English 241

American Literature to 1860

Spring 2003

Final Examination Model Questions

(1) Emerson’s writings are full of bold claims, of passages that read like self-confident epigrams (“Life only avails, not the having lived”; “Power ceases in the instant of repose”; “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think”; “Traveling is a fool’s paradise”). Such claims are not as self-evident as they are asserted. Sometimes they propose a position that Emerson struggled hard in his own daily practice to maintain, or about which he had considerable doubts. Contrast Emerson’s rhetorical positions to those of another writer – for example, Whitman, Douglass or Paine.

(2) Compare the protest poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier to the contemplative poetry of Emily Dickinson. How do they establish different relationships between poet and reader? If Dickinson seeks to disrupt easy reading relationships with the text, then how might Whittier be contrasted or compared on this point? How does Dickinson perceive her calling or duty as a poet?

(3) Compare and contrast the ideas of Frederick Douglass’ “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” with Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and The American Crisis. In particular, how might appeals to nationalism serve their argumentative purposes similarly or differently in these texts?

(4) Choose two texts that serve to illustrate central features of early American regionalism? With these choices as examples, what are the defining qualities of regionalism? How do these texts frame daily life? How do they employ both heroic and parodic elements? Derive a description of regionalism based on such considerations.

(5) Elias Boudinot, Sarah Moore Grimke, and David Walker all share the narrative position of disenfranchised speakers. What are their respective rhetorical strategies towards co-equal citizenship? How does gender shape Grimke’s Letters differently from either Boudinot or Walker?

(6) Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” share a reliance on Christian imagery together with representations of evil, but have profoundly divergent religious impulses. How are these two texts linked and how are they opposed texts?