英美文学笔记2

1、美国文学史及选读（第二册）笔记The Literature of Realism陈银 2014/3/7Lecture 2 Teaching Aims 1. To learn Walt Whitman and Harriet Beecher Stowe s life and career 2. To understand Walt Whitmans contribution and his poemsfeature 3. To understand Harriet Beecher Stowe s Uncle Toms Cabin Walt Whitman(1819 1892) American

2、poet, essayist ,journalist, and humanist A part of the transition between Transcendentalism and Realism The father of free verseLife and Career Born in 1819 on Long Island, New York Poor & Semiliterate(半文盲的） parents, only 5-6 years formal education, self-educated Worked as office boy, printing worke

3、r, school teacher(1836), free-lance writer In 1842 he was editor of the Aurora :r:r and from 1846 to 1848 he was editor of the Brooklyn Eagle Supported slavery abolishing, dismissed from his job Served as a volunteer nurse during the Civil War Died in 1892, unmarried all his lifeMajor Works of Whitm

4、an Leaves of Grass 草叶集 Drum-Taps 桴鼓集 Song of Myself 自我之歌 I Sit and Look Out 坐观世间 O Captain, My Captain! 船长，我的船长 When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd 最近紫丁香在庭院里开放的时候 I hear America Singing 我听见美国在歌唱Leaves of Grass 草叶集 First published in 1855 with only 12 poems Nine editions and last edition includes

5、 more than 400 poems Celebrates the ideals of equality, democracy, the dignity, self-reliant spirit and joy of common people Grass-the most common thing with the greatest vitality, as a symbol of the rising AmericanWalt Whitmans Contribution He believes the American poets would create both new forms

6、 and new subjects matter for poetry. In terms of poetic form, he advocated a completely new and completely American form of expression-free verse. In terms of contents, most of his poems are about man and nature, especially common people and ordinary Americans. He wanted his poetry to be for the com

7、mon people Major Themes in His Poetry Equality of things and beings Divinity of everything Multiplicity of nature Self-reliant spirit Death, beauty of death Expansion of America Brotherhood and social solidarity (unity of nations in the world) Pursuit of love and happinessFeatures of Whitmans poetry

8、1. The use of a certain pronoun “I”2. Two principles Parallelism or a rhyme of thought Phonetic recurrence ( the repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of the line, in the middle or at the end)E.g. I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belon

9、ging to me as good belongs to you3. The adopt of “free verse”-poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme4. The use of colorful words and vivid images Song of MyselfThe two principal beliefs embodied in this poem: In this poem Whitman sets forth two principal beliefs: the theory of universal

10、ity, which is illustrated by lengthy catalogues of people and things, and the belief in the singularity and equality of all beings in value. He extols whole universe and the world. He is thinking of the self as a powerful and sensitive instrument for receiving and expressing. He moves from himself t

11、o you to others, to all humanity all together about him.SelfIn this poem Whitman seems to put himself in the center, but the self of the poems speaker - the I of the poem - should not be limited to or confused with the person of the historical Walt Whitman. This is an expansive persona, one that has

12、 exploded the conventional boundaries of the self. I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe . and am not contained between my hat and boots (section 7).There are several other quotes from the poem that make it apparent that Whitman does not see himself as the voice of one indi

13、vidual. Rather, he seems to be speaking for all: “in all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less/and the good or bad I say of myself I say of them” (Section 20) “it is you talking just as much as myselfI act as the tongue of you” (Section 47) “I am large, I contain multitudes.”

14、(Section 51) “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” (Section 1) Harriet Beecher Stowe（1811-1896）So you are the little woman who wrote the book that created this great war. - Abraham Lincoln, 1862 upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe Harriet was one of eleven brothers and sisters, man

15、y of whom became famous reformers. Harriet was first a student and then a teacher at Hartford Female Seminary, a school founded by her sister Catherine. At that time, Hartford Female Seminary was one of only a handful of schools that took the education of girls seriouslyLiterary InfluencesHarriet Be

16、echer Stowe was influenced by many people. The most prominent influences in her life were: Her father, Lyman, a minister and seminary president Her sister, Catherine, an innovative educator Her younger brother, Henry, a minister Her husband, Calvin Ellis Stowe, a professor and strong critic of slave

17、ry. Literary Influence and Themes The author drew from these influences a strong sense of morality, which appears in the Puritan style of her characters, her religious identity, and a belief in the equality of all people, men and women. When the U.S. government passed the Fugitive Slaves Act (prohib

18、iting assistance to runaway slaves) she felt it was necessary to voice her opinions and began writing Uncle Toms Cabin. Uncle Toms Cabin became the best-selling novel of the 19th century in the U.S.Literary Themes Equality of all people Evil reality of slavery Christian love can overcome all (even s

19、omething as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings) The moral power of womenUncle Toms Cabin Main Characters George Shelby Uncle Tom Eliza and her son Harry Eva and her father, Augustine St. Clare Simon LegreePlotTwo main stories dominate the novel:1. the story of Eliza and her son Harry

20、2. the story of Uncle Tom. Uncle Toms Cabin - Plot One story serves as an escape narrative, chronicling Eliza and Georges flight to freedom. The other story is a slavery narrative, chronicling Uncle Toms descent into increasingly worse states of oppression. Polarization of North and SouthUncle Toms

21、Cabin Not surprisingly, the action in the escape narrative moves increasingly northward, with Canada representing its endpoint and the attainment of freedom by the escaped slaves. The action in the slavery narrative moves increasingly southward, with Toms death occurring on Legrees plantation in rur

22、al Louisiana, far into the Deep South. The geographical split in the novel represents the wide gulf between freedom and slavery and plays into Stowes general use of parallelism and contrast in making her political points.The Evil Reality of Slavery Uncle Toms Cabin was written after the passage of t

23、he Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made it illegal for anyone in the United States to offer aid or assistance to a runaway slave. The novel seeks to attack the Fugitive Slave Act and the institution it protected, advocating the immediate emancipation of the slaves and freedom for all people.Religi

24、ous Themes Christian ValuesEach of Stowes scenes serves, without exception, to persuade the readerespecially the Northern reader of Stowes timethat slavery is evil, un-Christian, and intolerable in a civil society.The Incompatibility of Slavery & Christian Values Writing for a mainly religious, pred

25、ominantly Protestant audience, Stowe takes great pains to illustrate the fact that the system of slavery and the moral code of Christianity oppose each other. In the book, the more religious a character is, the more he or she objects to slavery.The Moral Power of Women Although Stowe wrote Uncle Tom

26、s Cabin before the widespread growth of the womens rights movement of the late 1800s, the reader can nevertheless regard the book as a exemplar of early feminism. The text portrays women as morally conscientious, committed, and courageousindeed, often as more morally conscientious, committed, and co

27、urageous than men.Uncle Toms Cabin MotifsMotifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the texts major themes.1.Christ Figures The novel presents two instances of a sacrificial death linked to Christs. Eva and Tom, the two most morally perfect characters in the novel, both die in atmospheres of charged religious belief, and both die, in a sense, to achieve salvation for others. Both Tom and Eva are explicitly compared to Christ.2.The Supernatural an