Contents -- Note on third edition -- Introduction -- AMERICAN LITERATURE: BEGINNINGS TO 1914 -- 1 Historical Influences & Distinctive Features -- Alien Reality of the New World -- Religious Dissent -- Polycentrism -- Multiculturalism and Ethnicity -- 2 Periodization of American Literature -- 3 Earliest Monuments of American Literature -- Introduction -- General History of Virginia -- Of Plymouth Plantation -- 4 The Shaping of the Puritan Self -- Introduction -- John Cotton and Antinomianism -- Poetry and Private Life: Anne Bradstreet -- Survival and Damnation: Rowlandson and Wigglesworth -- Triumphs and Traps of Baroque Sensibility: Taylor and Cotton Mather -- 5 The Eighteenth Century: The Great Awakenings & the Enlightenment -- Introduction -- Jonathan Edwards -- First and Second Great Awakenings -- Benjamin Franklin -- 6 Revolution & the Early Republic -- Introduction -- Declarations of Independence -- Revolution and Religion -- The Republic of Letters -- American Utopias -- American Utopias and Voluntary Association -- Colonial Times in Retrospect -- 7 Inventing the Indians: Bryant, Cooper, Simms & LongfelloW -- Introduction -- William Cullen Bryant -- James Fenimore Cooper -- Simms & Longfellow -- 8 American Gothic: Brockden Brown & Poe -- Introduction -- Charles Brocken Brown -- Edgar Allan Poe -- 9 American Transcendentalism: Emerson & Thoreau -- Introduction -- Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Henry David Thoreau -- 10 Late Romanticism: Hawthorne & Melville -- Introduction -- Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Herman Melville -- 11 The Birth of Modern Poetry: Whitman & Dickinson -- Introduction -- Walt Whitman -- Emily Dickinson -- 12 Mark Twain, the Tall Tale, & Local Color -- Introduction -- Mark Twain -- Other Local Color -- 13 Fictions of Realism and Consciousness: Howells, & the James Brothers -- Introduction -- William Dean Howells -- Henry James.

William James -- 14 Naturalism -- Introduction -- Henry Adams -- Frank Norris -- Stephen Crane -- Theodore Dreiser -- Jack London -- 15 Abolitionism & African-American Literature from Beginnings through the Harlem Renaissance -- Introduction -- Abolitionism -- Frederick Douglass -- Washington and Du Bois -- Harlem Renaissance -- 16 Women's Literature before World War I -- Introduction -- Margaret Fuller -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton -- Gilman and Others -- Chopin and Cather -- Edith Wharton -- 17 Works Cited Beginnings to 1914 -- Abbreviations -- Primary -- Secondary -- TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE -- 18 Modernism, 1910 -1930 -- Introduction -- Theater -- Tendencies in American Theater at the Turn of the Century -- The New Stagecraft and the Little Theatres -- The Washington Square Plays and the Theatre Guild -- The Provincetown Players -- Eugene O'Neill -- American Modernism on Stage -- Prose Fiction -- Ernest Hemingway and the Consequences of War -- The Lost Generation and F. Scott Fitzgerald -- Willa Cather -- Sinclair Lewis -- Poetry -- Rupture and Continuity -- Ezra Pound and Imagism -- The Cantos -- T. S. Eliot -- Eliot's Later Poetry and Criticism -- Robert Frost -- Hart Crane -- 19 The Political Turn, 1930-1945 -- Introduction -- Popular Culture, Beginnings to 1945 -- Theater -- Theater at a Time of Crisis -- The Group Theatre (1931-1940) -- The Federal Theatre Project (1935-1939) -- Playwrights of the 1930s and Early '40s -- War and the Costs of Political Allegiance -- Poetry -- Periodization -- Marianne Moore -- William Carlos Williams -- Wallace Stevens -- Prose Fiction -- William Faulkner and Southern Literature -- Social Themes -- John Steinbeck -- Nathanael West -- Henry Roth -- Zora Neale Hurston -- 20 Explosion, 1945-1970 -- Introduction -- Popular Culture -- Theater -- Postwar and Cold War Contexts.

Playwrights of the Late 1940s and 1950s -- Alternative Energies of the 1960s -- New Playwrights of the 1960s -- Prose Fiction -- Southern Literature -- Jewish-American Literature -- African-American Prose -- The Beat Generation -- John Updike and Small Town America -- Poetry -- The New Critical Style -- Robert Lowell -- Sylvia Plath -- Elizabeth Bishop -- James Merrill -- John Ashbery -- Adrienne Rich -- 21 Aftermath, 1970-2000 -- Introduction -- Popular Culture -- Theater -- Disillusionment and the New Conservatism, 1970-1989 -- Political and Experimental Theater of the 1970s -- The Drama of American Masculinity -- Drama, Performance, and Diversity: The 1980s and After -- Prose Fiction -- The Expanse of History -- African-American Fiction -- Multiculturalism -- Fiction after Feminism -- Dirty Realism and Beyond -- Postmodernism and the Return of Realism -- Poetry -- The Disappearing Mainstream -- Formalism and Beyond -- Robert Pinsky -- Jorie Graham -- Reginald Shepherd and New Lyricism -- 22 Works Cited Twentieth Century.