Other Readings

In addition to novels, we will read short stories, essays, and poems. I am currently working to include pages on some of my favorite American authors who write in these genres.

Edgar Allan Poe is famous for his poem "The Raven" and many short stories, such as "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Masque of Red Death", and "The Cask of Amontillado".

Raven

Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson and Thoreau will provide the main focus of our study of Transcendentalism. The two men were friends and both lived in Concord, MA in the 1800s. Emerson wrote Nature, "Self Reliance", "The Concord Hymn" and "An American Scholar". Thoreau wrote Walden and "Civil Disobedience".

Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck, winner of the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath is probably one of my favorite authors that we won't have time to read this year. I whole-heartedly recommend perusing the links about Steinbeck so that you will have a slight background into this important author's life and style.

William Faulkner, winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize and 1955 and 1963 Pulitzer Prizes for A Fable and The Reivers, is famous for creating a fictional county called Yoknapatawpha in Mississippi. The characters which populate this county are intriguing and overlap between some of his short stories and novels. My favorites are the Snopes and the Bundrens. P.S. Oprah has selected three Faulkner novels for her summer reading series 2005: As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and Light in August.