WESTERN UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH. PhD QUALIFYING EXAMINATION READING LIST. English 9916 (SF)/ 9936 (PF) AMERICAN LITERATURE

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1 Revised Spring 2013 WESTERN UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH PhD QUALIFYING EXAMINATION READING LIST English 9916 (SF)/ 9936 (PF) AMERICAN LITERATURE In order to develop a wide-ranging competency to teach and research in the field of American literature, candidates will prepare a reading list according to the instructions and requirements below. 1. Instructions i. Secondary Field Exam Students may choose either the earlier or the later period, or the entire span of the literature. Students who choose one of the major periods should select roughly 75% of the list from that period and 25% from the other. Students who choose to cover the entire list should reduce it by about 50%. Authors and/or texts printed in bold type should be given greater weight in this process. ii. Primary Field Exam Students must choose either the earlier or the later period. They should complete the entire list for that period, plus about 25% of the other period. 2. Exam Structure i. The exam consists of THREE parts, covering the pre-1865 period, post-1865 period, and general themes. Students are required to answer ONE question from each of the three parts. ii. Students must not discuss the same text more than once. 3. Recommended Secondary Sources Please consult examining committee members for recommended readings.

2 CORE & OPTIONAL TEXTS The American Literature list covers a time period from the era of exploration and colonization through to the present day. As a result of this expansive range of time, the list is divided into two periods, an earlier and a later, with a brief period following the Civil War overlapping in both. Particular texts listed are intended to be suggestive rather than prescriptive: candidates may substitute authors and texts not on the list in consultation with the Examining Committee. The candidate s list must include representative prose and poetry, with a drama component optional. American Literature I: origins th-17th Centuries Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, The Relaccion (1542) [anon.], History of the Miraculous Apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe (1531) Samuel de Champlain Voyages of Samuel de Champlain ( ) Jerome Lalemant The Relation of 1647, from Jesuit Relations Thomas Hariot A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588) John Smith General Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624) James Revel The Poor, Unhappy Transported Felon (~1650) Thomas Morton New English Canaan (1637) William Bradford Of Plymouth Plantation (1647) John Winthrop Modell of Christian Charity ( ) Journal of John Winthrop John Winthrop s Christian Experience A Defence of an Order of Court (1637) A Short Story (1642) Speech to the General Court (1645) Roger Williams The Bloody Tenent of Persecution (1644) Key into the Languages of America (1643) John Cotton The Hireling Ministries None of Christ s (1652) Sixteene Questions of Necessary and Serious Consequence (1635) The Way of Congregational Churches Clear d (1648) Christ the Fountaine of Life (1651) Thomas Shepard Autobiography (1646) Anne Bradstreet The Tenth Muse (1650) The Author to Her Book (1678) Some Lines Written on the Burning of My House (1666) To My Dear and Loving Husband (1678) Wigglesworth, Michael Diary (1657) Day of Doom (1662) 2

3 Edward Taylor Preparatory Meditations (1670s) Upon a Spider Catching a Fly Mary Rowlandson The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (1682) Mather, Cotton Wonders of the Invisible World (1692) Magnalia Christi Americana (1702) [various] Documents of the Salem Witchcraft Crisis (1692) 18 th -Century Knight, Sarah Kemble The Private Journey Byrd, William The Secret Diary History of the Dividing Line Edwards, Jonathan Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God Divine and Supernatural Light Faithful Narrative Treatise of Religious Affections Chauncy, Charles Seasonable Thoughts on the Late Revivals Grainger, James The Sugar Cane Franklin, Benjamin The Way to Wealth Autobiography Crèvecoeur, Hector Letters from an American Farmer Woolman, John Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes Journal Freneau, Philip The Rising Glory of America The Indian Burying Ground The Wild Honey Suckle Wheatley, Phillis Poems Occasional and Moral Paine, Thomas Common Sense Jefferson, Thomas Notes on the State of Virginia Declaration of Independence Madison, Jay, Hamilton The Federalist Papers Brown, William Hill The Power of Sympathy Brown, Charles Brockden Wieland Ormond Foster, Hannah The Coquette Rowson, Susannah Charlotte Temple Equiano, Olaudah The Interesting Life 19 th Century Irving, Washington Cooper, James Fenimore Sedgwick, Catherine Bryant, William Cullen Legend of Sleepy Hollow Rip van Winkle Last of the Mohicans The Pioneers Hope Leslie Thanatopsis 3

4 The Prairies Abraham Lincoln Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature American Scholar Divinity School Address Self-Reliance The Poet Walker, David Appeal Fuller, Margaret Women in the Nineteenth Century Poe, Edgar Allan Fall of the House of Usher The Tell-Tale Heart The Man of the Crowd Berenice The Purloined Letter Murders in the Rue Morgue The Raven Douglass, Frederick Narrative The Heroic Slave Brown, William Wells Narrative Clotel Hawthorne, Nathaniel (At least 2 of) Scarlet Letter Blithedale Romance House of Seven Gables My Kinsmen, Major Molineux Young Goodman Brown Rappaccini s Daughter Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth Evangeline Stowe, Harriet Beecher Uncle Tom s Cabin Melville, Herman Moby-Dick (At least 2 of) Pierre Benito Cereno Bartleby, the Scrivener The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids Clarel Billy Budd Jacobs, Harriet Incidents in the Life of a Slave-Girl Wilson, Harriet Our Nig Delany, Martin Blake, or the Huts of America Whitman, Walt Leaves of Grass Democratic Vistas Davis, Rebecca Harding Life in the Iron Mills Dickinson, Emily Poems of Emily Dickinson Twain, Mark Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court Fenimore Cooper s Literary Offenses Pierce, Ambrose An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge 4

5 Harris, Joel Chandler James, Henry Chopin, Kate Howells, William Dean Washington, Booker Chestnutt, Charles Harper, Frances Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Du Bois, W.E.B. Crane, Stephen Dreiser, Theodore Norris, Frank The Wonderful Tar Baby Story Mr. Rabbit Grossly Deceives Mr. Fox Portrait of a Lady (At least 2 of) The Bostonians Daisy Miller The Wings of the Dove The Awakening Hazard of New Fortunes Up from Slavery The Marrow of Tradition Iola Leroy The Yellow Wall-Paper The Souls of Black Folk The Red Badge of Courage Maggie Sister Carrie McTeague American Literature II: 1865-contemporary FICTION Mark Twain Huckleberry Finn and one other novel Henry James two of The American, The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians, The Ambassadors William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes or the Rise of Silas Lapham Joel Chandler Harris Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs Kate Chopin The Awakening Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Yellow Wallpaper or Herland Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk Stephen Crane Maggie or The Red Badge of Courage The Native Tradition Cochise et al Harold Frederic The Damnation of Theron Ware Ambrose Bierce R. Harding Davis Life in the Iron Mills Charles Chesnutt The Marrow of Tradition Frank Norris McTeague POETRY Walt Whitman Emily Dickinson 5

6 Sidney Lanier Stephen Crane Henry Adams The Education of Henry Adams Theodore Dreiser Sister Carrie or An American Tragedy Edith Wharton House of Mirth or the Age of Innocence Gertrude Stein Willa Cather My Antonia Sherwood Anderson Winesburg, Ohio Sinclair Lewis Main Street or Babbitt Jack London F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby or Tender Is the Night Ernest Hemingway William Faulkner two of The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Absalom, Absalom, Light in August, Go Down, Moses John Dos Passos Henry Roth Call It Sleep John Steinbeck Nathanael West Miss Lonelyhearts or The Day of the Locust Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God Katherine Anne Porter Ellen Glasgow Barren Ground Thomas Wolfe Look Homeward, Angel James T. Farrell POETRY E.A. Robinson Hilda Doolittle Amy Lowell Robert Frost Wallace Stevens William Carlos Williams Ezra Pound Marianne Moore E.E. Cummings Edna St. Vincent Millay Hart Crane Langston Hughes Robert Penn Warren John Crowe Ransom Elinor Wylie Carl Sandburg Robinson Jeffers Allen Tate Countee Cullen 6

7 Melvin Tolson Muriel Rukeyser Louise Bogan Louis Zukofsky 1950-present Eudora Welty Richard Wright Ralph Ellison Saul Bellow Flannery O Connor Norman Mailer Vladimir Nabokov John Updike John Barth Thomas Pynchon Philip Roth Joyce Carol Oates Alice Walker N. Scott Momaday Leslie Marmon Silko Donald Barthelme E.L. Doctorow Robert Coover Don DeLillo Toni Morrison Ishmael Reed Maxine Hong Kingston Louise Erdrich Robert Penn Warren James Baldwin William Burroughs Charles Johnson Jack Kerouac Cormac McCarthy Malcolm X Native Son Invisible Man Herzog Lolita The Crying of Lot 49 or Gravity s Rainbow Goodbye Columbus The Color Purple The Woman Warrior Middle Passage Autobiography POETRY Charles Olson Robert Duncan Elizabeth Bishop Theodore Roethke John Berryman Robert Lowell Gwendolyn Brooks Audre Lorde 7

8 Allen Ginsberg John Ashbery Frank O Hara James Merrill Amiri Baraka Adrienne Rich Sylvia Plath Richard Wilbur Anthony Hecht Kenneth Koch A.R. Ammons John Cage Charles Bernstein Lyn Hejinian Susan Howe Robert Pinsky DRAMA Eugene O Neill (one play) Arthur Miller (one play) Tennessee Williams (one play) Elmer Rice Gertrude Stein Thornton Wilder Lillian Hellman Edward Albee David Mamet Sam Shepard Susan Glaspell Lorraine Hansberry Clifford Odets William Inge Tony Kushner Departmental regulations regarding PhD comprehensive exams can be the following site: 8