美国文学期末考试总结

Ⅰ. Write the author of each item. 10’
1．Anne Bradstreet（The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America）
①Contemplation
②To My Dear and Loving Husband
2. Benjamin Franklin
①The Autobiography (early American Dream)
3. Philip Freneau (Poet of American; The Father of American Poetry)
①The Wild Honey Suckle
②The Indian Burying Ground
③To a Caty-Did
4. Washington Irving(The Father of American Short Story; first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame; regarded as Father of American literature.)
①The legend of Sleep Hollow
②Rip Van Winkle
③The Sketch Book(the beginning of American Romanticism)
5. James Fennimore Cooper
①The Last Mohicans
②Leather Stocking Tales
6. William Cullen Bryant
① Thanatopsis
② To a Water Fowl
7. Edgar Allen Poe (Father of Modern Short Story; Father of Psychoanalysis criticism)
①To Helen
②The Raven
③The Fall of the House of Usher
④The Black Cat
8. Ralph Waldo Emerson (leading new England transcendentalist)
①Nature
②Self-Reliance
③The American Scholar
9. Henry David Thoreau (an active transcendentalist)
①Walden
10. Nathaniel Hawthorne (a master of symbolism; first great American writer of fiction to work in moralistic tradition. combined the American romanticism with puritan moralism; created a new genre psychological romance)
①The Scarlet Letter
②Twice Told Tales
③The Marble Faun
④Blithedale Romance
⑤The Minister’s Black Veil
11. Herman Melville
①Moby Dick
12. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(the fireside poet; love of nature, love for the past)
①A Psalm of Life
②The Slav e’s Dream
③My Lost Youth
④The Song of Hiawatha
13. Walt Whitman
①Leaves of Grass(first genuine epic poem)
②Song of Myself
③I Sit and Look Out
④ Beat！Beat！Drums！
14. Emily Dickinson (the theme of her poetry concern religion, life, death, marriage, immorality, nature etc.)
①I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed
②I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
③A Bird Came Down the Walk
④I Died for Beauty ___but Was Scarce
⑤I Hear a Fly Buzz ___When I Died
⑥Because I Could not Stop for Death
Ⅱ.True or False choice. 20’
Ⅲ. Choose the best answer 10’
Ⅳ. Appreciation 30’
The Scarlet Letter
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Symbolism：The Scarlet Letter, A symbol of shame, but instead it becomes a powerful symbol of identity to Hester. The letter’s meaning shifts as time passes. Originally inte nded to mark Hester as an adulteress, the “A” eventually comes to stand for “Able.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1.Nature
The declaration of Transcendentalism
Analysis of “Nature”
A long essay which has eight parts: the opening, commodity, beauty, language, discipline, Idealism, spirit and prospects. Our selection is taken from the opening. Taken as a whole, “Nature” expresses Emerson’s philosophy in a more systematic fashion than any other work of his.
Meanings of nature
I Beauty
nature is beautiful. : the complete, mysterious, useful and moral beauty of nature. First, nature’s beauty lies in its completeness. Second, nature’s beauty lies in its mystery. cannot be manipulated. Only when he holds a sincere respect for nature, can man feel the mysterious beauty of nature. Third, nature’s beauty lies in its usefulness. Nature provides man without any benefit
II Nature Is Divine
●Nature is divine and has the eternal order which should not be violated. Influenced in a way by
Chinese ancient philosophy, Emerson believes that all the things in the world come from the same root---the Oversoul.
●Emerson believes that man can find God in his own heart by direct contact with nature
●Nature has permeated (penetrate) all aspects of human life. Spirit embodied in nature has
influence upon us. Nature inspires man and gives him\her power. Man should find the truth,
goodness and beauty in his own soul and bring into play his potentiality as human being. Then, he will become himself “All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and c an do".
For Emerson, the individual is potentially the most divine and any organization or existing idea can not limit the development of individual.
III Nature Is Changing
Everything in nature is in a process---growing, withdrawing and falling into the ground. The flowing of nature comes from a force which impels it to develop. For instance, a river is always in constantly flowing. It originates from mountains, flows along great plains and ultimately converges into the sea. Transcendental philosophy
Nature symbolizes freedom, independence and change. These are Individualism elements which attend to significance of common life. Therefore Emerson's nature is the theoretical base of American Individualism---one of the characteristics of American culture. As the symbol of Spirit, nature helps to prove that man's soul is beautiful, divine and fluid. Man should pursue spiritual fulfillment
2.Self-Reliance
①“The Confidence”. a man must show his opinion confidently and bravely in spite of different ideas.
②“The Independence”. A man should keep himself firmly ; not be easily influenced by environment.
③Keep personality, which is closely related to the confidence and the independence. a man must keep his personality and conform to his own principles.
④“Showing no Sympathy to the Poor” shows that why the poor are poor is mainly due to their backward thinking. Showing help to this kind of people means doing harm to them.
Comment: In Self-reliance, Emerson expressed the romantic idea of individualism, with an emphasis on being self-sufficient. He promoted relying on oneself rather than on established society. Emerson was known for his repeated use of phrase “trust thyself”. “Self-reliance”is his explanation---both systematic and passionate of what he meant by this, and why he was moved to make it his catchphrase. Every individual possesses a unique genius, emerson argues, that can only be revealed when that individual has the courage to trust his or her own thoughts, attitudes, and inclinations against all public disapproval.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1. A Psalm of Life
①Love of nature, love for the past ②Trochaic tetrameter
③constant theme for poets: The relationship of life and death. ④He expresses his pertinent interpretation to that by warning us that though life is hard and everybody must die, time flies and life is short, yet, human beings ought to be hold “to act,” to face the reality straightly so as to make otherwise meaningless life significant.
2. My Lost Youth
Ⅴ. Terms 10’
New England Poets
The new England poets were the representatives of imitation, authors like Irving, William Cullen Bryant, Henry wadsworth Longfellow etc. tried to imitate the forms and themes of their English brothers, such as Alexander Pope, Robert Burns, Thomas Gray, wordsworth and so on.
Rip van winkle
This is one story in Washington Irving’s Sketch Book. It tells a story of a kind but hen-pecked man rip
van winkle. The protagonist does not take care of his own family very well and just wants to live idly. But his wife does not want him to live the life like that and keeps talking to him. Unhappy at home, he enters in the mountain with his gun and dog. One afternoon, he meets some strangers looking people playing at nine pins. Out of curiosity, he drinks the wine and falls into sleep. When he wakes up, he finds his dog missing and his gun rusted. He has to go back to the village again. But can not recognize the village and the folks. Later his surprise, he has been slept for 20 years. And his wife has been dead and his children grow up. At the end of story, his daughter takes him home and he still lives the life as he was used to.
Ⅵ.Comment 20’
1. Comment on Moby Dick:
a. Although the narrator sees insanity in Ahab, Melville’s emotional sympathy is with the deficient Aha
b. He begins with a noble intention to crush evil, but in taking this to the extreme, he becomes evil himself. He is destroyed by his consuming desire to root out evil.
b. Moby Dick is a symbol to represent cruel, brutal, malicious powers of nature. Nature is capable of destroying the human world. Nature threatens humanity & thus calls out the heroic powers of the human beings. So the power of the universe is both of blessing and curse. In this way, the author constructs a complicated statement about American view of nature.
2. Compare: Emily Dickinson with Walt Whitman in their writing style.
Similarities
①Along with Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman stands as one of the two giants of American ②poetry in the nineteenth century.
③Pioneers of imagism
④Part of American Renaissance
⑤Influenced by transcendentalism
⑥Thematically, they both extolled in their different ways and emergent America, its expansion, its individualism and its Americanness, their poetry being part of “American Renaissance”
⑦Technically, they both added to the literary independence of the new nation by breaking free of the convention of the iambic pentameter and exhibiting a freedom in form unknown before: they are pioneers in American poetry.
Differences
①Whitman seems to keep his eyes on society at large; Dickinson explores the inner life of the individual.
②Whereas Whitman is “national” in his outlook. Dickinson is “regional”
③Whitman has the “catalogue techniques”, all-inclusive catalogue. Whereas Dickinson’s concise, direct, simple diction and syntax。