本科美国文学The Literary History of the United States of America.doc

I. English Literature 英国文学部分1. English literature began with the Anglo-Saxon settlement in England. “Beowulf” is the national epic of the Anglo-Saxon and English people.2. The Norman Conquest: The French speaking Normans under Duke William came in 1066 and defeated the English , thus William was crowned as King of England.3. The Romance: The most prevalent kind of literature in feudal England. The central character of romances was the knight, a man of noble birth, who was known for his chivalry.4. The ballads(民谣，民歌): the most important department of English folk literature is the ballad. A ballad is a story told in song, usually in 4-line stanzas, with the second and the fourth lines rhymed. For example, the Robin Hood Ballads.5. Geoffrey Chaucer , the founder of English poetry, was born in 1340, and died in 1400. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, thus founding the “Poets Corner”. “ The Canterbury tales”(13871400)is Chaucers masterpiece and one of the monumental works in English literature. 6. The English Renaissance: Thomas More (14781535) and his “Utopia”; the “poets poet of the English Renaissance was Edmund Spenser (1552-90)whose masterpiece is “The faerie Queene”. If the imaginative powers of literary creation of English renaissance found their expression in the poetry of Spenser and the drama of Shakespeare , the intellectual energy of this age showed itself in the achievement of Francis bacon(1561-1626).7. William Shakespeare(1564-1616): the literary giant of the English Renaissance. His famous comedies: (1) A Mid-Summer Nights Dream(2) The merchant of Venice(3) Twelfth Night(4) Alls Well that Ends Well.His famous tragedies:(1) Romeo and Juliet(2) Hamlet(3) King Lear(4) MacbethShakespeare also wrote 154 sonnets. 8. The 17th Century Literature - John Milton (16081674): “Paradise Lost” 9. The 18th Century LiteratureThe Enlightenment in Europe: The 18th century marked the beginning of an intellectual movement in Europe known as the Enlightenment. It was, on the whole, an expression of struggle of the bourgeoisies against feudalism. The enlighteners fought against class inequality, stagnation, prejudices and other survivals of feudalism. They attempted to place all branches of science at the service of mankind.10. Classicism in the English literature:The classicists modeled themselves after the Greek and the Latin authors, and tried to guide literary creation by some fixed laws and rules drawn from Greek and Latin works. Rhymed couplets instead of blank verse, the three unites of time, place and action, regularity in construction, and the presentation of types rather than individuals-these were some of the standards the classicists required of drama. Poetry, following the ancient divisions, should be lyric, epic, didactic, satiric or dramatic, and each class should be guided by its own principles. Prose should be precise, direct, smooth and flexible. Classicism achieved a rapid growth and prevailed for the better part of the 18th century. The literary representatives of classicism in English literature were John Dryden, A. Pope and Samuel Johnson.11. The Rise of the English Realistic Novel”Daniel Defoe(1661-1731): Robinson Crusoe(1719).Jonathan Swift(1667-1745): Gullivers Travels” (1726).Henry Fielding (1707-1754):Tom Jones (1749) 12. English Romanticism At the turn of the 18th and 19th century romanticism came to be the new trend in English literature. It rose and grew under the impetus of Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. It was marked by a strong protest against the bondage of Classicism, a recognition of the claims of passion and emotion, a great attention to the spiritual and emotional life of man and a return to nature. William Wordsworth(17701850): I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): The Rime of Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan George Gordon Byron (1788-1824): Don Juan, Sonnet on Chillon Percy Bysshe Shelley(1792-1822): Queen Mab, Ode to the West Wind, Prometheus Unbound(a lyric drama) John Keats(1795-1821): Ode to Autumn, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale13. English Critical Realism:Charles Dickens(1812-1870): Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Hard Times, Great Expectation, A Tale of Two Cities. William Thackeray(1811-18630: Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero, Some Women Novelists:Jane Austen(17751817): Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, EmmaCharlotte Bronte(1816-1855): Jane EyreEmily Bronte(1818-1848): Wuthering Heights George Eliot(18191890): The Mill on the Floss14. The Victorian Poets: The Brownings-Robert Browning(1812-1867 )and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861). (The Ring and the Book, My last Duchess)15. The Turn of the Century: Thomas Hardy(1840-1928): Tess of the D Urbervlles (refer to Lesson 15,Book 5) George Bernard Shaw(1856-1950): Mrs. Warrens Profession, Man and Superman, Major Barbara, The Apple Cart.16. Between the Two World Wars:T.S. Eliot(1887-1965): The Waste LandJames Joyce(1882-1941): Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, Virginia Woolf(1882-1941): Mrs. Dalloway, D. H. Lawrence(1885-1930): Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterleys LoverWilliam S. Maugham(1874-1965): Of Human Bondage17: Contemporary English Literature(1945-) Kingsley Amis(1922-): Luck Jim John Fowles(1926-) :The French Lieutenants Woman(法国中尉的女人) Iris Murdoch(1919-1999): Under the Net(在网下)，The Sandcastle(沙堡) Samuel Beckett(1906-): Waiting for Godot John Osborne(1929-) :Look Back in Anger Harold Pinter(1930-):Birthday Party, Homecoiming18. Contemporary English Literature(1980-) Martin Amis(1949-): Money : A Suicide Note(钞票：绝命书) Times Arrow(时光之箭) Julian Barnes(1946-): Flauberts Parrot(福楼拜的鹦鹉) The Literary History of the United States of America ( Undergraduate Level)( from the early colonial period to the present) I. The Colonial Period ( from the settlement of North America in the early 17th to the end of the 18th)(1) The major topic here will be about American Puritanism. (2) The major figures will be Jonathan Edwards(17031758), Benjamin Franklin (17061790),II. The Romantic Period ( the first half of the 19th-the American Civil War) (1) the major topics will cover a rising America with its ideals of democracy and equality, its industrialization, its westward expansion.(2) The writers in this period: Washington Irving(17831859): The Sketch Book, Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.Fenimore Cooper(17891851) and his Leatherstocking Tales which offers some fictional version of the American national experience of adventure into the wilderness of the American West.(3) “New England Transcendentalism” or “American Renaissance”(18361855)Ralph Waldo Emerson(1803-1882), Nature Henry David Thoreau( 18171862), Walden. Walt Whitman(18191892), Leaves of Grass Emily Dickinson(18301886), writing about her time in her completely original way. Nathanial Hawthorne( 18041864), The Scarlet Letter, short stories. Herman Melville(18191891), Moby Dick. Edgar Allan Poe(18091849), To Helen, The Raven ,The Philosophy of Composition. III. The Age of Realism (the American Civil War-the First World War) William Dean Howells(18371920), The Rise of Silas Lapham, Novel-Writing and Novel Reading. Mark Twain( 18351910), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Henry James ( 18431916), the international theme, The American, Daisy Miller, The Europeans, The Portrait of a Lady, The Art of Fiction, short stories. Theodore Dreiser