美国文学笔记2

◆Henry Longfellow

I. Life

•born in in Portland, Maine (Unitarian)

•After graduating from Bowdoin College, Longfellow studied modern languages in Europe for three years, then returned to Bowdoin to teach them.

•a devoted husband and father, with a keen feeling for the pleasures of home, but his marriages ended in sadness and tragedy.

•took a position at Harvard in 1836

•began courting Frances "Fanny" Appleton,the daughter of a wealthy Boston industrialist

•In 1854, Longfellow decided to quit teaching to devote all his time to poetry.

II. Works

Voices of the Night, Ballads and Other Poems, Evangeline, Hiawatha, and The Courtship of Miles Standish and Other Poems

Theme: a spirit of optimism and faith in the goodness of life

III. Writing style

gentleness, sweetness, and purity

His writings belong to the milder aspects of the Romantic Movement.

His work untouched the religious and social struggles.

IV. Contributions

bringing European culture to the U.S.

did much to popularize American folk themes abroad

V. Appreciation of A Psalm of Life

1st Stanza: If your soul is not keen，if it is dead, you will not sense the true feature or charm of the world.

2nd Stanza: Life is full of flesh and blood, beauty, charms, and meanings. We need to be enthusiastic towards life. It is not a course from birth to death; it has meanings and goals to strive for. It should be enriched.

3rd Stanza: We should not be stopped by temporary joy or sorrow. We should enhance and improve ourselves continuously.

4th Stanza: we are just on the way to death, even though we are courageous or brave.

5th Stanza: Do not live passively, we should live in dignity and live actively.

6th Stanza: Don’t rely too much on the future, and not be obsessed by

the past. Stick to your ideal fast, hold belief in your heart under the guidance of God.

7th Stanza: We can be great.

8th Stanza: What we have done or left behind us may cheer up and stimulate those lonely and frustrated fighters. What we do is of significance.

9th Stanza: We should begin (take action) now, with courage and confidence, to work hard and be patient.

◆Walt Whitman

I. Life

•born in the family of a carpenter, on Long Island, New York

•six years of education in public schools, and then became an office boy

•changed several jobs—printer, wandering school-teacher

•fond of literature and music

•gave up all regular emplo yment, and started off on ―a leisurely journey and working expedition‖ (democratic partisanship) •During the Civil War in 1863 Whitman went to Washington and began attending on wounded soldiers until the end of the War.

•In 1873, Whitman had paralytic stroke.

•Though he was attacked in his lifetime for his offensive subject matter of sexuality and for his unconventional style, Walt Whitman has proved a great figure in the literary history of the United States because he embodies a new ideal, a new world and a new life style. II. Works

Leaves of Grass (openness, freedom, and above all, individualism ) Themes:

a. He shows concern for the whole hard-working people and the burgeoning life of cities.

b. The realization of the individual value also found a tough position in Whitman’s poems in a particular way.

c. Some of Whitman’s poems are politically committe

d.

Ⅲ. Contributions

Whitman’s poetic style is marked, first of all, by the use of the poetic “I”.

Whitman is also innovative in the form of his poetry. What he prefers for his new subject and new poetic feelings is “free verse,‖ that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular thyme scheme.

Parallelism and phonetic recurrence(the repetition of words and