美国文学14讲-诗歌赏析

The Wild Honey Suckle

Philip Freneau

1st stanza:

The honey suckle lives an obscure, unknown, forgotten, serene, and safe life.

2nd stanza: The pure, innocent honey suckle is not contaminated by the vulgar eye of people and protected, embraced, and nurtured by Nature.

3rd stanza: grief upon the flower’s death

4th stanza: nothing gained, nothing lost

题目：The Scarlet Letter

作者：Nathaniel Hawthorne

赏析：

1. A story of rebellion within an emotionally constricted Puritan society.

2. Undisputed masterpiece of Haw thorne. Reveal Hawthorne’s superb craftsmanship

3. Modern psychological insight; secret motivations in human behaviour; guilt & anxiety resulted from sins against humanity, esp. from pride.

4. Setting: Puritan background of New England in 17 C

5. Hawthorne: master of Symbolism.

Pearl= thematic symbol: consequence the sin of adultery has brought to the community and people living in the community.

Letter A= different symbolic meanings (adultery, angel, able, advance, admiration, etc.). The ambiguity is one of the salient features of the work.

6. Hester: committed sin but true to God and herself; not a real sinner; sinful just in the sinful eyes of the conventional Puritans.

7. Chillingworth: physician, cold observer of life, looking on mankind as the subject of experiment; lost in revenge; not true to himself/others/God; real villain of the story, true sinner. 8. Dimmesdale: partner of Hester’s sin; the concealment of the first sin led to the second sin; no longer true to God/others, but kept true to himself; intellectual arrogance & betraying of honesty conflict within him, led to the twisting and distortion of his personality; suffer most in story.

六

Ahab / Pequod/Ishmael

题目：Moby Dick

作者：Herman Melville

赏析：

1. Ahab: captain of the whaling ship

2. Pequod: name of the whaling ship

3. Theme: the rebellious struggle of Captain Ahab against the overwhelming, mysterious vastness of the universe and its awesome sometimes merciless forces.

4. Symbols & allegory:

Pequod= microcosm of human society;

The voyage= a search for truth;

Moby Dick= nature (complex, unfathomable, malignant, beautiful), an ultimate mystery of universe.

题目：To Helen

作者：Edgar Allan Poe

赏析：

1. Theme: celebrate the nurturing power of women—Helen’s beauty is soothing and provide safety & security.

2. Create the image & impression of the idealized & unreal woman;

3. Represent beauty, melancholy. Though heart desired, inaccessible.

4. Allusion, assonance, consonance, repetition

5. Ababb/ababa/abbab

6. Naiad= goddess; Psyche= goddess of the soul

题目：In a Station of the Metro

作者：Ezra Pound

赏析：

1. Imagism

2. Petal= beautiful faces in the crowd waiting for the train.

题目：Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

作者：Robert Frost

赏析：

1. One of his most well-known poems. New Hamshipre.

2. iambic tetrameter

3. Rubaiyat stanza,

4. rhyming shceme: aaba/bbcb/ccdc/dddd

5. chain rhyme