美国文学史课件

1、IntroductionBasic Concepts Hellenism HELLENISM, a term created in Judea in the 2nd century B.C.E., signifying the adoption by some of the Jews of Greek language, customs, and manners. By extension it came to mean Greek culture and all the characteristics which made a Greek recognize himself as such.

2、 In the absence of any unified Greek political state, it was their cultural affiliation which made the Greeks recognize themselves as members of one and the same community. Among the strong points of Greek culture were the facility with which it spread among the nations who were in touch with the Gr

3、eeks and the appeal it exercised on them. These factors account for its lasting influence, even after the disappearance of the last Greek state, especially in the Orient, one of the chief directions of its expansion. Cultural exchange was, however, by no means one-sided; through its contact with Eas

4、tern and Iranian cultures, Hellenism also was transformed. These relations thus led to mutual cultural enrichment. They also explain the longevity of Hellenism throughout the centuries. Friedrich Nietzsche is a 19th century philosopher who, among many other things, wrote a great deal about Hellenist

5、ic Greece. Nietzsche found this Hellenistic approach to life commendable and believed the bold lives of Greek heroes found in Homers epics were something worth aspiring to. However, his opinion of the Abrahamic religions was juxtaposed with his former of Hellenism. The humble and servile attitudes d

6、emanded by the God of Moses were nothing short of deplorable to Nietzsche, and his work on ethics; On Genealogy of Morals explicates his sentiment on Greek virtue in comparison to those of Western Europe, namely Germany. Excerpt from Nietzsches The Birth of Tragedy, Or: Hellenism and Pessimism: Whoe

7、ver approaches these Olympians with another religion in his heart, searching among them for moral elevation, even for sanctity, for disincarnate spirituality, for charity and benevolence, will soon be forced to turn his back on them, discouraged and disappointed. For there is nothing here that sugge

8、sts asceticism, spirituality, or duty. We hear nothing but the accents of an exuberant, triumphant life in which all things, whether good or evil, are deified. And so the spectator may stand quite bewildered before this fantastic excess of life, asking himself by virtue of what magic potion these hi

9、gh spirited men could have found life so enjoyable that, wherever they turned, their eyes beheld the smile of Helen, the ideal picture of their own existence, “floating in sweet sensuality”. But to this spectator, who has already turned his back, we must say: “Do not go away, but stay and hear what

10、Greek folk wisdom has to say of this very life, which with such inexplicable gaiety unfolds itself before your eyes. Excerpt from Nietzsches Genealogy of Morals: It was in order to be able to live that the Greeks had to create these gods from a most profound need. Perhaps we may picture the process

11、to ourselves somewhat as follows: out of original Titanic divine order of terror, the Olympian divine order of joy gradually evolved through the Apollonian impulse toward beauty, just as roses burst from thorny bushes. How else could this people, so sensitive, so vehement in its desires, so singular

12、ly capable of suffering, have endured existence, if it had not been revealed to them in their gods, surrounded with a higher glory. Christianity Christianity is a monotheistic religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the New Testament, the first four books of

13、which are the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), which recount the life and teachings of Jesus. According to the Gospels, Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born from the virgin Mary. Little of Jesus childhood is recorded in the Gospels compared to his adulthood, especially the week be

14、fore his death. The Biblical accounts of Jesus ministry include his baptism, miracles, teachings, and deeds. Christians believe Jesus to be the Son of God and the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament. The core Christian belief is that, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the perfect Son

15、of God, mankind is reconciled to God and thereby attains salvation by grace and the promise of eternal life to all who trust in Christ. The need for salvation was caused by original sin. Holy Trinity describes the single Divine substance existing as three distinct and inseparable persons: the Father

16、, the Son (Jesus Christ the eternal Word), and the Holy Spirit. Christianity shares its origins and many religious texts with Judaism, specifically the Hebrew Bible, known to Christians as the Old Testament. Like Judaism and Islam, Christianity is classified as an Abrahamic religion. NietzscheFriedr

17、ich Nietzsche (18441900) was a German philosopher of the late 19th century who challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality in the name of revaluation of all values. He was interested in the enhancement of individual and cultural health, and believed in life, creativity, power

18、, and the realities of the world we live in, rather than those situated in a world beyond. Central to his philosophy is the idea of “life-affirmation,” which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain lifes expansive energies, however socially prevalent those views might be. Often re

19、ferred to as one of the first existentialist philosophers along with Sren Kierkegaard (18131855), Nietzsches revitalizing philosophy has inspired leading figures in all walks of cultural life, including dancers, poets, novelists, painters, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists and social revolut

20、ionaries.Specific 20th century figures who were influenced, either quite substantially, or in a significant part, by Nietzsche include Alfred Adler, Georges Bataille, Martin Buber, Albert Camus, E.M. Cioran, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Isadora Duncan, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Stefan Geor

21、ge, Andr Gide, Hermann Hesse, Carl Jung, Martin Heidegger, Gustav Mahler, Andr Malraux, Thomas Mann, H.L. Mencken, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean-Paul Sartre, Max Scheler, Giovanni Segantini, George Bernard Shaw, Lev Shestov, Georg Simmel, Oswald Spengler, Richard Strauss, Paul Tillich, Ferdinand Tnnies,

22、Mary Wigman, William Butler Yeats and Stefan Zweig. Romanticism Romanticism is usually held to have originated in French (especially Rousseau) and German (notably Herder, Kant, Fichte, Schelling) thought, to have spread to England and then America, returned to France somewhat later, and to have shap

23、ed or affected all Europe. Romanticism is an overwhelming international tendency at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries in reaction against earlier Neo-Classicism, Mechanism and Rationalism. More than simply a return to nature, to the unconscious, the realm of imagination or feel

24、ing, it was a synthesizing temper that transformed the entire character of thought, sensibility and art; many of its preoccupations and notions remain central to the modern mind, including interest in the psychological and the expressive, in the childlike, the revolutionary, the nihilistic, the plea

25、sure principle. Realism In the arts, Realism is a key term used to define both a general, recurrent characteristic of nearly all art, and a specific historical movement. Realism in the general sensewhat Harry Levin calls the willed tendency of art to approximate to reality: to attempt precise imitat

26、ion of external and historical experience, to make empirical observations, to follow laws of probability, to seem truehas magnetized artists as diverse as Homer, Breughel and Defoe. During the 19th century, however, realism grew from a technique into a powerful theoretical aim; first and foremost in

27、 painting, but also in fiction and drama. Reacting against Romanticism and philosophical Idealism, suspicious alike of myth, religion and abstraction, it concentrated heavily on the here-and-now, and developed new techniques for the detailed, accurate REPRESENTATION of life in all its social and dom

28、estic aspects. Modernism Modernism is a comprehensive term for an international tendency, arising in the poetry, fiction, drama, music, painting, architecture and other arts of the West in the last years of the 19th century and subsequently affecting the character of most 20thcentury art. As a styli

29、stic term, modernism contains and conceals a wide variety of different, smaller movements, usually reckoned to be those post-dating Naturalism and characterized by the anti-positivistic and anti-representational leanings of many late-19th-century artists and thinkers. It would thus include the tende

30、ncies of Symbolism, Impressionism, and Decadence around the turn of the century; Fauvism, Cubism, Post-Impressionist, Futurism, Constructivism, Imagism, and Vorticism in the period up to and during World War I; and Expressionism, Dada and Surrealism during and after that war. Atonalism in music, ant

31、i-representationalism in painting (Abstract Art), Vers Libre in poetry, fragmentation and stream of consciousness presentation in the novel, Functionalism in architecture, and in general the use of spatial or collage as opposed to linear or representational forms, are recurrent features. Another com

32、mon characteristic is the presence of an element of, in Frank Kermodes word, decreation of technical introversion, or an often ironic self-awarenessin modernist forms. ModernityModernity is a term sometimes used to refer simply to recent times but increasingly denoting a phase in societal developmen

33、t. Modernity is sometimes seen as dating from the Enlightenment of 17th-and 18th-century Europe, sometimes from the development of industrial society in the 19th century. One of the most influential characterizations of modernity is that of the German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920), who sees its

34、main feature as an emphasis on rationality. Linked to the emphasis on rationality in modernity is a belief that it is impossible to improve, and perhaps perfect, human society through planned intervention in the social world. Some advocates of Postmodernism (particularly Jean-Franois Lyotard) argue

35、that modernity has ended or is in the process of ending, and believe that attempts to perfect the social world will only lead to tyranny. Other social scientists, such as Jrgen Habermas, deny that contemporary societies have moved beyond modernity and argued that the pursuit of planned improvements

36、in human societies remains essential. The Enlightenment The Enlightenment, starting in the 17th century with the scientific revolution, was a momentous intellectual movement that gradually established a system of modern values that emphasize reason, science, knowledge, progress, toleration, and (Car

37、tesian) skepticism.A History of American LiteraturePart 1Early American Literature:Colonial Period to 1815 Chapter 1 The Literature of the New WorldDiscoveries of America are diverse in their cultural and historical situations so that American culture is featured by cultural pluralism from the begin

38、ning.Discovery has become part of the American spirit. Thoreau said in The Maine Woods that America is always in the process of being discovered. The discovery of America denotes not only the exploration of the New World but also the exploration of the new in America. Native American Oral Literature

39、Origin storiesTrickster tales (people in the form of animals)Historical narrativesEuropean Exploration WritingsThe author challenged the conventional view that American literature should begin with Captain John Smith who recorded the EuropeanIndian encounter. . Chapter 2The Literature of Colonial Am

40、erica: 1620-1763Puritan Literature 1. Much of the literature was produced by Puritan and Pilgrim writers in the North whose American dream was to build a City upon a Hill, a religious utopia. (Definition of “Puritan” P.15) 2. Puritanism: Puritanism in America is sometimes called Calvinism. Puritan b

41、eliefs were based on two covenants, the covenant between God and Adam broken by the original sin and that between God and Abraham which involved Gods saving grace. Puritan beliefs opposed spiritual aristocrats to social aristocrats. The Puritans interpreted quite literally the apocalyptic prophecy o

42、f Revelation in the New Testament. They saw the initial help provided by the Indians to the Puritans as Gods providence at work and the conflicts with the Indians or “heathens” as fitting their understanding of the Bible. The witch-hunt (in Salem, for example) was a significant phenomenon within the

43、 Puritan community. In the 20th century, Arthur Miller reused the material of the Salem trials in his drama The Crucible. Anne Hutchinson as a dissenter was a fighter for religious freedom and womens rights. 3. The need to examine ones inner life or original sin as the experience of saving grace is

44、at the heart of Puritan colonial literature.Jonathan Edwards and the Great AwakeningThe Great Awakening： an evangelical movement meant to address, indeed redress, the new “sins,” namely deism and skepticism fostered by the influence of the European Enlightenment, the pursuit of materialist gains, an

45、d the trends to fall away from the old path of religious piety. Jonathan Edwards: a theologian in whom the fervor of the Great Awakening and the thinking of Enlightenment converged in contradiction. (Contemporary China)Southern LiteratureSouthern Literature with non-Puritan characteristics was creat

46、ed by Southerners whose American dream was to find the “vale of plenty”or to pursue material abundance. Religious life in the South adopted a variety of forms including the Anglican Church, Roman Catholics, Quakers, etc.Chapter 3Literature and the American Revolution:1764-1815Literature in the Ameri

47、can Revolution was predominantly public and utilitarian.Cultural Background: 1. The Enlightenment, starting in the 17th century with the scientific revolution, was a momentous intellectual movement that gradually established a system of modern values that emphasize reason, science, knowledge and pro

48、gress. What we call post-modernism today is, in part, a set of critical strategies developed over 300 years that call into question some of the problems if the Enlightenment. Rationalism often oversimplifies human nature to the extent that it overlooks the forces of desire, instincts, and will. Furt

49、hermore, rationalism, when instrumentalized, can be employed and, has been employed, to justify colonialist expansion, political repression, and genocides. Baudelaire, Flaubert, Dostoevsky were pioneers in the critique of the Enlightenment reason and modernity. The 18th century, in Europe as in Amer

50、ica, is known as the Age of Reason and Enlightenment. Ideas from the Enlightenment movement intellectually shaped the transition of the American nationhood to the status of independence and federation. These ideas produced new types of men including scientists, political philosophers, and religious

51、rationalists. Educated colonists in America were influenced by the scientific rationalism of Newton and the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. 2. Deism and Unitarianism Deism The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man. There is only one God who is all-perfect.

52、 There is a future state of rewards and punishments. To love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself is the sum of religion. These are the great points on which Christ endeavored to reform the religion of the Jews. (Thomas Jeffersons summarization) In Deism the rights of religion became c

53、onsistent with the rights of government and rights of the individual. Thus Deism was an integral part of the American Constitution, especially the First Amendment. Deism, as a more intellectualized and liberalized religion, became an antidote to Puritan/Calvinist tenets. Unitarianism (institutionali

54、zed Deism) Generally, Unitarianism believes that Jesus was a man and that Christianity is not a series of creeds but a way of life. Their statements of faith (not doctrines) are the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the leadership of Jesus, salvation by character, and progress of mankind on

55、ward and upward forever. Puritan influences declined partly due to the challenge of Enlightenment ideas and the rise of Unitarianism/ Deism which saw sin as a matter involving human relationships and not as an offense against God. After 1819, William Ellery Channing led Unitarianism/Deism into the p

56、hilosophy of transcendentalism. Political Background 1. The American Revolution whose philosophical motivation was John Locke and other philosophers of the natural rights school. Americans argued that God and Nature were Reason and that the King and the British government could not do what God and N

57、ature had forbiddenin other words, they could not impose taxation without representation. 2. The frontier movement The fascination with the frontier led to genocides of native Americans and, ironically, to romanticization of the frontier spirit. The frontier became the collective unconscious of the

58、American nation. Prominent Political Figures in This PeriodBenjamin Franklin (1706-1790) He exemplifies the age of Enlightenment and his religion might be described as transcendental Deism. His works include Poor Richards Almanacs, The Way to Wealth, and The Autobiography. Poor Richard could be the

59、earliest character of fiction created by an American author. Thomas Paine (1737-1809) His works include Common Sense, The American Crisis and The Rights of Man.Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) 1. Deism 2. The best government was the government that governed least. 3. The Declaration of Independence (177

60、6)Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) The Federalist Papers, which minimalized arguments based on natural rights, stabilized the political and economic system. Prominent Literary FiguresPhilip Freneau the Poet (1752-1832) 1. Deism 2. Forerunner of American RomanticismRoyall Tyler the Dramatist (1757-1826