美国文学简史期末复习资料

2021年1月25日发(作者：一把年纪)
.
-
i.

ii.

The Colonial Period

1.

关键词
: America Puritanism

2.

Calvinism
特点
: total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement,
Irresistible grace, Perseverance of the saints

3.

Anne Bradstreet( P17 ): a Puritan poet be known as “The Muse”

4.

Thomas Paine: one of continual, unswerving fight for the rights of man.

works:
“Common Sense” “American Crisis” “The Rights of Man” “The Age of
Reason”
理性时代

5.

Phillip Freneau(P22):
美国文学史上的重要人物

dawning nationalism
代表人物

Poems: The Wild Honeysuckle
野生的金银花

first modern American & the last medieval man

6.

Jonathan Edwards( Calvinism )

a critical role in shaping the First Great Awakening

works:
“The Freedom of the Will”

《自由意志论》

“The Great Doctrine of
Original
Sin
Defended”

《伟哉原罪论辩》

“The
Nature
of
True
Virtue”
“American Dream” “Self
-
made”

7.

Benjamin Franklin(puritanism)

“Poor Richard’s Almance”

“autobiography”
新文学形式

“18
th
century enlightenment”

Romanticism

1.

Washington Irving
（
1783
-
1859
）

①
titles: “the father of American literature”






“the American Goldsmith”

②
works:
The
Sketch
Book
(marked
the
beginning
of
American
Romanticism
and
the
beginning
of
short
stories
as
a
genre
in
American
literature)

Rip Van Winkle (P47—P48)

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

2.

James Fenimore Cooper
（
1789
-
1851
）

①
One of the first writer to write American Westward movement


②
“The Leatherstocking Tales” (novel)

first is “
The Pioneers”

---
Plot:

---
theme conflict between Natty Bumppo and Judge Temple
-


---
character:

Natty
Bumppo
---
innocent,
simple,
honest
and
generous,
for
freedom,
against civilization, wilderness is good

Judge Temple
---
just, reasonable, for civilization and law

③
Writing style:

intriguing plot

majestic landscape descriptions

rich imagination

wooden characterization

.
-
iii.

not authentic dialect

New England Transcendentalism
---
the culmination of American Romanticism

Beginning
of
the
Transcendentalism
---
1836,
Nature
,
Emerson
(1830s
–the
Civil
War)

Features
：
a:emphasizing on spirit or the Over
-
soul
；
b:stressing the importance
of
the
individual
；
c:offering
a
fresh
perception
of
nature
as
symbolic
of
the
Spirit or God.

1.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
：
The founder of the Transcendentalist club and the
editor for a time of the journal
the Dial

Works:

Nature
---

“the
Manifesto
of
American
Transcendentalism”
“the
Bible
of
New England”:



The Poet (from Nature)



The American Scholar
---
“Intellectual Declaration of Independence”

2.

Henry David Thoreau

Masterpiece:
Walden
(Failure first, success in the 20th century)

Content
---
a faithful record of his reflection in communicating with nature

3.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

“
The Scarlet Letter
”

Plot(P74)

Theme:

---
(general
theme)
evil
and
sin
exist
in
human
heart
and
will
be
punished
one day

moral, emotional and psychological effect of the sin on the people in general

---
(specific theme) a hymn on the moral growth of the woman Hester when
sinned against

symbolism
象征主义
: “A”—Adultery—able—angel



















“pearl”—treasure

4.

Herman Melville

works: Moby Dick (1851)
---
little response, famous until the 20th century

Content:

---
(general content) an encyclopedia of everything

---
(specific
content)
a
tragedy
of
man
fighting
against
overwhelming
power in an indifferent even hostile world

5.

Edgar Allan Poe

Theme: The death of beauty

Sense of loss

Works:

Poem
---
“The Raven”


“To Helen”

“Annabel Lee”

Writing style:

Musical

Repetition of words

Paralleled structure

Melancholy atmosphere(tone)

.
-
iv.

Short story
-
--
The Fall of the House of Usher

Plot: (P112)

Theme: the fall of the house
---
the annihilation (disintegration) and of person

6.

Emily Dickinson

Subject and theme:

①

(almost one third) Death and immortality

“My life closed twice before its close”

“Because I could not stop for death”

theme
:
Everyone
can’t
live
forever.
Only
after
death
can
we
get
immortality (immortality of soul)

“ I heard a Fly Buzz
-
When I died”

theme
: skeptical & ambivalent about death







reluctance to death

②

Love

“Wild Nights
-
Wild nights” (P99)

③

nature (both benevolent and cruel)

“I’ll tell you how the sun rose”

④

emphasis of free will and human responsibility

“To fight aloud”

“A triumph may be”

⑤

soul ( conviction of her sovereignty)

“I know that He exists”

“The Brain is wider than the sky”

Theme
:

influence of Transcendentalism

Human being’s mind (soul) is as divine as God

⑥

beauty, truth and goodness are ultimately one

“

I died for beauty
-
but was scare”

“
Tell all the truth but tell it slant” (P102)

Writing style
: emotional, original, against tradition

Choice of words, verbal construction (capitalized and dash), spelling, full
of fresh images, brief, direct, plain words but not easy to read

Influence
: precursor to the Imagist movement

7.

Walt Whitman

Works: “Leaves of Grass”
草叶集
(9 editions from 1855 to 1892, Famous until
the 5th edition)

Poems in Leaves of Grass:

“Song of Myself”

(most famous one)

“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” (1859)

“When Lilacs
紫丁香

Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (1865)

“O Captain My Captain!”

Writing style
: free verse( no regular rhyme, but musical)

过渡时期

Harriet Beecher Stowe

.
-
v.

work: Uncle Tom’s Cabin

---
The greatest manifesto of American anti
-
slavery (
最
有名的反奴隶制作品
)

Content: a faithful record of American black people's miserable life.

Realism
镀金时代
Gilded Age

1.

William Dean Howells
豪厄尔斯

①
title:
“champion
of
literary
realism
in
US”
“first
president
of
American
Academy of Arts and Letters”

②
works:

essay
---

Criticism and Fiction

novel
---
The Rise of Silas Lapham

Plot: P120
-
121

Character:
Silas
Lapham
---
common
Bostonian
of
the
late
19th
century,
average America happy with his family and proud of his success in the world

Theme:





house
---
symbol of Lapham’s success (in material) and aspiration for the
polite society





the burning of the house
---
financial fall and moral rise

2.

Henry James

①
themes:

exchanges between
Americans
and
Europeans
美国和欧洲文化
的冲突

②写作手法：
a. eliminates the author and gives the reader the illusion of
being present at the scene of action
让读者置身于情境中

b.
without
comments
or
explanations:
Dramatize,
only
dramatize,
is
his
lesson
作者只设定情境

③
Three distinctive periods:

a. 1865
-
1882 novels

The American (1877)

美国人

The Europeans (1878)

欧洲人

The Portrait of a Lady (1881)

淑女本色




贵妇的肖像


Daisy Miller(1878)
短篇小说

b.1882
-
1895 plays

c.1895
-
1990 novels

The Turn of the Screw(1898)
短篇小说

碧庐冤孽（螺丝在旋紧）

The Wings of the Dove (1902)


鸽之翼

The Ambassadors (1903)

大使（奉使记）

The Golden Bowl (1904)


金碗

3.

Mark Twain(Local Colorism)

①
Works:
The Adventure of Tom Sawyer









The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn
汤姆索亚历险记的续集，
海明
威称赞
“all modern American literature comes”

②
theme: racism& slavery









intellectual& moral education









The hypocrisy of civilized” society

③
real name: Samuel Langhorne Clemens