Note about the exam

The passages on the exam will NOT be those I have posted on this blog recently--nor will I use all of those authors.  Those passages were just for you to read and look at and practice with a bit.

All I can say about what will be on the exam is that they will be from the following list of authors, the same as the one I posted on Dec. 14:

Below are the 21 authors we've learned about and read.  Biographical tidbits not included.

Neo-classical  (or: Puritanism and Enlightenment)

(Colonial-era Poetry)
Anne Bradstreet (1612?-1692), "The Prologue," from The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America
Phyllis Wheatley (1753-1784), "On Being Brought from Africa to America"
Philip Freneau (1752-1832), "The Indian Burying-Ground"

(Captivity Narratives)
Mary Rowlandson (1637-1711), The Sovereignty and Goodness of God

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), Personal Narrative; Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God; Resolutions

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), from Autobiography -- and his critics:
    (Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1905)
    (D. H. Lawrence Studies in Classic American Literature, 1923)

Romanticism (including the American Renaissance/transcendentalism)

(Seduction Novels/Gothic Novels)
Susannah Rowson (1762-1824), Charlotte Temple
Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810), Wieland

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), The Last of the Mohicans

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), The Scarlet Letter

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), "The Black Cat"; "The Purloined Letter"; "The Tell-Tale Heart"; "The Raven"

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Walden
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), "Self-Reliance"; "Nature" etc.

H. W. Longfellow (1807-1882), Hiawatha, "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," etc.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892), "Song of Myself"; "There Was a Child Went Forth"; "I Hear America Singing"; etc.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), I'm Nobody; Much Madness is Divinest Sense; Wild Nights; etc.

Herman Melville (1819-1891), “Bartleby the Scrivener,” Moby Dick
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), Uncle Tom's Cabin

Regionalism/Realism 

Mark Twain (1835-1910), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Here are more excerpts...

From The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
 
In fact, the summum bonum of his ethic, the earning of more and more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, is above all completely devoid of any eudaemonistic, not to say hedonistic, admixture. It is thought of so purely as an end in itself, that from the point of view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single individual, it appears entirely transcendental and absolutely irrational. Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs. This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship, so irrational from a naive point of view, is evidently as definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence. At the same time it expresses a type of feeling which is closely connected with certain religious ideas. If we thus ask, why should “money be made out of men,” Benjamin Franklin himself, although he was a colorless deist, answers in his autobiography with a quotation from the Bible, which his strict Calvinistic father drummed into him again and again in his youth: “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings” (Prov. xxii. 29). The earning of money within the modern economic order is, so long as it is done legally, the result and the expression of virtue and proficiency in a calling; and this virtue and proficiency are, as it is now not difficult to see, the real Alpha and Omega of Franklin’s ethic, as expressed in the passages we have quoted, as well as in all his works without exception.
And in truth this peculiar idea, so familiar to us today, but in reality so little a matter of course, of one’s duty in a calling, is what is most characteristic of the social ethic of capitalistic culture, and is in a sense the fundamental basis of it. It is an obligation which the individual is supposed to feel and does feel towards the content of his professional activity, no matter in what it consists, in particular no matter whether it appears on the surface as a utilization of his personal powers, or only of his material possessions (as capital).

 --Max Weber

From The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
 
Sometimes we’d have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a spark—which was a candle in a cabin window; and sometimes on the water you could see a spark or two—on a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could a laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn’t say nothing against it, because I’ve seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they’d got spoiled and was hove out of the nest.

--Mark Twain 

 From Wieland:

I feel little reluctance in complying with your request. You know not fully the cause of my sorrows. You are a stranger to the depth of my distresses. Hence your efforts at consolation must necessarily fail. Yet the tale that I am going to tell is not intended as a claim upon your sympathy. In the midst of my despair, I do not disdain to contribute what little I can to the benefit of mankind. I acknowledge your right to be informed of the events that have lately happened in my family. Make what use of the tale you shall think proper. If it be communicated to the world, it will inculcate the duty of avoiding deceit. It will exemplify the force of early impressions, and show the immeasurable evils that flow from an erroneous or imperfect discipline.

My state is not destitute of tranquillity. The sentiment that dictates my feelings is not hope. Futurity has no power over my thoughts. To all that is to come I am perfectly indifferent. With regard to myself, I have nothing more to fear. Fate has done its worst. Henceforth, I am callous to misfortune.

I address no supplication to the Deity. The power that governs the course of human affairs has chosen his path. The decree that ascertained the condition of my life, admits of no recal. No doubt it squares with the maxims of eternal equity. That is neither to be questioned nor denied by me. It suffices that the past is exempt from mutation. The storm that tore up our happiness, and changed into dreariness and desert the blooming scene of our existence, is lulled into grim repose; but not until the victim was transfixed and mangled; till every obstacle was dissipated by its rage; till every remnant of good was wrested from our grasp and exterminated.

By Charles Brockden Brown

(Now... you may ask, "Isn't this a lot like a Poe story?  How can I tell Wieland is not by Poe?"  The answer is, it's not easy, but I would say: first, the story doesn't sound exactly like Poe; the sentences are less varied and considerably more monotonous than Poe usually is.  Second, Poe disdains easy morals like the one at the end of the first paragraph here ("It will... show the immeasurable evils that flow from an erroneous or imperfect discipline.").  Third, Poe wouldn't mix metaphors the way Brown does in the that last sentence, the only long sentence in the passage.  Fourth, Poe's narrators usually address the reader, if they do, as the general public, not a particular reader who has made a "request.")

 

Here are some excerpts...

 Here are some excerpts from works we read.  More to come.

On Being Brought From Africa to America

"Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye, 
"Their colour is a diabolic die." 
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, 
May be refin'd and join th'angelic train.  

--Phillis Wheatley

From The Autobiography:
 
  My list of virtues contain'd at first but twelve; but a Quaker friend having kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my pride show'd itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any point, but was overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinc'd me by mentioning several instances; I determined endeavouring to cure myself, if I could, of this vice or folly among the rest, and I added Humility to my list) giving an extensive meaning to the word.
   I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the appearance of it. I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbid myself, agreeably to the old laws of our Junto, the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix'd opinion, such as certainly, undoubtedly, etc., and I adopted, instead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be so or so; or it so appears to me at present. When another asserted something that I thought an error, I deny'd myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear'd or seem'd to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag'd in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos'd my opinions procur'd them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevail'd with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.
     
--Ben Franklin

From The Scarlet Letter
 By another impulse, she took off the formal cap that confined her hair, and down it fell upon her shoulders, dark and rich, with at once a shadow and a light in its abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to her features. There played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a radiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very heart of womanhood. A crimson flush was glowing on her cheek, that had been long so pale. Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of her beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, and clustered themselves with her maiden hope, and a happiness before unknown, within the magic circle of this hour. And, as if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal hearts, it vanished with their sorrow. All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees. The objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied the brightness now. The course of the little brook might be traced by its merry gleam afar into the wood's heart of mystery, which had become a mystery of joy.

Such was the sympathy of Nature—that wild, heathen Nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher truth—with the bliss of these two spirits! Love, whether newly-born, or aroused from a death-like slumber, must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.

--Nathaniel Hawthorne

From  "The Purloined Letter"
Oh, no; nothing of that nature. The fact is, the business is very simple indeed, and I make no doubt that we can manage it sufficiently well ourselves; but then I thought Dupin would like to hear the details of it because it is so excessively odd."
   "Simple and odd," said Dupin.
   "Why, yes; and not exactly that either. The fact is, we have all been a good deal puzzled because the affair is so simple, and yet baffles us altogether."
   "Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which puts you at fault," said my friend.
   "What nonsense you do talk!" replied the Prefect, laughing heartily.
   "Perhaps the mystery is a little too plain," said Dupin.
   "Oh, good heavens! who ever heard of such an idea?"
   "A little too self-evident."
   "Ha! ha! ha! -- ha! ha! ha! -- ho! ho! ho!" roared our visitor, profoundly amused, "oh, Dupin, you will be the death of me yet!"

--Edgar Allan Poe