美国文学史-知识点梳理

Part I The Literature of Colonial AmericaIHistorical IntroductionThe 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.)IIThe 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 immigration2) Highly theoretical, generally polemical, discussions of religious questions.IIIThe First American WriterThe 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 Virginia (1624): the Indian princess PocahontasCaptain 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.IVEarly New England LiteratureWilliam Bradford and John WinthropJohn Cotton and Roger WilliamsAnne Bradstreet and Edward TaylorVPuritan Thoughts1. The origin of puritanIn 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 Popes permission. Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife because she couldnt bear him a son. But the Pope didnt allow him to divorce, so he) broke away from the Roman Catholic Church & established the Church of England. But there was no radical difference between the doctrines of the Church of England and the Catholic Church. A group of people thought the Church of England was too Catholic and wanted to purify the church. Then came the name Puritans.2. Puritanism - based on Calvinism(1) predestination: Gods electPuritans believed they are predestined before they were born.Nothing or no good work can change their fate.They believed the success of ones business is the sign to show he is the Gods elect. So the Puritans works very hard, spend very little and invest more for the future business. They lived a very frugal life. This is their ethics.(2) Origianl sin and total depravityMan is born sinful. This determines some puritans pessimistic attitude towards life.(3) Limited atonement (the salvation of a selected few)(4) theocracyThey combined state with religion. Their government is at least not a liberal one.The Puritans established American tradition - intolerant moralism. They strictly punished drunks, adultery & heretics. Puritans changed gradually due to the severity of frontier environment3. Influence on American Literature(1) Its optimismAmerican literature was from the outset conditioned by the Puritan heritage. It can be said American literature is based on the Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden. After that, man have an illusion to restore the paradise. The puritans, after arriving at America, believing that God must have sent them to this new land to restore the lost paradise, to build the wilderness into a new Garden of Eden. Fired with such a strong sense of mission, they treated life with a tremendous amount of optimism. The optimistic Puritan has exerted a great influence on American literature.(2) Puritans metaphorical mode of perception changed gradually into a literary symbolism.Part II The Literature of Reason And RevolutionIHistorical IntroductionWith the growth, especially of industry, there appeared the intense strain with England. The British government did not want colonial industries competing with those in England. The British wanted the colonies to remain politically and economically dependent on the mother country. They took a series of measures to insure this dependence. They prevented colonial economy by requiring Americans to ship raw materials abroad and to import finished goods at prices higher than the cost of making them in this country. Politically, the British government forced dependence by ruling the colonies from overseas and by taxing the colonies without giving them representation in Parliament.However, by the mid-eighteenth century, freedom was won as much by the fiery rhetoric of Thomas Paines Common Sense and the eloquence of the Declaration of Independence as by the weapons of Washington. In the seventies of the 18th century, the English colonies in North America rose in arms against their mother country. The War for Independence lasted for 8 years (1776-1783) and ended in the formation of a federative bourgeois democratic republic - the United States of America.IIAmerican EnlightenmentIt was supported by all progressive forces of the country which opposed themselves to the old colonial order and religious obscurantism.It dealt a decisive blow upon the puritan traditions and brought to life secular education and literature. The spiritual life during that period was to a great degree moulded by it.The representatives set themselves the task of disseminating knowledge among the people and advocating revolutionary ideas.The writers injected an invigorating vein into the English language in America as they aimed at clarity and precision of their writings.At the initial period the spread of the ideas of the Enlightenment was largely due to journalism. Writings of Europe were widely read in America. The secular ideals of the American Enlightenment were exemplified in the life and career of Benjamin Franklin. IIIBenjamin Franklin (1706-1790)The AutobiographyPoor Richards AlmanacLifeBenjamin Franklin came from a Calvinist background.He was born into a poor candle-makers family. He had very little education. He learned in school only for two years, but he was a voracious reader.At 12, he was apprenticed to his elder half-brother, a printer.At 16, he began to publish essays under the pseudonym “Silence Do good” .At 17, he ran away to Philadelphia to make his own fortune.He set himself up as an independent printer and publisher. In 1727 he founded the Junto club.Multiple identities: a printer a leading author a politician a scientist a inventor a diplomat a civic activistFranklins Contributions to SocietyHe helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital. He founded an academy which led to the University of Pennsylvania. And he helped found the American Philosophical Society.Franklins Contributions to ScienceHe was also remembered for volunteer fire departments, effective street lighting, the Franklin stove, bifocal glasses and efficient heating devices. And for his lightning-rod, he was called “the new Prometheus who had stolen fire from heaven.”Franklins Contributions to the U.S.He was the only American to sign the four documents that created the United States: The Declaration of Independence, The Treaty of Alliance with France, The Treaty of Peace with England, The ConstitutionThe AutobiographyThe Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin 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 Americas first self-made man. The Autobiography is, first of all, a Puritan document. It is Puritan because it is a record of self-examination and self-improvement. The meticulous chart of 13 virtues he set for himself to cultivate to combat the tempting vices, the stupendous effort he made to improve his own person, the belief that God helps those who helps themselves and that every calling is a service to God all these indicate that Franklin was intensely Puritan. Then, the book is also a convincing illustration of the Puritan ethic that, in order to get on in the world, one has to be industrious, frugal, and prudent.The Autobiography is also an eloquent elucidation of the fact that Franklin was 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.A look at the style of The Autobiography will readily reveal that it is the pattern of Puritan simplicity, directness and concision. The plainness of its style, the homeliness of imagery, the simplicity of diction, syntax and expression are some of the salient features we cannot mistake. The lucidity of the narrative, the absence of ornaments in wording and of complex, involved structures in syntax, and the Puritan abhorrence of paradox are all graphically demonstrated in the whole of the book. Taken as a whole, it is safe to say that the book is an exemplary illustration of the American style of writing.IVThomas Paine (1737-1809)Common SenseAmerican CrisisVThomas Jefferson (1743-1826)The Declaration of IndependenceVIPhilip Freneau (1752-1832)“Poet of the American Revolution”“Father of American Poetry”“Pioneer of the New Romanticism”“A gifted and versatile lyric poet”Works“The Wild Honey Suckle” “The Indian Burying Ground” “To a Caty-Did”Freneau as Father of American Poetry: His major themes are death, nature, transition, and the human in nature. All of these themes become important in 19th century writing.Life ExperienceHe was born in New York.At 16, he entered the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). He decided to do a postgraduate study in theology. But two years later he gave it up. While still an undergraduate, he wrote in collaboration with one of his friends (H. H. Brackenridge) a poem entitled “The Rising Glory of America”.Later he attended the War of Independence, and he was captured by British army in 1780.After being released, he published “The British Prison Ship” in 1781.In the same year, he published “To the Memory of the Brave Americans”.After war, he supported Jefferson, and contributed greatly to American government.But after 50 years old, he lived in poverty. And at last he died in a blizzard.Main Works“The Rising Glory of America” (1772) 美洲光辉的兴起“The House of Night” (1779,1786) 夜之屋“The British Prison Ship” (1781) 英国囚船“To the Memory of the Brave Americans” (1781) 纪念美国勇士“”The Wild Honey Suckle” (1786) 野忍冬花“The Indian Burying Ground” (1788) 印第安人墓地野忍冬花（黄杲炘译）美好的花呀，你长得：这么秀丽，却藏身在这僻静沉闷的地方甜美的花儿开了却没人亲昵，招展的小小枝梢也没人观赏；没游来荡去的脚来把你踩碎，没东攀西摘的手来催你落泪。大自然把你打扮得一身洁白，她叫你避开庸俗粗鄙的目光，她布置下树荫把你护卫起来，又让潺潺的柔波淌过你身旁；你的夏天就这样静静地消逝，这时候你日见萎蔫终将安息。那些难免消逝的美使我销魂，想起你未来的结局我就心疼，别的那些花儿也不比你幸运虽开放在伊甸园中也已凋零，无情的寒霜再加秋风的威力，会叫这花朵消失得一无踪迹。朝阳和晚露当初曾把你养育，让你这小小的生命来到世上，原来若乌有，就没什么可失去，因为你的死让你同先前一样；这来去之间不过是一个钟点这就是脆弱的花享有的天年。This poem is divided into four stanzas. Each stanza consists of six lines, rhyming “ababcc”, and sounds just like music.In the first two stanzas, Freneau devoted more attention to the environment of the flower in which he found it than to the appearance of the flower. He conmented on the secluded nature of the place where the honey suckle grew, drawing a conclusion that it was due to natures protectiveness that the flower was able to lead a peaceful life free from mens disturbance and destruction.But the next stanza immediately changed the tone from silent admiration and appreciation to outright lamentation over the “futures doom” of the flower even nature was unable to save the flower from its death.And then, Freneau said, “if nothing once, you nothing lose.” It is true in peoples existence. There is fate for the life and death. After ones death, the only thing he can take away is what he brought when he gave birth to this world.Part III The Literature of RomanticismIHistorical Introductionfrom early 19th century through the outbreak of the Civil War1. native factorsIt is a period following American Independence. In this period, democracy and political equality became the ideals of the new nation. America was in an economic boom. There is a tremendous sense of optimism and hope among the people. The spirit of the time is, in some measure, responsible for the outburst of romantic feeling.2. foreign influenceRomanticism emerged in England from 1798 to 1832. It added impetus to the growth of Romanticism in America. In England the general features of the works of the romantics is a dissatisfaction with the bourgeois society. British Romanticism inspired the American imagination. Thus American Romanticism was in a way derivative.IIAmerican Romanticism: American RenaissanceRomanticism (appeared in England in the last years of the 18th century and spread to continental Europe and then) came to America early in the 19th century. It was pluralistic; its manifestations were as varied, as individualistic, and as conflicting as the cultures and the intellects from which it sprang. Yet romantics frequently shared certain general characteristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a source of goodness and mans societies a source of corruption.It exalted the individual, which suited the nations revolutionary heritage and its frontier egalitarianism. It revolted against traditional art forms, which gratified those cramped by the strict limits of neoclassic literature, painting, and architecture. It rejected rationalism, which gladdened those who were opposed to cool, intellectual religious wrapped with the remnants of Calvinism.Romantic writers placed increasing value on the free expression of emotion and display increasing attention to the spiritual states of their characters. Heroes and heroines exhibited extremes of sensitivity and excitement. The novel of terror became the profitable literary staple that it remains today. Writers of gothic novels sought to arouse in their readers a turbulent sense of the remote, the supernatural, and the terrifying by describing castles and landscapes illuminated by moonlight and haunted by ghosts. A preoccupation with the demonic and the mystery of evil marked by the works of Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and a host of lesser writers.Early American romanticism was best represented by New England poets William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) in poetry, and James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) and Washington Irving (1783-1859) in fiction. The later/peak period is represented by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862).IIIWashington Irving1. Rip Van WinkleThe story, written while Irving was staying with his sister Sarah and her husband Henry van Wart in Birmingham, England, is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War. A villager of Dutch descent escapes his nagging wife by wandering up Kaaterskill Clove near his home town of Palenville, New York in the Catskill Mountains. After various adventures (in one version of the tale, he encounters the spirits of Henry Hudson and his crew playing ninepins at the top of Kaaterskill Falls), he settles down under a shady tree and falls asleep. He wakes up 20 years later and returns to his village. He finds out that his wife is dead and his close friends have died in a war or gone somewhere else. He immediately gets into trouble when he hails himself a loyal subject of George III, not knowing that in the meantime the American Revolution has taken place and he is not supposed to be a loyal subject of any Hanoverian any longer. The story has become a part of cultural mythology: even for those who have never read the original story, Rip Van Winkle means either a person who sleeps for a long period of time, or one who is inexplicably (perhaps even blissfully) unaware of current events. Rip Van Winkle has been seen as a symbol of several aspects of America. Rip, like America, is immature, self-centered, careless, anti-intellectual, imaginative, and jolly as the overgrown child. The town itself symbolizes America forever and rapidly changing. Washington Irving has Rip sleep through his own countrys history, through what we might call the birth pangs of America, and return to the “busy, bustling, disputatious” self-consciously adult United States of America. His conflicts and dreams are those of the nation the conflict of innocence and experience, work and leisure, the old and the new, the head and the heart.2. The Legend of Sleepy HollowThe story is set circa 1790 in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. It tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a sycophantic, lean, lanky, and extremely superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut, who competes with Abraham Brom Bones Van Brunt, the town rowdy, for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and sole child of a wealthy farmer, Baltus Van Tassel. As Crane leaves a party he attended at the Van Tassel hom