American Literature CLEP

Precolonial/Early National

before 1830s (Exploration, Faith, Reason; Traits: providence, sermons, revolution; Core: Foundation)

Native American Oral Traditions

Origin Stories (Precolonial, Spirituality)

Christopher Columbus

Letters of Discovery (Precolonial, Colonization)

John Smith

The General History of Virginia (Precolonial, Survival)

William Bradford

Of Plymouth Plantation (Precolonial, Providence)

Anne Bradstreet

The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (Precolonial, Faith)

Jonathan Edwards

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Precolonial, Wrath)

Benjamin Franklin

Autobiography (Early National, Rationalism)

Thomas Paine

Common Sense (Early National, Revolution)

Washington Irving

Rip Van Winkle (Early National, Change)

Phillis Wheatley

Poems on Various Subjects (Early National, Liberty)

Romantic/Transcendental

1830-1865 (Imagination, Nature, Individualism; Traits: symbolism, reform, transcendence; Core: Imagination)

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self-Reliance (Romantic, Individualism)

Henry David Thoreau

Walden (Romantic, Simplicity)

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet Letter (Romantic, Guilt)

Edgar Allan Poe

The Raven (Romantic, Grief)

Herman Melville

Moby-Dick (Romantic, Obsession)

Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass (Romantic, Democracy)

Emily Dickinson

Poems (Romantic, Mortality)

Frederick Douglass

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Romantic, Freedom)

Realism/Naturalism

1865-1914 (Society, Detail, Determinism; Traits: class, survival, objectivity; Core: Reality)

Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Realism, Satire)

Henry James

The Portrait of a Lady (Realism, Psychology)

William Dean Howells

The Rise of Silas Lapham (Realism, Society)

Stephen Crane

The Red Badge of Courage (Naturalism, Fear)

Jack London

The Call of the Wild (Naturalism, Survival)

Kate Chopin

The Awakening (Naturalism, Feminism)

Edith Wharton

The House of Mirth (Realism, Class)

Modernism

1914-1945 (Experiment, Alienation, Disillusionment; Traits: fragmentation, stream of consciousness, myth; Core: Fragmentation)

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby (Modernism, Illusion)

Ernest Hemingway

A Farewell to Arms (Modernism, War)

William Faulkner

The Sound and the Fury (Modernism, Fragmentation)

T.S. Eliot

The Waste Land (Modernism, Disillusionment)

Ezra Pound

The Cantos (Modernism, Imagism)

Langston Hughes

The Weary Blues (Modernism, Jazz)

Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God (Modernism, Identity)

Contemporary/Postmodern

1945-Present (Diversity, Identity, Irony; Traits: multiculturalism, media, absurdity; Core: Diversity)

Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman (Contemporary, Disillusionment)

Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire (Contemporary, Desire)

Sylvia Plath

The Bell Jar (Contemporary, Identity)

Allen Ginsberg

Howl (Contemporary, Rebellion)

Toni Morrison

Beloved (Contemporary, Memory)

Maya Angelou

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Contemporary, Resilience)

John Updike

Rabbit, Run (Contemporary, Alienation)

Don DeLillo

White Noise (Contemporary, Consumerism)