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  • ENGL405: The American Renaissance
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  • Harriet Jacobs' "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"
    COURSE INTRODUCTION
    Course Syllabus
    Unit 1: The American Renaissance in Context
    1.1: The Influence of European Romanticism in America
    Romanticism in America
    The Romantic Period, 1820–1860: Essayists and Poets
    William Wordsworth's The Prelude
    Expanding and Revising the American Renaissance
    1.2: Individuality, Conflict, and Context
    Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The American Scholar"
    Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?"
    1.3: President Jackson and Indian Removal
    Biography of Andrew Jackson
    William Apess' "An Indian's Looking Glass for the White Man"
    1.4: Jacksonian Democracy and the Self-Made Man
    Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance"
    Jacksonian Democracy and the Ideal of the Self-Made Man
    1.5: The Second Great Awakening and the Emergence of Transcendentalism
    The Second Great Awakening and Transcendentalism
    Harold Clark Goddard's "Transcendentalism"
    1.6: The "Transcendental Club" and "The Dial"
    Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Editors to the Reader"
    Sophia Ripley's "Woman"
    1.7: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Father of the Transcendental Movement
    Ralph Waldo Emerson
    Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Gnothi Seauton"
    1.8: Competing Visions of Reform
    George Ripley's "1840 Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson"
    Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Reply to George Ripley"
    Unit 1 Assessment
    Unit 1 Assessment
    Unit 2: Continuity and Change in Poetic Form
    2.1.1: Ralph Waldo Emerson
    Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Poet"
    Overview of Ralph Waldo Emerson and "The Poet"
    Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Threnody"
    Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Rhodora"
    Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Snow-Storm"
    2.1.2: Edgar Allen Poe
    Edgar Allan Poe's "Philosophy of Composition"
    Overview of Edgar Allen Poe and "Philosophy of Composition"
    Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
    2.2: The Question of Poetry's Social Role
    John Greenleaf Whittier
    John Greenleaf Whittier's "The Christian Slave"
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Witnesses"
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Quadroon Girl"
    Edgar Allan Poe's "Review of Longfellow's Ballads and Other Poems"
    Edgar Allan Poe's "Review of Longfellow's Poems"
    2.3: Walt Whitman, Free Verse, and the Poetics of Democracy
    Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"
    Free Verse
    Introduction to Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"
    Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself"
    Image of Walt Whitman from 1855 Edition of "Leaves of Grass"
    Walt Whitman
    2.4: Emily Dickinson and the Personal Lyric
    The Emily Dickinson Project
    Emily Dickinson and the Nineteenth-Century Women Poets: The Poetics and Politics of Reticence
    Emily Dickinson's "I'm Nobody"
    Emily Dickinson's "The Soul Selects Her Own Society"
    Emily Dickinson's "I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died"
    Emily Dickinson's "I Felt a Funeral in my Brain"
    Critical Commentary on Emily Dickinson
    Unit 2 Assessment
    Unit 2 Assessment
    Unit 3: The Invention of the Short Story
    3.1: "The Limit of One Sitting" and Concerns with Length
    The Short Story
    Nathaniel Hawthorne
    3.2: The Short Story's Artistry and Conventions
    Edgar Allan Poe's "Review of Twice-Told Tales"
    Edgar Allen Poe: "The Cask of Amontillado"
    Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil"
    3.3: The Gothic, Suspense, and the Macabre
    The Gothic and the Antebellum American Short Story
    Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart"
    Edgar Allan Poe's "Ligeia"
    Edgar Allan Poe's "The Imp of the Perverse"
    Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown"
    Herman Melville's "Hawthorne and His Mosses"
    3.4: Building a New Genre with the Detective Story
    Rationalism and Romanticism in Detective Fiction
    Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue"
    Biography of Herman Melville
    Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno"
    Essay on Herman Melville's 'Benito Cereno'
    Unit 3 Assessment
    Unit 3 Assessment
    Unit 4: The Development of the Novel and its Various Forms
    4.1: The Establishment of American Publishers and the Passage of Copyright Laws
    Publishing in the US, 1820–1860
    What Copyright Protection Is and How It Works
    4.2: The Rise of Literacy and Public Education in the Young Republic
    Literacy
    Educational Reforms
    Native American Education at Carlisle and Hampton
    4.3: The Popularity of the Novel
    A Short History of the Early American Novel
    Fiction Literature
    4.4: The Romance and Nathaniel Hawthorne
    Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Preface to The House of the Seven Gables"
    Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"
    The Scarlet "A": Role-Play in Writing
    4.5: Sensationalism
    Sensationalism
    4.6: Sentimentalism
    Sentimentalism
    Fanny Fern's (Sara Payson Willis') "Ruth Hall"
    Unit 4 Assessment
    Unit 4 Assessment
    Unit 5: Nature and Technology: Creating and Challenging American Identity
    5.1: Technology and Class Division
    Technology, Industrialization, and Antebellum U.S. Literature
    Orestes Brownson's "The Laboring Classes"
    5.2: Economic Development
    The Election of 1824
    Antebellum Economic Development and the Growth of Consumerism
    Immigration
    5.3: Urban Popular Culture, the Penny Press, and the New Social Order
    The Penny Press and the Emergence of Urban Mass Culture
    The New Social Order
    The Lost Museum
    Blackface Minstrelsy
    5.4: Melville, Capitalism, and the Limits of Sympathy
    Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener"
    Essay on Herman Melville's 'Bartleby, the Scrivener'
    Herman Melville's "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids"
    5.5: The Move toward Realism in Davis' "Life in the Iron-Mills"
    Essay on Rebecca Harding Davis' "Life in the Iron-Mills"
    Rebecca Harding Davis' "Life in the Iron-Mills"
    5.6: American Nature as Challenge to American Progress
    Essay on Henry David Thoreau and "Walden"
    Henry David Thoreau's "Walden"
    Henry David Thoreau's "Resistance to Civil Government"
    Unit 5 Assessment
    Unit 5 Assessment
    Unit 6: The Question of Women's Place in Society
    6.1: Women's Rights in the Young Republic
    Boundless: "Women and the Early Republic"
    U.S. Department of State: "Women of Influence"
    Susan B. Anthony's "On Women's Right to Vote"
    The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (1848)
    Women's Sphere and the Emergence of the Women's Rights Movement
    6.2: Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, and the Transcendentalists
    "2014 Summer Conversational Series: Margaret Fuller and the Problem of Female Genius"
    Margaret Fuller's "Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Chapter 1"
    Margaret Fuller's "The Great Lawsuit, Man versus Men, Woman versus Women"
    New World Encyclopedia: "Elizabeth Palmer Peabody"
    6.3: Law, Class, Race, and Marriage
    Elizabeth Stoddard's "Lemorne versus Huell"
    New World Encyclopedia: "Alice Paul"
    New World Encyclopedia: "Frances Harper"
    New World Encyclopedia: "Ida. B. Wells Barnett"
    6.4: Sentiment, Religion, and the Power of Womanhood
    Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World
    Essay on Louisa May Alcott and "Little Women"
    Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women"
    Unit 6 Assessment
    Unit 6 Assessment
    Unit 7: The Slavery Controversy and Abolitionist Literature
    7.1: Slavery and the Debate over Abolition
    Resistance and Abolition
    The Library of Congress: "Abolition, Anti-Slavery Movements, and the Rise of the Sectional Controversy"
    7.2: Manifest Destiny and the Expanding Western Frontier
    Boundless: "Manifest Destiny and the Western Frontier"
    The Mexican War and Expansion of Slavery
    7.3: Radical Abolition and The Liberator
    Essay on David Walker, William Lloyd Garrison, and the Emergence of Radical Abolitionism
    William Lloyd Garrison's "The Liberator: To the Public"
    Excerpts from David Walker's "Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World"
    New World Encyclopedia: "Lucretia Mott"
    7.4: The Slave Narrative
    Essay on the Slave Narrative
    Frederick Douglass' "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"
    Harriet Jacobs' "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"
    7.5: Uncle Tom's Cabin
    Essay on Harriet Beecher Stowe and "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
    Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
    Unit 7 Assessment
    Unit 7 Assessment
    Study Guide
    ENGL405 Study Guide
    Course Feedback Survey
    Course Feedback Survey
    Certificate Final Exam
    ENGL405: Certificate Final Exam
    Archived Materials
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  1. ENGL405: The American Renaissance
  2. Unit 7: The Slavery Controversy and Abolitionist Literature
  3. 7.4: The Slave Narrative
  4. Harriet Jacobs' "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"

Harriet Jacobs' "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"

Completion requirements

Jacobs' 1861 narrative draws on and overturns many of the conventions of domestic sentimentalism embraced by mid-century American women. Read this revisionary account of the life of a slave woman. 

Click on Harriet Jacobs' "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" to open the resource.
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Saylor Academy © 2010-2025 except as otherwise noted. Excluding course final exams, content authored by Saylor Academy is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Third-party materials are the copyright of their respective owners and shared under various licenses. See detailed licensing information. Saylor Academy®, Saylor.org®, and Harnessing Technology to Make Education Free® are trade names of the Constitution Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization through which our educational activities are conducted.