Colonial/Pre-Revolutionary American Literature

Question 1

John Smith

Answer 1

Generall Historie of Virginia New England and the Summer Isles

Question 2

William Bradford

Answer 2

History of Plimmoth Plantation

Question 3

John Winthrop

Answer 3

History of New England

Question 4

Increase Mather

Answer 4

An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences

Question 5

Cotton Mather

Answer 5

Magnalia Christi Americana: The Ecclesiastical History of NE from its First Planting

Question 6

Thomas Morton

Answer 6

New England Canaan, Merrymount colony

Question 7

John Mason

Answer 7

Brief History of the Pequod War

Question 8

Mary Rowlandson

Answer 8

Wrote about captivity by Wampanoags

Question 9

Anne Bradstreet

Answer 9

Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America
A Dialogue between Old England and New
Four Elements
Four Constitutions
Four Ages of Man
Four Seasons
Four Monarchies
Contemplations

Question 10

Edward Taylor

Answer 10

Poetical Works, God’s Determinations Touching His Elect

Question 11

Michael Wigglesworth

Answer 11

Day of Doom (sinners and unbaptized infants condemned to Hell on Day of Judgment)

Question 12

George Alsop

Answer 12

A Character of the Province of Maryland

Question 13

Daniel Denton

Answer 13

A Brief Description of New York

Question 14

Jonathan Edwards

Answer 14

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
A faithful Narrative of the surprising Work of God
Freedom of the Will

Question 15

William Byrd

Answer 15

History of the Dividing Line
Secret Diary
Another Secret Diary

Question 16

Lucy Terry

Answer 16

Bar’s Fight August 28, 1746

Question 17

Jupiter Hammon

Answer 17

(black slave) An Evening Thought on Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries

Question 18

Phillis Wheatley

Answer 18

(first famous black) Poems on Various subjects Religious and Moral

Question 19

John Campbell

Answer 19

Boston News-Leter (first regular newspaper 1704)

Question 20

Andrew Bradford

Answer 20

American Magazine (one of first two magazines, 1741)

Question 21

Benjamin Franklin

Answer 21

General Magazine and Historical Chronical (one of two magazines, 1741)
Autobiography
Poor Richard’s Almanack (Richard Saunders)

Question 22

Crevecoeur (J. Hector St. John)

Answer 22

Letters from an American Farmer

Question 23

John Jay, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton

Answer 23

The Federalist

Question 24

Thomas Paine

Answer 24

Common Sense
Crisis
Age of Reason
The Rights of Man

Question 25

Hartford Wits

Answer 25

John Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, Joel Barlow

Question 26

John Trumbull

Answer 26

M’Fingal - M’Fingal is tarred and feathered and repents

Question 27

Timothy Dwight

Answer 27

The Conquest of Canaan, the Triumph of Infidelity, Greenfield Hill

Question 28

Joel Barlow

Answer 28

Hasty Pudding

Question 29

Philip Freneau

Answer 29

House of Night

Question 30

Olaudah Esquiano

Answer 30

(feed slave) The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Gustavus Vassa the African

Question 31

William Brown

Answer 31

Power of Sympathy (first American novel; Harrington can’t marry Harriot Fawcett because she is his half sister, they both die)

Question 32

Hugh Henry Brackenridge

Answer 32

Modern Chivalry (Captain Farrago and Teague O’Reagan travel, seeign unqualified office holders, including Teague)

Question 33

Charles Brown

Answer 33

Wieland of the Transformation (first American novel popular in Europe)
Arthur Mervyn
Edgar Huntly

Question 34

Washington Irving

Answer 34

Called “The American Goldsmith”
A History of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker
Sketch-Book of Geoffery Crayon which includes:
- Rip Van Winkle (Rip Van Winkle drinks from dwarf’s keg with dog Wolf in Catskills and sleeps for 20 years; like German Peter Klaus
- Sleepy hollow (Schoolmaster Ichabod Crane loves Katrina Van Tassel but is scared away by rival Brom Bones who masquerades as headless horseman)
The Alhambra
A Tour of the Prairies
biographies of Columbus and Washington

Question 35

Willium Cullen Bryant

Answer 35

Thanatopsis

Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood

Question 36

James Fenimore Cooper

Answer 36

Leatherstocking series:
- Pioneers (Templeton, NY: Natty Bumppo punished for kiling deer while other kill many pigeons; Elizabeth Temple marries Edward Efingham, resolving question of Judge Temple’s lands)
- Last of the Mohicans (Alice and Cora Munro try to join father at Fort William Henry; opposed by Hurons under Magua; Uncas, his dad Delaware Chief Chingachgook, and Hawkeye oppose Hurons)
- Prairie (old Natty Bumppo dies; Ishmael Bush squatters)
- Pathfinder (Pathfinder dumps Mabel Durham when he learns she loves susepected but vindicated traitor Jasper Western; Indian heroine Dew-of-June)
- Deerslayer (Lake Ostego, NY: Natty Bumppo and Hurry Harry March fight Hurons; Judith Hunter fails to interest Natty)
__________
Pilot
Spy
Littlepage Manuscripts

Question 37

Cambridge Poets

Answer 37

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
James Russel Lowell
Oliver Wendell Holmes
John Greenleaf Whittier

Question 38

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Answer 38

Evangeline (Gabriel Lajeunesse sent to LA and Evangeline Bellefontaine to NE when Acadians expelled from Nova Scotia; meet again in Philadelphia where she is a nurse and he dies)
Song of Hiawatha (Ojibway Indian Hiawatha raised by grandmother Nokomis, dauther of the moon; revenges mom Wenonah against dad West Wind; teaches peace with whites; wife Minnehaha becomes ill and they go to Northwest Wind)
Courtship of Miles Standish (Plymouth Plantation: shy military man Miles Standish asks John Alden to woo Priscilla Mullins for him, but she marries John isntead, and Miles gives blessing)
Translated the Divine Comedy
My Lost Youth (youth in Portland, ME)
Village Blacksmith
The Building of the Ship
The Children’s Hour
The Wreck of the Hesperus
Tales of a Wayside Inn (collection of poems in the style of Canterbury Tales; includes Paul Revere’s Ride, Elizabeth, the Battle of Carmilhan, Emma and Eginhard, The Saga of King Olaf)

Question 39

James Russel Lowell

Answer 39

The Bigelow Papers
Harvard Commemoration Ode (in honor of Civil War dead)
Among My Books
A Fable for Critics
edited the Atlantic Monthly

Question 40

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Answer 40

Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
The Chambered Nautilius (sea creature enlarges its shell as it grows)
The Deacon’s Masterpiece or the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay (shay fell apart, satinizing Calvinist permanence)
Elsie Venner A Romance of Destiny (Else Venner has serpentine qualities because mom was bitten by snake; loves Bernard Langdon but she dies)
Old Ironsides (saved USS Constitution from being scrapped)

Question 41

Frederick Douglass

Answer 41

(escaped slave) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave
My Bondage and My Freedom
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Question 42

William Wells Brown

Answer 42

(escaped slave)

Clotel (about racial intermarriage, first novel by black American)

Question 43

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Answer 43

The American Scholar
Nature
Address at Dvinity College
Essays
Self-Reliance
Compensation
Concord Hymn
Days
MErlin
The Over-Soul
Representative Men

Question 44

Henry David Thoreau

Answer 44

Walden or Life in teh Woods
Civil Disobedience (that government is best which governs least)
Life Without Principle

Question 45

Count Alexis de Tocqueville

Answer 45

Democracy in America

Question 46

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Answer 46

The Scarlet Letter
Twice-Told Tales (tales including Howe’s Masquerade, The Grey Champion, The Great Carbuncle, and The MInister’s Black Veil; title from King John)
Mosses from an Old Manse (25 stories including Young Goodman Brown (Puritan Brown, led by old man, observes wife Faith at a witches’ Sabbath in the woods and returns to Salem a sad man) and The Birthmark (Alymer removes birthmark from perfect wife Georgiana, killing her), Rappaccini’s Daughter (doctor Rappaccini nourishes daughter Beatrice on poisons so she may help with dangerous plant experiments; she dies drinking antidote from faithless suitor), Celestial Railroad
House of Seven Gables (Salem; Colonel Pyncheon obtained land for House of Seven Gables by accusing owner matthew Maule of witchraft Maule cursed Pyncheons; Clifford Pyncheon jailed fro murder of uncle actually committed by Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon; Pheobe and Holgrave, a descendent of Maule, fall in love and break the curse)
Marble Faun (Italina Count Donatello loves Mriam and kills her pursuer Antonio; artist Hilda witnesses the murder, confesses to priest and loves Kenyon)
Blithedale Romance (based on Brook Farm; Miles Coverdale narrates; Zenobia loves Hollingsworth who loves Priscilla)
Fanshawe (Fanshawe loves Ellen Langdon, ward of Harley College President Dr. Melmoth but gives to man she loves and dies; modeled on Bowdoin)
The Dolliver Romance (unfinsihed; Dr. Dolliver maeks elixir to care for granddaughter Pnasie but Colonel Dabney wants it for selfish reasons and dies)
Tanglewood Tales

Question 47

Herman Melville

Answer 47

Typee A Peep at Polynesian Life (hero and friend Toby jump ship in Marquesas Ilands and wander into valley of Typee where cannibals capture them; Fayaway nruses hero but he chooses to return to civilization)
Omoo A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (crew of Julia is imprisoned on Tahiti: hero and friend Doctor Long Ghost are released and explore the island)
Mardi and a Voyage Tither (5 Men sail through Mardi on King Media’s boat; stop in Vienza; Taji kills priest Aleema to rescue Yillah; Hautia seeks Taji; others include philosopher Babbalanja, poet Yoomy, and Historian Mohi)
Moby Dick (Captain Ahab pursues Moby-Dick; others on the Pequod include God-fearing Starbuck, Stubb, Harpooners Queenqueg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, blck Pip, and fire-worshipping Parsee; only narrator Ishmael survives)
Pierre or the Ambiguities (writer Pierre Grlendinning leaves mom and fiance Lucy Tartan for illegitimate sister, whom he comes to love; commits suicide in prison)
White Jacket or The world in a Man-of-War (white jacket nearly downs narrator when he falls into water; Jack Chasae appears on US Navy man-of-war; brutal floggings condemned)
Billy Budd Foretopman(Claggart falsely accuses Billy; Billy kills Claggart; Captain Vere reluctantly hangs Billy)
Battle-Pieces and Aspects of teh War
Clarel A Poem and A Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (theological student Clarel loves Jew Ruth while in Holy Land)
The Confidence-Man His Masquerade (Fidele MS River boat on April Fool’s Day; no plot)
The Piazza Tales (short stories including The Bell Tower (artist Bannadonna rivals God), The Lighting-Rod Man (man refuses to buy lightning-rod because he does not control or fear God), The Enchanted Isles (sketches based on Galapagos Islands), Benito Cerreno, Bartleby the Scrivener (Bartleby refuses to do his job proofreading legal documents, is imprisoned, and starves)