Introduction to American Literature (KIK-EN221/Eng223) Book Exam Reading List Autumn 2018 / Spring 2019 Instructor: Howard Sklar, PhD E-mail: howard.sklar@helsinki.fi Office: Metsätalo C611 Office 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 the pages for the 8th edition. If you have an earlier edition, or the two-volume edition, please contact me if you have difficulty locating the correct page numbers.) Important: In addition to the selections listed below, students should read the section introductions and individual 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 Walden o 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/mobydick-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 Dickinson o 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 end o 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, 1609-1611 o 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 Finn o 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 shake hands with me. W.E.B. Du Bois, from The Souls of Black Folk o 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 Frost o 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 or earlier) 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 Instructions Autumn 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 A and seven questions in Section B, as well as write two short essays for Section C. Also, some of the 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 for section) Identify only 7 of the following quotations (if you identify more than seven, only the first seven will be 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 for section) Identify only 7 of the following quotations (if you identify more than seven, only the first seven will be 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 as much detail from the texts as you can remember to support your points. Be sure to begin each essay with 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: Henry David Thoreau s Walden, Stephen Crane s The Open Boat, Emily Dickinson s There s a Certain Slant of Light, or Elizabeth Bishop s The Fish.
excerpt from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros We didn t always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, and before that I can t remember. But what I remember most is moving a lot. Each time it seemed there d be one more 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 rent to anybody or share the yard with the people downstairs or be careful not to make too much noise and there isn t a landlord banging on the ceiling. 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 broke and the landlord wouldn t fix them. We were using the washroom next door and carrying water over in empty milk gallons. That s why Mama and Papa looked for a house, and that s why we moved into the house on Mango Street, far away, on the other side of town. Our parents always told us that one day we would move into a house, a real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn t have to move each year. And our house would have running water and pipes that 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 basement and at least three washrooms so when we took a bath we wouldn t have 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 house Mama 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 s small and red with tight little steps in front and windows so small you d think they were holding their breath. There is no front yard, only four little elms the city planted by the curb. Out back is a small garage for the car we don t own yet and a small yard that looks smaller between the two buildings on either side. There are stairs in our house, but they re ordinary hallway stairs, and the house has only one washroom, very small. Everybody has to share a bedroom. Once when we were living on Loomis, a nun from my school passed by and saw me playing out front. The laundromat downstairs had been boarded up because it had been robbed two days before and the owner had painted on the wood YES WE RE OPEN so as not to lose 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 t fall out. You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there. I nodded. I knew then I had to have a house. One I could point to. The house on Mango Street isn t it. For the time being, Mama said. Temporary, said Papa. But I know how those things go. except from: Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1984. Corrected from text passage at: <<http://www.okhighered.org/epas/content-guides/reading.pdf>> Accessed 23 Jan. 2007.