美国文学入门.ppt

1、American Literature,Fan Li (2014,02),Lecture One,QQ:464465874 TelEmail:, 密码：20132013,Classroom policy,1). Class attendance is required of all the students; 2). Class participation is encouraged and expected; 3). Classroom exercises and homework are hoped to be well finished.,The final a

2、ssessment,1). Attendance of the lectures 10%； 2). Homework 20% 2). Final examination 70%；,Teaching plan,To introduce the main authors in American literary history. To introduce the main literary theories. Questions collected from different universities.,Part I. Introduction,A few questions,1. How to

3、 define literature and the American literature?,We can define literature as language artistically used to achieve identifiable literary qualities and to convey meaningful messages. Literature is characterized by beauty of expression and form and by universality intellectual and emotional appeal.,Ame

4、rican literature mainly refers to literature produced in English by the people living in the United States.,美国文学,美国文学（American literature或Literature of the United States）指在美国产生的文学（也包括建国前殖民地时期的文学作品）。美国文学的历史不长，它几乎是和美国自由资本主义同时出现，较少受到封建贵族文化的束缚。美国早期人口稀少，有大片未开发的土地，为个人理想的实现提供了很大的可能性。,美国文学,美国人民富于民主自由精神，个人主义

5、、个性解放的观念较为强烈，这在文学中有突出的反映。美国又是一个多民族的国家，移民不断涌入，各自带来了本民族的文化，这决定了美国文学风格的多样性和庞杂性。美国文学发展的过程就是不断吸取、融化各民族文学特点的过程。,It improves your language proficiency. It enriches your knowledge about the English culture. It helps you explore the nature of human beings. It gives you spiritual and psychological relief.,2.

6、Why is it necessary for you to study literature?,3.why do people read literature?,Reading for Pleasure Howells think that “the study of literature should begin and end in pleasure”. Apart from its role of protest, education, cognition and aesthetic appreciation, literature is primarily give pleasure

7、. Reading for Relaxation Get readers away to an imaginary world, thus forget their problems and obligations of everyday life. Reading to Acquire Knowledge It gives readers an insight into the tradition , custom, belief, attitudes, folklore, values of the age in which it is written.,Reading to Confro

8、nt Experience Literature is appealing mainly because of its relationship to human experience. It sheds light on the complexity and ambiguity of human experiences and thus broadens readers awareness of the possibilities of the experience. Reading for Artistic Appreciation Good craftsmanship and the b

9、eauty of expression and form; It can be analyzed according to literary theories and criteria; literary criticism, to clarify, explain and evaluate literature from an aesthetic point of view.,Analytical Approach Be familiar with the elements of a literary work, eg: plot, character, setting, point of

10、view, etc; answer some basic questions about the text itself. Thematic Approach “What is the story, the poem, the play or the essay about?” Historical Approach Aims at illustrating the historical development of literature.,5. How to study literature,Part II. The periods of American literature,The co

11、lonial period (约1607 - 1765) The main featuresP16 Puritanism The period of enlightenment and the Independence War (1765 -1800) Benjamin Franklin 3. The romantic period (1800 - 1865) The early romanticism,Washington Irving,James Fenimore Cooper,“New England Transcendentalism” or “American Renaissance

12、 (1836 - 1855)”,Emerson Thoreau,Whitman Dickinson,Hawthorne Melville Allan Poe,“New England Poets” or “Schoolroom Poets”,Lowell,Bryant,Holmes,Whittier,Longfellow,The Reformers and Abolitionists,Beecher Stowe,Frederick Douglass,The realistic period (1865 - 1914) Midwestern Realism,William Dean Howell

13、s,Cosmopolitan Novelist,Henry James,Local Colorism,Naturalism,Stephen Crane,Jack London,Theodore Dreiser,Mark Twain,The “Chicago School” of Poetry,Sandburg,Lindsay,Robinson,Masters,The Rise of Black American Literature,Washington,Du Bois,Chestnutt,The period of modernism (1914 - 1945) Modern poetry:

14、 experiments in form (Imagism),Ezra Pound,T.S.Eliot,Wallace Stevens,Robert Frost,Carlos Williams,Prose Writing: modern realism (the Lost Generation),F.Scott Fitzgerald,Ernest Hemingway,William Faulkner,Novels of Social Awareness,Sinclair Lewis,Dos Passos,John Steinbeck,Richard Wright,The Harlem Renaissance,Langston Hughes,Zora Neals Hurston,New Criticism,Th