美国文学简史复习资料[1]

１．《了不起的盖茨比》表现了“美国梦”的幻灭，这部小说谴责以托姆为代表的美国特权阶级自私专横，为所欲为，以同情的态度描写了盖茨比的悲剧，并指出他的悲剧来自他对生活和爱情的幻想，对上层社会缺乏认识。

１．惠特曼是美国著名的民主诗人，他歌颂民主自由，体现了美国人民对民主的渴望，他赞美人民创造性的劳

动，他的诗给人以积极向上的生机勃勃的精神。创造了自由体诗，不受格律，韵脚是限制和束缚，人思想和语言自由自在的发挥。

1.American Puritanism：

American Puritanism was one of the most enduring shaping influences in American thought and American literature. It has become, to some extent, so much a state of mind, rather than a set of tenets, so much a part of the national cultural atmosphere that the Americans breathe. On the one hand, American Puritans were all idealist as their European brothers. They came to the new continent with the dream that they would built the new land to an Eden on earth.On the other hand, American Puritans were more practical maybe because the severe conditions they faced.Symbolism（象征主义）lots of American writers liked to employ symbolism in their works. (typical way of Puritans who thought that all the simple objects existing in the world connoted deep meaning.) Symbolism means using symbols in literary works. The symbol means something represents or stands for abstract deep meaning.

２．American Romanticism

It is one of the most important periods in the history of American literature ,the Romantic Period ,which stretches from the end of the 18th century through the out break of Civil War.It started with the publication of Washington Irving's The Sketch book and ended with Whitman's Leave of Grass.American Romanticism was in essence the expression of "a real new experience "and contained "an alien quality "for the simple reason that "the spirit of the place" was radically new and alien.And it was both imitative and independent

３．American Realism

In American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came into existence. It came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism. Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived. It expresses the concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.

Mark Twain, William Dean Howells,Henry James

３．American Naturalism

American Naturalism refers to a kind of literature that applies objective scientific principles to its study section of human beings. It implies a philosophical meaning instead of literature technique. Famous American Naturalistic writers would include Abraham Cahan, Stephen Crane and Frank Norris; they were deeply influenced by Charles Darwin's evolution theory which believe that one's heredity and