美国文学重点

美国文学重点

From the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War. Started with Washington Irving's and ended with Whitman's , also called 'the American Renaissance' .Free expression of emotion, escapes from society, and return to nature New England Transcendentalism 新英格兰超验主义

- Walt Whitman, whose established him as the most popular American poet of the 19th century.

an early Romantic writer, regarded as a writer who “perfected the best classic style that American literature ever produced.”

First novel 纽约外史won him wide popularity

见闻札记 won international fame

→contains German folk tales ,

READING: excerpt from “Rip Van Winkle”瑞普·凡·温可尔

It is not only well-known for Rip’s 20-year sleep but also considered a model of perfect English in American literature and in the English language as well.

- the chief spokesman of New England Transcendentalism（超验主义） movement

>论美国学者, 论自助,

a reflection upon the aesthetic(美学的) problems in terms of the present state of literature in America

a discussion about the conflict between idealism and ordinary life. American Puritanism, European Romanticism, intuitive(直觉的) knowledge, over-soul, individual, nature Henry David Thoreau梭罗 -沃乐登

READING: excerpt from Nature

论自然 is regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism，Emerson’s first little book, which discuss the love of nature, the uses of nature…“a transparent eyeball”

heart, ‘there is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps,

the salient(显著的) characteristics of Hawthorne’s art.

READING: Young Goodman Brown小伙子布朗

Goodman Brown, a Puritan(清教徒), who accepts both society in general and his fellow men as individuals worth his regard, confronted with the vision of human evil in one terrible night, and becomes thereafter distrustful and doubtful.

Openness, freedom, individualism

I- me, my nation (society), Free verse（自由体诗）, Envelope structure（信件结构）, Catalogue (Listing)

A new ideal, a new world, a new life-style

草叶集written in the founding documents of both the Revolutionary War in the United States and the Civil War.

READING; 1. There Was a Child Went Forth 2. Cavalry Crossing a Ford 3. Song of Myself 一个孩子的成长 how a child is greatly influenced by his growing environments, be identified with the childhood of a young, growing America.

涉水的骑兵a scene of the American Civil War, all the movements described in this picture are frozen.

自己之歌 Whitman is a man bubbling with energy and laden(装满) with ideas, spontaneous(自发的) expression of his original ideas

allegory and symbolism, like Hawthorne