美国文学史期末参考复习资料

仅作参考，最主要还是要自己消化，整理

Chapter 1 Colonial Period

1. Puritanism: American puritans accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God.

2. Influence

(1) A group of good qualities – hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety (serious and thoughtful) influenced

American literature.

(2) It led to the everlasting myth. All literature is based on a myth – garden of Eden.

(3) Symbolism: the American puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chi efly instrumental

in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American.

(4) With regard to their writing, the style is fresh, simple and direct; the rhetoric is plain and

honest, not without a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible.

II. Overview of the literature

1. types of writing

diaries, histories, journals, letters, travel books, autobiographies/biographies, sermons

2. writers of colonial period

(1) Anne Bradstreet

(2) Edward Taylor

III. Benjamin Franklin

1. life

2. works

(1) Poor Richard’s Almanac

(2) Autobiography

3. 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. American Romanticism

1. Background

(1) Political background and economic development

(2) Romantic movement in European countries

Derivative – foreign influence

2. features

(1) American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new experience and

contained “an alien quality” for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place” was radically

new and alien.

(2) There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider. American romantic authors

tended more to moralize. Many American romantic writings intended to edify more than they

entertained.

(3) The “newness” of Americans as a nation is in connection with Am erican Romanticism.

(4) As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American romanticism was both

imitative and independent.

II. Washington Irving: Father of American Literature

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. life

3. 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 Voyages of Christopher Columbus

(4) A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada

(5) The Alhambra

4. Literary career: two parts

(1) 1809~1832