WaltWhitman简介.ppt

Walt Whitman Emily Dickinson (1819-1892) (1830-1886) Whitman was honored on a Famous Americans Series Postal issue, in 1940 One of the great innovators in American literature He gave American its first genuine epic poem: Leaves of Grass. 2 Walt Whitman Life story Major works Special features of works 3 Biographical Introduction Born on May 31, 1819, the second son of a house- builder Largely self-taught, acquainted with the works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible. In 1836, as a teacher in the one-room school houses of Long Island Continuing to teach until 1841, then turning to journalism as a full-time career. 4 A democrat An individualist A nationalist A pantheist(泛神论） An American free verse poet Biographical Introduction 5 An individualist tried to find a way to express his unique feelings about himself, the nation, and the cosmos. created a style and language of his own. greatly influenced by Emerson, the transcendental（先验论的 ） master. but not self-exclusion. Instead, he thinks that many people could realize a community while remaining individuals. Biographical Introduction 6 Major Works (1) Leaves of Grass A collection of Whitmans poems, his lifelong achievement. Consisting of 12 poems when first published in 1855. over the next 37 years it appeared in five revised editions and three reissues. The most famous pieces-Song of Myself, There Was a Child Went Forth, Pioneers! Pioneers! etc. With new poetic form of free verse and oral language, Leaves of Grass has become a landmark in American literary history, which represents the poet, the people, and the nation in the 19th century America and celebrates the future of the nation and the ideals of equality and democracy. 7 (2) Democratic Vistas (1871) The main themes are the ideals of democracy and individualism, which the author considers to be compatible. Whitman outlines a new culture order for the U.S. He condemns the degradation of democracy and the growth of material wealth during the post-Civil War period, prophesies a future greatness and announces that there must be a declaration of cultural independence to achieve a truly national indigenous（本土）literature. Major Works 8 (1)Themes Transcendent power of love, brotherhood, and comradeship（同志关系） Imaginative projection into others lives Optimistic faith in democracy and equality Belief in regenerative and illustrative powers of nature and its value as a teacher Equivalence of body and soul and the unabashed（ 不加掩饰的） exaltation（兴奋）of the body and sexuality Special Features 9 (2) Form He created Free verse- the verse that does not follow a fixed metrical pattern, the verse without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. Parallelism, a rhythm of thought Phonetic recurrence（语音反复） The use of a certain pronoun “I” A looser（自由） and more open-ended syntactic structure Strong tendency to use oral English Vocabulary-powerful, colorful, rarely- used words of foreign origins, some even wrong Sentences-catalogue techniques: long list of names, long poem lines Special Features 10 (3)The first person narrator Whitmans poetry is distinctively noted for the use of the first person narrator “I”. making his poems direct and sympathetic to the reader. (4) Language oral and powerful tends to use everyday English in his poems that would make an easy contact with the average American. his use of powerful and sometimes unusual words might give the reader a sense that his poems are not shallow but deep. Special Features 11 12 the daughter of Edward Dickinson, a prominent lawyer of Amherst, Mass., 13 Born in a Calvinist(严守道德的) family on December 10, 1830 in Amherst, MA. Educated at Amherst Academy for 7 years. At 17, began college at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary; she became ill in the spring of her first year and did not return. She would leave home only for short trips for the remainder of her life, leading scholars to speculate（ 思索）she may have suffered agoraphobia(旷野恐惧 症). 14 Between 1858 and 1862, it was later discovered, she wrote like a person possessed, often producing a poem in a day. It was also during this period that her life was transformed into the myth of Amherst. Withdrawing（冷淡 ）more and more, keeping to her room, sometimes even refusing to see visitors who called, she began to dress only in whitea habit that added to her reputation as an eccentric. 15 我是无名之辈(Im nobody , who are you) 这是我写给世界的信This is my letter to the world) 因为我不能等待死神（Because I couldnt stop for death) 我意识到一场葬礼（I felt a funeral , in my brain) 我死时听到一只苍蝇叫（I heard a fly buzz when I died) 我品味未经酿造的饮料（I taste a liquor never brewed) 16 Dickinsons poems are usually based on her own experiences, her sorrows and joys. But within her little lyrics Dickinson addresses those issues that concern the whole human beings. 17 Themes religion doubt and belief about religious subjects death and immortality love suffering and frustration caused by love physical aspect of desire nature kind and cruel free will and human responsibility 18 Her poetry is unique and unconventional in its own way. Her poems have no titles, hence are always quoted by their first lines. In her poetry there is a particular stress pattern, in which dashes （破折号）are used as a musical device to create cadence(韵律) and capital letters as a means of emphasis. Most of her poems borrow the repeated four-line, rhymed stanzas of traditional Christian hymns（圣歌）, with two lines of four-beat meter（四拍计） alternating with two lines of three-beat meter. A master of imagery that makes the spiritual materialize in surprising ways. 19 Simple form: She used imperfect rhymes, subtle breaks of rhythm, and idiosyncratic（特殊癖好的） syntax and punctuation to create fascinating word puzzles, which have produced greatly divergent interpretations over the years. Dickinsons irregular or sometimes inverted sentence structure confuses readers. Her poetic idiom is noted for its laconic（用字简洁的） brevity, directness and plainness. Her poems are usually short, rarely more than twenty lines, and many of them are centered on a single image or symbol and focused on one subject matter. Remarkable for its variety, subtlety and richness. 20 Comparison: Whitman vs. Dickinson Similarities: Thematically, they both extolled（赞美）, in their differen