3.美国文学史及选读大纲.doc

人文知识 美国文学部分美国文学主要分为五个时期The Literature in Colonial PeriodThe Literature Around the Revolution of IndependenceAmerican RomanticismAmerican RealismAmerican ModernismEarly Colonial Literature. 1607-1700The Literature of Colonial AmericaPuritan Thoughts: (The Mayflower voyage 1620) “Puritans”, named after those who wished to “purify” the church of England.The First American Writer: Captain John SmithAnne Bradstreet: (1612-1672) One of the most important figures in the history of American Literature. She is considered by many to be the first American poet. Her first collection of poems The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America The first book written by a woman to be published in the United States. Edward Taylor (1642-1729)：The best of the Puritan poets THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURYThe literature of Reason And RevolutionThe Age of Reason in AmericaThe Age of EnlightenmentThe 18th-century American Enlightenment was a movement marked by an emphasis on rationality rather than tradition, scientific inquiry instead of unquestioning religious dogma, and representative government in place of monarchy. Enlightenment thinkers and writers were devoted to the ideals of justice, liberty, and equality as the natural rights of man.Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)Americas first great man of letters,He embodied the Enlightenment ideal of humane rationality.He was the first great self-made man in America.Franklins Poor Richards Almanac, begun in 1732 and published for many years, made Franklin prosperous and well-known throughout the colonies.God helps them that help themselves. Early to Bed, and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy, and wise. One To-day is worth two tomorrow.The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is an inspiring account of a poor boys rise to wealth and fame and the fulfillment of the American dream.It is a book on the art of self-improvement.Thomas Paine (1737-1809)Thomas Paines pamphlet Common Sense (Jan. 10, 1776) sold over 100,000 copies in the first three months of its publication.Common Sense is often regarded as the greatest of the Revolutionary pamphlet.The American Crisis (1776-1783)Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) The Declaration of IndependencePOET OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONPhilip Freneau (1752-1832)“Poet of the American Revolution”“Father of American Poetry”Among his best lyrics are “The Wild Honey Suckle” (1786) on morality and “The India Burying Ground” (1788) on the imagined afterlife.He became one of the most outstanding representatives of dawning nationalism in American literature.Noah Webster（1758-1843）1786: the independence of politics as well as literatureSamuel Johnson - first combine an English dictionary, last neoclassicist enlightenerA Dictionary of the English LanguageThe literature of Romanticism 美国文学的第一次繁荣Washington Irving (1789-1859)Father of American literatureThe central figure in the American literary world between 1809 and the Civil War, esp. after the publication of his Sketch Book.The first prose stylist of American Romanticism a very good example of an American romantic.He wrote for pleasure and to produce pleasure.He was the first American man of letters to support himself as a professional writer.He was the first American author to win international recognition, and was extreme popular in Europe.The Sketch Book of Geoffrye Crayon (Irvings pseudonym) contains his two best remembered stories, “Rip Van Winkle（瑞普-凡-温克尔） and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)Cooper was the first important writer to be critical of the United Sates.The first successful American novelistHe stands rather as the originator of the novel of adventure in American literature, and is frequently termed the American Scott.“ The Leather-Stocking Talesthe Deerslayer(1841)the Last of the Mohicans(1826),the Pathfinder(1840),the Pioneers(1823)The Prairie(1823)The Leather-Stocking Tales is the life of Natty Bumppo.Natty Bumppo, Coopers renowned literary character, embodies his vision of the frontiersman as a gentleman, a Jeffersonian natural aristocrat.The essential American soul D. H. LawrenceThe first American hero of this type.Natty is the first famous frontiersman in American literature and the literary forerunner of countless cowboy and backwoods heroes.William Cullen Bryantfirst of our American classic poetsOne of Americas earliest naturalist poetsThe American WordsworthHe writes the poem Thanatopsis in 1811.To a Waterfowl. The vagueness and religious ambiguities of the poem were the major themes.Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)The Fall of the House of UsherThe RavenAnnabel LeeTo HellenThe Purloined Letter被窃的信件The first literary critic The Philosophy of CompositionThe Poetic PrincipleGothic styleFather of Detective novelsThemes 1. death predominant theme in Poes writing “Poe is not interested in anything alive. Everything in Poes writings is dead.” 2. disintegration (separation) of life 3. horrorRalph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)The towering figure of his era, had a religious sense of mission.He was one of the greatest essayists in the country.Nature (1836) has been called “the manifesto of American transcendentalism”“The American Scholar” (1837) has been called “Americas Declaration of Intellectual Independence” Self-RelianceHenry David Thoreau (1817-1862)Thoreaus masterpiece, Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854), is the result of two years, two months, and two days (from 1845 to 1847) he spent living in a cabin he built at Walden Pond on property owned by Emerson.Walden is a spiritual book. Its seen as a classic of American prose, a book of essays put together, exploring subjects concerned with Nature, with the meaning of life, and with morality.Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)Many of Hawthornes stories are set in Puritan New England.Gothic novelsHis greatest novel, The Scarlet Letter (1850), has become the classic portrayal of Puritan America.Hawthornes reputation rests on his other novels and tales as well. In The House of the Seven Gables (1851), he again returns to New Englands history.My Kinsman, Major Molineux“Young Goodman Brown Herman Melville (1819-1891)Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, Melvilles masterpiece, is the epic story of the whaling ship Pequod and its ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab, whose obsessive quest for the white whale Moby-Dick leads the ship and its men to destruction.Moby-Dick has been called a natural epic - a magnificent dramatization of the human spirit set in primitive natureBilly BuddHenry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)The most important Boston Brahmin（婆罗门） poets were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell.Longfellow, professor of modern languages at Harvard, was the best-known American poet of his day.He was the only American poet to be honored by having his bust placed in the Poets Corner of Westminster Abbey.He wrote three long narrative poems popularizing native legends in European metersEvangeline (1847),The Song of Hiawatha (1855), - the first American epic in blank verse about the American IndiansThe Courtship of Miles Standish (1858).Walt Whitman (1819-1892)His Leaves of Grass (1855), which he rewrote and revised throughout his life, contains Song of Myself, the most stunningly original poem ever written by an American.Leaves of Grass is as vast, energetic, and natural as the American continent; it was the epic generations of American critics had been calling for, although they did not recognize it.O Captain! My Captain!I hear America Singing“free verse” (1) no fixed rhyme or scheme (2) parallelism, a rhythm of thought (3) phonetic recurrence (4) the habit of using snapshots (5) the use of a certain pronoun “I” (6) sentences catalogue technique: long list of names, long poem linesEmily Dickinson (1830-1886)nun of AmherstBecause I Cant Stop for DeathI Heard a Fly Buzz When I diedTheme: friendship, love and marriage, life and deathstyle (1) poems without titles (2) severe economy of expression (3) directness, brevity (4) musical device to create cadence (rhythm) (5) capital letters emphasis (6) short poems, mainly two stanzas (7) rhetoric techniques: personification make some of abstract ideas vividHarriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)Harriet Beecher Stowes novel Uncle Toms Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly was the most popular American book of the 19th century.Reasons for the success of Uncle Toms Cabin are obvious. It reflected the idea that slavery in the United States, the nation that purportedly embodied democracy and equality for all, was an injustice of colossal proportions.The literature of Realism(1865-1918)The Civil War The First World WarLocal ColoristsNew England:Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)South:Joel Chandler Harris (1848 -1908)Kate Chopin(1851-1904) The AwakeningWest frontiers: Bret Harte - The Luck of Roaring CampRealists1. ThemeHowells middle class /James upper class /Twain lower class2. TechniqueHowells smiling/genteel realism /James psychological realism /Twain local colorism and colloquialismWilliam Dean Howells (1837-1920)Dean of American Realismoptimistic realismInterpreting sympathetically the “common feelings of commonplace people” was best suited as a technique to express the spirit of America.The Rise of Silas LaphamHenry James (1843-1916)Novel of manners 世态小说Psychological analysis, forefather of stream of consciousnessPsychological realismDaisy MillerThe Portrait of a LadysThe Wings of the DoveThe Golden BowlSAMUEL CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN) (1835-1910)Ernest Hemingways famous statement that all of American literature comes from one great book, Twains Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, indicates this authors towering place in the tradition.Twain was the first major author to come from the interior of the country, and he captured its distinctive, humorous slang and iconoclasm.The most well-known example is Huck Finn, a poor boy who decides to follow the voice of his conscience and help a Negro slave escape to freedom, even though Huck thinks this means that he will be damned to hell for breaking the law.Twains masterpiece, which appeared in 1884, is set in the Mississippi River village of St. Petersburg.The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnThe Adventures of Tom SawyerLife on the MississippiThe Innocents AbroadThe Prince and the PauperNaturalistsStephen CraneJack LondonFrank NorrisTheodore DreiserUpton Sinclair muckrakers 黑幕揭发者 The Jungle Chicago 屠场Stephen Crane (1871-1900)Cranes Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) is one of the bestThe Red Badge of CourageJack London (1876-1916)Other of his best-sellers, including The Call of the Wild (1903) and The Sea-Wolf (1904) made him the highest paid writer in the United States of his time.The autobiographical novel Martin Eden (1909) depicts the inner stresses of the American dream as London experienced them during his meteoric rise from obscure poverty to wealth and fame.Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)Sister CarrieThe 1925 work An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser explores the dangers of the American dream. the greatest novel in AmericaAn American Tragedy is a reflection of the dissatisfaction, envy, and despair that afflicted many poor and working people in Americas competitive, success-driven society.The Literature of Modernism(1918 1945)a flowering period of American literature.the second renaissance of American literature.The Roaring Twenties/Dollar Decade/Jazz AgeThe Great DepressionWorld War IIChicago PoetsCarl Sandburg (1879-1967)American SongbagChicago PoemsThe People, YesHart Crane(1899-1932) The BridgeImagistsEzra Pound (1885-1972) - father of modern American poetry.The CantosAmy LowellWilliam Carlos Williams (1883-1963)Red Wheelbarrow红色手推车Wallace StevensNew England PoetsRobert Frost (1874-1938)A Boys Wish；North of Boston (Mending Wall,After Apple-picking);Mountain Interval（成熟阶段）(The Road Not taken);Edward Arlington RobinsonMiniver Cheevy - comicRichard Cory tragicO. Henry (William Sydney Porter) (1862-1910) O. HENRY O. Henry is the pen name of William Sydney Porter.The master of the surprise endingwas a prolific American short-story writerwrote about the life of ordinary people in New York City. A twist of plot, which turns on an ironic or coincidental circumstance, is typical of O. Henrys stories.The Gift of the MagiWilla Cather (1873-1947)Alexanders BridgeMy AntoniaO Pioneers!The Professors HouseThe Song of the LarkBackground Information about the period between the two world warsMany historians have characterized the period between the two world wars as the United States traumatic coming of ageDespite outward gaiety, modernity, and unparalleled material prosperity, young Americans of the 1920s were the lost generation - so named by literary portraitist Gertrude Stein.F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940),His first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), became a best- sellerFitzgeralds secure place in American literature rests primarily on his novel The Great Gatsby (1925), a brilliantly written, economically structured story about the American dream of the self-made man. The protagonist, the mysterious Jay Gatsby, discovers the devastating cost of success in terms of personal fulfillment and love.Tender Is the Night (1934)Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)All the Sad Young Men (1926).Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)Hemingway is arguably the most popular American novelist of this century.Like Fitzgerald, Hemingway became a spokesperson for his generation - the lost generation of cynical survivors.The Sun Also Rises, about the demoralized life of expatriates after World War I; - brought him fameA Farewell to Arms, about the tragic love affair of an American soldier and an English nurse during the war;For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), set during the Spanish Civil War The Old Man and the Sea (1952), a short poetic novel about a poor, old fisherman who heroically catches a huge fish devoured by sharks, won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1953; the next year he received the Nobel Prize.code heroes - grace under pressureiceberg principleWilliam Faulkner (1897-1962)The Sound and the FuryAs I Lay DyingA Rose for EmilySherwood Anderson (1876-1941) Winesburg, OhioThe Triumph of the Eggsouthern women writers：Katherine Anne Porter，Eudora Welty，Flannery OConnor.John Steinbeck (1902-1968)He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963 and the international fame it confers.His best known work is the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), which follows the travails of a poor Oklahoma family that loses its farm during the Depression and travels to California to seek work. Family members suffer conditions of feudal oppression by rich landowners.Of Mice and Men (1937), and East of Eden (1952).Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)Main StreetBabbittEugene ONeill (1888-1953)Beyond the HorizonLong Days Journey Into NightMourning Becomes ElectraThe Iceman ComethDesire Under the ElmsThe Hairy Ape Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)The Glass MenagerieA Streetcar Named DesireCat on a Hot Tin RoofArthur Miller (1915- ) All My SonsDeath of a SalesmanThe CrucibleEdward Albee a. Zoo Story b. Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf?Black Humor - Joseph Heller (1923- ) Catch-22根据第二十二条军规，既然是疯子就可以获准免于飞行，但必须由本人提出申请；不过，第二十二条军规同时又规定，凡能意识到飞行有危险而提出免飞申请的，属头脑清醒者，应继续执行飞行任务。第二十二条军舰还规定，飞满三十二驾次的人可以不再执行任务，当尤索林满怀期望地飞满三十二架次时，卡思卡特上校又把规定任务改为四十次，五十次你还必须服从，否则就不准回国。最后，尤索林终于明白了，第二十二条军规原来是一个永远摆脱不掉的圈套，是一个无法逾越的障碍。整个世界都由这个可以随意解释的第二十二条军规统治着，就象天罗地网一样，把你牢牢罩