美国文学史复习总结正本

美国文学史复习总结正本 Stella 1.1殖民时期Major stages of American Literature：1. The Colonial and Revolutionary Period: 1607 - 18102. The Romantic Period: 1810 - 18603. The Realistic Period: 1860 - 19144. The Modern Period: 1914 - 1945 5. The Period of Pluralism: 1945 - the presentThe Colonial and Revolutionary Period (1607 -1810)1. The Colonial Period : 1607 - 1750（启蒙运动，第一次工业革命）2. The Revolutionary Period: 1750 - 1810（Charles Brown去世， The Sketch Book, 1819）Historical Background: The Colonization of North Americav Indians of North Americav 1492, Christopher Columbus v Migration from Europev 1607, more than 120 British men founded the first English Colony, Jamestown in Virginiav 1620, “May Flower”, Puritans, Plymouth colony in New Englandv 1630, Massachusetts Bay colonyv Thirteen English colonies (1607-1733) Colonial Literature Early American writers: Captain John Smith (Jamestown)； William Bradford (Plymouth)； John Winthrop (Massachusetts Bay)Early poets: Anne Bradstreet； Edward TaylorAnne Bradstreet (1612 1672) 安妮布雷兹特里特v First famous poet in North America, known as the “Tenth Muse”v Major works: The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America (1650) 最近在美洲出现的第十位缪斯- the first collection of poems in North America. Contemplations 沉思录Literature in the Age of Reason and Revolution (17501810)Historical Backgroundv 1. War of Independence v 2. Enlightenment (science, order, reason; deism 自然神论; Jean Jaques Rouseau, Social Contract社会契约论,)Overview of the Literary SceneMajor Thinkers and Writers：Thomas Jefferson: “Declaration of Independence”Thomas Paine: “Common Sense”, “The American Crisis”Benjamin Franklin: “Poor Richards Almanac”, “Autobiography”Philip Freneau: “The Wild Honeysuckle” (金银花p. 23), “The Indian Burying Ground”Jonathan Edwards: religious, a minister Major works of Tomas Jefferson1. Declaration of Independence, 1776 2. Notes on the State of Virginia 弗吉尼亚笔记 托马斯潘恩 （1737 1809）Most influential thinker and writer in the War of Independence Major works：Common Sense 常识；The Rights of Man (1791 1792 )人的权利 The American Crisis 美洲危机 （“The Times that Try Mens Souls”考验人的灵魂的时代)；The Age of Reason 理性的时代backBenjamin Franklin (1706-1790)v Statesman, essayist, orator, philosopher, ambassador, scientist, inventor, publisherv “master of each and mastered by none”Herman Melville v One of the Founding Fathers of America v Symbol of America in the Age of Enlightenment v 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 constitution v The symbol of American Dream, a self-made manMajor Works：Poor Richards Almanac (1732) 穷理查历书General Characteristics: As an author, Franklin is best known for his philosophy of the practical and the useful. Franklins energies were bent toward improving the conditions of this mundane existence.Style: Simple, easy, natural way of relating events； Simplicity, practicality, suggestiveness, common sense, was his leading attributes.Colonial Prose WritersJohn Smith (1580 - 1631) 约翰史密斯, the first American writer A true Relation of Virginia (1608) 关于弗吉尼亚的真实叙述A Description of New England （1616)新英格兰概述William Bradford (1590-1657), 威廉布拉福德 ，“Father of American History”. Of Plymouth Plantation 普利茅斯种植园史 John Winthrop (1588-1649), 约翰温斯罗普 The History of New England 新英格兰史 1.2本杰明 富兰克林Major Works：Poor Richards Almanac: household bookCollection of poems, essays, common sense； witticisms； Instruction to people in their development of character, career and relationship with people； Franklins devotion to better the world as he believes a practical idea reflects an aspect of truthThe Autobiography of Benjamin FranklinAccount of a man rising from obscurity and poverty to fame and wealthFeatures：Puritan document, a record of self-examination and self-improvement；A book that places Franklin as the spokesman of American EnlightenmentStyle: plain, direct, concrete, easy, leisurely and morally conscious 2.1浪漫主义Historical BackgroundTime Range: From the end of the 17th century through the outbreak of the Civil War.National independence, democracyRising materialism and business -leisure and wealthReligious dogma, rationalism -spiritual void精神空虚Features： American Romanticism was both imitative and independent.Imitative: English and European Romanticists, about home, family, nature, children and idealized love, etc.Independent: Emerson and Whitman, on major problems of American life, like the westward expansion and democracy and equality, etc.Authors in Romanticism：Washington Irving: Father of the American literature -The Sketch BookJames Fenimore Cooper: Father of the American novel - “Leather stocking Tales”Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet LetterHerman Melville - Moby DickEdgar Ellen Poe - The Fall of the House of Usher; The Tell-Tale HeartRalph Waldo Emerson - Nature, The American ScholarHenry David Thoreau Walden瓦尔登湖Poets: Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass; Emily Dickinson: “My life closed twice before its close” 2.2先验主义( 浪漫主义)Transcendentalism: Proposes a belief in a higher reality than that found in sense experience or in a higher kind of knowledge than that achieved by human reason. Suggests that every individual is capable of discovering this higher truth on his or her own, through intuition v Movement began with Emersons informal club in mid 18th C.Major Tenets and Features: 宗旨和特色Spirituality in the universe: “Oversoul” (All people, animals, things are connected and share the same soul. )Importance of the individual: to explain the world in terms of an individual (All knowledge began with self-knowledge)Nature as symbolic of God (Oversoul): a living mystery, full of signsNew England Transcendentalists:Magazine: The Dial Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Nature”; “Divinity School Address”; “Self-Reliance”; “The American ScholarMargaret Fuller; Bronson Alcott Henry David Thoreau: Walden; “Civil Disobedience” Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882):Major Works: 1. Nature: Emersons best known work2. “The American Scholar”: Americas declaration of Intellectual IndependenceImportant views in Emersons Philosophyv Oversoul: ultimate source of the universe, its transcendence connecting all in onev Individual: unique and infinite in his power as a part of the Oversoulv Nature: emblematic 象征性的of the spiritual world, spiritual guideHenry David ThoreauClose friend of EmersonTried out the Transcendentalist ideas by recording his experiment of essential living in Waldenexplained his rejection to pay the tax in “Civil Disobedience” 3.1梅尔维尔(18191891) Herman MelvillReceived recognition until the 1920s; “He has a very high and noble nature”Three important things in his life: 1)Going out to sea; 2) His marriage; 3) His friendship with HawthorneMoby-Dick 白鲸，莫比狄克: An encyclopedia百科全书 of everything - history, philosophy, religion, the whaling industry; a Shakespearean tragedy of man fighting against fatesSymbols in Moby Dick:1. The Pequod: a symbol of doom2. Moby Dick: a metaphor for the human relationship with the Christain God: God is unkown and cannot be pinned downThemes of Moby DickThemes - the sense of futility and meaninglessness; alienation; loneliness and suicidal individualism; rejection and quest1) Melvilles bleak view (negative attitude): the sense of futility and meaninglessness of the world. His attitude to life is “Everlasting Nay”Man in this universe lives a meaningless and futile life, meaningless because futile. Man cannot overcome nature. Once he attempts to seek power over it he is doomed. 2) Alienation (far away from each other) - exists between man and man, man and society, and man and nature. Ahab cuts himself off from his family, stays away from his crew, hates Moby Dick and becomes a devil rushing to his doom. 3) Loneliness and suicidal individualism (individualism causing disaster and death)- The basic pattern of nineteenth-century American lifeAhab: too much of a self-reliant individual to be a good human being - a victim of extreme individualismMoby Dick is a negative reflection upon Transcendentalism The price of self-reliance is death.4）rejection and quest:Voyaging for Ishmael has become a journey in quest of knowledge and values.starts out feeling bad hopes to find an ideal life comes to see the folly of Ahab seeking to conquer nature feels the significance of love and companionship learns to accept, n attitude which ensures his survival 3.2 Nathaniel Hawthorne Major Works:Twice-Told Tales: collection of short stories“Young Goodman Brown”“The Ministers Black Veil”“Dr. Rappacinis Daughter”Mosses from an Old ManseThe Scarlet LetterThe House of the Seven GablesThe Blithedale RomanceThe Marble Faun红字Major Charactersl Hester Prynne: proud, strong-willed, a character of maternal love, transcends her sin through her acts of mercyl Arthur Dimmesdale: indecisive, a tortured soul, saved finally through public confessionl Roger Chillingworth: unsympathetic, revengeful, “leech” that suck life out, a worse sinnerArtistic features：l Puritan severity towards sex and matrimony结婚l Concern with effect of sin and goodness, redemption: Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworthl Three Scaffold scenesl Hawthornes use of psychological analysisl Symbolism “A” 4.1Walt Whitman (1819-1891)LifeBorn into a working class backgroundWorked as printers apprentice, teacher, editor and journalistWrote short stories before he worked at Leaves of GrassTravels in New Orlends : experience with nature and slaveryLeaves of Grass: eight editions Leaves of GrassSome best known : “Song of Myself”, “I Sing the Body Electric”, There Was a Child Went Forth “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd”, ”O Captain! My Captain!”, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”Writers like Longfellow, Holmes were shocked by his book: a. unconventional rhyme, meter (free verse)b. erotic imagery and themes: “I Sing the Body Electric.”Whitmans statusWhitman stands as one of two giants of American poetry in 19th C.a. Found new subjects for typical American type of poetry.b. rejected conventional themes, traditional rhymeHe influenced Harlem Renaissance writers as Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson.Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot (Modernist poets) were also influenced by Whitman.From “Song of Myself” 4.2艾米丽迪金森Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)Life and Literary CareerBorn into a Calvinist family in Massachusetts, attended Amherst Academy and Holyoke SeminaryConfined to household life, she spent most of her leisure time writing poetryOver 1700 poems, only a few published in her lifetimePosthumous publicationFeatures of Writing l Illustration of her religious-ethical and political-social ideasl Basic tone: tragic (Predestination, pessimism)l Yearning for religious certitude (“At last to pray is left”)l Perplexities in search of love and helpl Not always believe in Gods plan This is my letter This is my letter to the world,That never wrote to me,- The simple news that Nature told, With tender majesty. 这是我给这个世界的信件，它则从不写给我，自然告知的简单消息，用温柔的庄严。Her message is committed To hands I cannot see; For love of her, sweet countrymen,Judge tenderly of me! 她的信息已交到我无法看见的人手里；出于对她的爱，亲爱的同胞，请给予我轻柔的裁判！ Dickinsons choice of subjectsLove: “With a Flower”, “Proof” Nature: “A Service of Song”, “Summer Shower”Faith and DoubtDeath and immortality: “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died”, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, “My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close”, “I Died for Beauty”Miscellaneous: “Tell all the Truth but tell It Slant”, “Wild Nights”On deathAt the centre of her poetryReveals Emily ever ready for deathShows her mostly at a tranquil, meditative state of mindConcerned about death as an entry into immortalityDickinsons techniquesRegular meter: Quatrains; Tetrameter四音步, trimeter三音步; second and fourth lines rhyme (ABCB) in iambic pentameterHer originality: Capitalizations and dashes; Metaphors; symbolismA 9-line stanza in which the first 8 lines are in iambic pentameter抑扬格五音步诗行 while the 9th line in iambic hexameter 抑扬格六音步诗行. Dickinsons statusHer unconventionality influenced modern poets like Adrienne Rich, Richard Wilbur, Ezra Pound and William Stafford.Along with Walt Whitman, Dickinson is considered a true genius of American poetry of the 19th “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-Because I could not With A FlowerProofLove: Though she was lonely and isolated, Emily appears to have loved deeply, perhaps only those who have loved and lost can love, with an intensity and desire which can never be fulfilled in the reality of the lovers touch. A Service of SongNature: A fascination with nature consumed Emily. She summed all her lyrics as the simple news that nature told, she loved natures creatures no matter how insignificant - the robin, the hummingbird, the bee, the butterfly, the rat .Only the serpent gave her a chill. 5.1现实主义American Realism (18651900)/(from the 1870s to the 1880s)By the 1870s New England Renaissance had waned. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the age of realism arrived. Realism became a major trend in the 70s and 80s of the 19th century.Historical Backgroundu Industrialization and expansion west of the Mississippi RiverThe Industrialization moved the country from a rural economy to an urban one. With this shift came the accompanying social ills, which began to appear in American literature. u American was becoming the “melting-pot” society with the influx of millions of immigrants.During the thirty-year period of 1870-1900, the population almost doubled, from 39 million to 76 million. The increase is largely due to the influx of European immigrants. Social &cultural context1. Aftermath of the Civil War The Civil War broke out in 1861, which marked a change in America. After the Civil War, the United States was transformed into an industrial and urban nation. On the surface there were elegance, security and comfort; but underneath there were all disconcert and disappointment. 2 .Question on the Transcendentalists assumptions.Great wealth and economic power became more and more concentrated in the hands of the few. So the nation became a land of contrasting wealth and poverty; political and commercial corruption grew widespread. All these made its people begin to question the assumptions shared by the Transcendentalists natural goodness, the optimistic view of nature and man, benevolent God. 3. A great interest in the realities of life. The people of the United States began to tire of the sentimental feelings of the Romanticism after the Civil War, just as they turned away from Puritanism at the close of the 18th century. A new inspiration came over them. Instead of thinking about the mysteries of life and death, peoples attention was now directed to the interesting features of everyday existence. Therefore a new spiritrealistic attitudeentered American literature, which started a new period in American writing known as the rise of Realism.4. The close of the Frontier. Now that the frontier was about to close, a re-examination of life began. The worth of the American dream, the idealized, romantic view of man and his life in the New World, began to loss its hold on the imagination of the people. Beneath the glittering surface of prosperity there lay suffering and unhappiness. Disillusionment and frustration were widely felt. Realistic Literature1. Propose of art : produce reality.2. Individuals confronted by hardship and moral dilemma3. The world of the commonplace, values of common humanity4. Present characters action directly Features of American RealismAs a literary movement realism came in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a reaction against “the lie” of romanticism and sentimentalism. It expressed the concern for the world of experience, of commonplace, and for the familiar and the low.Realism is the theory of writing in which familiar aspects of contemporary life and everyday scenes are represented in a straightforward or matter-of-fact manner. It stresses truthful treatment of material. It is anti-romantic, anti-sentimental, and without interest in nature, death, etc. Writers would describe the charm of human character reacting under various circumstances or authors picture the pioneers of the Far West, the new immigrants, and the struggles of the working classes.v 1. Anti-romantic, anti-sentimental ; truthful description of life真实性 v 2. typical character and plot under typical setting人物、情节与背景的典型性、代表性 v 3. Objective rather than idealized view of human nature and experience客观性 v 4. Concern for social and psychological problems关注社会与个人心理问题 Principles of Realism v 1. Insistence upon and defense of the