Overview of Comprehensive Examination

Period Reading Lists

Part II Primary Text(s)

American Literature: Beginnings to 1860 

This list has been replaced by a new list (click here). Examinees may choose to use the list below or the new list for the Fall 2009. For the Spring 2010 exam, all examinees in this area must use the new list.

Edwards, Personal Narrative, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

Franklin, Autobiography

Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, "Young Goodman Brown," "The Artist of the Beautiful," "Rappaccini's Daughter," "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," "Ethan Brand," "The May-Pole of Merry Mount"

Thoreau, Walden

Melville, Moby Dick, The Confidence Man, "Bartelby, the Scrivener," "Billy Budd," "Paradise of Bachelors and Tartarus of Maids," "Hawthorne and His Mosses"

Poe*

Cooper, The Pioneers

Emerson*

Whitman* and Song of Myself

Irving, Sketch Book

Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

Bradstreet, Contemplations

Brown, Wieland

* all selections in the Norton Anthology of American Literature