美国文学期末考试重点

名词解释：

Imagism: It’s a poetic movement of England and the U.S. flourished from 1909 to 1917.The movement insists on the creation of images in poetry by “the direct treatment of the thing” and the economy of wording. The leaders of this movement were Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell.

Beat generation: The term was coined by Jack Kerouac in 1948 to refer to a group of disillusioned writers following World War Two. Later, this literary and cultural movement continued into the 1960s. The Beat Generation must not be confused with the Lost Generation of writers. Spokesmen and representatives of the Beat Generation were Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and others. They revolted against an America that was materialistic, belligerent and frustrating. Social, intellectual and sexual freedom was advocated. Traditional culture and normal social behavior were attacked and violated. Many of them were drug addicts wearing long hair and dirty clothes. They were fond of slangs and jazz. Masterpieces created by writers of this g roup include Kerouac’s On the Road and Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems, which were regarded as pocket Bibles of that generation. Other prominent Beats include William S. Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Michael McClure, and Neal Cassady. The Beat Generation, had greatly influenced the countercultural movements of the 1960s and the adolescents and adults in other countries. In England, the “angry young men” made an echo and imitated the American “beatnik.”

二、1. Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Nature: it is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism.

The American Scholar:it has been regarded as “America’s Declaration of Intellectual Independence”.

2. Henry David Thoreau: Walden

3. Nathaniel Hawthorne:

The Scarlet Letter:

主题：Hawthorne focuses his attention on the moral, emotional, and psychological effects or consequences of the sin on the people in general and those main characters in particular, so as to show us the tension between society and individuals. To Hawthorne, everybody is potentially a sinner, and great moral courage is therefore indispensable for the improvement of human nature.

4. Herman Melville: Moby Dick

A. 作品分析：

（1）Moby Dick represents the sum total of Melville’s bleak view of the world in which he lived. It is at once godless and purposeless. The loss of faith and the sense of futility and meaningless which characterize modern life of the West were expresse d in Melville’s work so well that the twentieth century has found it both fascinating and great.

(2) One of the major themes of this novel is alienation, which exists in the life of Melville on different levels, between man and man, man and society, and man and nature. Melville also criticizes New England Transcendentalism of its emphasis on individualism and Oversoul. Another theme of this novel is “rejection and quest.”

(3) The novel is highly symbolic. The voyage itself is a metaphor for “search and discovery, the search for the ultimate truth of experience.” Moby Dick is the most conspicuous symbol in the book and it is capable of many interpretations. It is a symbol of evil to some, one of goodness to others, and both to still others. Its whiteness is a paradoxical color, signifying as it does death and corruption as well as purity, innocence, and youth. It represents the final mystery of the universe which man will do well to desist from pursuing.

(4) Melville manages to achieve the effect of ambiguity through employing the technique of multiple views of his narratives. He tends to write periodic sentences. His rich rhythmical prose and his poetic power have been profusely commented upon and praised.

B. what does the white whale in Moby Dick symbolize? Why do you think so?

For Captain Ahab, the white whale represents evil. After the loss of his leg in his encounter with the white whale, Ahab begins to hate Moby Dick and tries his best to kill the whale. It seems that he embodies all of the evil he once consigned to the white whale. For other members on the whaling ship, the white whale symbolizes the unknown, mysterious natural force of the universe. For the readers, the white whale is capable of many interpretations, for it is “paradoxically benign an d malevolent, nourishing and destructive,” “massive, brutal, monolithic, but at the same time protean, erotically beautiful, infinitely variable.”

C. Major themes: obsession, religion, and idealism versus pragmatism, revenge, racism, sanity, hierarchical relationships, and politics.

D. the Pequod is the microcosm of human society and the voyage becomes a search for truth. Moby Dick is a mystery, an ultimate mystery of the universe, and the voyage of the mind will forever remain a search, not a discovery, of the truth.

The whole story turns out to be a symbolic voyage of the mind quest of the truth and knowledge of the universe, a spiritual exploration into man’s deep reality and psychology.

5. Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass.It has been praised as “Democ ratic Bible”, and as American Epic.

主题：(1)he shows concern for the whole hard-working people and the burgeoning life of cities. (2) realization of the individual value. (3) pursuit of love and happiness. (4) Before and during the Civil War, Whitman expressed much mourning for the sufferings of the young lives in the battlefield and showed a determination to carry on the fighting dauntlessly until the final victory.

写作风格：(1) Whitman wrote “free verse”, that is,

poetry without a fixed beat or regular

rhyme scheme.

(2) There is a strong sense of the poems

being rhythmical. Parallelism and phonetic

recurrence at the beginning of the lines

contribute to the musicality of his poems.

(3) Most of the pictures he painted with

words are honest, undistorted images of

different aspects of America of the day.

(4) Whitman’s language is relatively simple

and even rather crude. Another

characteristic in Whitman’s language is his

strong tendency to use oral English.

Whitman’s vocabulary is amazing. He

would use powerful, colorful, as well as

rarely-used words.

Leaves of Grass的分析：

(1). Grass, the most common thing with the

greatest vitality, is an image of the poet

himself, a symbol of the then rising

American nation and an embodiment of his

ideals about democracy and freedom.

(2). In this giant work, openness, freedom,

and above all, individualism are all that

concerned him.

(3). In this book he also praises nature,

democracy, labor and creation, and sings of

man’s dignity and equality, and of th e

brightest future of mankind. Most of the

poems in Leaves of Grass sing of the

“en-masse” and self as well.

6. Emily Dickinson:

诗歌的主要内容：love, nature, death and

immortality.

7. Edgar Allen Poe: 短篇小说家和诗人。

Poe is the father of psychoanalytic criticism

and the father of detective story.

主题：death of one’s beloved lover of great

intelligence and beauty. He also writes

about horror (Gothic) stories, murder, and

insanity.

8. Henry James: The turn of the screw

The founder of psychological realism.

He was the first American writer to

conceive his artistic work in international

themes.

9. Mark Twain:The adventures of

Huckleberry Finn

Hemingway described it as the book from

which “all modern American literature

comes”.

The style of this book is quite simple.

The book is written in the colloquial style.

Though a local book, it touches upon the

human situation in a general, indeed

universal way: humanitarianism ultimately

triumphs.

It tells a story about the United States

before the Civil War, around 1850, when

the great Mississippi Valley was still being

settled. Here lies an America, wit its great

national faults, full of violence and even

cruelty, yet still retaining the virtues of

“some simplicity, some innocence, some

peace.”

10. Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore

Dreiser: 自然主义的代表人物。

11. F. Scott Fitzgerald:The Great Gatsby

迷惘一代的代表人物

12. Ernest Hemingway:

A Farewell to Arms; For Whom the Bell

Tolls; The Old Man and the Sea

The title of For Whom the Bell Tolls comes

from John Donne’s Meditation.

13. William Faulkner: stream of

consciousness的写作手法

14. Ezra Pound: 意象派代表人物。

意象派基本主张：

(1) 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.

15. Robert Frost: natural poet.

16. Eugene Glastone O’Neill: Desire

Under the Elms

Long Days Journey into Night:

Mark Twain

H. L. Mencken considered "the true father

of our national literatu re” Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn(1884) and Life on

the Mississippi(1883) Twain shaped the

world's view of American and made a more

extensive combination of American folk

humor and serious literature than previous

writers had ever done.

Mark Twain’s sty le

1) Twain is also known as a local colorist,

who preferred to present social life through

portraits of the local characters of his

regions

2) Another fact that made Twain unique is

his magic power with language, his use of

vernacular. His words are colloquial,

concrete and direct in effect, and his

sentence structures are simple, even

ungrammatical, which is typical of the

spoken language

3) Mark Twain's humor is remarkable, too.

Most of his works tend to be funny,

containing some practical jokes, comic

details, witty remarks.

4) Paid more attention to the "life" of the

Americans, Concerned with the life of a

small, well-defined region and the

lower-class people

5) Nostalgic in a vanishing way of life and

recorders of a present that faded before

their eyes

Adventures of Huckleberry Fin

The character analysis and social meaning

of Huck Finn

Huck is a typical American boy with “a

sound heart and a deformed conscience”.

He appears to be vulgar in language and

in manner, but he is honest and decent in

es sence. His remarkable raft’s journey

down on the Mississippi river can be

regarded as his process of education and

his way to grow up.

Huck is the son of nature and a symbol

for freedom and earthly pragmatism.

Through the eye of Huck, the innocent and

reluctant rebel, we see the pre-Civil War

American society fully exposed. Twain

contrasts the life on the river and the life on

the banks, the innocence and the

experience, the nature and the culture, the

wilderness and the civilization.

Ernest Hemingway

A Nobel Prize winner for literature

His style, the particular type of hero in

his novels, and his life attitudes have been

widely recognized, not only in

English-speaking countries but all over the

world Hemingway shot himself with a

hunting gun

In Our Time (1925)is the first book to

present a Hemingway hero--Nick Adams

The Sun Also Rises(1926) is

Hemingway's first true novel. A vivid

portrait of "The Lost Generation," -- a

group of young Americans who left their

native land and fought in the war and later

engaged themselves in writing in a new

way about their own experiences.

Hemingway's second big success is A

Farewell to Arms, telling us a story about

the tragic love affair of a wounded

American soldier with a British nurse --

emphasizes his belief that man is trapped

both physically and mentally, but goes to

some lengths to refute the idea of nature,

man is doomed to be entrapped

For Whom the Bell Tolls clearly

represents a new beginning in

Hemingway's career as a writer, which

concerns a volunteer American guerrilla

Robert Jordan fighting in the Spanish

Civil War, this work Caps his career and

leads to his receipt of the Nobel Prize

The Old Man and the Sea, Men Without

Women(1927), Death in the

Afternoon(1932), The Snows of

Kilimanjaro, To Have and Have Not

(1937)

Hemingway develops the style of

colloquialism initiated by Mark Twain

Hemingway was highly praised by the Nobel Prize Committee for "his

powerful style-forming mastery of the art" of creating modern fiction.

Indian Camp

The title indicates that the material is contemporary and to some extent,

representative of the early twentieth-century experience

A reference to the well-know phrase from the Book of Common

Prayer:" Give us peace in our time, O Lord," the title is very ironic

because there is no peace at all in the stories

In a chronological order, introduces Nick Adams to readers from his

childhood to adolescence and manhood

Nick watches his father deliver an Indian woman of a baby by

Caesarian section, with a Jack-knife and without anesthesia.

This incident brings the boy into contact with something that is

perplexing and unpleasant, and is actually Nick's initiation into the pain

and violence of birth and death.

Most of Hemingway's later works are merely variations of the Nick

Adams stories in In Our Time

The Hemingway code heroes and grace under pressure

They have seen the cold world, and for one cause, they boldly and

courageously face the reality. They have an indestructible spirit for his

optimistic view of life. Whatever the result is, they are ready to live with

grace under pressure. No matter how tragic the ending is, they will never

be defeated. Finally, they will be prevailing because of their

indestructible spirit and courage.

The iceberg technique

Hemingway believes that a good writer does not need to reveal every

detail of a character or action. The one-eighth is presented will suggest

all other meaningful dimensions of the story.

Thus, Hemingway’s language is symbolic and suggestive.