美国文学浪漫主义时期

1、Overview From the end of 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil War, a rising America was flourishing into a politically, economically and culturally independent country. Historically, it was the time of westward expansion. The western boundary had reached to the Pacific by 1860. Economicall

2、y, the whole nation was experiencing an industrial transformation, which affected the rural as well as the urban life. Politically, democracy and equality became the ideal of the new nation, and the two-party system came into being. Culturally and literally, the nation felt an urge to have its own l

3、iterary expression, to make known its new experience that other nations did not have: the early Puritan settlement, the confrontation with the Indians, the frontiersmens life, and the wild West. Romanticism in America coincided with the period of national expansion and the discovery of a distinctive

4、 American voice. The solidification of a national identity and the surging idealism and passion of Romanticism nurtured the masterpieces of the American Renaissance. Romanticism The Romantic Movement, which originated in Germany but quickly spread to England, France, and beyond, reached America arou

5、nd the year 1820, some 20 years after William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had revolutionized English poetry by publishing Lyrical Ballads. Romanticism was a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism. For romantics, the feelings, intuitions and emotions were more important than reas

6、on and common sense. They stressed the close relationship between man and nature, emphasized individualism and affirmed the inner life of the self. They cherished strong interest in the past, especially the medieval and were attracted by the wild, the irregular, the indefinite, the remote, the myste

7、rious, and the strange. The movement appealed to those longing to break free of the strict religious traditions of early settlement. It appealed to those in opposition of Calvinism, which involved the belief that the universe and all the events within it are subject to the power of God. The Romantic

8、 Movement gave rise to New England Transcendentalism which portrayed a less restrictive relationship between God and Universe. The new religion presented the individual with a more personal relationship with God. As a moral philosophy, transcendentalism was neither logical nor systemized. Romantic l

9、iterature was personal, intense, and portrayed more emotion than ever seen in neoclassical literature. Americas preoccupation with freedom became a great source of motivation for Romantic writers as many were delighted in free expression and emotion without so much fear of ridicule and controversy.

10、They also put more effort into the psychological development of their characters. Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and the Transcendentalists represent the first great literary generation produced in the United States. Early Romanticists Before th

11、e Revolutionary War, American literature-from Christopher Columbuss travel accounts to Benjamin Franklins autobiography- had been primarily nonfictional narratives, sermons, essays, diaries, and imitations of English verse, most of it written in private or shared in small circles. With the political

12、 revolution against England, however, came a cultural revolution, and Americans slowly began to build an independent cultural identity, which included a strong literary component. For the first time, America had a significant number of men and women of letters-that is, writers who created works appr

13、eciated for their aesthetic value and who made a career or at least a serious avocation of literature. The first of these writers was Washington Irving, whose Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, first published in 1819, was a sensation in England and helped build the United States reputation for creativ

14、e literature. Some other representative man of letters were James Fenimore Cooper in fiction, William Cullen Bryant, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in poetry. Washington Irving(1783-1859) Washington Irving(1783-1859) Washington Irving was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the

15、 early 19th century. He was best known for his short stories The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (1819-1820). Washington Irving has been called the father of the American short story because of his unique contribut

16、ions to the form. He established an artistic standard and model for subsequent generations of American short story writers. In The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-20), he wove elements of myth and folklore into narratives, such as Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, that achi

17、eved almost immediate classic status. Although Irving was also renowned in his lifetime for his extensive work in history and biography, it was through his short stories that he most strongly influenced American writing in subsequent generations and introduced a number of now-familiar images and arc

18、hetypes into the body of the national literature. A transitional figure, Irving somewhat ironically contributed to Americas literary independence while producing work that was distinctively European in content and style. His masterful use of stylized prose and use of European legend all demonstrate

19、the strong influence of the Old World on his work. This attention to the past, as Irving scholar William P. Kelly has noted, was one reason for Irvings success with his American audience. Kelly points out that Americans, recently severed from their European heritage, were struggling with an identity

20、 crisis at the time they were reading Irvings work, which itself looks both forward and backward. Many critics read Rips twenty-year sleep as a rejection of the capitalistic values of his societyferociously personified by the shrewish Dame Van Winkleand an embracing of the world of the imagination.

21、Ichabod Crane, too, has been viewed by such critics as Robert Bone as representing the outcast artist- intellectual in American society. Life and Literary Achievements Washington Irving was born in New York City at the end of the Revolutionary War on April 3, 1783. His parents, Scottish-English immi

22、grants, were great admirers of General George Washington, and named their son after their hero. At age six Irving met his namesake, who was then living in New York after his inauguration as president in 1789. In the years to come Irving would write one of his greatest works, The Life of George Washi

23、ngton (1855- 59). The 1798 outbreak of yellow fever in Manhattan prompted his family to send him to healthier climes upriver. It was in Tarrytown, New York that Irving became familiar with the nearby town of Sleepy Hollow, with its quaint Dutch customs and local ghost stories. Irving made several ot

24、her trips up the Hudson as a teenager, including an extended visit to Johnstown, New York, where he passed through the Catskill mountain region, the setting for Rip Van Winkle. Of all the scenery of the Hudson, Irving wrote later, the Catskill Mountains had the most witching effect on my boyish imag

25、ination. In 1809, Irving completed his first major book, A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker ( the imaginary Dietrich Knickerbocker, who was supposed to be an eccentric Dutch-American scholar). A History of New-York describ

26、es and pokes fun at the lives of the early Dutch settlers of Manhattan and it was one of the earliest fantasies of history. The name Knickerbocker was later used to identify the first American school of writers, the Knickerbocker Group, of which Irving was a leading figure. The book became part of N

27、ew York folklore, and eventually the word Knickerbocker was also used to describe any New Yorker who could trace ones family to the original Dutch settlers and it is where the basketball team The New York Knickerbockers (Knicks) got its name. Irvings success continued with The Sketch Book of Geoffre

28、y Crayon, Gent. (1819-20), a collection of essays, sketches and tales, which allowed him to become a full-time writer. Published in 1819 under another pen name, Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, the stories were heavily influenced by the German folktales. The Sketch Book includes the short stories “The Legend

29、of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”. The fictional Sleepy Hollow is actually the lower Hudson Valley area near Tarrytown, N.Y., and Rip Van Winkle sleeps through the entire Revolutionary War in the Catskill mountains of upstate New York. In the Sketch Book, Irving transforms the Catskill Mountain

30、s along the Hudson River north of New York City into a fabulous, magical region. American readers gratefully accepted Irvings imagined history of the Catskills, despite the fact that he had adapted his stories from a German source. Irving gave America something it badly needed in the materialistic e

31、arly years: an imaginative way of relating to the new land. By the late 1820s, Irving had gained a reputation throughout Europe and America as a great writer and thinker. Because of his popularity, Irving received many important honors. Irving never married or had children. On November 28, 1859, on

32、the eve of the Civil War, Washington Irving died at Sunnyside surrounded by his family. He was buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y “Rip Van Winkle” Plot Summary The story of Rip Van Winkle is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary

33、War. Rip Van Winkle, a villager of Dutch descent, lives in a nice village at the foot of New Yorks Catskill Mountains. An amiable man whose home and farm suffer from his lazy neglect, he is loved by all but his wife. One autumn day he escapes his nagging wife by wandering up the mountains. There he

34、encounters strangely dressed men, rumored to be the ghosts of Henry Hudsons crew, who are playing nine-pins. After drinking some of their liquor, he settles down under a shady tree and falls asleep. He wakes and returns to his village, where he finds twenty years have passed. He finds out that his w

35、ife has died and that his close friends have died in a war or gone somewhere else. He immediately gets into trouble when he proclaims himself a loyal subject of King George III, not knowing that the American Revolution has taken place. An old local recognizes him, however, and Rips now grown daughte

36、r takes him in. Rip resumes his habitual idleness, and his tale is solemnly believed by the old Dutch settlers, with certain hen-pecked husbands wishing they shared Rips good luck. Setting The story begins about five or six years before the American Revolution and ends twenty years later. The action

37、 takes place in a village in eastern New York, near the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains. The river was named after Englishman Henry Hudson, who explored it in 1609. The Catskill Mountains were named after Kaaterskill, the Dutch word for a local stream, Wildcat Creek. The Catskills contain ma

38、ny other streams, as well as lakes, waterfalls, and gorges. Type of Work Rip Van Winkle is a short storyone of Americas most belovedbased on German folk tales. THE FOLLOWING tale was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old gentleman of New York, who was very curious in the

39、Dutch history of the province. Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Catskill Mountains Selected Reading It is a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists, In that same village, and in one of these very houses, there lived many years si

40、nce, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle. I have observed that he was a simple, good- natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor and an obedient, henpecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing t

41、hat meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious (trying hard to please) and conciliating（make sb. less angry or more friendly) abroad who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant（温顺的） and

42、malleable (easily changed and influenced) in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation (great suffering), and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant （专横的女人）（专横的女人） wife may, therefore, in some respects, be consider

43、ed a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed. The great error in Rips composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. in a word, Rip was ready to attend to anybodys business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, it

44、 was impossible. In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; everything about it went wrong, and would go wrong, in spite of him. His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody. Rip Van Wi

45、nkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well- oiled dispositions, 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,

46、in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence.

47、Rip had but one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh volley from his wife, so that he was fain to draw off his forces, and

48、take to the outside of the housethe only side which, in truth, belongs to a henpecked husband. Rips sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as much henpecked as his master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause

49、of his masters so often going astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woodsbut what courage can withstand the ever-during and all-besetting terrors of a womans tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his crest fell,

50、 his tail drooped to the ground, or curled between his legs; he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broomstick or ladle would fly to the door with yelping precipitation. Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as

51、years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener by constant use. Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to escape from the labor of the farm and clamor of his wife, was to take gun in h

52、and and stroll away into the woods. As he approached the village, he met a number of people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustom

53、ed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The very village was altered: it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts h

54、ad disappeared. Strange names were over the doors strange faces at the windows everything was strange. His mind now began to misgive him; he doubted whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched. Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up the mountain: appar

55、ently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name? “God knows,” exclaimed he, at his wit

56、s end; “Im not myselfIm somebody elsethats me yondernothats somebody else, got into my shoesI was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and theyve changed my gun, and everythings changed, and Im changed, and I cant tell whats my name, or who I am!” How that there had been a revolutio

57、nary warthat the country had thrown off the yoke of old Englandand that, instead of being a subject of his Majesty, George III., he was now a free citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician; the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him; but there was one spe

58、cies of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that waspetticoat government; happily, that was at an end; he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was mentioned, however,

59、he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes; which might pass either for an expression of resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance. Comments on Rip Van Winkle Rip Van Winkle has been seen as a symbol of several aspects of America. Rip, like America, is immature, self-ce

60、ntered, careless, anti- intellectual, imaginative, and jolly as the overgrown child. The Dame is another symbol-of puritanical discipline and the work-ethic of Franklin. The town itself is emblematic of America-forever rapidly changing. Rips conflicts and dreams are those of the nation-the conflict