美国文学question & answer

殖民启蒙时期feedback

Question 1:

What are the basic beliefs and values of American Puritans?

For this question, my intention is for you to understand the importance of Puritanism in American literature, especially in the colonial period. If there is only one key word for colonial literature, then it would be "Puritanism".

To answer this question, you can think from two different aspects. One is their religious belief and the other is life attitude or life values. Thus you can combine some of your classmates’ a nswers:

1. They believed Calvinism: original sin, total depravity, unconditional selection, limited atonement and so on.

Puritans believed they were God's chosen people and were guided to the promised land-- America.

2. On the one hand, Puritanism is a highly strict religious doctrine. On the other hand, Puritans were very practical, hardworking, frugal, and strict in life.

How did American Puritanism influence colonial literature?

The influence of Puritanism on colonial literature can be summarized into the following three categories:

1. American literature, in a sense, is a literary expression of the pious idealism of the Puritan request. The Puritans dreamed of living under a perfect order and worked with hope and courage toward building a new Eden. Therefore, they tended to look everything optimistically.

2. The Puritans’ metaphorical mode of perception brought American literary symbolism into being. To the pious Puritans, the world was one of multiple meanings.

3. The Puritan style of writing was fresh, simple and direct, the rhetoric was plain and honest, and the words were simple and not fancy. The use of metaphors was only to explain their opinions rather than to decorate. They wrote non-fictional prose instead of novels. They were good at writing history, too, and biography was once a popular form of literature.

Question 2

How was the theme "American Dream" reflected in both colonial and revolutionary literature? Give some examples.

American Dream is an enduring theme in the whole history of American literature. The idea of American Dream is older than the United States, dating back to the 1600s, when people began to come up with all kinds of hopes and aspirations志向for the new and

largely unexplored continent.

Essentially本质上, the American Dream is an idea which suggests that all people can succeed through hard work, so all people have the potential to live happy and successful lives.

In both colonial and revolutionary period，w riter expressed the theme of “American Dream” with optimistic attitude.

For example, John Smith boasted the immigrants’ life in America in his A Map of Virginia, attracting more people to the new world to realize their American dreams.

浪漫主义feedback

Q1: compare American Romanticism & Transcendentalism.

A1: American romanticism is a literary movement in the US between 1800 and 1865. It stressed individual and creative function of imagination. It placed individual at the very center of all life and all experience and at the center of art.

Transcendentalism is a spiritual, philosophical and literary movement flourished during the mid-19th Century. Major concepts are: 1) Stress the power of intuition; 2)Spirit transcend matter; 3)Nature as symbolic of spirit or God; 4) Emphasize self-reliant individual; 5) Religion is an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal oversoul; 6) Commerce was degrading.

Comparison: Transcendentalism is romanticism in essence. It shares the basic characteristics with romanticism, including the emphasis on individual, nature, emotions, feelings, and creative imagination. It is special in its emphasis on the goodness of human nature, the idea of self-reliance, and action.

Q2: How do you understand or interpret Washington Irving's negative attitude towards change at his time?

For the second question, in fact it is a question asked by two of your classmates after class. My intention is for you to have a discussion, why was Irving negative about the changes and development of the new country and why would his negative attitude be accepted by optimistic American readers at his time?

I think the answer given by the group of Class 2 is to the point and you can refer to their answer.

A2: Not only Rip Van Winkle or the author Irving himself felt confused about the rapid changes taken place in their new country, but also the general public in America had the feeling that the changes are too great and rapid for them to adapt to. Thus the negative attitude towards changes by the author reflected the common confusion of American people at that time.