Lesson 1.1 · Unit 1 · RL.11-12.9, RI.11-12.9
Why a literature is read in order
This course runs chronologically, and the reason is not tidiness. American writers spend three centuries answering each other, and a student who meets them out of order sees a dozen unconnected authors instead of one long argument.
- A national literature is a conversation, and later writers respond to earlier ones whether or not they say so.
- Emerson is answering the Puritans, replacing a doctrine of human depravity with one of individual sufficiency.
- Whitman is answering Emerson, who had publicly asked for an American poet and then received one.
- The realists are answering Whitman, replacing the expansive self with observed and limited lives.
- Fitzgerald is answering all of them, writing a novel about a self-made man whose self-invention destroys him.
- An allusion is a deliberate reference to an earlier text, and it assumes the reader knows the earlier one.
- Influence is not always agreement, and the strongest responses are usually refusals.
- Standard RL.11-12.9 requires exactly this, asking students to read foundational American works and compare their treatment of shared themes.
Where students lose marks: treating a chronology as a list of dates. The dates matter only because they establish who could have read whom, which is what makes a comparison an argument rather than a coincidence.
The texts. Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", 1741; Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance", 1841. Both public domain.
Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell... There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.
Edwards, 1741
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string... Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness.
Emerson, 1841
Step one: establish the interval. Exactly one hundred years, in the same region, addressed to congregations and audiences descended from the same people. Emerson was himself a minister before he resigned.
Step two: state Edwards's claim about the self. That it is heavy with its own wickedness and tends downward, that nothing within it can arrest the fall, and that only an external power holds it up. The self is the problem.
Step three: state Emerson's claim about the self. That it should be trusted, that every heart vibrates to the same true note, and that a person must test received goodness against their own judgment. The self is the instrument.
Step four: notice that these are not merely different. They are the same question answered oppositely. Both ask what a person's own nature is worth, and one answers nothing and the other answers everything.
Step five: check whether the response is deliberate. Emerson was raised in this tradition, trained for its ministry, and left it. The reversal is not a coincidence of temperament; it is a position taken against a specific inheritance he knew from the inside.
Step six: notice the shared vocabulary. Both passages speak of weight and of what holds a person up. Edwards has lead and pressure; Emerson has an iron string. Emerson keeps the metal and reverses its function, which is what a deliberate answer looks like.
Step seven: state what reading out of order would cost. A student meeting Emerson alone reads an essay about confidence. A student who has read Edwards first reads a repudiation, and the essay's insistence becomes legible as the pressure of the thing it is pushing against.
Step eight: state the method for the year. For every writer, ask what they had read and what they are refusing. That question turns a reading list into an argument, and it is what standard RL.11-12.9 is asking for when it says to compare how foundational works treat related themes.
Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.
- Why is this course taught chronologically?
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Because American writers answer each other, and out of order they look unconnected
- Who is Emerson answering, and who answers Emerson?
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He answers the Puritans; Whitman answers him
- Define allusion.
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A deliberate reference to an earlier text, assuming the reader knows it
- What does Edwards say holds a person out of hell?
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Nothing but the mere pleasure of God
- What does Emerson tell the reader to do with received goodness?
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Explore whether it is goodness rather than be hindered by the name
- Show that Edwards and Emerson answer the same question.
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Both ask what a person's own nature is worth. Edwards answers that it is heavy with wickedness, tends downward, and can do nothing to arrest its own fall, so only an external power sustains it. Emerson answers that it should be trusted absolutely and that every heart vibrates to the same true note. One says nothing and the other says everything, which makes them a disagreement rather than two topics. Both ask what a person's own nature is worth, and answer oppositely
- What evidence is there that Emerson's reversal is deliberate?
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He was raised in the New England Calvinist tradition, trained for its ministry, ordained, and resigned. The position he takes is against an inheritance he knew from the inside rather than one he encountered as an outsider. That biography converts an apparent difference of temperament into a considered refusal, which is what makes it a response rather than a contrast. He was trained in the tradition he is repudiating and left it
- What do the two metal images accomplish?
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Edwards makes wickedness "heavy as lead", pulling the self downward. Emerson makes the trustworthy self "that iron string", the thing every heart resonates to. Emerson keeps the metal and reverses its function, from dead weight to a vibrating instrument. Shared vocabulary turned to opposite ends is one of the clearest signs that a writer is answering rather than merely differing. Emerson keeps Edwards's metal and turns it from weight into an instrument
- What does a reader lose by meeting Emerson without Edwards?
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They read an essay about confidence. A reader who has met Edwards first reads a repudiation, and the insistence of Emerson's prose becomes legible as the pressure of what it is pushing against. The essay's most famous sentences are answers, and an answer read without its question sounds like an assertion nobody needed. The essay reads as assertion rather than as repudiation
- State the method this course will use all year.
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For every writer, ask what they had read and what they are refusing. That question converts a reading list into a conversation and makes comparison an argument rather than an observed coincidence. It is also exactly what standard RL.11-12.9 requires, since comparing how foundational works treat related themes means establishing that one could have known the other. Ask what each writer had read and what they are refusing