and spring 2019 book exam for Introduction to American Literature is based on

the reading list for the spring 2018 course.· You must register in advance for the book exam via WebOodi.· HUOM! Please see the sample questions at the end of this PDF for the format of the exam.

Assigned Readings

This list of readings refers to page numbers in the one-volume Norton Anthology of American Literature(shorter 8th edition). (Note: The page numbers for the shorter 7th are listed in parentheses after thepages for the 8th edition. If you have an earlier edition, or the two-volume edition, please contact me ifyou have difficulty locating the correct page numbers.)

Important: In addition to the selections listed below, students should read the section introductions andindividual author introductions in the anthology.

The following reading list follows the progression of the spring 2017 course:

1) Introduction: Why American Literature?

· Anne Bradstreet, “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent Upon Public Employment,” 121 (108-109)· Phillis Wheatley, “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” 403 (420-421)

2) A New Nation and Its People

· J. Hector St. John de Crévecoer, from “Letter III: What Is an American” to “This is an American,”309-312 (310-313)

· Thomas Jefferson, “The Declaration of Independence”: http://www.constitution.org/us_doi.pdf· Thomas Paine, “The Crisis, No. 1,” 331-336 (332-338)

3) American Transcendentalism

· Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar,” 536-542 (520-525) to “goes forward at all hours”

· Henry David Thoreau, from Waldeno 858-862 middle of page (844-847, bottom of page)o 902 bottom – 906 middle (888 bottom – 892 middle)o 928 (914) from “I left the woods…” to “…now put foundations under them.”

· Margaret Fuller, from The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men. Woman versus Women, 752-760 (739-747)

4) American Romanticism

· Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown,” 619-628 (605-614)· Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” 714-718 (702-705)· Herman Melville, “Ahab”: http://americanliterature.com/author/herman-melville/book/moby-

dick-or-the-whale/chapter-28-ahab

5) The Emergence of Major American Poetic Voices

· Walt Whitman, from “Song of Myself”o Section 1: 1024-1025 (1011)o Sections 15-17: 1033-1036 (1020-1023)o Section 24: 1040-1042 (1028-1030)o Section 52: 1067 (1055)

· Emily Dickinsono Poem 269 [Wild Nights—Wild Nights!], 1197 (1205)o Poem 320 [There’s a certain Slant of light], 1197-1198 (1205)o Poem 446 [This was a Poet—It is That], 1205-1206 (1213)o Poem 479 [Because I could not stop for Death--], 1206-1207 (1214-1215)o Poem 620 [Much Madness is divinest Sense], 1208-1209 (1216)

6) Nineteenth-Century Social Protest

· Frederick Douglass, from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass:

o Chapter I, 946-949 (931-934)o Chapter IV, 954-956 (940-941) to “stained with his brother’s blood”o Chapter VI, 959-960 (944-946) to “benefit of both”o Chapter VII, 961-964 (946-949) to “I would learn to write”o Chapter IX, 970-971 (955-956) from “I have said…” to endo Chapter X, 973-978 (958-963) from “If at any one time…” to “…but was never whipped.”

· Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”, 1002-1005 (988-991)

· Harriet Beecher Stowe, from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Chapter VII: “The Mother’s Struggle,” 781-790(767-776)

· Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address,” 748-49 (735-36)

7) Late Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Part I

· Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour,” 1609-1611o Link (if you don’t have the 8th edition):

http://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/webtexts/hour/

· Stephen Crane, “The Open Boat,” 1768-1784 (1779-1795)

· Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” 1669-1681 (1684-1695)

8) Late Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Part II

· Mark Twain, from Huckleberry Finno Note: Please see the following brief plot summary before reading the selections below:

§ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn#Plot_summary

§ Chapter VII, 1308-1311 (1295-1299)§ Chapter VIII, 1311-1317 (1299-1304) to “watched um throo de bushes”§ Chapter XIX, 1360-1365 (1356-1362)§ Chapter XXI, 1371-1374 (1367-1371), to “…run himself to death.”§ Chapter XXXI, 1415-1418 (1412-1415), to “…might as well go the whole hog”

· Henry James, “Daisy Miller: A Study,” 1511-1549 (1495-1532)

9) Early Twentieth-Century Aspirations

· Booker T. Washington, from Up from Slavery, Chap. XIV, 1633-1636 (1630-1633), to “… shakehands with me.”

· W.E.B. Du Bois, from The Souls of Black Folko Chapter 1, 1717-1722 (1729-1734)o Chapter 3, 1722-1731 (1734-1744)

· Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin), from Impressions of an Indian Childhood, 1825-1830 (1838-1845)

10) American Modernist Poetry

· Robert Frosto “The Road Not Taken,” 1919-1920 (1960)o “Out, Out—”, 1921-1922 (1962)

· Amy Lowell, “September, 1918,” 1897 (1937)

· T.S. Eliot, from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” 2006-2009 (2039-2042)

· William Carlos Williams, “Spring and All,” 1965-1966 (2012)

· Langston Hughes, “I, Too” 2223-2224 (2266)

11) American Modernist Prose

· Ernest Hemingway, “Hills Like White Elephants”o Link:

http://faculty.weber.edu/jyoung/English%202500/Readings%20for%20English%202500/Hills%20Like%20White%20Elephants.pdf

· William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily,” 2182-2188 (2218-2224)

· Richard Wright, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch”o Link: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma01/white/anthology/wright.html

12) Post-War Poetry and Drama

· Tennessee Williams, from A Streetcar Named Desire, Act I, Scene 1, 2300-2309 (2337-2346)

· Elizabeth Bishop, “The Fish,” 2289-2290 (2399-2401)

· Sylvia Plath, “Daddy,” 2605-2607 (2656-2658)

· Allen Ginsberg, from “Howl,” Section I, 2540-2545 (2592-2597)

13) Post-War Prose (and a Poetic Finish!)

· Maxine Hong Kingston, “No Name Woman,” 2691-2699 (2744-2753)

· Art Spiegelman, from Maus, 2736-2752 (at the end of this PDF, if you have the 7th edition orearlier)

· Sandra Cisneros, “The House on Mango Street” (at the end of this PDF)

· N. Scott Momaday, “The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee”o Link: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46558/the-delight-song-of-tsoai-talee

Note: In the pages that follow, you will find the format of the exam and the text for Spiegelman.

Introduction to American Literature (KIK-EN221)EXAM FORMAT: Sample Questions and InstructionsAutumn 2018 / Spring 2019

Maximum time allowed for the exam: 3 hours

(NOTE: This is the basic format of the exam. Each section below contains one sample question.Please note that during the actual exam you will need to answer seven questions in Section Aand seven questions in Section B, as well as write two short essays for Section C. Also, some ofthe point totals listed below may change, according to the content of the exam.)

ANSWER ALL THREE SECTIONS

SECTION A: Prose Identifications (21 points/3 points per question; approx. 45 minutes forsection)

Identify only 7 of the following quotations (if you identify more than seven, only the first seven willbe graded). Keep your answers brief. A phrase or a few words are sometimes all you need.

For each quotation give:

(a) the first and last name of the author (b) the title of the work (c) an answer to the question

1. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

For what purpose was this text written?

SECTION B: Poetry Identifications (21 points/3 points per question; approx. 45 minutes forsection)

Identify only 7 of the following quotations (if you identify more than seven, only the first seven willbe graded. Keep your answers brief. A phrase or a few words are sometimes all you need.

For each quotation give:

(a) the first and last name of the author (b) the title of the work (c) an answer to the question

1. “So many steps, head from the heart to sever,If but a neck, soon should we be together.”What does the “head” represent in this poem? What does the “heart” represent?

SECTION C: Essay Questions (60 points; 30 points per essay; approx. 45 minutes per essay)

Write TWO essays, each approximately 500-600 words, each essay based one of the following topics.Once you have chosen your topic, use 3 (but not more) of the suggested texts in your answer. Use asmuch detail from the texts as you can remember to support your points. Be sure to begin each essaywith a short introductory paragraph, and end it with a short concluding paragraph.

1. Discuss humanity’s or the individual’s relationship to nature in 3 of the following texts: HenryDavid Thoreau’s Walden, Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat,” Emily Dickinson’s “There’s aCertain Slant of Light,” or Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish.”

except from: Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1984. Corrected fromtext passage at: <<http://www.okhighered.org/epas/content-guides/reading.pdf>> Accessed 23 Jan. 2007.

excerpt fromThe House on Mango Streetby Sandra Cisneros

We didn’t always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived onLoomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. BeforeKeeler it was Paulina, and before that I can’t remember. But what Iremember most is moving a lot. Each time it seemed there’d be onemore of us. By the time we got to Mango Street we were six—Mama,Papa, Carlos, Kiki, my sister Nenny and me.

The house on Mango Street is ours and we don ‘t have to pay rentto anybody or share the yard with the people downstairs or be carefulnot to make too much noise and there isn’t a landlord banging on theceiling. But even so it’s not the house we’d thought we’d get.

We had to leave the flat on Loomis quick. The water pipes brokeand the landlord wouldn’t fix them. We were using the washroom nextdoor and carrying water over in empty milk gallons. That’s why Mamaand Papa looked for a house, and that’s why we moved into the houseon Mango Street, far away, on the other side of town.

Our parents always told us that one day we would move into ahouse, a real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn’t haveto move each year. And our house would have running water and pipesthat worked. And inside it would have real stairs, not hallway stairs,but stairs inside like the houses on T.V. And we’d have a basementand at least three washrooms so when we took a bath we wouldn’thave to tell everybody. Our house would be white with trees around it,a great big yard and grass growing without a fence. This was the house

Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket and this was the houseMama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed.

But the house on Mango Street is not the way they told it at all. It’ssmall and red with tight little steps in front and windows so smallyou’d think they were holding their breath. There is no front yard, onlyfour little elms the city planted by the curb. Out back is a small garagefor the car we don’t own yet and a small yard that looks smallerbetween the two buildings on either side. There are stairs in our house,but they ‘re ordinary hallway stairs, and the house has only onewashroom, very small. Everybody has to share a bedroom.

Once when we were living on Loomis, a nun from my schoolpassed by and saw me playing out front. The laundromat downstairshad been boarded up because it had been robbed two days before andthe owner had painted on the wood YES WE’RE OPEN so as not tolose business.

Where do you live? she asked.There, I said pointing up to the third floor.You live there?There. I had to look to where she pointed—the third floor, the paint

peeling, wooden bars Papa had nailed on the windows so we wouldn’tfall out. You live there? The way she said it made me feel likenothing. There. I lived there. I nodded.

I knew then I had to have a house. One I could point to. The houseon Mango Street isn’t it. For the time being, Mama said. Temporary,said Papa. But I know how those things go.