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Time Period: Pre-Colonialism
Years: Pre 1607
Major Historical Events: Introduction of European colonialism, Puritanism, and Slaves are imported into the Americas

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Sample Work: “Ghost Dance Songs” by the Sioux

Time Period: Pre-Colonial

Dates: 1607

Point of View: First Person

Themes: religion, cross culture interaction, destruction

Connections: “If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans, and in my heart he put other and different desires. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows." (Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa Sioux) The Ghost Dance songs were made to preach the end of the colonial expansion as prophecy, while also preaching for peaceful coexistence between cultures. Therefore, the quote illustrates the wishes of these people to remain as they are now, yet also wish to be at peace with the colonists.

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Time Period: Colonialism

Years: 1607-1775

Major Historical Events: The English Colonization of the Americas, The Great Awakening, Salem Witch Trials

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Sample Work: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards

Time Period: Colonialism

Dates: 1741

Points of View: Second Person

Themes: religion, Calvinism, protestant, nature, sin

Connections: The time that this text was made was a time of great hysteria and fear of the supernatural. The colonists around at the time were in a mainly uncharted land, hundreds miles away from any well established government. With no guaranteed safety, the thoughts of life and death were constant, Therefore, making many hoping for salvation after death. “The wicked, on earth—at this very moment—suffer a sample of the torments of Hell. The wicked must not think, simply because they are not physically in Hell, that God (in Whose hand the wicked now reside) is not—at this very moment—as angry with them as He is with those miserable creatures He is now tormenting in hell, and who—at this very moment—do feel and bear the fierceness of His wrath.” Many puritan ministers that were around at this time preached in this manner in order to completely capture their attention and desperation to hold faith in God. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God harshly reiterates the puritan beliefs of predestination and the consequences of being these wicked individuals. “The observation from the words that I would now insist upon is this.— ’There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.’—By the mere pleasure of God, I mean his sovereign pleasure, his arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no manner of difficulty, any more than if nothing else but God’s mere will had in the least degree, or in any respect whatsoever, any hand in the preservation of wicked men one moment.” The text illustrates the idea of God being far more powerful and fearful then many would like to think about, as well as portray how powerless humans are over their own fate.

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Time Period: Enlightenment

Years: 1776-1820

Major Historical Events: American Revolutionary War, Signing of the Declaration of Independence

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Sample Work: “The Declaration of Independence” by Thomas Jefferson

Time Period: The Enlightenment

Dates: 1776

Points of View:

Themes: Deism, rebellion, independence, freedom

Connections: The Declaration of Independence was a legal document created by several of the founding fathers and written by Thomas Jefferson to formally declare rebellion against the British empire because of the colonist’s lack of representation in parliament, as well as many other injustices committed against the colonists. “He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.” Ultimately, the document serves as a guideline to the kind of laws that Americans would pass for their country once this freedom is obtained. The words that truly act as a bold guideline are: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

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Time Period: Romanticism

Years: 1820 - 1860

Major Historical Events: The Industrial Revolution, The French Revolution, Mary Shelly published Frankenstein

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Sample Work: “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe

Time Period: Romanticism

Dates: 1845

Points of View: first person

Themes: Devotion, grief, mysticism

Connections: The Raven is a poem that was written by Edgar Allan Poe that depicts a dark and sorrowful setting of a man alone with only the memories of the woman he loved. “Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow; From my books surcease of sorrow; sorrow for the lost Lenore; For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore; Nameless here for evermore.” In the quote, many supernatural and mystic elements are used, as fitting for the period that this poem was written. The mysticism portrayed by the raven brings further mystery to the poem. “Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken; ‘Doubtless,’ said I, ‘what it utters is its only stock and store; Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster; Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—; Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore;

Of ‘Never—nevermore’.’” The mystic nature of the raven is that the symbolic nature of the bird is never confirmed and is left up to the reader’s interpretation.

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Time Period: Transcendentalism

Years: 1840-1860

Major Historical Events: The Annexation of Texas, Annexation of California, The Gold Rush, Opening of Japan to America, Kansas-Nebraska Act, and Dred Scott vs Sanford

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Sample Work: “Oh Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman

Time Period: Transcendentalism

Dates: 1865

Points of View: First Person

Themes: Loss, grief, victory, denial, and tragedy

Connections: This poem was made in reference to the death of Abraham Lincoln after the civil war. The poem starts with a tone of victory and joy for the end of the civil war, only to take a sharp turn for the captain to be dead. The second part of the poem is filled with denial as the narrator tries to wake up his deceased captain. “O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, You’ve fallen cold and dead.” And the final part of the poem consists of sorrowful acceptance and grief, as the narrator finally comes to admit that the captain is truly dead. “My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will.”

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Time Period: Slave Narrative

Years: 1880-1900

Major Historical Events: American Civil War, Reconstruction

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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

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Sample Work: “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” by Frederick Douglass

Time Period: Slave Narrative

Dates: 1881

Points of View: First person

Themes: Slavery, escapism, deciet / truth, seeking of freedom, violence,

Connections:  The narrative that Frederick Douglass wrote about himself was made to expose the lies of the Sambo slave sterotype and reveal the true violent nature of slavery and its cruel practices. “Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.” One of the major lies of the Sambo stereotype is that singing slaves are happy slaves, the quote and the narrative as a whole completely prove this to be lie. Above all, slaves are completely restricted from the freedom via the lack of education. “To deny education to any people is one of the greatest crimes against human nature. It is to deny them the means of freedom and the rightful pursuit of happiness, and to defeat the very end of their being.” Being restricted from education was one of the many chains that held African Americans captive for so long, truly being a cruel crime against them.

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Time Period: Modernism

Years: roughly 1901-1950

Major Historical Events: World War I (1914-1918), The Great Depression (1929-1939), World War II (1939-1945, America entered 1941), the Holocaust (1941-1945), Harlem Renaissance (1918-1937), airplanes (1903)

Major authors: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude Stein, Ralph Ellison, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, etc

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Sample Work: “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Time Period: Modernism

Dates: Published in 1925 & Set in 1922

Point of View: First person

Themes: The American Dream, love, scandals.

Connection:  The Great Gatsby is a story set during the Harlem Renaissance. Throughout the book, a wealthy man named Jay Gatsby is shown seeking to win over the love of his life using his wealth, but in the end fails. "I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him." Gatsby’s life could ultimately be labeled as an example of a failure of the American dream. Gatsby had managed to work his way from dirt poor, to owning a huge, elegant mansion. He would hold large parties and owned beautiful possessions, all for the sake of attracting his love’s attention to him. But in the end, the one he loved chose a man who was born in wealth, leaving him to wait at the phone in denial and eventually death. “’I suppose Daisy'll call too.’ He looked at me anxiously as if he hoped I'd corroborate this.”