Noble, Charles. Studies in American Literature: A Text-Book For Academies and High Schools. New York: Macmillan, 1898.
PREFACE
The hope that this work may find a place of usefulness among our school manuals rests upon its method. Probably all teachers of Literature in college have felt the embarrassment caused by the inability of the average Freshman to appreciate the form in its relation to literary expression. The aim of these studies is to assist in meeting this difficulty by furnishing a manual for use in preparatory schools which shall combine the study of form with the interpretation of Literature.
It seems reasonable that in America school work in Literature should begin with American authors; and that hand in hand with the study of their writings should go the study of form in prose and verse. Therefore selections from our best writers have been given, with analysis of their form and interpretation of their content. The selections are, of course, fragmentary; and if the use of the book leads to nothing further, it will not be very helpful. But these fragments, presented as they are, and studied according to the suggestions offered, may whet the appetite for wider reading and broader study. The criticism is intended to be suggestive, and the lists of questions to serve as points of departure for the teacher.
[There follows a paragraph of acknowledgments.]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Verse Form
Prose Form
PART ONE: Origin and Early Development
Chapter I: Period of Preparation (31)
Chapter II: Period of the Later Eighteenth Century (58)
Epic Verse
Lyric Verse
The Drama
History and Biography
Fiction
Exposition
Oratory
PART TWO: Period of the Early Nineteenth Century
Chapter III: Verse (91)
Epic Verse
Lyric Verse
Dramatic Verse
Chapter IV: Verse (Continued), Bryant and Poe (106)
William Cullen Bryant
Edgar Allen Poe
Chapter V: Narrative Prose, Fiction (126)
Poe’s Tales
Other Fiction
James Fenimore Cooper
Chapter VI (142)
Washinton Irving
Study of Rip Van Winkle
Chapter VII: Biography, History, The Essay, Oratory (159)
Biography and History
Exposition
Oratory with a Study of Daniel Webster
PART THREE: Period of the Later Nineteenth Century
Chapter VIII: Introduction, Social Facts and Forces (177)
Chapter IX: Verse. The New England Poets (187)
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
James Russell Lowell
John Greenleaf Whittier
Other Poets of New England
Chapter X: Verse (Continued) (253)
Walt Whitman
Poets of New York
Poets of the Southern States
Sidney Lanier
Poets of Pennsylvania
Poets of the Western States
Epic Verse
Dramatic Verse
Chapter XI: Narrative Prose (287)
Fiction
Nathaniel Hawthorne
History and Biography
Chapter XII: Prose, Exposition (314)
The Transcendentalists
Other Philosophical and Religious Essayists
George William Curtis
Humorists
Criticism
Chapter XIII: Oratory (340)
Pulpit Oratory
Political Oratory
Abraham Lincoln
Chapter XIV: The Last Twenty Years (354)
Verse
Dialect Verse
Nature Verse, French Forms
Fiction, Realism
Dialect Fiction and Local Studies
Romance
Humorists
The Drama, History
Exposition, Criticism
Index (371)