Eleventh Grade Exhibition Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation. --Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn It has been said that literature is not created in a vacuum. To prove this point, for the next two quarters you will research an American author, playwright or poet of your choice and show how his/her works are the living memory of our nation. You will be expected to read a short biography of the person as well as a minimum of two novels or short story collections by an author, three full length plays by a dramatist, or two books of poetry by a poet. You should also know the major historical events occurring in America during the writer's lifetime and/or the major personal or historical events that shaped the writer's literature. In order to accomplish this, you will be given at least one period a week to read during class time. You may also go to the library to do necessary research, although most of the time you should be in class. However, if this time is abused, it will be taken away and you will be expected to accomplish everything outside of school. Your final product for this assignment will be twofold. First, you will present the your findings to the class in a 20 minute oral report complete with visuals and handouts you have created for the others. Second, you will hand in a 7-10 page typewritten paper complete with necessary citations and a bibliography. You should not have to rely too heavily on outside sources, though. At least half of the paper will be based on your own ideas. Some possible authors/poets/playwrights to research follow: Playwrights: Authors Tennessee Williams James Fenimore Cooper F. Scott Fitzgerald Neil Simon Washington Irving Kate Chopin Eugene O'Neill Edgar Allan Poe Frederick Douglass Lillian Hellman Nathaniel Hawthorne Sarah Orne Jewett Sam Shepard Herman Melville Hamlin Garland Arthur Miller Henry David Thoreau Willa Cather Dion Boucicault Mark Twain William Faulkner Bronson Howard Bret Harte Truman Capote Clifford Odets Stephen Crane Bernard Malamud Thorton Wilder Jack London John Updike William Inge Henry James Toni Morrison Arthur Kopit Upton Sinclair Joyce Carol Oates David Rabe Damon Runyan Flannery O' Conner Tina Howe Sinclair Lewis Nora Zeale Hurston Pearl Buck John Steinbeck James Thurber Saul Bellow Ernest Hemingway Oliver WendallHolmes Theodore Dreiser Ring Lardner William Dean Howells Alice Walker John Dos Passos Sylvia Plath Edith Wharton Carson McCullers Dorothy Parker William Saroyan Jack Kerouac Truman Capote Anne Tyler James Baldwin Harriet Beecher Stowe Sherwood Anderson Poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow John G. Whittier Ezra Pound T.S. Eliot William Carlos Williams Hilda Dolittle (H.D.) Gertrude Stein Carl Sandburg Langston Hughes ee cummings Robert Frost Walt Whitman Amy Lowell Adrienne Rich Robert Bly W.H. Auden Theodore Roethke Richard Wilbur Gwendolyn Brooks Sylvia Plath James Wright Emily Dickenson