美国文学简史1
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A Concise History of American LiteratureChapter 1 Colonial PeriodI.Jonathan Edwards1.life2.works(1)The Freedom of the Will(2)The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended(3)The Nature of True Virtue3.ideas – pioneer of transcendentalism(1)The spirit of revivalism(2)Regeneration of man(3)God’s presence(4)Puritan idealismII.Benjamin Franklin1.works(1)Poor Richard’s Almanac(2)Autobiography2.contribution(1)He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital and the AmericanPhilosophical Society.(2)He was called "the new Prometheus who had stolen fire <electricityin 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 masteredby none〞.Chapter 2 American RomanticismSection 1 Early Romantic PeriodI.Washington Irving1.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 literature2.works(1)A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the Endof the Dutch Dynasty(2)The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. <He won a measure ofinternational 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 Alhambra3.Literary career: two parts(1)1809~1832a.Subjects are either English or Europeanb.Conservative love for the antique(2)1832~1859: back to US4.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 languageII.James Fenimore Cooper1.works(1)Precaution <1820, his first novel, imitating Austen’s Pride andPrejudice>(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, ThePioneer, The Prairie2.point of viewthe theme of wilderness vs. civilization, freedom vs. law, order vs.change, aristocrat vs. democrat, natural rights vs. legal rights3.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 authentic4.literary achievementsHe 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 TranscendentalismI.Appearance1836, "Nature〞by EmersonII.Features1.spirit/oversoul2.importance of individualism3.nature – symbol of spirit/Godgarment of the oversoul4.focus in intuition <irrationalism and subconsciousness>III.Influence1.It served as an ethical guide to life for a young nation and brought aboutthe 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 expandedeconomy 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 mostprolific period in American literature.IV.Ralph Waldo Emerson1.works(1)Nature(2)Two essays: The American Scholar, The Poet2.point of view(1)One major element of his philosophy is his firm belief in thetranscendence of the "oversoul〞.(2)He regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moralinfluence on man, and advocated a direct intuition of a spiritual andimmanent God in nature.(3)If man depends upon himself, cultivates himself and brings out thedivine 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 hisworld, 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 celebrateAmerica which was to him a lone poem in itself.4.his influenceV.Henry David Thoreau1.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 andwas 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 genuinerestorative, 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 dirtyinstitutions of men’s odd-fellow society〞.(8)He has calm trust in the future and his ardent belief in a newgeneration of men.Section 3 Late RomanticismI.Nathaniel Hawthorne1.works(1)Two collections of short stories: Twice-told Tales, Mosses from andOld Manse(2)The Scarlet Letter(3)The House of the Seven Gables(4)The Marble Faun2.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 passedfrom 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 furnishthe soil on which his mind grows to fruition.(2)He was convinced that romance was the predestined form ofAmerican 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 viewII.Herman Melville1.works(1)Typee(2)Omio(3)Mardi(4)Redburn(5)White Jacket(6)Moby Dick(7)Pierre(8)Billy Budd2.point of view(1)He never seems able to say an affirmative yes to life: His is theattitude of "Everlasting Nay〞<negative attitude towards life>.(2)One of the major themes of his is alienation <far away from eachother>.Other themes: loneliness, suicidal individualism <individualismcausing disaster and death>, rejection and quest, confrontation ofinnocence and evil, doubts over the comforting 19c idea of progress3.style(1)Like Hawthorne, Melville manages to achieve the effect of ambiguitythrough 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 profuselycommented upon and praised.(4)His works are symbolic and metaphorical.(5)He includes many non-narrative chapters of factual background ordescription of what goes on board the ship or on the route <MobyDick>Romantic PoetsI.Walt Whitman1.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 Rocking2.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 happiness3.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 foreignorigins, some even wrong(10)sentences –catalogue technique: long list of names, long poemlines4.influence(1)His best work has become part of the common property of Westernculture.(2)He took over Whitman’s vision of the poet-prophet and poet-teacherand 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, bearswitness to his great influence.II.Emily Dickenson1.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 Nights2.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 responsibility3.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 ideasvividparison: Whitman vs. Dickinson1.Similarities:(1)Thematically, they both extolled, in their different ways, an emergentAmerica, its expansion, its individualism and its Americanness, theirpoetry being part of "American Renaissance〞.(2)Technically, they both added to the literary independence of the newnation by breaking free of the convention of the iambic pentameterand exhibiting a freedom in form unknown before: they werepioneers in American poetry.2.differences:(1)Whitman seems to keep his eye on society at large; Dickinsonexplores 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 PoeI.Works1.short stories(1)ratiocinative storiesa.Ms Found in a Bottleb.The Murders in the Rue Morguec.The Purloined Letter(2)Revenge, death and rebirtha.The Fall of the House of Usherb.Ligeiac.The Masque of the Red Death(3)Literary theorya.The Philosophy of Compositionb.The Poetic Principlec.Review of Hawthorne’s Twice-told TalesII.Themes1.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 life3.horror4.negative thoughts of scienceIII.Aesthetic ideas1.The short stories should be of brevity, totality, single effect, compressionand finality.2.The poems should be short, and the aim should be beauty, the tonemelancholy. Poems should not be of moralizing. He calls for pure poetry and stresses rhythm.IV.Style – traditional, but not easy to readV.Reputation: "the jingle man〞<Emerson>VI.His influencesChapter 3 The Age of RealismI.Three Giants in Realistic Period1.William Dean Howells –"Dean of American Realism〞(1)Worksa.The Rise of Silas Laphamb.A Chance Acquaintancec. A Modern Instance(2)Features of His Worksa.Optimistic toneb.Moral development/ethicscking of psychological depth2.Henry James(1)Literary career: three stagesa.1865~1882: international theme●The American●Daisy Miller●The Portrait of a Ladyb.1882~1895: inter-personal relationships and some plays●Daisy Miller <play>c.1895~1900: novellas and tales dealing with childhood andadolescence, 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 ideasa.The aim of novel: represent lifemon, even ugly side of lifec.Social function of artd.Avoiding omniscient point of view(3)Point of viewa.Psychological analysis, forefather of stream of consciousnessb.Psychological realismc.Highly-refined language(4)Style –"stylist〞nguage: highly-refined, polished, insightful, accurateb.V ocabulary: largec.Construction: complicated, intricate3.Mark Twain <see next section>Local Colorism1860s, 1870s~1890sI.Appearance1.uneven development in economy in America2.culture: flourishing of frontier literature, humourists3.magazines appeared to let writer publish their worksII.Mark Twain – Mississippi1.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 Hardleybug2.style(1)colloquial language, vernacular language, dialects(2)local colour(3)syntactic feature: sentences are simple, brief, sometimesungrammatical(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 Realism1.ThemeHowells – middle classJames – upper classTwain – lower class2.TechniqueHowells – smiling/genteel realismJames – psychological realismTwain – local colourism and colloquialismChapter 4 American NaturalismI.Theodore Dreiser1.works(1)Sister Carrie(2)The trilogy: Financier, The Titan, The Stoic(3)Jennie Gerhardt(4)American Tragedy(5)The Genius2.point of view(1)He embraced social Darwinism – survival of the fittest. He learned toregard man as merely an animal driven by greed and lust in astruggle for existence in which only the "fittest〞, the most ruthless,survive.(2)Life is predatory, a "game〞of the lecherous and heartless, a junglestruggle 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 generalscheme of things, with no power whatever to assert his will.(3)No one is ethically free; everything is determined by a complex ofinternal chemisms and by the forces of social pressure.3.Sister Carrie(1)Plot(2)Analysis4.Style(1)Without good structure(2)Deficient characterization(3)Lack in imagination(4)Journalistic method(5)Techniques in painting。
新编美国文学简史
• 第五章 爱默生和梭罗与超险主义（1830-1850） 第一节 爱默生与美国超险主义 第二节 梭罗及其《瓦尔登湖》 第三节 超险主义与中国古典哲学思想 第六章 美国“文艺复兴”文学（1830-1860） 第一节 霍桑的小说创作 第二节 麦尔维尔的小说创作 第三节 “南方作家”及其他小说作品 第四节 朗弗罗及共19世纪主要诗人 第五节 道格拉斯与其他散文作家 第六节 惠特曼的诗歌创作 第七节 惠特曼与中国文学
• 第七章 美国文学批评的初起与发展 第一节 早期美国文学评论概述 第二节 坡的文学批评与文学创作理论 第三节 其他小说诗歌理论 附录 一、大事年表 二、主要参考书目 三、中文索引 四、英文索引 后记...
概论 美国文学的源起与发展（起始1860）.
第一章 美国印第安传统文学 第一节 印第安典仪与曲词文学 第二节 印第安起源神话与其他传说 第二章 北美殖民时期文学（1950-1750） 第一节 殖民地建立与开发的一般叙述 第二节 历史意识与殖民地叙史文学 第三节 清教思想的表述及其文学特征 第四节 布拉德斯特理与早期美国诗歌 第五节 殖民时期的其他主要散文作家
• 第三章 独立革命前后的文学（1750-1810） 第一节 独立革命时期的政论文学 第二节 独立革命时期的其他散文 第三节 独立革命时期的美国诗歌 第四节 美国戏剧的初始与发展 第五节 美国小说的产生与发展.. 第四章 美国浪漫主义文学的起始（18101840） 第一节 欧文的散文与小说 第二节 库柏及其小说创作 第三节 坡及其短篇小说 .第四节 坡和布赖恩特与美国浪漫主义诗歌
美国文学简史 中文版
美国文学(American Literature)美国文学的历史不长，它几乎是和美国自由资本主义同时出现，较少受到封建贵族文化的束缚。
美国早期人口稀少，有大片未开发的土地，为个人理想的实现提供了很大的可能性。
美国人民富于民主自由精神，个人主义、个性解放的观念较为强烈，这在文学中有突出的反映。
美国又是一个多民族的国家，移民不断涌入，各自带来了本民族的文化，这决定了美国文学风格的多样性和庞杂性。
美国文学发展的过程就是不断吸取、融化各民族文学特点的过程。
许多美国作家来自社会下层，这使得美国文学生活气息和平民色彩都比较浓厚，总的特点是开朗、豪放。
内容庞杂与色彩鲜明是美国文学的另一特点。
个性自由与自我克制、清教主义与实用主义、激进与反动、反叛和顺从、高雅与庸俗、高级趣味与低级趣味、深刻与肤浅、积极进取与玩世不恭、明快与晦涩、犀利的讽刺与阴郁的幽默、精心雕琢与粗制滥造、对人类命运的思考和探索与对性爱的病态追求等倾向，不仅可以同时并存，而且形成强烈的对照。
从来没有一种潮流或倾向能够在一个时期内一统美国文学的天下。
美国作家敏感、好奇，往往是一个浪潮未落，另一浪潮又起。
作家们永远处在探索和试验的过程之中。
20世纪以来，许多文学潮流起源于美国，给世界文学同时带来积极的与消极的影响。
殖民地时期印第安人的文化欧洲人发现新大陆的时候，北美洲的土著居民印第安人处于原始公社制度各种不同的阶段。
印第安人在向大自然的斗争中创造了自己的文化，主要是民间口头创作，包括神话传说和英雄传说。
由于他们没有文字，这些传说后来才得以整理问世，启发了后世美国作家的灵感。
早期移民的文化移民刚到新大陆时忙于生存斗争，所以开始时文学发展比较缓慢。
最早发表的关于北美的作品是游记、日记之类的文字。
作者都是英国人。
英国殖民地建立之后，统治者利用宗教，主要是清教主义作为控制殖民地思想意识的主要手段，因此许多出版物是关于神学的研究。
著名的作家有科顿·马瑟(1663-1728)和乔纳森。
[指南]美国文学简史
![[指南]美国文学简史](https://img.taocdn.com/s3/m/d62f9c3e905f804d2b160b4e767f5acfa0c78355.png)
美国文学简史一、十九世纪以前美国是一个年轻的国家。
作为一个国家，它的历史只能从1776 年7 月4 日算起。
作为历史中一个不可分割的组成部分的美国文学史，严格地说，也是从这一天开始谱写的。
哥伦布在1492 年发现新大陆之前，这块土地的主人是印第安人，他们的各个部落还处在原始公社制度各个不同的发展阶段，他们本身并没有发达的文学。
遭到殖民主义者的野蛮屠杀和驱赶之后，这个种族已处于濒临灭绝的境地，仅有的口头创作也几乎完全中断。
美国独立以前，北美大陆受欧洲人统治长达几个世纪。
由于残酷的殖民经治以掠夺财富和剥削廉价劳力为目的，因此，北美大陆既没有发达的经济，更没有发达的文化。
从这个意义上说，美利坚民族的文化，实际上是欧洲文化的移植，文学和艺术绝大数是欧洲的舶来品。
殖民地时期美国仅有的几位诗人和民间作家，由于历史条件的局限和自身生活的局限，也没有能写出具有美洲特色的作品。
独立之后，美国的文学虽然还处于襁褓之中，但它已经开始摆脱殖民文化的桎梏。
在民族独立的历史关头，美国人民，特别是作为当时站在革命斗争最前列的资产阶级左翼分子，已经认识到了建立民族文学的重要性。
一批年轻的诗人就曾预言，美国文学必将有一个灿烂的未来；他们满腔热情地为这个未来的灿烂文学增砖添瓦，贡献自己的聪明才智。
尽管如此，独立以后相当长的一段时间里，美国还不能很快摆脱在文化上依附英国的状况，不利于民族文学繁荣发展的条件依然存在。
首先，在取得政治上的统一以后，各地区在经济、文化上的发展并不平衡。
当时西部大部分还是处女地，那里除了民间故事外，一时还不可能出现反映西部开发业迹的成熟作品。
在愚昧落后的南部，真正的民族文化无从谈起。
思想意识异常顽固的大不列颠王国的臣民，对这个新生国家总是抱着一种不可名状的仇恨和敌视。
他们鄙视美国的一切，当然也包括美国年轻幼稚的文学。
面对英国的一片嘲笑和挖苦声，已经获得了独立的美国人民决心使自己的国家在政治、经济、文化等各个领域都拥有充分的发言权，他们需要有自己的工业、农业、科学和文化。
美国文学史简述五篇范文
美国文学史简述五篇范文第一篇：美国文学史简述A Short Summary of the History of American LiteratureIn American Literature, Colonial and Revolutionary period, American Romanticism, The Realistic Period and American Modernism are the four important periods.During 17C and 18C is the American colonial and Revolutionary Period.Puritanism is the main school of this period, which is the practices and belief of puritans.The American puritans accept the doctrine and practice of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God.But due to the grim struggle for living in the new continent, they become more and more practical.American Puritanism is so much a part of the national atmosphere rather than a set of tenets.Jonathan Edwards was one of the great writers of the Puritanism, his works include The Freedom of the Will, The Nature of True Virtue and so on.Philip Freneau is “a poet of the American Revol ution” and “the father of American Poetry”.The Rising Glory of American and The Wild Honey Suckle are his famous works.Puritanism gradually declined at the end of 18C.As a result of the impact of European Literary Romanticism, there rapidly came into being the rise of romanticism in American.The American romanticism flourished from 1815 to 1865, which advocated importance to individual dignity and value, and they shared some characteristics— moral enthusiasm, individuality and intuitive perception.Transcendentalism, which appeared after 1830, marked the maturity of American Romanticism and the first Renaissance in the American literary history.It laid emphasis onspirit, individual and nature.Washington Irving is a writer of this period, who has been called “the father of American Literature”.He wins the international fame for The Sketch Book, which marked the beginning of American Romanticism.Ralph Waldo Emerson is the New England Transcendentalist.Nature, his famous work, is regarded as the “manifesto of Am erican Transcendentalism”.American industrialization was one of the important factors of the development of American Realistic Literature, which was the beginning of what Mark Twain called “The Gilded Age” from 1865 to 1914.American Realism came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism.It turned from an emphasis on the faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived.It expresses the common place and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.A realistic writer is more objective than subjective, more descriptive than symbolic.Realists looked for truth in any place.William Dean Howells is the champion of realism.He writes about the rising middle class and the way they live.The Rise of Silas Lapham, his masterpiece, is a fine example of the American realism.Mark Twain is a great literary artist and social critic.He writes about the story of the low class and is famous for his colloquial style and localism.The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn is his famous fiction, which has been regarded as one of the greatest books of western literature and western civilization.After the WWI, some young writers wondered pointlessly and restlessly, while at the same time the y were called the “Lost Generation”.Then, there came into being the modernism from 1914 to 1945, it is used to show the literary art possessing outstanding characteristics in conception, feeling, form and style after the WWI.It meanscutting off history and a sense of despair and loss.It refused to accept the traditional ideological influences.F.Scott Fitzgerald is widely regarded as one of the 20th century’s greatest writers.This Side of Paradise is his first novel, it became immensely popular for the simple reason that it caught the tone of the age.Ernest Hemingway is the famous writer of this period.He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea.A Farewell to Arms is his masterpiece in which the author deals with the war directly.This is what I want to say about the history of American literature.第二篇：美国文学史梗概美国文学史梗概一、殖民地时代和美国建国初期最早来自这片新大陆的欧洲移民主要是定居在新英格兰的清教徒和马萨诸塞的罗马天主教徒，二者虽然在教义上有很多不同之处，但他们都信奉加尔文主义：人生在世只是为了受苦受难，而他们唯一的希望是争做上帝的“选民”，死后进天国，相信“原罪”。
美国文学简史
American Literature
A His• • • • • • Colonial Period Revolution and Nation-building Period Romanticism Realism & Naturalism Modernism Post-modernism
Colonial literature (1492-1765)
• • • • • puritanism; Garden of Eden Religion & colonial life both idealistic and practical; British tradition Enlightenment (18th c)
•
• • • • •
•
Fish & Visitors stink in 3 days. 访客和鱼三天都 会发臭。 Diligence is the Mother of Good Luck. 勤勉乃 幸运之母。 God helps them that help themselves. 天助自助 者。 Drive thy Business, let not that drive thee. 你要 管理事务，别让事务管理你。 Wink at small faults; remember thou has great ones. 若对小错误视而不见，那你就会犯大错。 Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others. 吃乃快活自家，穿是取悦人家。
Realism & Naturalism
purpose of a novelist: to be a scientist Emile Zola (1840-1902) heredity & environment; hostile forces, indifferent determinism Stephen Crane: The Red Badge of Courage Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie
美国文学简史William-Faulkner1
Features of Southern literature prior to this renaissance --- focus on historical romances about the "Lost Cause" of the Confederate States of America. --- glorified the heroism of the Confederate army and civilian population during the Civil War and the supposedly "idyllic culture" that existed in the South before the war (known as the Antebellum South).
---我感觉，这个奖不是授予我这个人，而是授予我的工作， 它是对我呕心沥血、毕生从事的人类精神探索的工作的肯定。 我的这项工作不为名，更不图利，而是要从人类精神的原始 素材里创造出前所未有的东西。
threleitsetargaersy career:
(1) 1924~1929: training as a writer The Marble Faun 《大理石雕像》
"Dry September."《献给 爱米丽的玫瑰》、《红 叶》、《夕阳》和《干 燥的九月》
Yoknapatawpha 约克纳帕塔法
Yoknapatawpha County: --- A county in northern Mississippi, the setting for most of William Faulkner’s novels and short stories, and patterned upon Faulkner’s actual home in Lafayette County, Mississippi.
美国文学简史
美国简史1、殖民时代的美国作家Benjamin Franklin生平介绍、作品的流畅、清晰、言简意赅的文风，受18世纪英国作家的影响。
作品中清教思想的反映及对后世美国文学的影响。
2、浪漫主义文学时期的美国作家1）Washington Irving生平介绍、对美国文学的突出贡献、对欧洲民间故事的移殖，使之成为美国文学的传统，作品的风格。
2）James Cooper生平简介、美国战争历史小说、海洋冒险小说以及边疆小说的开拓者、对小说艺术形式的贡献。
3）Edgar Allan Poe生平及创作简介，对法国象征诗人；对现、当代美国南方文学、对后世侦探作家的影响，文学理论以及对王尔德“为艺术而艺术”等唯美主义作家的影响。
4）Walt Whitman《草叶集》中歌颂自由、民主、平等、人的创造力以及对美国人民的赞颂和对现代科学技术的赞扬。
对美国诗歌的独特贡献以及对威廉斯、庞德、垮掉一代作家等的影响。
《草叶集》的创新及艺术风格。
5）Ralph Emerson超验主义哲学思想的核心。
爱默生超验主义思想在文学中的反映及对梭罗、惠特曼、弗罗斯特的影响。
６）Henry David Thoreau对超验主义者运动的贡献及其作品的影响。
７）Emily Dickinson作品的主题、对现代诗人的影响尤其对意象派的影响、作品的艺术内容。
８）Nathaniel Hawthorne介绍加尔文教、清教思想对霍桑的思想及其作品的影响、《红字》一书的艺术手法以及霍桑对人类心灵的探讨。
３、现实主义作家１）Mrs. Stowe介绍废奴文学、《汤姆叔叔的小屋》的社会意义以及黑人在美国社会所受不幸遭遇等。
２）Mark Twain介绍马克"吐温的生活经历在其文学作品中的反映，其作品的社会意义，对美国社会各种腐败现象的揭露，马克"吐温代表作的艺术手法。
马克"吐温的口语化语言对现、当代美国作品的影响。
马克吐温被誉为“美国文学之父”。
美国文学简史1
The first American literature is neither American nor literature.
It was the work of immigrants from England. It was an interesting mixture of travel accounts and religious writings. John Smith, William Bradford, John Winthrop Anne Bradstreet, the “Tenth Muse” Philip Freneau, important poet of 18th century
foreign influences: Romantic movement in England and Europe, a model for American romantic writing
American Romanticism
Features: “pioneering”, a new experience;
A Survey of American Literature
美国文学简史
常耀信 著
学习参考书目
常耀信主编的《美国文学简史》配套辅 导书
《美国文学简史》学习指南
赵红英主编
中国传媒大பைடு நூலகம்出版社
Map of America
Chapter 1 Colonial America
American Puritanism
Autobiography自传
Chapter 3 American Romanticism, Irving, Cooper
美国文学简史
一名词解释1.殖民地时期的美洲The colonial period of America2.压头韵Alliteration: The repetition of the initial consonant sounds in poetry.3.自传Autobiography: A person’s account of his or her own life. An autobiography is generallywritten in narrative form and includes some introspection.4.戏剧独白Dramatic monologue: A kind of narrative poem in which one character speaks toone or more listeners whose replies are not given in the poem. The occasion is usually a crucial one in the speaker’s personality as well as the incident that is the subject of the poem.5.挽歌Elegy: A poem of mourning, usually over the death of an individual. An elegy is a typeof lyric poem, usually formal in language and structure, and solemn or even melancholy in tone.二回答问题1.《了不起的盖茨比》The Great Gatsby *作者Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 –December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s.*主题（1）The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s（2）The Hollowness of the Upper Class *盖茨比失败的原因Gatsby fails since he is betrayed by the whole world. On the other side, Gatsby bases his pursuit on the green light, which is evidently a token of uncertainty as well as visionary. *思想意义In Gatsby's pursuit and destruction to the performance of "disillusionment USA dream", which exposes the "false essence America dream".2.自我诗歌的《草叶集》的分析Whitman’s self, which consists of three layers—the Individual Self, the American self and the universal self, is of indispensable importance in his poetry. These three aspects of the self form a complete and integrated whole and cannot be separated form each other. Each has its own peculiarities, sometimes contradictory and sometimes complementary. They together constitute the complete Self of Whitman in Leaves of Grass. His aim was nothing less than to express some new poetical feelings and to initiate a poetic tradition in which difference should be recognized. The poet’s essential purpose was to identify his ego with the world, and more specifically with the democratic “en-masse” of America, which is established in the opening lines of “Song of Myself.” As Whitman saw it, poetry could play a vital part in the process of creating a new nation. In celebrating the self, Whitman gives emphasis to the physical dimension of the self and openly and joyously celebrates sexuality. Whitman’s poetic style is marked, first of all, by the use of the poetic “I”.“Song of Myself”-àIn this poem Whitman sets forth two principal belief: the theory of universality, and the belief in the singularity and equality of all beings in value.3.我不能停止死亡的象征意义in the poem, life is just like “a recycling process” and death keeps coming upon human. But one is for sure, that “life is towards eternity”.As a 19th-century women poet, Emily Dickinson is unique in ideas and unconventional in her way of writing. Full of images, she leads us to the unknown world of death. She pictures the scene when walking towards death and showers us with immortality in soul, which shows her unprecedented deep research for death。
美国文学简史中文版(上 (1)
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美国文学简史复习资料[1]
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美国文学美国文学Part 1. Colonial AmericaPhilip Freneau Philip Freneau菲菲利普·弗伦诺1752-1832The Wild Honeysuckle野生的金银花；The Indian Burying Ground 印第安人殡葬地印第安人殡葬地 Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Edwards The Freedom of the Will The Great Doctrine of Original Sin The Freedom of the Will The Great Doctrine of Original Sindefended T he The Nature of True VirtueBenjamin Franklin 本杰明·富兰克林本杰明·富兰克林Poor Richard’s Almanack 穷查理历书；The Autobiography 自传Part 2. A merican American Romanticism It is one of the most important periods in the history of American literature ,t Romantic Period ,which stretches from the end of the 18th century through the out breakof Civil War.It started with the publication of Washington Irving's The Sketch bookand ended with Whitman's Leave of Grass .American Romanticism was in essence the expression of "a real new experience "and contained "an alien quality "for the simplereason that "the spirit of the place" was radically new and alien.And it was bo imitative and independent.Washington Irving 华盛顿·欧文1783-1859 A History of New York 纽约的历史纽约的历史---------------美国人写的第一部诙谐文学美国人写的第一部诙谐文学杰作；杰作；The The Sketch Book 见闻札记The Legend of Sleepy Hollow 睡谷的传说的传说---------------使之成为美国第一个获得国际声誉的作家；使之成为美国第一个获得国际声誉的作家；Rip Van Winkle -------short storyJames Fenimore Cooper 詹姆斯·费尼莫尔·库珀1789-1851The Spy 间谍;The Pioneer 拓荒者；;The Prairie 大草原;ThePathfinder 探路者;The Deerslayer 杀鹿者Part 3.New England TranscendentalismRalf Waldo Emerson 拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生1803-1882Essays 散文集散文集::Nature 论自然-----新英格兰超验主义者的宣言书;TheAmerican Scholar 论美国学者;Henry David Threau 亨利·大卫·梭罗1817-1862W adden,or Life in the Woods 华腾湖或林中生活Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ·朗费罗 An April Day 四月的一天/A Psalm of Life 人生礼物(poem )/PNathaniel Hawthorne 纳撒尼尔·霍桑1804-1864 Twice-told Tales 尽人皆知的故事尽人皆知的故事;Mosses from an Old Manse ;Mosses from an Old Manse 古屋青苔:Young Goodman Brown 年轻的古德曼·布朗年轻的古德曼·布朗年轻的古德曼·布朗;The Scarlet Letter ;The Scarlet Letter红字红字;The House of the Seven Gables ;The House of the Seven Gables 有七个尖角阁的房子有七个尖角阁的房子----------------心理若们罗曼史心理若们罗曼史;The Blithedale Romance ;The Blithedale Romance 福谷传奇福谷传奇;The Marble Faun ;The Marble Faun玉石雕像玉石雕像Herman Melville Moby Dick/The White Whale 莫比·迪克/白鲸；Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass 草叶集:Song of Myself 自我之歌Emily Dickinson ； “Because I could not stop for death ” “I ＇ｍ no body... ”poemEdgar Allan Poe 埃德加·爱伦·坡1809-18491809-1849（以诗为（以诗为诗；永为世人共赏的伟大抒情诗人伟大抒情诗人----------叶芝）叶芝）The Fall of the House of Usher 厄舍古屋的倒塌;Annabel Lee 安娜贝尔·李Poem-----歌特风格；首开近代侦探小说先河，又是法国象征主义运动的源头T 诗:The Raven 乌鸦;To Hellen 致海伦 Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom’s Cabin 汤姆叔叔的小屋;Part 4. The age of RealismWilliam Dean Howells 威廉·狄恩·豪威尔斯恩·豪威尔斯The Rise of Silas Lapham 赛拉斯·拉帕姆的发迹;A Hazard of Now Fortunes 时来运转;2323、、Henry James 小说：Daisy Miller苔瑟·米乐；The Portrait of a Lady 贵妇人画像；Part 5. Local ColorismMark Twain 马克·吐温（Samuel Longhorne Clemens Clemens））------美国文美国文学的一大里程碑学的一大里程碑The Gilded Age 镀金时代 -----------novel;The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 哈克贝利·费恩历险记How to Tell a Story 怎样讲故事怎样讲故事---------对美国早期幽默文学的总结对美国早期幽默文学的总结对美国早期幽默文学的总结 O. Henry short story 短篇小说 The Four Million ”《四百万》”《四百万》 小说集小说集、“The Gift of the Magi ”《麦琪的礼物》《麦琪的礼物》Part 6. American NaturalismFrank Norris The Octopus 章鱼,The Pit 小麦交易所);4040、、JackLondon 杰克·伦敦1876-1916T he Call of the Wild 野性的呼唤----novel ;The Sea-wolf 海狼;White Fang 白獠牙;T ;Martin Eden 马丁·伊登;Part 7. The 1920s ImagismEzra Pound 艾兹拉·庞德1885-1972美国现代诗歌之父美国现代诗歌之父Cathay 华夏（英译中国诗The Cantos of Ezra Pound 庞德诗章（109首及8首未完成稿）《In a station of the Metro 》----在地铁站里 Thomas Stearns Eliot The Waste Land 荒原;名诗：名诗：Ash Ash Wednesday 圣灰星期三圣灰星期三;;FourQuarters 四个四重奏Robert Frost 罗伯特·弗罗斯特1874-1963 After Apple-picking 摘苹果之后)(The Road Not taken 没有选择的道路)----poem---------Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening <雪夜林畔>F Scott Fitzgerald 弗朗西斯·菲茨杰拉德1896-1940(迷惘的一代一代) )The Side of Paradise 人间天堂;The Beautiful and the Damned 美丽的和倒霉;The Great Gatsby 了不起的盖茨比;Tender in the Night 夜色温柔Ernest Ernest Hemingway Hemingway 欧内斯特·海明威1899-19611899-1961（“迷惘（“迷惘的一代”的代表人物）物）The Sun Also Rises 太阳照样升起太阳照样升起;;Farewellto Arms 永别了，武器;For Whom the Bell Tolls 丧钟为谁而鸣William William Faulkner Faulkner威廉·福克纳1897-1962短篇小说：;The Sound and the Fury 愤怒与喧嚣;；Short story ------A Rose For Emily 《给艾米丽小姐的玫瑰》 Theodore Dreiser西奥多·德莱塞1871-1945Sister Carrie 嘉莉姐妹----Novel ;Trilogy of Desire 欲望三部曲(Financer 金融家,The Titan 巨人,The Stoic);An American Tragedy 美国的悲剧（被称为美国最伟大的小说） Arthur Miller ;The Death of a Salesman 推销员--------Play ;１．《了不起的盖茨比》表现了“美国梦”的幻灭，这部小说谴责以托姆为代表的美国特权阶级自私专横，为所欲为，以同情的态度描写了盖茨比的悲剧，并指出他的悲剧来自他对生活和爱情的幻想，对上层社会缺乏认识。
美国文学史Part 1 the literature of colonial America
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Therefore the writing in this period was essentially two kinds: (1) practical matter-of-fact accounts of farming, hunting, travel, etc. designed to inform people “at home” what life was like in the new world, and, often, to induce their immigration; (2) highly theoretical, generally polemical, discussions of religious questions. Furthermore, the influential Protestant work ethic, reinforced by the practical necessities of a hard pioneer life, inhibited the development of any reading matter designed simply for leisuretime entertainment. It is the belief that work itself is good in addition to what it achieves; that time saved by efficiency or good fortune should not be spent in leisure but in doing further work; that idleness is always immoral and likely to lead to even worse sin since “the devil finds work for idle hands to do”. This belief later developed into the American philosophic idea Puritanism.
美国文学简史
美国文学简史1. 前言美国文学是指在美国国内创作并流传的文学作品。
随着美国的发展和独立，美国文学在18世纪末至今逐渐形成独特的风格和流派。
本文将从殖民地时期到现代，概述美国文学的发展历程和代表作品，旨在带您了解美国文学的演变和贡献。
2. 殖民地时期（17世纪初-18世纪初）美国殖民地时期是美国文学的起源。
在殖民地时期，殖民者将英国文学的传统与新大陆的经历相结合，创作出了许多有代表性的作品。
2.1 《普利姆斯的历史》（《Of Plymouth Plantation》）《普利姆斯的历史》是由普利茅斯定居者的领导人威廉·布拉德福编写的历史记录。
这本书详细描述了普利茅斯殖民地的建立和发展，记录了殖民者在新大陆的艰苦生活。
它是美国文学中最早的非虚构作品之一，也是学习美国殖民地历史的重要参考书籍。
2.2 《普渡大学诗歌》（《The Bay Psalm Book》）《普渡大学诗歌》是美国第一本印刷书籍，由普渡大学教士翻译和编撰，于1640年出版。
这本书是使用英语将《圣经》诗歌翻译成韵文的作品。
它在美国文学中具有重要的意义，不仅是美国文学的开端，也标志着美国最早的文化实践之一。
3. 独立时期（18世纪中叶-19世纪初）美国在独立战争后建立了独立的政治体系，这对于美国文学的发展起到了积极的推动作用。
该时期的文学作品反映了对独立和自由的渴望。
3.1 《常识》（《Common Sense》）《常识》是由托马斯·潘恩在1776年匿名发表的一本政治小册子。
这本书通过简明易懂的语言向广大美国民众阐述了独立的理由和价值。
它对美国革命的推动作用极大，激发了人们追求自由和独立的火焰。
3.2 《自然》（《Nature》）《自然》是拉尔夫·瓦尔多·爱默生于1836年发表的一篇论文集。
他通过对美国的自然环境的赞美和反思，提出了自然界与人类的和谐关系。
这对于美国的独立文化和民族精神有着重要的影响，成为了美国浪漫主义文学运动的先驱。
A_Survey_of_American_Literature 美国文学简史_Chapter_1_Colonial_America_殖民时期的美国
A Survey of American Literature 美国文学简史1. John Smith（He is a captain）A Description of New England2. William Bradford (first governor of the Plymouth)Of Plymouth Plantation3. John WinthropA Model of Christian Charity4. Anne Bradstreet ( 1617-1672 )（know as The Tenth Muse）ContemplationsOn the Burning of Our House5. Edward Taylor (the finest poet in colonial period)HuswiferyUpon a Spider Catching a FlyPreparatory Meditation6.Roger Williams（A puritan dissenters）The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for the Cause of ConscienceJohn Woolman Journal7.Thomas Paine Comman Sense8.Philip Freneau9. Jonathan Edwards pioneer of transcendentalismThe Freedom of the Will The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended The Nature of True Virtue10. Benjamin FranklinPoor Richard’s Almanac Autobiography11. Nathaniel HawthorneTwo collections of short stories: Twice-told Tales, Mosses from and Old Manse The Scarlet Letter The House of the Seven Gables The Marble Faun12. Herman Melville Moby Dick13. Walt WhitmanLeaves of Grass (9 editions)Song of Myself There Was a Child Went Forth Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Democratic Vistas Passage to India Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking14. Emily DickensonMy Life Closed Twice before Its Close Because I Can’t Stop for Death I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I died Mine – by the Right of the White Election Wild Nights – Wild Nights15. Edgar Allen PoeThe Fall of the House of Usher The Raven Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque16. William Dean HowellsThe Rise of Silas Lapham17. Mark Twain。
美国文学简史
美国文学简史第1章殖民地时期的美国1.1复习笔记I.American Puritanism（美国清教主义）The British began to immigrate to North America in the first half of the 17th century. The firstpermanent English settlement in North America was established at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.In1620,the ship Mayflower carried about one hundred Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts.Many early American immigrants were Puritans, and they came to the United States for a variety ofreasons.The Puritanism they believed in later took root in the New World and had a profound impacton American thought and American literature.英国向北美的移民活动开始于17世纪上半叶。
英国于1607年在北美建立了第一个永久性海外殖民区：弗吉尼亚州的詹姆斯敦。
1620年“五月花”号载运100余名移民抵达马萨诸塞州的普利茅斯。
很多美国早期的移民是清教徒，他们出于多种原因来到美国。
他们信奉的清教主义后来在新大陆生根发芽，并对美国思想和美国文学产生了根深蒂固的影响。
Doctrines of Puritanism（清教主义的教义）The Puritans believed in the doctrine predestination put forward by the theologian John Calvin,including original sin, complete depravity, and limited redemption.清教徒信奉神学家约翰·加尔文宣扬的预设定论，原罪，彻底的堕落，有限制的救赎等神学主张。
(完整word版)美国文学简史中文版
美国文学简史什么是文学?文学是语言的艺术来实现识别的文艺气质，并传达有意义的信息。
第1章殖民时期一，项目背景：清教主义一，特点清教主义（1）宿命：神决定一切之前的事情发生。
（2）原罪：人类天生是邪恶的，并可以通过这种原罪了一代又一代。
（3）总的堕落（4）有限赎罪：※当选§可以保存。
2.Influence（1）A组每艰苦奋斗，勤俭节约,虔诚，庄重(认真周到的)影响了美国文学的优秀品质。
（2）它导致了永恒的神话.所有文献的基础上每伊甸园的神话。
（3)象征主义:美国的清教徒*隐喻模式的看法，主要是在调用的文学象征，这是典型的美国。
(4）关于他们的写作，风格清新，简单和直接的说辞是平原和诚实，不无淡淡的贵族往往可以追溯到“圣经"的直接影响.II。
文献综述1.型式的写作日记，历史,日记，信件，书籍,自传/传记，布道2。
writers的殖民时期（1）安妮邓白氏(2）爱德华·泰勒(3）罗杰·威廉斯(4）约翰伍尔曼（5）托马斯·潘恩(6）菲利普FreneauIII。
乔纳森·爱德华兹1。
life2。
works（1）自由的意志（2）大原罪的学说辩护（3）自然真德3.ideas每超验主义的先锋（1）精神的复兴运动（2)再生人(3）神*的存在（4）清教徒理想主义IV。
本杰明·富兰克林1.life2。
works(1)差理查德*年鉴（2)自传3。
contribution（1）他帮助了宾夕法尼亚州的医院和美国哲学学会。
（2)他被称为※新普罗米修斯偷火从天上（在这种情况下，电力）§。
（3)一切似乎都在这一个男人，以满足每※万事通§。
赫尔曼·梅尔维尔如此描述他※大师和掌握的没有§.第2章美国浪漫主义第1节什么是早期浪漫主义时期的浪漫主义呢?古希腊柏拉图的LAN的方法LA文学思潮：18C在英国(1798〜1832）lSchlegel兄弟I.预览：浪漫主义的特点1。
美国文学简史American Literature Poetry
American Literature: PoetryINTRODUCTIONAmerican Literature: Poetry, verse in English that originates from the territory now known as the United States. American poetry differs from British or English poetry chiefly because America’s culturally diver se traditions exerted pressure on the English language, altering its tones, diction, forms, and rhythms until something identifiable as American English emerged. American poetry is verse written in this form of English.The term American poetry is in some ways a contradiction. America represents a break with tradition and the invention of a new culture separate from the European past. Poetry, on the other hand, represents tradition itself, a long history of expression carried to America from a European past. American poetry thus embodies a clearly identifiable tension between tradition and innovation, past and future, and old forms and new forms. American poetry remains a hybrid, a literature that tries to separate itself from the tradition of English literature even as it adds to and alters that tradition.American poetry could be defined differently, however, especially if it is not limited to poetry in English. Without that qualifying term, American poetry has its origins in the rich oral traditions of Native American cultures. Each of these cultures developed complex symbolic tales of the origins and history of its people, akin to epic poems in the European tradition. These tales were performed as part of rituals and passed on through memorization from one generation to the next. Some of them have been translated into English. Yet these works tend to vanish from most histories of American poetry because they were part of ongoing performances based in spoken rather than written language. Moreover, their rhythms and sounds are bound to the native languages in which they evolved.Other cultures have contributed to the rich heritage of American poetry. Spanish-language poetry has been produced in America from the time of the earliest Spanish explorers to current Hispanic and Chicano and Chicana poetry. American poetry traditions also have thrived in many other languages, from Chinese to Yiddish, as the result of centuries of immigration to the United States.But most people mean by American poetry those rhythmic, memorable, and significant verse forms composed in English in the United States or in lands that became the United States. This overview of more than 300 years of American poetry tracks the creation of a national literature identifiably different from that of any other nation. In the 1600s colonial poets responded to the challenges of their new world and expressed the hopes and fears of Europeans who settled there. In the years following the Declaration of Independence (1776) American poets created a patriotic poetry as a defining literature for the new nation. A powerful new kind of poetry flowered in the mid- and late 19th century among the first poets to be born and raised as actual citizens of the United States. American modernist poetry emerged in the first half of the 20th century, as many writers sought to subdue nationalist impulses in their poetry and define themselves as part of an international advance in the arts. Finally, in the second half of the 20th century a multiplicity of diverse voices redefined American poetry. For information on American prose or drama, see American Literature: Prose; American Literature: Drama.I I BEGINNINGS: 1600S THROUGH THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION(1775-1783)From the beginning until well into the 19th century, widespread agreement existed that American poetry would be judged by British standards, and that poetry written in America was simply British poetry composed on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Yet in responding to British styles, American poetry took inspiration from the new physical environment and the evolving culture of the colonies. In the process it recorded a subtle shift from poets who were dependent imitators to poets who spoke for and in the language of the new nation.A New England PuritanPoetryPuritans who had settled in New England were the first poets of the American colonies. Most Puritan poets saw the purpose of poetry as careful Christian examination of their lives; and private poems, like Puritan diaries, served as a forum where the self could be measured daily against devout expectations. Puritan leaders deemed poetry a safe and inspiriting genre, since they considered the Bible itself to be God’s poetry. Thus poetry became the literary form that allowed devout believers to express, with God’s help, divine lessons. Other genres, such as drama and fiction, were considered dangerous, capable of generating lies and leading to idle entertainment instead of moral uplift.Puritan poets had grown up in England during a period when Christian epic poetry—culminating in Paradise Lost (1667) by John Milton—was considered the highest literary accomplishment. When they came to America they maintained their cultural allegiances to Britain. Anne Bradstreet looked to British poets Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser; Edward Taylor looked to poets George Herbert and John Donne.Bradstreet was the first poet in America to publish a volume of poetry. The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America was published in England in 1650. Bradstreet had lived in England until 1630, when at the age of 18 she arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where she spent the rest of her life. Although Bradstreet wrote many poems on familiar British themes and produced skilled imitations of British forms, her most remarkable works responded directly to her experiences in colonial New England. They reveal her attraction to her new world, even as the discomforts of life in the wilderness sickened her. Her poetry contains a muted declaration of independence from the past and a challenge to authority.Although Bradstreet’s verses on the burning of her house in 1666 and poems on the death of three grandchildren end by reaffirming the God-fearing Puritan belief system, along the way they also question the harsh Puritan God. Further, Brads treet’s work records early stirrings of female resistance to a social and religious system in which women are subservient to men. In “The Prologue” (1650), Bradstreet writes, “I am obnoxious to each carping tongue / Who says my hand a needle better fits, / [than] A poet’s pen.…” Bradstreet’s instincts were to love this world more than the promised next world of Puritan theology, and her struggle to overcome her love for the world of nature energizes her poetry.Taylor, a poet of great technical skill, wrote powerful meditative poems in which he tested himself morally and sought to identify and root out sinful tendencies. In “God's Determinations Touching His Elect” (written 1680?), one of Taylor’s most important works, he celebrates God's power in the triump h of good over evil in the human soul. All of Taylor’s poetry and much of Bradstreet’s served generally personal ends, and their audience often consisted of themselves andtheir family and closest friends. This tradition of private poetry, kept in manuscript and circulated among a small and intimate circle, continued throughout the colonial period, and numerous poets of the 17th and 18th centuries remained unknown to the general public until long after their deaths. For them, poetry was a kind of heightened letter writing that reaffirmed the ties of family and friends. Taylor’s poems remained unpublished until 1939, when The Poetical Works of Edward Taylor appeared. Many of Bradstreet’s most personal poems also remained unpublished during her lifetime.Public poetry for the Puritans was more didactic or instructive in nature and often involved the transformation into verse of important biblical lessons that guided Puritan belief. Poet and minister Michael Wigglesworth wrote theological verse in ballad meter, such as The Day of Doom (1662), which turned the Book of Revelation into an easily memorized sing-song epic. Puritan poetry also included elaborate elegies,or poems honoring a person who had recently died. Puritans used these poems to explore the nature of the self, reading the character of the dead person as a text and seeing the life as a collection of hidden meanings.B SouthernSatireColonial poets of the 18th century still looked to British poets of their time, such as Alexander Pope and Ambrose Philips. Both were masters of pastoral verse—poetry that celebrated an idealized English countryside and rural life—and of satirical verse. Initially, this satiric tone was more prevalent in the southern colonies than in New England.Two poets from the Maryland Colony, Ebenezer Cook and Richard Lewis, wrote accomplished satirical poems based on British pastoral models. But their poems cleverly undermine those models by poking fun at the British. Cook’s The Sot-Weed Factor (1708) is a long narrative poem written in rhyming couplets that mocks Americans as a backward people but aims its satire most effectively at the poem’s narrator, who is a British snob. Americans may be laughable, Cook suggests, but they are not as ridiculous as the British with their ignorance and prejudice about Americans.C Revolutionary Era PatrioticPoetryA penchant for satire continued in the American Revolutionary era, when American poetry was centered on Connecticut and a group of poets known as the Connecticut Wits (or Hartford Wits). This group, most of whose members were associated with Yale University, included David Humphreys, John Trumbull, and Joel Barlow. Along with other writers they produced The Anarchiad (1786-1787), a mock epic poem warning against the chaos that would ensue if a strong central government, as advocated by the Federalists, was not implemented in the United States. American poets used the British literary model of the mock epic as a tool to satirize and criticize British culture. Trumbull’s mock epic M’Finga l (1775-1782) lampooned the British Loyalists during the Revolution.Revolutionary-era poets composed more than satire, however. They felt an urgency to produce a serious—even monumental—national poetry that would celebrate the country’s new democratic ideals. Epic poems, they believed, would confer importance and significance on the new nation’s culture. Educated in the classics, these poets were also lawyers, ministers, and busy citizens of the new republic. They did not bother with the question whether a new nation required new forms of poetry, but were content to use traditional forms to write about new subjects in orderto create the first truly American poetry. Whereas traditional epics celebrated past accomplishments of a civilization, American epics by necessity celebrated the future. Examples of such epics include Barlow’s The Vision of Columbus(1787), later revised as The Columbiad (1807); Greenfield Hill (1794) by clergyman Timothy Dwight; and The Rising Glory of America (1772) by Philip Freneau. All offered the prospect of America as the future culmination of civilization.Freneau, the most accomplished patriot poet, was not associated with Connecticut. He was born in New York City and later lived in a variety of places. His range of experience and clarity of expression made him a very popular poet, widely regarded as the first poet who spoke for the entire country. Much of his poetry focused on America’s future greatness, but he also wrote on other subjects, including the beauties of the natural w orld. Such lyric poems as “The Wild Honey Suckle” (1786) and “On a Honey Bee” (1809), can be seen as the first expressions in American poetry of a deep spiritual engagement with nature.D Early BlackVoicesSlavery was the great contradiction in the new nation that had affirmed in its Declaration of Independence a basic belief that “all men are created equal” and have “inalienable” rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Many of the country’s early leaders believed that African slaves were intellectually inferior to whites. Phillis Wheatley, a Boston slave, challenged those racist assumptions early on. Brought to America as a young girl, Wheatley was educated by her masters in English and Latin. She became an accomplished poet, and her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral(1773) was published in England. Like the white patriot poets, Wheatley wrote in 18th-century literary forms. But her highly structured and elegant poetry nonetheless expressed her frustration at enslavement and desire to reach a heaven where her color and social position would no longer keep her from singing in her full glory.Wheatley’s poetry, along with that of other slaves, begins a powerful African American tradition in American poetry. In 1746 Lucy Terry, a slave in Massachusetts who was also educated by her owner, wrote the first poem to be published by a black American: 'Bar's Fight.' The poem, which was not published until 1855, describes the victims and survivors of a Native American raid against settler s. It was followed by Jupiter Hammon’s biblically inspired, hymnlike verse, “An Evening Thought; Salvation by Christ, with Penitential Cries” (1761).Born at the time of the founding of the nation, African American poetry retained its concern with the burning issues of the American Revolution, including liberty, independence, equality, and identity. It also expressed African American experiences of divided loyalties. Just as white Americans experienced divided loyalties in the republic’s early years—unsure whether their identity derived from the new country or from their European past—so too did African Americans, who looked always to their African past and to their problematic American present.I IITHE 19TH CENTURYThe 19th century began with high hopes for poetic accomplishment. The first comprehensive anthologies of American poetry appeared in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s. In the first half of the century poets sought to entertain, to inform, and to put into memorable language America’s history, myths, manners, and topography, but they did not seek to forge a radical new poetic tradition. Their poetry built upon tradition, and they met the first great goal of American poetry:that it be able to compete in quality, intelligence, and breadth with British poetry. But just as they achieved this goal, poetic aspirations began to change. By the mid-19th century the new goal for American poetry was to create something very different from British poetry. Innovative poets, particularly Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, led the way.A The FiresidePoetsWilliam Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and John Greenleaf Whittier constituted a group sometimes called the Fireside Poets. They earned this nickname because they frequently used the hearth as an image of comfort and unity, a place where families gathered to learn and tell stories. These tremendously popular poets also were widely read around the hearthsides of 19th-century American families. The consensus of American critics was that the Fireside Poets first put American poetry on an equal footing with British poetry.Bryant gained public recognition first and is best remembered for “Thanatopsis,” published in 1821 but written when he was a teenager. Still widely anthologized, this poem offers a democratic reconciliation with death as the great equalizer and a recognition that the “still voice” of God is embodied in all processes of nature. During a busy life as a lawyer and editor of the New York Evening Post, Bryant wrote accomplished, elegant, and romantic descriptions of a nature suffused with spirit.Longfellow was the best known of the Fireside Poets, and it was with him that American poetry began its emergence from the shadow of its British parentage. His poetic narratives helped create a national historical myth, transforming colorful aspects of the American past into memorable romance. They include Evangeline (1847), which concerns lovers who are separated during the French and Indian War (1754-1763), and The Song of Hiawatha (1855), which derives its themes from Native American folklore. No American poet before or since was as widely celebrated during his or her lifetime as Longfellow. He became the first and only American poet to be honored with a bust in the revered Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey in London, England.The accomplishments of the other Fireside Poets were various. Lowell’s Biglow Papers (1848) added to the American tradition of long satirical poems. Holmes wrote several memorable short po ems such as “The Chambered Nautilus” (1858). Whittier became best known for Snow-Bound (1866), a long nostalgic look at his Massachusetts Quaker boyhood, when the family gathered around the fireside during a snowstorm.B AbolitionistPoetryDuring the 19th century, black and white poets wrote about the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of slaves. George Moses Horton, a North Carolina slave, was the first Southern black poet. Joshua McCarter Simpson was a black poet from Ohio whose memorable songs of emancipation were set to popular tunes and sung by fugitive slaves. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper wrote passionate abolitionist and early feminist poems that called both blacks and whites to action against oppression. James M. Whitfield wrote powerful poems criticizing America for its failure to live up to its ideals. In his long poem “America” (1853), he writes: “America, it is to thee, / Thou boasted land of liberty,— / It is to thee I raise my song, / Thou land of blood, and crime, and wrong.”Black poets at this time appropriated the language and style of the predominantly white, mainstream patriotic America. In using mainstream language, these black poets showed their white audiences how differently songs of liberty and freedom sounded from the perspective of those who had been left out of the “all men are created equal” equation. Black poets also often expressed themselves with irony and ambiguity so that different audiences heard different intonations and meanings, a double voicing that would become central to later African American writing.White abolitionist poets, from their more privileged social position, could afford to be more confrontational about the issue of slavery. Whittier was a fiery abolitionist whose numerous antislavery poems were collected in Voices of Freedom(1846). Longfellow’s Poems on Slavery (1842) forms a long-forgotten but illuminating contribution to the tradition of American political poems. Lowell also was an ardent abolitionist.C WaltWhitmanA newspaper reporter and editor, Whitman first published poems that were traditional in form and conventional in sentiment. In the early 1850s, however, he began experimenting with a mixture of the colloquial diction and prose rhythms of journalism; the direct address and soaring voice of oratory; the repetitions and catalogues of the Bible; and the lyricism, music, and drama of popular opera. He sought to write a democratic poetry—a poetry vast enough to contain all the variety of burgeoning 19th-century American culture.In 1855 Whitman published the first edition of Leaves of Grass, the book he would revise and expand for the rest of his life. The first edition contained only 12 untitled poems. The longest poem, which he eventually named “Song of Myself,” has become one of the mos t discussed poems in all of American poetry. In it Whitman constructs a democratic “I,” a voice that sets out to celebrate itself and the rapture of its senses experiencing the world, and in so doing to celebrate the unfettered potential of every individual in a democratic society. Emerging from a working class family, Whitman grew up in New York City and on nearby Long Island. He was one of the first working-class American poets and one of the first writers to compose poetry that is set in and draws its energy from the bustling, crowded, diverse streets of the city.Whitman later added a variety of poems to Leaves of Grass. They include “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1856), in which Whitman addresses both contemporary and future riders of the ferry, and “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” (1860), a reverie about his boyhood on the shores of Long Island. Other poems were about affection between men and about the experiences and sufferings of soldiers in the Civil War (1861-1865).Whitman’s work was initially embraced more fully in Britain than in the United States. An influential 1872 anthology, American Poems, published in England and edited by English literary critic William Michael Rossetti, was dedicated to Whitman and gave him more space than any other poet. From then on American poetry was judged not by how closely it approximated the best British verse, but by how radically it divorced itself from British tradition. Rough innovation came to be admired over polished tradition.D EmilyDickinsonEmily Dickinson, along with Whitman, is one of the most original and demanding poets in American literature. Living her whole life in Amherst, Massachusetts, Dickinson composed nearly2,000 short, untitled poems. Despite her productivity, only a handful of Dickinson’s poems were published before her death in 1886. Most of her poems borrow the repeated four-line, rhymed stanzas of traditional Christian hymns, with two lines of four-beat meter alternating with two lines of three-beat meter. A master of imagery that makes the spiritual materialize in surprising ways, Dickinson managed manifold variations within her simple form: She used imperfect rhymes, subtle breaks of rhythm, and idiosyncratic syntax and punctuation to create fascinating word puzzles, which have produced greatly divergent interpretations over the years.Dickinson’s intensely private poems cover a wide range of subjects and emotions. She was fascinated with death, and many of her poems struggle with the contradictions and seeming impossibility of an afterlife. She carries on an argument with God, sometimes expressing faith in him and sometimes denying his existence. Many of her poems record moments of freezing paralysis that could be death, pain, doubt, fear, or love. She remains one of the most private and cryptic voices in American literature.Because of Dickinson’s prominence, it sometimes seems that she was the only female poet in America in the 19th century. Yet nearly a hundred women published poetry in the first six decades of the 1800s, and most early anthologies of American poetry contained far more women writers than appeared in anthologies in the first half of the 20th century. Dickinson’s work can be better understood if read in the context of these poets.Lydia Huntley Sigourney was a popular early-19th-century poet whose work set the themes for other female poets: motherhood, sentiment, and the ever-present threat of death, particularly to children. She developed, among other forms, the same hymn stanza that Dickinson used, although she experimented with fewer variations on it than Dickinson, and her poetry was simple and accessible. The work of Sigourney, along with that of Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Frances Sargent Locke Osgood, Alice and Phoebe Cary, and Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt, was dismissed by most 20th-century critics until feminist critics began to rediscover the ironic edge to what had before seemed to be conventional sentimentality. The work of these and other women poets offers a window into the way 19th-century culture constructed and understood such concepts as gender, love, marriage, and motherhood.Poe, Melville, andOthersOther poets who tried out distinctive new forms included Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville. Poe devoted great effort to writing poetry that was unlike anything before it. A careful craftsman, he examined in detail the effects that his every poetic choice had. Poe’s poetry earned little respect from his contemporaries, who dismissed him as “the jingle man.” He had, said Whitman, “the rhyming art to excess.” Yet Poe’s nightmarish scenes, unnerving plots, and probings of abnormal psychology gave his poetry, as well as his tales, a haunting, memorable quality that makes him one of the most admired innovators in American literature. The opening lines of his best-kno wn poem, “The Raven” (1845), demonstrate Poe’s love of rhyming and his use of varying rhythm: “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, / Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.”Melville, though much better known as a novelist, nonetheless wrote powerful poetry about the Civil War, collected in Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866). He later wrote a long and mysterious poem, Clarel (1876), about his search for faith, his struggle with doubt, and his anxiety about the decline of civilization.Lesser-known innovators of the 19th century include Jones Very, Sidney Lanier and Henry Timrod. Very was a Massachusetts poet who produced strikingly original religious sonnets. Lanier was a Georgia poet who sought to reproduce in language the effects of music. Timrod, a Southern poet who was known as “the laureate of the Confederacy,” wrote some notably original and dark poetry in the 1860s.Toward the 20thCenturyWhitman had hoped that his work would generate new energy in American poetry. But when he died in 1892, the American poetic scene was relatively barren. Most of the major poets had died and no successor to Whitman was emerging. William Vaughn Moody, a poet born in Indiana, wrote The Masque of Judgement(1900), which was the first in a series of verse dramas about humanity’s spiritual tortures and eventual spiritual victory. Stephen Crane, best known for his novels, published two volumes of poetry, The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895) and War Is Kind and Other Poems (1899). In their tone and fragmented form, his grim poems anticipate the concerns of many modern writers. But neither poet lived far into the 20th century.I VTHE 20TH CENTURYBy 1900 the United States was far different from the new nation it had been a hundred years earlier. Westward expansion, waves of immigration, and increasing urbanization all combined to create a physically larger, more populous, and far more diverse country than its founders could have imagined. These changes are tracked mor e visibly in America’s fiction than in its poetry, but the nation’s growing diversity is evident in the diverse voices of 20th-century American poets. American poetry in the opening decades of the century displayed far less unity than most anthologies and critical histories indicate. Shifting allegiances, evolving styles, and the sheer number of poets make it difficult to categorize 20th-century poetry.A RegionalismIn the last decades of the 19th century, American literature had entered a period of regionalism, exploring the stories, dialects, and idiosyncrasies of the many regions of the United States. Dialect poetry—written in exaggerated accents and colorful idioms—became a sensation for a time though it produced little of lasting value. However, one major poet who rose to fame on the basis of his dialect poems was Paul Laurence Dunbar, a black writer from Ohio. Dunbar’s dialect poems, which romanticized the life of slaves in the pre-Civil War South, were extremely popular. His volumes Oak and Ivy (1893) and Majors and Minors(1895) brought attention to African American literature, although the dialect poems later embarrassed many black poets. Dunbar also wrote many nondialect poems, and through his work initiated an important debate in African American literature about what voices and materials black writers should employ.Other regions and groups developed their own distinctive voices. Kansas-born Edgar Lee Masters achieved success with Spoon River Anthology(1915). His poetic epitaphs (commemorations) capture the hidden passions, deceits, and hopes of Midwesterners buried in the fictional Spoon River cemetery. Edwin Arlington Robinson explored the lives of New Englanders in his fictional Tilbury Town through dramatic monologues—poems written entirely in the voice。
美国文学简史
Chapter 1 Colonial PeriodI. Background: Puritanism1. features of Puritanism(1) Predestination: God decided everything before things occurred.(2) Original sin: Human beings were born to be evil, and this original sin can be passed down from generation to generation.(3) Total depravity(4) Limited atonement: Only the “elect” can be saved.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 chiefly 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 literature1. types of writingdiaries, histories, journals, letters, travel books,autobiographies/biographies, sermons2. writers of colonial period(1) Anne Bradstreet(2) Edward Taylor(3) Roger Williams(4) John Woolman(5) Thomas Paine(6) Philip FreneauIII. Jonathan Edwards1. life2. works(1) The Freedom of the Will(2) The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended(3) The Nature of True Virtue3. ideas – pioneer of transcendentalism(1) The spirit of revivalism(2) Regeneration of man(3) God’s presence(4) Puritan idealismIV. Benjamin Franklin1. life2. works(1) Poor Richard’s Almanac(2) Autobiography3. 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 RomanticismSection 1 Early Romantic PeriodWhat is Romanticism?l An approach from ancient Greek: Platol A literary trend: 18c in Britain (1798~1832)l Schlegel Bros.I. Preview: Characteristics of romanticism1. subjectivity(1) feeling and emotions, finding truth(2) emphasis on imagination(3) emphasis on individualism – personal freedom, no hero worship, natural goodness of human beings2. back to medieval, esp medieval folk literature(1) unrestrained by classical rules(2) full of imagination(3) colloquial language(4) freedom of imagination(5) genuine in feelings: answer their call for classics3. back to naturenature is “breathing living thing” (Rousseau)II. American Romanticism1. Background(1) Political background and economic development(2) Romantic movement in European countriesDerivative – foreign influence2. 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 American Romanticism.(4) As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American romanticism was both imitative and independent.III. Washington Irving1. 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 literature2. life3. 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 Alhambra4. Literary career: two parts(1) 1809~1832a. Subjects are either English or Europeanb. Conservative love for the antique(2) 1832~1859: back to US5. 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 languageIV. James Fenimore Cooper1. life2. 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 Prairie3. point of viewthe theme of wilderness vs. civilization, freedom vs. law, order vs. change, aristocrat vs. democrat, natural rights vs. legal rights4. 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 authentic5. literary achievementsHe 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 TranscendentalismI. Background: four sources1. Unitarianism(1) Fatherhood of God(2) Brotherhood of men(3) Leadership of Jesus(4) Salvation by character (perfection of one’s character)(5) Continued progress of mankind(6) Divinity of mankind(7) Depravity of mankind2. Romantic IdealismCenter of the world is spirit, absolute spirit (Kant)3. Oriental mysticismCenter of the world is “oversoul”4. PuritanismEloquent expression in transcendentalismII. Appearance1836, “Nature” by EmersonIII. Features1. spirit/oversoul2. importance of individualism3. nature – symbol of spirit/Godgarment of the oversoul4. focus in intuition (irrationalism and subconsciousness)IV. Influence1. 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 spiritua l height.3. It helped to create the first American renaissance –one of themost prolific period in American literature.V. Ralph Waldo Emerson1. life2. works(1) Nature(2) Two essays: The American Scholar, The Poet3. 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.4. 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 celebrateAmerica which was to him a lone poem in itself.5. his influenceVI. Henry David Thoreau1. life2. works(1) A Week on the Concord and Merrimack River(2) Walden(3) A Plea for John Brown (an essay)3. 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 influence 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 sorel y 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 menSection 3 Late RomanticismI. Nathaniel Hawthorne1. life2. 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 Faun3. 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.4. 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.5. 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 viewII. Herman Melville1. life2. works(1) Typee(2) Omio(3) Mardi(4) Redburn(5) White Jacket(6) Moby Dick(7) Pierre(8) Billy Budd3. 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 progress4. 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) Chapter 3 The Age of RealismI.Background: From Romanticism to Realism1.the three conflicts that reached breaking point in this period(1)industrialism vs. agrarian(2)culturely-measured east vs. newly-developed west(3)plantation gentility vs. commercial gentility2.1880’s urbanization: from free competition to monopoly capitalism3.the closing of American frontierII.Characteristics1. truthful description of life2.typical character under typical circumstance3.objective rather than idealized, close observation and investigation of life“Realistic writers are like scientists.”4.open-ending: Life is complex and cannot be fully understood. It leaves much room for readers to think by themselves.5.concerned with social and psychological problems, revealing the frustrations of characters in an environment of sordidness and depravity III.Three Giants in Realistic Period1.William Dean Howells –“Dean of American Realism”(1)Realistic principlesa.Realism is “fidelity to experience and probability of motive”.b.The aim is “talk of some ordinary traits of American life”.c.Man in his natural and unaffected dullness was the object of Howells’s fictional representation.d.Realism is by no means mere photographic pictures of externals but includes a central concern with “motives” and psychological conflicts.e.He condemns novels of sentimentality and morbid self-sacrifice, and avoids such themes as illicit love.f.Authors should minimize plot and the artificial ordering of the sense of something “desultory, unfinished, imperfect”.g.Characters should have solidity of specification and be real.h.Interpreting sympathetically the “common feelings of commonplace people” was best suited as a technique to express the spirit of America.i.He urged writers to winnow tradition and write in keeping with current humanitarian ideals.j.Truth is the highest beauty, but it includes the view that morality penetrates all things.k.With regard to literary criticism, Howells felt that the literary critic should not try to impose arbitrary or subjective evaluations on books but should follow the detached scientist in accurate description, interpretation, and classification.(2)Worksa.The Rise of Silas Laphamb.A Chance Acquaintancec.A Modern Instance(3)Features of His Worksa.Optimistic toneb.Moral development/ethicscking of psychological depth2.Henry James(1)Life(2)Literary career: three stagesa.1865~1882: international themeThe AmericanDaisy MillerThe Portrait of a Ladyb.1882~1895: inter-personal relationships and some playsDaisy Miller (play)c.1895~1900: novellas and tales dealing with childhood and adolescence, then back to international themeThe Turn of the ScrewWhen Maisie KnewThe AmbassadorsThe Wings of the DoveThe Golden Bowl(3)Aesthetic ideasa.The aim of novel: represent lifemon, even ugly side of lifec.Social function of artd.Avoiding omniscient point of view(4)Point of viewa.Psychological analysis, forefather of stream of consciousnessb.Psychological realismc.Highly-refined language(5)Style –“stylist”nguage: highly-refined, polished, insightful, accurateb.V ocabulary: largec.Construction: complicated, intricate3.Mark Twain (see next section)Local Colorism1860s, 1870s~1890sChapter 4 American NaturalismI.Background1.Darwin's theory: "natural selection"2.Spenser's idea: "social Darwinism"3.French Naturalism: ZoraII.Features1.environment and heredity2.scientific accuracy and a lot of details3.general tone: hopelessness, despair, gloom, ugly side of the societyIII.significanceIt prepares the way for the writing of 1920s’“lost generation” and T. S. Eliot.IV.Theodore Dreiser1.life2.works(1)Sister Carrie(2)The trilogy: Financier, The Titan, The Stoic(3)Jennie Gerhardt(4)American Tragedy(5)The Genius3.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 generalscheme of things, with no power whatever to assert his will.(3)No one is ethically free; everything is determined by a complexof internal chemisms and by the forces of social pressure.4.Sister Carrie(1)Plot(2)Analysis5.Style(1)Without good structure(2)Deficient characterization(3)Lack in imagination(4)Journalistic method(5)Techniques in paintingChapter 5 The Modern PeriodSection 1 The 1920sI. IntroductionThe 1920s is a flowering period of American literature. It is considered “the second renaissance” of Americ an literature. The nicknames for this period:(1) Roaring 20s – comfort(2) Dollar Decade – rich(3) Jazz Age – Jazz musicII. Backgrounda) First World War –“a war to end all wars”(1) Economically: became rich from WWI. Economic boom: newinventions. Highly-consuming society.(2) Spiritually: dislocation, fragmentation.b) wide-spread contempt for law (looking down upon law)1. Freud’s theoryIII. Features of the literatureWriters: three groups(1) Participants(2) Expatriates(3) Bohemian (unconventional way of life) – on-lookersTwo areas:(1) Failure of communication of Americans(2) Failure of the American societyImagismI. BackgroundImagism was influenced by French symbolism, ancient Chinese poetry and Japan ese literature “haiku”II. Development: three stages1. 1908~1909: London, Hulme2. 1912~1914: England - America, Pound3. 1914~1917: Amy LowellIII. What is an “image”?An image is defined by Pound as that which presents an intellectualand em otional complex in an instant of time, “a vortex or cluster of fused ideas” “endowed with energy”. The exact word must bring the effect of the object before the reader as it had presented itself to the poet’s mind at the time of writing.IV. Principles1. Direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective;2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation;3. As regarding rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome.V. Significance1. It was a rebellion against the traditional poetics which failed to reflect the new life of the new century.2. It offered a new way of writing which was valid not only for the Imagist poets but for modern poetry as a whole.3. The movement was a training school in which many great poets learned their first lessons in the poetic art.4. It is this movement that helped to open the first pages of modern English and American poetry.VI. Ezra Pound1. life2. literary career3. works(1) Cathay(2) Cantos(3) Hugh Selwyn Mauberley4. point of view(1) Confident in Pound’s belief that the artist was morally and culturally the arbiter and the “saviour” of the race, he took it upon himself to purify the arts and became the prime mover of a few experimental movements, the aim of which was to dump the old into the dustbin and bring forth something new.(2) To him life was sordid personal crushing oppression, and culture produced nothing but “intangible bondage”.(3) Pound sees in Chinese history and the doctrine of Confucius a source of strength and wisdom with which to counterpoint Western gloom and confusion.(4) He saw a chaotic world that wanted setting to rights, and a humanity, suffering from spiritual death and cosmic injustice, that needed saving. He was for the most part of his life trying to offer Confucian philosophy as the one faith which could help to save the West.5. style: very difficult to readPound’s early poems are fresh and lyrical. The Cant os can be notoriously difficult in some sections, but delightfully beautiful in others.Few have made serious study of the long poem; fewer, if anyone at all, have had the courage to declare that they have conquered Pound; and many seem to agree that the Cantos is a monumental failure.6. ContributionHe has helped, through theory and practice, to chart out the course of modern poetry.7. The Cantos –“the intellectual diary since 1915”Features:(1) Language: intricate and obscure(2) Theme: complex subject matters(3) Form: no fixed framework, no central theme, no attention to poetic rulesNovels in the 1920sI. F. Scott Fitzgerald1. life – participant in 1920s2. works(1) This Side of Paradise(2) Flappers and Philosophers(3) The Beautiful and the Damned(4) The Great Gatsby(5) Tender is the Night(6) All the Sad Young Man(7) The Last Tycoon3. point of view(1) He expressed what the young people believed in the 1920s, the so-called “American Dream” is false in na ture.(2) He had always been critical of the rich and tried to show the integrating effects of money on the emotional make-up of his character. He found that wealth altered people’s characters, making them mean and distrusted. He thinks money brought only tragedy and remorse.(3) His novels follow a pattern: dream – lack of attraction – failure and despair.4. His ideas of “American Dream”It is false to most young people. Only those who were dishonest could become rich.5. StyleFitzgerald was one of the great stylists in American literature. His prose is smooth, sensitive, and completely original in its diction and metaphors. Its simplicity and gracefulness, its skill in manipulating the relation between the general and the specific reveal his consummate artistry.6. The Great GatsbyNarrative point of view – NickHe is related to everyone in the novel and is calm and detectedobserver who is never quick to make judgements.Selected omniscient point of viewII. Ernest Hemingway1. life2. point of view (influenced by experience in war)(1) He felt that WWI had broken America’s culture and traditions, and separated from its roots. He wrote about men and women who were isolated from tradition, frightened, sometimes ridiculous, trying to find their own way.(2) He condemned war as purposeless slaughter, but the attitude changed when he took part in Spanish Civil War when he found that fascism was a cause worth fighting for.(3) He wrote about courage and cowardice in battlefield. He defined courage as “an instinctive movement towards or away from the centre of violence with self-preservation and self-respect, the mixed motive”. He also talked about the courage with which to face tragedies of life that can never be remedied.(4) Hemingway is essentially a negative writer. It is very difficult for him to say “yes”. He holds a black, naturalistic view of the world and sees it as “all a nothing” and “all nada”.3. works(1) In Our Time(2) Men Without Women(3) Winner Take Nothing(4) The Torrents of Spring(5) The Sun Also Rises(6) A Farewell to Arms(7) Death in the Afternoon(8) To Have and Have Not(9) Green Hills of Africa(10) The Fifth Column(11) For Whom the Bell Tolls(12) Across the River and into the Trees(13) The Old Man and the SeaSouthern LiteratureI. HeritageAmerican southern literature can date back to Edgar Allen Poe, and reach its summit with the appearance of the two “giants” – Faulkner and Wolfe. There are southern women writers – Katherine Anne Porter,Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor.II. Southern Myths – guilt, failure, poverty1. Chevalier [w]heritage[/w]2. Agrarian virtue3. Plantation aristocracy4. Lost cause5. White supremacy6. Purity of womanhoodSouthern literature: twisted, pessimistic, violent, distortedGothic novel: PoeIII. William Faulkner1. life2. literary career: three stages(1) 1924~1929: training as a writerThe Marble FaunSoldie's PayMosquitoes(2) 1929~1936: most productive and prolific periodSartorisThe Sound and the FuryAs I Lay DyingLight in AugustAbsalom, Absalom(3) 1940~end: won recognition in AmericaGo Down, Moses3. point of viewHe generally shows a grim picture of human society where violence and cruelty are frequently included, but his later works showed more optimism. His intention was to show the evil, harsh events in contrast to such eternal virtues as love, honour, pity, compassion, self-sacrifice, and thereby expose the faults o f society. He felt that it was a writer’s duty to remind his readers constantly of true values and virtues.4. themes(1) history and raceHe explains the present by examining the past, by telling the stories of several generations of family to show how history changes life. He was interested in the relationship between blacks and whites, especially concerned about the problems of the people who were of the mixed race of black and white, unacceptable to both races.(2) Deterioration(3) Conflicts between generations, classes, races, man andenvironment(4) Horror, violence and the abnormal5. style/features of his works(1) complex plot(2) stream of [w]consciousness[/w](3) multiple point of view, circular form(4) violation of chronology(5) courtroom rhetoric: formal language(6) characterization: he was able to probe into the psychology ofcharacters(7) “anti-hero”: weak, fable, vulnerable (true people in modernsociety)He has a group of women writers following him, includingO’Connor and Eudora WeltySection 2 The 1930sRadical 1930sI. BackgroundGreat Depression (1929 “Black Thursday”)II. Literature1. Writers of the 1920s were still writing, but they didn’t producegood works.2. The main stream is left-oriented.III. Writers of 1930s1. social concern and social involvement2. revival of naturalistic tradition of Dreiser and NorrisIV. John Steinbeck1. life2. works(1) Cup of Gold(2) Tortilla Flat(3) In Dubious Battle(4) Of Mice and Men(5) The Grapes of Wrath(6) Travels with Charley(7) Short stories: The Red Pony, The Pearl3. point of view(1) His best writing was produced out of outrage at the injustices ofthe societies, and by the admirations for the strong spirit of the poor.(2) His theme was usually simple human virtues, such as kindness and fair treatment, which were far superior to the dehumanizing cruelty ofexploiters.4. style(1) poetic prose(2) regional dialect(3) characterization: many types of characters rather than individuals(4) dramatic factors(5) social protect: spokesman for the poverty-stricken people5. The Grapes of Wrath。
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American Romanticism
Features: “pioneering”, a new experience;
American Puritanism; “new” country as a result: imitative and independent
Washington Irving(1783-1859)
The first American literatue is neither American nor literature
It was the work of immigrants from England. It was an interesting mixture of travel accounts and religious writings. John Smith, William Bradford, John Winthrop Anne Bradstreet, the “Tenth Muse” Philip Freneau,important poet of 18th century
A Survey of American Literature
美国文学简史
学习参考书目
常耀信主编的《美国文学简史》配套辅导书
《美国文学简史》学习指南赵红英主编 中Fra bibliotek传媒大学出版社
Map of America
Chapter 1 Colonial America
American Puritanism
First American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame “Rip Van Winkle” “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
James Fenimore Cooper (17891851)
the first settlers in America; Mayflower ship; features of Puritans;
“doctrinaire opportunist” (practical idealist)
cultural heritage
The Literary Scene in Colonial America
“Leatherstocking Tales”
Natty Bumppo—a mythic figure
The Pioneers《拓荒者》 The Deerslayer 《猎鹿者》 The Last of the Mohicans《最后的莫希干人》 The Pathfinder《探路人》 The Prairie 《大草原》
Chapter 2 Edwards, Franklin, Crevecoeur
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Poor Richard’s Almanac “Lost time is never found again.” “God help them that help themselves.” “Early to bed, and ealy to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” Autobiography
Chapter 3 American Romanticism,Irving, Cooper
American Romanticism Background democracy and political equality, the ideals of new nation spread of industrialism, sudden influx of immigrants, “pioneers” further west—ecnomic boom, optimism and hope—cried for literary expression foreign influences:Romantic movement in England and Europe, a model for American romantic writing