本教材在相关章节中对美国文学发展的各个历史时期的时代背景、哲学和文艺思潮、文学运动和主要作家做了较为详尽的介绍。对所选作家及其作品也做了具体的介绍。结合作者在美国文学课堂教学实践中得到的经验，对练习项目做了精心的设计，包括检查学生对文本阅读理解程度的题目，培养学生对文本进行鉴赏的适合课堂上进行小组讨论的题目，以及锻炼学生用书面表达对文学作品的意见的写作练习。

Chapter One Early American Literature

  Jonathan Edwards

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

  Benjamin Franklin

The Autobiography

Chapter Two American Romanticism and Transcendentalism

 Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature

Self-Reliance

 Henry David Thoreau

Walden

 Edgar Allan Poe

The Raven

 Nathanlel Hawhome

The Minister's Black Veil

 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A Psalm of Life

 Herman Melville

Moby Dick

walt Whitman

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

Cavalry Crossing a Ford

Come Up from the Fields, Father

Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

 Emily Dickinson

Wild blights-Wild blights!

A Bird Came down the Walk

I Died for Beauty-But Was Scarce

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Chapter Three American Realism and American Naturalism

 Samuel Longhorne Clemens

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

 Henry James

Daisy Miller

 Edith Wharton

Ethan Frame

 Stephen Crane

The Red Badge of Courage

 Theodore Dreiser

Old Rogaum and His Theresa

 Jack London

The Law of Life

Chapter Four American Modernism

  Ezra Pound

In a Station of the Metro

  Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

Fire and Ice

Mending Wall

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Thomas Steams (T. S. ) Eliot

The Love Song of J. ALfred Prufrock

  Sherwood Anderson

Sophistication, Concerning Helen White

Emest Hemingwoy

A Clean, Well-lighted Place

William Faulkner

A Rose for Emily

Eugene 0'Neill

Desire under the Elms

Chapter Five Post-war American Literature

  Soul Bellow

Looking for Mr. Green

  Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman

  Jerome David Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye

 Flannery O'Connor

The Life You Save May Be Your Own

  Allen Ginsberg

A Supermarket in California

  Raymond Carver

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

  Alice Walker

Everyday Use

  Gish Jen

In the American Society

References