美国文学史第一部分材料(复习+ 作业+预习)

Handouts for American Literature (I)

Introduction

I. Literature---defined by Webster’s Universal Unabridged Dictionary as “all writings in prose or

verse, especially those of an imaginative or critical character”. A kind of work imaginative and creative, either written or oral, made of three categories: drama, poetry and fiction

• A. Drama—comedy, tragedy, historical play, legendary play, mystery play Bible）, miracle play（saints）, morality play, satire, closet drama

• B. Fiction—romance, legend, short-short story, short story, novelette, novel（historical, picaresque, Gothic, science fiction, detective, psychological, stream-of-consciousness）• C. Poetry—epic, narrative poem, blank verse, sonnet, epigram, elegy, ode, picture poem, parody, free verse（open form）

II. 9 American Nobel Prize winners in literature:

1930 Sinclair Lewis(1885–1951)---Main Street, Babbitt

1936 Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) ---dramatist, The Hairy Ape, The Emperor Jones, Beyond the Horizon, Desire Under the Elms, Long Days Journey into Night

1938 Pearl Buck (1892-1973)--- The Good Earth

1948 T. S. Eliot---American to British nationality, poet, playwright and critic, father of modernism, Waste Land

1949 William Faulkner (1897–1962) ---novelist, series about a fictional southern county; The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, As I Lay Dying

1954 Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) ---The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises

1962 John Steinbeck(1902-1968)---The Grapes of Wrath, about farmers’ hardship

1976 Soul Bellow(1915 –2005)---a Jewish writer, Seize the Day, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, Humboldt's Gift

1993 Toni Morrison(1931- )---a black woman writer, The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, Love, A Mercy, about black people

Part One The Literature of Colonial America

England (provided the overwhelming majority of the immigrants)

1607---Jamestown (in memory of king James I), 1st permanent English settlement in America

1620---Heading for Hudson River, pilgrims landed at Plymouth (by Mayflower, 73 men and 29 women), signed the Mayflower Compact, which has become the base of American independence and constitution. In 1621, the pilgrims celebrated a huge harvest to thank God (Thanksgiving Day)

1630---Great Migration of English Puritans to New England began.

1732---Last and 13th colony (Georgia) was founded

●Settlers came for 2 purposes: fortune and religious freedom

● 3 religions in the world ---Christianity, Islam, Buddhism

●Puritanism (influenced by Calvin) ---principles and practices of the Puritans.

---The main doctrines of it are the following four aspects:

predestination (God has decided a person’s fate even before his birth),