第一章殖民时期的美国
I. American Puritanism
The settlement of North American continent by the English began in the early part of the seventeenth century. The first permanent English settlement in North America was established at Jamestown, Virginia in 1606. In 1620, the ship Mayflower carried about one hundred Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth , Massachusetts. The first settlers in America were quite a few of them Puritans. They came to America out of various reasons. They carried with them American Puritanism which took root in the New World and became the most enduring shaping influence in American thought and American literature.
1. Doctrines of Puritanism
The Puritans accepted the doctrine predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement (or the salvation of a selected few) , which theologian John Calvin had preached.
2. The influence of Puritanism on American literature
(1) The idealism of Puritan had exerted a great influence on American writers.
It is a common place that American literature—or Anglo-American literature—is based on a myth, that is, the Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden. This literature is in good measure a literary expression of the pious idealism of the American Puritan bequest. The Puritan dreamed of living under a perfect order and worked with courage and hope toward building a new Garden of Eden in America, where man could at long last live the way he should. Fired with such a sense of mission, the Puritan looked upon even the worst of life in the face with a tremendous amount of optimism. All this went, in due time, into the making of American literature. The spirit of optimism burst into the pages of so many American authors.
(2) The American puritan' s metaphorical mode of perception was chiefly instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American.
Puritan doctrine and literary practice contributed to no small extent to the development of an indigenous symbolism. To the pious Puritan the physical phenomenal world was nothing but a symbol of God. Every passage of life, en-meshed in the vast context of God 1 s plan, possessed a delegated meaning. It is impossible to overlook the very symbolizing process that was constantly at work in Puritan minds. This process became, in time, part of the intellectual tradition in which American authors were brought up along with their people. For Jonathan Edwards, Emerson, Hacothorne, Melville, Howells and many others, symbolism as a technique has become a common practice. This peculiar mode of perception was an essential part of their upbringing.
(3) With regard to technique, the simplicity which characterize the Puritan style of writing greatly influenced the American literature.
The style of the writing of the Puritan writers is fresh, simple and direct; the rhetoric is plain and honest, not without a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible. All this left an indelible imprint on American writing.
II. Overview of the colonial literature
American literature grew out of humble origins. Diaries, histories, journals, letters, commonplace books, travel books, sermons, in short, personal literature in its various forms, occupied a major position in the literature of the early colonial period.
1. Major writers of colonial period
(1) John Smith (1580 -1631)
Captain John Smith was one of the founders of the colony Jamestown, Virginia. His writing about North America became the source of information about the New World for later settlers.
In The General History of Virginia he wrote about his capture by the Indians and his rescue by the famous Indian Princess, Pocahontas.
Another thing he wrote about that became historically important was his description of the fertile and vast new continent in his A Description of New England.
(2) William Bradford (1590-1657)
In 1620 William Bradford led the Mayflower endeavor and became the first governor of the Plymouth Plantation with his group of Pilgrim Fathers.
His major work is Of Plymouth Plantation.
(3) John Winthrop (1588-1649)
John Winthrop was the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony.
In his famous speech A Model of Christian Charity he states that “we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.”
The two major poets in the colonial period were Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor.
(4) Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
Anne Bradstreet was known as the "Tenth Muse" who appeared in America.
1. Major works
The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America
Contemplations
"Upon the Burning of Our House"
"To My Dear and Loving Husband"\
"In Reference to Her Children"
"The Fresh and the Spirit"
"As Weary Pilgrim"
2. Analysis of her major works
?Contemplations ( 9 )
When the poet heard the grasshopper and cricket sing, she thought of this as their praising of their Creator and searched her own soul accordingly. It is evident that she saw something metaphysical, inhering in the physical, a mode of perception that was singular Puritan.
? "The Fresh and the Spirit"
This poem depicts two sisters arguing about their values. The flesh is forthright with her assertion of her views about the importance of this world while the Spirit, the other, tries to convince her of the greatness of the kingdom of God. The twin sisters are evidently the integral parts of one Puritan mind.
(5) Edward Taylor (1642 -1729)
Edward Taylor was a Puritan poet, concerned about how his images spoke for God. (X) Analysis of major works
? " Huswifery"
This poem indicates that the poet saw religious significance in a simple daily incident like a housewife spinning. The spinning wheel, the distaff, the flyers, the spool, the reel and the yarn have all acquired a metaphysical significance in the symbolic, Puritan eyes of the poet.
? " Upon a Spider Catching a Fly"
The pet sees the spider as a symbol of Hell. It is obvious that Taylor has faith in God who can save the erring, or sinful, humankind from the evil designs of Hell.
(6) Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Thomas Paine was born in England and came to America in 1774. His life was one of continual, unswerving fight for the rights of man. He was a major influence in the American Revolution. (J) Major works
Common Sense
The American Crisis
"The Times that Try Men's Souls"
The Rights of Man
The Age of Reason
2 Analysis of his major works
? Common Sense
Common Sense attacked the British monarchy and added fuel to the fire which was soon to bring the colossus of its colonial rule down in flame. Paine declared that the crisis with which the North American colonies were then faced could only be solved by an appeal to man … s instincts and common sense and impulses of conscience. TTie booklet was warmly received in the colonies as a justification for their cause of independence and as an encouragement to the painfully fighting people.
? the American Crisis
The American Crisis is made up of 16 pamphlets written between 1776 and 1783. The first pamphlet "The Times that Try
Men's Souls" came out at one of the darkest moment of the revolution. “ The harder the struggle, the more glorious the triumph," when Washington had it read to the troops, it proved a heartening stimulus, a spurring excitement to further action with hope and confidence.
(7) Philip Freneau
Philip Freneau was import an! in American literary history in a number of ways. Apart from the fact that he used his poet-ic talents in the service of a nation struggling for independence, writing verses for the righteous cause of his people and exposing British colonial savageries, he was a most notable representative of dawning nationalism in American literature. Almost alone of his generation, Freneau managed to peer through the pervasive atmosphere of imitativeness, see life directly, and appreciate die natural scenes on the new land and the native Indian civilization.
1. Major works
"The Wild Honey Suckle"
"The Dying Indian: Tomo Chequi"
"The Indian Burying Ground"
2. Analysis of major work
? "The Wild Honey Suckle"
In this poem, the lyric beauty, the heartfelt pathos, and the multiple emotional responses and echoes that the sight de-scribed are simply amazing. Here we can see the poet enjoys the beauty that the American landscape is capable of offering. This poem is an indication of the poet?s dedication of American subject matter.
第二章爱德华兹-富兰克林-克里夫古尔
American critic Van Wyck Brooks attempted a general survey of eighteen-century America and American characters. He stated that Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin shared the eighteenth century between them. The American Puritanism is a two-faceted tradition of religious idealism and levelheaded common sense. Jonathan Edwards represents the former aspect, and Franklin the latter. The one was as a good Puritan as the other.
I Jonathan Edwards (1703 -1758)
1. Life
Edwards was born into a very religious family. He entered Yale at 13 and took his M. A. in 1723. Later He became the minister of the church of Northampton, Massachusetts. His sermons taught the power of God and the depravity of man and man1 s need to communicate with Holy Spirit to receive God1 s grace. He was instrumental in bringing about the "Great Awakening.” He became famous not only in his own country, but won a measure of international recognition as well.
2. Ideas
(1) He was the first modern American and the country1 s last medieval man.
His works reveal the modern consciousness of the man. He was influenced to no small extent by Newton ? s mechanical view of the universe and the Lockean thesis. He tried to reconcile Puritan ideas with the new rationalism of Lock and Newton.
The same works reveals the medieval mind of the man. He liked to walk in the woods, to be solitary, far from all mankind, so as to sweetly converse with Christ, to be wrapped and swallowed up in God. This is meant by the inward com-munication of soul with god, by "conversation" through the heart rather than through reason.
(2) He was a good deal of a transcendentalist.
He holds that God is immanent. God manifests himself in nature and man, and that man, being a part of God, is divine. His work Images or Shadow of Divine Things anticipated the nature symbolism of nineteenth-century Transcendentalism. The mystical implication of his Puritan idealism was to be developed and given full, explicit realization by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the next century.
3. Major works
The Freedom of the Will
The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended
The Nature of True Virtue
"Sinners in the hands of An Angry God"
"Personal Narrative"
Images or Shadow of Divine Thing
II. Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
Franklin was a rare genius in human history. He became everything: a printer, postmaster, almanac maker, essayist, scientist, orator, statesman, philosopher, political economist, ambassador, —"Jack of all trades. "
1. Life
He was born into a poor candle-maker's family. He was a voracious reader. At 16 he published essays under the pseu-donym Silence Dogood. At 17 he ran away to Philadelphia to make his own fortune. He became a printer. He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital, an academy which led to the University of Pennsylvania, and the American Philosophical Society. He was a preeminent scientist of his day. He signed the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Peace with England, and the Constitution. He was one of the makers of the new nation. Franklin?s claim to a place in literature rests chiefly on his Poor Richard’ s Almanac and The Autobiography.
2. Analysis of major works
? Poor Richard1 s Almanac
Franklin issued Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1732 and kept publishing it for almost a quarter of a century. Apart from poems and essays, he managed to put in a good many adages and commonsense witticisms which became, very quickly, household words and, for many, mottos of the most practical kind. He borrowed from maxims from others. But he made good use of his own wit and wisdom to simplify and enrich their axioms which made Poor Richard1 s Almanac to teach as well as amuse.
? The Autobiography
(1) The Autobiography was probably the first of its kind in literature. It is the simple yet immensely fascinating record of
a man rising to wealth and fame from a state of poverty and obscurity into which he was born, the faithful account of the colorful career of American " s first self-made man. The book consists of four parts, written at different times.
(2) The Autobiography is, first of all, a Puritan document. It is a record of self-examination and self-improvement. The book is also a convincing illustration of the Puritan ethic that, in order to get on in the world, one has to be industrial, frugal and prudent.
(3) The Autobiography is also an eloquent elucidation of the fact that Franklin was a spokesman for the new order of eighteenth-century enlightenment, and that he represented in America all its ideas, that man is basically good and free by nature, endowed by God with certain inalienable rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Through telling a success story of self-reliance, the book celebrates the fulfillment of the American dream.
(4) The style of The Autobiography reveals that it is the pattern of Puritan simplicity, directness and concision.
Hector St John de Crevecoeur (1735-1813)
Crevecoeur was a French settler. His famous work is letters from an American Farmer.
? Analysis of Letters from an American Farmer
Crevecoeur wrote letters back to Europe to explain the meaning of America to the outside world. Letters from an Amer-ican Farmer is made up of 12 letters. The first 8 letters reveal the pride of a man being an American. Starting from his ninth letter, he began to speak with a different voice, the voice of a definitely disillusioned man. He became aware of the existence of evil which he thought the American had left behind in the old world. The note of pessimism began to vibrate in Letters from an American Farmer.
第三章美国浪漫主义-欧文-库柏
Overview of American Romanticism
In the history of American literature, the Romantic period is one of the most important periods. It stretched from the end of the eighteenth century through the outbreak of the civil war.
1. Background
( 1 ) A nation bursting into new life cried for literary expression. The buoyant mood of the nation and the spirit of the times seemed in some measure responsible for the spectacular outburst of romantic feeling. The literary milieu proved fertile and conductive to the imagination. Magazine appeared in ever-increasing numbers. They played an important role in facilitating literary expansion.
(2) Foreign influences added incentive to the growth of romanticism. The Romantic Movement, which had flourished earlier in the century both in England and Europe, proved to be a decisive influence on the upsurge of American romanti-cism.
(3) There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider.
2. Characteristics
( 1 ) American Romanticism exhibited from the very outset distinct features of its own. It originated from an amalgam of factors that were altogether American rather than anything else. It was in essence the expression of "a real new experi-ence" and contained "an alien quality".
( 2) As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American Romanticism was both imitative and inde-pendent.
II. Washington Irving (1783 -1859)
1. Life
Irving was born into a wealthy New York merchant family. From a very early age he began to read widely and write ju-venile poems, essays and plays. His first book A History of New York was a great success. With the publication of The Sketch Book, he won a measure of international recognition. In 1826 he was sent to Spain as an American diplomatic attache. From 1829 - 1832 he was Secretary of The United States Legation in London. He spent almost the rest of his life at Sunnyside on the Hudson River. He was not married and died in 1859.
2. His literary contribution
Irving's contribution to American literature is unique in more ways than one. He did a number of things that have been regarded as the first of their kind in America.
(1) He was first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame.
(2) He was the father of American literature. The short story as a genre in American literature probably began with Irving …s The Sketch Book. This book also marked the beginning of American Romanticism.
3. Literary career
Irving ?s career can be roughly divided into two important phases, the first of which spanned from his first book up to 1832, the other stretching over the remaining years of his life.
( 1 ) In the first period, most of time, he wrote about subjects either English or European. He found value in the past and in the tradition of the Old World.
(2) In the second period, Irving found a whole new spirit of nationalism in American feeling and art and letters.
4. Writing style
Irving was a highly skillful writer. The gentility, urbanity , and pleasantness of the man all seem to have adequate ex-pression in his style.
( 1) First, Irving avoids moralizing as much as possible; he writes to amuse and entertain.
(2) He is good at enveloping his stories in an atmosphere, the richness of which is often more than compensation for the slimness of plot
( 3 ) His characters are vivid and true so that they lend to linger in the mind of the reader.
(4) The humor has built itself into the very texture of his writings.
(5) The finished and musical language and the patent workmanship have been among the points of critical attention.
5. Major works
A History of New York
The Sketch Book
"The Authors Account of Himself"
"Rip Van Winkle"
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
The history of Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus
A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada
Life of Goldsmith
Life of Washington
The Crayon Miscellany
“A Tour on the Prairies"
' Astoria"
Adventures of Captain Bonneville
6-Analysis of major works
? "Rip Van Winkle"
This story reveals the conservative attitude of its author. Before the war, there was peace and harmony. But there comes now the scramble for power between parties and the tempo of life has quickened. The story might be taken as an il-lustration of Irving' s argument that change—and revolution— upset the natural order of things and the fact that Irving never seemed to accept a modem democratic America.
? "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow?'
The creation of archetypes is a particularly subtle feat of Irving' s consummate craftsmanship. We may see in Ichabod Crane a New Englander, shrewd, commercial, a city-slicker, who is rather an interloper, a somewhat destructive force, in village life, and who comes along to swindle the villagers. He is driven away from where he does not belong, so that the serene village remains permanently good and happy. Brom Bones, on the other hand, is a Huck Finn-type of country bumpkin, tough, vigorous, boisterous but inwardly very good, a frontier type put out there to shift for himself. Thus the rivalry in love between Ichabod and Brom, viewed in this way, suddenly assumes the dimensions of two ethical groups locked in a kind of historic contest.
The style of the piece represents Irving at his best.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789 -1851)
1. Life
Cooper was born into a rich land-holding family of New Jersey. He was sent to Yale at 14 but was expelled because of improper behavior. He went and spent five year at sea; In his early twenties, he inherited his father1 s vast fortune and them began to write. His second novel, The Spy, proved to be an immense success. In the three decades that followed, he wrote thirty-odd novels, including eleven of the sea, and a voluminous amount of other writings. He was best known in his own day and is still read and remembered today as the author of Leatherstocking Tales.
2. Literary contribution
Cooper was one of the first authors to write about the American Westward movement Cooper's claim to greatness in American literature lay in the fact that he created a myth about the formative period of the American nation. Cooper wrote with increasing awareness of the importance to Fiction of the Western frontier where, American society may be conceived as passing from one set of principle to another in two directions. Cooper? s power lay in his assurance that one direction was morally right and the other practically inevitable. Here lies Cooper1 s conflict of allegiance. He was devoted to the principles of social order and responsible to the idea of nature and freedom in the wildness.
3. Writing style
( 1 ) Cooper is good at inventing plots. His plots are sometimes quite incredible, but his stories are immensely intriguing.
(2) His landscape descriptions are majestic and suggestive of Sir Walter Scott.
(3 ) He was quite conscious of the association of different locales. The fact that he had never been to the frontier and among the Indians and yet could write five huge epic books a-bout them which is an eloquent proof of the richness of his imagination. His Indians are among the first appearing in American fiction and probably the first group of noble savages.
(4) His style is dreadful. His characterization seems wooden and lacks probability, and his language, his use of dialect, is not authentic.
4. Major works
The Spy
Leatherstocking Tales
The Pioneers (1823)
The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
The Prairie (1827)
The Pathfinder (1840)
The Deerslayer (1841)
5. Analysis of major work
? Leatherstocking Tales
( I) Leatherstocking Tales is a series of five tales about the life of American settlers. The protagonist Natty Bumppo is a mythic figure. When he first appears, we see a real frontiersman, a man of flesh and blood in the virgin forests of North America. But as the story moves on, he does so gathering more and more of the halo of a legendary and mythic nature around him. He becomes a type, a representation of a nation struggling to be born, progressing from old age to rebirth and youth. The Leatherstocking novels go backwards, from old age to golden youth. That is the true myth of America.
( 2) The Pioneers is the first of Leatherstocking Tales. Its historical importance lies in the fact that it was probably the first true romance of the frontier in American literature. The basic conflict of the story is, in essence, one between Leather-stocking who insists on man?s old forest freedom and Judge Temple to whom man remains savage without law and order. Bumppo embodies the idea of brotherhood of man and of nature and freedom, and is morally right. Judge Temple symbolizes law and civilization, and represents the practically inevitable aspect It is between them that they built the wilderness into anything like a civilized place. Hence the plural in the tide of the book, The Pioneers.
第四章新英格兰超验主义-爱默生-梭罗
In 1836 Emerson? s Nature came out which made a tremendous impact on the intellectual life of America. Nature9 s voice pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New England Transcendentalism, the summit of American Romanticism.
New England Transcendentalism
In the 1830s and 1840s some New Englanders , not quite happy about the materialistic-oriented life of their time, formed themselves into an informal club, the Transcendentalist Club, and met to discuss matters of interest to the life of the nation as a whole. They expressed their views, published their journal, the Dial, and made their voice heard. The club with a membership of some thirty men and a couple of women included Emerson, Thoreau, Branson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller. Most of them were teachers or clergymen, radicals who reacted against the faith of Boston businessmen and the cold, rigid rationalism of Unitarianism. The word " Transcendental" was not native to America; it was a Kantian term denoting, as Emerson put it, "Whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought n
1. Major features
( 1 ) The Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe. The Oversoul was an all-pervading power for goodness, omnipresent and omnipotent, from which all things came and of which all were a part. This represented a new way of looking at the world. It was a reaction to the eighteenth Newtonian concept of the universe. It was also a reaction against the direction that a mechanized, capitalist America was taking, against the popular tendency to get ahead in world affairs to neglect spiritual welfare.
(2) The Transcendentalists stressed the importance of the individual. To them the individual was the most important element of society. The ideal type of man were the self-reliant individuals. The individual soul communed with the Oversold and was therefore divine. This new notion of the individual and his importance represented a new way of looking at man. It was a reaction against the Calvinist conception of total depravity, against the process of dehumanization that came in the wake of developing capitalism.
(3) The Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the spirit or God. Things in nature tended to become symbolic, and the physical world was a symbol of the spiritual. This in turn added to the tradition of literary symbolism in American literature.
2. Sources
New England Transcendentalism was the product of a combination of foreign influence and the American tradition. ( 1 ) Idealistic philosophy of Germany and France. ( 2) Oriental mysticism. ( 3) American Puritanism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 -1882)
I. Life
Emerson was the descendant of a long line of New England clergymen. When he was still a child, the family fortune fell. He went to Harvard. 1ater he embraced Unitarianism and became a Unitarian minister to the Second Church of Boston. But not for long, he found the rationality of Unitarianism intolerable and left his job. He went to Europe and brought back with him the influence of European Romanticism. He formed an informal Transcendentalists1 club with some friends and edited for a time the Transcendentalist journal, the Dial, to explain their ideas. He became the most eloquent spokesman of New England Transcendentalism. During his lifetime he was considered one of the two or three best writers in America, and certainly the most influential among his contemporaries. He was the prophet of his age and exerted great influence on Thor-eau, Whitman, Hawthorne and others in varying degrees.
2. Analysis of major works
? Nature
(1)Published in 1836, Nature is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism.
(2) In this book, Emerson emphasizes the transcendence of the "Oversoul". He holds the universe is composed of Nature and Soul. He regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man, and advocates a direct in-tuition of a spiritual and immanent God in nature.
(3) The spiritual God is operative in the soul of man, and that man is divine. The divinity of man became a favorite subject in lectures and essays. Each man should feel the world as his, and the world exists for him alone. Emerson? s message was eventually self-reliance. His self-reliance was an expression , on a very high level, of the buoyant spirit of his time. (4) Nature is the emblematic of God. It mediates between man and God. A natural implication of Emerson's view on nature is that the world around is symbolic.
? "The American Scholar"
“The American Scholar” has been regarded as " America … s Declaration of Intellectual Independence, "Emerson tried to say that the Americans should write a-bout here and now instead of imitating and importing from other lands. He called on American writers to write about America in a way peculiarly American. Emerson?s importance in the intellectual history of America lies in the fact that he embodied a new nation … s desire and struggled to assert its own identity in its formative period.
Henry David Thoreau (1917 -1862)
1. Life
(1)Thoreau was a renowned New England Transcendentalist. He was a friend of Emerson and his junior by some fourteen years. Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts. He went to Harvard at 17. After graduation, he made friends with Emerson and embraced his ideas. In 1845 he moved in a cabin on Walden Pond and lived there in a very simple manner for a little over two years. During his stay in Walden, he went back occasionally to his village, and on one visit he was detained for a night in jail for refusing to pay a poll-tax he thought unjust. This inspired him to write his famous essay, “Civil Disobedience". He wrote about his experience in the famous book, Walden, after he moved back to Concord.
He was one of the three great American authors of the nineteenth century who had no contemporary readers and yet became great in the twentieth century, the other two being Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson. And he became a major voice for nineteenth-century America, now better heard perhaps than Emerson?s. His influence goes l>eyond America. His status was placed in the Hall of Fame in New York in 1969.
2. Major Works
A Week On the Concord and Merrimack Rivers Walden
"Civil Disobedience" "A Plea for John Brown"
3. Analysis of major work
? Walden
Thoreau?s masterpiece, Walden, is a great Transcendentalist work. It is a faithful record of Thoreau ' s reflections when he was in solitary communion with nature, an eloquent indication that he not only embraced Emerson' s Transcendentalist philosophy but went even further to illustrate the pantheistic quality of nature. Walden can be many things and can be read on more than one level.
( I ) It is a book about man, what he is, what he should be and must be. Thoreau holds that the most important thing for men to do with their lives is to be self-sufficient and strive to achieve personal spiritual perfection. Thoreau has been re-garded as a prophet of individualism in American literature.
(2) In this book, Thoreau was very critical of modem civilization. Modem civilized life has dehumanized man and placed him in a spiritual quandary.
(3) Furthermore, the book is full of ideas expressed to jostle his neighbors out of their smug complacency. He records how he tries to minimize his own needs on Walden Pond. He holds that spiritual richness is real wealth. One's soul might not help one to get up in the world, but it will help make real progress in self-improvement
(4) Thoreau went to the woods to experiment a new way of life for himself and for his fellowmen. And he felt that he came out of it a better man, reborn and reinvigorated. Thus, regeneration became a major thematic concern of Walden and it also decided its structural framework.
第五章霍桑-麦尔维尔
I. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 -1864)
1. Life
Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts. Some of his ancestors were men of prominence in the Puritan theocracy. One of his ancestors was a colonial magistrate, notorious for his part in the persecution of the Quakers, and another was a judge at the Salem Witchcraft Trial in 1692. Gradually, the family fortune declined. Hawthorn was intensely conscious of the wrongdoing of his ancestors, and this awareness led to his understanding of evil being at the core of human life, so he seemed to be haunted by his sense of sin and evil in his life.
2. Ideas
(1) He was haunted by his sense of sin and evil in life, therefore we see " black vision" in his works—the power of blackness. Evil seems to be man1 s birthmark. In almost every book he wrote, Hawthorne discussed sin and evil.
(2) He rejected the Transcendentalists 1 transparent optimism about the potentialities of human nature.
(3) Whenever there is sin, there is punishment Sin or e-vil can be passed from generation to generation. In his opinion, evil educates.
(4) He believed that romance was the predestined form of American narrative. He took a great interest in history and an-tiquity. To him these furnished the soil on which his mind grew to fruition.
(5) Hawthorne had a negative attitude toward science.
3. Writing style
(1 )He is the most ambivalent writer, a consummate romantic in the American literature history. One salient feature of Hawthorne … s art is his ambiguity, of which the technique of multiple views employed in the last part of his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter offers a good illustration.
( 2 ) He is good at exploring of the complexity of human psychology. He is anatomist of "the interior of the heart". His works are full of mental activities.
(3 ) Allegory is used to hold fast against the crushing blows of reality, the symbolism serves as a weapon to attack and penetrate it Hawthorne is a master of symbolism, which he took from the Puritan tradition and bequeathed to American literature in a revivified form. The symbol can be found everywhere in his writing, and his masterpiece. The Scarlet Letter, provides the most conclusive proof.
4. Influence
Hawthorne's influence has been great. He was accorded due recognition by his contemporary James Russell Lowell in the latter' s A Fable for Critics. He changed Herman Melville' s original scheme for his Moby Dick. William Dean Howells learned to use Hawthorne's fiction as the benchmark for their novel-writing practice. In this century William Faulkner and some Gothic novelists clearly show their indebtedness to him.
5. Major works
The Scarlet Letter
Twice-told Tales
Mosses from an Old Manse
The House of the Seven Gables
The Blithdale Romance
The Marble Faun
"Young Goodman Brown"
"The Minister's Black Veil"
" Rappacint ? s Daughter"
6. Analysis of bis major works
? The Scarlet Letter
( 1 ) Theme—This novel assumes the universality of guilt and explores the complexities and ambiguities of man1 s choices. Hawthorne does not intend to tell a love story nor a story of sin, but focuses his attention on the moral, emotional, and psychological effects or consequences of the sin on the people in general and those main characters in particular, so as to show us the tension between society and individuals. To Hawthorne, everybody is potentially a sinner, and great moral courage is therefore indispensable for the improvement of human nature.
(2) Symbolism—Hawthorne portrays Hester as an aristocratic and sensitive young woman who meets her sentence with dignity and courage. When she is set free, she does not flee the community. She supports herself and her child by doing fancy needlework, devotes her life to her child and helping the sick and the poor, and wins the admiration and love of her fellow-men again. So, The Scarlet Letter is a hymn on the moral growth of the woman. The scarlet letter at first is a token
of shame. Adultery, then the genuine sympathy and help she offers to her fellow villagers change it to Able. Later in the end, A appears in the sky, signifying Angel. Her life eventually acquires a real significance when she establishes a meaningful relationship with her fellowmen.
Herman Melville (1819 -1891)
I. Life
Melville is a famous novelist and poet in American literature. He had little education and began to work after stopped schooling. There are three things which deserve mention about his life: going out to sea, his marriage and his friendship with Hawthorne. His experiences and adventures on the sea furnished him with abundant material for fiction. Melville had to do hackwork for the money he needed to keep his wife in her extravagant style. Melville saw in Hawthorne the one American who was expressively aware of the evil at the core of American life. He found Hawthorne1 s understanding of evil, that blackness of vision, unusually fascinating. A significant change came about in the original design of his masterpiece Moby Dick when the two men met, and the novel was rewritten into the world classic that we read today. 2. Major works
Redburn
Typee
Omoo
Moby Dick
Mardi
White Jacket
Pierre
Billy Budd
The Confidence Man
Clarel
3. Analysis of major work
? Moby Dick
(1) Moby Dick represents the sum total of Melville? s bleak view of the world in which he lived. It is at once godless and purposeless. The loss of faith and the sense of futility and meaningless which characterize modern life of the West were expressed in Melville's work so well that the twentieth century has found it both fascinating and great
(2) One of the major themes of this novel is alienation, which exists in the life of Melville on different levels, between man and man, man, and society, and man and nature. Melville also criticizes New England Transcendentalism of its emphasis on individualism and Oversoul. Another theme of this novel is "rejection and quest".
(3) The novel is highly symbolic. The voyage itself is a metaphor for" search and discovery, the search for the ultimate truth of experience.” Moby Dick is the most conspicuous symbol in the book and it is capable of many interpretations. It is a symbol of evil to some, one of goodness to others, and both to still others. Its whiteness is a paradoxical color, signifying as it does death and corruption as well as purity, innocence, and youth. It represents the final mystery of the universe which man will do well to desist from pursuing.
(4) Melville manages to achieve the effect of ambiguity through employing the technique of multiple view of his narra-tives. He tends to write periodic sentences. His rich rhythmical prose and his poetic power have been profusely commented upon and praised.
第六章惠特曼-狄金森
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
1. Life
Whitman was brought up in a working-class background, on Long Island, New York. He had five years schooling and a good deal of " loafing" and reading. Thirsting for experience and gregarious in habit, Whitman tried at a variety of jobs and picked up a first hand knowledge of life and people in the new world. The experience with the people and the country furnished both the material and the guiding spirit for his epic. Leaves of Grass. When the Civil War began, he worked as a "wound dresser" in a military hospital. In 1873, he suffered a paralytic stroke and moved to New Jersey where he was taken good care of by his friends and where he spent the remaining years revising his Leaves of Grass.
2. Literary point of view
( 1 ) Influenced by the leading New Englander Emerson , Whitman states that the greatest poet breathes into the world the grandeur and life of the universe.
(2 ) Art should be based organically on nature; the poet' s work grows out of nature and cosmic processes and derives its form from within.
( 3 ) Whitman embraces idealism. He relies on insight and intuition.
3. Themes
(1 ) He shows concern for the whole hard-working people and the burgeoning life of cities.
(2) He advocates the realization of the individual value. Most of the poems in Leaves of Grass sing of the" en-masse" and the self as well.
( 3 ) Pursuit of love and happiness is approved of repeatedly and affectionately in his lines. The individual person and his desires must be respected.
( 4 ) Some of Whitman' s poems are politically committed. Before and during the Civil War, Whitman expressed much mourning for the sufferings of the young Lives in the battlefield and showed a determination to carry on the fighting dauntlessly until the final victory. Later, he wrote down a great many poems to air his sorrow over the death of Lincoln, and one of the famous is" When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom? d.
4. Writing style
( 1 ) Whitman broke free from the traditional iambic pentameter and wrote” free verse" , that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.
(2) There is a strong sense of the poems being rhythmical. Parallelism and phonetic recurrence at the beginning of the lines contribute to the musicality of his poems.
(3) Most of the pictures he painted with words are honest, undistorted images of different aspects of America of the day.
(4) Whitman? s language is relatively simple and even rather crude. Another characteristic in Whitman' s language is his strong tendency to use oral English. Whitman' s vocabulary is amazing. He would use powerful, colorful, as well as rarely-used words.
5. Whitman’s influence
Whitman?s influence over modern poetry is great in the world as well as in America Whitman has been compared to mountain in American literary history. For his innovations in diction and versification, his frankness about sex, his inclusion of the commonplace and the ugly and his censure of the weakness of the American democratic practice-these have paved his way to a share of immortality in American literature.
6. Major works
Leaves of Grass
"Song of Myself"
"The Poet"
“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom1 d"
"0 Captain, My Captain"
"I Hear America Singing"
"There was a Child Went Forth"
"Out of Cradle Endlessly Rocking")
Two Riverlets
Drum Traps
7. Analysis of major works
? Leaves of Grass
( I ) Grass, the most common thing with the greatest vitality, is an image of the poet himself, a symbol of the then rising American nation and an embodiment of his ideals about democracy and freedom.
(2) In this giant work, openness, freedom, and above all, individualism (the belief that the rights and freedom of individual people are most important) are all that concerned him.
(3) In this book he also praises nature, democracy, labor and creation, and sings of man? s dignity and equality, and of the brightest future of mankind. Most of the poems in Leaves of Grass sing of the" en-rnasse" and the self as well.
? "Song of Myself
Whitman extols the ideals of equality and democracy and celebrates the dignity, the self-reliant spirit, and the joy of the common man, "Song of Myself" reveals a world of equality, without rank and hierarchy.
? "When Lilacs Last in the D ooryard Bloom'd"
It deals with the typical Whitmansque love-and-death motif. It was written as part of the memories of President Lincoln, in the poem, when the poet looks up, he sees the western fallen star, and then when he looks around, he spots the lilac bush blossoming in the dooryard. Here the star is associated with the thought of death, the lilac with a token of life for the dead. Death is not the end, but the beginning of life. Q. Emily Dickinson (1830 -1886)
1. Life
Dickinson was born into a Calvinist family. Her father, an old Puritan, with a heart "pure and terrible”, influenced his daughter in no small way. She was shy, sensitive, some-limes rebellious. It was during her mid-twenties that Emily be-came a recluse. She wanted to live simply as a completely independent person.
2. Themes
(1 ) Based on her own experiences, joys or sorrows, she writes about doubt and belief about religious subjects, suffering and frustration caused by love, success and failure.
(2) The largest portion of Dickinson's poetry concerns death and immortality. For Dickinson, death leads to immortality.
(3) Dickinson sees nature as both gaily benevolent and cruel.
(4) On the ethical level, Dickinson holds that beauty, truth and goodness are ultimately one.
(5 ) She emphasizes free-will and human responsibility.
3. Writing styles
(1 ) Her poetry abounds in telling images. In the best of her poems, every word is a picture. So she is regarded as the precursor of Imagism poetry.
(2) Her poetic idiom is noted for its conciseness, directness and plainest words.
(3) Dickinson?s poems are usually short, and the first line of Dickinson … s poems is used to be the title.
(4) The capital letters in her poems are used for emphasis.
4. Comparison: Whitman VS. Dickinson Similarities:
( 1 ) Thematically, they both extolled, in their different ways, an emergent America, its expansion, its individualism and its Americanness, their poetry being part of" American Renaissance".
(2) Technically, 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 were pioneers in American poetry. Differences
(1) Whitman seems to keep his eye on society at large; Dickinson explores the inner life of the individual.
(2) Whereas Whitman is "national" in his outlook, Dickinson is" regional".
(3) Dickinson has the “catalogue technique" (direct, simple style) which Whitman doesn?t have.
5. Influence
Her poetry abounds in telling images. Her poetic idiom is noted for its laconic brevity, directness and plainest words. All these characteristics of her poetry were to become popular through Stephen Crane with the Imagists such as Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell in the twentieth century. She became the pre-cursor of the Imagist movement.
6. Major works
"The Soul selects her own Society"
" My life closed twice before its close"
"Because I could not stop for Death"
"I heard a fly buzz when I died"
"Mine—by the Right of the White Election"
"Wild Nights—Wild Nights"
"Death is a Dialogue between"
"I died for Beauty—but was scarce"
第七章埃德加-爱伦-坡
Edgar Allan Poe
1. Life
Poe?s childhood was a miserable one. He lost both of his parents when still very small, and was taken care of by a wealthy merchant of Virginia. Father and son enjoyed nothing but an unhappy relationship together. At 17 Poe entered the University of Virginia but did not finish. He went to West Point as a cadet but was dismissed because of misbehavior. Poe wrote and worked as editor most of his short life. He was poor all his life. At 27 he married his thirteen-year-old cousin, whose death in 1847 left him inconsolable and bitter with life than ever. He died, in mysterious circumstances, in October, 1849. For a long time after his death Poe remained probably the most controversial and most misunderstood literary figure in the history of American literature. But today Poe is recognized as a great writer of fiction, a poet of the first rank, and a critic of acumen and insight. His works are read the world over with appreciation and understanding.
2. Literary point of view
(1) Theories for short story
The short story must be such length as to be read at one sitting (brevity) , so as to ensure the totality of impression. (2)The very first sentence ought to help to bring out the "single effect" of the story. No word should be used which does not contribute to the" pre-established" design of the work ( compression ).
（3）A tale should reveal some logic with "the fullest satisfaction ," and should end with the last sentence, leaving a sense of finality with the reader.
{2) Theories for Poetry
(1)Poems should be short, concise and readable at one sitting.
(2)The aim of poem writing is beauty; the most beautiful thing described by a poem is the death of a beautiful woman; the desirable tone of a poem is melancholy.
3.He opposed didactic poems.
4.He stressed the form of poem, especially the beautiful and neat rhyme. He defined poetry as "the rhythmical creation of beauty".
3. Theme and style
He is a romantic poet who is preoccupied with the subject of the death of one' s beloved lover of great intelligence and beauty. He also writes about horror (Gothic) stories, murder.
and insanity.
Poe's style is traditional. It is much too rational, too ordinary to reflect the peculiarity of his theme. Somehow he failed to carry the newness of his idea into his style, which incidentally failed to echo his central theme. He is not easy to read. Poe? s choice of words and his syntax may have been responsible for his difficult prose.
4. Influence
His influence is world-wide in modern literature. His aesthetics and conscious craftsmanship, his attack on "the heresy of the didactic" f and his call for "the rhythmical creation of beauty" have influenced French symbolists and the devotees of "art for art's sake". Poe is the father of psychoanalytic criticism and the father of detective story.
5. Major works
Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque
"MS. Found in a Bottle"
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
"The Fall of the House of Usher"
"The Masque of the Red Death"
"The Cask of Amontillado"
"The Raven"
" Israfel"
"Annabel Lee
"To Helen"
The Philosophy of Composition
The Poetic Principle
6. Analysis of major works
? To Helen" /
“To Helen" is one of the most famous of Poe' s lyrics. It was inspired by the beauty of the mother of a schoolmate of Poe' 8in Richmond, Virginia. The poem is famous for a number of things, for example, its rhyme scheme, its varied
lint-lengths , its metaphor of a travel on the sea, and its oft-quoted lines, ”To the Glory that was Greece / And the grandeur that was Rome. "
? "The Raven"
"The Raven" is an illustration of Poe's poetic theory. It is about 100 lines (108 in fact) , perfectly readable at one sitting. A sense of melancholy over the death of a beloved beautiful young woman pervades the whole poem; the portrayal of a young man grieving for his lost Ignore, his grief being turned to madness under the steady one-word repetition of the talking bird introduced right at the beginning of the poem. The young man, a neurotic on the brink of a mental collapse, outpours his sorrow in his semi-sleep on the appearance of the bird. Poetic imagination externalizes itself in the phantom of a bird and intermingles with it to enhance the effect of the tragedy of the bereavement. Poe1 s poems are heavily tinted in a dreamy, hallucinatory color. And the narrator is in a state of semi-stupor.
第八章现实主义时期-豪威尔-詹姆斯
American Realism
Realism was a reaction against Romanticism and paved the way to Modernism.
During this period a new generation of writers, dissatisfied with the Romantic ideas in the older generation t came up with a new inspiration. This new attitude was characterized by a great interest in the realities of life. It aimed at the interpre-tation of the realities of any aspect of life, free from subjective prejudice, idealism, or romantic color. Instead of thinking a-bout the mysteries of life and death and heroic individualism, people1 s attention was now directed to the interesting features of everyday existence, to what was brutal or sordid, and to the open portrayal of class struggle.
So writers began to describe the integrity of human characters reacting under various circumstances and picture the pi-oneers of the Far West, the new immigrants and the struggles of the working classes.
Mark Twain, Howells and Henry James are three leading figures of the American Realism. D. William William Dean Howells
1. Life
He was born in a small town in Ohio and brought up in humble surroundings. He had little formal education but read widely. He was the first president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, once the editor-in-chief of the country 1 s most influential journal, The Atlantic Monthly. He was a prolific writer. He wrote volumes of drama, poetry, and novels in addition to criticism, travelogues, and autobiography.
2. Literary point of view
( 1 ) He defines realism as " fidelity to experience and probability of motive" , a quest of the average and the habitual rather than the exceptional and the unique high or low.
(2) Man in his natural and unaffected dullness was the object of Howells1 s fictional representation.
(3) Realism is by no means mere photographic pictures of externals but includes a central concern with" motives" and psychological conflicts.
(4) Realism, interpreting sympathetically the "common feelings of commonplace people," was best suited as a technique to express the spirit of America.
(5) With regard to literary criticism, Howells felt that the literary critic should not try to impose arbitrary or subjective evaluations on books but should follow the detached scientist in accurate description, interpretation, and classification.
3. Major works
The Rise of Silas Lapham
A Modern Instance
A Hazard of New Fortunes
Criticism and Fiction
4. Analysis of major work
? The Rise of Silas Lapham
In this novel Howells? qualities as a novelist are shown at their best. It relates the story of a new upstart in mid-19 th C in Boston. It is a fine specimen of American realistic writing. There is nothing heroic, dramatic or extraordinary. Howells is here so devoted to the small, the trivial, and the commonplace. In this novel the author emphasizes on ethics, stresses the need for sympathy and moral integrity and the need for different social classes to adapt to one another. The author criticizes the rise of materialism in American life.
Henry James
He is considered the founder of psychological realism. He was the first American writer to conceive his artistic work in international themes.
1.Life
Henry James was born into a wealthy cultured family of New England. His brother, William James, was to be the famous philosopher and psychologist. To some extent, his family background decides his theme: he wrote about the wealthy, deep-rooted leisure class. At a very early age, he was exposed to the cultural influence of Europe. In 1876, he settled down in London, and spent the rest of his life there.
2. James1 literary point of view
(1 ) As a realist f he holds that art must be related to life, the aim of the novel is to represent life. He advocates an immense increase of freedom in novel-writing and argues for inclusion of the disagreeable, the ugly and the commonplace.
(2)James's realism is characterized by his psychological approach to his subject matter. He emphasized the inner awareness and inward movements of his characters in face of outside occurrence rather than merely portraying their environment in any detail.
(3) James was concerned with "point of view" which is at the center of his aesthetic of the novel. James avoids the authorial omniscience as much as possible and makes his characters reveal themselves with his minimal intervention. 3. Theme
During his lifetime his fame rested largely upon his handling of his major fictional theme, "the international theme,”the meeting of America and Europe, American innocence in contact and contrast with European decadence, and its moral and psychological complications. For the American it was a process of progression from inexperience to experience, from
innocence to knowledge and maturity.
4. Style
James is not so easy to understand. He is often highly refined and insightful. With a large vocabulary, he is always accurate in word selection, trying to find the best expression for his literary imagination. Therefore Henry James is not only one of the most important realists of the period before the First World War, but also the most expert stylist of his time.
5. Major works
The American
Daisy Miller
The Portrait of a Lady
The Bostonians
The Princess Casamassima
The Turn of the Screw
When Maisie Knew
The Ambassadors
The Wings of the Dove
The Golden Bowl
6. Analysis of major works
? The Portrait of a Lady
This novel tells about the fate of one of those splendid Jamesian American girls, Isabel Archer, arriving in Europe, full of hope and with a will to live a free and noble life, only to fall prey to the sinister designs of two vulgar and unscrupulous expatriates, Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond. Isabel ' s dreams and expectations evaporate; her unawareness of evil a-round her and her money combine to work her undoing.
? The Ambassador
The Ambassador, which James considered his "most perfect" work of art, is a comedy of American and European manners. Strether, the middle-aged American, is sent to Paris to bring back the young man too fascinated with Europe to return home, but is eventually convinced that Paris is the place both for the young man and for himself. James stresses mutual understanding and sympathy.
第九章地方色彩小说-马克-吐温
Local Colorism
The vogue of local color fiction was the outgrowth of historical and aesthetic forces that had been gathering energy since early 19th century. Local colorism as a literary trend first made its presence felt in the late 1860s and early seventies. It is a variation of American literary realism.
Local colorists were consciously nostalgic historians of a vanishing way of life, recorders of a present that faded before their eyes. They concerned themselves with presenting and interpreting the local character of their regions. They tended to idealize and glorify, but they never forgot to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life. Major local colorists are Bret Harte, Hanlin Garland, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kate Chopin and Mark Twain.
Mark Twain (1835 -1910)
1. Life
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, is a great literary giant of America. He was brought up in the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi River. He was twelve when his father died and he had to leave school. He was successively a printer? s apprentice, a tramp printer, a silver miner, a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, and a frontier journalist in Nevada and California. This knocking about gave him wide knowledge of humanity. With the publication of his frontier tale, he became nationally famous. His first novel The Gilded Age was an artistic failure, but it gave its name to the American of the post-bellum period. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was his masterwork. Mark Twain was essentially an affirmative writer. But toward the latter part of his life, due to some tragic events, he changed to an almost despairing determinist.
2. Comparisons among Howells, Henry James and Mark Twain
Although Howells, James and Mark Twain all worked for realism, there were obvious differences between them.
(1 ) In the thematic Terms, James wrote mostly of the upper reaches of American society, and Howells concerned himself chiefly with middle class life, whereas Mark Twain dealt largely with the lower strata of society.
( 2) Technically, Howells wrote in the vein of genteel realism, James pursued an "imaginative" treatment reality or psychological realism, but Mark Twain … s contribution to the development of realism and American literature was partly through his theories of localism in American fiction, and partly through his colloquial style.
3. Comments on Mark Twain
( I ) Mark Twain was a famous American literary giant. He was a humorist and acclaimed as " the true father of our national literature" by Mencken.
(2) Mark Twain preferred to represent social life through portraits of local places which he knew best. He drew heavily from his own rich fund of knowledge of people and places.
(3) One of Mark Twain? s significant contributions to American literature lies in the fact that he made colloquial speech an accepted, respectable literary medium in the literary history of the country. His style of language influenced many later writers like Sherwood Anderson, Hemingway, etc.
(4)Mark Twain was also a social critic. All his life Mark Twain loved life and people, and freedom and justice, felt a pride in human dignity and advocated brotherhood of man. He haled tyranny and iniquity, despised meanness and cruelty.
(5) Mark Twain was a friend of the Chinese. He was not indifferent either to the Chinese immigrants persecuted in America or to china suffering intense agonies of humiliation by imperialist power.
4. Major works
Innocents Abroad
Roughing it
The Gilded Age
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Prince and the Pauper
Life on the Mississippi
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
The Mysterious Stranger
Autobiography
5. Analysis of major work
? The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(1 ) It is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but much deeper and more mature in theme and technique. It has always been regarded as one of the greatest books of western literature and western civilization. Hemingway described it as the book from which "all modern American literature comes”.
(2 ) The story tells a story about the U. S. before the Civil War, and takes place along the Mississippi River. It relates the story of the escape of Jim from slavery and how Huck Finn, floating along with him and helping him as best he could, changes his mind, his prejudice about Black people, and comes to accept Jim as a man and as a close friend as well.
(3) It is a veritable recreation of living models. Most of the major characters had prototypes in real life. The portrayal of individual incidents and characters achieved intense verisimilitude of detail. Serious problems are being discussed through the narration of a little illiterate boy. The fact of the wilderness juxtaposed with civilization. Though a local and particular book. It touches upon the human condition in a general indeed universal way: Humanism ultimately triumphs.
(4 ) Another notable feature of the novel is its language. The book is written in the colloquial style, in the general standard speech of uneducated Americans. Mark Twain made colloquial speech an accepted respectable literary medi-um in the American literature.
L American Naturalism
1.Historical Background
( I ) The post-bellum decades witnessed the emergence of " Modern America. " The spread of industrialization created extremes of wealth and poverty. Slums appeared in great numbers, and the city poor lived a life of insecurity, suffering, and violence.
(2) The westward expansion continued to push the frontier nearer the Pacific coast, the settlers found themselves subjected to the ruthless manipulation of forces including the railroad, which charged heavy freight rates and drove farmers to bankruptcy.
(3 ) Living in an indifferent, cold and Godless world, man was no longer free in any sense of the word. People … s outlook toward life became pessimistic. The Darwinian concepts like "the survival of the fittest" and "the human beast" became popular catchwords and standards of moral reference in an amoral world.
2. Features of Naturalist writings
( 1 ) American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. It evolved from realism but went a step further than it in por-traying social reality.
(2) The American naturalists tore the mask of gentility to pieces and wrote about the helplessness of man, his insignifi-cance in a cold world, and his lack of dignity in face of the crushing forces of environment and heredity.
(3) The Naturalist works reveal a bitter and wretched world where human beings battle hopelessly against over-whelming odds in a cold, harsh and at best apathetic environment , with their lives very much determined by forces they have no means whatever of manipulating. The whole picture is somber and dark; and the general tone one of hopelessness and even despair.
3. Major American Naturalists
Stephen Crane
Frank Norris
Theodore Dreiser
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Jack London
Upton Sinclair
Stephen Crane (1871 -1900)
1. Life
Stephen Crane was born into a New Jersey Methodist Clergyman … s family. He attended a military prep school where he stayed for less than a year. Then he moved into New York to earn his living as a free-lance journalist. First hand knowledge of New York slum area furnished him with material for his Maggie: a Girl of the Streets. In 1895the publication of The Red Badge of Courage and of his first book of poems, The Black Riders, brought him into prominence. He once was a correspondent in Cuba covering the Spanish-American War. Because of his marriage he left
America and settled down in England, where he enjoyed the company of Conrad and James. He died of tuberculosis in Germany in 1900.
2. Literary contributions
(1 ) Crane was a pioneer writing in the naturalistic tradition. His writings gave the whole esthetic movement of the nineties "a sudden direction and a fresh impulse".
(2) He is also a pioneer in the field of modem poetry. His early poems, brief, quotable, with their unrhymed, unor-thodox conciseness, and impressionistic imagery, were to exert a significant influence on modern poetry.
3. Major works
Maggie: a Girl of the Streets
The Black Riders
The Red Badge of Courage
"The Open Boat"
"The Blue Hotel"
"An Experiment in Misery"
4. Analysis of major work
? The Red Badge of Courage
(1 ) It is a story set in the period of the Civil War. The basic theme of the animal man in a cold, manipulating world runs through the whole book. Here Crane is looking into man?s primitive emotions and trying to tell the elemental truth about human life.
(2) Crane's debunking of war has a singularly modern touch about it. War in this novel is a plain slaughter-house. There is nothing like valor or heroism on the battlefield, and if there is anything, it is fear of death, cowardice, the natural instinct of man to run from danger. By de-romanticizing war and heroism, Crane initiated the modern tradition of telling the truth at all costs about the elemental human situation, and writing about war as a real human experience.
Frank Norris (1870 -1902)
1. Life
Frank Norris was born in Chicago and lived there until 1984 when the family moved to San Francisco. He studied art briefly in Paris, and entered the University of California at Berkeley in 1890. During a year at Harvard he wrote McTeague Before his death he was writing a trilogy on the production, distribution, and consumption of wheat. The first book The Octopus is his best work. The second is The Pit and the third is The Wolf, unfinished. Norris was also a literary critic. His essays of literary criticism have been collected in The Responsibility of the Novelist. He died of meningitis in 1902. Norris exerted a great influence on the writers of the 1920s and 1930s such as William Faulkner and John Steinbeck.
2. Writing style
Norris' s works are sometimes written in loose structure and the story is over adventurous, but his language is concise, quotable and poetic. And his vibrant and fresh imagery is also part of the literary legacy of the period.
3. Major works
Mcteague
The Octopus
The Pit
The Responsibility of the Novelist
4. Analysis of major work
McTcague
( I) It has been called "the first full-bodied naturalist American novel" and "a consciously naturalistic manifesto. " It is a classic study of the inevitable effect of environment and heredity on human lives.
(2) McTeague is a fine specimen of the "human beast," with his primitive, atavistic behavior, and wild desires. His tragedy ties in the fact that he cannot shake himself free of the brutalizing influences destined to destroy him as a man.
(3) This novel added strength to the naturalistic endeavor beginning to make its impact felt in the country.
IV. Theodore Dreiser (1871 -1945)
Dreiser was the greatest American literary naturalist
1. Life
Dreiser was born in Indiana, the ninth child of German-speaking parents. His child hood was spent in extreme poverty. His first novel, Sister Carrie, was rejected because of his relentless honesty in presenting the true nature of American life. Sister Carrie came out in 1900, followed by other works. Dreiser was left-oriented. He visited Russia and had a strong sympathy for communism. He wrote Dreiser Looks at Russia and Tragic America to express his new faith. He joined the American Communist Party before he died.
2. Dreiser’s points of view
(1 ) Dreiser embraced the social Darwinism. He thought man is merely an animal driven by greed and lust in a struggle for existence in which only the fittest survive. Life was determined and human beings had no power to assert his wil l. ( 2 ) He was scathingly critical of his country for in his o-pinion the moral and social codes of America misrepresent the truth of human nature.
3. Major works
Sister Carrie Jennie Gerhardt The Financier The Titan The Stoic The Genius
An American Tragedy Dreiser Looks at Russia Tragic America The Bulwark
4. Analysis of major work
? Sister Carrie
( 1) Sister Carrie tells about a country girl comes to Chicago to look for a better life or to pursue the American Dream.
(2) Sister Carrie embodies Dreiser? s naturalistic belief that men are controlled and conditioned by heredity, instinct and chance.
(3 ) To Sister Carrie, the world is cold and harsh. Alone and helpless, she moves along like a mechanism driven by desire and catches blindly at any opportunities for a better existence. A feather in the wind, she is totally at the mercy of forces she cannot comprehend, still less to say control.
(4) The obvious symbol of the novel is the rocking chair that stands for the uncertainty of life.
V. Other authors of the period
1. Edwin Arlington Robinson (1860 -1935)
Robinson was generally regarded as America 1 s greatest poet in the 1920s.
? Major works
"Man Against the Sky "
Richard Cory"
"Miniver Cheevy"
" Flammonde"
2. Jack London (1876 -1916)
Jack London was a very popular author in the first years of the 20 th century. He came from the bottom of society and worked hard to make his way up to the summit of the social hierarchy. But when he became a millionaire, he found fashionable society life empty and distasteful. He committed suicide, in despair.
? Major works
The Call of the Wild
White Fang
The Sea Wolf
Martin Eden
3.O. Henry (1862-1910)
0. Henry is the pseudonym of William Sidney Porter. He is one of the most prolific writers in the history of American lit-erature and also one of the most famous short story writers in the world.
? Major works
"The Gift of the Magi"
"The Cop and the Anthem"
"The Last Leaf"
第11章20世纪20年代-意象派-庞德
Overview of the 1920s
1. Background
( 1 ) The decade of the 1920s was sandwiched between two significant historical events: the First World War and the Great Depression.
(2) The country became urban in these years; a new type of industrial economy developed. Mass production, mass consumption, and mas9 leisure became essential to economic and cultural life and were soon to dominate the nation1 s culture and institutions.
(3) After the war the heroism, patriotism and the zeal for democracy that the romantic notion of war had inspired proved to be false and tasteless to a generation who had once had faith in them.
(4) On the social scene, there was a high degree of intolerance in American society as a whole. All forms of radicalism and all assertion of social and religious rights were treated with least tolerance.
(5) The loss of faith, which began noticeably with Darwin 1 s theories of evolution continued with greater intensity into the twentieth century. Without faith man held the sense of life being fragmented, chaotic, and disjunctive. People found
th emselves living in a spiritual wasteland.
2. New expressions In the field of art and literature
Impressionism
Dadaism
Expressionism
Symbolism
Surrealism
II.The coming of the image
The Imagist poem was the invention of a small group of English and American poets who came together in the first years of the 20th century to work out some new way of writing poem. This movement underwent three phases.
1. The first phase (1908-1909)
T. E. Hulme, an English poet founded in 1908 a Poets? Club which met in Soho every Wednesday to dine and discuss poetry. Hulme insisted on absolutely accurate presentation and no verbiage.
2. The second phase (1912 -1914)
Ezra Pound was the leading figure in this period. Poetic Principle1 s laid down by Pound and Flint are:
(1) Direct treatment of the "thing", whether subjective or objective;
(2) To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation;
( 3) As regarding rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome.
3. The third phase (1914 -1917)
Amy Lowell took over from Pound and pushed the movement into the period of "Amygism". Disagreements aroused between the Imagist and the Imagist movement gradually lost its momentum.
4. Conception of image
T. E. Hulme; The image must enable one " to dwell and linger upon a point of excitement, to achieve the impossible and convert a point into a line".
Ezra Pound; An image is "that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time".
Richard Aldington：he exact word must bring the effect of the object before the reader as it had presented itself to the poet's mind at the time of writing.
5. American Imagists
Ezra Pound
Amy Lowell
William Carlos Williams
Wallace Stevens
T. S. Eliot
Carl Sandburg ID.
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
Ezra Pound was identified as the father of modern American poetry and the most influential leader of the Imagist Movement
1. Life
Part I The Literature of Colonial America I．Historical Introduction The colonial period stretched roughly from the settlement of America in the early 17th century through the end of the 18th. The first permanent settlement in America was established by English in 1607. ( A group of people was sent by the English King James I to hunt for gold. They arrived at Virginia in 1607. They named the James River and build the James town.) II．The pre-revolutionary writing in the colonies was essentially of two kinds: 1) Practical matter-of-fact accounts of farming, hunting, travel, etc. designed to inform people "at home" what life was like in the new world, and, often, to induce their immigration 2) Highly theoretical, generally polemical, discussions of religious questions. III．The First American Writer The first writings that we call American were the narratives and journals of these settlements. They wrote about their voyage to the new land, their lives in the new land, their dealings with Indians. Captain John Smith is the first American writer. A True Relation of such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia Since the First Planting of That Colony (1608) A Map of Virginia: A Description of the Country (1612) General History of Virgini a (1624): the Indian princess Pocahontas Captain John Smith was one of the first early 17th-century British settlers in North America. He was one of the founders of the colony of Jamestown, Virginia. His writings about North America became the source of information about the New World for later settlers. One of the things he wrote about that has become an American legend was his capture by the Indians and his rescue by the famous Indian Princess, Pocahontas. IV．Early New England Literature William Bradford and John Winthrop John Cotton and Roger Williams Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor V．Puritan Thoughts 1. The origin of puritan In the mediaeval Europe, there was widespread religious revolution. In the 16th Century, the English King Henry VIII (At that time, the Catholics were not allowed to divorce unless they have the Pope's permission. Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife because she couldn't bear him a son. But the Pope didn't allow him to divorce, so he) broke away from the Roman Catholic Church & established the Church of
美国文学史作品作家汇总美国文学 Part 1. Colonial America Thomas Paine托马斯潘恩1737-1809 The Case of the Officers of Excise税务员问题；Common Sense常识；American Crisis美国危机；Rights of Man人的权利：Downfall of Despotism专制体制的崩溃；The Age of Reason理性时代Philip Freneau菲利普弗伦诺1752-1832 The Rising Glory of America蒸蒸日上的美洲；The British Prison Ship英国囚船；To the Memory of the Brave Americans纪念美国勇士-----同类诗中最佳；The Wild Honeysuckle野生的金银花；The Indian Burying Ground印第安人殡葬地 .Jonathan Edwards The Freedom of the Will 论意志自由The Great Doctrine of Original Sin defended论原罪The Nature of True Virtue论真是德行的本原Benjamin Franklin本杰明富兰克林1706-1790 A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Money; Poor Richard’s Almanac穷查理历书；The Way to Wealth致富之道；The Autobiography自传 Part 2. American Romanticism Washington Irving华盛顿欧文1783-1859 A History of New York纽约的历史-----美国人写的第一部诙谐文学杰作；The Sketch Book见闻札记The Legend of Sleepy Hollow睡谷的传说-----使之成为美国第一个获得国际声誉的作家；Brace bridge Hall布雷斯布里奇田庄；Talks of Travelers旅客谈；The Alhambra阿尔罕伯拉
ⅠColonial America(17th century)殖民主义时期文学 1.In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered America and he mistook the native people on the new continent for Indians. Character of colonial literature: a.content: religious, political b.form: diary, journal, letters, travel books, sermons, history (personal literature) c.Style: simple. direct, concise d.out of humble origins Early in the 17th century, the English settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts began the main stream of what we recognize as the American national history. The earliest settlers in America included Dutch, Swedes, Germans, French, Spaniards, Italians and Portuguese. The first permanent English settlement in North America was established at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607(北美弗吉尼亚詹姆斯顿) 2.Captain Town Smith, the first American writer 3.Puritan Thoughts: hard work, thrift(节俭), piety(虔诚), sobriety(节制), 这些也成了早期 美国作品主导思想. 典型的清教徒：John Cotton & Roger William, John Cotton was called “the Patriarch of New England(新英格兰教父)” 清教徒采用的文学体裁：narratives(日记) and journals(游记) 清教徒在美国的写作内容： 1）Their voyage to the new land 2）Adapting themselves to unfamiliar climates and crops 3）About dealing with Indians 4）Guide to the new land, endless bounty, invitation to bold spirit 4.Private literature: theological, moral, historical, political 5.The work of two writers, Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor, rose to the level of real poetry. Anne Bradstreet is one of the most interesting of the early poets, 英国最早移民到美国的诗人. The best of the Puritan poets was Edward Taylor. ⅡReason and Revolution(18th century)理性和革命时期文学 1.The War for Independence (1776-1783) ended in the formation of a Federative bourgeois democratic republic - the United States of America. 2.Bourgeois Enlightenment 3.Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard’s Almanac(穷人理查德的年鉴), an annual collection of proverbs. The Autobiography, 18世纪美国唯一流传至今的自传 ?The Autobiography is, first of all, a Puritan document. It is Puritan because it is a record of self-examination and self-improvement. The Puritans, as a type, were very much given to self-analysis. ?The Autobiography shows Franklin was spokesman for the new order of 18th-century Enlightenment, and that he represented in America all its ideas, that man is basically good and free, by nature endowed by God with certain inalienable rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Captain John Smith (first American writer). Anne Bradstreet；The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America （colonists living） Edward Taylor(the best puritan poet) John Cotton ”the Patriarch of New England” teacher spiritual leader Benjamin Franklin The Autobiography Poor Richard’s Almanack Thomas Jefferson： Political Career Thoughts The Declaration of Independence we hold truth to be self-evidence Philip Freneau“Father of American Poetry” The Wild Honey Suckle American Romanticism optimism and hope Nationalism Washington Irving“Father of American Literature short story”The first “Pure Writer” A History of New York The Sketch Book marked the beginning of American Romanticism! “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”Rip Van Winkle James Fenimore Cooper Father of American sea and frontier novels Leather stocking Tales The Last of the Mohicans The Pioneers The Prairie The Pathfinder The Deerslayer Edgar Allan Poe father of detective story and horror fiction Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque “MS. Found in a Bottle” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” “The Fall of the House of Usher”“The Masque of the Red Death”“The
美国文学史_作者作品 Part 1. Colonial America(1607-1800) John Smith(158-1631) 约翰斯密斯The General History of Virginia 弗吉尼亚通史, A Description of New England 新 英格兰概览 William Bradford(1590-1657) 威廉布Of Plymouth Plantation 普利茅斯拓荒 莱德福 John Winthrop(1588-1649) 约翰温斯A Model of Christian Charity 基督徒慈善的典范 洛普 Anne Bradstreet(1612- 1672) “Contemplations ”, “Upon the Burning of Our House”, ” To My Dear and Loving Husband”, In Reference to Her Children ”,” The Flesh and The Spirit ” As Weary Pilgrim ” Edward Taylor(1642-1729) 爱德华泰“ Huswifery ”, “Upon a Spider Catching a Fly ” Roger Williams(1603-1683) 罗杰威廉The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for the Cause of Conscience
John Woolman(1720- 1772) “Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes”, A Plea for the Poor ” Thomas Paine(1737 -1809) The Case of the Officers of Excise 税务员问题;Common Sense常识［American Crisis 美国危机［Rights of Man 人的权利：Downfall of Despotism 专制体制 崩溃;The Age of Reas on 理性时代 Philip Freneau(1752-1832) The Rising Glory of America;The British Prison Ship 英国囚船;To the Memory of the Brave Americans 纪念美国勇士同类诗中最佳;The Wild Honeysuckle 野生的金银花;The Indian Burying Ground; The Dying Indian: Tomo Chequi Charles Brockden Brown(1771-1810) Wieland; Edgar Huntly; Ormond; Arthur Mervyn Jonathan Edwards(1703-1758) 爱德华The Freedom of the Will 《意志的自 由》The Great Doctrine of Original Sin 兹defended 《原罪说辩》The Nature of True Virtue 真美德的性质; Images or Shadows of Divine Things 《神灵的形影》;” Personal Narrative ” Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God ”愤怒的上帝手中之罪人 Benjamin Franklin(1706-1790) Poor Richard?s Almanac 穷查理历书;The Way to Wealth 致富之道;The Autobiography 自传 Hector St.John de Crevecour Letters form an American Farmer 来自美国农夫的信
美国文学史复习（colonialism) 第一部分殖民主义时期的文学 一、时期综述 1、清教徒采用的文学体裁：a、narratives 日记b、journals 游记 2、清教徒在美国的写作内容： 1）their voyage to the new land 2) Adapting themselves to unfamiliar climates and crops 3) About dealing with Indians 4) Guide to the new land, endless bounty, invitation to bold spirit 3、清教徒的思想： 1）puritan want to make up pure their religious beliefs and practices 净化信仰和行为方式 2) Wish to restore simplicity to church and the authority of the Bible to the theology. 重建教堂，提供简单服务，建立神圣地位 3）look upon themselves as chosen people, and it follow logically that anyone who challenged their way of life is opposing God's will and is not to be accepted. 认为自己是上帝选民，对他们的生活有异议就是反对上帝 4）puritan opposition to pleasure and the arts sometimes has been exaggerated. 反对对快乐和艺术的追求到了十分荒唐的地步5）religious teaching tended to emphasize the image of a wrathful God.强调上帝严厉的一面，忽视上帝仁慈的一面。 4、典型的清教徒：John Cotton & Roger William 他们的不同：John Cotton was much more concerned with authority than with democracy; William begins the history of religious toleration in America. 5、William的宗教观点：Toleration did not stem from a lack of religious convictions. Instead, it sprang from the idea that simply to be virtuous in conduct and devout in belief did not give anyone the right to force belief on others. He also felt that no political order or church system could identify itself directly with God. 行为上的德，信仰上的诚，并没有给任何人强迫别人该如何行事的权利。没有任何政治秩序和教会体制能够直接体现神本身的意旨。 6、英国最早移民到美国的诗人：Anne Bradstreet 7、在殖民时期最好的清教徒诗人：the best of Puritan poets is Edward Tayor. 学习指南： 1、Could you give a description of American Puritans? 关于美国清教徒的描绘 Like their brothers back in England, were idealists, believing that the church should be restored to the "purity" of the first-century church as established by Jesus Christ himself. To them religion was a matter of primary importance. They made it their chief business to see that man lived and thought and acted in a way which tended to the glory of God. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God, all that John Calvin, the great French theologian who lived in Geneva had preached. It was this kind of religious belief that they brought with them into the wildness. There they meaant to prove that were God's chosen people enjoying his blessings on this earth as in Heaven. 2、Hard work, thrift, piety and sobriety were the Puritan values that dominated much of the earliest American writing. 3、The work of two writers, Anne Bradstreet & Edward Taylor, rose to the level of real poetry.
美国文学史复习1（colonialism) 第一部分殖民主义时期的文学 一、时期综述 1、清教徒采用的文学体裁：a、narratives 日记b、journals 游记 2、清教徒在美国的写作内容： 1）their voyage to the new land 2) Adapting themselves to unfamiliar climates and crops 3) About dealing with Indians 4) Guide to the new land, endless bounty, invitation to bold spirit 3、清教徒的思想： 1）puritan want to make up pure their religious beliefs and practices 净化信仰和行为方式 2) Wish to restore simplicity to church and the authority of the Bible to the theology. 重建教堂，提供简单服务，建立神圣地位 3）look upon themselves as chosen people, and it follow logically that anyone who challenged their way of life is opposing God's will and is not to be accepted. 认为自己是上帝选民，对他们的生活有异议就是反对上帝 4）puritan opposition to pleasure and the arts sometimes has been exaggerated. 反对对快乐和艺术的追求到了十分荒唐的地步5）religious teaching tended to emphasize the image of a wrathful God.强调上帝严厉的一面，忽视上帝仁慈的一面。 4、典型的清教徒：John Cotton & Roger William 他们的不同：John Cotton was much more concerned with authority than with democracy; William begins the history of religious toleration in America. 5、William的宗教观点：Toleration did not stem from a lack of religious convictions. Instead, it sprang from the idea that simply to be virtuous in conduct and devout in belief did not give anyone the right to force belief on others. He also felt that no political order or church system could identify itself directly with God. 行为上的德，信仰上的诚，并没有给任何人强迫别人该如何行事的权利。没有任何政治秩序和教会体制能够直接体现神本身的意旨。 6、英国最早移民到美国的诗人：Anne Bradstreet 7、在殖民时期最好的清教徒诗人：the best of Puritan poets is Edward Tayor. 学习指南： 1、Could you give a description of American Puritans? 关于美国清教徒的描绘 Like their brothers back in England, were idealists, believing that the church should be restored to the "purity" of the first-century church as established by Jesus Christ himself. To them religion was a matter of primary importance. They made it their chief business to see that man lived and thought and acted in a way which tended to the glory of God. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God, all that John Calvin, the great French theologian who lived in Geneva had preached. It was this kind of religious belief that they brought with them into the wildness. There they meaant to prove that were God's chosen people enjoying his blessings on this earth as in Heaven. 2、Hard work, thrift, piety and sobriety were the Puritan values that dominated much of the earliest American writing. 3、The work of two writers, Anne Bradstreet & Edward Taylor, rose to the level of real poetry. 4、The earliest settlers included Dutch, Swedes, Germans, French, Spaniards Italian, and Portuguese. 美国文学史复习2（reasoning and revolution) (2009-01-17 15:54:25) 一、美国的性质： The war for Independence ended in the formation of a Federative bourgeois democratic republic - the United States of America. 联邦的资产阶级民主共和国--美利坚合众国。 二、代表作家： 1、Benjamin Franklin 本杰明·富兰克林1706-1790 1）"Poor Richard's Almanac" 穷人查理德的年鉴annual collection of proverbs 流行谚语集 It soon became the most popular book of its kind, largely because of Franklin's shrewd humor, and first spread his reputation 2) Founded the Junto, a club for informal discussion of scientific, economic and political ideas. 建立了一个秘密俱乐部，讨论的主题是政治、经济和科学等时事方面的问题 3）established America's first circulating library, founded the college--University of Pennsylvania. 建立了美国第一个可租借的图书馆，还创办了一所大学——就是现在的宾夕法尼亚大学。 4）first applied the terms "positive" and "negative" to electrical charges. 5)As a representative of the Colonies, he tried in vain to counsel the British toward policies that would let America grow and flourish in association with England. He conducted the difficulty negotiations with France that brought financial and military support for America in the war. 作为殖民地的代表，他不断建议英国改变政策，使美国可以和英国一起发展、繁荣。他说服法国支持美国的独立战争。 6）As an author he had power of expression, simplicity, a subtle humor, sarcastic.作为作家具有非凡的才能，表达简洁明了，幽默，讽刺天才、 7）The Way to Wealth致富之道The Autobiography自传18世纪美国唯一流传至今的自传
History And Anthology of American Literature （6） 附：作者及作品 一、殖民主义时期The Literature of Colonial America 1．船长约翰·史密斯Captain John Smith 《自殖民地第一次在弗吉尼亚垦荒以来发生的各种事件的真实介绍》 “A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia Since the First Planting of That Colony” 《弗吉尼亚地图，附：一个乡村的描述》 “A Map of Virginia: with a Description of the Country” 《弗吉尼亚通史》“General History of Virginia” 2．威廉·布拉德福德William Bradford 《普利茅斯开发历史》“The History of Plymouth Plantation”3．约翰·温思罗普John Winthrop 《新英格兰历史》“The History of New England” 4．罗杰·威廉姆斯Roger Williams 《开启美国语言的钥匙》”A Key into the Language of America” 或叫《美洲新英格兰部分土著居民语言指南》 Or “A Help to the Language of the Natives in That Part of America Called New England ” 5．安妮·布莱德斯特Anne Bradstreet 《在美洲诞生的第十个谬斯》 ”The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America” 二、理性和革命时期文学The Literature of Reason and Revolution 1。本杰明·富兰克林Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) ※《自传》“ The Autobiography ” 《穷人理查德的年鉴》“Poor Richard’s Almanac” 2。托马斯·佩因Thomas Paine (1737-1809) ※《美国危机》“The American Crisis” 《收税官的案子》“The Case of the Officers of the Excise”《常识》“Common Sense” 《人权》“Rights of Man” 《理性的时代》“The Age of Reason” 《土地公平》“Agrarian Justice” 3。托马斯·杰弗逊Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) ※《独立宣言》“The Declaration of I ndependence” 4。菲利浦·弗瑞诺Philip Freneau (1752-1832) ※《野忍冬花》“The Wild Honey Suckle” ※《印第安人的坟地》“The Indian Burying Ground” ※《致凯提·迪德》“To a Caty-Did” 《想象的力量》“The Power of Fancy” 《夜屋》“The House of Night” 《英国囚船》“The British Prison Ship” 《战争后期弗瑞诺主要诗歌集》 “The Poems of Philip Freneau Written Chiefly During the Late War” 《札记》“Miscellaneous Works” 三、浪漫主义文学The Literature of Romanticism 1。华盛顿·欧文Washington Irving (1783-1859) ※《作者自叙》“The Author’s Account of Himself” ※《睡谷传奇》“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” 《见闻札记》“Sketch Book” 《乔纳森·欧尔德斯泰尔》“Jonathan Oldstyle” 《纽约外史》“A History of New York” 《布雷斯布里奇庄园》“Bracebridge Hall” 《旅行者故事》“Tales of Traveller” 《查理二世》或《快乐君主》“Charles the Second” Or “The Merry Monarch” 《克里斯托弗·哥伦布生平及航海历史》 “A History of the Life and V oyages of Christopher Columbus” 《格拉纳达征服编年史》”A Chronicle of the Conquest of Grandada” 《哥伦布同伴航海及发现》 ”V oyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus” 《阿尔罕布拉》“Alhambra” 《西班牙征服传说》“Legends of the Conquest of Spain” 《草原游记》“A Tour on the Prairies” 《阿斯托里亚》“Astoria” 《博纳维尔船长历险记》“The Adventures of Captain Bonneville” 《奥立弗·戈尔德史密斯》”Life of Oliver Goldsmith” 《乔治·华盛顿传》“Life of George Washington” 2．詹姆斯·芬尼莫·库珀James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) ※《最后的莫希干人》“The Last of the Mohicans” 《间谍》“The Spy” 《领航者》“The Pilot” 《美国海军》“U.S. Navy” 《皮袜子故事集》“Leather Stocking Tales” 包括《杀鹿者》、《探路人》”The Deerslayer”, ”The Pathfinder” 《最后的莫希干人》“The Last of the Mohicans” 《拓荒者》、《大草原》“The Pioneers”, “The Praire” 3。威廉·卡伦·布莱恩特William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) ※《死之思考》“Thanatopsis” ※《致水鸟》“To a Waterfowl” 4。埃德加·阿伦·坡Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) ※《给海伦》“To Helen” ※《乌鸦》“The Raven” ※《安娜贝尔·李》“Annabel Lee” ※《鄂榭府崩溃记》“The Fall of the House of Usher” 《金瓶子城的方德先生》“Ms. Found in a Bottle” 《述异集》“Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” 5。拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) ※《论自然》“Nature” ※《论自助》“Self-Reliance” 《美国学者》“The American Scholar” 《神学院致辞》“The Divinity School Address” 《随笔集》“Essays” 《代表》“Representative Men” 《英国人》“English Traits” 《诗集》“Poems” 6。亨利·戴维·梭罗Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) ※《沃尔登我生活的地方我为何生活》 1
美国文学史作品作家汇总 美国文学 Part 1. Colonial America Thomas Paine托马斯?潘恩1737-1809 The Case of the Officers of Excise税务员问题；Common Sense常识；American Crisis美国危机；Rights of Man人的权利：Downfall of Despotism专制体制的崩溃；The Age of Reason理性时代 Philip Freneau菲利普?弗伦诺1752-1832 The Rising Glory of America蒸蒸日上的美洲；The British Prison Ship英国囚船；To the Memory of the Brave Americans纪念美国勇士-----同类诗中最佳；The Wild Honeysuckle 野生的金银花；The Indian Burying Ground印第安人殡葬地 .Jonathan Edwards The Freedom of the Will 论意志自由The Great Doctrine of Original Sin defended论原罪The Nature of True Virtue论真是德行的本原 Benjamin Franklin本杰明?富兰克林1706-1790 A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Money; Poor Richard’s Almanac穷查理历书；The Way to Wealth致富之道；The Autobiography自传 Part 2. American Romanticism Washington Irving华盛顿?欧文1783-1859 A History of New York纽约的历史-----美国人写的第一部诙谐文学杰作；The Sketch Book见闻札记The Legend of Sleepy Hollow睡谷的传说-----使之成为美国第一个获得国际声誉的作家；Brace bridge Hall布雷斯布里奇田庄；Talks of Travelers旅客谈；The Alhambra阿尔罕伯拉 Jamie Fennimore Cooper詹姆斯?费尼莫尔?库珀1789-1851 The Spy间谍;The Pilot领航者;The Little page Manuscripts利特佩奇的手稿;Leather stocking Tales皮裹腿故事集:The Pioneer拓荒者；The Last of Mohicans最后的莫希干人;The Prairie大草原;The Pathfinder探路者;The Deer slayer杀鹿者 Part 3.New England Transcendentalism Ralf Waldo Emerson拉尔夫?沃尔多?爱默生1803-1882 Essays散文集:Nature论自然-----新英格兰超验主义者的宣言书;The American Scholar 论美国学者;Divinity; The Over soul论超灵;Self-reliance论自立;The Transcendentalist超验主义者;Representative Men代表人物;English Traits 英国人的特征;School Address神学院演说 Concord Hymn康考德颂;The Rhoda杜鹃花;The Humble Bee野蜂;Days日