美国文学

Chapter 2 Colonial and Revolutionary Periods
■The early settlers(Dutch Swedes Germans French Spaniards Italians Portuguese)
Reasons:
1.Most of the immigrants came because they were hungry and America offered them good and extensive land. They then described their good fortune in their letters home, attracting more to come.
2.Other people came because they wanted to get away from the religious persecution back in their own country.
3.Or, you might have a wrong political opinion (on bureaucracy, taxes, democracy) and you were faced with a probability of being put into prison.
■Captain John Smith(约翰.史密斯上尉)(P7), recognized as the first American writer
■Most of the early settlers were Puritans, a group of serious, religious people who advocated strict religious and moral principles.
⏹American Puritans
The Puritans established their own religious and moral principles known as American Puritanism which became one of the enduring influences in American thought and American literature. American Puritanism stressed predestination, original sin, total depravity, and limited atonement (or the salvation of a selected few) from God‗s grace. With such doctrines in their minds, Puritans left Europe for America in order to establish a theocracy in the New World. Puritans dreamed of living under a perfect order and worked with indomitable courage and confident hope toward building a new Garden of Eden in America, where man could at long last live the way he should. Over the years in the new homeland they built a way of life that stressed hard work (勤奋), thrift （节约）, piety (虔诚）, and sobriety (节制).
⏹American Puritanism is a two-fold cultural heritage, one being religious and
the other practical. Puritans were therefore called "practical idealist" or "doctrinaire opportunist―
(现实的理想主义者)
The Impact of Puritanism on American literature
1.对作家的价值观和态度的影响(乐观主义）
2. 文学作品写作技巧的影响- 象征主义
3.（朴素文风）The Puritan style of writing is characterized by simplicity.
Literary Scene
⏹Almost all literatures come from humble origins—diaries, journals, letters,
sermons (布道；讲道), travel books, etc. So did American literature. In the Colonial Period, personal literature occupied a major position in the literary scene. In content, they served either God or the expansion or both. In form, they were mainly the imitations of the English tradition.
Some important writers in this period include: William Bradstreet,John Winthrop, Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor and John Edward.
■Anne Bradstreet (安妮.布拉德斯特里特1612-1672), the first notable poet in America whose lyrics remained unsurpassed by any
American women writers for 200 years until the appearance of Emily
Dickinson. Her The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650)
《美国新崛起的第十位缪斯女神》was the first published book of
poetry written by a settler in the English colonies.
她后来的诗歌题材分为两类：
1. 体现当时盛行的请教主义精神的宗教沉思
The Flesh and the Spirit《灵与肉》, Meditation《沉思录》
2. 对丈夫、孩子、家庭、生活真诚炙热的爱
■To My Dear and Loving Husband《致我亲爱的丈夫》
■Before the Birth of One of Her Children《写在孩子出生之前》
The Complete Works of Anne Bradstreet :Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up In America (1650)《美国新崛起的第十穆斯女神》
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov‘d by wife, then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompence.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.
Then while we live, in love let‘s so persevere,
That when we live no more, we may live ever
If ever two were one, then surely we 若有两人能契合如一，定是我们。

If ever man were lov‘d by wife, then thee；若有男子受妻爱，定是你。

If ever wife was happy in a man, 若有女受之夫疼，
Compare with me ye women if you can和我相比，天下女子有谁敢答应。

I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold,你的爱胜过天下的金石，
Or all the riches that the East doth hold. 胜过一切宝藏。

My love is such that Rivers cannot quench, 我的爱犹如绵延不尽的清河
Nor ought but love from thee, give recompence. 无物可偿还，除了你对我的爱。

Thy love is such I can no way repay, 你的爱我难以报答
The heavens reward thee manifold I pray. 只能祈求上天赐你更多
Then while we live, in love lets so persevere, 有生之年，我们相爱不渝
That when we live no more, we may live ever. 无生之年，爱永生。

解析：
If ever two were one, then surely we．
If ever man were lov‟d by wife, then thee
She felt that their love was so strong that they were as one person. She wrote as if they were in the same body. They did not exist separate. It was very intense love she brought out in her poetry.
“That when we live no more, we may live ever”
⏹the paradox is where it says "when we live no more, we may live ever"
because it is contradicting what it already said - it said we will live no more but following that it says we will live ever. but while it is a contradiction, it shows some truth...revealing that we will live evermore in heaven...
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits,
A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong
For such despite they cast on female wits.
If what I do prove well, it won't advance,
They…ll say it's stolen, or else it was by chance.
我深深受害于每一张饶舌的尖嘴，
说我的手更适合缝纫的针线，
世人嘲笑我亵渎了诗人的笔，
这是我对我们女性心智的轻贱。

即使我作品优秀，也不会有何进展，
他们会说是剽窃，或者是偶然。

The Literature of the Revolutionary Period (独立革命前后的文学）
New Policy (P22)
Proclamation of 1763 《1763年公告》（又名《1763年皇家宣言》
Stamp Act of 1765 《1765年印花税条例》
⏹Basic theories（Isaac Newton - mechanical view of the Universe牛顿机械
论世界观促成了启蒙运动意识形态的萌芽；John Locke – Empiricism 约翰.洛克经验主义认识论；Deism –自然神论）
Benjamin Franklin
＊He was a scientist, remembered for the invention of bifocal glasses (双光眼镜), effective street lighting (道路照明灯)and lighting rod (避雷针)
＊He was a printer, issuing Poor Richard‟s Almanac 《穷理查历书》, a calendar filled with ads, weather forecasts, recipes, jokes and proverbs.
＊He was a public serviceman, helping to organize the American Philosophical Society and the University of Pennsylvania.
＊He was a statesman, being made a delegate to the Continental Congress. He was the only American who signed the four documents that created the U.S., therefore, he was considered one of the makers of the nation.
＊He was a literary man. Apart from the many foreign languages he knew, his The Autobiography 《自传》established biography as a mature literary genre in American literary history.
＊The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin（started 1771, 1784,1788,1790）The American Dream
⏹―The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better
and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunities for each according to ability and achievement. a dream of social order in which each man and each
woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous (巧合的) circumstances of birth or position.‖
―美国梦‖包含几个要素：美国提供了人人都能成功的机会；成功取决于自己的才能和努力，而不是家世和背景；人人都拥有平等的权利；人人都有信仰的自由。

⏹Franklin seems to embody and personify the American dream .
⏹Franklin believed in Deism i.e., God created everything and let it go/the
belief that there is a God who made the world but does not influence human lives. It is up to the human beings themselves to take care of themselves and to run the world. In order to get on in the world, one has to be industrious, frugal(节约) and prudent (谨慎的). Therefore, Franklin confidently believed that America was a land full of opportunities, which might be met through hard work and wise management.
⏹Born the son of a candlemaker, few people would have surmised that Franklin
would master so many disciplines. A leading American statesman, inventor, philanthropist, publisher, revolutionary, and thinker, Benjamin Franklin was truly the Enlightened American. His story proves that with determination and dedication, success is within anyone's grasp.
Chapter 3 Three American Romanticism(From the end of the 18th Century through to the outbreak of the Civil War )
⏹It starts with the publication of Washington Irving‘s The Stretch Book 华盛
顿.欧文《见闻札记》and ended with Walt Whitman‘s Leaves of Grass 惠特曼《草叶集》.
⏹Being a period of the great flowering of American literature, it is also called
“the American Renaissance“.
⏹Internal Background
1.Political background:
Democracy and political equality became the ideals of the new nation. (在政治上,自由和民主制度为美国浪漫主义文学提供了政治保障)
2.Economic Background
The spread of industrialization, the influx of immigration and the westward movement produced an economic boom and a strong sense of optimism and hope among people.
3.Cultural - Magazines increased in number
The North American Review 《北美评论》
The New York Mirror 《纽约鏡刊》
The Atlantic Monthly 《大西洋月刊》
External Influence
⏹Sir Walter Scott, with his border tales, helped toward the development of
American Indian Romance and the romantic description of landscape in America literature.
⏹The Gothic tradition and the graveyard tradition came to America and found
their way into the works of Edgar Allan Poe 爱伦坡.
⏹Burns, Byron, Wordsworth, and Coleridge inspired and spurred the American
imagination for lyrics of love and passion and despair.
⏹Uniqueness of American Romanticism
⏹The Westward Movement, the pioneering into the West, provided the
American writers with the best subject and materials. The wilderness always filled them with hope and drove them to look for an ideal world.
⏹The newness as a nation, with pe ople‘s ideals of individualism and freedom,
their dream that America was to be built into a new Garden of Eden, was strong enough to inspire romantic imagination.
⏹American moral values were basically Puritan. As a result, many writers tend
to moralize more than their English counterpart. They intended to edify (训导) rather than to entertain.
⏹The immigration in large numbers brought in mingling of races, which made
American literature take on a variety in subject matter.
⏹The major principles of American Romanticism (p33)
Early Romanticism
⏹The Fireside Poets 炉边诗人(America‘s First Literary Stars):Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier
⏹Henry Wadsworth Longfellow亨利．沃兹沃思．朗费罗(1807-1882)
Song of Hiawatha 《海华沙之歌》----美国人写的第一部印第安人史诗.
Paul Revere’s Ride《保罗·里维尔的夜奔》
Evangeline《伊凡吉琳》
Translated Dante’s Inferno from Italian into English但丁的《神曲》
⏹William Cullen Bryant 威廉·卡伦·布莱恩特1794-1878
―Thanatopsis‖《死亡观》
美国的第一位浪漫主义诗人
美国最早获得国际声誉的诗人
James Russell Lowell 詹姆士·罗素·洛威尔(1819-1891) (Active in anti-slavery causes)
⏹Oliver Wendell Holmes奥利弗·温德尔·霍姆斯1809-1894
Medical doctor –invented the term ―anesthesia.‖麻醉
Wrote The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table《早餐桌上的霸王》
⏹John Greenleaf Whittier约翰·格林利夫·惠蒂尔1807-1892 (Active in
anti-slavery movement)
Snow-bound《大雪封门》
⏹Lasting Impact
1.Longfellow remained the most popular American poet for decades..
Longfellow remains the only American poet to be immortalized by a bust in Westminster Abbey‘s Poets‘ Corner人们将他的半身像安放在威斯敏斯特教堂
的―诗人角‖，在美国作家中他是第一个获此殊荣的人
2.They took on causes in their poetry, such as the abolition of slavery, which
brought the issues to the forefront in a palatable way.
3.Through their scholarship and editorial efforts, they paved the way for later
Romantic writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman.
⏹Washington Irving (p36) 华盛顿.欧文
⏹James Fenimore Cooper (p42) 詹姆斯.费尼莫尔.库柏
⏹Transcendentalism 超验主义(1836-1860)
⏹Transcendentalism is a philosophical and literary movement that flourished in
new England from about 1836 to 1860. it is the summit of American Romanticism. It originated among a small group of intellectuals who were bound by adherence to an idealistic system of thought based on a belief in the essential unity of all creation , the innate goodness of man, and the supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the revelation of the deepest truths.
⏹Religious and philosophical contexts
⏹American Unitarianism 一神论教,唯一理教:否认三位一体（即圣父、圣子、圣灵
一体）之说，认为上帝只有一位，耶稣是人而不是神。

⏹Kant‘s theory of intuitive, mysterious, spontaneous nature of knowledge (康德
的先验论)
⏹Oriental mysticism （东方神秘主义）
⏹Hinduism （古印度宗教哲学思想―梵我合一‖）
⏹American Puritan tradition
⏹Characteristics of New England Transcendentalism P66
1 spirit, or the Oversoul
2 self-knowledge
3 individualism
4 nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God.
⏹Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882
Unitarian minister (一神教派牧师)
Poet and essayist
Founded the Transcendental Club
Popular lecturer
Banned from Harvard for 40 years following his Divinity School address 《神学院演讲》P77
Supporter of abolitionism
Nature 《论自然》P75 “Nature”has been called ―the Manifesto of American Transcendentalism”（超验主义宣言）and is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism;
The Poet <论诗人> it marked the birth of true American poetry
The Oversoul 《论超灵》
Self Reliance 《自助》
The American Scholar《论美国学者》P76
The Transcendentalist 《超验主义者》
Representative Men <代表性人物>
English Traits <英国人的特性>
The Conduct of Life <论为人处事>
⏹Essays Many of his famous essays are included in Essays, which convey the
best of his philosophical discussions, such as ―The American Scholar‖, ―Self-Reliance‖, ―The over-soul‖.
⏹Influence on American literature
1）His call for an independent cul ture in both ―Nature‖ and ―The American Scholar‖ played a very important part in the intellectual history of the nation.
2) He called on American writers to write about America in a way peculiarly American. In his opinion, the Americans should write about here and now instead of imitating and importing from other lands.
3) His importance in the intellectual history of America lies in the fact that he embodied a new nation‘s desire and struggle to assert its own identity in its formative period.
⏹Comments on him：
A founder of the Transcendental movement. Emerson was not only the shaper of a distinctly American philosophy embracing optimism, individuality, and mysticism, but one of the most influential figures of the nineteenth century.
Henry David Thoreau 亨利·戴维·梭罗1817-1862（Schoolteacher, essayist, poet，Influenced environmental movement，Supporter of abolitionism）
⏹“Civil Disobedience” (p86)<非暴力反抗>or<论公民的不服从>
⏹―A Plea for John Brown‖ (p82) <为约翰．布朗辩护>
⏹ A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers <在康科德及麦瑞迈克河
的一周>(P86)
⏹Walden / Life in the Woods P88 <沃尔登or华尔腾or瓦尔登湖/ 林中生
活>
1.The spiritual Journey (P88)
2．Duality of man and nature
3．Growth, Change and Renewal (P89)
4．The Individuality -Centrality and Independence
5．The Simple Life
⏹The Maine Woods <缅因森林>
⏹Letters to Various Person <书信集>
⏹Duality of man and nature (梭罗人与自然的二元对立解构）
Thoreau perceives man is simultaneously a physical being and as an intellectual spectator within his own body. Men embark on the spiritual quest may progress from living in reality to a more spiritual life.
Nature is perceived and enjoyed as both reality, the entity made up of matter, and a symbol of the spirit. He made the water in Walden Pond a symbol of spiritual knowledge of washing away evil, being reborn, being refreshed with the water of pure, innocent nature.
⏹
Amos Bronson Alcott 爱默斯·布朗森·爱尔考特1799-1888
Teacher and writer
Introduced art, music, P.E., nature study, and field trips; banished corporal punishment Father of novelist Louisa May Alcott
⏹Margaret Fuller 玛格丽特・富勒1810-1850
Journalist, critic, women‘s rights activist
First editor of The Dial 《日晷》, a transcendental journal
First female journalist to work on a major newspaper—The New York Tribune《纽约论坛报》
⏹William Ellery Channing 威廉·埃勒里·钱宁1818-1901
Poet and especially close friend of Thoreau
Published the first biography of Thoreau in 1873—Thoreau, The Poet-Naturalist
⏹High Romanticism (1850-1855)
⏹美国后期的浪漫主义文学代表作家
⏹Natheaniel Hawthorne纳撒尼尔·霍桑（1804年－1864年）
⏹Walt Whitman沃尔特·惠特曼（1819年－1892年）
⏹Herman Melville 赫尔曼·麦尔维尔（1819年－1891年）
⏹Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804—1864)纳撒尼尔.霍桑
His Works: collections of short stories:
⏹Twice-Told Tales (1837) 《故事重述》or 《尽人皆知的故事》
⏹Mosses from an Old Manse (1846) 《古屋青苔》
⏹The Snow-Image and Other Twice-Told Tales (1851)《雪人及其它故事重述》Novels:
The Scarlet Letter(1850) 《红字》--a treatment of the effects of sin on the human spirit.
The House of Seven Gables (1851)《有七个尖角阁的房子》
The Blithedale Romance (1852)《福谷传奇》
The Marble Faun (1860)《玉石收神》or《玉石雕像》
Hawthorne’s point of view 1:
⏹Hawthorne is influenced by Puritanism deeply. He was not a Puritan
himself, but he had Puritan ancestors who played an important role in his life and works.
⏹His works reveal the depth of his concern with the dark side of
Puritanism, the harshness and the persecution.
Hawthorne’s point of view 2:
1.Hawthorne always writes about man in society, rather than simply about man in
nature. In opposition to the transcendentalists, their work focused on the limitations and destructiveness of the human spirit. Anti-transcendentalism believed that the transcendentalists’point of view was too positive. They also believed that the works of these authors didn’t look very closely at the evil in the world. Whereas, anti-transcendentalists focused on the existence of sin and evil; therefore, their works were very dark.
2.Transcendentalist: beliefs of its author in its abundance of symbolism and in its emphasis on individuality and personal responsibility
(1) Evil is at the core of human life.
(2) To Hawthorne sin will get punished. Sin or evil can be passed from generation
to generation.
(3) Evil educates.
⏹Achievement is obtained “under the impact of and by engagement with
evil‖经历过犯罪，受到其影响，人们才能有所成就
⏹Man is better for the crime which brings about the fall.
人在犯罪后才能更好的完善自己
(4) He has disgust in science. One source of evil is overweening (too proud of
oneself) intellect （自视才智非凡的人）.
Hawthorne’s art:
1.He is good at exploring of the complexity of human psychology. He was anatomist of "the interior of the heart".
2.One salient feature of his art is his ambiguity. He always asks questions, but rarely answers them; he gropes, with no confidence in the outcome. He never offers a distinct, single and consistent attitude about man’s nature and the nature of the world he lives in.
3.The use of the supernatural can be seen as a hallmark (印记) of his art.
4.He is a master of symbolism.
Hawthorne’s influence
He was a major American writer now and the greatest writer living in the 19th century. He was regarded as a pioneer of psychological novel and a master of symbolism. With the publication of The Scarlet Letter, he secured his position in the literary history forever, and he influenced many writers in his time and later generations, such as Herman Melville, Henry James, William Dean Howells and William Faulkner etc. Symbolic meaning of letter”A” in <Scarlet Letter>
―A‖ at first it is a token of shame, ―adultery‖;
The genuine sympathy and help Hester offered to her fellow villagers changes it to “Able‖.
Later in the story, the letter “A”appears in the sky, signifying “Angel”. It may also represent Adamic, an archetypal vice (原罪恶）suggestive of “original sin”. Herman Melville (1819—1891)赫尔曼.梅尔维尔
⏹Melville's writings can be divided into two groups:
1) Early works
Novels:
⏹Typee (1846) 《泰比》
⏹Omoo (1847) 《奥穆》
⏹Mardi (1849) 《玛第》--adventures among the people of South Pacific
⏹Redburn (1849) 《莱德伯恩》--a voyage to England
⏹White Jacket (1850) 《白衣》--life on a United States
⏹Moby Dick (1851) –whaling
⏹Pierre (1852) 《皮埃尔》
2) Later Works
Novels:
⏹The Confidence-Man (1857) 《骗子》
⏹Billy Budd (1924) 《比利.巴德》
Long stories:
⏹Benito Cereno (1856)《贝尼托.西莱诺》
⏹Bartleby (1856) 《巴比妥》
Poem:
Clarel (1876)《克莱尔》
Moby Dick, which is one of the world‘s greatest masterpieces. It is an encyclopedia of everything, history, philosophy, religion, etc.
The appreciation of Moby Dick(The use of allegory and symbolism)
Theme: In addition to a detailed account of the operations of the whaling industry. But it is first a Shakespearean tragedy of man fighting against overwhelming odds in an indifferent and even hostile universe . It is a symbolic voyage of the mind in quest of the truth and knowledge of the universe, a spiritual exploration into man‘s deep reality and psychology.
（白鲸不仅为海上生活的生动描述，而且也是象征象征着人类同大自然的斗争以及人追求宇宙真理的心路历程）
Romantic Poets
＃Walt Whitman (1819—1892) 沃尔特.惠特曼
His Works:
⏹Leaves of Grass 《草叶集》—nine editions
⏹Drum Taps (1865) 《桴鼓集》—about civil war
⏹Two Rivulets (1876) 《两条小河》--dedication to 100th anniversary of US
⏹Democratic Vistas (1870) 《民主的前景》--collection of prose
⏹―Song of Myself‖ 自己之歌
⏹―I Hear America Singing‖我听见美国在歌唱
⏹―O, Captain! My Captain!‖哦．船长，我的船长！
⏹“I Sit and Look Out”我坐而眺望
Song of Myself (自我之歌)
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
我赞美我自己，歌唱我自己，
我所讲的一切，将对你们也一样适合，
因为属于我的每一个原子，也同样属于你。

我闲游，邀请我的灵魂一起，
我俯首下视，悠闲地观察一片夏天的草叶。

我的舌，我的血液中的每个原子，都是由这泥土这空气构成，
我生在这里，我的父母生在这里，他们的父母也生在这里，
我如今三十七岁，身体完全健康，
开始歌唱，希望不停地唱下去，直到死亡。

教条和学派暂且搁开，
退后一步，满足于现在它们所已给我的一切，
但决不能把他们全遗忘了，
不论是善事恶，我将随意之所及，
毫无顾忌，以一种原始的活力述说自然
⏹In "Song of Myself"《自我之歌》, Whitman sets forth two principal beliefs:
⏹the theory of universality, the poet is celebrating humanity as an integrated
whole. The whole poem ends on an extremely transcendental note: "I am large,
I contain multitudes（我很大，我包罗一切）".
⏹The other belief is in the singularity and equality of all beings in values.
⏹"Song of Myself" reveals a world of equality, without rank and hierarchy.
I Sit and Look Out
I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world,
and upon all oppression and shame,
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at
anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done,
I see in low life the mother misused by her children,
dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate,
I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the
treacherous seducer of young women,
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love
attempted to be hid, I see these sights on the earth,
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see
martyrs and prisoners,
I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting
lots who shall be kill'd to preserve the lives of the rest,
I observe the slights and degradations cast by
arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon
negroes, and the like;
All these-all the meanness and agony without end I
sitting look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.
我坐而眺望世界的一切忧患，一切的压迫和羞耻，
我听到青年人因自己所做过的事悔恨不安而发出的秘密的抽搐的哽咽，
我看见处于贫贱生活中的母亲为她的孩子们所折磨、绝望、消瘦，奄奄待毙，无人照管。

我看见被丈夫虐待的妻子，我看见青年妇女们所遇到的无信义的诱骗者，
我注意到企图隐蔽着的嫉妒和单恋的苦痛，我看见大地上的这一切，
我看见战争，疾病，暴政的恶果，我看见殉教者和囚徒，
我看见海上的饥馑，我看见水手们拈阄决定谁应牺牲来维持其余人的生命，
我看到倨傲的人们加之于工人、穷人、黑人等的污蔑与轻视，
我坐而眺望着这一切——一切无穷无尽的卑劣行为和痛苦，
我看着，听着，但我沉默无语。

Theme:
⏹In “I sit an look out” the writer displays his attitude towards the frightfulness
of the earthly world, regretful young men, misused wife, war, famine…
Although in the end the poet says he is silent, the title reveals his attitude: look out, warning readers of the ugliness hidden under the prosperous society. Style and language:
⏹Whitman was a daring experimentalist.
a.The use of the poetic "I". Speaking in the voice of "I", Whitman becomes all those
people in his poems, and yet remains "Walt Whitman", hence a discovery of the self in the other with such identification.
b.The use of free verse. Whitman broke free from the traditional iambic pentameter
and wrote free verse. Free verse is poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme
scheme.
c.The use of parallelism and phonetic recurrence.
d.The use of colorful words and vivid images.
His Importance:
1) He is the great typical American poet with his theme of an emergent America, its expansion, its individualism and its Americanness which is part of “American Renaissance”.
2) Whitman’s great contribution to American literature is his use of free verse. His poetry added to the literary independence of the new nation by breaking free of the convention of the iambic pentameter and exhibiting a freedom unknown before
3) Not only the form of Whitman’s free verse but also his thought of democracy have been influential in world literature, and remain the inspiring source of 20th-century literature.
4) Whitman’s influence over modern poetry is great in the world as well as in America. His best work has become part of the common property of western culture. Many later poets are on his debts.
Emily Dickinson(1830- ) Great female productive American poet
Her work: Poetry of Emily Dickinson (1955) <艾米莉.狄金森诗集>
Her view and theme:
1) Her poetry is a clear illustration of her religious- ethical and political-social
ideas;
2) Her basic tone was tragic;
3) Her themes concern death and immortality;
4) She sees nature as both gaily benevolent and cruel.
5) She emphasizes free will and humanresponsibility.
6) She holds that beauty, truth and goodness are ultimately one.
Her styles P134
Her poems:
I tasted a liquor never brewed《我品味未经酿造的饮料》
A bird came down the walk《一只小鸟沿小径》
I died for beauty –but was scarce《我为美而死—但几乎尚未》
Because I could not stop for death《因为我不能停止赴死》
I heard a fly buzz –when I died《我死时听到了苍蝇的嗡嗡声》
I taste a liquor never brewed
I taste a liquor never brewed
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!
Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.
When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!
Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!
我品尝了一种从未酿造过的酒，
用珍珠掏空挖成的酒杯；
并非莱茵河上所有的酒桶
都能流出这样的琼浆！
我是空气的酒鬼，
我纵情于露水，
从熔化的蓝天的酒馆中，
踉跄而出，穿过无尽的夏日。

当房东把喝醉的蜜蜂
赶出毛地黄的家门，
当蝴蝶否认它们的酒浆，
我还要饮得更多！
直到六翼天使摇晃着雪白的帽子，
直到圣徒们奔到窗前，
来看这小小的酗酒者
斜靠着太阳！
The poem "I taste a liquor never brewed" portrays the speaker's spiritual intoxication through an extended metaphor likening her soul drunkenness to alcohol inebriation (酩酊大醉) .
I died for Beauty—but was scarce
I died for Beauty—but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room—
He questioned softly ―Why I failed‖?
―For Beauty‖, I replied—
―And I—for truth—Themselves are One—
We Brethren4, are‖, He said—
And so, as Kinsmen5, met a Night6—
We talked between the Rooms—
Until the Moss had reached our lips—
And covered up—our names—
我为美死去，但是还不曾
安息在我的墓里，
又有个为真理而死去的人
来躺在我的隔壁。

他悄悄地问我为何以身殉？
―为了美，‖我说。

―而我为真理，两者不分家；
我们是兄弟两个。

‖
于是象亲戚在夜间相遇，
我们便隔墙谈天，
直到青苔爬到了唇际，
将我们的名字遮掩。

“I died for Beauty—but was scarce”displays her perception on beauty and truth through a fancy conversation between two persons in adjacent tombs. No matter on what behalf people lose their existence, for beauty or for truth, they will have to confront the same ending: forgetting and forgotten. The ultimate effect of this poem is to show that every aspect of human life –ideals, human feelings, identity itself –is erased by death.
I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me。