美国文学选读复习提纲

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美国文学复习大纲

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* Second stage: Transcedentalism (p.56-59) Raph Waldo Emerson: Nature Henry David Thoreau: Walden
• Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter • Herman Melville: Moby Dick • Edgar Allan Poe: Gothic novels • “Tales of Grotesque and Arabesque” • Poe’s position in the world literature (P.114-115)
The first peak of literature in US
• Two stages of Romanticism in the first half of 19th century of US: • * First stage: • Washing Irving: Father of American literature; the first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame • A History of New York • The Sketch Book: “Rip Van Winkle” “Sleepy Hollow” • James F. Cooper: • Leather-stocking Tales: The Pioneer • The Last of the Mohicans • The Prairie • The Pathfinder • The Deerslayer
• American Movement of Enlightenment (P.27-28) Writers of enlightenment Benjamin Franklin: The Authobiography; Poor Richard’s Amanack The Importance of Benjamin Franklin’s “The Autobiography”. (P. 35-37) Thomas Paine: Common Sense; Thomas Jefferson: The Declaration of Independence

美国文学选读复习资料

[ 美国⽂文学选读 ]!Ⅰ. Authors and their worksAlice Walker The Color PurpleAllen Ginsberg HowlA Supermarket in CaliforniaArthur Miller All My Sons!Death of a Salesman!A View from the Bridge!The Misﬁts!The Archbishop’s Ceiling!The Crucible!After the Fall!The Price!Situation Normal!The Man Who Had All the Luck!A memory of Two Mondays!The American Clock!Archibald MacLeish The Happy MarriageThe Poet of EarthConquistadorArs PoeticaTowers of IvoryStreets in the MoonNew Found LandThe Fall of The CityAirraidAmbrose Bierce The Fiend’s DelightNuggests and Dust Panned out in California Cobwebs from an Empty SkullTales of Soldiers and CiviliansIn the Midst of LifeCan Such Things Be?The Devil’s DictionaryThe ApplicantBenjamin Franklin Poor Richard’s Almanac !The Autobiography!The Way to Wealth!Bret Harte The Luck of Roaring CampBernard Malamud The FixerThe AssistantThe TenantThe Magic BarrelA New LifeGod’s GraceCarl Sandburg Chicago PoemsThe People, YesAlways the Young StrangerIn Reckless EcstasyThe Prairie YearsThe War YearsThe American SongbagHoney and SaltCorn-HuskerFogSmoke and SteelCharles Waddell Chesnutt The Conjure WomanThe Wife of His Youth and Other Story of the Color Line The Sheriff’s ChildrenThe Pioneer of the Color LineThe Marrow of TraditionClifford Odets Waiting for LeftyAwake and SingTill the Day I DieParadise LostGolden Boy’Clash by NightThe Big KnifeThe Country GirlThe Flowering PeachDu Bois E. B. White Stuart LittleCharlotte’s WebQuo Vadimus or the Case for the BicycleOne Man’s MeatThe Points of My CompassOnce More to the LakeE Cumings Tulips and ChimneysThe Enormous RoomVivaNo, ThanksEimiEdgar Allan Poe The Raven and Other Poems!Tamerlane and Other Poems!Al Araaf!Poems!Ligeia!Annabel Lee!The Fall of the House of Usher !The Masque of the Red Death!The Black Cat!The Cask of Amontillado!Murders in the Rue Morgue!The Purloined Letter!The Gold Bug!William Wilson!The Philosophy of Composition!The Poetic Principle!Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque!Sonnet — To Science!To Hellen !The City in the Sea!Israfel !Edgar Lee Masters A Book of VerseMaximilianSpoon River AnthologyEdward Arlington Robinson The Children of the NightCaptain CraigThe Town Down the RiverThe Man Against the SkyAvon’s HarvestEdward Albee The Zoo StoryThe American DreamWho’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?The sandboxEdward Bellamy Looking Backward 2000-1887EqualityThe Duck of Stockbridge :A Romance of Shay’s Rebellion The Blindman’s World and Other StoriesEdwin Charles Markham The Man With the HoeEdmund Wilson Travel in Two DemocraciesTo the Finland StationA Piece of My Mind: Reﬂection at SixtyAxel’s CastleThe Triple ThinkersThe Wound and the BowThe Shores of LightThe Fruits of the MLAEdith Wharton The House of MirthThe Age of InnocenceEthan FromeBunner SisterThe Customs of the CountryA Backward GlanceEzra Pound Hugh Selwyn Mauberley !The Cantos!Exultations!Personae!Cathy!The Spirit of Romance!The Anthology Des Imagistes!Literary Essays!A Few Don’ts by Imagiste!Polite Essays!In a Station of the Metro!Emily Dickinson To Make a Prairie!Success Is Counted Sweetest!I’m Nobody!!Because I could not Stop for Death!I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died!This is My Letter to the World!My Life Closed Twice Before its Close! Mine-by the Bight of the White Election! Wild Nights — Wild Nights!A narrow Fellow in the Grass!Apparently with no Surprise!I Died for Beauty — but was Scarce!Tell All the Truth but Tell It Slant!I Like to See it Lap the Miles!The Brain is Wider than the Sky !As Imperceptibly as Grief!Elmer Rice The Adding MachineElizabeth Bishop North and SouthGeography ⅢIn the Waiting RoomEllen Glasgow The Barren GroundEugene O’Neill Beyond the Horizon!Emperor Jones!The Hairy Ape !Bound East for Cardiff!In the Zone!The Long Voyage Home!The Moon of the Carribeans!The Great God Brown!Strange Interlude!Desire Under the Elm!Morning Becomes Electra!A Touch of the Poet!Anna Christie!The Emperor Jones!All the God’s Children Got Wings!Long Day’s Journey Into Night!The Moon for the Misbegotten!Hughie!More Stately Mansions!The Iceman Cometh!Eudora Welty The Golden ApplesThe Bride of Innisfallen•Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises!A Farewell to Arms!For Whom the Bell Tolls!The Old Man and the Sea!The Torrents of Spring!Men Without Woman!The Winters Take Nothing!To Have and Have Not!A Movable Feast!In Our Time!A Clean Well-Lighted Place!In Another Country!F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby !Tender In the Night!The Side of Paradise!The Beautiful and the Damned !Flappers and Philosophers!Tales of the Jazz Age!The Last Tycoon!Taps at Reveille !The Ice Palace!May Days!The Diamond as Big as the Ritz! Winter Dreams!The Rich Boy!Babylon Revisited!The Crack-Up!Flannery O’Connor A Good Man Is Hard to FindWise BloodThe ViolentBear it AwayFrancis Bret Harte The Luck of Roaring CampTennessee’s PartnerFrank Norris Moran of the Lady LettyMc-TeagueThe Epic of the WheatThe OctopusThe PitA Deal in Wheat and Other stories of the Old and New West Frederick Douglass My Bondage and My FreedomGeorge Santayana Skepticism and Animal FaithThe Realms BeingThree Philosophical PoetsThe Last PuritanGertrude Stein Tender ButtonThe Autobiography of Alice B ToklasHart Crane The BridgeMy Grandfather’s Love LettersWhite BuildingsPraise for an UrnFor the Marriage of Faustus and HellenVoyageHamlin Garland Crumbling IdolMan Travelled Roads/The Return of a PrivateRose of Ducher’s CoolyA Son of the Middle BorderHenry David Thoreau Walden / Life in the Woods!On the Duty of Civil Disobedience!A Week on the Concord and Merrimack River! Civil Disobedience!Life Without Principle!Henry Louis Mencken Bernard Shaw: His PlaysThe Philosophy of NietzscheThe American LanguageHappy DaysNewspaper DaysHeathe DaysHerman Melville Moby Dick / The White Whale!Typee !Omoo!Mardi!Redburn!White Jacket!The Conﬁdence Man !Battle pieces!Clarel!Piazza!Pierre!John Marr and Other Sailors!Timoleon!Billy Budd!Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom’s Cabin!A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp!The Minister’s Wooing!The Pearl of Orr’s Island!Oldtown Folks!Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Song of Hiawatha!Voices of the Night !Ballads and Other Poems!Evangeline!I Shot an Arrow!A Psalm of Life!The Hymn of the Night!The Secret of the Sea!Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems!Tales of a Wayside Inn!An April Day!Paul Revere’s Ride!The Courtship of Miles Standish! Poems on Slavery!The Slave’s Dream!The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls! Henry James The Portrait of a Lady!The Wings of the Dove!The Ambassadors !The Golden Bowl!A Passionate Pilgrim !Roderick Hudson!The American!Daisy Miller!The BostoniansThe Princess of Casamassima!The Spoils of Poynton!The Turn of the Screw!The Awkward Age!The American Scene!The Jolly Corner !The Real Thing and other Tales!French Poets and Novelists !Hawthorne!Partial Portrait!Notes and Reviews!Art of Fiction and other Essays!Hilda Doolittle Sea GardenPear TreeOrchardThe Walls Do Not FallTribute to the AngelsThe Flowering of the RodTribute to FreudHellen in EgyptIrwin Shaw The Young LionsThe Naked and the DeadBury the DeadSailor Off the BremenThe Troubled AirLucy CrownTwo Weeks in Another TownVoices of A Summer DayRich ManPoor ManBeggarmanNightworkBread upon the WatersJack London The Call of the Wild!White Fang!The Law of Life!Love of Life!The Heathen!To Build a Fire!The Pearls of Parlay!The Son of the Wolf!The Sea-Wolf!The People of the Abyss!The Iron Heel!Marti Eden !How I Become a Socialist!The War of the Classes!What Life Means to Me!Revolution!The Mexican !Under the Deck Awings!Jack Kerouac On the RoadThe Town and the CityThe SubterraneansThe Dharma BumsVisions of Cody Doctor SaxMaggie CassidyMexico City BluesLonesome TravellerJean Toomer CaneJohn Greenleaf Whittier Snow-boundVoice of FreedomThe Tent on the Beach and Other Poems IchabodA Winter IdylJohn Dos Passos The Three SoldiersManhattan TransferU. S. A.(The 42 Parallel;1919;The Big Money) District of ColumbiaThe Adventures of a Young ManNumber OneThe Grand DesignOrient ExpressJohn Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath!In Dubious Battle!Cup of Gold!Tortilla Flat!The Moon is Down!Of Mice and Men!Cannery Row!The Pearl!The Red Pony(The Leader of the People;!The Gift;The Great Mountains;The Promise)! John Updike Rabbit Run, Redux, Is Rich, at RestJoseph Heller Catch-22We Bombed in New HavenSomething HappenedGood as GoldGod KnowsJames Langston Hughes Mulatto !The Weary Blues!Fine Clothes to the Jew!The Dream Keeper and Other Poems! Shakespeare in Harlem!Dreams!Me and the Mule!Boarder Line !Dear Lovely Death!I Wonder as I Wander!The Best of Simple!James Fenimore Cooper The Leather-stocking Tales!The Spy!The Pilot!The Littlepage Manus Cripts!The Pioneer!The Last of Mohicans!The Prairie!The Pathﬁnder !The Deerslayer!James Farrel Studs LoniganJudgement dayDanny O’NeilBernard CarrCalico ShoesGuillotine PartyA Note on Literary CriticismLiterature and MoralityJames Jones From Here to EternityJames Baldwin Go Tell It on the Mountain!Nobody Knows My Name!The Fire Next Time!Note of a Native Son!J. D. Salinger Catcher in the RyeThe Young FolksFrannyZooeyRaise High the Roof BeamCarpentersSeymour: An IntroductionJoel Chandler Harris Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings Kate Chopin The Awakening !Katherine Anne Porter The Leaning Tower and Other StoriesA Ship of FoolsThe Flowering JudasPale Horse, Pale RiderThe Old OrderOld MortalityThe Jilting of Granny WeathrallMaria ConceptionThe Never Ending WrongLillian Hellman The Children’s HourThe Little FoxesWatch on the RhineThe Searching WindThe Autumn GardenTos in the AtticThe Days to ComeAnother Part of the ForrestAn Unﬁnished WomanPentimentoScoundrel TimeLorraine Hansberry Raisin in the SunLouise Erdrich Love MedicineThe Beet QueenTracksThe Crown of ColumbusThe Bingo PalaceTales of Burning LoveThe Antelope WifeThe Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Hors The Master Butchers Singing ClubFour SoulsThe Painted DrumThe Plague of DovesShadow TagLulu’s BoysMalcolm Cowley Blue JuniataThe Dry SeasonThe Exile’s ReturnA Second Flowering / The Other War •Mark Twain !The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County !The Innocents Abroad!The Gilded Age!The Adventure of Tom Sawyer!The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn!Life on the Mississippi!A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court! The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson!Following the Equator!The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg!The Mysterious Stranger !The Prince and the Pauper!How to Tell a Story!Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc!Martin Luther King, Jr. I Have a DreamStride Toward FreedomStrength To LoveWhy We Can’t WaitWhere Do We Go From HereMaya Angelou Still I RiseMichael Gold 120 MillionChange The WorldThe Hollow ManJew Without MoneyHoboken BluesFiesta Battle Hymn!Nathaniel Hawthorne Twice-told Tales!Mosses from an Old Manse!The Blithedale Romance !The Scarlet Letter!The House of the Seven Gables!The Minister’s Black Veil!Young Goodman Brown!The Birthmark!The Snow-Image!Rappaccini’s Daughter!Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment!The Marble Faun!Nathanael West The Dream Life of Balso SnellThe Day of LocustMiss LoneyheartsNorman Mailer The Armies of the NightBarbary ShoreThe Deer ParkAn American DreamThe White NegroO Henry The Man Higher UpSixes and SevensThe Gift of MagiThe Police and the HymnThe Last LeafPaul Lawrence Dumbar We Wear the MaskPhilip Roth Goodbye, ColumbusPortnoy’s ComplaintThe Ghost WriterZuckerman UnboundThe Anatomy LessonPhilip Freneau Rising Glory of America!The British Prison Ship!To the Memory of the Brave Americans! The Wild Honeysuckle!The Indian Burying Ground !Ralph Waldo Emerson Essay!Nature!Self-reliance!Representative Men!English Traits!The Conduct of Life!May-Day and Other Pieces!The American Scholar!Days !The Humble Bee!The Rhodo!The Transcendentalist !Divinity!The Oversoul!Ralph Waldo Ellison Invisible Man!Shadow and Act!Going to the Territory!Robert Bly The Light Around the BodyThe SixtiesRobert Frost A Boy’s WillWest-Running BrookA Further RangeMending WallAfter Apple-PickingThe BirchesNorth of BostonNew HamphshireMountain IntervalA Witness TreeFire and IceStopping by Woods on a Song EveningThe Road Not Taken!Robert Penn Warren All the King’s MenRobert Lowell Life StudiesLord Weary’s CastleThe DolphinSkunk HourFor SaleWalking in the BlueFor the Union DeadRichard Wright Native SonUncle Tom’s ChildrenBlack Boy: A Record of ChildhoodThe OutsidersThe Long DreamEight MenSarah Orne Jewett Deephaven and Other StoriesThe Country of Pointed FirsSaul Bellow Dangling ManMr. Sammler’s PlanetThe VictimAnderson the Rain KingHerzogSeize the DayThe Adventure of Augie MarchThe Dean’s DecemberMore Die of HeartbreakThe TheftThe ActualRavelsteinThe Last AnalysisLooking for Mr. GreenHumboldt’s GiftStephen Crane Maggie: A Girl of the Streets!The Red Badge of Courage!The Open Boat!The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky!The Blue Hotel!Sinclair Lewis Main StreetBabbittDur Mr WrennThe JobArrowsmithElmer GantryDodsworthIt can’s Happen HereKingsblood RoyalSherwood Anderson Winesburg, OhioWindy McPherson’s SonMarching MenMid-American ChantsThe Book of the GrotesquePoor WhiteThe Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories Horses and MenI Want to Know WhyMany MarriagesDark LaughterDeath in the Woods and Other Stories Sylvia Plath The ColossusArielWinter TreesThe Bell JarPoint ShirleyTennessee Williams A Streetcar Named DesireThe Glass MenagerieCat on a Hot Tin RoofSummer and SmokeThe Rose TattooCamino RealOrpheus DescendingSuddenly Last SummerThe Sweet Bird of Youth The Night of the LguanaT. S. Eliot The Waste Land !Prufrock and Other Observations!The Burial of the Dead!A Game of Chess!The Fire Sermon!Death By Water!What the Thunder Said!Ash Wednesday!Four Quarters!Murder in the Cathedral!Family Reunion!Cocktail Party!Theodore Dreiser Sister Carrie!Jannie Gerhardt!An American Tragedy!Trilogy of Desire!Financer / The Titan / The Stoic!Nigger Jeff!Theodore Roethke The Waking PoemsOn the Poet and His Craft: Selected Prose Thomas Paine Common Sense!American Crisis !Rights of Man!The Age of Reason!Thomas Wolfe Look Homeward, AngelOf Time and the RiverThe Web and the RockYou Can’t Go Home AgainThe Hills BeyondFrom Death to MorningThomas Jefferson Declaration of IndependenceTruman Capote In Cold BloodToni Morrison Song of Solomon!Beloved!The Bluest Eye!Sula!Tar Baby!Jazz!Paradise!Love!A Mercy!Recitatif!Upton Sinclair The JungleSpring and HarvestKing CoalOilBostonDragon’s TeethVilla Cather Oh, Pioneers!My AntoniaA Lost LadyThe Professor’s HouseDeath Comes to the ArchbishopMiss JewettWashington Irving The Sketch Book!The Legend of Sleepy Hollow!Rip Van Winkle!History of New York!The Life of George Washington!Bracebridge Hall!Talks of Traveller!The Alhambra!William Cullen Bryant To a Waterfowl!The Fountain!The Yellow Violet!Thanatoppsis!The White Footed Deer!A Forest Hymn!The Flood of Years!William E.B Dubois Souls of Black Folk!The Philadelphia Negro!John Brown!The Black Flame!William Dean Howells Criticism and Fiction!The Rise of Silas Lapham!A Modern Instance!A Hazard of Now Fortunes!A Traveller from Altruia!From the Eye of the Needle!Novel-Writing and Novel-Reading! William Carlos Williams PatersonDes ImagistesCollected Later PoemsCollected Early PoemsThe Red WheelbarrowSpring and AllSour GrapesThe Desert MusicThe Journey of LovePictures from BrueghelAsphodalThat Green FlowerThe Widow’s Lament in Spring The Dead BabyThe Sparrow, to My FatherIn the American GrainThe Great American NovelProletarian PortraitWilliam Faulkner The Sound and the Fury!Light in August! Absalom! Absalom!!Go down, Moses!Soldier’s Pay!As I Lay Dying!Sartoris!The Hamlet!The Town!The Mansion!The Marble Faun!Dry September!Barn Burning!William Inge Come Back, Little ShebaPicnicWalt Whitman Leaves of Grass!One’s Self I Sing!O Captain! My Captain!!Song of Myself!I Hear America Singing!Song of the Broad-Axe!When Lilacs Lost in the Dooryard Bloom’d! Democratic vistas!The Tramp and Strike Question !I Sit and Look Out!Wallace Stevens The Man with the Blue GuitarThe Necessary AngelAnecdote of the JarHarmoniumNotes Toward a Supreme FictionPeter Quince at the ClavierSunday MorningThe Auroras of Autumn!!!Ⅱ解释术语!!Aestheticism 唯美主义：is an intellectual and art movement supporting the emphasis of aesthetic values more than social-political themes for literature, ﬁne art, music and other arts.!Angry young man 奋⻘青：a group of mostly working and middle class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The group's leading members included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis .They showed an equally uninhibited disdain for the drabness of the postwar welfare state, and their writings frequently expressed raw anger and frustration as the postwar re forms failed to meet exalted aspirations for genuine change.!Allegory 寓⾔言:An allegory is a narrative, whether in prose or verse, in which the agents and action, and sometimes the setting as well, are contrived by the author to make coherent sense on the primary level of signiﬁcation, and at the same time to signify a second, correlated order of signiﬁcation.!Criticism 批判主义：is the practice of judging the merits and faults of something. To criticize does not necessarily imply "to ﬁnd fault", but the word is often taken to mean the simple expression of an objection against prejudice, or a disapproval of something. Often criticism involves active disagreement, but it may only mean "taking sides". It could just be an exploration of the different sides of an issue.!Critical realism 批判现实主义:is the theory that some of our sense-data (for example, those of primary qualities) can and do accurately represent external objects, properties, and events, while other of our sense-data (for example, those of secondary qualities and perceptual illusions) do not accurately represent any external objects, properties, and events. In short, critical realism refers to any position that maintains that there exists an objectively knowable, mind-independent reality, whilst acknowledging the roles of perception and cognition.!Classicism古典主义：the ideas and styles that are common in the literature, art, and architecture of ancient Greece and Rome; a traditional style of art, literature, music, architecture, etc., that is usually graceful and simple with parts that are organized in a pleasing way!Dadaism 达达主义: a form of artistic anarchy born out of disgust for the social, political and cultural values of the time. It embraced elements of art, music, poetry, theatre, dance and politics. Dada was not so much a style of art like Cubism or Fauvism; it was more a protest movement with an anti-establishment manifesto.!Determinism 决定论:is the philosophical position that for every event, including human interactions, there exist conditions that could cause no other event. "There are many determinisms, depending on what pre-conditions are considered to be determinative of an event or action.” Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have sprung from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations.!Existentialism 存在主义:is a term that has been applied to the work of a number of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, took the human subject — not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual and his or her conditions of existence — as a starting point for philosophical thought.!Free verse ⾃自由体诗:Free verse, or “open form” verse, is printed like traditional verse in short lines instead of with the continuity of prose, but it differs from traditional verse by the fact that its rhythmic pattern is not organized into a regular metrical form. Most free verse also has irregular lengths, and either lacks rhyme or uses it only sporadically.!golden age ⻩黄⾦金时代：the most ﬂourishing period in the history of a nation, literature, people, etc.!Gilded age 镀⾦金时代：the age of wealth and poverty, of progress and decline, and the age of gaudy excesses.!Hippie 嬉⽪皮⼠士：a member of a counterculture, originally a youth movement that started in the United States and United Kingdom during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world.!Imagism 意象主义:Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. Imagism has been described as the most inﬂuential movement in English poetry since the activity of the Pre-Raphaelites. As a poetic style it gave Modernism its start in the early 20th century, and is considered to be the ﬁrst organized Modernist literary movement in the English language. Imagism is sometimes viewed as 'a succession of creative moments' rather than any continuous or sustained period of development.!Idealism 理想主义:In philosophy, idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing. In a sociological sense, idealism emphasizes how human ideas—especially beliefs and values—shape society.!Industrialism 产业主义:An economic and social system based on the development of large-scale industries and marked by the production of large quantities of inexpensive manufactured goods and the concentration of employment in urban factories.! Individualism 个⼈人主义:is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance and advocate that interests of the individual should achieve precedence over the state or a social group, while opposing external interference upon one's own interests by society or institutions such as the government.!Local colorism 乡⼟土特⾊色(主义）：literary works that emphasizes the characteristics of their own region, deeply rooted in America, in local soil and culture. For the first time, the rich variety of American life and American people are fully presented in literary works.Local colorist is mostly concerned with the characteristics of people and life of their own regions. As a result, local colorists in different regions together presented a most colorful and comprehensive picture of America and American life, best presented not only the history of the country but the development of the nation and its culture.Literature ⽂文学：language artistically used to achieve identiﬁable literary qualities and to convey meaningful messages.! Modernism 现代主义:It is the term referring to the literary, artistic and general culture of the first half of the twentieth century. Modernism is distinguished by its general rejection of previous literary traditions, particularly those of the late nineteenth century and of bourgeois society.!Materialism 唯物主义:Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all phenomena, including mental phenomena and consciousness, are identical with material interactions.!Magic realism 魔幻现实主义： is an artistic genre in which magical elements or illogical scenarios appear in an otherwise realistic or even “normal” setting, which has been widely used in relation to literature, art and ﬁlm. The magical realists aim to highlight reality as opposed to traditional way of presenting or reﬂecting reality, to express the irony in everyday events that we tend to ignore and to blur the boundary between real and unreal.!Naturalism ⾃自然主义: Naturalism is a growth of realism, a prominent literacy movement that seeks to replicate a believable everyday reality, as opposed to such movements as romanticism or surrealism, in which subjects may receive highly symbolic, idealistic or even supernatural treatment. !New criticism 新批判主义:was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object.!Primitivism 原始主义:Primitivism is a preference for the supposedly free and contented existence found in a “primitive” way of life as opposed to the artiﬁcialities of urban civilization. It had a particular prominence in the 18th century Europe and 19th century America, contributing to the values of Romanticism.!Predestination 宿命论:in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul. Explanations of predestination often seek to address the "paradox of free will", whereby God's omniscience seems incompatible with human free will. In this usage, predestination can be regarded as a form of religious determinism; and usually predeterminism.!Psychological realism ⼼心理现实主义:refers to works of prose ﬁction which places more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization, and on the motives, circumstances, and internal action which springs from, and develops, external action. The psychological realism is not content to state what happens but goes on to explain the motivation of this action. In this type of writing character and characterization are more important than usual, and they often delve deeper into the mind of a character than novels of other genres.!Post-romanticism 后浪漫主义:refers to a range of cultural endeavors and attitudes emerging in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, after the period of Romanticism. Herman Melville and Thomas Carlyle are post-Romantic writers. Flaubert's Madame Bovary is a post-Romantic novel. The period of post-romanticism in poetry is deﬁned as the late nineteenth century, and includes the poetry of Tennyson.!Post-modernism 后现代主义:is a late-20th-century movement in the arts, architecture, and criticism that was a departure from modernism. Postmodernism includes skeptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, history, economics, architecture, ﬁction, and literary criticism. It is often associated with deconstruction and post-structuralism because its usage as a term gained signiﬁcant popularity at the same time as twentieth-century post-structural thought.!Postmodernism is a blanket term covering a wide range of diverse experimentation that has been going on since the end of World War II. It is applied to a cultural condition prevailing in the advanced capitalist societies since the 1960s, characterized by a superabundance of disconnected images and styles — most noticeably in television, advertising, commercial design, and pop video.!。

美国文学史复习大纲

美国文学史复习大纲一：作家作品1.Sherwood Anderson: Winesburg, Ohio(小镇畸人，1919) The Triumph of the Egg(鸡蛋的胜利，1921)2.John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath(愤怒的葡萄，1939，strong sociological novel,1940年获普利策奖（Pulitzer Prize)),1962年获诺贝尔文学奖①the foremost novelist of the American Depression.美国大萧条时期最杰出的小说家。

②代表作：“Of Mice and Men”《人鼠之间》portrayed the tragic friendship between two migrant workers “The Grapes of Wrath”《愤怒的葡萄》regarded as masterpiece ,showed the migration of the Okies from the Dust Bowls to California ,a migration that ended in broken dreams and misery but at the same time affirmed the ability of the common people to endure and prevail. Theme : strength comes from unity i-we ;faith in life; struggle to live better2.John Dos Passos: 约翰多斯帕索斯His trilogy U.S.A(美利坚)---The 42nd Parallel(北纬42度，1930), 1919(1932), The Big Money(1936), Three Soldiers。

美国文学选读复习资料全

American Puritanism 殖民地时期( roughly from the settlement of America in the early 17th century through the end of the 18th)一、Benjamin Franklin 本杰明•富兰克林作品：1、Poor Richard's Almanac 《格言历书》--- A Collection of maxims, or proverbs, on the value of work and savings for success.2、The Autobiography 《自传》---“美国梦”的根源3、参与起草《独立宣言》浪漫主义American RomanticismThe Romantic Period stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War. It is a period of the great flowering of American literature.The social and cultural background of RomanticismThe young Republic was flourishing into a politically, economically and culturally independent country.The Romantic writings revealed unique characteristics of their own in their works and they grew on the native lands.The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became a permanent convention of American literature.The American Puritanism as a cultural heritage exerted great influences over American moral values.Romantics frequently shared certain general characteristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in va lue of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a sourc e of goodness and man’s societies as a source of corruption.二、Edgar Allan Poe 埃德加·爱伦·坡---poet, short story writer and literary critic (48 poems,70 short stories)He greatly influenced the devotees of “Art for art’s sake.”He was father of psychoanalytic criticism (心理分析批评), and the detective story. 诗歌的精髓就是追求美小说的主题常常是恐怖和死亡，其中还运用了象征手法。

美国文学史复习纲要

1. The Colonial PeriodThe settlement of America in the early 17th century--- the end of the 18th century.The major topicThe major figures2. The Romantic PeriodCovering the first half of the19th century.•The major points:3. The Age of RealismThe Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. Covering the end of the 19th century and the first decade of 20th century.•It expresses the concern for the commonplace and the low, and offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.•4. American Naturalism•From the first decade of twentieth century to the First World War.•The major figures: Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, and O. Henry5 American ModernismThe literature between the two world wars. This is the most important period in6. American Postmodernism•From the World War II up to now.•Postmodernist writers: John Barth, Philip Roth, Thomas Pinchon, Ishmael Reed and Don Delillo.•The flourishing of minoritarian literature: Jewish-American, African-American and Asian-American literatureis an account of a person’s life written by that person or a book written by oneself about one’s own life. It is characterized by the simplicity of diction, syntax and expression, lucidity of the narrative. Benjamin Franklin…s Autobiography is a good example.Puritanism:Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans, who became American‟s founding fathers. They advocated highly religious and moral principles.The American Puritans were idealists. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God.Puritanism has a profound influence on the early American mind and literaturePoor Richard’s Almanac Autobiography Romanticism1800-1865Characteristics of Romanticism (derivative independent)o an innate and intuitive perception of man, nature and society—reliance on the subconscious, the inner life, the abnormal psychologyo an emphasis on freedom, individualism and imagination—rebellion against neoclassicism which stressed formality, order and authority o a profound love for nature—nature as a source of knowledge, nature asa refuge from the present, nature as a revelation of the holy spirito the quest for beauty—pure beautyo the use of antique and fanciful subject matters—sense of terror, Gothic, grotesque, odd and queerMoby-Dick is regarded as the first American prose epic. His ideas:The world is at once Godless and purposelessMan cannot influence and overcome nature at its sourceThemes 1 alienation 2 Rejection and Quest3criticism against Emersonian self-reliant individualSymbolThe Pequod -------- of human society. The voyage ----- search and discovery. The whale Moby Dick------nature Queequeg's coffin ---- symbolizes life and death. The whiteness of Moby Dick --- death and corruption and purity, innocence and youth; final mystery of the universe.The ship on the ocean----- symbol of the whole world with people in quest of its瓦尔登湖A psalm of lifeSonnet—To science abab cdcd efef ggTo Helen ABABB CDCDC AEEAE五行诗节1. Free from the traditional iambic pentameter and writes free verse2. Parallelism3. Phonetic recurrence systematic repetition of words and phrases or sounds4. Long catalogs, giving free rein to poetic imaginationHer poetry is a clear illustration of her religious-ethical and political-social ideas.largest portion of Dickinson‟s poetry concerns andoriginal in art and famous for the economy of expression in diction and the frequent use of dashes.Her poems are short and implicit in meaning. She is regarded as the forerunner of modernism in American poetryThemes: death love natureFrequent use of dashesTranscendentalism.浪漫主义运动的表现形式-超验主义it‟s Romanticism on the Puritan soil Transcendentalism has been defined as the recognition in man of the capacity of acquiring knowledge transcending the reach of the five senses, or of knowing truth intuitively, or of reaching the divine without the need of an intercessor.placed emphasis on spirit, or the Over soul as the most important thing in the universe stressed the importance of the individualoffered a fresh perception of nature a symbolic of the Spirit or Godstressed the power of intuition.He firmly believes in the transcendence of the “Oversoul”.2. Emerson’s Idealism. He sees the world as phenomenal, and emphasizes theneed for idealism, for idealism sees the world in God3. Emerson’s View on Spirit. He sees spirit pervading everywhere4.Emerson’sView on Man. man is made in the image of God and is just a little less then Him.man is divine.5. Emerson’s View on Individuality and Self-Reliance. The individual is the mostimportant of all. E For him, if man depends upon himself, cultivates himself and brings out the divine in himself, he can hope to become better and even perfect.So men should and could be self-reliant.6. Emerson’s Nature. A natural implication of Emerson‟s view on nature is that the world around is symbolicRealismHis later works become darker and more obscure, showing his discontent and disappointment toward the social reality. His last works shows his acute pessimism, despair, skepticism determinism.Humor local color satireThe Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”The Adventures of Tom Sawyer The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnThe Gilded Age Life on the Mississippi A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court The Man That Corrupted Hardleybug The Mysterious StrangerThe Innocents Abroad Roughing It Pudd'nhead WilsonAmerican ClaimantNaturalismIs a critical term applied to the method of literary composition that aims at a detached, scientific objectivity in the treatment of natural man•It is thus more inclusive and less selective than realism, and holds to the philosophy of determinism.•It conceives of man as controlled by his instincts or his passions, or by its social and economic environment and circumstances.•Since in this view man has no free will, the naturalistic writer does not attempt to make moral judgments•Since in this view man has no free will, the naturalistic writer does not attempt to make moral judgments.•In a word, naturalism is evolved from realism when the author‟s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic.CharacteristicsA literary trend that prevailed in 1890s in America.1) Emphasis on reality, objectivity, no exaggeration, give no comments andcriticizing;2) The naturalists would go to the slums and describe the poverty and crime;3) Be concerned about the influence of social environment. According to them,human beings are victims of the crushing forces of heredity and environment.Explain human activities and human society according to biological law, highlight the effect of animal instincts and heredity on human beings.5) Apply scientific experiment to writing, try to test human feelings in variouskinds of environment.6) The universe is cold, godless, indifferent and hostile.7) Hold very pessimistic attitude towards human society, and this pessimism oftengoes to determinism.Representatives: CharacteristicFrank Norris（弗兰克·诺里斯）dehumanizedStephen Crane（斯蒂芬·克莱恩）- determinedTheodore Dreiser（西奥多·德莱塞）- moved by inner and outer forcesJack London（杰克·伦敦beyond conscious moral control McTeague Octopus the Pit Vandover and the BruteMaggie: A Girl of the Streets The red badge of courage Sister Carrie Modernism现代主义时期•During the first decades of the 20th century, modernism became an international tendency against positivism and representational art in art and literature. Modernism was the consequence of the transformation of society brought about by industrialism and technology. The essence of modernism wasa break with the past, and it also fostered a belief in art and literature as anavenue to self-fulfillment. The feature was its strong and conscious break with traditional forms, perceptions, and techniques of expressions, and its great concern with language and all aspects of its medium.•It was persistently experimental. Stream of consciousness, the use of myth as a structural principle, and the primary status given to the poetic image, all challenged traditional representation.•Generally speaking, this new desire in craftsmanship and skill was one of the hallmarks of the early decades of the 20th century.Imagism意象派（诞生于现代主义时期）It is a Movement in U.S. and English poetry characterized by the use of concrete language and figures of speech, modern subject matter, metrical freedom, and avoidance of romantic or mystical themes, aiming at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images. It was initially led by Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell.（no fuss, frill, or ornament）,（precision and economy of expression）,（free verse form and music）.Launch Imagism setting down the Imagist principlesThe Cantos 《诗章》威廉·卡洛·威廉斯avoided complexity andobscure华莱士·斯蒂文斯Simple lines: an emphasis on vocabulary and imagery rather than prosodyThe faith in poetry : when no one believes in God, it is necessary to believe in something else, such as poetry, a thing created by imaginationAnecdote of the Jar罗伯特The most popular 20th Century American Poet, A four-timeStyl e 1rejected the revolutionary poetic principles of his contemporaries, choosingthe old-fashioned way to be new.• 2 employ the plain speech of rural New Englanders.3 use the simple, short, traditional forms of lyrics and Narrative, can probemysteries of darkness and irrationality in the bleak and chaotic landscapes of an indifferent universe where man stand alone, unaided and perplexed.Fire and ice Fire - a symbol of desire, or love. Ice - a symbol of hatredtwo weaknesses of human beings that are as destructive as natural disasters The road not taken it does not moralize about choice, it simply says that choice is inevitable but you never know what your choice will mean until you have lived itStopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening The poem is primarily oriented towards the pleasures of the scene and the responsibility of life. Metaphors:• Promises –Our own promises or duties that we must fulfill.Miles - experience we must travel through before deathThe apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black boughthe Great Gatsby 1926The Sun Also Rises 1926, A Farewell to Arms , 1929,the Wasteland.Main Street 1920an American TragedyAmerican Dream:The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is not a dream of martial wealth, but a dream of social order. People try to get success no matter what kind of circumstances of birth or position they came from.The lost generationIt refers to the writers who were devoid of faith, values and ideals and who were alienated from the civilization the capitalist society advocated. It includes Ernst Hemingway, F. S.Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Louis Bromfield., and E.E.Cummings, Ezra Pound，who rebelled against former values and ideas, but replaced them only by despair or a cynical hedonism. They were frustrated by the WWI and returned from that “Great War”to their own country only to find the grim reality that the social values and civilization were hollow.Short storyIt is a fictional prose tale of no specified length, but too short to be published as a volume on its own. It concentrates on a single event with one or two characters. It flourished in the magazines of the 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in the USA, which has a particularly strong tradition. Edgar Allen Poe was considered as the father of modern short story. His short stories like the cast of Amontillado and the Black cat are famous.Jazz Age⏹American industry developed fast. The nation is full of bouncingebullience, fearful of nothing, confident smug isolationism.⏹Socially, decline of idealism. Patriotism became cynical disillusionment.Unity of family weakened. There appeared the revolt of the Younger Generation. They escaped responsibility and assumed immorality.⏹After WWI, people found that the war which cost millions of lives failedto provide an abiding solutions to the world’s problems, that the war was just the traps of political leaders. Such a disillusionment about the value of war, accompanied by the booming of American economy drove people to cynical hedonism. People experiment with new amusements. They restlessly pursued stimulus and pleasures, wallow in heavy drinking, fast driving and casual sex. By these, they hoped to seek relief from serious problems.Hemingway heroThey live adventures-filled lives that were driven by courage and limited by fear. They hide a sensitive heart from tough exterior.” Grace under press” is their motto. Its heroes are hemmed in by forces beyond their control.AntiheroIt is a central character in a dramatic or narrative work who lacks the qualities ofnobility and magnanimity expected of traditional heroes in romances and epic.Like the character “Henry” in the work of a farewell to arms.SymbolTraditional FormsBallad(民谣)A ballad is a story told in song, usually in 4-line stanzas, with the second and fourth lines rhymed. “The Geste of Robin HoodHeroic CoupletIt refers to a couplet consisting of two rhymed lines of iambic pentameter and written in an elevated style. Sonnet 18Spenserian stanza•It is a stanza with eight lines of iambic pentameter and a concluding Alexandrine with the rhyme pattern abab bcbc c. The Faerie QueeneBlank verse素体诗，无韵诗•Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter.•It became widely used in dramatic poetry and narratives.Now that/ the gloo/my sha/dow of /the night,Longing/ to view/ Orion/’s drizz/ling look,Leaps from/ the an/tarc/tic world/ unto/ the skyAnd dims/ the wel/kin with/ her pi/tchy breath ----Doctor FaustusFree verseMeans the rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without paying attention to conventional rules of meter. It can free the poets from the restrictions of formal metrical patterns and recreate instead the free rhythms of natural speech.Beat GenerationTheatre of absurd. the 1950sBlack humor.the 1960s。

美国文学复习大纲

美国文学部分(American Literature)一．殖民时期文学（The Literature of the Colonial Period）1．本章考核知识点和考核要求：1) 早期殖民地时期的文学的特点2) 十八世纪美国文学的特点（重点是独立革命前后时期文学）3) 主要的作家、其概况及其代表作品4) 术语：the colonial period, American Puritanism, Puritans, Enlightenment in American, the Great Awakening2．主要作家作品John Smith第一个美国作家A True Relation of Virginia and General History of Virginia.Anne Bradstreet 殖民地时期女诗人The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America (1650)Jonathan Edwards十八世纪上半叶大觉醒时代的代表人物“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”Benjamin Franklin 本杰明·富兰克林，散文家、科学家、社会活动家，曾参与起草《独立宣言》。

十八世纪美国启蒙思想代言人。

《穷查理历书》Poor Richard’s Almanac（收录格言警句）《致富之道》The Way to Wealth《自传》The Autobiography （富兰克林原意为写给儿子的家书）Thomas Paine 托马斯·潘恩，散文家、政治家、报刊撰稿人。

《常识》Common Sense ( Paine 最知名的政论文：It was inspired by the first battle of the Revolutionary War—the Battle of Lexington in Concord.)《美国危机》American Crisis《人的权利》Rights of Man《专制体制的崩溃》Downfall of Despotism《理性时代》The Age of ReasonPhilip Freneau 菲利普·弗伦诺，著名的“革命诗人”。

美国文学复习提纲

第一部分殖民时期一、时期综述（关于清教的应该都是重点）1、清教徒采用的文学体裁：A、narratives 日记B、journals 游记2、清教徒在美国的写作内容：①their voyage to the new land ②adapting themselves to unfamiliar climates and crops③about dealing with Indians ④guide to the new land, endless bounty，invitation to bold spirit★3、清教徒的想法：①Puritans want to make up pure their religious beliefs and practices.净化信仰和行为方式②wish to restore simplicity to church services and the authority of the Bible to theology.重建教堂，提供简单服务，建立神圣地位③look upon themselves as a chosen people，and it follow logically that anyone who challenged their way of life is opposing God’s will and is not to be accepted。

认为自己是上帝选民，对他们的生活有异议就是反对上帝。

④Puritan opposition to pleasure and the arts sometimes has been exaggerated.反对对快乐和艺术的追求到了十分荒唐的地步。

⑤religious teaching tended to emphasize the image of a wrathful God。

强调上帝严厉的一面，忽视上帝仁慈的一面.4、典型的清教徒：John Cotton and Roger Williams他们的不同:John Cotton was much more concerned with authority than with democracy。

美国文学选读复习资料

1、Benjamin Franklin（1706-1790）本杰明·富兰克林He is the representative of the Enlightenment in America in 18th century. Humanist, statesman, writer, scientist, inventor.The Autobiography《自传》♂简析：The book is about the course of Franklin's struggle for success. It tells us the importance of being diligent. The book had a great influence on American people,and changed the destinies of many youth.It is the first America successful biographical work（传记文学）, has an important position in the history of American Literaturel.Poor Richard’s Almanac 《格言历书》♂简析：A collection of maxims （格言），or proverbs, on the value of work and savings for success.2、Edgar Allan Poe(1809-1849) 埃德加·爱伦·坡 Novelist,poet,critic.Good at writing Gothic（哥特式）and detective fiction.Father of western detective stories and psychoanalytic criticism.（扩展：文学理论建树不容忽视，影响深远。

美国文学复习资料

Lecture 1 Washington Irving1. Background Questions:1) What is the duration of American Romanticism?From the end of the 18th century to the Civil War (1861-1865)2) What are the main features of American Romanticism?Irrationalism: opposing rationalism/neo-classicism; focusing on feelings,intuitions and emotions; worshipping ideals, imaginationIndividualism: placing the individual and the common man against the group, against authorityBeing close to nature: the world as a living, breathing being; the close relationshipbetween man and natureSimplicity in style(Other distinctive features of American Romanticism besides the above common features of Romanticism)Objection to puritan moralityThe ―newness‖ of the Americans as a nation independent from the European yoke: newness of America as a nation, their ideals of individualism and political equality, and their dream of America as a new Garden of Eden for man, their national experience of ―pioneering into the west‖2. Selected Reading:Pre-Reading questions:1) What are the artistic features of Irving‘s writing?a. The use of humorb. Graceful, refined, fluent, dignified and standard language. His essays are models of English.c. Romantic imagination and fantasiesd. Vivid and picturesque description of the setting2) What are the different types of humor? Try to find some humorous expressions in the excerpt?a. Different types of humor:Jocular humor—Irving (for fun, for amusement)Satirical humor—Mark Twain (to satire, to criticize)Tearful humor—O‘ Henry (a rouse sympathy on the poor)Black humor—Joseph Heller (humor in facing death)b. There are a lot of examples:When depicting how Rip‘s close friend, his dog Wolf reacts to Rip‘s wife, Dame Van Winkle‘s any movement when it is at home.When introducing the so called celebrities at the small inn where Rip frequents in order to console himself when he is driven from home by his wife, and how Rip‘s wife behaves when she gets to the small inn.Topics for after-reading discussion:1) What kind of people do you think Rip Van Winkle and his wife Dame Van Winkle are? If your future husband/wife is Rip/Dame, what will you do to him/her?Rip Van Winkle: lazy, good-tempered, warm-hearted, hen-pecked, well-oiled,care-free, obedient, irresponsible, etc.His wife: nagging, termagant, sharp-tongued, hard-working country woman2) What are the possible themes of the short story?a. A story of man who has difficulty in facing his advancing age or the author‘s conservative attitude towards the American Revolution and the young Republic, and his dissatisfaction with American developmentb. Puritan teachings (Unceasing labor, no play, all kinds of pleasures are condemned, greedy for wealth) as opposed to the American desire for leisure, for the freedom of the individuals as part of American Romantic ideals.c. Escape from one‘s responsibility and even one‘s historyd. The loss of identity4) For what reasons is Irving considered ―father of American literature‖?Possible reasons:He is the first American author who explores native themes.He is the first American writer to win international recognition, extremely popular in Europe.His popularity comes from his humor (using dignified words to for unimportant things/ exaggerate the seriousness of the situation)―Rip Van Winkle‖ is often considered as the first American short story.Lecture 2 Edgar Allan Poe1. Background questions:1) What is Gothic writing in the 18th century?An 18th-century style of literature which describes romantic adventures in mysterious or frightening settings, like ancient castle, ruins or wilderness. The subject matter is always about murder, violence, rape, incest together with ghostly or supernatural horror sometimes.2) What is romantic in Gothic writing?Gothic style is usually called ―dark romanticism‖. Not like romanticism which tends to convey positively human‘s social, political and moral ideals, Gothic writing is full of violence and horror with the involvement of mysterious and supernatural forces to reveal the dark side of human nature, especially of human morality. Like general romanticism, it is irrational paying much attention to the release of human emotion, imagination, intuition and ideals which are suppressed or neglected by the rationalists.2. Selected Reading :1) What are the elements of poetry?Elements of poetry1. Voice: speaker and tone2. Diction: the best words in the best order (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)3. Imagery: a concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea.Images: visual, aural, tactile, olfactory (something smelled), gustatory (sth tasted)4. Figures of speech: simile and metaphor5. Symbolism: a symbol is any object or action that means more than itself, any object oraction that represents sth beyond itself.6. Syntax: the grammatical structure of words in sentences and the development ofsentences in longer units throughout the poem.7. Sound:a. rhyme: matching of final vowel and consonant sounds in two or more words1. end rhyme (at the ends of lines)2. internal rhyme (within lines)b. alliteration: the repetition of consonant sounds, esp. at the beginning of wordsc. assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds8. Rhythm and metera. rhythm: beat we feel in a phrase of music or a line of poetry, the regular recurrence of the accent or stress in poem.b. foot[音步]: unit of rhythm in a line of poetry containing one stressed syllable and one or more unstressed syllables, as in the four division of ―four man/may come/and men/may go‖c. meter[格律]: poetic metre with a given number of feet, or fixed arrangement of accented and unaccented syllables.Rising feet/meter: iamb (iambic), anapest (anapestic)Falling feet/meter: trochee (trochaic), dactyl (dactylic)Number of feet per lineMonometer Dimeter TrimeterTetrameterPentameterHexameterHeptameterOctameter2) What roles do sound and rhythm play in a poem?Sound and rhythm can make the writing musical and melodious. They contribute a lot to the mood and the theme of the writing at the same time.Topics for after-reading discussion:2) What effect does the raven’s word have on the persona?a. The raven‘s only one word answer to the speaker‘s questions which seems as irrelevant fits the scene quit e well. Each time the raven‘s answer is a sting on the broken heart of the speaker. Therefore, it adds to the sad and melancholic mood of the speaker.b. The repetition of the word ―Nevermore‖ also probes into the value of human being‘s existence philosop hically: as answered by the raven to the speaker, one‘s beloved can never be regained if bereaved.3) What types of techniques has the poet employed in the poem in terms of sound?End rhyme (abcbbb)Alliteration (flirt, flutter; stately, sain tly…)Assonance (dreary, weary; napping, tapping, rapping; morrow, borrow, sorrow, with the sound ―o‖ to show one‘s sad, sorrow and grief mood; burning, turning; peering, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming…)Lecture 3 Nathanial Hawthorne1. Background questions:1) What is New England Transcendentalism?Transcendentalism refers to a kind of attitude that believes in the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses. In another word, transcendentalists believe that man learns things not only through reasoning based on his five senses, or by his own sensual experiences, and that he also learns truth spontaneously, out of his soul or instincts. In a literal sense, it means the belief that knowledge and principles of reality can be obtained by studying thought, not necessarily by practical experiences.In this sense the term is almost synonymous with the word mysticism. It was first applied to the German philosophical systems of Hegel, Kant, and Fichte. Later the word came to be used more loosely to apply to a movement that began in New England around 1830, the spokesman of which was Ralph Waldo Emerson.The three key features of New England Transcendentalism are: First, the Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe. Secondly, the transcendentalists stressed the importance of the individual. Thirdly, they take nature as symbolic of Spirit or God.New England Transcendentalism is important to American literature. It is the summit of American Romanticism. It inspires a whole new generation of famous authors such as Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman and Dickinson. Without its impetus America might have been deprived of one of its most prolific literary periods in its history.3) How does Hawthorne‘s life experience exert great influence on Hawthorne‘s later literary creation?Hawthorne‘s life experience exerts great influence on hi s literary career. Obsessed by the Calvinistic concept of the original sin, Hawthorne believes human beings are evil-natured and sinful and this sin and evil is ever present in human heart and will pass on from one generation to another. His writings are to show how we are all wronged and wrongers, and avenge one another.1) What is a literary allegory?A literary mode involving extended narratives that produce secondary meanings regarding the story that exists on the surface, or a literary form of indirect representation. Characters in allegorical works frequently serve as metaphors for abstract ideas.3) What is Hawthorne’s writing style?His style is soft, flowing and almost feminine.His language is smooth, clear, beautiful in sound and meaningHe also frequently uses symbols and settings to reveal the psychology of the characters.2) What is the structure of the whole story?At sunset, Goodman Brown leaves his wife Faith, spends the night in the forest, and at dawn returns a changed man. Within this basic structure, the story further divides into four separate scenes, the first and last of which, that is, the departure from and the return to Salem, are balanced. The night in the forest falls naturally into two parts: the temptation by the Devil and the meeting of the witch. The two scenes, particularly the former, make full and careful use of the dramatic devices of suspense and climatic arrangement. The climax of the story comes when Brown calls upon his wife to look up to heaven, and resist the wicked one, which is cut off abruptly by anticlimax as the meeting vanishes in a roaring wind, and Brown leaning against the rock finds it chill and damp to his touch.4) What are the allegorical meanings of Young Goodman, his journey to the dark forest, and his encounter with the devil?The story is often read as a conventional allegory in the sense that Young Goodman is everyman, and his journey to the dark forest and his encounter with the devil are symbolic of man‘s life journey from innocence to knowledge, from good to evil.5) Can you find some symbols in the story? Try to interpret their symbolic meanings.day and the town: human convention and societynight and forest: symbols of doubt and wanderingred: Sin or Evilblack: doubt of the reality of either Evil or Good that tortures BrownLecture 4 Walt Whitman1. Background questions:1) What is free verse?Poetry without fixed beat or regular rhyme. The rhythmical lines vary in length, and there is no fixed metrical pattern. It usually seems formless, but it does have a form or pattern based on repetition and parallel structure. Whitman is the first great American poet to use this form of poetry. He also used it more skillfully than any other poet.2) What do you know about Whitman’s Leaves of Grass?Leaves of Grass is Whitman‘s lifelong achievement. Walt Whitman is a poet with a strong sense of mission, having devoted all his life to the creation of the single poem Leaves of Grass. It goes through several editions altogether and contained many excellent poems in the collection. Generally speaking we can divide the whole period into three parts. They respectively are before and during the civil war and the last one is after war.From the poems which he writes before the civil war, such as ―Song of myself‖, ―There was a child went forth‖, we can easily find the trace of romanticism. He advocates democracy and encourages people to fight for individual rights, and helps them to understand their new status and to define themselves in the new world. Hence, the abundance of themes in his poetry voices freshness. He shows concern for the whole hard-working people and burgeoning life of cities. In celebrating the self, Whitman gives emphasis to the physical dimension of the self and openly and joyously celebrates sexuality.During the civil war, Whitman stood firmly on the side of the North and wrote a series of poems which expressed much mourning for the sufferings of the young lives in the battle field and showed a determination to carry on the fighting dauntlessly until the final victory, all of these poems were gathered as a collection under the title of ―Drum Tapes‖. Besides, he wrote down a g reat many poems to air his sorrow to the death of Lincoln, and one of the famous is ―When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom‘d‖This ground-breaking book breaks with the poetic convention, and its sexuality and exotic and vulgar language bring harsh criticisms on it at the very beginning.One of the major principles of Whitman‘s technique is parallelism or a rhythm of thought in which the line is the rhythmical unit, as in the poetry of the Bible.Another principle of Whitman‘s versification i s phonetic recurrence, i.e. the systematic repetition of words and phrases at the head of the line, in the middle or at the end.Unity, unreality of time and space, evil as only an appearance emerging into good, the equal potential divinity of everything from grass to mankind, the immanence of God in all creation, plentitude, continuity and gradation, the multiplicity of nature, and the need for a poetry commensurate with it—all these find adequate expression in this whole poem.2) Discuss the structure of the poem “There Was a Child Went Forth”.The structure of the poem is a circular one. The first stanza is an introduction to the child. In the second stanza, it turns out to be a beautiful idyllic landscape where the child came to know nature. However, he went from the idyllic peaceful Eden to the noisy human city in the next stanza, and then came to know the conception of himself in the fourth stanza. In the last stanza, hesaw his parents and other people in the crowding world. But the poem changes here into another idyllic episode: the beautiful scene on the sea. It is just like a circle. The child came in peace, grew in the crowded society, but went back to peace at the sea. The return to peace is just the beginning of another one. The child will mature day in and day out.3) What‘s the theme of “Song of Myself”?―Song of myself‖ is the longest poem in Leaves of Grass. ―Myself‖ is the central and principal image in this poem. It refers not only to the poet himself but also to a group of people who had the American national characteristics and the democratic ideals like Whitman. They were pioneers on the American continent: the ironsmiths, the carpenters, the butcher, and the waiters, etc., as listed in the poem. These people were optimistic in spirit and strong physically. They live harmoniously with other people in this world as well as with nature. In this song, Whitman sings of nationalism and of the nature of the self in relation to the cosmos and the meaning and purpose of birth and death. Individualism, nationalism, and internationalism or cosmopolitanism, the three contradicting beliefs are reasonably united.Lecture 5 Emily Dickinson3) In what ways does Dickinson differ from Whitman?Whitman mostly keeps his eye on society, but Dickinson explores the inner life of the individual; Whitman embraces a national outlook, but Dickinson holds a regional one; Whitman‘s language is musical, oral but powerful, on the other hand, Dickinson‘s language is usually concise, direct and simple.2. Pre-Reading questions:1) How does Dickinson view love?She herself had lived a lonely life of a spinster. She had once or twice fallen in love with someone. But each time she was frustrated. Some of her love poems reflect the unhappy experiences of hers, such as ―I never lost as much but twice‖. There are also poems about the longing of physical love, the union of the bodies, as in ―Wild nights! Wild nights!‖. For her, love is unhappiness, and love is passion at the same time.3) Wha t‘s Dickinson‘s attitude toward nature?Dickinson was also a nature poet. To her, nature is both simple and harmonious. She writes about nature to reveal its simplicity and profundity on one hand, and tries to establish a connection between nature and man on the other, like the transcendentalists. Her poems are full of insights into nature and human life.1) How does the poet interpret love in “Wild nights! Wild nights!”?Although Dickinson lives a spinster‘s life, she is good at convey the passi onate love between lovers through her poetry. In ―Wild nights! Wild nights!‖, she compares the boat and the sea to two lovers. The passion of love is deeply buried in the heart, like the stormy night. Love can only be released in such adverse circumstances. It is the wild consummated love, as wild as the stormy night, as perfect as the relationship of boat and sea. Therefore, love is something passionate, something a little tragic.3) What aesthetic principle can you see from her poem ―I died for Beauty, but was Scarce”?Beauty and truth are the same, a reflection of John Keats‘s aesthetic idea. In the poem, Dickinson presents 2 personas: one died for Beauty and one for truth. According to Dickinson, the sacrifice for beauty and the sacrifice for truth are both the glories ends in life.4) How do you understand the image ―fly‖ in the poem ―I heard a Fly buzz when I died‖?In the poem, Dickinson employs a strange image of a fly which is normally disgusting to symbolize the lingering of the dead a mong the human world, and also it‘s perspective of a decaying corpse. The fly is an envoy to the two worlds of life and death. The fly is an insect that has the freedom to fly between death and life. It flies to the dying before the death. It also lead the dead to fly to the next world far away.5) What is the theme of the poem “Because I could not stop for Death”?Death and immortality. Death was immortality. This is what Dickinson considers the mystical relationship between death and immortality.Lecture 6 Mark Twain1.Background questions:1) What do you know about America in the Mid- to Late-Nineteenth Century?"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was first published in 1865, when Mark Twain was living in the American Southwest, which was still in the process of being settled. The Industrial Revolution had brought machinery and factories to the eastern United States, but most of the country, particularly areas west of the Mississippi River, still relied on the land for economic development. Much of the land in the West was devoted to cattle, and the U.S. government was involved in battles and embroilments with various ways.2) What are the main characteristics of American Realism?Realistic Techniques• 1. Settings thoroughly familiar to the writer• 2. Plots emphasizing the norm of daily experience• 3. Ordinary characters, studied in depth• 4. Complete authorial objectivity• 5. Responsible morality; a world truly reportedPrinciples of Realism• 1. Insistence upon and defense of "the experienced commonplace".• 2. Character more important than plot.• 3. Attack upon romanticism and romantic writers.• 4. Emphasis upon morality often self-realized and upon an examination of idealism.• 5. Concept of realism as a realization of democracy.Characteristics of Realistic Writing• 1. The philosophy of Realism is known as "descendental" or non-transcendental. The purpose of writing is to instruct and to entertain. Realists were pragmatic, relativistic, democratic, and experimental.• 2. The subject matter of Realism is drawn from "our experience," - it treated the common, the average, the non-extreme, the representative, the probable.• 3. The morality of Realism is intrinsic, integral, relativistic - relations between people and society are explored.• 4. The style of Realism is the vehicle which carries realistic philosophy, subject matter, and morality. Emphasis is placed upon scenic presentation, de-emphasizing authorial comment and evaluation. There is an objection towards the omniscient point of view.2) Examine the structure of the story.The frame tale structure of "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is one of its most important parts. In a frame tale, one story appears in—that is, it is framed by—another story.Twain has devised a story-within-a-story framing structure also known as a frame or 'envelope' narrative) by making his narrator the reluctant audience for his storyteller, Simon Wheeler, and by distinguishing his storyteller from his protagonist, Jim Smiley.3) From what aspects in the story can you define Mark Twain as a realist?Twain uses local customs of the time, dialect, and examples of social status in his story to create a realistic view of the region in which the story takes place. The way that the characters behave is very distinctive. Dialect is also used to give the reader a convincing impression of the setting in ―The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County‖. The social status of the main characters in this story also was something that Twain took into account in writing this story. Mark Twain is a realist who concentrates on the customs, dialect, and social status of specific regions of the country.1)Humorists generally have a target; they make jokes at someone's expense. Who is the target in the "Jumping Frog" story?Jim Smiley is the primary target. He is a trickster who turns out to be too clever for his own good. The narrator is also a target in Twain's story, a victim of the anonymous trickster who sent him to the garrulous Simon Wheeler. In fact, the narrator's eagerness to escape Wheeler at the end of the story suggests that he may be Wheeler's victim as well.3) What do you think is the possible theme of this story?Culture Clash"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," highlights various aspects of late nineteenth-century American society and culture through the retelling of a tall tale. Central to the story is the idea of conflicting cultures, particularly the clash between the settled, eastern portion of the United States and the still-developing West. At the time Twain wrote the story, the East and its inhabitants had a reputation for being civilized, cultured, and advanced. The West, on the other hand, was still being settled and was considered to be populated by less-educated.4) What kind of humor can you find in this brief masterpiece?Twain combines the vibrant, loquacious storytelling tradition rooted in folk tale, fable, and gossip with the more calculated literary tradition of satire, irony, and wit.Lecture 7 Theodore DreiserPossible Answers to the topics for after-reading discussion:2) Whereas before she looked at department stores and then factories, she now looks at theaters and then department stores. This really marks the transition away from manufacturing that Dreiser upholds throughout the novel. Much the way we see her move from her miller father to the salesman Drouet to the manager Hurstwood, her own job search progresses from manufacturing to selling to acting. For Dreiser, perhaps, the complete abandonment of manufacturing is the highest social achievement, one that Carrie is striving towards.Lcture 8 Francis Scott FitzgeraldHe believes that Daisy may come to a party some night. He thinks his wealth shown in those parties may gain his lover back. This is a sign of a corrupt way of 'winning' love through money and wealth. The American Dream- It rose in the 19th century and was based on the theory that each person, no matter what his background was, could succeed in life as long as he had skill and effort. It was the idea of the self-made man. The Great Gatsby is a novel about what happened to the American dream in the 1920s, a period when the old values that gave substance to the dream had been corrupted by the pursuit of wealth. What Fitzgerald seems to be criticizing in The GreatGatsby is not the American Dream itself but the corruption of the American Dream. Fitzgerald has delayed the introduction of the novel‘s most important figure—Gatsby himself—until the beginning of Chapter III. The reader has seen Gatsby from a distance, heard other chara cters talk about him, and listened to Nick‘s thoughts about him, but has not actually met him (nor has Nick).Chapter III is devoted to the introduction of Gatsby and the lavish, showy world he inhabits. Fitzgerald gives Gatsby a suitably grand entrance as the aloof host of a spectacularly decadent party. Despite this introduction, this chapter continues to heighten the sense of mystery and enigma that surrounds Gatsby, as the low profile he maintains seems curiously out of place with his lavish expenditures. Just as he stood alone on his lawn in Chapter I, he now stands outside the throng of pleasure-seekers. The delay shows he is different from others and Daisy. His difference determines partially his dream is to fail.In his first direct contact with Gatsby, Nick notices his extraordinary smile—―one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it.‖ Nick‘s impression of Gatsby emphasizes his optimism and vitality—something about him seems remarkably hopeful, and this belief in the brilliance of the future impresses Nick, even before he knows what future Gatsby envisions. The romantic dream and future are actually illusions and the mysterious atmosphere highlights the romance and illusions.throwing parties --- standing as an outsidera good library --- real books with uncut literaturea grand mansion --- the host‘s living in a small bedroomvarious rumours ---truththe gap between perception and reality.At the party, as he looks through Gatsby‘s books, Owl Eyes states that Gatsby has captu red the effect of theater, a kind of mingling of honesty and dishonesty that characterizes Gatsby‘s approach to this dimension of his life. The party itself is a kind of elaborate theatrical presentation, and Owl Eyes suggests that Gatsby‘s whole life is m erely a show, believing that even his books might not be real. The novel‘s title itself—The Great Gatsby—is suggestive of the sort of vaudeville billing for a performer or magician , subtly emphasizing the theatrical and perhaps illusory quality of Gatsby‘s life.ThemesThe Great Gatsby is an examination of American myth in the 20th century. Fitzgerald deliberately depicts Gatsby as a mysterious person so as to achieve the effect that Gatsby is American Everybody. The death, or rather the murdering, of Gatsby poignantly points at the truth about the withering of the American Dream and the ironic effect it has produced upon the whole American myth.Character portrayalJay Gatsby: Gatsby in the novel represents the newly rich upstart, vulgar in his ostentatious [showy] wealth. However, he becomes a kind of new American Adam. He is ―great‖, because he is dignified and ennobled by his dream and his mythic vision of life.Nick Carraway: Nick is both a narrator and a character in this novel. He leads us to the dignity and depth of Gatsby‘s character, and suggests the relation of his tragedy to the American situation. But as a character, Carraway has his own likes and dislikes. Since Carraway himself is。

美国文学期末考试复习大纲

美国文学期末考试复习大纲Ⅰ. 文学史1.American Puritanism (美国请教主义):Puritanism was a religious reform movement that arose within the Church of England in the late 16th century.I.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 calli ng into beinga 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 writing: diaries, 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 Freneau(7)Jonathan Edwards(8)Benjamin Franklin2.American Enlightenment (美国启蒙运动):Enlightenment is a philosophical movement of the 18th century that emphasized the use of reason to scrutinize previously accepted doctrines and traditions and that brought about many humanitarian reforms.The American Enlightenment is a term sometimes employed to describe the intellectual culture of the British North American colonies and the early United States (as they became following the American Revolution).It is commonly dated from 1750—1820.Among the leading intellectual figures of this period are Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.Democratic Origins and Revolutionary Writers, 1776—18201.Background: American Revolution——historicalEuropean Enlightenment2.Basic Assumptions:(1)Reg ard ―enlightenment‖ or ―education‖ as the principle means for development of society(2)Show concern for civil rights, democracy in government and tolerance rather than earlier religious mysticism(3)Reconsider the relationship between man & God. Brief-Deism (natural religion)3.Transcendentalism (超验主义):Transcendentalism is literature, philosophical and literary movement that flourished in New England from about1836 to 1860.It originated among a small group of intellectuals who were reacting against the orthodoxy of Calvinism and the rationalism of the Unitarian Church, developing instead their own faith centering on the divinity of humanity and the natural world.The ideas of transcendentalism were most eloquently expressed by Ralph Waldo Emerson in such essays as Nature (1836) and Self-reliance and by Henry David Thoreau in his book Walden (1854).I.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 Idealism: Center of the world is spirit, absolute spirit (Kant)3.Oriental mysticism: Center of the world is ―oversoul‖4.Puritanism: Eloquent expression in transcendentalismII.Appearance1836, ―Nature‖ by EmersonIII.Features1.spirit/oversoul2.importance of individualism3.nature – symbol of spirit/God; garment 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 becameopportunism, and the desire to ―get on‖ obscured the moral necessity for rising to spiritual height.It helped to create the first American renaissance – one of the most prolific period in American literature.4.Dark Romanticism1.Dark Romanticism & Gothic FictionSimilarities: darkness, supernatural, featuring charactersDifferences: sheer horror——Gothic Fiction’s purposedark mystery & skepticism of man——Dark Romance’s purpose2.Dark Romanticism——reaction against transcendentalismDark Romanticism is a literary subgenre that emerged from the transcendental philosophical movement popular in 19th century America. Some writers, including Poe, Hawthorne and Melville, found transcendental belief far too optimistic and egotistical and reacted by modifying.3.Dark Romanticism & Transcendentalism:Dark Romantics are much less confident about the notion that perfection is an innate equality of mankind, as believed by transcendentalists. Dark Romantics present individuals as prone to sin and self-destruction, not as inherently possessing divinity and wisdom.While both groups believe nature is a deep spiritual force, Dark Romanticism views it in a much more sinister light than does transcendentalism, which sees nature as a divine & universal organic mediator. For Dark Romantics, the natural world is dark, decaying, and mysterious, when it does reveal truth to man, its revelations are evil.Transcendentalists advocate social reform when appropriate, works of Dark Romanticism frequently show individuals, falling in their attempts to make changes for the better.4.Fiction:⑪ General term for invented storiesNovel, short story, novellas, romance, fable etc.《堂吉诃德》——the first novel of European⑫ Types of novel:①.Kunstlerroman 成长小说Bildungroman——《麦田守望者》②.Spy novel③.Historical novel④.Campus novel 校园小说⑤.Gothic novel⑥.Epistolary novel⑦.Picaresque novel⑧.Detective novel⑨.Sociological novel⑩.Psychological novel⑬ Elements of fiction:①.Setting (time, place, environment)②.Plot (selected events, cause & effect, structure)——conflict (exposition, rising action/complication, climax, falling action, resolution)③.Character (animal, inanimate things)④.Point of view (first person, third person, multiple)⑤.Theme (different from ―subject‖)⑥.Style (diction, syntax, figure of speech)⑦.Symbol & IronyⅡ. 文学概念1. Allegory (寓言)：Allegory is a story with a symbolic meaning used to teach a moral principle.Allegory is a form of extended metaphor, in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative, are equated with the meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. The underlying meaning has moral, social, religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas as charity, greed, or envy.Thus, an allegory is a story with two meanings: a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.Many of Hawthorne’s stories are allegories dealing with pride, isolation, love and betray. For example, Y oung Goodman Brown tells Brown’s journey in the forest. After the journey, Brown changed a lot. In fact the story shows Brown’s struggle between goodness and evil and re veals the processes of losing one’s innocence.2. Romance:―Romance‖ is now frequently used as s term to designate a kind of fiction that differs from the novel in being more freely. It is the product of the author’s imagination than the product of an effo rt to represent the actual world with verisimilitude.Romance is a heightened, emotional, and symbolic form of the novel. Romances are not love stories, but serious novels that use special techniques to communicate complex and subtle meanings.Nathaniel Hawthorne is a representative of dark romance, most of his works reveals the dark side of human beings.3. Lyric(抒情诗)：In the modern sense, it is any fairly short poem expressing the personal mood, feeling, or meditation of a single speaker. Lyric poetry is the most extensive category of verse. Lyrics may be composed in almost any meter and on almost every subject, although the most usual emotions presented are those of love and grief. Among the common lyric forms are the sonnet, ode, elegy, and the more personal kinds of hymn.Lyric poetry is genre that does not attempt to tell a story but instead of a more personal nature. It portrays the poet’s own feelings, states of mind, and perceptions.While the genre’s name derived from ―lyre‖, implies that it is intended to be sung, much lyric poetry is meant purely for reading.The most popular form for western lyric poetry to take may be the 14-line sonnet, as practiced by Petrarch and Shakespeare. Lyric poetry shows a bewildering variety of forms, including, increasingly in the 20th century, unrhymed ones.Lyric poetry is the most common type of poetry.5.Allusion:It is one of the figures of speech.An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, a place, event, literary work, myth, or work of art, either directly or by implication.For example, in literature, the snake often represents the evil. It’s an allusion of Bible. In Bible, the snake allured Eve to eat the apple. Thus, they were punished by God.5. T rickster:Trickster always appears in mythology, it’s a kind of literary character.In mythology, and in the study of folklore and relig ion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior.Trickster is the ―rebellion‖ that challenges authority.The trickster is a very important archetype in the history of human kind.H e is the ―wise fool‖.It is he, through his creations that destroy the authority.He exists to question and to cause us to question.He is the Destroyer of the world and at the same time the Savior of us all.For example, Robin Hood, he is a thief, who steals the rich to help the poor. On one hand, a thief is supposed to be punished, but on another hand, he steals the money not for himself but to help others. Thus, we call him a trickster.6.Gothic Fiction:Gothic fiction rises in the late of 18th century.The Gothic relates the individual to the infinite universe.Gothic literature pictures the human condition as an ambiguous mixture of good and evil power that cannot be understood completely by human reason.The Gothic novel or short story is any story which can be describe as dark, mysterious, and grotesque. A Gothic story often has supernatural elements that give it a hint of horror/ terror.Gothic fiction is often psychological (from the villain’s perspective)It has romantic elements: the damsel in distress, the ghost of a loverCreates suspense: never sure what is going to happenIt adopts the use of doppelganger theme.The most familiar Gothic fiction to me is The V ampire Diaries. Similar to the Twilight, it tells a love story between the V ampire and a human being. There are many terror scenes with suspense and a doppelganger in the story. Now The V ampire Diaries is made into TV series. In the TV series, a vampire called Damon is my favorite one.7. Kunstlerroman8. Quest:―quest‖ means search, pursue, go on adventure. The Quest myth/ Quest story, similar to Romance is a genre of literature.The background, such as an imbalanced society, is often challenging.The hero leaves the society. His goals are always noble. He is always on the side of goodness, and his enemies are always evil.The hero must undergoes trials: physical tests—slaying a dragon, battling powerful opponents, rescuing maidens in distress etc.Having completed his quest, the hero returns to society to bring about spiritual transformation and restore the perfect human community.The Captain Ahab in Moby Dick is a hero of quest but not a traditional one, he is a villain hero who tries to conquer the nature.9. Iambic Pentameter:10. Point of View(视角)：It is the relationship of the storyteller or narrator, to the story.A story has a first-person point of view if one of the characters, referred to as ―I‖, tells the story.A story has a limited third-person point of view if the narrator reveals the thoughts of only one character but refers to that character as ―he‖ or ―she‖.A narrator who tells the thoughts of all the characters and who tells things that no one character could know uses the omniscient (all-knowing), or third-person, point of view.For example, in Moby Dick, Melville adopted the first-person narrator, Ishmael was the observer who saw the events of the story and played s minor role in the action.Ⅲ. 重要作家及作品Nathanial Hawthorne (纳撒尼尔·霍桑)1.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美学的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 yetnot 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 viewThe Scarlet Letter, （adultery）1.About the story:(1)The story of Hester Prynne Set: the 17th century(2)What is situated immediately outside the door of the prison in which Hester is kept: A rosebush(3)How does Hester support herself financially: as a seamstress(4)She always wears: black(5)―A‖ represents: adultery2.Major characters in the story:(1)Hester Prynne: wears ―A‖; ―A‖ defines her identity(2)Arthur Dimmesdale: wears ―A‖ in his heart; his soul never in peace (invisible wearer)(3)Roger Chillingworth: the maker of scarlet letter(4)Pearl: the p roduct/result of ―A‖3.Symbolism: (special movement in literature; the use of symbols)In ―The Scarlet Letter‖:(1)The rosebush: passion(2)The forest: an ungovernable place(3)The scarlet letter: adultery; sin(4)Pearl: wildness; passion(5)The meteor: community4.Refuse to take off ―A‖:(1)For Hester, to remove scarlet letter would be to acknowledge the power it has in determining who she is(2)She is determined to transform its meaning and her identity(3)She wants to be the one who controls its meaning(4)She stands as a self-appointed reminder of the evils society can commitYoung Goodman Brown1. Psychological interpretation——Sigmund Freud (the founder of psychology):(1)superego——consciousness——the principle of morality 超我(2)ego——subconsciousness——the principle of reality 自我(3)id——unconsciousness——the principle of pleasure 本我Brown’s journey is psychological as well as physical:Village, a place of light and order——Forest, a place of darkness and wildnessconsciousness——unconsciousnessvillage——superego——FaithBrown——egoforest——id——SatanHawthorne saw the dangers of an overactive suppression of libido and the consequent development of tyrannous superego.2. Men, Women, and the loss of Faith:Despite the literary sexism of his day, Hawthorne portrays women as powerful moral agents.Although Faith is not a three-dimensional character, the story centers on her husband’s rejection of her. Women are victimized.Women——angle in the house——do not have desires, rights and needsFallen women——prostitutes, witches, and mad womenFaith to Brown is female sexuality; Satan to Brown is patriarchal authority3. Female images:Innocents vs. Temptresses:(1)Governor’s wife, Goody Cloyse, prostitutes, maidens, witches, Quaker women, Faith(2)Sex is seen as alluring and dangerous(3)Brown is an empty and failed husband and fatherHerman Melville (赫尔曼·麦尔维尔)1.life(1)Typee 《泰皮》(2)Omio 《殴穆》(3)Mardi 《玛地》(4)Redburn 《雷德本》(5)White Jacket 《白外衣》(6)Moby Dick(7)Pierre 《皮埃尔》(8)Billy Budd 《比利·巴德》3.point of view(1)He never seems able to say an affirmative yes to life: His is the attitude of ―Everlasting Nay‖ (negative attitudetowards 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 multipleview 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 onthe route (Moby Dick)Moby Dick《白鲸》：Moby-Dick, often considered the greatest American novel, is a masterpiece with many layers. It is a sea adventure, an exciting chase after a destructive and mysterious creature. The enormous white whale Moby-Dick torments Captain Ahab, who is obsessed with finding and killing Moby-Dick, having lost a leg in a previous encounter with the whale, and Ahab’s burning desire for revenge really is the center of the story. At the novel’s end, Ahab finds and attacks Moby-Dick, but the terrible whale takes Ahab, his ship Pequod, and nearly all its crew down to a watery grave with him.1. An encyclopedia of everythingA Shakespearean tragedy of man fighting against fates (extreme individualism)2. Image of ship: ship on the sea is the human soul search the meaning in the universe.3. Purpose——noble: he think Moby Dick as an evilHero: he is a hero but not a traditional hero (he does not stand for goodness); a villain hero4. Byronic hero (create by Byron): mad, bad, dangerous to know, obsessive——rebellions: challenge the authority; unconventional; right the wrongSatanic: revengeful; rebellious; the fight between God & Satan5. The Pequod——a symbol of doom(named after a native American tribe in Massachusetts; did not long survived of white men(extincted); is painted gloomy black and covered in whale teeth and bones)The sailors are of different ethics——all people in American (individual)Queequeg’s Coffin——life boat; life6. Theme of Moby Dick:(1)Melville’s bleak view (negative attitude) the sense of futility and meaninglessness of the w orld. His attitude to life is―Everlasting Nay‖. Man in this universe lives a meaningless and futility.The adventure of killing Moby Dick is meaningless. Ahab tries to control it, which leads to his doom.Modern life——the loss of faith, the sense of futility——well expressed in Moby Dick(2)Alienation (far away from each other): exists between man & man, man & society, and man & nature.(3)Loneliness and suicidal individualism——the basic pattern of 19th century American life(individualism causing disaster and death)——Moby Dick is a negative reflection upon Transcendentalism.(4)Rejection and quest:V oyaging for Ishmael has become a journey in quest of knowledge and valuesHenry David Thoreau1.life(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 natur e as a genuine restorative, healthy influence on man’s spiritualwell-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 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 men.WaldenEdgar Allen PoeI.LifeII.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 TalesIII.Themes1.death – predominant t heme 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 scienceIV.A esthetic ideas1.The short stories should be of brevity, totality, single effect, compression and finality.2.The poems should be short, and the aim should be beauty, the tone melancholy. Poems should not be of moralizing. Hecalls for pure poetry and stresses rhythm.V.Style – traditional, but not easy to readVI.R eputation: ―the jingle man‖ (Emerson)VII.His influencesWalt Whitman1.life2.work: Leaves of Grass (9 editions)(1)Song of Myself(2)There Was a Child Went Forth(3)Crossing Brooklyn Ferry(4)Democratic V istas(5)Passage to India(6)Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking3.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 War 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 happiness4.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 foreign origins, some even wrong(10)sentences – catalogue technique: long list of names, long poem lines5.influence(1)His best work has become part of the common property of Western culture.(2)He took over Whitman’s vision of the poet-prophet and poet-teacher and recast it in a more sophisticated andEuropeanized mood.(3)He has been compared to a mountain in American literary history.(4)Contemporary American poetry, whatever school or form, bears witness to his great influence.Ralph Waldo Emerson (拉尔夫·华尔多·爱默生)1.life (American philosopher, poet and essayist; the most eloquent spokesman of New England Transcendentalism)2.works(1)Nature——his first book expressing the main principle of Transcendentalism. It is regarded as ―American’sDeclaration of Intellec tual Independence‖(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 aspiritual 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 betterand 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 makinghimself.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 celebrate America which was to him a lone poem in itself.5.his influenceWashington 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 Y ork 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 ofthis.)(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 languageJames Fenimore Cooper1.life (―father of American novelists‖; the creation of the west frontier and its heroes)2.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.Benjamin Franklin1.life (printer, enlightener, inventor, scientist, statesman, diplomat)2.works(9)Poor Richard’s Almanac(10)Autobiography——form: the first autobiography of Americanmeaning: American dream & individualismself-improvement; business (contents); prototype of American success (significance); Puritanism and enlightenment spirits 3.contribution(11)He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital and the American Philosophical Society.(12)He was called ―the new Prometheus who had stolen fire (electricity in this case) from heaven‖.(13)Everything seems to meet in this one man –―Jack of all trades‖. Herman Melville thus described him ―master of each and mas tered by none‖.(14)Aid Jefferson in writing The Declaration of IndependenceThomas Paine1.father of the American Revolution2.propagandist, pamphleteer, a master of persuasion who understands the power of language to move a man to action3.main works:(1)The American Crisis(2)Common Sense(3)The Right of Man(4)The Age of Reason。

美国文学史及选读大纲

人文知识–美国文学部分美国文学主要分为五个时期The Literature in Colonial PeriodThe Literature Around the Revolution of Independence American RomanticismAmerican RealismAmerican ModernismEarly Colonial Literature. 1607-1700The Literature of Colonial AmericaPuritan Thoughts: (The Mayflower voyage 1620) “Puritans”, named after those who wished to “purify”the church of England.The First American Writer: Captain John SmithAnne Bradstreet: (1612-1672)One of the most important figures in the history of American Literature.She is considered by many to be the first American poet.Her first collection of poems –The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America –The first book written by a woman to be published in the United States.Edward T aylor (1642-1729)?The best of the Puritan poetsTHE EIGHTEENTH CENTURYThe literature of Reason And RevolutionThe Age of Reason in AmericaThe Age of EnlightenmentThe 18th-century American Enlightenment was a movement marked by an emphasis on rationality rather than tradition, scientific inquiry instead of unquestioning religious dogma, and representative government in place of monarchy. Enlightenment thinkers and writers were devoted to the ideals of justice, liberty, and equality as the natural rights of man.Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)America's "first great man of letters,"He embodied the Enlightenment ideal of humane rationality. He was the first great self-made man in America.Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac, begun in 1732 andpublished for many years, made Franklin prosperous and well-known throughout the colonies."God helps them that help themselves." "Early to Bed, and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy, and wise." "One To-day is worth two tomorrow."The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is an inspiring account of a poor boy’s rise to wealth and fame and the fulfillment of the American dream.It is a book on the art of self-improvement.Thomas Paine (1737-1809)Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense (Jan. 10, 1776) sold over 100,000 copies in the first three months of its publication.Common Sense is often regarded as the greatest of the Revolutionary pamphlet.The American Crisis (1776-1783)Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)The Declaration of IndependencePOET OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONPhilip Freneau (1752-1832)“Poet of the American Revolution”“Father of American Poetry”Among his best lyrics are “The Wild Honey Suckle” (1786) on morality and “The India Burying Ground” (1788) on the imagined afterlife.He became one of the most outstanding representatives of dawning nationalism in American literature.Noah Webster（1758-1843）1786: the independence of politics as well as literature Samuel Johnson - first combine an English dictionary, last neoclassicist enlightenerA Dictionary of the English LanguageThe literature of Romanticism 美国文学的第一次繁荣Washington Irving (1789-1859)Father of American literatureThe central figure in the American literary world between 1809 and the Civil War, esp. after the publication of his Sketch Book.The first prose stylist of American Romanticism –a very good example of an American romantic.He wrote for pleasure and to produce pleasure.He was the first American man of letters to support himselfas a professional writer.He was the first American author to win international recognition, and was extreme popular in Europe.The Sketch Book of Geoffrye Crayon (Irving‘s pseudonym) contains his two best remembered stories, “Rip Van Winkle （瑞普-凡-温克尔）" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)Cooper was the first important writer to be critical of the United Sates.The first successful American novelistHe stands rather as the originator of the novel of adventure in American literature, and is frequently termed "the American Scott.“The Leather-Stocking T alesthe Deerslayer(1841)the Last of the Mohicans(1826),the Pathfinder(1840),the Pioneers(1823)The Prairie(1823)The Leather-Stocking T ales is the life of Natty Bumppo. Natty Bumppo, Cooper's renowned literary character, embodies his vision of the frontiersman as a gentleman, a Jeffersonian "natural aristocrat."The essential American soul – D. H. LawrenceThe first American hero of this type.Natty is the first famous frontiersman in American literature and the literary forerunner of countless cowboy and backwoods heroes.William Cullen Bryantfirst of our American classic poetsOne of America’s earliest naturalist poetsThe American WordsworthHe writes the poem "Thanatopsis" in 1811."To a Waterfowl." The vagueness and religious ambiguities of the poem were the major themes.Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)The Fall of the House of UsherThe RavenAnnabel LeeTo HellenThe Purloined Letter《被窃的信件》The first literary critic – The Philosophy of Composition The Poetic PrincipleGothic styleFather of Detective novelsThemes 1. 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 life 3. horrorRalph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)The towering figure of his era, had a religious sense of mission.He was one of the greatest essayists in the country. Nature (1836) has been called “the manifesto of American transcendentalism”“The American Scholar” (1837) has been called “America’s Declaration of Intellectual Independence”Self-RelianceHenry David Thoreau (1817-1862)Thoreau's masterpiece, Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854),is the result of two years, two months, and two days (from 1845 to 1847) he spent living in a cabin he built at Walden Pond on property owned by Emerson.Walden is a spiritual book. It’s seen as a classic of American prose, a book of essays put together, exploring subjects concerned with Nature, with the meaning of life, and with morality.Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)Many of Hawthorne's stories are set in Puritan New England. Gothic novelsHis greatest novel, The Scarlet Letter (1850), has become the classic portrayal of Puritan America.Hawthorne's reputation rests on his other novels and tales as well. In The House of the Seven Gables (1851), he again returns to New England's history."My Kinsman, Major Molineux“"Young Goodman Brown"Herman Melville (1819-1891)Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, Melville's masterpiece, is the epic story of the whaling ship Pequod and its "ungodly, god-like man," Captain Ahab, whose obsessive quest forthe white whale Moby-Dick leads the ship and its men to destruction.Moby-Dick has been called a "natural epic" -- a magnificent dramatization of the human spirit set in primitive nature Billy BuddHenry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)The most important Boston Brahmin（婆罗门）poets were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell.Longfellow, professor of modern languages at Harvard, was the best-known American poet of his day.He was the only American poet to be honored by having his bust placed in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey. He wrote three long narrative poems popularizing native legends in European meters"Evangeline" (1847),"The Song of Hiawatha" (1855), -- the first American epic in blank verse about the American Indians"The Courtship of Miles Standish" (1858).Walt Whitman (1819-1892)His Leaves of Grass (1855), which he rewrote and revised throughout his life, contains "Song of Myself," the most stunningly original poem ever written by an American. Leaves of Grass is as vast, energetic, and natural as the American continent; it was the epic generations of American critics had been calling for, although they did not recognize it."O Captain! My Captain!"I hear America Singing“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) sentences –catalogue technique: long list of names, long poem linesEmily Dickinson (1830-1886)"nun of Amherst"Because I Can’t Stop for DeathI Heard a Fly Buzz – When I diedTheme: friendship, love and marriage, life and deathstyle (1) poems without titles (2) severe economy of expression (3) directness, brevity (4) musical deviceto create cadence (rhythm) (5) capital letters –emphasis (6) short poems, mainly two stanzas (7) rhetoric techniques: personification –make some of abstract ideas vividHarriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly was the most popular American book of the 19th century.Reasons for the success of Uncle Tom's Cabin are obvious. It reflected the idea that slavery in the United States, the nation that purportedly embodied democracy and equality for all, was an injustice of colossal proportions.The literature of Realism(1865-1918)The Civil War – The First World WarLocal ColoristsNew England:Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)South:Joel Chandler Harris (1848 -1908)Kate Chopin(1851-1904) – The AwakeningWest frontiers: Bret Harte - The Luck of Roaring Camp Realists1. ThemeHowells – middle class //James – upper class //Twain – lower class2. TechniqueHowells – smiling/genteel realism //James – psychological realism //Twain – local colorism and colloquialismWilliam Dean Howells (1837-1920)Dean of American Realismoptimistic realismInterpreting sympathetically the “common feelings of commonplace people”was best suited as a technique to express the spirit of America.The Rise of Silas LaphamHenry James (1843-1916)Novel of manners 世态小说Psychological analysis, forefather of stream ofconsciousnessPsychological realismDaisy MillerThe Portrait of a Lady’sThe Wings of the DoveThe Golden BowlSAMUEL CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN) (1835-1910)Ernest Hemingway's famous statement that all of American literature comes from one great book, Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, indicates this author's towering place in the tradition.Twain was the first major author to come from the interior of the country, and he captured its distinctive, humorous slang and iconoclasm.The most well-known example is Huck Finn, a poor boy who decides to follow the voice of his conscience and help a Negro slave escape to freedom, even though Huck thinks this means that he will be damned to hell for breaking the law.Twain's masterpiece, which appeared in 1884, is set in the Mississippi River village of St. Petersburg.The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnThe Adventures of Tom SawyerLife on the MississippiThe Innocents AbroadThe Prince and the PauperNaturalistsStephen CraneJack LondonFrank NorrisTheodore DreiserUpton Sinclair –muckrakers 黑幕揭发者The Jungle –Chicago 屠场Stephen Crane (1871-1900)Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) is one of the bestThe Red Badge of CourageJack London (1876-1916)Other of his best-sellers, including The Call of the Wild (1903) and The Sea-Wolf (1904) made him the highest paid writer in the United States of his time.The autobiographical novel Martin Eden (1909) depicts the inner stresses of the American dream as London experienced them during his meteoric rise from obscure poverty to wealth and fame.Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)Sister CarrieThe 1925 work An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser explores the dangers of the American dream. – the greatest novel in AmericaAn American Tragedy is a reflection of the dissatisfaction, envy, and despair that afflicted many poor and working people in America's competitive, success-driven society. The Literature of Modernism(1918 – 1945)a flowering period of American literature.the second renaissance of American literature.The Roaring Twenties/Dollar Decade/Jazz AgeThe Great DepressionWorld War IIChicago PoetsCarl Sandburg (1879-1967)American SongbagChicago PoemsThe People, YesHart Crane(1899-1932) – The BridgeImagistsEzra Pound (1885-1972)-- father of modern American poetry.The CantosAmy LowellWilliam Carlos Williams (1883-1963)Red Wheelbarrow红色手推车Wallace StevensNew England PoetsRobert Frost (1874-1938)A Boy’s Wish；North of Boston (Mending Wall,After Apple-picking); Mountain Interval（成熟阶段）(The Road Not taken); Edward Arlington RobinsonMiniver Cheevy -- comicRichard Cory – tragicO. Henry (William Sydney Porter) (1862-1910)O. HENRY O. Henry is the pen name of William Sydney Porter.The master of the surprise endingwas a prolific American short-story writerwrote about the life of ordinary people in New York City.A twist of plot, which turns on an ironic or coincidental circumstance, is typical of O. Henry's stories.The Gift of the MagiWilla Cather (1873-1947)Alexander's BridgeMy AntoniaO Pioneers!The Professor's HouseThe Song of the LarkBackground Information about the period between the two world warsMany historians have characterized the period between the two world wars as the United States' traumatic "coming of age"Despite outward gaiety, modernity, and unparalleledmaterial prosperity, young Americans of the 1920s were "the lost generation" -- so named by literary portraitist Gertrude Stein.F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940),His first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), became a best- sellerFitzgerald's secure place in American literature rests primarily on his novel The Great Gatsby (1925), a brilliantly written, economically structured story about the American dream of the self-made man. The protagonist, the mysterious Jay Gatsby, discovers the devastating cost of success in terms of personal fulfillment and love.Tender Is the Night (1934)Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)All the Sad Young Men (1926).Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)Hemingway is arguably the most popular American novelist of this century.Like Fitzgerald, Hemingway became a spokesperson for his generation -- the "lost generation" of cynical survivors. The Sun Also Rises, about the demoralized life ofexpatriates after World War I; -- brought him fameA Farewell to Arms, about the tragic love affair of an American soldier and an English nurse during the war; For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), set during the Spanish Civil WarThe Old Man and the Sea (1952), a short poetic novel about a poor, old fisherman who heroically catches a huge fish devoured by sharks, won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1953; the next year he received the Nobel Prize.code heroes -- grace under pressure"iceberg principle"William Faulkner (1897-1962)The Sound and the FuryAs I Lay Dying"A Rose for Emily"Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)Winesburg, Ohio"The Triumph of the Egg"southern women writers：Katherine Anne Porter，Eudora Welty，Flannery O’Connor.John Steinbeck (1902-1968)He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963 and the international fame it confers.His best known work is the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), which follows the travails of a poor Oklahoma family that loses its farm during the Depression and travels to California to seek work. Family members suffer conditions of feudal oppression by rich landowners. Of Mice and Men (1937), and East of Eden (1952).Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)Main StreetBabbittEugene O'Neill (1888-1953)Beyond the HorizonLong Day's Journey Into NightMourning Becomes ElectraThe Iceman ComethDesire Under the ElmsThe Hairy ApeTennessee Williams (1911-1983)The Glass MenagerieA Streetcar Named DesireCat on a Hot Tin RoofArthur Miller (1915- )All My SonsDeath of a SalesmanThe CrucibleEdward Albee a. Zoo Story b. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Black Humor -- Joseph Heller (1923- )Catch-22根据第二十二条军规，既然是疯子就可以获准免于飞行，但必须由本人提出申请；不过，第二十二条军规同时又规定，凡能意识到飞行有危险而提出免飞申请的，属头脑清醒者，应继续执行飞行任务。

美国文学选读复习资料

美国文学选读复习资料美国文学选读复习资料美国文学是世界文学宝库中的一颗璀璨明珠，承载着美国历史、文化和社会的精华。

作为文学爱好者和学生，对于美国文学的了解和掌握是必不可少的。

本文将为大家提供一份美国文学选读的复习资料，帮助大家更好地理解和欣赏美国文学的经典之作。

一、美国文学的起源与发展美国文学的起源可以追溯到十七世纪的殖民地时期。

最早的美国文学作品是早期殖民者的日记、教会纪实和历史记录，如《普利茅斯纪事》和《马萨诸塞纪事》。

随着殖民地的发展和美国独立战争的爆发，美国文学逐渐形成了自己的独特风格和主题，如《飘》、《红字》和《汤姆·索亚历险记》等。

二、美国文学的主题与特点美国文学的主题广泛而多样，涵盖了对自由、平等、个人主义和社会正义的探索。

美国文学作品常常关注社会问题和人类命运，如种族歧视、性别平等、战争和社会阶级等。

同时，美国文学也以其写实主义和现实主义的风格著称，力求真实地描绘社会生活和人物形象。

三、美国文学的代表作品1.《钢铁是怎样炼成的》这是美国作家海明威的代表作之一，通过描写一战期间的士兵们的生活和战争的残酷性，展现了人性的脆弱和战争的荒谬。

2.《了不起的盖茨比》这是美国作家菲茨杰拉德的代表作之一，以20世纪20年代的纽约社交圈为背景，描绘了财富、爱情和欲望的交织，对美国梦的追求和破灭进行了深刻的探讨。

3.《杀死一只知更鸟》这是美国作家哈珀·李的代表作之一，通过一个小女孩的视角，揭示了种族歧视和社会不公的问题，以及人性的复杂性和善恶的边界。

4.《老人与海》这是美国作家海明威的另一部代表作品，通过一个老渔夫与大海的搏斗，探讨了生命的意义和人与自然的关系。

5.《傲慢与偏见》这是英国作家简·奥斯汀的作品，虽然不是美国文学，但对美国文学的影响深远。

通过描写女主角伊丽莎白·班纳特的成长和婚姻观念的转变，探讨了社会等级、婚姻和爱情的主题。

四、美国文学的影响与意义美国文学不仅仅是一种艺术形式，更是美国文化和民族精神的重要组成部分。

美国文学复习提纲

Part 1 Literature of Colonial America1. What is the 1st permanent English settlement in NorthAmerica? When was it established? Jamestown, 16072.Who is the first American writer: Captain John Smith3.Puritanism and its influence on and reflection inAmerican literature.4.poetess Anne Bradstreet: The Tenth Muse Lately SprungUp in AmericaPart II The Literature of Reason and Revolution1.Benjamin Franklin’s major literary works:Poor Richard's Almanac，The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin2.Thomas Paine: Common Sense3.Thomas Jefferson: The Declaration of Independence：Structure, main idea, analysis4.Philip Freneau:"The Poet of the American Revolution” , Father ofAmerican Poetry"The Wild Honey Suckle", “The Indian Burying Ground”Part 3 The Literature of Romanticism1. Literary terms: American Romanticism,Transcendentalism2.Washington Irving: Father of American LiteratureSketch Book3.James Fenimore Cooper:the Leatherstocking Tales (1832-1841)：The Pioneers ( 1823 ). 《拓荒者》The Last of the Mohicans ( 1826 )《最后的莫希干人》The Prairie ( 1827 ). 《大草原》The Pathfinder ( 1840 ). 《探路者》The Deerslayer ( 1841 ). 《猎鹿人》Central figure: Natty BumppoUncas: “The Last of the Mohicans”4. William Cullen Brant：Thanatopsis 《死之思考》"To a Waterfowl" 《致水鸟》:Matthew Arnold, the eminent English critic and poet, called it the “most perfect brief poem in the language”.5.Edgar Allan Poe:Poems: The Raven, To Helen, Annabel LeeShort stories: The Fall of the House of Usher6.Ralph Waldo EmersonNature：Henry David Thoreau: Walden Dial7.Nathaniel HawthorneHow do you interpret the symbol “A ” in The Scarlet Letter?8.Herman MelvilleMoby-DickWhat is/are the symbolic meaning/meanings of the white whale, Moby Dick?What are themes of the novel Moby Dick?9.Henry Wadsworth LongfellowA Psalm of Life: What the Heart of the Young Man Said to thePsalmistPart 4 The Literature of Realism1.Literary terms: American Realism, free verse, LocalColor （ism）/Regionalism2.Henry James: International themes, PsychologicalRealismAmerican versus European Character (innocence Vs.sophistication), Social and Emotional Maturation3.Theodore Dreiser:Trilogy of Desire -The Financier, The Titan, and The Stoic. His best known work is An American TragedyThemes of Sister Carrie: Materialism/consumerism, Money and Morality, American Dream, Change and Transformation, Choices and Consequences, Class Conflict, IdentityPart 5 20th Century Literature/ Modernism1.Literary term: American Modernism, Imagism, the LostGeneration2.Robert Frost:How do you understand Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”?3.F. Scot Fitzgeraldthemes of The Great Gatsby: The Decline/disillusionment of the American Dream in the 1920s, The Hollowness of the Upper Class, Honesty，Decay，Gender Roles，Violence，Class, World War I4.Ernest HemingwayMasterpiece: The Old Man and the SeaThe Iceberg Theory5.William Faulkner:An important interpreter of the universal theme of "the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself." Experiments in the use of stream-of-consciousness technique and in the dislocation of narrative timeThemes: sex, class, race relations, and relations with nature the Yoknaptawpha saga, southern literatureMajor works：As I Lay Dying，Sanctuary，Light in August，A bsalom，Absalom! The Sound and the FuryGo Down，Moses。

自考英美文学选读复习纲要 sinceChapter4 Victorian Period1836

Chapter4 Victorian Period1836-19012. background（1）early years： rapid economic development as well as serious social problems（2）the next twenty years： prosperity and relative stability. a national spirit of earnestness，respectability， modesty domesticity（3）the last three decades： the decline of the British empire and the decay of the Victorian values3. idea：（1）Darwin‘s The Origin of Species； The Descent of Man shook the theoretical basis of the traditional faith（2）Utilitarianism： whether it could promote the material happiness（3）socially conscious writers criticized（2）‘s depreciation of cultural values，cold indifference towards human feeling（4）literature： magnitude and diversity， romantically and realistically4.critical realist writers： criticized the society， concerned about the fate of common peopleCharles Dickens1.theme：critical realist writers， criticize： poverty， injustice， hypocrisy，corruptness2.works： Oliver Twist； The Pickwick Paper； David Copperfield； Domeby and Son； A Tale of Two Cities； Bleak House； Little Dorrit； Hard Times； Great Expectations3.characteristics：（1）he is skillful in the dialect and have a large vocabulary（2）character portrayal（3）characters are mostly innocent， helpless ，persecuted child characters（4）a mixture of humor and sympathism（5）bizarre figure， horrible4.Oliver Twist： the cruelty and hypocrisy of the workhouse system and the dark criminal underworld lifeThe Bronte Sisters1.scene：vast，rough，untouched moorland wilderness2.Charlotte Bronte： Jane EyreMr. Rochester and Jane Eyre.Rochester： a grim-looking， energetic， quick-tempered， but an understanding middle-aged manJane Eyre： has a burning spirit and a longing to love and be lovedJane Eyre： struggles for recognition of her basic rights and equality as a woman. It‘s an individual conscious struggle towards self-realization. She gets joy through the sacrifice of herself or her weakness overcome3.Emily Bronte： Wuthering Heights（uses flashbacks）Nelly： Catherine‘s old nurse， narrator， told Mr.Lockwood， a temporary tenant the storyAlfred Tennyson1.Crossing the Bar； Ulysses； Break， Break， Break2.uation：Poet Laureate （Wordsworth， Southey）3.features：a powerful expression_r of the poet‘s philosophical and religious thoughts， his doubts about life， soul.Robert Browning1.features：perfects “dramatic monologue”， keeps readers onmouseover，thoughtful and enlightened2.works： My Last Dutches， in heroic couplets， dramatic monologueGeorge Eliot1.idea：founder of “stream of consciousness”， focus on inner struggle. hereditary influences govern human action. concern forthe destiny of woman. the tragedy of women lies in their very birth（hereditary influences）2.works features ：naturalistic and psychological novel3.works：Middlemarch：a full view of life in a small EnglishtownThomas Hardy1.uation：naturalist（wrance； Theodore Dreiser； George Eliot），also critical realist writer （Dickens）2.works：Wessex，The Return of the Nature； The Mayor of Casterbridge； Tess of the D‘Urbervilles； Jude the Obscure3.features：nostalgic（Washington Irving； F.Scott Fitzergerald； William Faulkner），also pessimistic4.naturalism：Darwin‘s idea of “survival of the fittest”（1）man is born with tragic，inevitably bound by his own hereditary traits（2）man proves powerless before fate however he tries，he seldom escapes his doomed destiny5.Tess of the D‘Urbervilles：（1）criticize the society， hypocrisy of the society（2）nauralism， the misery， poverty Tess suffersChapter5 The Modern Period （England）1.background：second half of the 19th century to early of the 20th decades（1）natural and social sciences enormously advanced（2）capitalism came into its monopoly stage（3）the gap between the rich and the poor was further deepened（4）World War 1 2 broke2.what ideas influence this period： all kinds of philosophical ideas（1）Karl Marx： scientific socialism（2）Darwin‘s theory of evolution，“survival of the fittest”（3）Freud‘s analytical psychology（4）The irrationalist philosophers give immense influence3.ideas：（1）Modernism originated from skepticism and disillusion of capitalism（2）The French symbolism announced modernism（3）takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base.The major themes are the distorted，alienated and ill relationships4.difference between Modernism and RealismModernism is a reaction against realism in many aspects（1）Modernism rejects rationalism， which is the theoretical base of Realism（2）Modernism refects the source of Realism， i.e. the external， objective，material world（3）Modernism rejects almost all the traditional elements in literaturewence‘s works’ features：（1）he interests in exploring the psychological development， he thinks life impulse is man‘s instinct. any conscious oppression will cause distortion of the individual’s personality（2）make a psychological exploration of human relationships， especially those between men and women（3）he emphasizes that it‘s capitalist industrialization that turn man into inhuman machines. And the desires for power and money cause the alienation of human relationships6.John Osborne：“Look back in Anger”“Angry Young Man”， the working-class drama and the Theater of AbsurbGeorge Bernard Shawn1.idea：against “art for art‘s sake”， art should serve social purposes by reflecting human life， revealing social contradictions and educating common people2.works features： prolem plays， only one passion： indignation（1）showing one’s character by the expense of another’s（2）inversion3.works：Mrs Warren‘s Profession（a play about the economic oppression of woman）；St. Joan（historical play）； The Apple Cart（political play）； The Doctor’s Dilemma （political play）John Galsworthy1.works： trilogy：The Man of Property； In Chancery； To Let2.The Man of Property：Soames（husband），Irene（wife），Bosinney（wife‘s lover）the predominant possessive instinct of the ForsytesSoames represents the principle that the accumulation of wealth in the aim of life，for he considers everything in terms of one‘s property，he never pays any attention to his wife’s thoughts and feelings，he takes her merely as part of his own property.theme：human relationships of the contemporary English Society are merely an extension of property relationshipsWilliam Butler Yeats1.works：The Lake Isle of Innisfree； Down by the Salley GardensT.S.Eliot1.works：The Waste Land（1）presents physical disorder and spiritual decadence in the modern western society（2）reflects disillusion and despair of a whole post war generation.anguish，menace，sterility had been afflicting all sensitive members of the postwar generation（3）concerns with the spiritual breakup of a modern civilization in which human life has lost its meaning（4）reflects the 20th century people‘s disillusion and frustration in a meaningless and boring world2.works：The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock： dramatic monologue in ironic tonecontent： the meditation of an aging young man over the proposing marriagetheme： the speaker‘s incapability of facing up to love and to life in a sterile upper-class worldwence1.works：The Rainbow； Women in Love； Lady Chatterley‘s Lover2.Sons and Loverscontents： ignorant， drunken and brutish father（Mr.Morel）， the weary，frustrated mother（Mrs.Morel）， the intelligent and ambitious woman， tries to find emotional fulfillment in her sons（Paul）。

美国文学选读复习提要3

美国文学选读复习提要3Mark Twain 马克·吐温1835-19101.原名Samuel Langhorne Clemens 塞缪尔·朗赫恩·克莱门斯。

1847年父亲去世后开始到一家出版社当学徒工，从1853年开始全国旅行，期间做过印刷排字临时工，结识了船长霍勒斯·比克斯比，从那以后便开始水上生活his formal education ended soon after his father’s death in 1847, when he became a printer’s apprentice. From 1853, he traveled widely, as a journeyman printer, in the eastern states and in the west, he met Horace Bixby, the captain of the boat, and turned to a career on the river.国内战争爆发以后，他离开密西西比河，先后在军队当过志愿者，到内华达州掏过金，他还做过木材投机生意，当过新闻记者he left the Mississippi at the outbreak of the Civil War, and became, in swift succession, and army volunteer, a gold-prospector in Nevada, a timber speculator and a journalist.2.在弗吉尼亚《企业》杂志任职期间，他开始使用笔名“马克·吐温”，意为口寻，也就是十二尺深whileworking for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, he adopted the pseudonym “Mark Twain”, the way of a boatman taking soundings, and meaning two fathoms, i.e. twelve feet.3.1865年，他第一本书《跳蛙》出版”Jumping Frog”;1869年，《傻子国外旅行记》“Innocents Abroad”;1872年，《艰苦岁月》“Roughing It”;1873年，《镀金时代》“The Gilded Age”1876年，《汤姆·索亚历险记》“The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”;1883年，《密西西比河上的生活》“Life on the Mississippi”;1884年，《哈克贝里·费恩历险记》”Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”;1894年，《傻瓜威尔逊》“Pudd’n head Wilson”;1900年，《败坏了哈德莱堡的人》“The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg”;1906年，《什么是人？》“What is Man”;1916年，《神秘来客》“The Mysterious Stranger”4.晚年悲观与失望，对十九世纪美国社会价值观不能接受，后一直是一个坚定的怀疑论者，有时他通过时事恶毒的评论来疏缓自己的压力，晚景凄凉，亲人相继离去he pointed towards his uneasy acceptance of the values of nineteenth-century American society, he wrote three works expressing his acute pessimism.From that time until his death, he maintained a bitter skepticism, relieved at times by outraged commentary on world affairs. His last years were saddened by personal bereavement.Ezra Pound埃兹拉·庞德1885-19721.埃兹拉·卢米斯·庞德Ezra Loomis Pound。

美国文学史复习提纲

美国文学史复习提纲I. Explain the following literary terms.1. RomanticismThe most profound and comprehensive idea of romanticism is the vision of a greater personal freedom for the individual. Appeals to imagination; Stress on emotion rather than reason; optimism, geniality. Subjectivity: in form and meaning.2 American transcendentalismAmerican transcendentalism was an important movement in philosophy and literature that flourished during the early to middle years of the nineteenth century (about 1836-1860). For the transcendentalists, the soul of each individual is identical with the soul of the world and contains what the world contains.3 Realism: ―nothing more and nothing less than the tru thful treatment of material.‖ theCivil wara. verisimilitude of details derived from observationb. representative in plot, setting and characterc. an objective rather than an idealized view of human experience4. Modernism like modernism in general is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic. The general term covers many political, cultural and artistic movements rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. American modernism is an artistic and cultural movement in the United States starting at theturn of the 20th century with its core period between World War I and World War II and continuing into the 21st century.II. Questions and Answers. Give brief answers to each of the following questions in English.1. What is local color？an amalgam of romantic plots and realistic descriptions of things immediately observable: the dialects, customs, sights, and sounds of regional America‖2. What is American Puritanism1). Total Depravity - the concept of Original Si2). Unconditional Election - the concept of predestination3). Limited Atonement - Jesus died for the chosen only, not for everyone.4). Irresistible Grace - God's grace is freely given, it cannot be earned or denied.5). Perseverance of the "saints" - those elected by God have full power to interpret the will of God, and to live uprightly. If anyone rejects grace after feeling its power in his life, he will be going against the will of God.3. Analyze Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography.themes in autobiography: Self- Improvement Mind: Self-education Body: Physical ActivityBehavior: Moral Perfection Religion: The best service to God is to be good to man Benjamin Franklin and aspects of The American DreamRags to Riches: Impotence to Importance: A Philosophy of Individualism:Freewill vs. Determinism: Hope and Optimism:The Autobiography is a record of self-examination and self-improvement.Benjamin Franklin was a spokesman for the new order of the 18th century enlightenment The Autobiography is a how-to-do-it book, a book on the art of self-improvement. (for example, Franklin’s 13 virtues)Through telling a success story of self-reliance, the book celebrates, in fact, the fulfillment of the American dream.The Autobiography is in the pattern of Puritan simplicity, directness, and concision4. What is Imagism?It is a movement of English and American poets in revolt from Romanticism, which flourish 1910-1917. The characteristic products of the movement are more easily recognized than its theories defined: they tend to be short ,composed of short lines of musical cadence rather than metrical regularity, to avoid abstraction, and to treat the image with a hard, clear precision rather than with overt symbolic intent.As part of the modernist movement, away from the sentimentality and moralizing tone of nineteenth-century Victorian poetry, imagist poets looked to many sources to help them create a new poetic expression, aiming at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images. III. Topic discussion.1. Discuss Allen Poe’s literar y achievements with his works.famous American poet, short-story writer and critic father of detective storymaster of gothic novel forerunner of symbolisma father of detective storyPoe introduced of a new form of short fiction--- the detective story.Th e word ―detective‖ did not exist in English at the time thatPoe was writing, but the genre has become a fundamental mode of twentieth-century literature and film.b) master of gothic novelGothic novel, a genre that rose with Romanticism in Britain in the late eighteenth century, explores the dark side of human experience—death, alienation, nightmares, ghosts, and haunted landscapes. Poe brought the Gothic to America.Gothic novels originated from The Castle of Otranto, written by Horace Walpole in Britain at the end of the 18th century, which created the early classical Gothic novel mode.It leads habitually with darkness and horror. Gothic elements include horror, mystery, supernatural phenomenon, misfortune, death, haunted houses, and family curses.C Literary criticPoe is one of the few American writers who not only wrote poetry, but also wrote about how to write poetry. His critical essays on poetry include The Poetic Principle, and The Philosophy of Composition.Poe remained the most controversial and most misunderstood literary figure in the history of American literature.2. Analyze Freneau’s The Wild Honeysuckle.野金银花Fair flower, that dost so comely grow, 美好的花呀，你长得：这么秀丽，Hid in this silent, dull retreat, 却藏身在这僻静沉闷的地方——Untouched thy honey'd blossoms blow, 甜美的花儿开了却没人亲昵，Unseen thy little branches greet; 招展的小小枝梢也没人观赏；No roving foot shall crush thee here, 没游来荡去的脚来把你踩碎，No busy hand provoke a tear. 没东攀西摘的手来催你落泪。

美国文学史概述及选读复习资料

美国文学史American Literature in the colonical and Revolutionary:1.Benjamin Franklin(本杰明.富兰克林)2.hilip Freneau 菲利普·费瑞诺Benjamin Franklin(本杰明.富兰克林)1)"Poor Richard's Almanac" 穷人查理德的年鉴(以笔名Richard Sunders)2)“annual collection of proverbs “流行谚语集(It soon became the most popular bookof its kind, largely because of Franklin's shrewd humor, and first spread his reputation) 3)The Way to Wealth (Father Abraham’s Sermon)致富之道(as the “perface to Poor RichardImproved)4)The Autobiography自传(18世纪美国唯一流传至今的自传)5)Founded the Junto, a club for informal discussion of scientific, economic and politicalideas. 建立了一个秘密俱乐部，讨论的主题是政治、经济和科学等时事方面的问题.6)established America's first circulating library, founded the college--University ofPennsylvania. 建立了美国第一个可租借的图书馆，还创办了一所大学——就是现在的宾夕法尼亚大学.7)first applied the terms "positive" and "negative" to electrical charges.8)Writer,printer,publisher,scientist,philanthropist,and diplomat,he was the most famousand respected private figure of his time.The Rising Glory of America蒸蒸日上的美洲；The British Prison Ship英国囚船；To the Memory of the Brave Americans纪念美国勇士-----同类诗中最佳；The Wild Honeysuckle野生的金银花；The Indian Burying Ground印第安人殡葬地(1)poet and political journalist 诗人和政治方面的新闻记者(2)perhaps the most outstanding writer of the post-revolutionary period.(3)has been called the "Father of American Poetry" 美国诗歌之父(4)Imaginative and melancholy treatment of nature and human life,and sharp satire against the British tyranny19th Century American LiteratureWashington Irving(华盛顿.欧文)1．James Fenimore Cooper(詹姆斯.芬尼莫.库珀)2．Nathaniel Hawthorne(纳萨尼尔.霍桑)3．Edgar Allan Poe （埃德加.阿伦.坡）4．Henry Daived Thoreau(亨利.戴维.梭罗)5．Herman Melville(赫尔曼.麦尔维尔)6．Walt Whiteman(沃尔特.惠特曼)The Rise of American Romanticism• One of the most important periods in the history of American literature, stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War(1861-65).• It started with the publication of Washington Irving's e T he h Sketch Book(1820) and ended with Whitman's s Leaves f of Grass(1855)..Romanticism的特点：frequently shared certain general characteristics, moral enthusiam,faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception, and apresumption that he natural world was a source of corruption.浪漫主义之间大多是相通的，都注重道德，强调个人主义价值观和直觉感受，并且认为自然是美的源头，人类社会是腐败之源。

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Proses:
Nathan Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter-Chapter 2
Hawthorne: 心理分析小说，以宗教罪恶观sin评价社会。

-Why are women especially the elder ones so harsh and intolerant to Hester?
1. Startled or astonished by the beauty, elegant and dignity of Hester.
2. The patriarchal society let women have eternalized patriarchal ideas, unfavorable for women adulterers.
-How does the author portray Hester Prynne?
1. Core impressive image: the artistically and fantastically made letter A.
2. Appearance
-What does the scarlet letter with gold thread and elaborate embroidery(刺绣) suggests?
1. C lue of Hester’s attitude: she makes a mockery of her punishment by making this plain symbol of adultery into a
gorgeous decoration.
2. To negate the awful meaning of the letter.
3. as punishment, 血红色的A字象征这人们反对human nature ,lush, 有devilish意味，而Hester wants to change
her human reality, to make it prettier than it really is.
-W hat does “A” stand for?
Adultery/Angel (appearing in the sky when governor dies)/Able (Hester gains influence)
-What kind of person is Chillingworth?
1. Devil or devil’s emissary or Satan: cold intellect and old age, without hominine feelings from heart and soul.
2. In Hester’s recalling, he is “…pale.”
Character Captain Ahab
Image of American: an idealist and an egonist.
Willa Cather: Miss Jewett
Sarah Orne Jewett’s poetic principles
Jewett both as a writer and a person
Cather’s poetic principles
As a writer, Jewett has her own writing style.
She focuses on the places where she lives and loves, and makes them subject-matters of her stories. (Wherever she might be, She carried the Maine shore-country with her. She loved it by instinct, and in the light of wide experience, from near and from afar. Every day, in every season of the year, she enjoyed the beautiful country in which she had the good fortune to be born. Her love of the Maine country was the supreme happiness of her life. Her stories were but reflections, quite incidental, of that peculiar and intensely personal pleasure. Take ,for instance, that dear, daybreak paragraph which begins “By the Morning Boat”:
“On the coast of Maine…”P127 paragraph 3)
She writes with delightful humor that comes from her delicate and tactful handling of her native language.(Her personal opinions she voiced lightly, half-humorously; any expression was spontaneous, the outgrowth of the immediate conversation.)
And, the distinctive thing about Miss Jewett is that she has her own individual voice.(her comment on the story of a mule)
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
Ernest Hemingway: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
Exist entialism and the “Lost Generation”: Although Hemingway was writing years before existentialism became a prominent culture idea, his questioning of life and his experiences as a searching member of the lost generation gave his work existentialist overtones.
Nothingness: (nada) an existential angst about his place in the universe and an uncertainty about the meaning of life. The struggle to deal with despair: the older waiter cannot actually stave off despair: ineffective methods including: money (bar)/mocking prayers (religion)
The Older Waiter：Lonely, recognizes himself in the old man and sees his own future.
The Younger Waiter: naïve and insensitive, immature, demonstrates a dismissive attitude toward human life in general.
Deceptive pacing: 写作风格从简，导致故事节奏忽快忽慢。

Conveys only the most essential information in the scene. Saul Bellow: Looking for Mr. Green
Character analysis: Raynor and Field
Poets:
19th Century:
Walt Whitman: One’s Self I Sing
Emily Dickinson: I’m Nobody!/ Success Is Counted Sweetest
20th Century:
Wallace Stevens: Anecdote of the Jar
William Carlos Williams: The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams: Spring and All
Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken
===
Robert Lowell: Skunk Hour
Allen Ginsberg: A Supermarket in California。