常耀信美国文学史教案

常耀信美国文学史教案
Chapter 1 Colonial America
(US is a quite special country in the world. Although it only has a very short history, it is the most powerful country today. )
1.Historical Background
⑴ In 1942, Christopher Columbus found the new continent called America.
⑵ Immigrants: Spanish (they built the first town on the new continent); Dutch (they built New York city at the beginning stage); French (today still lots of people’s mother tongue is French in North America)
⑶ English immigrants, Jamestown, Virginia, 1607
1620 “May Flower”, Plymouth
(Imagine: transportation not convenient, why some many immigrants left their hometown and came to such a remote place as America? Economic reasons; Religious reasons) (Reformation and religious conflicts in Europe; persecution of Protestants)
2.American Puritanism（清教主义）
⑴ Puritans=Calvinists
a:John Calvin, a theologian, Puritans believed most doctrines preached by him, so they were also called Calvinists
but puritans wanted to “purify the church” to its original state, because they thought the church was corrupted and had too many rituals
c:To be a Puritan: taking religion as the most important thing; living for glorifying God; believing predestination（命运天定）, original sin（原罪，人生下来就是有罪的，因为人类的祖先亚当和夏娃是有罪的）, total depravity（人类是完全堕落的，所以人要处处小心自己的行为，要尽可能做到最好以取悦上帝）, limited atonement（有限救赎，只有被上帝选中的人才能得到上帝的拯救）
d lif
e style o
f Puritans: pious, austerity of taste, diligence and thrift, rigid sense of morality, self-reliance (John Milton is a typical Puritan.)
⑵ American Puritan
a:On the one hand, American Puritans were all idealist as their European brothers. They came to the new continent with the dream that they would built the new land to an Eden on earth.
b:On the other hand, American Puritans were more practical maybe because the severe conditions they faced.
⑶ Influence on literature
a:Basis of American literature: the dream of building an Eden of Garden on earth (Early American literature were mainly optimistic because they believed that God sent them to the new continent to fulfill the sacred task so they would overcome all the difficulties they met at last. Gradually Americans found that their dreams would not be successful, so lots of pessimistic literary works were produced.)
b:Symbolism（象征主义）: lots of American writers liked to employ symbolism in their works. (typical way of Puritans who thought that all the simple objects existing in the world connoted deep meaning.) Symbolism means using symbols in literary works. The symbol means something represents or stands for abstract deep meaning.
c:Style: simple, fresh and direct (just as the style of the Authorized Version of
Holy Bible)
3.Colonial Literature
⑴ General features
a:Humble origins: diaries, histories, letters etc.
b:In content: serving either God or colonial expansion or both
c:In form: imitating English literary traditions
⑵ Captain John Smith: the first American Writer (P16)
⑶ Anne Bradstreet: first American woman poet; a Puritan poet; once called “Tenth Muse”; her poems mainly about religious experience, family life and early settlers’lives; her most famous poems?“Contemplations” (P17)
⑷ Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
a:He is the most important poet in the 18th century.
b:He was entitled “Father of American Poetry”.
c:He was born in New York and graduated from Princeton University.
d:He wrote lots of poems supporting American Revolution and human liberty.
e:He was the most notable representative of dawning American nationalism in literature.
f:His poems presented Romantic spirits but his form and taste were mainly influenced by Classicism.
g:Most famous poems: “The Wild Honey Suckle” and “The Indian Burying Ground”h:Analyze and discuss the theme, rhyme scheme and some difficult dictions in “The Wild Honey Suckle”.
Lecture 2 Edwards and Franklin
(In most course books, this part is called the 18th century literature. And Jonathan Edwards is not included and is put to the colonial period. However, Philip Freneau should be included in this chapter.)
(Putting these two characters together, the author may means to compare these two. The comparison is mentioned several times in the text on P27 and P32.)
1.Historical Background
⑴ American Revolution
(Strict rules made by English government prevented the economic development of the colonies. It was unfair. So American Independence War broke.)
a:1775, Lexington, beginning of the Independence War
b:June 4th, 1776, Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence
c:1778, alliance with France, turning point for American army
d:1778, English army surrendered
e:1783, formal recognition from Britain government
⑵ Enlightenment (启蒙运动)
(Review English Literature, 18th century, Addison, Steele and Pope, Classicism) a:Originated in Europe in the 17th century
b:Resources: Newton’s theory; deism（自然神教派，课本P28，宗教与启蒙精神相结合的产物）; French philosophy (Rousseau, Voltaire)
c:Basic principles: stressing education; stressing Reason (Order) (The age has been called Age of Reason.); employing Reason to reconsider the traditions and social
realities; concerns for civil rights, such as equality and social justice
d:Representatives: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson etc.
e:Influence on literature
In form: imitating English classical（古典主义）writers
In content: utilitarian tendency (for political or educational purpose)
2.Jonathan Edwards (1703?1758) (last important figure in Puritan tradition)
⑴ Life
a:Born in a very religious New England family
b:Graduated from Yale
c:Worked as a minister and was an important figure in “Great Awakening” (a serious of religious revivals which occurred in the 1730s and 1740s on North America continent)
dismissed from his position because of fierce religious controversy at that time eived and meditated in solitude; wrote some books (P29)
⑵ Analysis
a:Influenced by the new ideas of Enlightenment, such as empiricism
b:Still a pious Puritan
c:His sense of God’s overwhelming presence in nature and in soul anticipated the Transcendentalism. (P32)
d:First modern American and the country’s last medieval man
3.Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
⑴ Life?Jack of all trades
a:Born in a poor candle maker’s family in Boston
b:No regular education
c:Became a apprentice of a printer when he was 12
d:A editor of a newspaper and published lots of essays when he was 16
e:Went to Philadelphia when he was 17
f:A successful printer and publisher
g:Retired when he was 42
h: A scientist with lots of inventions and a famous experiment (kite, electricity, thunderstorm)
i:A famous statesman (the only America who once signed all the four documents that created the new country) (P33)
An example who made American Dream come true
⑵ Literary works
aoor Richard’s Almanac《穷查理的年历》
b:Modeled on farmers’ annual calendar; kept publishing for many years; includes many classical sayings, such as “A penny saved is a penny earned.” (P34)
c:The Autobiography?first of its kind in literature
Writing when he was 65
An introduction of his life to his own son
Including four parts written in different time
Puritanism’s influence, such as self-examination and self-improvement (timetable, thirteen virtues, life style)
Enlightenment spirits (man’s nature good, rights of liberty, virtues includes “order”)
Style: simple, clear in order, direct and concise (“Nothing should be expressed in two words that can as well be expressed in one.”) (Puritanism’s influence) Popular, still well-read today, his values and style influenced lots of Americans Lecture 3 American Romanticism
1.General Introduction
(1)Time: from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War
(2)Reasons (Why Romanticism emerged?)
A. Fast development of the new nation (flood of immigrants; pioneers pushing the frontier further west; industrialization; economic boom; a promising new land with prevailed optimistic moods)
B. Development of jounalism (Some influential periodicals appeared, such as The Atlantic Monthly. They need more literary productions.)
C. Foreign influence (Review history of English literature.)(from the 18th century classicism to sentimentalism to Pre-Romanticism to Romanticism which can be divided into passive group and active group)(most influential British writers to American Romanticists-Walter Scott)
(3)General features of Romanticism
A. Stressing emotion rather than reason
B. Stressing freedom and individuality
C. Idealism rather than materialism
D. Writing about nature, medieval legends and with supernatural elements?
(4) Features of American Romanticism
A. Imitative
B. Independent
a. peculiar American experience (landscape, pioneering to the West, Indian civilization, new nation's democracy and dreams)
b. Puritan heritage (more moralizing, edifying more than mere entertainment) (careful about love and sex. example: Scarlet Letter)
(5) Two periods and representatives
A. 1770s to 1830s Early period
Representatives: Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper and New England poets Two famous poets: William Cullen Bryant (first distinctive American lyric poet; writing about nature, religion and life; famous poems - "Thanatopsis" and "To a Waterfowl") and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (balancing Romantic spirits with classical and Christian taste; famous poem - "A Psalm of Life")
B. 1830s to 1860s? Late period
Flowering of American literature
Representatives: Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson, Poe etc.
(6) Significance
Creative period of a native American culture and literature
2. Washington Irving (1783 - 1859)
(1) Life
A. Born in a rich merchant family
B. Learned law but more interested in writing
C. Went to England for family business
D. Wrote to support himself after business failure
E. Diplomatic work for a period
(2) Major works
The Sketch Book (a collection of essays and short stories)
Two famous short stories in the collection: "Rip Van Winkle" (Read the plot on P48-P49)and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (Read the plot on P49)
(3) Features
A. Conservative (e.g. Rip felt into sleep before American Independence and woke after it.)(love of old world's tradition)("an old gentleman speaking English not American)
B. Style: gentle, refined, lucid, beautiful (classical in form though romantic in subjects)
C. Aim of writing: entertainment, not moralizing
D. Good at creating atmosphere
E. Thin plot
F. Humor
G. Finished and musical language
H. vivid characters
(4) Contributions
A. He was the first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame.
B. The short story as a genre in American literature probably began with Irving's? The Sketch Book.
3. James Fenimore Cooper (1789 - 1851)
(1) Life story
A. born in a rich family
B. attended Yale but expelled
C. five years at sea
D. inherited fortune then a comfortable life
E. wrote lots of novels because he oneday was disgusted by one novel
(2) Major works
"Leatherstocking Tales" (a series of five novels about the frontier life): The Pioneers, The Prairie, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Deerslayer Central character: Natty Bumppo (several names for same character: Hawk-eye, the Pathfinder, the Deerslayer, Leatherstocking) (a typical frontier man: honest, simple, innocent, generous) (represents brotherhood of man, nature and freedom)
Theme: modern civilization advancing on the wilderness and the contradiction between them
(3) Features
A. Good at inventing plots (Cooper had never been to the frontier area personally.)
B. Style: powerful, yet clumsy and dreadful
C. Wooden Characters
D. Use of dialect, but not authentic (criticized by Mark Twain)
(4) Contributions
Finding "the West" and "the frontier life" as materials for literary works Introducing Western tradition into American literature
Lecture 4 Transcendentalism（超验主义）
1. General Introduction
(a special kind of philosophy appeared in the 1830s in US) (quite influential)
(1) Resources
A. Puritan heritage
At the end of the 18th century people gradually felt boring about the strict Calvinism. At the same time with the development of science and technology, Americans suspected the old religion. Thus, Unitarianism（唯一理教） appeared. It was a developed school from the Transcendentalism. It stressed "continual progress of mankind" rather than old religion's "man's total depravity”. It influenced Emerson. Emerson once was a preacher of Unitarianism, but he thought there were too many rituals in this religious school. Then he resigned from the position and sought a way for people to worship more freely.
Emerson also believed in individuality and the dream of making a Garden of Eden on earth held by old generation Puritans.
From Jonathan Edwards Emerson inherited the ideas of inward communication with God and the divine symbolism of nature.
B. Foreign influence
German Philosophy, especially Kant（康德）
Ancient Indian and Chinese works, such as Confucius and Mencius
(2) Features (P57)
A. Emphasis on Spirit (Oversoul) (超灵)（爱默生在超验主义里强调的超灵相当于过去宗教里上帝的这个角色，在超验主义里超灵是无形的，人生活的世界里所有的一切都来自超灵，超灵在人生活的世界里也无所不在。

）
against “world is made of matter”;
against “neglecting of spiritual life in capitalist world”
B. Emphasis on individuals
Old Puritan views: self-reliance and self-improvement
Through communication with Oversoul, human being can be divine.
against “total depravity” in Old Puritan doctrines
against dehumanization of capitalist world
C. Taking nature as the symbol of the Spirit (Oversoul)
encouraging people to find goodness and beauty from nature
against materialism in the society and the actions which broke the harmony between human and nature only for profits
D. Brotherhood of man (equal and liberty)
interested in social reforms; endeavor to create an ideal society; against “everything for money” in the capitalist world
(3) Significance
A. influenced a large group of writers
B. summit of American Romanticism
C. marked the independence of American literature
2. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
(1) Life
A. born in a clergyman’s family in New England
B. graduated from Harvard
C. a Unitarian minister
D. abandoned Unitarianism and went to Europe searching for truth
E. founded a Transcendentalists' Club and published a journal
F. traveled and gave lectures; quite influential
(2) Major works
Nature ( a book which declared the birth of Transcendentalism)
Some other essays preaching his thoughts: "The Poet", "Self-reliance" and "The American Scholar" (American's Declaration of Intellectual Independence)
(3) Aesthetics and significance
A. Aesthetics
a. In Emerson's opinion, poets should function as preachers who gave directions to the mass.
b. True poetry should serve as a moral purification
c. The argument (or his thought or experience) should decide the form of the poem instead of traditional techniques.
d. The poets should express his thought in symbols.
e. Poets should use words for their pictorial and imaginative meaning.
f. As to theme, Emerson called upon American authors to writer about peculiar American matters.
B. Significance
Emerson's aesthetics brought about a revolution in American literature in general and in American poetry in particular. It marked the birth of true American poetry and true American poets.
(4)Limitation
His reputation fell in the 20th century because he firmly believed human and human society could be better. It seemed that he had no sense of evil and too opitimistic about human nature and the society. Somebody once called this kind of optimism "Transcendental folly".
* 爱默生的散文富于哲理，多格言警句，在中国有多种译文。

中国著名的女作家张爱玲曾经翻译过爱默生的散文，目前她的译本已由三联书店出版。

3.Henry David Thoreau (1817- 1862)
(1) Life
A. Born in a common family in New England
B. Graduated from Harvard, but only stayed at home and helped family business
C. A friend of Emerson
D. Active in social life and had a strong sense of justice (Example: He once refused to pay a poll-tax of 2 dollars because he felt the tax was unfair, and thus he was jailed. And later he wrote an essay named "Civil Disobedience" which advocated passive
resistance to unjust laws and influenced Gandhi in India.甘地的非暴力不合作运动)
F. not successful as a writer and lived in obscurity all his life
(2) Works
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Walden（《瓦尔登湖》）(desciption of his life near the pond called Walden belonging to Emerson; the author lived there for nearly two years with only an axe at the beginning) (This book was a failure in his own time but became very popular in the 20th century.)
Walden presented Thoreau's unusual interests in nature and showed his individualism which inherited from American Puritanism.The book described the author's extremely simple life and regeneration he experienced when he lived near the Walden pond. Comparing with Emerson who was a great thinker, Thoreau was a great experimentalist who put Emerson's Transcendental doctrines into practice in the actual life.
* 《瓦尔登湖》在二十世纪已经成为了一本美国文学中的经典著作，在中国有多个译本，其中比较常见的一个译本由徐迟翻译，在中国非常流行。

* 《瓦尔登湖》中的名剧：“我可以用28.12元建立一个家，0.27元过一周的生活。

每年我用6个星期赚一年的生活费，剩余的46个星期做自己想做的事。

”对于在20世纪的繁忙的现代社会中奔波的人，《瓦尔登湖》中记述的作者亲近自然的简单生活自然别有一番魅力，它就像现代人的一个梦想，这也是为什么此书在20世纪非常流行的原因之一。

* 一位梭罗研究专家曾经说《瓦尔登湖》有5种读法：1，关于自然的书；2，关于自立更生，简单生活的书；3，对现代生活的批评；4，文学名著；5，神圣的书。

* 梭罗在《瓦尔登湖》记述的生活方式很像中国古代的隐士，有兴趣的同学可以对他们进行一个比较。

Lecture 5 Hawthorne and Melville
1.Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864)
(1) Life
A.He was born in a prestigious New England family closely related with Puritan church; his ancestors attended the persecution of people belonging to different churches, such as Quakers.
B. When he was born, his family declined. He was aware of his ancestors' misdeeds and thus "blackness of Hawthorne" formed. He thought that the reason of his family's decline is his ancestors' misdeeds. And he didn't agree with the optimism held by Transcendentalists towards human nature. He wrote lots of works on everlasting evil side in human nature.
C. He graduated from Bowdoin College. Henry Wadsworth Longfellows and Mr. Pierce, the 14th American presidents were his classmates.
D. After graduation, he lived in seclusion and wrote.
E. Laterly, he worked in the US Custom House.
F. After Pierce became president, he was asked to be the consul in Liverpool and Italy.
(2) Major works
Short story collections: Twice-Told Tales 《故事新编》; Moses from an Old Manse 《古屋青苔》
Novels: Scarlet Letter《红字》; The House of Seven Gables《七个尖角阁的房子》; The Blithedale Romance《福谷传奇》; The Marble Faun《大理石神像》
Sample: Scarlet Letter (A: Adultery to Able to Angel)
Characters: Hester Prynne (heroine, attractive, active towards the sin)
Roger Chillingworth (Hester's husband, emotionless, only thinking about revenge, real vallain in the novel, signifying pure intellect which was merciless in Hawthorne's mind)
Arthur Dimmesdale (a handsome and admirable young priest, contraditionary on the sin he made with Hester, being a brave man at last)
Theme: (Ask students: Is this a love story? No) The theme of the story should be the moral, emotional and psychological effects of the sin on people. * 对于《红字》的主题，有很多种不同的说法，这和这本小说的复义性有关。

这里写的主题是课本上的说法，其他的研究资料上有另外一种流行的说法：《红字》的主题是谴责清教主义对人性自由的妨碍，因为Hester和Arthur的爱情如果放到一个自由的社会里根本不算什么罪恶，只是两个互相倾慕的人的天性流露而已。

Scarlet Letter is a cultural allegory, in which the author indirectly tells the future of Puritanism.
Scarlet Letter is a sample in which American Romanticism adapted itself to American Puritanism.(Because of the strong influence of Puritanism in American society, Hawthorne only expressed his ideas on the sin indirectly by employing symbolism.)
(3) Features
A. sense of sin and evil (sin and punishment)
B. tension between head (intellect) and heart (emotion)
(Hawthorne held negative attitude towards science. Mostly, his intellectual characters are vallains.)
C. ambiguity（复义性）
D. good at depicting psychology
E. symbolism
F. supernatural elements
G. excellent craftsmanship (delicate structure; refined language)
* 目前国内《红字》比较权威的译本当属韩侍桁先生的译本，由上海译文出版社出版
2. Herman Melville (1819 - 1891)
(1) Life
Lecture 6
(They were called the first two pure American poets because they together created
a special American tradition in poem writing.)
1. Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)惠特曼
(1) Life
A. born in New York, a common family
B. five years education, variety of jobs
C. before wrote poems, wrote kinds of other literary productions
D. inspired by grandeur landscape of America, wrote lots of poems, thus a famous poet
(2) Major works
Leaves of Grass《草叶集》(famous poems such as “Song of Myself” and “O! Captain! My Captain!”)
totally nine editions and last edition includes more than 400 poems
(3) Analysis
A. He extols the ideals of equality and democracy and celebrates the dignity, the self-reliant spirit and the joy of the common man.
B. employing “free verse” (no conventional rhyme and meter) as the form of his poems with two characteristics: parallelism; phonetic recurrence (P92-P93)
* What is the difference between free verse and blank verse? (blank verse has no rhyme, but it should be iambic pentameter)
C. frankness of the commonplace and the ugly sides in human life
D. direct, plain and even vulgar language
E. “untold latencies” (his poetry suggests rather than tell)
F. great influence on the 20th century American poets
(4) Sample poem
To those who’ve failed
To those who’ve failed, in aspiration vast,
To unnamed soldiers fallen in front on the lead,
To calm, devoted engineers – to over-ardent travelers –
to pilots on their ships,
To many a lofty song and picture without recognition –
I’d rear a laurel-covered monument,
High, high above the rest – To all cut off before their time,
Quenched by an early death.
(You can find those characteristics of Whitman’s poetry I list above from this poem.) (This poem has no meter and no rhyme. It shows the phonetic recurrence such as repetition of “to” at the beginning of each line.)
(And from the contents you can find Whitman’s passion and his idealism.)
2. Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)
(1) Life
A. She was born in a Puritan’s family. Her father was a famous lawyer.
B. She received college education.
C. She lived a leisure and simple life and kept single all her life. She enjoyed gardening and writing and tried to avoid visitors. (Her life style is similar with Jane Austen’s.)
D. She wrote 1775 poems, but only seven of them published in her life time.
E. Before her death, she asked her sister to burn all her poems. However, her sister published those beautiful poems.
(2) Analysis
A. Strong influence of Puritanism on her thought (pessimism and tragic tone of her poems)
B. Care about death and immortality (1/3 of all her poems talked about these two themes.)
C. exploring human’s inner world (psychology description in her poems)
D. severe economy of expression
E. original images
F. direct and plain language
G. great influence on the Imagist Movement in the 20th century
(3) Sample poems (P98)
Read the small poem “My life closed twice before its close”. You can find nearly all characteristics I mentioned above.
Think about one question: How to understand the last two lines?
Answer: (我们皆知离别是因为天堂，我们需要面对的则是地狱)
Lecture 7 Edgar Allan Poe爱伦坡
(He held a unique position in the American literary history. George Bernard Shaw once said America has only two great writers – Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain.)
1. Life (1809 – 1849)
(He lived a short and tragic life.)
(1) His childhood was a miserable one. He lost both of his parents when he was very young and then he was adopted by a wealthy merchant, John Allan. Poe’s relation with the Allans was unhappy.
(2) He entered University of Virginia and then West Point but did not finish.
(3) He worked as editor and writer most of his life and he was always poor.
(4) At 27 he married his thirteen-year-old cousin, whose death in 1847 left him inconsolable.
2. Works (He wrote all kinds of literary productions. Among all his works, his poems and short stories are more famous.)
(1) Poems
A. Theory
Poems should be short, concise and readable at one sitting;
The aim of poem writing is beauty; the most beautiful thing described by a poem is the death of a beautiful woman; the desirable tone of a poem is melancholy;
He opposed didactic poems;
He stressed the form of poem, especially the beautiful and neat rhyme.
(His poetry theory is not fair at all time. For example, according to him, Paradise Lost is not a good poem.)
B. Famous poems: “The Raven”, “Annabel Lee”, “To Helen” etc.
C. All his poems were written according to his poetry theory and his poems have strong dreamy color.
D. Sample: “To Helen” (Read the last line on P109 and the first few lines on P110 to find out the cause of this poem.)
To Helen
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo! in yon brilliant window niche,
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!
（See if you can find out those features of Poe’s poems mentioned above.）
（参考中文译本）（余光中翻译）
致海伦
海伦，你的美貌对于我
像古代奈西亚的那些帆船
在芬芳的海上悠然浮起
把劳困而倦游的浪子载还
回到他故国的港湾
惯于在惊险的海上流浪
你风信子般的柔发，古典的面孔
你女神的风姿召我回乡
回到昨日希腊的光荣
和往昔罗马的盛况
看，那明亮的窗龛中间
我看见你像一座神像站立
玛瑙的亮灯擎在你手里
哦，赛琪，你所来自的地点
原是那遥远的圣地！
(2) Short Story
A. Theory (Read the first few lines of the last paragraph on P110)
B. Sample: “The Fall of the House of Usher” (Read the related part on P110 to P111 and the plot of this story can be found on P112.)
C. Features
a. Gothic elements
b. deep analysis of human psychology (He noticed subconscious of human mind nearly one hundred year before Freud. ) (He was also the first American author who took neurotic characters as main characters in his stories.)
c. precursor of detective stories (e.g. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”) and science stories
3. Conclusion
(1) style: ordinary, traditional
(2) language: mannerism
(3) a controversial figure in American literary history (Poe was criticized by several famous American writers, such as Emerson, Henry James and Mark Twain. However, his works was welcomed in Europe, especially in France.)
(4) great influence on aesthetism, William Faulkner, Baudelaire（法国著名诗人波德莱尔，有著名诗集《恶之花》）etc
Lecture 8 The Age of Realism现实主义
1. Historical Background
(1) The Civil War (1860 – 1865)
1860 Presidential campaign; success of Republican Party (Abraham Lincoln) which stands for the North and supports the abolishment of slavery; 11 southern states declared independence; thus was broke out
1863 Emancipation Proclamation (important turning point of the war)
1865 Southern army surrendered
Significance: reunification of the North and the South; fast development of capitalism
A turning point of American culture: most people abandoned Transcendentalism gradually and lost old moral values
(2) Industrialization
American economy developed very fast in the late part of the 19th century. Extreme of wealth and poverty appeared. Money concentrated into a small group of people while the masses struggled for survival. Most people in the country developed strong ambition for power and money.
(3) Closing Frontier
losing hope to go to the West; thus people became more practical to face daily life (“Gilded Age” according to Mark Twain: prosperous surface, developing dark sides in society)
(Because the development of the country, no wonder people lost the Romantic imagination gradually and turned to be practical. So the age of realism came.) 2. Realism
(1) Time: the latter half of the 19th century, esp. 1870s, 1880s
(2) Features
A. reaction against “the lie” of Romanticism (considering Romanticism made people escape from the social realities)
B. theme: the world of experience of the commonplace and the familiar and the low
C. style: genteel, graceful prose by Howells and Henry James; plain and rough by Mark Twain and some other local color writers
D. vivid description of details from observation of actual life
E. a reliance on the representative character
F. trying to hold an objective view of human nature and society
(3) Representative writers: William Dean Howells, Henry James and Mark Twain
3. William Dean Howells (1837 – 1920)
(1) Life
A. born in Midwest, Ohio, a humble family
B. little formal education but read widely
C. has been reporter and wrote a biography which helped Lincoln win presidency
D. American consul in Venice
E. editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Monthly
F. love to help young writers
G. nickname “Dean of the country’s literature”; first president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters。