摘花的英文美国文学选读期末复习资料

2021年1月19日发(作者：boomerang)

美国文学选读期末复习资料


The Colonial Period or The Enlightenment and Revolution Period


American
Puritanism
(
roughly
from
the
settlement
of
America
in
the
early
17th
century through the end of the 18th)

一、
Benjamin Franklin
本杰明·富兰克林


作品：
1
、
Poor Richard's Almanac
《格言历书》

---

A Collection of maxims, or proverbs, on the
value of work and savings for success.

















2
、
The Autobiography
《自传》
---
“美国梦”的根源







3
、参与起草《独立宣言》




American Romanticism

The Romantic Period stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War. It
is a period of the great flowering of American literature.

浪漫主义两大主题：爱和大自然的力量


The social and cultural background of Romanticism
：

---The young Republic was flourishing into a politically, economically and culturally independent
country.

---The
Romantic
writings
revealed
unique
characteristics
of
their
own
in
their
works
and
they
grew on the native lands.

---The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became a permanent convention of
American literature.

---The American Puritanism as a cultural heritage exerted great influences over American moral
values.


Romantics frequently shared certain general characteristics
:
moral enthusiasm
,
faith in value
of individualism and intuitive perception
, and a presumption that
the natural world
was a source of
goodness and
man
’
s societies
as a source of corruption.








二、
Edgar Allan Poe
埃德加·爱伦·坡
---
poet, short story writer and literary critic (48
poems,70 short stories)

He greatly influenced the devotees of
“
Art for art
’
s sake.
”

He was father of psychoanalytic criticism (
心理分析批评
), and the detective story.
诗歌的精髓就是追求美

小说的主题常常是
恐怖
和< br>死亡
，其中还运用了
象征手法
。



The Poetic Principle
: 1. The poem, should be short, readable at one sitting;



















2. Beauty (the rhythmical creation of beauty);



















3. Melancholy
忧伤
(especially the death of a beautiful woman).
代表作：
The Fall of the House of Usher
《厄舍大厦的倒塌》









Ligeia
《莉盖亚》










Annabel Lee
《安娜贝尔·李》









The Raven
《乌鸦》









The
Cask
of
Amontillado
《阿芒提拉多的酒桶》
---gothic
novel
人物：蒙特利瑟
Montresor,
弗图纳多
Fortunato
，
筵席上男人将喝醉的死对头哄骗至地窖并砌墙活埋的故事。



















































































三、
Ralph Waldo Emerson
拉尔夫·华尔多·爱默生
---
The chief spokesman of New
England Transcendentalism
（超验主义）


He was a descendent
（后裔）
of a long line of New England clergymen
（牧师）
.

散文家、诗人、超验主义的哲学的主要倡导者。



American Transcendentalism
As
a
philosophical
and
literary
movement,
American
Transcendentalism
(also
known
as
“
American Renaissance
”
) flourshed in New England from the 1830s to the Civil War. It is the
high
tide of American romanticism
and its doctrines found their greatest literary advocates in Emerson
and Thoreau. Transcendentalists spoke
for the cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of
American society.



The major features of Transcendentalism:
①

The Transcendentalists placed emphasis on
spirit
, or the
Oversoul
, as
the most important thing
in the universe
.
思想

超灵

宇宙

②

The Transcendentalists stressed the importance of the
individual
. To them, the individual is
the
most important element of Society
.
个体
+
社会

③

The Transcendentalists offered
a fresh perception of nature
as symbolic of the Spirit or God.
Nature was not purely matter. It was alive, filled with God
’
s overwhelming presence.
自然
+
上帝







代表作：
Nature
《论自然》
---the Bible of Transcendentalism by Emerson
；









Self-Reliance
《论自助》

---
是表达他的超验主义观点的最重要作品之一









The American Scholar
《论美国学者》

；









The Over- soul

《论超灵》




四、
Nathaniel Hawthorne
纳撒尼尔·霍桑

--- effected by
超验主义


He was born into a prominent
Puritan family
.

One of
the most ambivalent
（矛盾的）
writers
in the American literary history.

主要成就：

美国心理分析小说的开创者












浪漫主义小说家












心理小说家




代表作：
Mosses from an Old Manse
《古宅青苔》
;









Twice-Told Tales
《故事重述》
;









The Marble Faun
《玉石雕像》
;









The House of the Seven Gables
《带有七个尖角阁的房子》









The Scarlet Letter
《红字》


Many
of
his
earlier
stories
had
treated
themes
that
led
to
The
Scarlet
Letter
.
Puritan
severity
toward sex
and matrimony and its tendency to
suppress bright color and true feelings
.


The Scarlet Letter
《红字》

：

Hester Prynne--- strong-willed, impetuous, a king of compassionate, maternal figure;
Pearl---innocent, perceptive;
Roger Chillingworth---a man deficient in human warmth, true evil in the story;
Arthur Dimmesdale---intelligent and emotional.


Symbolism in his works
Hawthorne is a master of symbolism, which he took from the Puritan tradition
清教徒传统
and
bequeathed
to
American
literature
in
a
revivified
form.
In
his
masterpiece,
by
using
Pearl
as
a
thematic symbol, Hawthorne emphasizes the consequence the sin of adultery has brought to the
community and people living in that community. With the scarlet A as the biggest symbol of all,
which is ambiguous, he proves himself to be one of the best symbolists.










五、
Herman Melville

赫尔曼·梅尔维尔



The early
sailing experiences
were rewarding.
代表作：

White Jacket
《白外衣》











Billy Budd
《毕利·伯德》
,









Typee
《泰比》
,










Omoo
《欧穆》
,










Mardi
《玛地》
.









Moby Dick 1851
《白鲸》
---
百科全书式性质
/
海洋作品
/
动物史诗（

《熊》

福克
纳、
《老人与海》

海明威、
《白鲸》梅尔维尔）


Moby Dick represents the sum total of
Melville
’
s bleak view of the world
in which he lived. It is
at
once
Godless
and
purposeless
.
Man
in
this
universe
lives
a
meaningless

and
futile
life,
meaningless because futile. Once he attempts to seek power over it he is doomed. The idea that
man
can
make
the
world
for
himself
is
nothing
but
a
Transcendentalist
folly.
Moby
Dick
thus
reveals the basic pattern of 19
th
century American life:

loneliness and suicidal individualism in a
self-styled democracy
. (a negative reflection upon Transcendentalism)


Symbolism in Moby Dick
：

---It
is
regarded
as
the
first
American
prose
epic
.

It
is
not
merely
a
whaling
tale
or
sea
adventure, considering that Melville is a great symbolist. It turns out to be a symbolic voyage of
the
mind
in
quest
of
the
truth
寻找真理
and
knowledge
of
the
universe,
a
spiritual
exploration
into man
’
s deep reality and psychology.
---Different people on board the ship are representations of different ideas and different social and
ethnic groups; facts become symbols and incidents acquire universal meanings; the Pequod is the
microcosm of human society and the voyage becomes a search for truth. The white whale, Moby
Dick, symbolizes nature for Melville, for it is complex, unfathomable
难以理解的
,malignant
恶性
的
, and beautiful as well.



Moby Dick
相关人名、地名

人名：
Ishmael


Ahab


Queequeg


Moby Dick
地名：
Pequod

Jeroboam (where they meet Gabriel, a prophet.






Samuel Enderby ( whose captain is Boomer)






The Rachel


The Delight










六、
Henry David Thoreau
亨利·大卫·梭罗


As a young man, Thoreau took a more than usual interest in the natural world. Like Emerson, but
more
than
him,
he
saw
nature
as
a
genuine
restorative,
healthy
influence
on
man
’
s
spiritual
well-being, and regarded it as
a symbol of spirit
.

Thoreau was very
critical of modern civilization
. It was, in his opinion, degrading and enslaving
man.

新英格兰超验主义的重要作家，
最有代表性的两件事情就是在瓦 尔登湖畔度过的两年和在监
狱度过的一夜。

代表作：
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
《论公民的不服从》









Walden
《瓦尔登湖》
---not only fully demonstrates Emersonian ideas of self-reliance
but also
develops and tests Thoreau’s own transcendental philosophy.




七、
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
亨利·沃兹沃思·朗费罗


Features of Longfellow’s
poetic works
---Chief romantic tendencies as humanitarian attitude, love of nature and love of beauty.
---The first American poet to write narrative poems.
---Generally simple ideas expressed musically and powerfully. Above all, there is a joyousness in
them, a spirit of optimism and faith in the goodness of life which evokes immediate response in
the emotions of his readers.
---Simplicity and detachment from the deep problems of contemporary life.

19
世纪美国 最伟大的
浪漫主义
诗人之一。
传统派
，
励志型
。



诗集：





《夜吟》
Voices of the Night





《歌谣及其他》
Ballads and Other Poems





《伊凡杰琳》
Evangeline





《海依华沙之歌》
The Song of Hiawatha
诗歌：





《我射出一支箭·
·
·
·
·
·
》


I Shot an Arrow...

A Psalm of Life
《生命颂
/
人生颂》
---
第一首被完整地介绍到中国的 美国诗歌








八、
Walt Whitman

沃尔特·惠特曼


美国著名诗人、人文主义者，他创造了诗歌的
自由体（
Free Verse--- without a fixed beat or
regular rhyme scheme.
）
，
The first edition of Leaves of Grass
《
草叶集》

was published in 1855.

In this giant work,
openness
,
freedom
, and above all,
individualism
are all that concerned him.

Writing features of Whitman
---A singer for the ideals of equality, democracy and human dignity.
---Songs
for
himself,
for
the
labour
of
common
American
people,
natural
creation,
the
independence of the country, love and friendship, and for the memorizing of President Lincoln.
---Free verse, rhythmical unit, phonetic recurrence.

诗歌：

《我歌唱自我》
One's Self I Sing
《噢，船长！

我的船长！
》
O Captain! My Captain!




九、
Emily Dickinson
（
19
世纪唯一出名的女作家）
---I Died for Beauty, because I could
not stop for Death.

美国女诗人，
狄金森一生都没有离开过自己的家乡，
对她的 诗歌风格产生直接影响的是爱默
生的诗歌，她的诗歌预示了
20
世纪诗歌的诞生。
宅女，想象力，诗歌（死亡、爱情、失败、无标点）


Whitman:
society

Dickinson:
inner life of the individual

Most of her poems are about death and immortality. Nature is to her both benevolent and cruel.

Emily was an energetic and outgoing woman while attending the Academy and Seminary.

Most of her poems are about life and nature. They are short; many of them are based on a single
image or symbol.
作品：
《要描绘一片草原·
·
·
·
·
·
》

To Make a Prairie






《最美妙的胜利感觉》

Success Is Counted Sweetest





《我是无名之辈》

I'm Nobody!











The Age of Realism

The
war
led
many
to
question
the
assumptions
shared
by
the
transcendentalists
----
natural
goodness, the optimistic view of nature and man, benevolent God. It taught men that life was not
good, man was not and God was not.
As a literary movement, the Age of Realism came into existence after Romanticism with the Civil
War It was a reaction against
“
the lie
”

of Romanticism and sentimentalism, and paved the way to
Modernism.
This literary interest in the so-called
“
reality
”

of life started a new period in the American literary
writing known as The Age of Realism.

The three dominant figures of the period
:
William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Henry James

James wrote mostly of the
upper reaches of American society.

Howells concerned

himself chiefly with middle class life.


Twain dealt largely with
the lower strata of society.


Mark Twain and Howells
seemed to have paid more attention to
the
“
life
”

of the Americans
, and
Henry James
had apparently laid greater emphasis on the
“
inner world
”

of man.



十、
Mark Twain
马克·吐温



Writing:
humor and local colorism


The characteristics of local colorism:

---Twain preferred to have his own region and people at the forefront of his stories. This particular
concern about the local character of a region came about as
“
local colorism
”

a unique variation
of American literary realism.
---Local Colorism or Regionalism first appeared in the late 1860s and early seventies in America.
Hamlin Garland defined local colorism as having
“
such quality of texture and background that it
could not have been written in any other place or by anyone else than a native.
”

The ultimate aim
of the local colorists is to create the illusion of an indigenous
土产的

little world with qualities
that tell it apart from the world outside.
---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.




代表作：


Life on the Mississippi
《密西西比河上》











The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
《汤姆·索亚历险记》











The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
《哈克贝里·费恩历险记》
---(Mark Twain
’
s
most representative work)



The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

---The novel is written in a language that is totally different from the rhetorical language used by
Emerson, Poe, and Melville.
---His characters, confined to a particular region and to a particular historical moment, speak with
a strong accent, which is true of his local colorism.
---The rich material of his boyhood experience on the Mississippi became the endless resources
for his fiction, and the Mississippi valley and the West became his major theme.
---His humor, a kind of artistic style used to criticize the social injustice and satirize the decayed
romanticism, is remarkable.

人物：
Huckleberry Finn
、
Jim
、
Tom Sawyer
、
Widow Douglas and Miss Watson
、
Pap


The Duke and Dauphin (
公爵和法国皇太子）




十一、
Henry James
亨利·詹姆斯


作品：
The Portrait of a Lady
《一个女士的画像》




Daisy Miller
《黛西·密勒》


The
international
theme
:
the
meeting
of
America
and
Europe, American
innocence
in
contact
and
contrast
with
European
decadence
and
the
moral
and
psychological
complications
arising
therefrom.
Like Hawthorne, James regarded evil as essentially of
inward cause and repeatedly emphasized
magnanimity and the beauty of goodness.

Psychological Realism
心理现实主义

It
is
the
realistic
writing
that
probes
deeply
into
the
complexities
of
characters
’

thoughts
and
motivations
. And
Henry James
is considered the founder of psychological realism. He believed
that reality lies in the impressions made by life on the spectator, and not in any facts of which the
spectator
is
unaware.
Such
realism
is
therefore
merely
the
obligation
that
the
artist
assumes
to
represent life as he sees it.










American Naturalism
自然主义

---Living
in
a
cold,
indifferent,
and
essentially
Godless
world,
man
was
no
longer
free
in
any
sense. He was completely thrown upon himself for survival. Life became a struggle for survival.
---Both
Howells
and
Twain
had
written
their
best
work
and
had
said
what
they
had
to
say.
Apparently they were too old and too set in their ways to reorientate themselves in the new period.
---The impact of Darwin
’
s evolutionary theory
达尔文进化论
on the American thought and the
19
th
century French literature on the American men of letters gave rise to another school of realism:
American naturalism.

The emergence of naturalism
does not mark a radical break with realism
.
It is a new and harsher
realism.
The
naturalists
emphasized
that
the
world
was
amoral
与道德无关的
,
that
men
and
women
had
no
free
will
,
that
lives
were
controlled
by
heredity
遗传
and
environment,
that
the
destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion
湮没
in death.

代表作家

Stephen Crane
；
Theodore Dreiser
；
Jack London
；
O
’
Henry


十二、
Stephen Crane
史蒂芬·克莱恩

是美国著名的文学家
,
自然主义手法
Naturalism
( Human are controlled by laws of environment
环境
and heredity
遗传

)
。其作品特点：< br>realistic
，
naturalistic, impressionistic .
同时其作品大多
关注社会底层，但比较
pessimistic
.
《海上扁舟》中运用了自然主义和
印象主义（光的
变化）的手法


作品：
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
《街头女郎麦姬》

；







The Red Badge of Courage
《红色英勇勋章》

；







The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky
《新娘来到黄天镇》







The Blue Hotel
《蓝色旅店》







The Open Boat
《海上扁舟》

；人物：船长
Captain,
注油工
Oiler
（最后死了）厨师
Cook,
记者
Correspondent

A Man Said to the Universe













A man said to the universe:























































A sense of obligation.




































---Stephen Crane

Jack London
：
The Call of the Wild
；
Martin Eden

(William Sydney Porter)
：
The Gift of the Magi
；
The Cop and the anthem
Theodore Dreiser
：
Trilogy of Desire: Financier 2. The Titan 3. The Stoic
；

















Sister Carrie
；

















Jennie Gerhardt
；

















An American Tragedy