Comprehensive Journal Assignment
You should use this sheet to create a journal or personal narrative to record your journey through this course. For each author we read (they are listed in order below), you should write at least one paragraph (no less than 4 sentences), including some reflection on how this writer suggests the theme of the individual in community. Please make sure to note quotations and page numbers as evidence of your judgments. You should be sure to work on this assignment each week, filling in your reflections as you do the course readings. See the reading assignments for the parts you need to read.
This assignment will make up 20% of your course grade, so make sure that your insights are substantial. You will be given a grade of A (excellent), B (good), C (average), D (passing), or F
(failing) according to your comments. This assignment is due 11:55 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 28 and will be checked in the fourth week.
Week 1: The Individual Voice: Narratives, Journals, Diaries from Puritan Times
Questions to consider for Week I: Assess how each writer as an individual relates to community. How are they alike in this aspect? How are they different? What threads of American identity can you discern in the thoughts and observations of each?
1. John Smith A Description of New England:
2. William Bradford Of Plymouth Plantation:
3. The Narrative of the Captivity and the Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson:
4. William Byrd The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709-171:
5. The Journal Of John Winthrop:
6. Diary of Samuel Sewell:
Week 2: Community Voice – Poetry of Settlement
Don’t forget to include page numbers when needed! Consider Puritan values in relation to the theme of the individual in the community.
1. Poem by Roger Williams: “Boast Not Proud English”:
2. Poems of Anne Bradstreet:
3. Day of Doom selections by Michael Wigglesworth:
Week 3: The Spiritual Voice -Sermons and Prayers
Consider how the spiritual voice shapes, connects or disconnects with community.
1. “A Model of Christian Charity” by John Winthrop:
2. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards:
3. Selected Poetry of Edward Taylor (ca. 1642-1729):
Week 4: The Public Voice: Texts of an Emerging Nation
Don’t forget to include page numbers when needed!
Read and comment regarding the theme of community in relation to the individual, especially
individual rights.
1. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin:
2. “The Way to Wealth” by Benjamin Franklin
3. “On the Transportation of Felons to the Colonies” by Benjamin Franklin:
4. “The Declaration of Independence” by Thomas Jefferson:
5. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense:
6. “The Crisis Essay #1,” December 23, 1776 by Thomas Paine:
7. “On Being Brought from Africa to America” and “To the University of Cambridge, in New-England” by Phillis Wheatley:
8. Poems by Phillis Wheatley:
9. “To His Excellency, General Washington” poem by Phillis Wheatley to General
Washington and his letter in reply:
Week 5: The Emergence of Romanticism: Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Longfellow
What place does the individual have in Romanticism? The community?
1. “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving:
2. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving:
3. “The Last of the Mohicans” – Chapters 1-3 and 32-33 by James Fenimore Cooper:
4. The Negotiation of Manhood: James Fenimore Cooper’s Ideology of Manhood in The
Last of the Mohicans:
5. “Thanatopsis,” “To a Waterfowl,” and “To an American Painter Departing for Europe” William Cullen Bryant Poems:
6. The Song of Hiawatha,” Mezzo Camin,” “Divina Commedia I,” “Paul Revere’s Ride,” and “The Wreck of the Hesperus” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
Week 6: The Emergence of Freedom and Feminism: Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth
Don’t forget to include page numbers when needed!
How do we see the theme of the individual versus the community transform in these writings?
1. “Narrative in the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave” by Frederick
Douglass:
2. Chapters 1-8 and 40-45 of Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Or Life Among the Lowly by
Harriet Beecher Stowe:
3. “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” by Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
4. “The Destructive Male by Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
5. Interview with Sojourner Truth, “The Libyan Sibyl” by Harriet Beecher Stowe from The
Atlantic Monthly:
6. Speech by Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?” December, 1851:
Week 7: The Complex Voice: The Tortured Soul in the works of Poe, Hawthorne, and
Melville
Can you discern the voice of the individual in communion or disconnect with the community?
1. “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe:
2. “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Poe:
3. “The Poetic Principle” by Poe
4. “The Raven,” “The Bells,” and “Annabel Lee” by Poe
5. “The Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
6. “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
7. Chapters 1-6, Chapter 16 and Chapters 23-24 of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel
Hawthorne:
8. Scholarly article, “Reading and Respect: Hawthorne as Stranger” by Clark Davis:
9. “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street” by Herman Melville:
10. Chapters 1-9 and Chapters 133 – Epilogue of Mody-Dick, or The Whale by Herman
Melville:
Week 8: Writers in a Transcendentalist World: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau
Don’t forget to include page numbers when needed!
How does transcendentalism change take up the theme of the individual and the community?
1. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature (chapters 1,7,8) and essay Self Reliance:
2. Henry David’s Thoreau’s Walden (Chapters 1,2,16,17,18):
3. Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (Sections 1-12 and 51-52):
ScholarMatic: Explanation & Answer
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