Interlude

[tablesaw]

Part 2 is not tonight because (a) I am wiped out from the week and (b) having focused my preliminary thoughts in Part 1, I keep thinking of more things for part 2, which make

I was thinking today about the Introduction to American Literature course I took in my freshman year of college at GW. It was a two-books-a-week survey course and the teacher had lots of conflicting goals. But as I get older, I find I rely on what I learned from it very often, which is impressive. Someday I will have to track down the teacher to see what she's done since then.

Anyway, a question she asked early in the class seemed to resonate with my thoughts today.

What is the oldest piece of literature that you were assigned to read as part of an American History or American Literature class?

The teacher pointed out that most classes focused on a very narrow set of texts at the beginning of the course, focusing on Protestant (usually Puritan) English immigrants before quickly giving way to the writings underpinning the American Revolution and the works of the "Founding Fathers."

(I'm not revealing my own answer just yet.)

Comments

[tahnan]

Oh, heavens. I gave up on English as a major before I got to American Lit in college, so this would be high school. I'm pretty sure we didn't read anything early that wasn't in the Norton Anthology, so it'd pretty much have to be Puritans—Sinners in the Hands of an Angry G-d, say, or something by Cotton Mather.

Well. And this would be, you know, 1989. I see that current editions of the Anthology include earlier texts, many of them English and Spanish explorers, but it starts with native texts. I'm not 100% sure what to make of the description (on the timeline)

Peoples indigenous to the Americas orally perform and transmit a variety of "literary" genres that include, among others, speeches, songs, and stories.

and why, e.g., "literary" is in quotes (or perhaps there at all).

[flourish]

Unrelated to this post: Hello! I see you subbed to me! Do I know you on LJ? I assume so, but embarrassingly enough, cannot place you.

[tablesaw]

Nope, just saw you in zvi'z journal.

[flourish]

Oh good! I was afraid I was going crazy. ;)

Earliest American Lit?

[dedalus_1947]

In high school that would have been The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne. Unfortunately, I didn't "get it" until I re-read it in college for American Lit.

This brought back memories from college

[(Anonymous)]

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral - Phillis Wheatley 1773. I believe it was the first book of poetry published by an African American woman. It was part of a survey of early American writers, which was a seminar for English majors. It was in 1968.
But remember I went to an all women's college.

Mom