Identify the literary forms available to eighteenth-century American writers.

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Identify the literary forms available to eighteenth-century American writers. What limited their choices? How did they invent within these forms?
Describe the way the concepts of the self and of self-reliance develop and find expression in American literature of the eighteenth century and the Revolutionary period. Identify those specific figures or works that you see as significant and explain their contributions.
Discuss some key similarities and differences between seventeenth-century writers [including Puritan writers] and their eighteenth-century counterparts. Discuss literary works that illustrate these differences.

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The earliest literary works we have from this period, the Native American creation stories and trickster tales, come down to us in translation, and from cultures and times that can seem remote. Discuss what you imagine the intended audience of the Native American tales would have been like, and compare their culture-based expectations to those of a specific storyteller from the European tradition: Bradford, Mather, or some other Euro-American writer who narrates with a specific purpose and to a particular culture.
Most of these Native American narratives are received as anonymous works—attributed to a people rather than to a single author and historical moment. Most of the accounts by European voyagers and colonizers, however, have names and dates attached and often center on the adventures and thoughts of one author. Discuss these differences—the ownership of narrative, the concern with time—and how they might connect to different ways of perceiving the American landscape.

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Discuss Frances E. W. Harper as an experimenter with American English in her poetry. Where does she use different vocabularies, and how would you account for those variations? Compare her poetic style to one other poet we have read, using specific passages to make the comparison clear.
Should Phillis Wheatley’s poetry be considered an important point of origin for African American verse? For uniquely American verse? Why or why not? Can you talk about specific qualities or moments in Wheatley’s poems to support your position? Use comparisons to other poets as well.
Discuss Edward Taylor’s use of objects from the natural world or of secular experience in his poetry and examine the relationship in the poem between earthly life and spiritual salvation. Be sure to include a discussion of metaphysics in your answer.
Discuss the extent to which Edward Taylor’s poetry reflects specific concepts of Puritan theology and compare it to the ways in which Anne Bradstreet’s poetry reflects Puritan thinking. Analyze in particular the tonal and rhetorical differences between poems and between poets.

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Mary Rowlandson and Cotton Mather, following a Puritan pattern of thought, attribute certain worldly events to Divine Will or supernatural causes. Compare passages in which such attributions are made, and make distinctions about their thinking and their rhetorical style. Discuss the impact this pattern of thought has on the quality of their works as literature.
What is the “religion” Franklin “preaches” to his readers in Father Abraham’s speech in “The Way to Wealth”? How do you explain Franklin’s use of religious metaphors in his writing? How does it compare to the use of religious metaphors and imagery in one other writer’s work?
Discuss similarities you see between the rhetorical strategy of the Declaration of Independence and sermons, speeches, and public discourse from the American Colonial period.

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One could argue that Abraham Lincoln’s prose style permanently changed the nature of American public speech. In the American literary tradition, what roots does he draw on and what traditions does he break from? Find passages from earlier public or political prose (Paine, Jefferson, Edwards) to make the comparison clear.
Choose one or two paragraphs from any one author [NOT a poet] and discuss the ways in which that author structures sentences, chooses analogies, and selects vocabulary. How does the author’s tone, prose style, and structure reflect that author’s situation as a person and as an author? How does it reflect American literary tradition?
Witnessing slavery firsthand leads J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur to lament the “strange order of things” in Letter IX from Letters from an American Farmer. How does he reconcile his view of slavery, and of the great contrast between lives of plantation owners and slaves in Charles-Town, with his portrait of America as a place where humankind can be renewed? Compare his early discussion of slavery with one of the authors we read in week 7. How are they similar and how do they differ? How does the form of the text influence the author’s message and style?
How do the Adams letters reflect the values of a distinctly American literary tradition? Compare them to any two other private forms of writing we have read as literature.