美国文学笔记

美文学美国部分——浪漫主义时期

Part two: American Literature

Chapter 1 The Romantic Period浪漫主义时期

1. From the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of he Civil War. It started with the publication of Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book and ended with Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. It is also called “the American Renaissance”.浪漫主义时期开始于十八世纪末，到内战爆发为止，华盛顿.欧文出版的《见闻札记》标志着美国文学的开端，惠特曼的《草叶集》是浪漫主义时期文学的压卷之作。（也可称为“美国德文艺复兴”）

2. The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became a permanent convention of American literature.对逃离社会，回归自然的渴求成为美国文学的一个永恒的话题。

3. The American Puritanism as a cultural heritage exerted great influences over American moral values.美国清教作为一种文化遗产，对美国人的道德观念产生了很大的影响。

4. Besides, a preoccupation with the Calvinistic view of original sin and the mystery of evil marked the works of Hawthorne, Melville and a host of lesser writers. 在霍桑，麦尔维尔以及其他一些小作家的作品种加尔文主义的原罪思想和罪恶的神秘性都得到了充分的表现。

5. The most clearly defined Romantic literary movement in this period is New England Transcendentalism.美国浪漫主义文学运动足能标炳的是新英格兰的超验主义运动。

6. This Transcendentalist group includes two of the most significant writers America has produced so far, Emerson and his young friend, Henry David Thoreau, whose writing has a strong impact on American literature.超验主义文学的主要代表是爱默生和梭罗，他们的作品对美国文学产生了很大的影响。

7. Basically, Transcendentalism has been defined philosophically as “the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses.”超验主义承认“人类具有本能了解或认识真理的能力，能够超过感官获取知识”。

8. Emerson once proclaimed in a speech, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of you own mind.” Other concepts that accompanied Transcendentalism include the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, self-reliant.爱默生曾说过：“只有人心灵的尊严才是最神圣的”。超验主义还认为自然是高尚的，个人是神圣的，因此人必须自助。

9. It ranges from the comic fables of Washington Irving to the Gothic tales of Edgar Allen

Poe, from the frontier adventures of James Fenimore Cooper to the narrative quests of Herman Melville, from the psychological romances of Nathaniel Hawthorne to the social realism of Rebecca Harding.美国浪漫主义时期的小说富有独创性，多样性，与华盛顿.欧文的喜剧性寓言体小说，有艾伦.坡的哥特式惊险故事，有库柏的边疆历险故事，有麦尔维尔的长篇叙事，有霍桑的心理罗曼史，有戴维斯的社会现实小说。

10. To Hawthorne and Melyille, everybody is potentially a sinner, and great moral courage is therefore indispensable for the improvement of human nature.霍桑和麦尔维尔认为人们在内心上都是罪人，因此需要道德力量来改善人性。

(I). Washington Irving华盛顿.欧文

11. He is regarded as Father of the American short stories.他是美国浪漫主义文学代表作家之一,美国短篇小说之父。

12. With the publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Irving won a measure of international fame on both sides of the Atlantic.1819年至1820年，欧文出版了《见闻札记》，该书为欧文获得了欧美两大洲的文学荣誉。

13. A History of New York---He parodies or imitates Homer.《纽约史》在多方面模仿了荷马。

14. Like the two famous personae he created, Diedrich Knickerbocker and Geoffrey Crayon, Irving remained a conservative and always exalted a disappearing past.他所创造的两个人物Diedrich Knickerbocker和Geoffrey Crayon和他一样，都停留在对过去的事情的津津乐道上。

15. We hear rather than read, for there is musicality in almost every line of his prose. We seldom learn a moral lesson because he wants us amused and relaxed.他的作品行文优美流畅，犹如音乐。他的作品寓教于乐，给人以轻松安逸之感，如入梦境。

16. He is worth the honor of being “the American Goldsmith” for his literary craftsmanship.在创作艺术方面他堪称是“美国的近匠”。

17. “rip van winkle”—Here, Irving’s pervasive theme of nostalgia for the unrecoverable past is at once made unforgettable.“瑞普.凡.温克尔”---欧文在此表达了对一去不复返的东西十分依恋，笔触生动，令人难忘。

(II). Ralph Waldo Emerson拉尔夫.华尔多.爱默生

18. New England Transcendentalism, which is unanimously agreed to be the summit of the Romantic period in the history of American literature.在美国浪漫主义时期的文学中，新英格兰的超验主义是不可或缺的。

19. Emersonian Transcendentalism is actually a philosophical school which absorbed some ideological concerns of American Puritanism and European Romanticism, with its focus on the