American Literature and Rhetoric

Chapter 1 | Rhetorical Analysis

The Rhetorical Situation

Occasion, Context, and Purpose

The Rhetorical Triangle

Rhetorical Appeals

Analyzing Rhetoric and Style

From Reading to Writing: Crafting a Rhetorical Analysis Essay

2001 to the Present

Barbara Ehrenreich, from Serving in Florida (nonfiction, 2001)

George W. Bush, Address to the Nation on September 11, 2001 (nonfiction)

TALKBACK | Omer Aziz, The World 9/11 Took from Us (nonfiction, 2019)

Barack Obama, Democratic National Convention Speech (nonfiction , 2004)

Brian Turner, At Lowe’s Home Improvement Center (poetry, 2010)

TALKBACK | Ilya Kaminsky, In a Time of Peace (poetry, 2019)

Viet Thanh Nguyen, Fatherland (fiction, 2011)

Natalie Diaz, Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation (poetry, 2012)

Roxane Gay, from Bad Feminist: Take Two (nonfiction , 2014)

Ross Gay, A Small Needful Fact (poetry, 2015)

Kathryn Schulz, from Citizen Khan (nonfiction, 2016)

Ted Closson, A GoFundMe Campaign Is Not Health Insurance (graphic essay, 2017)

Bryan Stevenson, A Presumption of Guilt (nonfiction, 2017)

Kehinde Wiley, President Barack Obama (painting, 2018)

Amy Sherald, First Lady Michelle Obama (painting, 2018)

Tracy K. Smith, Refuge (poetry, 2018)

Jesmyn Ward, My True South: Why I Decided to Return Home (nonfiction, 2018)

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black (fiction, 2018)

José Olivarez, My Family Never Finished Migrating We Just Stopped (poetry, 2019)

Louise Erdrich, The Stone (fiction, 2019)

Bill McKibben, 2050: How Earth Survived (nonfiction, 2019)

Chapter 6 | A Meeting of Old and New Worlds Beginnings to 1830

American Indian Trickster Stories (fiction)

Iroquois Confederacy, from The Iroquois Constitution (nonfiction, c. 1142)

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, from The Relation of Cabeza de Vaca (nonfiction, 1542)

Richard Frethorne, Letter to Father and Mother (nonfiction, 1623)

John Winthrop, from A Modell of Christian Charity (nonfiction, 1630)

Anne Bradstreet, The Author to Her Book (poetry, 1678)

Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World: A Hortatory and Necessary Address to a Country Now Extraordinarily Alarum’d by the Wrath of the Devil (nonfiction, 1693)

Jonathan Edwards, from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (nonfiction, 1741)

Benjamin Franklin, The Speech of Miss Polly Baker (nonfiction, 1747)

Phillis Wheatley, On Being Brought from Africa to America (poetry, 1773)

To S. M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works (poetry, 1773)

To His Excellency General Washington (poetry, 1776)

TALKBACK | June Jordan, from The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America: Or Something like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley (nonfiction, 2002)

Patrick Henry, Speech to the Second Virginia Convention (nonfiction, 1775)

Thomas Paine, from Common Sense (nonfiction, 1776)
Abigail and John Adams, Letters (nonfiction, 1776)

Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence (nonfiction, 1776)

Philip Freneau, To Sir Toby, a Sugar Planter in the Interior Parts of Jamaica, Near the City of San Jago de la Vega (Spanish Town), 1784 (poetry, 1784)

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, from The Federalist Papers (nonfiction, 1787)

Preamble to the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights (nonfiction, 1789)

Judith Sargent Murray, from On the Equality of the Sexes (nonfiction, 1790)

TALKBACK | H. L. Mencken, from In Defense of Women (nonfiction, 1918)

George Washington, To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island (nonfiction, 1790)

Benjamin Banneker, Letter to Thomas Jefferson with Response from Thomas Jefferson (nonfiction, 1791)

Absalom Jones, et al., Petition of the People of Colour, Freemen, within the City and Suburbs of Philadelphia (nonfiction, 1799)

Red Jacket, Defense of Native American Religion (nonfiction, 1805)
Francis Scott Key, The Star Spangled Banner (poetry, 1814)

TALKBACK | Ada Limón, A New National Anthem (poetry, 2018)

Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle (fiction, 1820)

Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, The Forsaken Brother (fiction, 1827)

Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom (painting, 1833)

1830-1865

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minister’s Black Veil (fiction, 1832)

John Ross, Response to the Treaty of New Echota (nonfiction, 1836)

Sara Grimké, from Letter on the Equality of the Sexes (nonfiction, 1837)

Edgar Allen Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher (fiction, 1839)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Self-Reliance (nonfiction, 1841)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments (nonfiction, 1848)

Sojourner Truth, Ain’t I a Woman? (nonfiction, 1851)

Harriet Beecher Stowe, from Preface to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (nonfiction, 1852)

Frederick Douglass, from What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July? (nonfiction, 1852)

Anonymous, Go Down Moses (poetry, c. 1852)
Henry David Thoreau, from Walden (nonfiction, 1854)

TALKBACK | Kathryn Schulz, from Pond Scum (nonfiction, 2015)

John Brown, Last Speech (nonfiction, 1859)

Walt Whitman, I Hear America Singing (poetry, 1860)

TALKBACK | Langston Hughes, I, Too (poetry, 1926)

O Captain! My Captain! (poetry, 1865)

Harriet Jacobs, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (nonfiction, 1861)

Alfred M. Green, Let Us Take Up the Sword (nonfiction, 1861)

Emily Dickinson, "Hope is the thing with feathers — (poetry, c. 1861)

I heard a Fly buzz — when I died — (poetry, c. 1862)

My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun — (poetry, c. 1863)

TALKBACK | Hans Ostrom, Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven (poetry, 2006)

Herman Melville, Shiloh: A Requiem (poetry, 1862)

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Bury Me in a Free Land (poetry, 1864)

Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (nonfiction, 1865)

Mathew Brady Photo Studio, Civil War Photographs (visual essay, 1861-1865)

1865-1913

Jourdon Anderson, To My Old Master (nonfiction, 1865)

Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field (painting, 1865)

TALKBACK | Natasha Trethewey, Again, the Fields: After Winslow Homer (poetry, 2006)

Red Cloud, Speech on Indian Rights (nonfiction, 1870)

Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, Life Among the Piutes (nonfiction, 1882)

Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus (poetry, 1883)

Mark Twain, from Life on the Mississippi (nonfiction, 1883)

Jacob Riis, The Mixed Crowd (nonfiction, 1890)

Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (fiction, 1890)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (fiction, 1892)

TALKBACK | Kehinde Wiley, Portrait of a Lady (painting)

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, from Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (nonfiction, 1892)

Frederick Jackson Turner, from The Significance of the Frontier in American History (nonfiction, 1893, 1920)

Booker T. Washington, The Atlanta Exposition Address (nonfiction, 1895)

Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear the Mask (poetry, 1896)

Jane Addams, from The Subtle Problem of Charity (nonfiction, 1899)

Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life (nonfiction, 1899)

James Weldon Johnson, Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing (poetry, 1900)

TALKBACK | Augusta Savage, The Harp (sculpture, 1939)

Andy Adams, from The Log of a Cowboy (fiction, 1903)

W.E.B. DuBois, The Talented Tenth (nonfiction, 1903)

Willa Cather, The Sculptor’s Funeral (fiction, 1905)

TALKBACK | Kim Stafford, Willa Cather’s Ride (poetry, 2019)

E. A. Robinson, Miniver Cheevy (poetry, 1910)

Sui Sin Far, Its Wavering Image (fiction, 1912)

Katharine Lee Bates, America the Beautiful (poetry, 1912)

TALKBACK | Gregory Djanikian, In the Elementary School Choir (poetry, 1989)

1913-1945

Maria Cristina Mena, The Vine Leaf (fiction, 1914)

Carrie Chapman Catt, Women’s Suffrage Is Inevitable (nonfiction, 1917)

Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (poetry, 1917)

Edna St. Vincent Millay, First Fig (poetry, 1918)

Claude McKay, If We Must Die (poetry, 1919)

Marianne Moore, Poetry (poetry, 1919)

Theodore Dreiser, A Certain Oil Refinery (nonfiction, 1919)

Emma Goldman, Statement at the Federal Hearing in re Deportation (nonfiction, 1919)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bernice Bobs Her Hair (fiction, 1920)

E. E. Cummings, in Just— (poetry, 1920)

Robert Frost, Fire and Ice (poetry, 1920)

William Carlos Williams, The Great Figure (poetry, 1921)

TALKBACK | Charles Demuth, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (painting, 1928)

Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers (poetry, 1921)

Zora Neale Hurston, Drenched in Light (fiction, 1924)

Countee Cullen, Yet Do I Marvel (poetry, 1925)

T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men (poetry, 1925)

Eleanor Roosevelt, Women Must Learn to Play the Game As Men Do (nonfiction, 1928)

TALKBACK | Rebecca Solnit, If I Were a Man (nonfiction, 2017)

Zora Neale Hurston, How It Feels to Be Colored Me (nonfiction, 1928)

TALKBACK | Eve Ewing, What I mean when I say I’m sharpening my oyster knife (poetry, 2018)

William Carlos Williams, This Is Just to Say (poetry, 1934)

E. B. White, Farewell, My Lovely! (nonfiction, 1936)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address: One-Third of a Nation (nonfiction, 1937)

Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish (poetry, 1938)

W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen (poetry, 1939)

The Great Depression (visual essay, 1930-1942)

Gordon Hirabayashi, from Diary from King County Jail (nonfiction, 1942)

1945-2000

Lillian Hellman, I Cannot and Will Not Cut My Conscience to Fit This Year’s Fashions (nonfiction, 1952)

Flannery O’Connor, Good Country People (fiction, 1955)

James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (nonfiction, 1955)

Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California (poetry, 1955)

Philip Roth, The Conversion of the Jews (fiction, 1959)

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address (nonfiction, 1961)
Joan Didion, On Self-Respect (nonfiction, 1961)

Sylvia Plath, Mirror (poetry, 1961)

John F. Kennedy, Cuban Missile Crisis Speech (nonfiction, 1962)

TALKBACK | Nikita Khrushchev, Letter to John F. Kennedy (nonfiction, 1962)

Rachel Carson, from Silent Spring (nonfiction, 1962)

Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail (nonfiction, 1963)

TALKBACK | Malcolm Gladwell, Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted (nonfiction, 2010)

Robert F. Kennedy, The Mindless Menace of Violence (nonfiction, 1968)

Toni Cade Bambara, Raymond’s Run (fiction, 1971)

Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck (poetry, 1973)

Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman (fiction, 1974)

Naomi Shihab Nye, Arabic Coffee (poetry, 1986)

Brent Staples, Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space (nonfiction, 1986)

Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It (poetry, 1988)

TALKBACK | Ocean Vuong, Aubade with Burning City (poetry, 2014)

Tim O’Brien, On the Rainy River (fiction, 1990)
Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named María (nonfiction, 1992)

Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize Speech (nonfiction, 1993)

Kerry James Marshall, Our Town (painting, 1995)

Rita Dove, Rosa (poetry, 1998)