美国文学史复习纲要

1. The Colonial Period

The settlement of America in the early 17th century--- the end of the 18th century.

The major topic

The major figures

2. The Romantic Period

Covering the first half of the19th century.

•The major points:

3. The Age of Realism

The 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.

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4. American Naturalism

•From the first decade of twentieth century to the First World War.

•The major figures: Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, and O. Henry

5 American Modernism

The literature between the two world wars. This is the most important period in

6. 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 literature

is 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 literature

Poor Richard’s Almanac Autobiography Romanticism1800-1865

Characteristics of Romanticism (derivative independent)

o an innate and intuitive perception of man, nature and society—reliance on the subconscious, the inner life, the abnormal psychology

o 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 as

a refuge from the present, nature as a revelation of the holy spirit

o the quest for beauty—pure beauty

o the use of antique and fanciful subject matters—sense of terror, Gothic, grotesque, odd and queer

Moby-Dick is regarded as the first American prose epic. His ideas:

The world is at once Godless and purposeless

Man cannot influence and overcome nature at its source