美国文学考试资料整理

一．The Literature of Colonial America(Puritanism)

1.The first English colony: Jamestown in Virginia in 1607

2.The first American writer: John Smith

3.Anne Bradstreet:

first American woman poet; a Puritan poet; once called “Tenth Muse”;

二．Literature of Reason and Revolution

War of Independence (1775-1783);The French and Indian War / the Seven Y ears’War(1756-1763)

1..Benjamin Franklin:

Autobiography; Richard’s Almanac

Maxims from Poor Richard’s Almanac

(proverbs that give practical wisdom)

2..Thomas Paine (1737-1809):

Common Sense: a strong push for the Revolution W ar; four parts (British enslavement of the colonies; praising democratic election; America’s economic and military potential to protect the rights of people)

3..Philip Freneau (1752-1832)

The first American-born poet;“Poet of the American Revolution”, “Father of American Poetry”, the most significant poet of 18th century America

W orks:The Wild Honey Suckle《野忍冬花》on mortality, The Indian Burying Ground 《印第安人殡葬地》on the imagined afterlife, The British Prison Ship《英国囚船》about his imprisoned experience.

三．Romanticism

The American Romantic period is considered one of the most important periods, the first literary Renaissance, in the history of American literature. It stretches from the end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil W ar. It started with the publication of W ashington Irving’s The Sketch Book and ended with Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

1.Washington Irving (1783-1859)

Literary status: the first American to earn an international reputation; Father of the American short stories

The Sketch Book: winning him international popularity，the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature.

Major works: A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty under the name of “Diedrich Knickerbocker

2.James Fenimore Cooper:

Leatherstocking T ales

Including: The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder, The Deerslayer Natty Bumppo (an ideal romantically; various names: Leatherstocking, Deerslayer, Pathfinder, Hawkeye; with two noble red men: Mohican Chief Chingachgook and his son, Uncas)

3.Edgar Allen Poe

Works: Raven ;To Henlen;The Fall of the House of Usher:

"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story of Gothic horror written in first-person point of view, which proves Poe to be the father of American psychoanalytic novels

4.Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emersonian T ranscendentalism

Literary status: the chief spokesman of New England T ranscendentalism, which is the summit of American Romanticism

Essays: Nature:“Over-soul”“Universal Mind.”

Essays (The American Scholar, The Divinity School Address, Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul), Essays: Second Series (The Poet, Experience)

5.Henry David Thoreau:Walden

6.Nathaniel Hawthorne:

⑴An appalling fictional version of Hawthorne’s belief that “wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones,” and that evil will come out of evil though it may take many generations to happen.

⑵Power of blackness

Twice-Told Tales;The House of the Seven Gables

⑶The Scarlet Letter 《红字》(

the changes of the symbolic meaning of the scarlet letter “A”?

Adultery: a token of shame

Alone and Alienation

Able

Admirable →Angel

7.Herman Melville

Sea adventure:Typee Omoo Mardi；The Confidence-Man(没有)

Literary achievements: Moby Dick：Symbolism:

8.William Cullen Bryant:Literary status: one of America’s earliest naturalist poets; “the American Wordsworth;Literary achievements:

Works:

⑴Poetry: The Fountain, The White-Footed Deer, A Forest Hymn, and The Flood of Years (small output, but high skills)