美国文学课件4

• “The Universe is composed of Nature and the Soul.” • “Spirit is present everywhere.”
About Transcendentalism
Club: Transcendentalist Club
Transcendentalist journal: The Dial
• Lecturing • Text-analysis
Leading writers
Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
Manifesto
In 1836 the publication of Nature by Emerson pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New England Transcendentalism. Nature is regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism. It says in the book:
2) Moby Dick
Moby Dick possesses various symbolic meanings for various individuals. 1) Symbol of nature for human beings, because it is mysterious, powerful, unknown. 2) Symbol of evil for the Captain Ahab. 3) Symbol of good and purity because of its whiteness.
Main Ideas (Features) of N.E.T.
• 1. placing emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe --- a new way of looking at the world • 2. stressing the importance of the individual. --- a new way of looking at man • 3. offering a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of Spirit or God
Evaluation
• Moby Dick is, critics have agreed, one of the world’s greatest masterpieces. To get to know the 19th century American mind and America itself, one has to read this book. • One of the classics of American Literature and even world literature.
Works
1. Redburn 2. Typee 3. Omoo 4. Moby Dick 5. Mardi 6. White Jacket 7. Pierre 8. Billy Budd 1849 1846 1874 1851 1849 1850 1852 1924
Themes of Moby Dick
Henry David Thoreau(1817-1862)
• A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Walden---a prophet of individualism in American literature
• He was one of the three great American authors of the last century who had no contemporary readers and yet became great in this century. • Herman Melville • Emily Dickinson.
3) Voyage of the Pequod Symbol of the pursuit of ideals, adventure, and the hunt in the vast wilderness. 4) Ahab Symbol of solipsism, revenge and then evil. 5) Sea Symbol of vastness, loneliness, and isolation.
• Moby Dick is an encyclopedia of everything, history, philosophy, religion, etc. in addition to a detailed account of the operations of the whaling industry.
• New England Transcendentalism was, in actuality, Romanticism in Puritan soil.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The American Scholar--Intellectual Declaration of Independence Nature ---the Bible of New England Transcendentalism
《教长的 黑面纱》
《好小伙
儿布朗》
h)
g)
《拉普齐 尼博士的 女儿》
Life
Hawthorne was born in Salem Massachusetts. Some of his ancestors were men f prominence (突出)in the Puritan theocracy of seventeenth-century New England. One of them was a colonial magistrate, notorious for his part in the persecution of the Quakers, and another was a judge at the Salem Witchcraft Trial in 1692.
《红字 》
d)
The House of the Seven Gables 1851 The Blithedale Romance The Marble Faun 1860
《七个尖角阁的房子》
e)
1852
《福谷传奇》
d)
《大理石雕像》
g)
“Young Goodman Brown”
“The Minister‟s Black Veil” “Dr. Rappacini‟s Daughter”
Symbols
• 1) The Pequod The Pequod is a symbol of doom. It is painted a gloomy black and covered in whale teeth and bones, literally bristling with the mementos of violent death. It is, in fact, marked for death. Adorned like a primitive coffin, the Pequod becomes one. )
Sources: ---German Idealism, ---German Transcendentalism ---American Puritanism.
Definition by Emerson
“What is probably called Transcendentalism among us is idealism; idealism as appears in 1842.” Transcendental: Whatever belongs to the class of intuitive (直 觉的) thought
• Emerson’s aesthetics brought about a revolution in American literature in general and in American poetry in particular. • It marked the birth of true American poetry and true American poets such as Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. • He embodied a new nation’s desire and struggle to assert its own identity in its formative period.
Teaching Materials
• Hawthorne “The Minister’s Black Veil” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “A Psalm of Life” Edgar Allan Poe “Annabel Lee”
Teaching Methodology
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
His life represents: one of the greatest tragedies in the North American literary history, one of the greatest losses to American literature, one of the most disgraceful episodes of critical stupidity in the United States
• 1. Search for truth The story deals with the human pursuit of truth and the meaning of existence. 2. Conflict between Good and Evil. 3. Conflict between Man and Nature. 4. Isolation between man and man; man and nature; man and society. 5. Solipsism.
6. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Collections of short stories
Works
《故事 重述》
a) b) c)
Twice-Told Tales 1837 Mosses from an Old Manse 1843 The Scarlet Letter 1850 《古宅青苔》
American Literature
Lecture 4
Objectives
• Enable the Ss to know the background, representative writers and their works of the Romantic period in American literary history; • Enable the Ss to appreciate Hawthorne’s style by a close reading of “The Minister’s Black Veil” • Enable the Ss to know how to appreciate poems by analyzing Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” from the perspective of form and theme etc.