高中英语教学论文 美国文学总结归纳

The first lecture1. A general look at the American literaturePhases of the history of American literature:1) Colonial America - the 17th century from the settlement of North America in the early seventeenth century through the end of it.2) Reason and revolution - the 18th century3) Romanticism - the first half of the nineteenth century, till the Civil War (1861-1865)4) Realism - from the civil war till the early period of 19th century (18611918)5) Modernism - from 1918-19456) Contemporary literature - starting with 19452. Historical introduction of the literature of Colonial America1) Indians were migrants form eastern Siberia and might belong to the Mongoloid peoples. They traveled into the New World more than 20,000 years ago.2) About A.D. 1000, Norsemen from northern Europe happened on American, but their contact did not exert a tremendous influence in the world at that time. In 1492, the date of the discovery of America, Columbus sailed here.3) The first permanent English settlement in North America was established at Jamestown, Virginia in May 14, 1607.4) In 1620, Mayflower with 102 passengers sailed to Massachusetts. They were the first group of puritans5) A large number of the settlers themselves left home in the first years of the 17th century in earnest quest of an ideal of their own. It is true that they wished to escape religious persecution - and the English government regarded its American colony as an ideal dumping ground for the undesirables, but they were also determined to find a place where they could worship in the way they thought true Christians should. When they arrived and saw the virgin forests, the virgin land, and the vast expanse of wilderness that stretched miles around before them, they became aware that God must have sent them there for a definite purpose to reestablish a commonwealth based on the teachings of the Bible, restore the lost paradise, and build the wilderness into a new Garden of Eden.3. Puritan thoughts1) American Puritanism was one of the most enduring shaping influences in American thought and American literatureIt has become so much a part of the national cultural atmosphere that the Americans breathe, that, without some understanding of Puritanism, there can be no real understanding of American culture and literature.2) They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God.3) The Puritans dreamed of living under a perfect order and worked with courage and confident 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 Puritans looked even the worst of life in the face with a tremendous amount of optimism. And this went to the making of American literature.4. The first American writer - John Smith (1580-1631)1) LifeHe was England adventurer and one of the chief founders of the first permanent settlement in North America, the colony of Jamestown.In 1604, he came to know a group of people who were ready to go to northern America to establish colonies there after returning to England from Russia. They landed on May 14, 1607, and soon he became the leader of the newly-established colony, and one year later he became the governor.He was once captured by Indians, whose chief was Powhatan (波瓦坦), but was rescued by the famous Indian princess, Pocahontas, the daughter of the chief. And this story becomes a legend.2) WritingsA True Relation of Such Occurances and Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia Since the First Planting of That Colony ( in 1608) (殖民地第一次在弗吉尼亚开拓以来发生的各种事件的真实介绍A Map of Virginia: with a Description of the Country ( in 1612) (弗吉尼亚地图: 一个乡村的描述)General History of Virginia (1624) (弗吉尼亚通史)His writings about America became the source of information about the New World for later settlers. And his narratives reveal the early settlers vision of the new land as something capable of being built into a new Garden of Eden.The second lecture1. Reason and RevolutionHistorical IntroductionPeople are industrious, natural resources are rich and economy developed. Fast developing economy will influence politics. Economy asked for political rights.English ruling class made huge profits out of American colonies. Laboring people suffered. Even the merchants and manufacturers did suffer because buying and selling were monopolized. South slave-owners were dissatisfied with the British as the price of tobacco and cotton they produced was fixed.1764, Sugar Act. 1765, Stamp Act. To levy tax on everything.Clashes were unavoidable. In April, 1775, some British troops were sent to Lexington and Concord, small towns 30 miles from Boston, to disarm the militiamen. The first shot.In 1783, colonies won independence.In 1787, the Constitution passed.2. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)1) LifeBorn in 1760 into a poor candle-makers family “poor and obscure”. He had little education but he was a voracious reader.When still very young, he apprenticed to his older half-brother, a printer, and began at 16, to publish essays under the pseudonym, Silence Dogood.At 17, he ran away to Philadelphia to make his own fortune and set himself up as an independent printer and publisher.As a scientist. His many inventions, besides the lightning rod, included the Franklin stove, bifocal glasses, a miniature printing press and even a strange musical instrument called “armonica.” He contributed to the theories of electricity and first applied the terms “positive” and “negative” to electrical charges.As a statesman. He was the only American to sigh the four documents that created the United States: the Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with France, the treaty of peace with England, and the constitution.2) Bourgeois EnlightenmentThe spiritual life in the colonies during this period was to a great degree molded by the bourgeois Enlightenment a movement supported by all progressive forces of the country which opposed themselves to the old colonial order and religious obscurantism. The representatives of the Enlightenment set themselves the task of disseminating knowledge among the people and advocating revolutionary ideas.American Enlightenment dealt a decisive blow upon the puritan traditions and brought to life secular education and literature. The writers of the Enlightenment injected an invigorating vein into the English language in Americans as they aimed at clarity and precision of their writings.3) WritingsPoor Richards Almanac (格言历书穷理查德的警句)The Autobiography (自传)4)Poor Richards AlmanacHe kept writing it for almost a quarter of a century. Apart from poems and essays, he managed to put in a good many axioms and commonsense witticisms which became, very quickly, household words and mottoes of the most practical kind.“Lost time is never found again.”“A penny saved is a penny earned.”“God help them that help themselves.”“Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”Those and many other similar statements filled the almanac, and taught as much as amused.5) The Autobiography of Benjamin FranklinA fascinating record of a man rising to wealth and fame from a state of poverty into which he was born, a faithful account of the colorful career of Americas first self-made man.A Puritan document. It is Puritan because it is a record of self-examination and self-improvement, and a convincing illustration of the Puritan ethic that, in order to get on in the world one has to be industrious, frugal, and prudent. Franklin told himself and his fellowmen that for that century moderation and temperance were among the best virtues of man.It 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.The third lectureThe Literature of Romanticism1. Historical introduction1) Political reviewGeorge WashingtonThomas Jefferson (1800-1808)During the two administrations of Jefferson, the relations between U. S. and Britain were becoming worse.The British were not reconciled to the loss of their thirteen colonies. Jefferson had to take some actions, but he had to try to avoid war as he knew the U.S. was ill-prepared.MadisonIn1812, Madison asked Congress to declare war on Britain, and the war broke out. The war lasted for three years and ended in another American victory over the British.This war has one important result the strengthening of national unity and patriotism. And it was only after this that the United States was able to effect the change of a semi-colonial economy into a really independent national economy.James Monroe (1816-1824)In 1823, President Monroe announced his foreign policy which has come to be known as the Monroe Doctrine. The main idea of the doctrine was that European nations should not establish new colonies in the Western Hemisphere; European nations should not intervene in the affairs of independent nations of the New World; and the United States would not interfere in the affairs of European nations.2) Territorial expansionIn 1780s, the American government passed some laws to encourage people to move to the frontier region between the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers.May 2, 1803, the acquisition of Louisiana (New Orleans)1845, annexed Texas1846, the Oregon territory settlement between Britain and the U.S.1846, war on Mexico. The states of California, New Mexico and Arizona became part of the United States.3) Economic changesIn the south, slavery was the foundation of the economic system. After 1812, cotton played a critical role in the developing market economy of the entire nation. Consequently, slaves, who worked in the cotton field, became rooted in the South.In the North, commerce and industry were the main character for its economy. Some northerner expected to get the blacks from the south.4) The Civil WarFebruary 4, 1861, representatives from the seceded states met in Montgomery, Alabama. And they organized the Confederate States of America. Also a constitution was passed.On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office.In April 1861, the Confederates took Fort Sumter in the South Carolina and the Civil War began. The War lasted for 4 years from 1861 to 1865.The outcome of the war placed the northern capitalists in solid control of the federal government. It swept away the last obstacle to the development of U.S. capitalism.5) In this period we see a rising America fast burgeoning into a political, economic, and cultural independence it had never known before.2. Romanticism: Romantics share certain general characteristic: 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.3. Characteristics of American romanticism1) Foreign influences added incentive to the growth of romanticism in America. The Romantic Movement, which had flourished earlier in the century both in England and Europe, proved to be a decisive influence without which the upsurge of American romanticism would hardly have been possible. Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Byron, Robert Burns and many other English and European masters of poetry and prose all made a stimulating impact on the different departments of the countrys literature.2) Although foreign influences were strong, American Romanticism exhibited from the very outset distinct features of its own. It was different from its English and European counterpart because it originated from factors that were altogether American rather than anything else. American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new experience” and contained “an alien quality” for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place” was radically new and alien.3) Then there is American Puritanism as cultural heritage to consider. American moral values were essentially Puritan. Public opinion was overwhelmingly Puritan; the Puritan atmosphere of the nation predominantly conditioned social life and cultural taste. Puritan influence over American Romanticism was conspicuously noticeable. American romantic authors tended more to moralize than their English and European brother. Many American writings intended to edify more than they entertained. Sex and love, for instance, were subjects American authors were particularly careful in approaching.The fourth lectureWashington Irving (1783-1859)1. LifeGently born and well-educated, the youngest of eleven children of a prosperous New York merchant, he began a genteel reading for the law at sixteen, but preferred a literary Bohemianism. At nineteen he published in his brothers newspaper his “Jonathan Oldstyle, a satire of New York life. By the age of twenty-three, when he was admitted to the New York bar, he had roamed the Hudson valley and been a literary vagabond in England, Holland, France, and Italy, reading and studying what pleased him.From 1826 to 1829 he was in Spain on diplomatic business. And he served as secretary of the American legation in London from 1829 to 1831. In 1832 he was on the way back to United States. In 1836, he made his home at Sunnyside, near Tarrytown. From 1842 to 1845 he served as minister to Spain, then settled at Sunnyside. He died in 1859.2. Two important phases of his writing career1) From the first book in 1809 to 1832.The first period was predominantly “English,” in which he was drawn to the ruins and relics of Europe and writing, most of the time, about subjects either English or European. He seemed to be endowed with a love for the antique that amounted to an obsession. He found value in the past and in the tradition of the Old World. America, being young, didnt have what Europe had to offer for a man of imagination.A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (1809) (纽约外史)Sketch Book (1819-1820) (见闻札记)Bracebridge Hall (1820) (布雷斯布里奇田庄)Tales of a Traveler (1824) (旅行者的故事)Charles the Second, or The Merry Monarch (查尔斯二世, 或快乐君主)A History of the Life and Voyage of Christopher Columbus (1828) (哥伦布生平及航海史)A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829) (格林纳达征服史)Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus (1831) (哥伦布同伴的生平及航海)Alhambra (1832) (阿尔罕伯拉)2) Stretching over the remaining years of his life from 1832-1859.Back in America, Irving found a whole new spirit of nationalism in American feeling and art and letters and awoke to the fact that there was beauty in America.A Tour on the Prairies (1835) (草原游记)Astoria (1836) (阿斯托里亚)The Adventures of Captain Bonneville (1837) (伯纳维尔船长历险记)Life of Oliver Goldsmith (1840) (奥利弗戈尔德史密斯传)Life of George Washington (published 1855-1859) (华盛顿传)3. Features of his writing1) Irving avoids moralizing as much as possible; he wrote 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) The finished and musical language has been the critical attention for a long time.4. Irvings contribution to American literature is unique in more ways than one.He was first great belletrist, writing always for pleasure, and to produce pleasure. In The Sketch Book appeared the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature.He was the first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame. Americans took this as a sign that American literature was emerging as an independent entity.To say that he was father of American literature is not much exaggeration. The short story genre in American literature probably began with Irvings The Sketch Book.5. Rip Van WinkleRip Van Winkle, “one of those happy mortals, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment.”The story reveals, to some extent, the conservative attitude of its author. Rip goes to sleep before the War of Independence and wakes up after it. The change that has occurred in the twenty years he slept is to him not always for the better. The story might be taken as an illustration of Irvings argument that change revolution upset the natural order of things, and of the fact that Irving never seemed to accept a modern democratic America.6. The Legend of Sleep HollowIchabod Crane, a memorable character with the mixture of shrewdness, credulity, self-assertiveness, and cowardice.Brom Bones, his rival in love, a Huck Fine type of country bumpkin, rough, vigorous, boisterous but inwardly very good, a frontier type put out there to shift for himself, headless horseman throwing his head at his rival in love.KatrinaThe fifth lectureEdgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)1. LifePoes parents, David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins, were touring actors; both died before he was 3 years old, and he was taken into the home of John Allan, a prosperous merchant in Richmond, Va., and baptized Edgar Allan Poe. The remaining children were cared for by others. Poes brother William died young and sister Rosalie become later insane. At the age of five Poe could recite passages of English poetry. Later one of his teachers in Richmond said: While the other boys wrote mere mechanical verses, Poe wrote genuine poetry; the boy was a born poet. His childhood was uneven