美国文学史期末参考复习资料
仅作参考，最主要还是要自己消化，整理
Chapter 1 Colonial Period
1. Puritanism: American puritans accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God.
2. Influence
(1) A group of good qualities – hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety (serious and thoughtful) influenced
American literature.
(2) It led to the everlasting myth. All literature is based on a myth – garden of Eden.
(3) Symbolism: the American puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chi efly instrumental
in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American.
(4) With regard to their writing, the style is fresh, simple and direct; the rhetoric is plain and
honest, not without a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible.
II. Overview of the literature
1. types of writing
diaries, histories, journals, letters, travel books, autobiographies/biographies, sermons
2. writers of colonial period
(1) Anne Bradstreet
(2) Edward Taylor
III. Benjamin Franklin
1. life
2. works
(1) Poor Richard’s Almanac
(2) Autobiography
3. contribution
(1) He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital and the American Philosophical Society.
(2) He was called “the new Prometheus who had stolen fire (electricity in this case) from
heaven”.
(3) Everything seems to meet in this one man –“Jack of all trades”. Herman Melville thus
described him “master of each and mastered by none”.
Chapter 2 American Romanticism
Section 1 Early Romantic Period
I. American Romanticism
1. Background
(1) Political background and economic development
(2) Romantic movement in European countries
Derivative – foreign influence
2. features
(1) American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new experience and
contained “an alien quality” for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place” was radically
new and alien.
(2) There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider. American romantic authors
tended more to moralize. Many American romantic writings intended to edify more than they
entertained.
(3) The “newness” of Americans as a nation is in connection with Am erican Romanticism.
(4) As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American romanticism was both
imitative and independent.
II. Washington Irving: Father of American Literature
1. several names attached to Irving
(1) first American writer
(2) the messenger sent from the new world to the old world
(3) father of American literature
2. life
3. works
(1) A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty
(2) The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (He won a measure of international recognition
with the publication of this.)
(3) The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus
(4) A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada
(5) The Alhambra
4. Literary career: two parts
(1) 1809~1832
a. Subjects are either English or European
b. Conservative love for the antique
(2) 1832~1859: back to US
III. James Fenimore Cooper
1. life
2. works
(1) Precaution (1820, his first novel, imitating Austen’s Pride and Prejudice)
(2) The Spy (his second novel and great success)
(3) Leatherstocking T ales (his masterpiece, a series of five novels)
The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneer, The Prairie
3. point of view
the theme of wilderness vs. civilization, freedom vs. law, order vs. change, aristocrat vs. democrat, natural rights vs. legal rights
4. literary achievements
He created a myth about the formative period of the American nation. If the history of the United States is, in a sense, the process of the American settlers exploring and pushing the American frontier forever westward, then Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales effectively approximates the American national experience of adventure into the West. He turned the west and frontier as a useable past and he helped to introduce western tradition to American literature.
Section 2 Summit of Romanticism – New England Transcendentalism
I. Mark: 1836, “Nature” by Emerson
II. Definition:
As a philosophical and literary movement, Transcendentalism flourished in New England from 1830s to the outbreak of the civil war. Its representatives were Emerson and Thoreau.
Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe. The transcendentalists stressed the importance of the individual. The transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1. life
2. works
(1) Nature (The Bible of New England Transcendentalism)
(2) Two essays: The American Scholar (America’s Declaration of Intellectual Independence),
The Poet
3. aesthetic ideas
(1) He is a complete man, an eternal man.
(2) True poetry and true art should ennoble.
(3) The poet should express his thought in symbols.
(4) As to theme, Emerson called upon American authors to celebrate America which was to him
a lone poem in itself.
III. Henry David Thoreau
1. life
2. works
(1) A Week on the Concord and Merrimack River
(2) Walden
(3) A Plea for John Brown (an essay)
3. point of view
(1) He did not like the way a materialistic America was developing and was vehemently
outspoken on the point.
(2) He hated the human injustice as represented by the slavery system.
(3) Like Emerson, but more than him, Thoreau saw nature as a genuine restorative, healthy
influence on man’s spiritual well-being.
(4) He has faith in the inner virtue and inward, spiritual grace of man.
(5) He was very critical of modern civilization.
(6) “Simplicity…simplify!”
(7) He was sorely disgusted with “the inundations of the dirty institutions of men’s odd-fellow
society”.
(8) He has calm trust in the future and his ardent belief in a new generation of men.
Section 3 Late Romanticism
I. Nathaniel Hawthorne
1. life
2. works
(1) Two collections of short stories: Twice-told Tales, Mosses from and Old Manse
(2) The Scarlet Letter
(3) The House of the Seven Gables
(4) The Marble Faun
3. point of view
(1) Evil is at the core of human life, “that blackness in Hawthorne”
(2) Whenever there is sin, there is punishment. Sin or evil can be passed from generation to
generation (causality).
(3) He is of the opinion that evil educates.
(4) He has disgust in science.
4. aesthetic ideas
(1) He took a great interest in history and antiquity. To him these furnish the soil on which his
mind grows to fruition.
(2) He was convinced that romance was the predestined form of American narrative. To tell the
truth and satirize and yet not to offend: That was what Hawthorne had in mind to achieve.
5. style – typical romantic writer
(1) the use of symbols
(2) revelation of characters’ psychology
(3) the use of supernatural mixed with the actual
(4) his stories are parable (parable inform) – to teach a lesson
(5) use of ambiguity to keep the reader in the world of uncertainty – multiple point of view
II. Herman Melville
1. life
2. works
(1) White Jacket
(2) Moby Dick
3. point of view
(1) He never seems able to say an affirmative yes to life: His is the attitude of “Everlasting Nay”
(negative attitude towards life).
(2) One of the major themes of his is alienation (far away from each other).
Other themes: loneliness, suicidal individualism (individualism causing disaster and death),
rejection and quest, confrontation of innocence and evil, doubts over the comforting 19c idea
of progress
4. style
(1) Like Hawthorne, Melville manages to achieve the effect of ambiguity through employing the
technique of multiple view of his narratives.
(2) He tends to write periodic chapters.
(3) His rich rhythmical prose and his poetic power have been profusely commented upon and
praised.
(4) His works are symbolic and metaphorical.
(5) He includes many non-narrative chapters of factual background or description of what goes
on board the ship or on the route (Moby Dick)
Romantic Poets
I. Walt Whitman
1. life
2. work: Leaves of Grass (9 editions)
(1) Song of Myself
(2) There Was a Child Went Forth
(3) Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
(4) Democratic Vistas
(5) Passage to India
(6) Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
3. themes –“Catalog of American and European thought”
4. style:
One of the major principles of Whitman’s technique is parallelism or a rhythm of thought in which, the line is the rhythmical unit. Another main principle of Whitman’s versification is ph onetic recurrence, i. e., the systematic repetition of words and phrases at the beginning of the line, in the middle or at the end. Whitman wrote free verse.
5. influence
(1) His best work has become part of the common property of Western culture.
(2) He took over Whitman’s vision of the poet-prophet and poet-teacher and recast it in a more
sophisticated and Europeanized mood.
(3) He has been compared to a mountain in American literary history.
(4) Contemporary American poetry, whatever school or form, bears witness to his great
influence.
II. Emily Dickenson
1. life
2. works
(1) My Life Closed Twice before Its Close
(2) Because I Can’t Stop for Death
(3) I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I died
(4) Mine – by the Right of the White Election
(5) Wild Nights – Wild Nights
3. themes: based on her own experiences/joys/sorrows
(1) religion – doubt and belief about religious subjects
(2) death and immortality
(3) love – suffering and frustration caused by love
(4) physical aspect of desire
(5) nature – kind and cruel
(6) free will and human responsibility
III. Comparison: Whitman vs. Dickinson
1. Similarities:
(1) Thematically, they both extolled, in their different ways, an emergent America, its expansion,
its individualism and its Americanness, their poetry being part of “American Renaissance”.
(2) Technically, they both added to the literary independence of the new nation by breaking free
of the convention of the iambic pentameter and exhibiting a freedom in form unknown before:
they were pioneers in American poetry.
2. differences:
(1) Whitman seems to keep his eye on society at large; Dickinson explores the inner life of the
individual.
(2) Whereas Whitman is “national” in his outlook, Dickinson is “regional”.
(3) Whitman has the “catalogue technique” which Dickinson doesn’t have. (direct, simple style) Edgar Allen Poe
I. Life
II. Works
1. short stories
(1) ratiocinative stories
a. Ms Found in a Bottle
b. The Murders in the Rue Morgue
c. The Purloined Letter
(2) Revenge, death and rebirth
a. The Fall of the House of Usher
b. Ligeia
c. The Masque of the Red Death
(3) Literary theory
a. The Philosophy of Composition
b. The Poetic Principle
c. Review of Hawthorne’s Twice-told Tales
III. Themes
1. death –predominant theme in Poe’s writing
“Poe is not interested in anything alive. Everything in Poe’s writings is dead.”
2. disintegration (separation) of life
3. horror
4. negative thoughts of science
IV. Aesthetic ideas
1. The short stories should be of brevity, totality, single effect, compression and finality.
2. The poems should be short, and the aim should be beauty, the tone melancholy. Poems should
not be of moralizing. He calls for pure poetry and stresses rhythm.
V. Style – traditional, but not easy to read
VI. Reputation: “the jingle man” (Emerson)
VII. His influences
Chapter 3 The Age of Realism
I. Background: From Romanticism to Realism
1. the three conflicts that reached breaking point in this period
(1) industrialism vs. agrarian
(2) culturely-measured east vs. newly-developed west
(3) plantation gentility vs. commercial gentility
2. 1880’s urbanization: from free competition to monopoly capitalism
3. the closing of American frontier
II. Definition:
With Howells, James, and Mark Twain active on the scene, realism became a major trend in the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century. It expressed the concern for the world of experience, of the commonplace, and for the familiar and the low. In matters of style, there was contrast between the genteel and graceful prose on the one hand, and vernacular diction and rough and ready frontier humor on the other.
Three Giants in Realistic Period
1. William Dean Howells –“Dean of American Realism”
(1) Works
a. The Rise of Silas Lapham
b. A Chance Acquaintance
c. A Modern Instance
(2) Features of His Works
a. Optimistic tone
b. Moral development/ethics
c. Lacking of psychological depth
2. Henry James
(1) Life
(2) Literary career: three stages
a. 1865~1882: international theme
●The American
●Daisy Miller
●The Portrait of a Lady
b. 1882~1895: inter-personal relationships and some plays
●Daisy Miller (play)
c. 1895~1900: novellas and tales dealing with childhood and adolescence, then back to
international theme
●The Turn of the Screw
●When Maisie Knew
●The Ambassadors
●The Wings of the Dove
●The Golden Bowl
(3) International Theme:
Most of Hen ry Jame’s novels deal with the international theme. That is the meeting of America and Europe, American innocence in contact and contrast with European decadende, and its moral and psychological complications. For American it was a process of progression from inexperience to experience, from innocence to knowledge and maturity.
Local Colorism
1860s, 1870s~1890s
I. Appearance
1. uneven development in economy in America
2. culture: flourishing of frontier literature, humourists
3. magazines appeared to let writer publish their works
II. What is “Local Colour”?
Local Colorism as a trend first made its presence felt in the late 1860s and early seventies. The appearance of Bret Harte’s “The Luck of Roaring Camp” in 1868 marked a significant development in the brief history of local color fiction. Local colorists concerned themselves with presenting and interpreting the local character of their regions. They tended to idealize and glorify, but they never
forgot to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life.
III. Mark Twain – Mississippi
1. life
2. works
(1) The Gilded Age
(2) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn
(3) Life on the Mississippi
IV. Comparison of the three “giants” of American Realism
In thematic terms, James wrote mostly of the upper reaches of American society, and Howells concerned himself chiefly with middle class life, whereas Mark Twain dealt largely with the lower strata of society. Technically, Howells wrote in the vein of genteel realism, James pursued the psychological realism, but Mark Twain’s contributi on to the development of realism and to American literature as a whole was partly through his theories of local colorism in American fiction, and partly through his colloquial style.
Chapter 4 American Naturalism
I. Background
1. Darwin’s theory: “natural selection”
2. Spenser’s idea: “social Darwinism”
3. French Naturalism: Zora
II. Definition: American Naturalism appeared in the 1890s with the representatives of Crane, Norris and Theodore Dreiser. They tore the mask of gentility to pieces and wrote about the helplessness of man, his insignificance in a cold world, and his lack of dignity in face of the crushing forces of environment and heredity. They reported truthfully and objectively, with a passion for scientific accuracy and a lot of details. The whole picture is somber and dark; and the general tone one of hopelessness and even despair.
III. Theodore Dreiser
1. life
2. works
(1) Sister Carrie
3. point of view
(1) He embraced social Darwinism – survival of the fittest. He learned to regard man as merely
an animal driven by greed and lust i n a struggle for existence in which only the “fittest”, the
most ruthless, survive.
(2) Life is predatory, a “game” of the lecherous and heartless, a jungle struggle in which man,
being “a waif and an interloper in Nature”, a “wisp in the wind of social forces”, is a mere
pawn in the general scheme of things, with no power whatever to assert his will.
(3) No one is ethically free; everything is determined by a complex of internal chemisms and by
the forces of social pressure.
Chapter 5 The Modern Period
Section 1 The 1920s
I. Introduction
The 1920s is a flowering period of American literature. It is considered “the second renaissance” of American literature.
The nicknames for this period:
(1) Roaring 20s – comfort
(2) Dollar Decade – rich
(3) Jazz Age – Jazz music
II. Background
a) First World War –“a war to end all wars”
(1) Economically: became rich from WWI. Economic boom: new inventions. Highly-consuming
society.
(2) Spiritually: dislocation, fragmentation.
b) wide-spread contempt for law (looking down upon law)
1. Freud’s theory
Imagism
I. Development: three stages
2. 1908~1909: London, Hulme
3. 1912~1914: England -> America, Pound
4. 1914~1917: Amy Lowell
II. Principles
1. Direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective;
2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation;
3. As regarding rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a
metronome.
Imagism: Imagism was a poetic movement that flourished in America and England, at the beginning of the 20th century. Ezra Pound raised three principles for the movement: direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective; to use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation; as regarding rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome.
III. Ezra Pound
1. life
2. literary career
3. works
(1) Cathay
(2) Cantos
(3) Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
4. style: very difficult to read
5. Cantos –“the intellectual diary since 1915”
VII. T. S. Eliot
1. life
2. works
(1) poems
●The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
●The Waste Land (epic): spiritual crisis of the postwar Europe.
3. point of view
(1) The modern society is futile and chaotic.
(2) Only poets can create some order out of chaos.
(3) The method to use is to compare the past and the present.
4. The Waste Land: five parts
(1) The Burial of the Dead
(2) A Game of Chess
(3) The Fire Sermon
(4) Death by Water
(5) What the Thunder Said
VIII. Robert Frost
1. life
2. works
(1) The Road Not Taken
(2) Mending Wall
(3) Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Novels in the 1920s
I. F. Scott Fitzgerald
1. works
(1) The Great Gatsby
(2) Tender is the Night
2. point of view
(1) He expressed what the young people believed in the 1920s, the so-called “American Dream”
is false in nature.
(2) He had always been critical of the rich and tried to show the integrating effects of money on
the emotional make-up of his character. He found that wealth altered people’s characters,
making them mean and distrusted. He thinks money brought only tragedy and remorse.
(3) His novels follow a pattern: dream – lack of attraction – failure and despair.
3. His ideas of “American Dream”
It is false to most young people. Only those who were dishonest could become rich.
II. Ernest Hemingway
1. life
2. works
(1) The Sun Also Rises
(2) A Farewell to Arms
(3) For Whom the Bell T olls
(4) The Old Man and the Sea
3. themes –“grace under pressure”
(1) war and influence of war on people, with scenes connected with hunting, bull fighting which
demand stamina and courage, and with the question “how to live with pain”, “how human
being live gracefully under pressure”.
(2) “code hero”/Hemingway Hero
The Hemingway hero is an average man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and
intelligent, a man of action, and one of few words. That is an individualist keeping emotions
under control, stoic and self-disciplined in a dreadful place. These people are usually spiritual
strong, people of certain skills, and most of them encounter death many times.
III. Sinclair Lewis –“the worst important writer in American literature”. He was the first American author to win the Nobel Prize for literature, which he did in 1930.
Southern Literature
I. Heritage
American southern literature can date back to Edgar Allen Poe, and reach its summit with the appearance of the two “giants” – Faulkner and Wolfe. There are southern women writers – Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor.
II. Southern Myths – guilt, failure, poverty
1. Chevalier heritage
2. Agrarian virtue
3. Plantation aristocracy
4. Lost cause
5. White supremacy
6. Purity of womanhood
Southern literature: twisted, pessimistic, violent, distorted
Gothic novel: Poe
III. William Faulkner
1. life
2. literary career: three stages
●Sartoris
●The Sound and the Fury
●As I Lay Dying
●Light in August
●Absalom, Absalom
●Go Down, Moses
3. themes
(1) history and race
He explains the present by examining the past, by telling the stories of several generations of
family to show how history changes life. He was interested in the relationship between blacks
and whites, especially concerned about the problems of the people who were of the mixed
race of black and white, unacceptable to both races.
(2) Deterioration
(3) Conflicts between generations, classes, races, man and environment
(4) Horror, violence and the abnormal
Section 2 The 1930s
I. John Steinbeck
1. life
2. works
(1) Of Mice and Men
(2) The Grapes of Wrath
Chapter 6 The Post-War Period: 50s & 60s
I. Historical Background – multi-faceted
1. Cold War
2. McCarthyism (persecution of communists)
3. Korean War
4. Civil Rights Movement
5. Counter-culture Movement – political, economical and military achievement
Section 1 Poetry
I. Schools of Poetry (time, representatives, major features)
1. Confessional Poets: Robert Lowell
The greatness of Lowell lies in the fact that, in talking candidly about himself, he is examining the culture of his nation. The identification of personal experience with that of an age has always ensured greatness and even immortality as it did.
2. Black Mountain Poets: Charles Olson
There is an emphasis on the importance of the moments of awareness. It portrays a world of “awakened, contemplative awareness”, one in which civilization appears alien, cold, and almost unreal.
3. Beat Generation:
In the 1950s there was a widespread discontentment among the postwar generation, whose voice was one of protest against all the mainstream culture that America had come to represent. This has come to be known as the Beat Generation. The representatives included Allan Ginsberg’s Howl and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.
Section 2 Fiction
1. J. D. Salinger
(1) Life
(2) Point of view
One of his frequent themes is young people longing for simplicity and truth instead of
complexity and hypocrisy of the life they observed around them. In his novels, he questions
the moral foundations of society and often places innocent idealist characters in setting
where a vicious, corrupt society could destroy them. Although his stories are often pessimistic,
the characters represent hope rather than despair. They want to affirm truth. They deplore th e
lies with which the society conceals its own corruption. They withdraw the society, become
drop-outs rather than participants in the society.
(3) Catcher in the Rye
2. Joseph Heller
(1) Life
(2) Catch-22
It is not only a war novel, but also a novel about people’s life in peaceful time. This novel
attacked the dehumanization of all contemporary institutions and corruptions of individuals
who gain power in institutions. Armed-forces are the most outrageous example of the two
evils.
Language: circular conversation, wrenched cliché
Jewish Literature
I. Definition
Jewish literature refers to published creative writings by American Jews about their American experiences. This kind of writings is shown in Jewish perspective.
II. Jewish Point of View
1. Jews believe that God has sent perpetual sufferings to his chosen people to strengthen and purify
them, and they are the “chosen people”.
2. Humour is a prominent aspect of Jewish point of view. It is often a twisted kind of comedy to keep
them from despair. Jews are able to laugh at themselves, so some of their best humour is self-mocking.
3. Jews lay emphasis upon the power of intellects. The power to understand their own experience to
judge their own life rationally to think well is considered a high virtue.
4. Self-teaching is at the heart of almost all Jewish novels. The Jewish heroes often try to seek a
rational interpretation of the world through their own experience in it.
III. Saul Bellow
1. life
2. works
(1) The Adventures of Augie March
(2) Henderson the Rain King
(3) Herzog
(4) Mr. Sammler’s Planet
3. Themes: Saul B ellow’s basic themes are essentially three-folded: First, he views contemporary
society as a threat to human life and human integrity. Then living in such an environment, people tend to become paranoid, high-strung, and impotent, and so lose their sanity. Bellovian characters
suffer most from a kind of psychosis. They go through a phase before they regain their mental balance and serenity. Finally, there is the quest motif, a quest for truth and values, difficult, excruciating, but successful in a way.
Chapter 7 American Drama
I. Eugene O’Neil
1. life
2. works
(1) The Emperor Jones
(2) The Hairy Ape
(3) Desire under the Elms
(4) The Iceman Cometh
(5) Long Day’s Journey into Night
3. The Hairy Ape: Yank
4. style
(1) O’Neil was a tireless experimentalist in dramatic art. He paid little attention t o the division of
scenes. He introduced the realistic or even the naturalistic into the American theatre.
(2) He borrowed freely from the best traditions of European drama, especially the stream of
consciousness.
(3) He made use of setting and stage property to help in his dramatic representation.
(4) He wrote long introduction and directions for all the scenes, explaining the mood and
atmosphere.
(5) He sometimes wrote the actors’ lines in dialect.
II. Tennessee Williams
1. life
2. point of view and themes
He writes about violence, sex, homosexuality (taboos in drama). Some of his plays rooted in southern social scene. The characters are often unhappy wanderers; lonely, vulnerable women indulged in memory of the past or illusion of the future. He was attracted to bizarre characters and their predicament. He looked deeply into the psychology of the outcasts of society. He saw life a game which cannot be won. Almost all his characters are defeated.
3. his plays
(1) The Glass Menagerie
(2) A Streetcar Named Desire
(3) Summer and Smoke
(4) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
III. Arthur Miller
1. life
2. theme: dilemma of modern man in relation to family and work
3. his plays
(1) Death of a Salesman
IV. Theatre of the Absurd
Definition: The theatre of absurd came to vogue in the 1950s and 1960s. It refers to some plays the theme of which centers on the meaninglessness of life with its pain and suffering that seems funny, even ridiculous. The representatives are Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot, and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Chapter 8 Black American Literature
I. Overview
Negro – coloured (legally free) – black (after civil rights movement)
1. oral tradition
2. written literature (from 1760s)
II. Richard Wright
1. life
2. works
(1) Native Son
3. themes and subjects
His common theme is to condemn racism, urge reform, criticize evils of society. His b ooks focus on racial conflict and physical violence. They review the devastating effect of institutionalized hatred (hatred brought by social system) and humiliation on black males’ psyche. They affirmed
dignity and humility of society’s outcasts.
III. Ralph Ellison
1. works: Invisible Man
IV. Alice Walker
1. life
2. works
(1) The Colour Purple (epistolary)
V. Toni Morrison
1. life
2. works
(1) The Bluest Eye
(2) Sula
(3) Song of Solomon (the best black novel after Native Son and Invisible Man)
(4) Tar Baby
(5) Beloved
(6) Jazz
(7) Love (trilogy)
3. themes: love, guilt, history, individual, gender, race, religion
4. purpose: to empower the black people to act for themselves, to recognize for their own world, own
history, own reality
5. style – many kinds of factors: naturalism, realism, fantasy, reality, magical realism
1993- Toni Morrison
1987- Joseph Brodsky
1980-Czeslaw Milosz
1978-Isaac Bashevis Singer
1976-Saul Bellow
1962-John Steinbeck
1954-Ernest Hemingway
1949-William Faulkner
1938-Pearl S Buck
1936-Eugene O'Neill
1930-Sinclair Lewis
美国文学史期末参考复习资料
仅作参考，最主要还是要自己消化，整理 Chapter 1 Colonial Period 1. Puritanism: American puritans accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God. 2. Influence (1) A group of good qualities – hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety (serious and thoughtful) influenced American literature. (2) It led to the everlasting myth. All literature is based on a myth – garden of Eden. (3) Symbolism: the American puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chi efly instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American. (4) With regard to their writing, the style is fresh, simple and direct; the rhetoric is plain and honest, not without a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible. II. Overview of the literature 1. types of writing diaries, histories, journals, letters, travel books, autobiographies/biographies, sermons 2. writers of colonial period (1) Anne Bradstreet (2) Edward Taylor III. Benjamin Franklin 1. life 2. works (1) Poor Richard’s Almanac (2) Autobiography 3. contribution (1) He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital and the American Philosophical Society. (2) He was called “the new Prometheus who had stolen fire (electricity in this case) from heaven”. (3) Everything seems to meet in this one man –“Jack of all trades”. Herman Melville thus described him “master of each and mastered by none”. Chapter 2 American Romanticism Section 1 Early Romantic Period I. American Romanticism 1. Background (1) Political background and economic development (2) Romantic movement in European countries Derivative – foreign influence 2. features (1) American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new experience and contained “an alien quality” for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place” was radically new and alien. (2) There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider. American romantic authors tended more to moralize. Many American romantic writings intended to edify more than they entertained. (3) The “newness” of Americans as a nation is in connection with Am erican Romanticism. (4) As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American romanticism was both imitative and independent. II. Washington Irving: Father of American Literature 1. several names attached to Irving (1) first American writer (2) the messenger sent from the new world to the old world (3) father of American literature 2. life 3. works (1) A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (2) The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (He won a measure of international recognition with the publication of this.) (3) The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (4) A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (5) The Alhambra 4. Literary career: two parts (1) 1809~1832
美国文学史及选读试卷 (1)
美国文学史及选读试卷 Ⅰ.Each of the following statements below is followed by four alternatives. Choose the one that would best complete the statement. (60points in all, 2 for each) 1. Which of following can be said of the common features which are shared by the English and American Romanticists ? A. An increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions. B. An increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters. C. An increasing emphasis on the desire to return to nature. D. both A and B. 2. Which of the following statements about the Romantic period in the history of American literature is NOT true? （） A. In most of the American writings of this period there was a new emphasis upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature. B. The writers of this period placed an increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions and displayed an increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters. C. There was a strong tendency to exalt the individual and the common man. D. Most heroes and heroines in the writings of this period exhibited extremes of reason and nationality. 3.______ is unanimously agreed to be the summit of the American Romanticism in the history of American literature. A. New England Transcendentalism B. England Transcendentalism C. the Harlem Renaissance D. New Transcendentalism 4.Hawthorn e’s unique gift was for the creation of ______ which touch the deepest roots of man’s moral nature. A. symbolic stories B. romantic stories
美国文学史及选读期末复习
美国文学史复习1（colonialism) 第一部分殖民主义时期的文学 一、时期综述 1、清教徒采用的文学体裁：a、narratives 日记 b、journals 游记 2、清教徒在美国的写作内容： 1）their voyage to the new land 2) Adapting themselves to unfamiliar climates and crops 3) About dealing with Indians 4) Guide to the new land, endless bounty, invitation to bold spirit 3、清教徒的思想： 1）puritan want to make up pure their religious beliefs and practices 净化信仰和行为方式 2) Wish to restore simplicity to church and the authority of the Bible to the theology. 重建教堂，提供简单服务，建立神圣地位 3）look upon themselves as chosen people, and it follow logically that anyone who challenged their way of life is opposing God's will and is not to be accepted. 认为自己是上帝选民，对他们的生活有异议就是反对上帝 4）puritan opposition to pleasure and the arts sometimes has been exaggerated. 反对对快乐和艺术的追求到了十分荒唐的地步 5）religious teaching tended to emphasize the image of a wrathful God.强调上帝严厉的一面，忽视上帝仁慈的一面。 4、典型的清教徒： John Cotton & Roger William 他们的不同：John Cotton was much more concerned with authority than with democracy; William begins the history of religious toleration in America. 5、William的宗教观点：Toleration did not stem from a lack of religious convictions. Instead, it sprang from the idea that simply to be virtuous in conduct and devout in belief did not give anyone the right to force belief on others. He also felt that no political order or church system could identify itself directly with God. 行为上的德，信仰上的诚，并没有给任何人强迫别人该如何行事的权利。没有任何政治秩序和教会体制能够直接体现神本身的意旨。 6、英国最早移民到美国的诗人：Anne Bradstreet 7、在殖民时期最好的清教徒诗人：the best of Puritan poets is Edward Tayor. 学习指南： 1、Could you give a description of American Puritans? 关于美国清教徒的描绘 Like their brothers back in England, were idealists, believing that the church should be restored to the "purity" of the first-century church as established by Jesus Christ himself. To them religion was a matter of primary importance. They made it their chief business to see that man lived and thought and acted in a way which tended to the glory of God. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God, all that John Calvin, the great French theologian who lived in Geneva had preached. It was this kind of religious belief that they brought with them into the wildness. There they meaant to prove that were God's chosen people enjoying his blessings on this earth as in Heaven. 2、Hard work, thrift, piety and sobriety were the Puritan values that dominated much of the earliest American writing. 3、The work of two writers, Anne Bradstreet & Edward Taylor, rose to the level of real poetry. 4、The earliest settlers included Dutch, Swedes, Germans, French, Spaniards Italian, and Portuguese. 美国文学史复习2（reason and revolution) (2009-01-17 15:54:25) 一、美国的性质： The war for Independence ended in the formation of a Federative bourgeois democratic republic - the United States of America. 联邦的资产阶级民主共和国--美利坚合众国。 二、代表作家： 1、Benjamin Franklin 本杰明·富兰克林 1706-1790 1）"Poor Richard's Almanac" 穷人查理德的年鉴 annual collection of proverbs 流行谚语集
美国文学史复习资料
美国文学史复习（colonialism) 第一部分殖民主义时期的文学 一、时期综述 1、清教徒采用的文学体裁：a、narratives 日记b、journals 游记 2、清教徒在美国的写作内容： 1）their voyage to the new land 2) Adapting themselves to unfamiliar climates and crops 3) About dealing with Indians 4) Guide to the new land, endless bounty, invitation to bold spirit 3、清教徒的思想： 1）puritan want to make up pure their religious beliefs and practices 净化信仰和行为方式 2) Wish to restore simplicity to church and the authority of the Bible to the theology. 重建教堂，提供简单服务，建立神圣地位 3）look upon themselves as chosen people, and it follow logically that anyone who challenged their way of life is opposing God's will and is not to be accepted. 认为自己是上帝选民，对他们的生活有异议就是反对上帝 4）puritan opposition to pleasure and the arts sometimes has been exaggerated. 反对对快乐和艺术的追求到了十分荒唐的地步5）religious teaching tended to emphasize the image of a wrathful God.强调上帝严厉的一面，忽视上帝仁慈的一面。 4、典型的清教徒：John Cotton & Roger William 他们的不同：John Cotton was much more concerned with authority than with democracy; William begins the history of religious toleration in America. 5、William的宗教观点：Toleration did not stem from a lack of religious convictions. Instead, it sprang from the idea that simply to be virtuous in conduct and devout in belief did not give anyone the right to force belief on others. He also felt that no political order or church system could identify itself directly with God. 行为上的德，信仰上的诚，并没有给任何人强迫别人该如何行事的权利。没有任何政治秩序和教会体制能够直接体现神本身的意旨。 6、英国最早移民到美国的诗人：Anne Bradstreet 7、在殖民时期最好的清教徒诗人：the best of Puritan poets is Edward Tayor. 学习指南： 1、Could you give a description of American Puritans? 关于美国清教徒的描绘 Like their brothers back in England, were idealists, believing that the church should be restored to the "purity" of the first-century church as established by Jesus Christ himself. To them religion was a matter of primary importance. They made it their chief business to see that man lived and thought and acted in a way which tended to the glory of God. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God, all that John Calvin, the great French theologian who lived in Geneva had preached. It was this kind of religious belief that they brought with them into the wildness. There they meaant to prove that were God's chosen people enjoying his blessings on this earth as in Heaven. 2、Hard work, thrift, piety and sobriety were the Puritan values that dominated much of the earliest American writing. 3、The work of two writers, Anne Bradstreet & Edward Taylor, rose to the level of real poetry.
美国文学史及选读期末复习题
1.Captain John Smith became the first American writer. 2.The puritans looked upon themselves as a chosen people. is an annual collection of proverbs written by Benjamin Franklin. 4.Thomas Paine’s famous pamphlet Common Sense boldly advocated a “Declaration for Independence”. 5.Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston.
has been called the “Father of American Poetry”. 7.In Washington I rving’s appeared the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature. 8.Cooper’s enduring fame rests on his William Cullen Bryant’s wok. is considered “father of American detective stories and American gothic stories”. 10.Emerson believed above all in
美国文学史及选读复习重点
Captain John Smith (first American writer). Anne Bradstreet；The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America （colonists living） Edward Taylor(the best puritan poet) John Cotton ”the Patriarch of New England” teacher spiritual leader Benjamin Franklin The Autobiography Poor Richard’s Almanack Thomas Jefferson： Political Career Thoughts The Declaration of Independence we hold truth to be self-evidence Philip Freneau“Father of American Poetry” The Wild Honey Suckle American Romanticism optimism and hope Nationalism Washington Irving“Father of American Literature short story”The first “Pure Writer” A History of New York The Sketch Book marked the beginning of American Romanticism! “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”Rip Van Winkle James Fenimore Cooper Father of American sea and frontier novels Leather stocking Tales The Last of the Mohicans The Pioneers The Prairie The Pathfinder The Deerslayer Edgar Allan Poe father of detective story and horror fiction Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque “MS. Found in a Bottle” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” “The Fall of the House of Usher”“The Masque of the Red Death”“The
美国文学史及选读期末复习题
1.C aptain John Smith became the first American writer. 2.T he puritans looked upon themselves as a chosen people. collection of proverbs written by Benjamin Franklin. 4.T homas Paine’s famous pamphlet Common Sense boldly advocated a “Declaration for Independence”.
5.T homas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. has been called the “Father of American Poetry”. 7.I n Washington Irving’s appeared the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature.
8.C ooper’s enduring fame rests on his frontier stories, especially the five novels that comprise the is perhaps the peak of William Cullen Bryant’s wok. “father of American detective stories and American gothic stories”.
美国文学史及选读考研复习笔记6.
History And Anthology of American Literature （6） 附：作者及作品 一、殖民主义时期The Literature of Colonial America 1．船长约翰·史密斯Captain John Smith 《自殖民地第一次在弗吉尼亚垦荒以来发生的各种事件的真实介绍》 “A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia Since the First Planting of That Colony” 《弗吉尼亚地图，附：一个乡村的描述》 “A Map of Virginia: with a Description of the Country” 《弗吉尼亚通史》“General History of Virginia” 2．威廉·布拉德福德William Bradford 《普利茅斯开发历史》“The History of Plymouth Plantation”3．约翰·温思罗普John Winthrop 《新英格兰历史》“The History of New England” 4．罗杰·威廉姆斯Roger Williams 《开启美国语言的钥匙》”A Key into the Language of America” 或叫《美洲新英格兰部分土著居民语言指南》 Or “A Help to the Language of the Natives in That Part of America Called New England ” 5．安妮·布莱德斯特Anne Bradstreet 《在美洲诞生的第十个谬斯》 ”The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America” 二、理性和革命时期文学The Literature of Reason and Revolution 1。本杰明·富兰克林Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) ※《自传》“ The Autobiography ” 《穷人理查德的年鉴》“Poor Richard’s Almanac” 2。托马斯·佩因Thomas Paine (1737-1809) ※《美国危机》“The American Crisis” 《收税官的案子》“The Case of the Officers of the Excise”《常识》“Common Sense” 《人权》“Rights of Man” 《理性的时代》“The Age of Reason” 《土地公平》“Agrarian Justice” 3。托马斯·杰弗逊Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) ※《独立宣言》“The Declaration of I ndependence” 4。菲利浦·弗瑞诺Philip Freneau (1752-1832) ※《野忍冬花》“The Wild Honey Suckle” ※《印第安人的坟地》“The Indian Burying Ground” ※《致凯提·迪德》“To a Caty-Did” 《想象的力量》“The Power of Fancy” 《夜屋》“The House of Night” 《英国囚船》“The British Prison Ship” 《战争后期弗瑞诺主要诗歌集》 “The Poems of Philip Freneau Written Chiefly During the Late War” 《札记》“Miscellaneous Works” 三、浪漫主义文学The Literature of Romanticism 1。华盛顿·欧文Washington Irving (1783-1859) ※《作者自叙》“The Author’s Account of Himself” ※《睡谷传奇》“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” 《见闻札记》“Sketch Book” 《乔纳森·欧尔德斯泰尔》“Jonathan Oldstyle” 《纽约外史》“A History of New York” 《布雷斯布里奇庄园》“Bracebridge Hall” 《旅行者故事》“Tales of Traveller” 《查理二世》或《快乐君主》“Charles the Second” Or “The Merry Monarch” 《克里斯托弗·哥伦布生平及航海历史》 “A History of the Life and V oyages of Christopher Columbus” 《格拉纳达征服编年史》”A Chronicle of the Conquest of Grandada” 《哥伦布同伴航海及发现》 ”V oyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus” 《阿尔罕布拉》“Alhambra” 《西班牙征服传说》“Legends of the Conquest of Spain” 《草原游记》“A Tour on the Prairies” 《阿斯托里亚》“Astoria” 《博纳维尔船长历险记》“The Adventures of Captain Bonneville” 《奥立弗·戈尔德史密斯》”Life of Oliver Goldsmith” 《乔治·华盛顿传》“Life of George Washington” 2．詹姆斯·芬尼莫·库珀James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) ※《最后的莫希干人》“The Last of the Mohicans” 《间谍》“The Spy” 《领航者》“The Pilot” 《美国海军》“U.S. Navy” 《皮袜子故事集》“Leather Stocking Tales” 包括《杀鹿者》、《探路人》”The Deerslayer”, ”The Pathfinder” 《最后的莫希干人》“The Last of the Mohicans” 《拓荒者》、《大草原》“The Pioneers”, “The Praire” 3。威廉·卡伦·布莱恩特William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) ※《死之思考》“Thanatopsis” ※《致水鸟》“To a Waterfowl” 4。埃德加·阿伦·坡Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) ※《给海伦》“To Helen” ※《乌鸦》“The Raven” ※《安娜贝尔·李》“Annabel Lee” ※《鄂榭府崩溃记》“The Fall of the House of Usher” 《金瓶子城的方德先生》“Ms. Found in a Bottle” 《述异集》“Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” 5。拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) ※《论自然》“Nature” ※《论自助》“Self-Reliance” 《美国学者》“The American Scholar” 《神学院致辞》“The Divinity School Address” 《随笔集》“Essays” 《代表》“Representative Men” 《英国人》“English Traits” 《诗集》“Poems” 6。亨利·戴维·梭罗Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) ※《沃尔登我生活的地方我为何生活》 1
美国文学史及选读考试整理
Washington Irving Bracebridge Hall 布雷斯布里奇田庄 (1822) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Tales of a Traveller 旅客谈 (1824) Christopher Columbus (1828) c. writing characteristics (1) humorous: the function of his writing is to amuse, to entertain instead of teaching or instruction (2) vivid and true character portrayal (3) finished (refined) and musical language, thus regarded as “the Amn. Goldsmith ” d. analysis on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow(选自the sketch book 见闻札记 ) 1. the story:setting,character, plot 2. theme:conflicts and praise conflict betw. Ichabod and Brom conflict betw. the village and the outside world James Fenimore Cooper The Spy (1821): a historical novel The Pilot (1824): a sea novel Leatherstocking Tales 皮裹腿故事集(1823-1841): frontier novels The Last Mohicans (1826) (Colonial War betw. Britain and France) e. writing features: strong points: we can see a variety of incidents and tensions, complicated plot and structure and a beautiful description of nature. Weak points: characterization is weak. There is unsatisfactory description of characters (esp. female). He is not free from syntactical awkwardness, heavy-handed attempt at humor. “Where Irving excels Cooper is weak.” Dialect is not authentic. Edgar Allan Poe The Fall of the House Usher Feature: i. brevity (15 pages) ii. Single effect iii. originality in theme To Helen It was inspired by the beauty of the mother of a schoolmate of Poe in Richmond, Virginia. The poem is famous for a number of things: 1. its rhyme scheme: ababb 2. its varied line lengths 3. its metaphor of a travel on the sea 4. its oft-quoted lines: "To the glory that was Greece,/And the grandeur that was Rome." theme: praise the ideal love and beauty and ancient Greek and Roman civilizations The Raven 乌鸦 theme: the lament over the death of a beautiful woman tone: melancholy Transcendentalism (essayists, poets, novelists) Their journal is “The Dial ” . Definition: Transcendentalism is idealism. (Emerson) b. features (1) stress on Oversoul, that is spirit. (2) stress the importance of individual. (3) fresh conception of nature. c. significance (1) inspired a whole generation of writers such as Whitman, Melville and Dickinson. (2) dresses man ’s subjective initiative as opposed to materialism. (3) liberated people from Calvin ’s original sin d. limitation (1) shallow: cut off from real life or reality; initiated by the rich, they were limited in a certain circle. So, in some degree, they have been cut off from social life and can ’t understand the sufferings of the common people. (2) inward contradiction: gain knowledge by intuition, shows its idealistic aspect. R.W. Emerson (Ralph Waldo) Nature (1836): the Bible of New England transcendentalism The American Scholar (1837): "America's Declaration of Intellectual The Divinity School Address 神学院致辞 (1838) Essays (1841/1847) Representative Men (1850) English Traits (1856)