美国文学简史期末复习考试资料
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i.The Colonial Period
1.关键词: America Puritanism
2.Calvinism特点: total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement,
Irresistible grace, Perseverance of the saints
3.Anne Bradstreet( P17 ): a Puritan poet be known as “The Muse”
4.Thomas Paine: one of continual, unswerving fight for the rights of man.
works: “Common Sense”“American Crisis”“The Rights of Man”“The Age of
Reason”理性时代
5.Phillip Freneau(P22): 美国文学史上的重要人物
dawning nationalism 代表人物
Poems: The Wild Honeysuckle野生的金银花
first modern American & the last medieval man
6.Jonathan Edwards( Calvinism )
a critical role in shaping the First Great Awakening
works: “The Freedom of the Will”《自由意志论》“The Great Doctrine of
Original Sin Defended”《伟哉原罪论辩》“The Nature of True Virtue”
“American Dream”“Self-made”
7.Benjamin Franklin(puritanism)
“Poor Richard’s Almance”“autobiography”新文学形式
“18th century enlightenment”
ii.Romanticism
1.Washington Irving(1783-1859)
①titles: “the father of American literature”
“the American Goldsmith”
②works: The Sketch Book (marked the beginning of American
Romanticism and the beginning of short stories as a genre in American
literature)
Rip Van Winkle (P47—P48)
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
2.James Fenimore Cooper(1789-1851)
①One of the first writer to write American Westward movement
②“The Leatherstocking Tales” (novel)
first is “The Pioneers”
---Plot:
---theme conflict between Natty Bumppo and Judge Temple-
---character:
Natty Bumppo---innocent, simple, honest and generous, for freedom,
against civilization, wilderness is good
Judge Temple---just, reasonable, for civilization and law
③Writing style:
intriguing plot
majestic landscape descriptions
rich imagination
wooden characterization
not authentic dialect
iii.New England Transcendentalism---the culmination of American Romanticism Beginning of the Transcendentalism---1836, Nature, Emerson (1830s –the Civil War)
Features:a:emphasizing on spirit or the Over-soul;b:stressing the importance of the individual;c:offering a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God.
1.Ralph Waldo Emerson:The founder of the Transcendentalist club and the
editor for a time of the journal the Dial
Works:
Nature --- “the Manifesto of American Transcen den talism” “the Bible of
New England”:
The Poet (from Nature)
The American Scholar --- “Intellectual Declaration of Independence”
2.Henry David Thoreau
Masterpiece: Walden (Failure first, success in the 20th century)
Content---a faithful record of his reflection in communicating with nature
3.Nathaniel Hawthorne
“The Scarlet Letter”
Plot(P74)
Theme:
---(general theme) evil and sin exist in human heart and will be punished
one day
moral, emotional and psychological effect of the sin on the people in general
---(specific theme) a hymn on the moral growth of the woman Hester when
sinned against
symbolism象征主义: “A”—Adultery—able—angel
“pearl”—treasure
4.Herman Melville
works: Moby Dick (1851)---little response, famous until the 20th century
Content:
---(general content) an encyclopedia of everything
---(specific content) a tragedy of man fighting against overwhelming
power in an indifferent even hostile world
5.Edgar Allan Poe
Theme: The death of beauty
Sense of loss
Works:
Poem--- “The Raven” “To Helen” “Annabel Lee”
Writing style:
Musical
Repetition of words
Paralleled structure
Melancholy atmosphere(tone)
Short story---The Fall of the House of Usher
Plot: (P112)
Theme: the fall of the house---the annihilation (disintegration) and of person
6.Emily Dickinson
Subject and theme:
①(almost one third) Death and immortality
“My life closed twice before its close”
“Because I could not stop for death”
theme: Everyone can’t live forever. Only after death can we get
immortality (immortality of soul)
“ I heard a Fly Buzz- When I died”
theme: skeptical & ambivalent about death
reluctance to death
②Love
“Wild Nights-Wild nights” (P99)
③nature (both benevolent and cruel)
“I’ll tell you how the sun rose”
④emphasis of free will and human responsibility
“To fight aloud”
“A triumph may be”
⑤soul ( conviction of her sovereignty)
“I know that He exists”
“The Brain is wider than the sky”
Theme:
influence of Transcendentalism
Human being’s mind (soul) is as divine as God
⑥beauty, truth and goodness are ultimately one
“I died for beauty-but was scare”
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant” (P102)
Writing style: emotional, original, against tradition
Choice of words, verbal construction (capitalized and dash), spelling, full
of fresh images, brief, direct, plain words but not easy to read
Influence: precursor to the Imagist movement
7.Walt Whitman
Works: “Leaves of Grass”草叶集(9 editions from 1855 to 1892, Famous until
the 5th edition)
Poems in Leaves of Grass:
“Song of Myself”(most famous one)
“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” (1859)
“When Lilacs紫丁香La st in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (1865)
“O Captain My Captain!”
Writing style: free verse( no regular rhyme, but musical)
iv.过渡时期
Harriet Beecher Stowe
work: Uncle Tom’s Cabin---The greatest manifesto of American anti-slavery (最有名的反奴隶制作品)
Content: a faithful record of American black people's miserable life.
v.Realism 镀金时代Gilded Age
1.William Dean Howells豪厄尔斯
①title: “champion of literary realism in US”“first president of American
Academy of Arts and Letters”
②works:
essay--- Criticism and Fiction
novel---The Rise of Silas Lapham
Plot: P120-121
Character: Silas Lapham---common Bostonian of the late 19th century,
average America happy with his family and proud of his success in the world
Theme:
house---symbol of Lapham’s success (in material) an d aspiration for the polite society
the burning of the house---financial fall and moral rise
2.Henry James
①themes:exchanges between Americans and Europeans美国和欧洲文化
的冲突
②写作手法:a. eliminates the author and gives the reader the illusion of
being present at the scene of action让读者置身于情境中
b. without comments or explanations: Dramatize, only dramatize, is his
lesson作者只设定情境
③Three distinctive periods:
a. 1865-1882 novels
The American (1877) 美国人
The Europeans (1878) 欧洲人
The Portrait of a Lady (1881) 淑女本色贵妇的肖像
Daisy Miller(1878) 短篇小说
b.1882-1895 plays
c.1895-1990 novels
The Turn of the Screw(1898)短篇小说碧庐冤孽(螺丝在旋紧)
The Wings of the Dove (1902) 鸽之翼
The Ambassadors (1903) 大使(奉使记)
The Golden Bowl (1904) 金碗
3.Mark Twain(Local Colorism)
①Works: The Adventure of Tom Sawyer
The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn 汤姆索亚历险记的续集,海明威称赞“all modern American literature comes”
②theme: racism& slavery
intellectual& moral education
The hypocrisy of civilized” society
③real name: Samuel Langhorne Clemens
④背景: Mississippi River
vi.Naturalism(是现实主义的高级阶段)
Time: at the end of the 19th century
Subject of naturalist: detailed description of lives of the low and the abnormal, frank description of human passion and sexuality, and portrayal of men overwhelmed by nature
Theme of naturalists: pessimistic, deterministic
自然主义的起源:Emile Zola “surrounding and heredity遗传can decide one’s destiny”
写作手法:ironic讽刺, less sympathy, more serious than realism, deterministic决定论
1.Stephen Crane
①Works: (novels) Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) and The Red Badge of
Courage (1895) (short stories) “The Open Boat”
②Writing style: psychological description, visual beauty with symbols
2.Frank Norris
①works: (Novel) McTeague麦克提格(1899)首部全面展示自然主义的作品
the Octopus章鱼(best work) (1901) railway
Writing style:
rich material
fresh imagery
poetic mode of fiction
precise and exact word
(Essay of literary criticism) The Responsibilities of the Novelists (1903)
3.O. Henry(a prolific American short-story writer)多产短篇小说家
①Real name: William Porter
②The Gift of the Magi
③Writing style: short, interesting and clever plot, good-natured humor,
surprising end, keen observation of details, slang and colloquial
expressions
4.Theodore Dreiser西奥多·德莱塞
works:Sister Carrie(1990)《嘉丽妹妹》
Jennie Gerhardt (1911)《珍妮姑娘》(姐妹篇)
The Financier (1912) 《金融家》“Trilogy of Desire” (欲望三部曲) The Titan (1914)《巨头》
The Stoic(1947)《斯多葛》The "Genius" (1915) 《天才》--autobiographical novel
An American Tragedy--greatest and most successful Political commentary set
5.Jack London
Works:
---Reflection of his Involvement in the socialist movement:
The Iron Heel, The People of the Abyss
---Reflection of his belief in Darwinism:
The Call of the Wild (1903)适者生存, The Sea Wolf (1904)
---Reflection of the conflicting view :
autobiographical novel Martin Eden (1909)
vii.Modernism
Two literary periods
•1920s --- The First World War (a decade of great joy and happenings )
•1930s--- The Great Depression
1.Ezra Pound--- the founder of Imagist movement(深受中国文化的影响)
works: translations of Lipo’s poems “The River- Merchant’s Wife”翻译李白
的《长干行》
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd ;
Petals on a wet, black bough.—Ezra Pound
2.T. S. Eliot
Poems
The Waste Land (1922)---spiritual crisis of postwar Europe, like a manifesto
of the “Lost generation”
The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock (1917)--- a poem with a notable modern
emotional color,意识流,现代主义情感色彩
3.Wallace Stevens
Basic theme: interrelationship between reality and art, power of imagination
Works: “Anecdote of the Jar”古坛轶事
4.William Carlos Williams
Works: Famous poem: Paterson 帕特森(1946–58).
Subject: everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people.
Writing style: unusual meters and styles, easy and enjoyable to read
5.Carl Sandburg---One of The greatest poets in the “Chicago Renaissance”
---Chicago Poems
6.Robert Frost
Subject: the people and landscape of New England.
(Misconception of him as a lyric poet or as an authentic painter of local
landscape)
Theme: (universal and abstract) the complexity of human existence
Works:
poem collection:
A Boy’s Will (1913), North of Boston(1914)
New Hamphshire(1923),
Collected Poems(1930),
A Further Range(1936),
A Witness Tree(1942)
Some famous poems:
“After Apple Picking”
“Mending Wall”
“Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening”
“The Road not Taken”
“Design”
“The Wood-Pile”
Writing style:
---form
to retain traditional forms of poetry
---theme
deceptively simple (trivial subjects)
---language
lucid, easy, fluent
7.William Faulkner: one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers
---one of the southern writers (fictional Yoknapatawpha County)
---the Nobel Prize-winning novelist(1949)
---a famous short story writer
Works: 19 novels, 3volumes of short stories
•poem collection: The Marble Faun, 1924)
•Novel:The Sound and the Fury, 1929喧哗与躁动
As I Lay Dying, 1930
Light in August, 1932
Absalom, Absalom!, 1936
Go Down, Moses, 1942
•short story: “A Rose For Emily”
Theme: general human situation
Writing style: difficult and experimental
•Vivid characterization( character with great independence)
•Multiple narrators
•Story-novel (emphasis on narrative)
•Modern stream of consciousness (fragmentary and obscure)
• A variety of English
8. F. Scott Fitzgerald
work: The Great Gatsby(1925)
Themes: The decline衰落of American Dream in the 1920s
The Hollowness空虚of the upper class
Symbols: The green light
9.Ernest Hemingway
①Nick Adams, a Hemingway hero, first appears in the novel In Our Time
(1925)
②The Sun Also Rises (1926)
Jake Barnes
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
Frederick Henry & Catherine Barkley
Death in the Afternoon (1932 )
Green Hills of Africa (1935)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
Manolin & Santiago
viii.American drama
1.Eugene O’Neil(1888 – 1953)
father of American drama
Works:
first published play, Beyond the Horizon (1920) on Broadway
The Iceman Cometh (1946)
Long Days Journey into Night (1956):an autobiographical play and released
after O'Neill's death.
2.John Steinbeck
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962
Famous for The Grapes of Wrath (1939), a novel widely considered to be a
20th-century classic.。