美国文学选读复习提纲

Proses:

Nathan Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter-Chapter 2

Hawthorne: 心理分析小说，以宗教罪恶观sin评价社会。

-Why are women especially the elder ones so harsh and intolerant to Hester?

1. Startled or astonished by the beauty, elegant and dignity of Hester.

2. The patriarchal society let women have eternalized patriarchal ideas, unfavorable for women adulterers.

-How does the author portray Hester Prynne?

1. Core impressive image: the artistically and fantastically made letter A.

2. Appearance

-What does the scarlet letter with gold thread and elaborate embroidery(刺绣) suggests?

1. Clue of Hester’s attitude: she makes a mockery of her punishment by making this plain symbol of adultery into a

gorgeous decoration.

2. To negate the awful meaning of the letter.

3. as punishment, 血红色的A字象征这人们反对human nature ,lush, 有devilish意味，而Hester wants to change

her human reality, to make it prettier than it really is.

-What does “A” stand for?

Adultery/Angel (appearing in the sky when governor dies)/Able (Hester gains influence)

-What kind of person is Chillingworth?

1. Devil or devil’s emissary or Satan: cold intellect and old age, without hominine feelings from heart and soul.

2. In Hester’s recalling, he is “…pale.”

Character Captain Ahab

Image of American: an idealist and an egonist.

Willa Cather: Miss Jewett

Sarah Orne Jewett’s poetic principles

Jewett both as a writer and a person

Cather’s poetic principles

As a writer, Jewett has her own writing style.

She focuses on the places where she lives and loves, and makes them subject-matters of her stories. (Wherever she might be, She carried the Maine shore-country with her. She loved it by instinct, and in the light of wide experience, from near and from afar. Every day, in every season of the year, she enjoyed the beautiful country in which she had the good fortune to be born. Her love of the Maine country was the supreme happiness of her life. Her stories were but reflections, quite incidental, of that peculiar and intensely personal pleasure. Take ,for instance, that dear, daybreak paragraph which begins “By the Morning Boat”:

“On the coast of Maine…”P127 paragraph 3)

She writes with delightful humor that comes from her delicate and tactful handling of her native language.(Her personal opinions she voiced lightly, half-humorously; any expression was spontaneous, the outgrowth of the immediate conversation.)

And, the distinctive thing about Miss Jewett is that she has her own individual voice.(her comment on the story of a mule) Sherwood Anderson: The Triumph of the Egg