English Lit or American Lit?

[jkmicronix]

I'm gonna need one of these to satisfy my Bachelors. Is either one easier than the other? Does either one have better study resources availiable than the other?

Thanks.

[MaieJaie]

In my opinion, American literature would seem much easier to prepare for than English literature. The reason is simple--shorter time period. English literature dates back to about the 7th century; American literature consists of precious little prior to the 18th century. As a result, English literature has more literary movements, more writers, and more works which could be covered on the exam. American literature, however, will have a few questions pertaining to literature before the 19th century, but will mostly just cover the 19th and 20th centuries. If you were to make a list of all the major British writers you can think of in ten minutes, only a small fraction would appear on the CLEP; if you were to do the same with American writers, nearly all would appear on the exam. Take poetry, for instance. There are huindreds of English, Scottish, and Irish poets who are considered to be masters; any of these could reasonably appear on the CLEP English Literature. For American poetry, there are maybe a couple of dozen poets that are acclaimed enough to be likely to appear on the CLEP American literature. Basically, for the American literature test, it's much easier to predict what will appear on the test.

As far as study sources available, well, there are tons of sites online for either English or American literature. You wouldn't even need to obtain a textbook if you didn't wish to purchase one.

[studyhard]

Personally, I found British Lit WAY easier than American Lit. Yes, it spans a longer time period but for that reason it tends to simply hit the highlights of famous authors...Milton, Shakespeare, etc. If you've read some of the classics (Dickens, Jane Austen, etc.) or seen a few Shakespeare plays, that will give you an edge also. Overall, I was more familiar with the works covered on the British Lit exam.

I really haven't read much of the supposed "classics" of American Literature. A lot of them (in my unasked opinion) are junk. I hated that test...I had to read a ton of book summaries of books I'd never heard of and they were mostly all Really Stewpid books.