美国文学简史复习资料精华版

A Concise History of American Literature
Chapter 1 Colonial Period
I.Jonathan Edwards
1.life
2.works
(1)The Freedom of the Will
(2)The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended
(3)The Nature of True Virtue
3.ideas – pioneer of transcendentalism
(1)The spirit of revivalism
(2)Regeneration of man
(3)God’s presence
(4)Puritan idealism
II.Benjamin Franklin
1.works
(1)Poor Richard’s Almanac
(2)Autobiography
2.contribution
(1)He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital and the American
Philosophical Society.
(2)He was called "the new Prometheus who had stolen fire <electricity
in this case> from heaven〞.
(3)Everything seems to meet in this one man –"Jack of all trades〞.
Herman Melville thus described him "master of each and mastered
by none〞.
Chapter 2 American Romanticism
Section 1 Early Romantic Period
I.Washington Irving
1.several names attached to Irving
(1)first American writer
(2)the messenger sent from the new world to the old world
(3)father of American literature
2.works
(1)A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End
of the Dutch Dynasty
(2)The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. <He won a measure of
international recognition with the publication of this.>
(3)The History of the Life and V oyages of Christopher Columbus
(4)A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada
(5)The Alhambra
3.Literary career: two parts
(1)1809~1832
a.Subjects are either English or European
b.Conservative love for the antique
(2)1832~1859: back to US
4.style – beautiful
(1)gentility, urbanity, pleasantness
(2)avoiding moralizing – amusing and entertaining
(3)enveloping stories in an atmosphere
(4)vivid and true characters
(5)humour – smiling while reading
(6)musical language
II.James Fenimore Cooper
1.works
(1)Precaution <1820, his first novel, imitating Austen’s Pride and
Prejudice>
(2)The Spy <his second novel and great success>
(3)Leatherstocking Tales <his masterpiece, a series of five novels>
The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The
Pioneer, The Prairie
2.point of view
the theme of wilderness vs. civilization, freedom vs. law, order vs.
change, aristocrat vs. democrat, natural rights vs. legal rights
3.style
(1)highly imaginative
(2)good at inventing tales
(3)good at landscape description
(4)conservative
(5)characterization wooden and lacking in probability
(6)language and use of dialect not authentic
4.literary achievements
He created a myth about the formative period of the American nation. If the history of the United States is, in a sense, the process of the American settlers exploring and pushing the American frontier forever westward, then Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales effectively approximates the American national experience of adventure into the West. He turned the west and frontier as a useable past and he helped to introduce western tradition to American literature.
Section 2 Summit of Romanticism – American Transcendentalism
I.Appearance
1836, "Nature〞by Emerson
II.Features
1.spirit/oversoul
2.importance of individualism
3.nature – symbol of spirit/God
garment of the oversoul
4.focus in intuition <irrationalism and subconsciousness>
III.Influence
1.It served as an ethical guide to life for a young nation and brought about
the idea that human can be perfected by nature. It stressed religious tolerance, called to throw off shackles of customs and traditions and go forward to the development of a new and distinctly American culture.
2.It advocated idealism that was great needed in a rapidly expanded
economy where opportunity often became opportunism, and the desire to "get on〞obscured the moral necessity for rising to spiritual height.
3.It helped to create the first American renaissance –one of the most
prolific period in American literature.
IV.Ralph Waldo Emerson
1.works
(1)Nature
(2)Two essays: The American Scholar, The Poet
2.point of view
(1)One major element of his philosophy is his firm belief in the
transcendence of the "oversoul〞.
(2)He regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral
influence on man, and advocated a direct intuition of a spiritual and
immanent God in nature.
(3)If man depends upon himself, cultivates himself and brings out the
divine in himself, he can hope to become better and even perfect.
This is what Emerson means by "the infinitude of man〞.
(4)Everyone should understand that he makes himself by making his
world, and that he makes the world by making himself.
3.aesthetic ideas
(1)He is a complete man, an eternal man.
(2)True poetry and true art should ennoble.
(3)The poet should express his thought in symbols.
(4)As to theme, Emerson called upon American authors to celebrate
America which was to him a lone poem in itself.
4.his influence
V.Henry David Thoreau
1.works
(1)A Week on the Concord and Merrimack River
(2)Walden
(3)A Plea for John Brown <an essay>
2.point of view
(1)He did not like the way a materialistic America was developing and
was vehemently outspoken on the point.
(2)He hated the human injustice as represented by the slavery system.
(3)Like Emerson, but more than him, Thoreau saw nature as a genuine
restorative, healthy inf luence on man’s spiritual well-being.
(4)He has faith in the inner virtue and inward, spiritual grace of man.
(5)He was very critical of modern civilization.
(6)"Simplicity…simplify!〞
(7)He was sorely disgusted with "the inundations of the dirty
institutions of men’s odd-fellow society〞.
(8)He has calm trust in the future and his ardent belief in a new
generation of men.
Section 3 Late Romanticism
I.Nathaniel Hawthorne
1.works
(1)Two collections of short stories: Twice-told Tales, Mosses from and
Old Manse
(2)The Scarlet Letter
(3)The House of the Seven Gables
(4)The Marble Faun
2.point of view
(1)Evil is at the core of human life, "that blackness in Hawthorne〞
(2)Whenever there is sin, there is punishment. Sin or evil can be passed
from generation to generation <causality>.
(3)He is of the opinion that evil educates.
(4)He has disgust in science.
3.aesthetic ideas
(1)He took a great interest in history and antiquity. To him these furnish
the soil on which his mind grows to fruition.
(2)He was convinced that romance was the predestined form of
American narrative. To tell the truth and satirize and yet not to offend:
That was what Hawthorne had in mind to achieve.
4.style – typical romantic writer
(1)the use of symbols
(2)revelation of characters’ psychology
(3)the use of supernatural mixed with the actual
(4)his stories are parable <parable inform> – to teach a lesson
(5)use of ambiguity to keep the reader in the world of uncertainty –
multiple point of view
II.Herman Melville
1.works
(1)Typee
(2)Omio
(3)Mardi
(4)Redburn
(5)White Jacket
(6)Moby Dick
(7)Pierre
(8)Billy Budd
2.point of view
(1)He never seems able to say an affirmative yes to life: His is the
attitude of "Everlasting Nay〞<negative attitude towards life>.
(2)One of the major themes of his is alienation <far away from each
other>.
Other themes: loneliness, suicidal individualism <individualism
causing disaster and death>, rejection and quest, confrontation of
innocence and evil, doubts over the comforting 19c idea of progress
3.style
(1)Like Hawthorne, Melville manages to achieve the effect of ambiguity
through employing the technique of multiple view of his narratives.
(2)He tends to write periodic chapters.
(3)His rich rhythmical prose and his poetic power have been profusely
commented upon and praised.
(4)His works are symbolic and metaphorical.
(5)He includes many non-narrative chapters of factual background or
description of what goes on board the ship or on the route <Moby
Dick>
Romantic Poets
I.Walt Whitman
1.work: Leaves of Grass <9 editions>
(1)Song of Myself
(2)There Was a Child Went Forth
(3)Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
(4)Democratic Vistas
(5)Passage to India
(6)Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
2.themes –"Catalogue of American and European thought〞
He had been influenced by many American and European thoughts: enlightenment, idealism, transcendentalism, science, evolution ideas, western frontier spirits, Jefferson’s individualism, Civil W ar Unionism, Orientalism.
Major themes in his poems <almost everything>:
●equality of things and beings
●divinity of everything
●immanence of God
●democracy
●evolution of cosmos
●multiplicity of nature
●self-reliant spirit
●death, beauty of death
●expansion of America
●brotherhood and social solidarity <unity of nations in the world>
●pursuit of love and happiness
3.style: "free verse〞
(1)no fixed rhyme or scheme
(2)parallelism, a rhythm of thought
(3)phonetic recurrence
(4)the habit of using snapshots
(5)the use of a certain pronoun "I〞
(6)a looser and more open-ended syntactic structure
(7)use of conventional image
(8)strong tendency to use oral English
(9)vocabulary –powerful, colourful, rarely used words of foreign
origins, some even wrong
(10)sentences –catalogue technique: long list of names, long poem
lines
4.influence
(1)His best work has become part of the common property of Western
culture.
(2)He took over Whitman’s vision of the poet-prophet and poet-teacher
and recast it in a more sophisticated and Europeanized mood.
(3)He has been compared to a mountain in American literary history.
(4)Contemporary American poetry, whatever school or form, bears
witness to his great influence.
II.Emily Dickenson
1.works
(1)My Life Closed Twice before Its Close
(2)Because I Can’t Stop for Death
(3)I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I died
(4)Mine – by the Right of the White Election
(5)Wild Nights – Wild Nights
2.themes: based on her own experiences/joys/sorrows
(1)religion – doubt and belief about religious subjects
(2)death and immortality
(3)love – suffering and frustration caused by love
(4)physical aspect of desire
(5)nature – kind and cruel
(6)free will and human responsibility
3.style
(1)poems without titles
(2)severe economy of expression
(3)directness, brevity
(4)musical device to create cadence <rhythm>
(5)capital letters – emphasis
(6)short poems, mainly two stanzas
(7)rhetoric techniques: personification –make some of abstract ideas
vivid
parison: Whitman vs. Dickinson
1.Similarities:
(1)Thematically, they both extolled, in their different ways, an emergent
America, its expansion, its individualism and its Americanness, their
poetry being part of "American Renaissance〞.
(2)Technically, they both added to the literary independence of the new
nation by breaking free of the convention of the iambic pentameter
and exhibiting a freedom in form unknown before: they were
pioneers in American poetry.
2.differences:
(1)Whitman seems to keep his eye on society at large; Dickinson
explores the inner life of the individual.
(2)Whereas Whitman is "national〞in his outlook, Dickinson is
"regional〞.
(3)Dickinson has the "catalogue technique〞<direct, simple style>
which Whitman doesn’t have.
Edgar Allen Poe
I.Works
1.short stories
(1)ratiocinative stories
a.Ms Found in a Bottle
b.The Murders in the Rue Morgue
c.The Purloined Letter
(2)Revenge, death and rebirth
a.The Fall of the House of Usher
b.Ligeia
c.The Masque of the Red Death
(3)Literary theory
a.The Philosophy of Composition
b.The Poetic Principle
c.Review of Hawthorne’s Twice-told Tales
II.Themes
1.death –predominant theme in Poe’s writing
"Poe is not interested in anything alive. Everything in Poe’s writings is dead.〞
2.disintegration <separation> of life
3.horror
4.negative thoughts of science
III.Aesthetic ideas
1.The short stories should be of brevity, totality, single effect, compression
and finality.
2.The poems should be short, and the aim should be beauty, the tone
melancholy. Poems should not be of moralizing. He calls for pure poetry and stresses rhythm.
IV.Style – traditional, but not easy to read
V.Reputation: "the jingle man〞<Emerson>
VI.His influences
Chapter 3 The Age of Realism
I.Three Giants in Realistic Period
1.William Dean Howells –"Dean of American Realism〞
(1)Works
a.The Rise of Silas Lapham
b.A Chance Acquaintance
c. A Modern Instance
(2)Features of His Works
a.Optimistic tone
b.Moral development/ethics
cking of psychological depth
2.Henry James
(1)Literary career: three stages
a.1865~1882: international theme
●The American
●Daisy Miller
●The Portrait of a Lady
b.1882~1895: inter-personal relationships and some plays
●Daisy Miller <play>
c.1895~1900: novellas and tales dealing with childhood and
adolescence, then back to international theme
●The Turn of the Screw
●When Maisie Knew
●The Ambassadors
●The Wings of the Dove
●The Golden Bowl
(2)Aesthetic ideas
a.The aim of novel: represent life
mon, even ugly side of life
c.Social function of art
d.Avoiding omniscient point of view
(3)Point of view
a.Psychological analysis, forefather of stream of consciousness
b.Psychological realism
c.Highly-refined language
(4)Style –"stylist〞
nguage: highly-refined, polished, insightful, accurate
b.V ocabulary: large
c.Construction: complicated, intricate
3.Mark Twain <see next section>
Local Colorism
1860s, 1870s~1890s
I.Appearance
1.uneven development in economy in America
2.culture: flourishing of frontier literature, humourists
3.magazines appeared to let writer publish their works
II.Mark Twain – Mississippi
1.works
(1)The Gilded Age
(2)"the two advantages〞
(3)Life on the Mississippi
(4)A Conne cticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
(5)The Man That Corrupted Hardleybug
2.style
(1)colloquial language, vernacular language, dialects
(2)local colour
(3)syntactic feature: sentences are simple, brief, sometimes
ungrammatical
(4)humour
(5)tall tales <highly exaggerated>
(6)social criticism <satire on the different ugly things in society>
parison of the three "giants〞of American Realism
1.Theme
Howells – middle class
James – upper class
Twain – lower class
2.Technique
Howells – smiling/genteel realism
James – psychological realism
Twain – local colourism and colloquialism
Chapter 4 American Naturalism
I.Theodore Dreiser
1.works
(1)Sister Carrie
(2)The trilogy: Financier, The Titan, The Stoic
(3)Jennie Gerhardt
(4)American Tragedy
(5)The Genius
2.point of view
(1)He embraced social Darwinism – survival of the fittest. He learned to
regard man as merely an animal driven by greed and lust in a
struggle for existence in which only the "fittest〞, the most ruthless,
survive.
(2)Life is predatory, a "game〞of the lecherous and heartless, a jungle
struggle in which man, being "a waif and an interloper in Nature〞, a
"wisp in the wind of social forces〞, is a mere pawn in the general
scheme of things, with no power whatever to assert his will.
(3)No one is ethically free; everything is determined by a complex of
internal chemisms and by the forces of social pressure.
3.Sister Carrie
(1)Plot
(2)Analysis
4.Style
(1)Without good structure
(2)Deficient characterization
(3)Lack in imagination
(4)Journalistic method
(5)Techniques in painting。