Contents

Historical Background…………………………………………………. 2

Colonization of America………………………………………………...4

The American Revolution or War of Independence………………….....5

The Age of Romanticism in American Literature…………………….…8

Washington Irving……………………………………………………….9

Rip Van Winkle…………………………………………………….11

James Fenimore Cooper…………………………………………….…..24

The Last of Mohicans……………………………………………....25

The Pioneers…………………………………………………...…...23

Edgar Allan Poe…………………………………………………...……39

Annabel Lee………………………………………………..………42

Eldorado………………………………………………….………...44

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow……………………………...…………..46

The Song of Hiawatha………………………………..…………….47

Harriet Beecher-Stowe…………………………………...……………...62

Uncle Tom’s Cabin………………………………..………………..63

Emily Dickinson……………………………………….………………...66

As if Some Little Arctic Flower………………..……………….....67

I Should Not Dare to Leave My Friend………...………………….67

Critical Realism……………………………………..…………………...69

Mark Twain………………………………………..………………….....70

The Adventures of Tom Sowyer…………...……………………...71

A Dog and Tree Dollars…………………..…………………….....73

O.Henry……………………………………….…………………………75

Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking...…………………………..76

The Gift of the Magi……………………………………………...88

Robert Frost……………………………………………………………...92

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening…………………..……94

Acquainted with the Night…………………………….………......95

Jack London……………………………………………………………...97

Martin Eden…………………….…………………………………98

Love of Life………………………………………...…………....100

Theodore Dreiser…………………………………………………...…...115

Sister Carrie………………………………...…………………….116

The Financier…………………………...………………………...118

Ernest Hemingway……………………………………………………...122

For Whom the Bell Tolls………………………………………....123

The Old Man and the Sea……..………………………………....126

John Steinbeck………………….……………………………………....132

The Grapes of Wrath..…………………………………………....133

Jerome David Salinger……………………………………..………..….138

The Catcher in the Rye……………………….…………………..139

Harper Lee…………………………………….…………………….......141

To Kill A Mockingbird……………..…………………………....142

Lillian Hellman………………………………………….……………...146

Vocabulary………………………………………….…………………..148

Historical background

The Western Hemisphere had already been reached by courageous Scandinavian seafarers in the 10^th century, but the actual discovery of America was made during the Renaissance period, in the 16^th century. In search of a shorter and safer trade – route from Europe to Asia, Christopher Columbus landed on some island near Cuba in 1492 which he mistook for India. The misunderstanding was cleared up a few years later when the Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci, explored that coast and found that it was not India. So the new continent came to be called America after the name of its undoubted discoverer.

More than a century was spent on compassing both Americas. The northern part of America, where Canada and the United States now lie, was first explored by a Bristol merchant John Cabot and his son Sebastian who sailed direct west from England across the Atlantic, and then by Henry Hudson. The southern continent was explored by the Spaniards and the Portuguese.

At first the only aim of these white adventurers was to get gold. That is why they were more interested in the southern part of the continent: there lived numerous rich tribes of Indians, some of them highly civilized. Cortes, the conquistador from Spain, went to what is now Mexico with a band of cut-throats and plundered the American Indians using the most murderous means. In the Beginning of the 17^th century the colonization of America really started. Four European nations competed in that overseas expansion: Spain, Holland, France and England. Spain colonized the part of North America. The Dutch founded colonies around the mouth of the Hudson River and built a town which they called New Amsterdam. Some time later came the English. The wealthier of the new settlers received large tracts of land and became plantation owners. The rest became small farmers. The governors of the English colonies were appointed by the king of England. Each country sent two representatives to the assembly at Jamestown. The representatives were invariably chosen from the rich planter class.

Colonization of America on a large scale in the 17^th century was due to the changing conditions in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of poor peasants who had lost their land in Britain and Germany were forced to leave their native countries and search for new homes across the Atlantic.

A group of English Puritans set sail from Plymouth early in September 1620. After a long voyage across a stormy sea they dropped anchor at Cape Cod Bay on November 11. They agreed that they would build up a new society where every member would be free.

The Puritans set up a more democratic form of government than that of southern colonies, yet it was a bourgeois order with a theocracy at the top. At first the Pilgrims had a hard time cultivating the virgin land, but when they began to prosper, they expanded their holdings. The Puritans who had come to America in search of freedom, believing that all men had a right to freedom; they themselves denied this freedom to the homeless immigrants and oppressed them.

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