CLEP 
American Literature
College · CLEP American Literature · Certificate available
641 lessons 5.9h runtime 19 units 898 links between lessons Test yourself · 19 quizzes, a mid exam, and a final
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Begin with Unit 1: Reading Poetry: Line, Sound, Form, Figure. It sets the foundation for everything that follows.
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Unit 1: Reading Poetry: Line, Sound, Form, Figure 40 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0001 What the Exam Asks You to Do With a Poem
- 0002 Speaker and Poet: The Difference That Decides Answers
- 0003 Tone: The Attitude a Poem Takes Toward Its Subject
- 0004 Diction: High, Low, and the Distance Between
- 0005 Syntax: The Sentence Inside the Lines
- 0006 The Line as a Unit of Meaning
- 0007 Enjambment and the End-Stopped Line
- 0008 Meter: Counting Stress, Not Syllables Alone
- 0009 Iambic Pentameter, the Default English Line
- 0010 Trochee, Anapest, Dactyl, Spondee
- 0011 Scanning a Line: The Procedure worked example
- 0012 Blank Verse and Free Verse Are Not the Same Thing
- 0013 Rhyme: End, Internal, Slant, Eye
- 0014 Lettering a Rhyme Scheme worked example
- 0015 Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance
- 0016 Onomatopoeia, Euphony, Cacophony
- 0017 Stanza Shapes: Couplet, Tercet, Quatrain
- 0018 The Sonnet: Italian and English
- 0019 The Volta, and Why the Turn Is the Question
- 0020 Ballad, Ballad Stanza, and the Refrain
- 0021 Ode, Elegy, Lyric
- 0022 Villanelle, Sestina, Haiku
- 0023 Epic, Mock Epic, Narrative Poem
- 0024 The Dramatic Monologue
- 0025 Simile and Metaphor: Tenor and Vehicle
- 0026 Personification, Apostrophe, Metonymy, Synecdoche
- 0027 Symbol and Allegory: The Difference the Exam Tests
- 0028 Image, Imagery, and the Concrete Particular
- 0029 Irony: Verbal, Situational, Dramatic
- 0030 Paradox, Oxymoron, Hyperbole, Understatement
- 0031 Allusion and the Borrowed Authority
- 0032 Ambiguity: When Two Readings Are Both Defensible
- 0033 Reading a Short Poem in Six Moves worked example
- 0034 Reading an Excerpt From a Long Poem worked example
- 0035 Naming a Verse Form From the Shape on the Page worked example
- 0036 Reading Tone From Diction: A Worked Case worked example
- 0037 What the Speaker's Response Question Rewards worked example
- 0038 The Four Traps in Poetry Questions worked example
- 0039 The Terms the Board Actually Uses
- 0040 How a Poem Means: The Method This Course Uses review
Unit 2: Reading Prose and Drama: Voice, Plot, Style 32 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0101 What the Exam Asks You to Do With a Prose Passage
- 0102 Narration: First Person, Third Limited, Omniscient
- 0103 The Unreliable Narrator
- 0104 Point of View and What It Hides
- 0105 Plot: Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Denouement
- 0106 Conflict: Internal, External, and the Antagonist
- 0107 Character: Flat, Round, Static, Dynamic
- 0108 Characterization: Direct and Indirect
- 0109 Setting as Place, Time, and Pressure
- 0110 Style: Sentence, Rhythm, and the Writer's Hand
- 0111 Diction and Register in Prose
- 0112 Theme Is Not Subject, and Not Moral
- 0113 Motif, Leitmotif, and Repetition
- 0114 Foreshadowing, Flashback, In Medias Res
- 0115 Frame Narrative and the Tale Within a Tale
- 0116 Stream of Consciousness and Interior Monologue
- 0117 Free Indirect Discourse
- 0118 Satire, Parody, Burlesque
- 0119 The Fable, the Allegory, the Parable
- 0120 Genres the Exam Names: Novel, Novella, Short Story
- 0121 Autobiography, Memoir, Slave Narrative, Captivity Narrative
- 0122 The Essay and the Sermon as Literary Forms
- 0123 Drama: Act, Scene, Stage Direction, Soliloquy
- 0124 Tragedy, Comedy, and the Tragic Flaw
- 0125 Realism, Naturalism, Romance: Three Modes, Not Three Periods
- 0126 Reading a Prose Passage in Six Moves worked example
- 0127 Naming the Form of a Passage worked example
- 0128 Finding the Theme a Passage Argues worked example
- 0129 Placing a Passage in Its Period by Its Prose worked example
- 0130 Telling Narrator From Author worked example
- 0131 The Three Traps in Prose Questions worked example
- 0132 How Prose Means: The Method This Course Uses review
Unit 3: Beginnings: Native Oral Traditions, Contact, Exploration 26 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0201 What "Beginnings" Means on This Exam
- 0202 Oral Tradition: Literature Before Writing
- 0203 The Iroquois Creation Story
- 0204 "How the World Was Made": The Cherokee Account
- 0205 The Pima Story of Creation
- 0206 The Seneca Story of How Tales Began
- 0207 Glooskap and the Wabanaki Hero
- 0208 The Origin of Disease and Medicine
- 0209 Oral Formula, Repetition, and Performance
- 0210 Reading a Creation Story as Literature worked example
- 0211 Columbus and the Letter That Invented America
- 0212 Cabeza de Vaca: Shipwreck, Captivity, and a Changed Eye
- 0213 Captain John Smith and the Making of a Legend
- 0214 Pocahontas: The Story, the Sources, and the Doubt
- 0215 The Promotional Tract: Writing to Recruit
- 0216 Thomas Morton and the Merrymount Quarrel
- 0217 The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in Its Own Documents
- 0218 Samson Occom and *A Short Narrative of My Life*
- 0219 Pontiac's Speech at Detroit
- 0220 What Contact Literature Leaves Out
- 0221 The Captivity Narrative as a Genre
- 0222 Sorting Exploration Writing by Its Purpose worked example
- 0223 Reading a Contact Document for Its Assumptions worked example
- 0224 Dating a Colonial Passage From Its Prose worked example
- 0225 Native Voices in an Archive Kept by Others
- 0226 Before the Nation: What the First Texts Establish review
Unit 4: Puritan New England 28 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0301 The Puritan Errand and the Literature It Produced
- 0302 Calvinism in Four Doctrines
- 0303 Typology: Reading the World as a Sign
- 0304 The Plain Style
- 0305 John Winthrop and "A Model of Christian Charity"
- 0306 "A City Upon a Hill"
- 0307 William Bradford and *Of Plymouth Plantation*
- 0308 Providence as a Narrative Principle
- 0309 Edward Winslow and the Pilgrims' Departure
- 0310 Anne Bradstreet: The First Published American Poet
- 0311 *The Tenth Muse* and Its London Publication
- 0312 "The Author to Her Book"
- 0313 "To My Dear and Loving Husband"
- 0314 "Before the Birth of One of Her Children"
- 0315 "Upon the Burning of Our House"
- 0316 Bradstreet's Quarrel With Her Own Consolations
- 0317 Edward Taylor and the Private Meditations
- 0318 "Huswifery" and the Metaphysical Conceit
- 0319 Mary Rowlandson's Captivity and Restoration
- 0320 The Removes: Structure as Spiritual Record
- 0321 Samuel Sewall's Diary and *The Selling of Joseph*
- 0322 Cotton Mather and *The Wonders of the Invisible World*
- 0323 Roger Williams and the *Key Into the Language*
- 0324 Jonathan Edwards and "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"
- 0325 Edwards Beyond the Sermon
- 0326 Reading a Puritan Text for Its Doctrine worked example
- 0327 Telling Sermon From Diary From Narrative worked example
- 0328 The Puritan Legacy: What Later Writers Inherit review
Unit 5: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the New Republic 28 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0401 From Providence to Reason: The Enlightenment Turn
- 0402 Deism and the Clockmaker God
- 0403 Benjamin Franklin and the Invented Self
- 0404 The *Autobiography* as a Model of Self-Making
- 0405 Poor Richard and the Aphorism
- 0406 "The Way to Wealth"
- 0407 Franklin's Project of Moral Perfection
- 0408 Crèvecœur: "What Is an American?"
- 0409 The Melting Pot Before the Phrase
- 0410 Thomas Paine and *Common Sense*
- 0411 *The American Crisis* and the Rhetoric of Emergency
- 0412 Jefferson and the Declaration as Prose
- 0413 *Notes on the State of Virginia* and Its Contradiction
- 0414 John and Abigail Adams: The Letter as Literature
- 0415 The Adams–Jefferson Correspondence
- 0416 Phillis Wheatley: The Poet and the Proof
- 0417 "On Being Brought From Africa to America"
- 0418 Wheatley to Washington, and to the Earl of Dartmouth
- 0419 Olaudah Equiano and the *Interesting Narrative*
- 0420 The Middle Passage in Equiano's Telling
- 0421 Benjamin Banneker's Letter to Jefferson
- 0422 Absalom Jones and the Petition Tradition
- 0423 Judith Sargent Murray, "On the Equality of the Sexes"
- 0424 Philip Freneau, the Poet of the Revolution
- 0425 Susanna Rowson and *Charlotte Temple*
- 0426 The Seduction Novel and the Early American Reader
- 0427 Sorting a Revolutionary-Era Text by Its Errand worked example
- 0428 Reason, Rights, and the Contradiction the Nation Kept review
Unit 6: The New Nation: Irving, Cooper, and the First American Fiction 24 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0501 The Call for a National Literature
- 0502 Romanticism: The Terms That Define It
- 0503 American Romanticism's Four Preoccupations
- 0504 The Sublime and the Picturesque
- 0505 Washington Irving, the First American Man of Letters
- 0506 *The Sketch Book* and the Persona of Geoffrey Crayon
- 0507 "Rip Van Winkle"
- 0508 "Rip Van Winkle" as a Fable of the Revolution
- 0509 "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
- 0510 Irving's Borrowed Plots and the Question of Originality
- 0511 James Fenimore Cooper and the Frontier Romance
- 0512 The Leatherstocking Tales in Order
- 0513 Natty Bumppo, the First American Hero
- 0514 *The Last of the Mohicans*
- 0515 Cooper's Indians and the Romance of a Vanishing Frontier
- 0516 William Cullen Bryant and "Thanatopsis"
- 0517 The Publishing Trade and the Pirated Novel
- 0518 The Historical Romance as a Form
- 0519 Longfellow and the Boston Brahmins
- 0520 *Evangeline*, *Hiawatha*, and the National Myth
- 0521 The Gothic Arrives in America
- 0522 Placing an Early National Text by Its Hero worked example
- 0523 Reading a Romantic Landscape worked example
- 0524 Inventing an American Literature: What the First Novelists Did review
Unit 7: Transcendentalism: Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller 26 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0601 What Transcendentalism Claimed
- 0602 Unitarianism, Kant, and the Road to Concord
- 0603 The Over-Soul
- 0604 Emerson's *Nature*
- 0605 The Transparent Eyeball
- 0606 "The American Scholar" and Intellectual Independence
- 0607 "Self-Reliance"
- 0608 "A Foolish Consistency"
- 0609 The Divinity School Address and the Scandal
- 0610 Emerson's Style: The Aphorism as Argument
- 0611 Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond
- 0612 *Walden*: The Experiment and the Book
- 0613 "Economy" and the Cost of a Life
- 0614 "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For"
- 0615 The Bean-Field, the Pond, and the Seasons
- 0616 "Resistance to Civil Government"
- 0617 Thoreau's Night in Jail and Its Long Influence
- 0618 Margaret Fuller and *Woman in the Nineteenth Century*
- 0619 Fuller at *The Dial* and in Italy
- 0620 Brook Farm and the Communal Experiments
- 0621 Transcendentalism's Critics
- 0622 The Movement's Afterlife in American Prose
- 0623 Telling Emerson From Thoreau on the Page worked example
- 0624 Reading a Transcendentalist Passage for Its Claim worked example
- 0625 Sorting a Romantic Writer: Transcendental or Dark worked example
- 0626 Self, Nature, and Conscience: What Concord Argued review
Unit 8: The Dark Romantics: Poe, Hawthorne, Melville 32 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0701 Dark Romanticism: The Answer to Concord
- 0702 Edgar Allan Poe: The Life and the Legend
- 0703 "The Philosophy of Composition"
- 0704 The Single Effect and the Short Story's Rules
- 0705 "The Raven"
- 0706 "Annabel Lee" and the Dead Beloved
- 0707 Poe's Sound: Meter, Refrain, and Internal Rhyme
- 0708 "The Fall of the House of Usher"
- 0709 "The Tell-Tale Heart"
- 0710 "The Cask of Amontillado"
- 0711 "Sonnet—To Science" and Poe's Quarrel With the Age
- 0712 Poe and the Invention of Detective Fiction
- 0713 Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Puritan Inheritance
- 0714 "Young Goodman Brown"
- 0715 "The Minister's Black Veil"
- 0716 "The Birthmark" and "Rappaccini's Daughter"
- 0717 *The Scarlet Letter*: Story and Structure
- 0718 Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, Pearl
- 0719 The Scaffold Scenes and the Letter Itself
- 0720 *The House of the Seven Gables* and the Curse
- 0721 Hawthorne's Romance and His Preface to It
- 0722 Herman Melville at Sea
- 0723 *Moby-Dick*: The Whale and the Hunt
- 0724 Ahab, Ishmael, Queequeg, Starbuck
- 0725 The Whiteness of the Whale
- 0726 "Bartleby, the Scrivener"
- 0727 "I would prefer not to"
- 0728 "Benito Cereno"
- 0729 *Billy Budd* and the Posthumous Melville
- 0730 Hawthorne and Melville: The Friendship and the Essay
- 0731 Telling Poe From Hawthorne From Melville worked example
- 0732 The Dark Side of the American Renaissance review
Unit 9: Slavery, Reform, and the Woman Question 27 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0801 The Literature of Reform
- 0802 The Slave Narrative as a Genre
- 0803 Frederick Douglass: From Slavery to the Platform
- 0804 The *Narrative* of 1845 and Its Authenticating Letters
- 0805 Learning to Read as the Narrative's Turn
- 0806 Mrs. Auld: How Slavery Corrupts the Slaveholder
- 0807 The Fight With Covey
- 0808 "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"
- 0809 Harriet Jacobs and *Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl*
- 0810 Linda Brent, the Garret, and the Woman's Narrative
- 0811 Solomon Northup and *Twelve Years a Slave*
- 0812 Olaudah Equiano's Place in the Tradition
- 0813 David Walker's *Appeal*
- 0814 William Lloyd Garrison and *The Liberator*
- 0815 Harriet Beecher Stowe and *Uncle Tom's Cabin*
- 0816 Uncle Tom, Eliza, Topsy, Simon Legree
- 0817 Sentimental Fiction and Its Political Work
- 0818 Sojourner Truth and "Ain't I a Woman?"
- 0819 The Speech, the Versions, and the Record
- 0820 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Declaration of Sentiments
- 0821 The Grimké Sisters and Lydia Maria Child
- 0822 Fanny Fern and the Newspaper Column
- 0823 Rebecca Harding Davis and "Life in the Iron-Mills"
- 0824 Lincoln's Prose: The Gettysburg Address
- 0825 Reading a Slave Narrative for Its Argument worked example
- 0826 Telling Sentimental From Documentary Appeal worked example
- 0827 Writing Against Slavery: What the Literature Did review
Unit 10: Whitman and Dickinson 26 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0901 Two Poets Who Change What a Poem Can Be
- 0902 Walt Whitman Before *Leaves of Grass*
- 0903 *Leaves of Grass* and Its Editions
- 0904 The 1855 Preface and the Poet as Nation
- 0905 "Song of Myself": The Opening Claim
- 0906 The Catalogue and the Long Line
- 0907 Free Verse: What Whitman Made Possible
- 0908 The Body, the Self, and the Democratic Voice
- 0909 "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"
- 0910 *Drum-Taps* and the Civil War
- 0911 "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"
- 0912 "O Captain! My Captain!" and Its Odd Formality
- 0913 Emerson's Letter and Whitman's Use of It
- 0914 Emily Dickinson: The Life and the Manuscripts
- 0915 The Poems Found After Her Death
- 0916 Dickinson's Form: Hymn Meter and the Dash
- 0917 Slant Rhyme and "Tell all the truth but tell it slant"
- 0918 "Because I could not stop for Death"
- 0919 "I heard a Fly buzz — when I died"
- 0920 "My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun"
- 0921 "The Soul selects her own Society"
- 0922 "Success is counted sweetest" and the Paradox Poems
- 0923 Dickinson's Editors and the Restored Texts
- 0924 Telling Whitman From Dickinson on Sight worked example
- 0925 Reading a Dickinson Poem in Four Moves worked example
- 0926 Two Answers to the Same Question review
Unit 11: Realism and Regionalism 44 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1001 What Realism Claimed and Against What
- 1002 The Conditions That Produced It
- 1003 William Dean Howells and the Realist Program
- 1004 "Editha" and the Cost of Romantic Talk
- 1005 Regionalism and Local Color
- 1006 Mark Twain: The Name and the River
- 1007 "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
- 1008 The Vernacular as a Literary Instrument
- 1009 *The Adventures of Tom Sawyer*
- 1010 *Adventures of Huckleberry Finn*
- 1011 Huck, Jim, and the Raft
- 1012 "All right, then, I'll go to hell"
- 1013 The Ending of *Huckleberry Finn* and Its Critics
- 1014 *Life on the Mississippi* and *Roughing It*
- 1015 "The War Prayer" and the Late, Dark Twain
- 1016 *A Connecticut Yankee* and the Satire of Progress
- 1017 Bret Harte and the Mining Camp Story
- 1018 "The Outcasts of Poker Flat"
- 1019 Ambrose Bierce and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
- 1020 Sarah Orne Jewett and the Maine Coast
- 1021 "A White Heron"
- 1022 *The Country of the Pointed Firs*
- 1023 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and "The Revolt of 'Mother'"
- 1024 Kate Chopin and Louisiana
- 1025 "The Story of an Hour"
- 1026 "The Storm" and Its Suppression
- 1027 *The Awakening*
- 1028 Edna Pontellier and the Ending
- 1029 Henry James and the International Theme
- 1030 *Daisy Miller*
- 1031 *The Portrait of a Lady*
- 1032 *The Turn of the Screw* and the Ambiguity
- 1033 James's Late Style
- 1034 Point of View as James's Contribution
- 1035 Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "The Yellow Wall-Paper"
- 1036 The Rest Cure and the Story's Argument
- 1037 Charles W. Chesnutt and the Conjure Tales
- 1038 "The Passing of Grandison"
- 1039 Emma Lazarus and "The New Colossus"
- 1040 Edith Wharton and the Novel of Manners
- 1041 *The House of Mirth* and *Ethan Frome*
- 1042 Sorting a Realist From a Regionalist worked example
- 1043 Reading Dialect Without Mocking It worked example
- 1044 The Realist Settlement: What the Period Decided review
Unit 12: Naturalism and the Turn of the Century 39 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1101 Naturalism: Realism With a Thesis
- 1102 Darwin, Spencer, and the Literary Consequence
- 1103 Determinism, Heredity, Environment
- 1104 Frank Norris and "A Plea for Romantic Fiction"
- 1105 *McTeague* and *The Octopus*
- 1106 Stephen Crane: A Short Life
- 1107 *Maggie: A Girl of the Streets*
- 1108 *The Red Badge of Courage*
- 1109 Henry Fleming and the Question of Courage
- 1110 "The Open Boat"
- 1111 "The Blue Hotel" and "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky"
- 1112 Crane's Poetry and Its Strangeness
- 1113 Jack London and the Yukon
- 1114 "To Build a Fire"
- 1115 *The Call of the Wild* and *White Fang*
- 1116 Theodore Dreiser and *Sister Carrie*
- 1117 *An American Tragedy*
- 1118 Dreiser's Prose and Its Defenders
- 1119 Upton Sinclair and *The Jungle*
- 1120 Booker T. Washington and *Up From Slavery*
- 1121 The Atlanta Compromise
- 1122 W. E. B. Du Bois and *The Souls of Black Folk*
- 1123 Double Consciousness and the Veil
- 1124 The Du Bois–Washington Argument
- 1125 Paul Laurence Dunbar and the Two Voices
- 1126 "We Wear the Mask"
- 1127 "Sympathy" and the Caged Bird
- 1128 James Weldon Johnson and *The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man*
- 1129 "Lift Every Voice and Sing"
- 1130 Edwin Arlington Robinson and Tilbury Town
- 1131 "Richard Cory"
- 1132 "Miniver Cheevy" and "Mr. Flood's Party"
- 1133 Hamlin Garland and the Middle Border
- 1134 Ellen Glasgow and the Southern Realists
- 1135 Nicholas Said and the Widening Archive
- 1136 Sorting Naturalism From Realism worked example
- 1137 Reading a Naturalist Passage for Its Force worked example
- 1138 Placing a Turn-of-the-Century Author by Subject worked example
- 1139 The Machine, the Animal, and the Self at 1910 review
Unit 13: The Harlem Renaissance 28 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1201 The Great Migration and a New Capital
- 1202 What the Harlem Renaissance Was
- 1203 Alain Locke and *The New Negro*
- 1204 The Patrons, the Magazines, and the Terms
- 1205 Langston Hughes: The Life
- 1206 "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"
- 1207 "I, Too"
- 1208 "The Weary Blues" and the Blues Form
- 1209 "Harlem" and the Deferred Dream
- 1210 "Mother to Son"
- 1211 "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain"
- 1212 Claude McKay and "America"
- 1213 The Sonnet as Protest
- 1214 Countee Cullen and "Yet Do I Marvel"
- 1215 "Heritage" and the Question of Africa
- 1216 Cullen's Traditionalism and the Quarrel It Caused
- 1217 Jean Toomer and *Cane*
- 1218 Zora Neale Hurston: Anthropologist and Novelist
- 1219 *Their Eyes Were Watching God*
- 1220 Janie, Tea Cake, and the Frame
- 1221 "How It Feels to Be Colored Me"
- 1222 Hurston's Reception, Eclipse, and Recovery
- 1223 Nella Larsen, *Quicksand* and *Passing*
- 1224 Jessie Redmon Fauset and the Editor's Power
- 1225 Hughes's Later Poems
- 1226 Placing a Harlem Renaissance Text by Its Stance worked example
- 1227 Reading the Blues Stanza worked example
- 1228 What Harlem Made and What It Cost review
Unit 14: Modernist Poetry 40 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1301 Modernism: The Break and Its Causes
- 1302 "Make It New": Pound's Instruction
- 1303 Imagism and Its Three Rules
- 1304 "In a Station of the Metro"
- 1305 H.D. and the Imagist Poem
- 1306 Pound's *Cantos* and the Difficulty
- 1307 Pound's Politics and the Prize Quarrel
- 1308 T. S. Eliot: An American in London
- 1309 "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
- 1310 Prufrock's Voice and the Dramatic Monologue
- 1311 *The Waste Land*
- 1312 Fragment, Allusion, and the Notes
- 1313 The Objective Correlative
- 1314 *Four Quartets* and the Later Eliot
- 1315 Robert Frost: The Public Poet
- 1316 "Mending Wall"
- 1317 "The Road Not Taken" and Its Misreading
- 1318 "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
- 1319 "Home Burial" and the Dramatic Narrative
- 1320 "Birches" and "After Apple-Picking"
- 1321 Frost's Form: The Sound of Sense
- 1322 Wallace Stevens: The Insurance Executive
- 1323 "The Emperor of Ice-Cream"
- 1324 "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
- 1325 "Anecdote of the Jar" and "Sunday Morning"
- 1326 Imagination and Reality in Stevens
- 1327 William Carlos Williams: The Doctor Poet
- 1328 "The Red Wheelbarrow"
- 1329 "This Is Just to Say"
- 1330 "No ideas but in things"
- 1331 *Paterson* and the American Local
- 1332 Marianne Moore and "Poetry"
- 1333 e. e. cummings and the Typography
- 1334 Carl Sandburg and the Chicago Poems
- 1335 Hart Crane and *The Bridge*
- 1336 Edna St. Vincent Millay and the Sonnet Revival
- 1337 Theodore Roethke and "My Papa's Waltz"
- 1338 Telling One Modernist From Another worked example
- 1339 Reading a Modernist Poem Without Its Notes worked example
- 1340 What Modernism Asked of the Reader review
Unit 15: Modernist Fiction and Drama 41 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1401 The Lost Generation
- 1402 Gertrude Stein and the Phrase
- 1403 Expatriate Paris and the Little Magazines
- 1404 F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age
- 1405 *The Great Gatsby*
- 1406 Nick Carraway as Narrator
- 1407 Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, Myrtle
- 1408 The Green Light and the Valley of Ashes
- 1409 The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg
- 1410 "Winter Dreams" and "Bernice Bobs Her Hair"
- 1411 *Tender Is the Night* and the Later Fitzgerald
- 1412 Ernest Hemingway and the Iceberg
- 1413 *The Sun Also Rises*
- 1414 Jake Barnes, Brett Ashley, and the Wound
- 1415 *A Farewell to Arms*
- 1416 "Hills Like White Elephants"
- 1417 *The Old Man and the Sea* and the Nobel
- 1418 Hemingway's Sentence
- 1419 William Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha
- 1420 *The Sound and the Fury*
- 1421 Benjy, Quentin, Jason, Dilsey
- 1422 *As I Lay Dying*
- 1423 *Light in August* and *Absalom, Absalom!*
- 1424 "A Rose for Emily"
- 1425 "Barn Burning"
- 1426 Faulkner's Nobel Address
- 1427 Willa Cather and the Prairie
- 1428 *My Ántonia* and *O Pioneers!*
- 1429 Sherwood Anderson and *Winesburg, Ohio*
- 1430 The Grotesque and the Story Cycle
- 1431 John Steinbeck and the Dust Bowl
- 1432 *The Grapes of Wrath*
- 1433 *Of Mice and Men* and *Cannery Row*
- 1434 John Dos Passos and the *U.S.A.* Trilogy
- 1435 Katherine Anne Porter and Kay Boyle
- 1436 Richard Wright and *Native Son*
- 1437 Bigger Thomas and the Protest Novel
- 1438 Eugene O'Neill and American Tragedy
- 1439 Thornton Wilder and *Our Town*
- 1440 Telling Hemingway From Faulkner From Fitzgerald worked example
- 1441 The Modern Novel and the Broken World review
Unit 16: Postwar Fiction, 1945–1975 44 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1501 What Changed in American Fiction After 1945
- 1502 The GI Bill, the Suburb, and the Reader
- 1503 Ralph Ellison and *Invisible Man*
- 1504 The Prologue, the Battle Royal, the Campus
- 1505 Invisibility as the Book's Argument
- 1506 James Baldwin: Essayist First
- 1507 *Notes of a Native Son*
- 1508 "Sonny's Blues"
- 1509 *Go Tell It on the Mountain* and *The Fire Next Time*
- 1510 Baldwin and Wright: Mentor and Exile
- 1511 Flannery O'Connor and the Southern Grotesque
- 1512 "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
- 1513 The Misfit and the Question of Belief
- 1514 "Good Country People" and the Later Collection
- 1515 O'Connor's Catholicism and Her Method
- 1516 Eudora Welty and "A Worn Path"
- 1517 Carson McCullers and *The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter*
- 1518 J. D. Salinger and *The Catcher in the Rye*
- 1519 Holden Caulfield and the Title
- 1520 Salinger's Later Books and His Silence
- 1521 Saul Bellow and *The Adventures of Augie March*
- 1522 *Herzog*, *Seize the Day*, and the Nobel
- 1523 Bernard Malamud and *The Assistant*
- 1524 Philip Roth and *Goodbye, Columbus*
- 1525 *Portnoy's Complaint* and Alexander Portnoy
- 1526 Roth's Later Novels and *The Human Stain*
- 1527 John Updike and the Rabbit Novels
- 1528 Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom
- 1529 John Cheever and the Suburban Story
- 1530 Vladimir Nabokov and *Lolita*
- 1531 Nabokov's Style and the Unreliable Narrator
- 1532 Jack Kerouac and *On the Road*
- 1533 The Beats as a Movement
- 1534 Kurt Vonnegut and *Slaughterhouse-Five*
- 1535 Joseph Heller and *Catch-22*
- 1536 The War Novel After the War
- 1537 Postmodernism: The Term and the Techniques
- 1538 John Barth and *Lost in the Funhouse*
- 1539 Thomas Pynchon and *The Crying of Lot 49*
- 1540 Metafiction, Paranoia, Entropy
- 1541 Shirley Jackson and "The Lottery"
- 1542 Matching Author to Character: The Method worked example
- 1543 Sorting Postwar Fiction by Its School worked example
- 1544 The Postwar Novel: Self, System, and Doubt review
Unit 17: Postwar Poetry and Drama 44 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1601 American Poetry After the War
- 1602 The Academic Poem and the Reaction Against It
- 1603 Robert Lowell and *Life Studies*
- 1604 Confessional Poetry: The Term and the Risk
- 1605 "Skunk Hour" and "For the Union Dead"
- 1606 Sylvia Plath: The Life and the Work
- 1607 *Ariel* and the Late Poems
- 1608 "Daddy"
- 1609 "The Applicant" and the *Ariel* Voice
- 1610 *The Bell Jar*
- 1611 Anne Sexton and the Confessional Company
- 1612 Elizabeth Bishop and the Traveling Eye
- 1613 "One Art" and the Villanelle
- 1614 "The Fish" and *Geography III*
- 1615 Bishop's Reticence Against Lowell's Disclosure
- 1616 Randall Jarrell and "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner"
- 1617 Theodore Roethke's Late Work
- 1618 Gwendolyn Brooks and Bronzeville
- 1619 "We Real Cool"
- 1620 *The Bean Eaters* and the Pulitzer
- 1621 Robert Hayden and "Those Winter Sundays"
- 1622 "Middle Passage" and the Historical Poem
- 1623 Dudley Randall and Broadside Press
- 1624 The Black Arts Movement
- 1625 Etheridge Knight and the Prison Poem
- 1626 Lucille Clifton's Short Line
- 1627 Allen Ginsberg and "Howl"
- 1628 "A Supermarket in California" and the Whitman Debt
- 1629 The Beat Poem as Performance
- 1630 Adrienne Rich and "Diving into the Wreck"
- 1631 Rich's Politics and Her Change of Style
- 1632 James Wright and the Turn to Loose Form
- 1633 Martin Luther King Jr. as a Prose Stylist
- 1634 "Letter From Birmingham Jail"
- 1635 American Drama After the War
- 1636 Tennessee Williams and *The Glass Menagerie*
- 1637 *A Streetcar Named Desire*
- 1638 Blanche DuBois and the Masks She Wears
- 1639 Arthur Miller and *Death of a Salesman*
- 1640 Willy Loman and the Tragedy of the Common Man
- 1641 *The Crucible* and Its Occasion
- 1642 Lorraine Hansberry and *A Raisin in the Sun*
- 1643 Edward Albee and August Wilson
- 1644 Voice, Witness, and the Stage After 1945 review
Unit 18: Contemporary and Multicultural Voices 48 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1701 What "Contemporary" Covers on This Exam
- 1702 Toni Morrison: The Editor and the Novelist
- 1703 *The Bluest Eye*
- 1704 Pecola Breedlove and the Standard of Beauty
- 1705 *Song of Solomon*
- 1706 *Beloved*
- 1707 The Ghost and the Recovered Voice
- 1708 Morrison's Nobel and the Technique of Enchantment
- 1709 Alice Walker and *The Color Purple*
- 1710 "Everyday Use" and the Quilt
- 1711 Walker and the Recovery of Hurston
- 1712 Maxine Hong Kingston and *The Woman Warrior*
- 1713 The Identity Plot in Postwar Fiction
- 1714 Amy Tan and *The Joy Luck Club*
- 1715 Jhumpa Lahiri and *Interpreter of Maladies*
- 1716 Leslie Marmon Silko and *Ceremony*
- 1717 N. Scott Momaday and the Native American Renaissance
- 1718 Louise Erdrich and *Love Medicine*
- 1719 Sherman Alexie and the Reservation Story
- 1720 Joseph Bruchac and Carter Revard
- 1721 Sandra Cisneros and *Woman Hollering Creek*
- 1722 Oscar Hijuelos and the Latino Novel
- 1723 Pat Mora and the Border Poem
- 1724 Rudolfo Anaya and *Bless Me, Ultima*
- 1725 Li-Young Lee and the Immigrant Lyric
- 1726 Yusef Komunyakaa and "Facing It"
- 1727 Tim O'Brien and *The Things They Carried*
- 1728 The Weight of the Things They Carried
- 1729 Raymond Carver and Minimalism
- 1730 "Cathedral"
- 1731 Joyce Carol Oates and "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"
- 1732 Cormac McCarthy and *Blood Meridian*
- 1733 McCarthy's Sources and the Question of Origins
- 1734 Marilynne Robinson and *Housekeeping*
- 1735 Ruth, Sylvie, and the Permeable Self
- 1736 Don DeLillo and *White Noise*
- 1737 David Foster Wallace and Narrative Excess
- 1738 Edward P. Jones and *The Known World*
- 1739 Stephen King and the Popular Novel's Place
- 1740 Billy Collins, Robert Pinsky, and the Public Poem
- 1741 Linda Pastan and the Domestic Lyric
- 1742 August Wilson's Century Cycle
- 1743 Emanuel Xavier and the Spoken Word
- 1744 The Inaugural Poem: Frost to Gorman
- 1745 Multiculturalism and the Widened Canon
- 1746 Placing a Contemporary Work by Its Concerns worked example
- 1747 Reading a Contemporary Passage Without Its Context worked example
- 1748 Whose America: The Contemporary Argument review
Unit 19: Capstone: The Exam, the Bands, the Sample Questions 24 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1801 How the Exam Is Built: 100 Questions, 90 Minutes, Five Periods
- 1802 The Anchor, the Witnesses, and the Copyright Line
- 1803 Band 1 in One Entry: Beginnings–1800
- 1804 Band 2 in One Entry: 1800–1865
- 1805 Band 3 in One Entry: 1865–1910
- 1806 Band 4 in One Entry: 1910–1945
- 1807 Band 5 in One Entry: 1945–Present
- 1808 The Interpretation Band and How to Practise It
- 1809 The Knowledge Band: Authors, Characters, Plots
- 1810 The Terms Band: What Gets Asked
- 1811 The Context Band: Movements and Influences
- 1812 A Timeline of American Literature in One Entry worked example
- 1813 The Movements in Order, With Their Dates worked example
- 1814 Twenty Author–Work Pairs Worth Knowing Cold worked example
- 1815 Drill 1: The Seventeenth-Century Poet worked example
- 1816 Drill 2: The Form of the Passage worked example
- 1817 Drill 3: The Theme of the Passage worked example
- 1818 Drill 4: The Source of the Passage worked example
- 1819 Drill 5: What Jewett, Chopin, and Twain Are Called worked example
- 1820 Drill 6: The Speaker's Response in "Richard Cory" worked example
- 1821 Drill 7: The Billboard and the Novel worked example
- 1822 Drill 8: The Author–Character Mismatch worked example
- 1823 Drill 9: Morrison and Pecola Breedlove worked example
- 1824 Five Periods, One Argument: What American Literature Keeps Asking review
Who this subject is for
- Students preparing for the CLEP American Literature exam
- English and humanities students
- Education majors preparing to teach literature
- Adult learners finishing a degree
- Homeschool students
- Anyone who wants a guided tour of American writing
Why American Literature matters
American Literature traces how the nation's writers argued about who Americans are. It prepares you for:
- Upper-level literature courses
- Literary analysis
- American studies
- Composition and writing
Time to complete
- of lessons (641, measured)
- 5.9 h
- of lectures (38)
- 14.8 h
- learning hours on the certificate, with quizzes and the final
- 27.5 h
Times are measured from the recordings and the exam time limits. Go at your own pace; nothing expires.
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