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Common Core ELAGrades 11–12Reading: Literature

RL.11-12.9: Foundational American Literature by Era

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.9 · Cluster: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas.

All 41 Grades 11–12 ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Demonstrate knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American literature, including how two or more texts from the same period treat similar themes or topics.

Common Core State Standards, Grades 11-12, Reading: Literature · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RL.11-12.9 Means in Plain English

Juniors and seniors know the foundational American literature of the 1700s, 1800s and early 1900s, and show how works from one era treat a shared theme. Walden and The Scarlet Letter, both from the 1850s, each make the woods a refuge from society’s rules.

In grades 9 and 10 (RL.9-10.9) students traced how one author reworks a source, like Shakespeare drawing on Ovid. Grades 11 and 12 ask for a body of American literature and comparisons within its periods. This is the last band of the line: college and career readiness.

RL.11-12.9 I Can Statements

  • I can name foundational American works from three centuries.
  • I can identify the features that place a text in its period.
  • I can compare how two works from one era treat a theme.

RL.11-12.9 Worked Example

Two invented excerpts on the same subject, the American forest, written in the manner of two periods sixty years apart.

Read the Story
Excerpt A, in the manner of a 1790s pamphlet: Let the industrious farmer take up his axe! Every acre redeemed from the tangled wilderness is an acre given to the Republic, and every field he clears is a lesson in virtue to his sons.Where the panther cried, the plough shall turn; where the forest kept its gloom, Reason and Providence shall raise the yeoman’s house in the light.Excerpt B, in the manner of an 1850s narrative: I walked out to the old woodlot at dusk and found it cleared. The stumps stood in rows like the stones of a burying ground, and I could not say which of us had been robbed, the forest or I.Somewhere past the last stump a thrush began, and I stood in the cold until it stopped, as if I owed it that much.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: How does each excerpt treat the wilderness, and what marks each as a product of its period? Name a real foundational work from the same era that treats the theme the same way.
Not Yet“Excerpt A likes cutting down trees and Excerpt B doesn’t. B is better because it cares about nature.”It spots the opposite attitudes but explains neither, shows no knowledge of either period, and judges the past instead of placing each text in its time.
Meets the Standard“Excerpt A speaks for the young nation. Its public command, ‘take up his axe,’ treats the forest as waste to be redeemed, every acre ‘given to the Republic’ and every field ‘a lesson in virtue.’ Its trust in ‘Reason and Providence’ is Revolutionary-era thinking: land improved by labor makes good citizens, as in Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer. Excerpt B is Romantic. The voice is private and first person, the stumps look ‘like the stones of a burying ground,’ and the speaker cannot say ‘which of us had been robbed, the forest or I,’ so nature is bound up with the self. That places it beside Thoreau’s Walden, from the same decade. The first era clears the forest to build a nation, and sixty years later the next one mourns what the clearing cost a soul.”It reads each excerpt’s style and attitude as marks of its period, pairs each with a real foundational work from the same era, and explains what changed between the two.
Question Stems to Use
What does each text assume the wilderness is for?Which features of style place this text in its period?What other work from the same decade treats this theme, and how?Is the speaker addressing a nation or a single reader?What changed in American thinking between these two texts?

Common Mistakes with RL.11-12.9

Era as a date, not a mindset

“Excerpt A is old because it uses fancy words.”

Try this: Teach each period’s core beliefs, like Enlightenment reason or Romantic feeling, so students can read style as evidence of an era.

Comparing across eras only

Students contrast the 1790s and 1850s texts and stop there

Try this: Require a same-period partner for each text, a real work from that decade, and one sentence on how the two treat the theme alike.

Judging the past by the present

“Excerpt A is wrong to want to cut down forests.”

Try this: Ask what the writer’s first readers believed, and explain the text’s attitude from inside its time before evaluating it.

Where RL.11-12.9 Fits

Comes BeforeRL.9-10.9Analyze how an author draws on and transforms a source, like Shakespeare using Ovid.
AlongsideRI.11-12.9Analyze foundational U.S. documents, like the Declaration of Independence, for theme and rhetoric.RL.11-12.2Trace how themes develop and interact across a whole work.
Comes NextW.11-12.9Write comparisons of works from one period, with evidence drawn from each.SL.11-12.1Discuss how writers of one era answered each other on a shared theme.

Practice RL.11-12.9

Quick Check

  1. What does Excerpt A say every cleared acre becomes?
  2. What do the stumps remind the speaker of in Excerpt B?
  3. Which real work from the 1850s ties nature to the self the way Excerpt B does?

RL.11-12.9: Other Names

RL.11-12.9CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.9

Common Core State Standards © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved. Official wording from the Common Core State Standards PDFs at corestandards.org, last checked October 14, 2026. The explanation, I can statements, example, mistakes and practice on this page are EMStudio’s own, written beside the official wording. They are not part of the standard.