美国文学史

第一章殖民时期的美国I. American PuritanismThe settlement of North American continent by the English began in the early part of the seventeenth century. The first permanent English settlement in North America was established at Jamestown, Virginia in 1606. In 1620, the ship Mayflower carried about one hundred Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth , Massachusetts. The first settlers in America were quite a few of them Puritans. They came to America out of various reasons. They carried with them American Puritanism which took root in the New World and became the most enduring shaping influence in American thought and American literature.1. Doctrines of PuritanismThe Puritans accepted the doctrine predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement (or the salvation of a selected few) , which theologian John Calvin had preached.2. The influence of Puritanism on American literature(1) The idealism of Puritan had exerted a great influence on American writers.It is a common place that American literature—or Anglo-American literature—is based on a myth, that is, the Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden. This literature is in good measure a literary expression of the pious idealism of the American Puritan bequest. The Puritan dreamed of living under a perfect order and worked with courage and hope toward building a new Garden of Eden in America, where man could at long last live the way he should. Fired with such a sense of mission, the Puritan looked upon even the worst of life in the face with a tremendous amount of optimism. All this went, in due time, into the making of American literature. The spirit of optimism burst into the pages of so many American authors.(2) The American puritan' s metaphorical mode of perception was chiefly instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American.Puritan doctrine and literary practice contributed to no small extent to the development of an indigenous symbolism. To the pious Puritan the physical phenomenal world was nothing but a symbol of God. Every passage of life, en-meshed in the vast context of God 1 s plan, possessed a delegated meaning. It is impossible to overlook the very symbolizing process that was constantly at work in Puritan minds. This process became, in time, part of the intellectual tradition in which American authors were brought up along with their people. For Jonathan Edwards, Emerson, Hacothorne, Melville, Howells and many others, symbolism as a technique has become a common practice. This peculiar mode of perception was an essential part of their upbringing.(3) With regard to technique, the simplicity which characterize the Puritan style of writing greatly influenced the American literature.The style of the writing of the Puritan writers 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. All this left an indelible imprint on American writing.II. Overview of the colonial literatureAmerican literature grew out of humble origins. Diaries, histories, journals, letters, commonplace books, travel books, sermons, in short, personal literature in its various forms, occupied a major position in the literature of the early colonial period.1. Major writers of colonial period(1) John Smith (1580 -1631)Captain John Smith was one of the founders of the colony Jamestown, Virginia. His writing about North America became the source of information about the New World for later settlers.In The General History of Virginia he wrote about his capture by the Indians and his rescue by the famous Indian Princess, Pocahontas.Another thing he wrote about that became historically important was his description of the fertile and vast new continent in his A Description of New England.(2) William Bradford (1590-1657)In 1620 William Bradford led the Mayflower endeavor and became the first governor of the Plymouth Plantation with his group of Pilgrim Fathers.His major work is Of Plymouth Plantation.(3) John Winthrop (1588-1649)John Winthrop was the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony.In his famous speech A Model of Christian Charity he states that “we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.”The two major poets in the colonial period were Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor.(4) Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)Anne Bradstreet was known as the "Tenth Muse" who appeared in America.1. Major worksThe Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in AmericaContemplations"Upon the Burning of Our House""To My Dear and Loving Husband"\"In Reference to Her Children""The Fresh and the Spirit""As Weary Pilgrim"2. Analysis of her major works♦Contemplations ( 9 )When the poet heard the grasshopper and cricket sing, she thought of this as their praising of their Creator and searched her own soul accordingly. It is evident that she saw something metaphysical, inhering in the physical, a mode of perception that was singular Puritan.♦ "The Fresh and the Spirit"This poem depicts two sisters arguing about their values. The flesh is forthright with her assertion of her views about the importance of this world while the Spirit, the other, tries to convince her of the greatness of the kingdom of God. The twin sisters are evidently the integral parts of one Puritan mind.(5) Edward Taylor (1642 -1729)Edward Taylor was a Puritan poet, concerned about how his images spoke for God. (X) Analysis of major works♦ " Huswifery"This poem indicates that the poet saw religious significance in a simple daily incident like a housewife spinning. The spinning wheel, the distaff, the flyers, the spool, the reel and the yarn have all acquired a metaphysical significance in the symbolic, Puritan eyes of the poet.♦ " Upon a Spider Catching a Fly"The pet sees the spider as a symbol of Hell. It is obvious that Taylor has faith in God who can save the erring, or sinful, humankind from the evil designs of Hell.(6) Thomas Paine (1737-1809)Thomas Paine was born in England and came to America in 1774. His life was one of continual, unswerving fight for the rights of man. He was a major influence in the American Revolution. (J) Major worksCommon SenseThe American Crisis"The Times that Try Men's Souls"The Rights of ManThe Age of Reason2 Analysis of his major works♦ Common SenseCommon Sense attacked the British monarchy and added fuel to the fire which was soon to bring the colossus of its colonial rule down in flame. Paine declared that the crisis with which the North American colonies were then faced could only be solved by an appeal to man … s instincts and common sense and impulses of conscience. TTie booklet was warmly received in the colonies as a justification for their cause of independence and as an encouragement to the painfully fighting people.♦ the American CrisisThe American Crisis is made up of 16 pamphlets written between 1776 and 1783. The first pamphlet "The Times that TryMen's Souls" came out at one of the darkest moment of the revolution. “ The harder the struggle, the more glorious the triumph," when Washington had it read to the troops, it proved a heartening stimulus, a spurring excitement to further action with hope and confidence.(7) Philip FreneauPhilip Freneau was import an! in American literary history in a number of ways. Apart from the fact that he used his poet-ic talents in the service of a nation struggling for independence, writing verses for the righteous cause of his people and exposing British colonial savageries, he was a most notable representative of dawning nationalism in American literature. Almost alone of his generation, Freneau managed to peer through the pervasive atmosphere of imitativeness, see life directly, and appreciate die natural scenes on the new land and the native Indian civilization.1. Major works"The Wild Honey Suckle""The Dying Indian: Tomo Chequi""The Indian Burying Ground"2. Analysis of major work♦ "The Wild Honey Suckle"In this poem, the lyric beauty, the heartfelt pathos, and the multiple emotional responses and echoes that the sight de-scribed are simply amazing. Here we can see the poet enjoys the beauty that the American landscape is capable of offering. This poem is an indication of the poet‟s dedication of American subject matter.第二章爱德华兹-富兰克林-克里夫古尔American critic Van Wyck Brooks attempted a general survey of eighteen-century America and American characters. He stated that Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin shared the eighteenth century between them. The American Puritanism is a two-faceted tradition of religious idealism and levelheaded common sense. Jonathan Edwards represents the former aspect, and Franklin the latter. The one was as a good Puritan as the other.I Jonathan Edwards (1703 -1758)1. LifeEdwards was born into a very religious family. He entered Yale at 13 and took his M. A. in 1723. Later He became the minister of the church of Northampton, Massachusetts. His sermons taught the power of God and the depravity of man and man1 s need to communicate with Holy Spirit to receive God1 s grace. He was instrumental in bringing about the "Great Awakening.” He became famous not only in his own country, but won a measure of international recognition as well.2. Ideas(1) He was the first modern American and the country1 s last medieval man.His works reveal the modern consciousness of the man. He was influenced to no small extent by Newton ‟ s mechanical view of the universe and the Lockean thesis. He tried to reconcile Puritan ideas with the new rationalism of Lock and Newton.The same works reveals the medieval mind of the man. He liked to walk in the woods, to be solitary, far from all mankind, so as to sweetly converse with Christ, to be wrapped and swallowed up in God. This is meant by the inward com-munication of soul with god, by "conversation" through the heart rather than through reason.(2) He was a good deal of a transcendentalist.He holds that God is immanent. God manifests himself in nature and man, and that man, being a part of God, is divine. His work Images or Shadow of Divine Things anticipated the nature symbolism of nineteenth-century Transcendentalism. The mystical implication of his Puritan idealism was to be developed and given full, explicit realization by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the next century.3. Major worksThe Freedom of the WillThe Great Doctrine of Original Sin DefendedThe Nature of True Virtue"Sinners in the hands of An Angry God""Personal Narrative"Images or Shadow of Divine ThingII. Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)Franklin was a rare genius in human history. He became everything: a printer, postmaster, almanac maker, essayist, scientist, orator, statesman, philosopher, political economist, ambassador, —"Jack of all trades. "1. LifeHe was born into a poor candle-maker's family. He was a voracious reader. At 16 he published essays under the pseu-donym Silence Dogood. At 17 he ran away to Philadelphia to make his own fortune. He became a printer. He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital, an academy which led to the University of Pennsylvania, and the American Philosophical Society. He was a preeminent scientist of his day. He signed the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Peace with England, and the Constitution. He was one of the makers of the new nation. Franklin‟s claim to a place in literature rests chiefly on his Poor Richard’ s Almanac and The Autobiography.2. Analysis of major works♦ Poor Richard1 s AlmanacFranklin issued Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1732 and kept publishing it for almost a quarter of a century. Apart from poems and essays, he managed to put in a good many adages and commonsense witticisms which became, very quickly, household words and, for many, mottos of the most practical kind. He borrowed from maxims from others. But he made good use of his own wit and wisdom to simplify and enrich their axioms which made Poor Richard1 s Almanac to teach as well as amuse.♦ The Autobiography(1) The Autobiography was probably the first of its kind in literature. It is the simple yet immensely fascinating record ofa man rising to wealth and fame from a state of poverty and obscurity into which he was born, the faithful account of the colorful career of American " s first self-made man. The book consists of four parts, written at different times.(2) The Autobiography is, first of all, a Puritan document. It is a record of self-examination and self-improvement. The book is also a convincing illustration of the Puritan ethic that, in order to get on in the world, one has to be industrial, frugal and prudent.(3) The Autobiography is also an eloquent elucidation of the fact that Franklin was a spokesman for the new order of eighteenth-century enlightenment, and that he represented in America all its ideas, that man is basically good and free by nature, endowed by God with certain inalienable rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Through telling a success story of self-reliance, the book celebrates the fulfillment of the American dream.(4) The style of The Autobiography reveals that it is the pattern of Puritan simplicity, directness and concision.Hector St John de Crevecoeur (1735-1813)Crevecoeur was a French settler. His famous work is letters from an American Farmer.♦ Analysis of Letters from an American FarmerCrevecoeur wrote letters back to Europe to explain the meaning of America to the outside world. Letters from an Amer-ican Farmer is made up of 12 letters. The first 8 letters reveal the pride of a man being an American. Starting from his ninth letter, he began to speak with a different voice, the voice of a definitely disillusioned man. He became aware of the existence of evil which he thought the American had left behind in the old world. The note of pessimism began to vibrate in Letters from an American Farmer.第三章美国浪漫主义-欧文-库柏Overview of American RomanticismIn the history of American literature, the Romantic period is one of the most important periods. It stretched from the end of the eighteenth century through the outbreak of the civil war.1. Background( 1 ) A nation bursting into new life cried for literary expression. The buoyant mood of the nation and the spirit of the times seemed in some measure responsible for the spectacular outburst of romantic feeling. The literary milieu proved fertile and conductive to the imagination. Magazine appeared in ever-increasing numbers. They played an important role in facilitating literary expansion.(2) Foreign influences added incentive to the growth of romanticism. The Romantic Movement, which had flourished earlier in the century both in England and Europe, proved to be a decisive influence on the upsurge of American romanti-cism.(3) There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider.2. Characteristics( 1 ) American Romanticism exhibited from the very outset distinct features of its own. It originated from an amalgam of factors that were altogether American rather than anything else. It was in essence the expression of "a real new experi-ence" and contained "an alien quality".( 2) As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American Romanticism was both imitative and inde-pendent.II. Washington Irving (1783 -1859)1. LifeIrving was born into a wealthy New York merchant family. From a very early age he began to read widely and write ju-venile poems, essays and plays. His first book A History of New York was a great success. With the publication of The Sketch Book, he won a measure of international recognition. In 1826 he was sent to Spain as an American diplomatic attache. From 1829 - 1832 he was Secretary of The United States Legation in London. He spent almost the rest of his life at Sunnyside on the Hudson River. He was not married and died in 1859.2. His literary contributionIrving's contribution to American literature is unique in more ways than one. He did a number of things that have been regarded as the first of their kind in America.(1) He was first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame.(2) He was the father of American literature. The short story as a genre in American literature probably began with Irving …s The Sketch Book. This book also marked the beginning of American Romanticism.3. Literary careerIrving ‟s career can be roughly divided into two important phases, the first of which spanned from his first book up to 1832, the other stretching over the remaining years of his life.( 1 ) In the first period, most of time, he wrote about subjects either English or European. He found value in the past and in the tradition of the Old World.(2) In the second period, Irving found a whole new spirit of nationalism in American feeling and art and letters.4. Writing styleIrving was a highly skillful writer. The gentility, urbanity , and pleasantness of the man all seem to have adequate ex-pression in his style.( 1) First, Irving avoids moralizing as much as possible; he writes to amuse and entertain.(2) He is good at enveloping his stories in an atmosphere, the richness of which is often more than compensation for the slimness of plot( 3 ) His characters are vivid and true so that they lend to linger in the mind of the reader.(4) The humor has built itself into the very texture of his writings.(5) The finished and musical language and the patent workmanship have been among the points of critical attention.5. Major worksA History of New YorkThe Sketch Book"The Authors Account of Himself""Rip Van Winkle""The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"The history of Life and Voyages of Christopher ColumbusA Chronicle of the Conquest of GranadaLife of GoldsmithLife of WashingtonThe Crayon Miscellany“A Tour on the Prairies"' Astoria"Adventures of Captain Bonneville6-Analysis of major works♦ "Rip Van Winkle"This story reveals the conservative attitude of its author. Before the war, there was peace and harmony. But there comes now the scramble for power between parties and the tempo of life has quickened. The story might be taken as an il-lustration of Irving' s argument that change—and revolution— upset the natural order of things and the fact that Irving never seemed to accept a modem democratic America.♦ "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow‟'The creation of archetypes is a particularly subtle feat of Irving' s consummate craftsmanship. We may see in Ichabod Crane a New Englander, shrewd, commercial, a city-slicker, who is rather an interloper, a somewhat destructive force, in village life, and who comes along to swindle the villagers. He is driven away from where he does not belong, so that the serene village remains permanently good and happy. Brom Bones, on the other hand, is a Huck Finn-type of country bumpkin, tough, vigorous, boisterous but inwardly very good, a frontier type put out there to shift for himself. Thus the rivalry in love between Ichabod and Brom, viewed in this way, suddenly assumes the dimensions of two ethical groups locked in a kind of historic contest.The style of the piece represents Irving at his best.James Fenimore Cooper (1789 -1851)1. LifeCooper was born into a rich land-holding family of New Jersey. He was sent to Yale at 14 but was expelled because of improper behavior. He went and spent five year at sea; In his early twenties, he inherited his father1 s vast fortune and them began to write. His second novel, The Spy, proved to be an immense success. In the three decades that followed, he wrote thirty-odd novels, including eleven of the sea, and a voluminous amount of other writings. He was best known in his own day and is still read and remembered today as the author of Leatherstocking Tales.2. Literary contributionCooper was one of the first authors to write about the American Westward movement Cooper's claim to greatness in American literature lay in the fact that he created a myth about the formative period of the American nation. Cooper wrote with increasing awareness of the importance to Fiction of the Western frontier where, American society may be conceived as passing from one set of principle to another in two directions. Cooper‟ s power lay in his assurance that one direction was morally right and the other practically inevitable. Here lies Cooper1 s conflict of allegiance. He was devoted to the principles of social order and responsible to the idea of nature and freedom in the wildness.3. Writing style( 1 ) Cooper is good at inventing plots. His plots are sometimes quite incredible, but his stories are immensely intriguing.(2) His landscape descriptions are majestic and suggestive of Sir Walter Scott.(3 ) He was quite conscious of the association of different locales. The fact that he had never been to the frontier and among the Indians and yet could write five huge epic books a-bout them which is an eloquent proof of the richness of his imagination. His Indians are among the first appearing in American fiction and probably the first group of noble savages.(4) His style is dreadful. His characterization seems wooden and lacks probability, and his language, his use of dialect, is not authentic.4. Major worksThe SpyLeatherstocking TalesThe Pioneers (1823)The Last of the Mohicans (1826)The Prairie (1827)The Pathfinder (1840)The Deerslayer (1841)5. Analysis of major work♦ Leatherstocking Tales( I) Leatherstocking Tales is a series of five tales about the life of American settlers. The protagonist Natty Bumppo is a mythic figure. When he first appears, we see a real frontiersman, a man of flesh and blood in the virgin forests of North America. But as the story moves on, he does so gathering more and more of the halo of a legendary and mythic nature around him. He becomes a type, a representation of a nation struggling to be born, progressing from old age to rebirth and youth. The Leatherstocking novels go backwards, from old age to golden youth. That is the true myth of America.( 2) The Pioneers is the first of Leatherstocking Tales. Its historical importance lies in the fact that it was probably the first true romance of the frontier in American literature. The basic conflict of the story is, in essence, one between Leather-stocking who insists on man‟s old forest freedom and Judge Temple to whom man remains savage without law and order. Bumppo embodies the idea of brotherhood of man and of nature and freedom, and is morally right. Judge Temple symbolizes law and civilization, and represents the practically inevitable aspect It is between them that they built the wilderness into anything like a civilized place. Hence the plural in the tide of the book, The Pioneers.第四章新英格兰超验主义-爱默生-梭罗In 1836 Emerson‟ s Nature came out which made a tremendous impact on the intellectual life of America. Nature9 s voice pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New England Transcendentalism, the summit of American Romanticism.New England TranscendentalismIn the 1830s and 1840s some New Englanders , not quite happy about the materialistic-oriented life of their time, formed themselves into an informal club, the Transcendentalist Club, and met to discuss matters of interest to the life of the nation as a whole. They expressed their views, published their journal, the Dial, and made their voice heard. The club with a membership of some thirty men and a couple of women included Emerson, Thoreau, Branson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller. Most of them were teachers or clergymen, radicals who reacted against the faith of Boston businessmen and the cold, rigid rationalism of Unitarianism. The word " Transcendental" was not native to America; it was a Kantian term denoting, as Emerson put it, "Whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought n1. Major features( 1 ) The Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe. The Oversoul was an all-pervading power for goodness, omnipresent and omnipotent, from which all things came and of which all were a part. This represented a new way of looking at the world. It was a reaction to the eighteenth Newtonian concept of the universe. It was also a reaction against the direction that a mechanized, capitalist America was taking, against the popular tendency to get ahead in world affairs to neglect spiritual welfare.(2) The Transcendentalists stressed the importance of the individual. To them the individual was the most important element of society. The ideal type of man were the self-reliant individuals. The individual soul communed with the Oversold and was therefore divine. This new notion of the individual and his importance represented a new way of looking at man. It was a reaction against the Calvinist conception of total depravity, against the process of dehumanization that came in the wake of developing capitalism.(3) The Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the spirit or God. Things in nature tended to become symbolic, and the physical world was a symbol of the spiritual. This in turn added to the tradition of literary symbolism in American literature.2. SourcesNew England Transcendentalism was the product of a combination of foreign influence and the American tradition. ( 1 ) Idealistic philosophy of Germany and France. ( 2) Oriental mysticism. ( 3) American Puritanism.Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 -1882)I. LifeEmerson was the descendant of a long line of New England clergymen. When he was still a child, the family fortune fell. He went to Harvard. 1ater he embraced Unitarianism and became a Unitarian minister to the Second Church of Boston. But not for long, he found the rationality of Unitarianism intolerable and left his job. He went to Europe and brought back with him the influence of European Romanticism. He formed an informal Transcendentalists1 club with some friends and edited for a time the Transcendentalist journal, the Dial, to explain their ideas. He became the most eloquent spokesman of New England Transcendentalism. During his lifetime he was considered one of the two or three best writers in America, and certainly the most influential among his contemporaries. He was the prophet of his age and exerted great influence on Thor-eau, Whitman, Hawthorne and others in varying degrees.2. Analysis of major works♦ Nature(1)Published in 1836, Nature is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism.(2) In this book, Emerson emphasizes the transcendence of the "Oversoul". He holds the universe is composed of Nature and Soul. He regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man, and advocates a direct in-tuition of a spiritual and immanent God in nature.(3) The spiritual God is operative in the soul of man, and that man is divine. The divinity of man became a favorite subject in lectures and essays. Each man should feel the world as his, and the world exists for him alone. Emerson‟ s message was eventually self-reliance. His self-reliance was an expression , on a very high level, of the buoyant spirit of his time. (4) Nature is the emblematic of God. It mediates between man and God. A natural implication of Emerson's view on nature is that the world around is symbolic.♦ "The American Scholar"“The American Scholar” has been regarded as " America … s Declaration of Intellectual Independence, "Emerson tried to say that the Americans should write a-bout here and now instead of imitating and importing from other lands. He called on American writers to write about America in a way peculiarly American. Emerson‟s importance in the intellectual history of America lies in the fact that he embodied a new nation … s desire and struggled to assert its own identity in its formative period.Henry David Thoreau (1917 -1862)1. Life(1)Thoreau was a renowned New England Transcendentalist. He was a friend of Emerson and his junior by some fourteen years. Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts. He went to Harvard at 17. After graduation, he made friends with Emerson and embraced his ideas. In 1845 he moved in a cabin on Walden Pond and lived there in a very simple manner for a little over two years. During his stay in Walden, he went back occasionally to his village, and on one visit he was detained for a night in jail for refusing to pay a poll-tax he thought unjust. This inspired him to write his famous essay, “Civil Disobedience". He wrote about his experience in the famous book, Walden, after he moved back to Concord.He was one of the three great American authors of the nineteenth century who had no contemporary readers and yet became great in the twentieth century, the other two being Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson. And he became a major voice for nineteenth-century America, now better heard perhaps than Emerson‟s. His influence goes l>eyond America. His status was placed in the Hall of Fame in New York in 1969.2. Major WorksA Week On the Concord and Merrimack Rivers Walden"Civil Disobedience" "A Plea for John Brown"3. Analysis of major work♦ WaldenThoreau‟s masterpiece, Walden, is a great Transcendentalist work. It is a faithful record of Thoreau ' s reflections when he was in solitary communion with nature, an eloquent indication that he not only embraced Emerson' s Transcendentalist philosophy but went even further to illustrate the pantheistic quality of nature. Walden can be many things and can be read on more than one level.( I ) It is a book about man, what he is, what he should be and must be. Thoreau holds that the most important thing for men to do with their lives is to be self-sufficient and strive to achieve personal spiritual perfection. Thoreau has been re-garded as a prophet of individualism in American literature.(2) In this book, Thoreau was very critical of modem civilization. Modem civilized life has dehumanized man and placed him in a spiritual quandary.(3) Furthermore, the book is full of ideas expressed to jostle his neighbors out of their smug complacency. He records how he tries to minimize his own needs on Walden Pond. He holds that spiritual richness is real wealth. One's soul might not help one to get up in the world, but it will help make real progress in self-improvement(4) Thoreau went to the woods to experiment a new way of life for himself and for his fellowmen. And he felt that he came out of it a better man, reborn and reinvigorated. Thus, regeneration became a major thematic concern of Walden and it also decided its structural framework.第五章霍桑-麦尔维尔I. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 -1864)1. Life。