Syllabus

English XI

American Literature (Eleventh Grade)

Eleventh Grade English at Brunswick is a chronological study of American literature, focusing on some of the major works and movements that helped shape American literary history. Beginning with various nineteenth and twentieth-century works, the course examines a variety of literary topics, from the romantic vision of the “American Dream” to the more realistic struggles of the human condition; from the celebration of the “Self” in New England Transcendentalism to the dark, grotesque characters of the American gothic. In addition, students explore works that reflect the changing role of women in American society, the African-American “experience,” and the impact of war on the individual. Readings include: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, Toni Morrison’s Sula, Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Tim O’Brien’s Things They Carried, as well as selections from Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dickinson, Eliot, Hemingway, Lowell, and others.

Semester I

"Higher Laws" and "Conclusion" from Henry David Thoreau's Walden.

 Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"; "Over-Soul"; from Nature;

Selections from Walt Whitman's Song of Myself

The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

Benito Cereno, Herman Melville

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

The Great Gatsby, F. Scot Fitzgerald

The Norton Anthology of Poetry (shorter edition)

Semester II

           Selections from The Complete Collection of Stories, Ernest Hemingway

As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner

Tar Baby, Toni Morrison

A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey

The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien

The Norton Anthology of Poetry (shorter edition)