Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
2. Compare the sentimental tone of Whittier’s poetry and Stowe’s prose
with Harper’s forceful acclamation in “Ethiopia.” How authentic does
Harper’s tone seem to you? Why?
3. In “Learning to Read,” how eective and authentic is the voice/persona
of Aunt Chloe? Why does Harper use this persona?
4. What aspects of the positive eects of education for blacks does “Learning
To Read” disclose? Why? How do these aspects compare to Douglass’s
and Jacobs’s views on education? Why?
5. In “Slave Mother,” what’s the eect of Harper’s use of repetend? What’s
do you think is the eect of the last line identifying the suering woman
as a mother, without adding the adjective “black” or “slave?” Why?
4.26 EMILY DICKINSON
(1830–1886)
The following content originally appeared in Writing the Nation: A Concise
Introduction to American Literature 1865 to Present by the University System of
Georgia, and is used in accordance to license CC BY-SA 4.0.
Born into an inuential and socially
prominent New England family in 1830,
Emily Dickinson beneted from a level
of education and mobility that most of
her contemporaries, female and male,
could not comprehend. The middle
child of Edward Dickinson and Emily
Norcross, Dickinson, along with her
older brother Austin and younger sister
Lavinia, received both an extensive
formal education and the informal
education that came by way of countless
visitors to the family homestead during
Edward Dickinson’s political career.
Contrary to popular depictions of her
life, Dickinson did travel outside of
Amherst but ultimately chose to remain
Image 4.24 | Emily Dickinson
at home in the close company of family Photographer | Unknown
Source | Wikimedia Commons
and friends. An intensely private person,
License | Public Domain
Dickinson exerted almost singular
control over the distribution of her poetry during her lifetime. That control,
coupled with early portrayals of her as reclusive, has led many readers to assume
that Dickinson was a fragile and timid gure whose formal, mysterious, concise,
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