美国文学 复习大纲

美国文学

1THE LITERATURE OF COLONIAL AMERICA

1.1 The first permanent English settlement in North America was

established at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.

1.2 The first writing that we call American were the narratives and

journals of these settlements.

1.3The first American writer is Captain John Smith,settled in

Jamestown.

1.4 The first American poet is

1.5 Puritan Thoughts:the puritans establish their own moral and

religious principles known as American Puritanism, which became one of the enduring influences in American literature. American Puritanism stressed on predestination, depravity, original sin, and salvation of selected few from God's grace. With such doctrines in their minds, Puritans left Europe for America in order to establish a theocracy in the new world. over the years in new homeland they establish a new way of life stressed on hard work, thrift, piety and sobriety( 其中也包括个人主义再现)

1.6Anne Bradstreet

-------the first poet in America by crisis

-------the first woman poet in America

-------she settled in Massachusetts

------ The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America

2THE LITERATURE OF REASON AND REVOLUTION

2.1主要文体------ politics essay

2.2 The War for Independence-----1776-1783---ended in the formation of

a Federative bourgeois democratic republic- the United States of

America

2.3 Benjamin Franklin-----思想：自助者天助（God helps those who help themselves）

2.4 Thomas Paine----- Great Commoner of Mankind

----- Rights of Man; The Age of Reason; Agrarian Justice

American Crisis (a series of 16 pamphlets)

2.5 P32 ①for though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine,

the coal can never expire.------ spirit / enthusiasm of struggle

② but if a thief breaks into my house---- British government

2.6★Philip Freneau-----美国前期浪漫主义的代表诗人/ the most

outstanding writer of the post-Revolutionary period

----- “The Poet of Revolution”

----- “Father of American Poetry”(连线)

----- he settled in Mount Pleasant, near Freehold, New

Jersey

---- The Wild-Honey Suckle(If nothing once, you nothing lose)

3THE LITERATURE OF ROMANTICISM

3.1起止时间：Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book(1819-1820)---

Whitman’s Leaves of Grass(1858)

3.2浪漫主义的一般特点：moral enthusiasm, faith in the value of

individualism and intuitive perception, a presumption that the natural

world was a source of goodness and man’s societies a source of

corruption.

3.3Oversoul: an all-pervading power for goodness from which all things

come and of which all thing are a part.

3.4美国国歌：Star-Spangled Banner

3.5Literature from: novels, short stories, poems.

3.6The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became

a permanent convention of American literature.

3.7★Washington Irving---- Father of American short stories(连线)