1、单击此处编辑母版标题样式,单击此处编辑母版文本样式,第二级,第三级,第四级,第五级,*,*,*,Unit 7 American Literature,1/48,Early Fiction,2/48,Definition:Washington Irving,One of the famous writers of the post-Revolutionary period.,History of New Yorkan account of the Dutch settlement of Manhattan Island.With this work Irving furnished Americ
2、a with first myth-hero,Father Knickerbockers.,3/48,Leather stocking tales,It refers to the first great romances written by Fenimore Cooper,at the period of the post American Revolution.,It includes The Pioneers,The Last if the Mohicans,The Prairie,The Pathfinder,The Deerslayer.,It presents the life
3、story of the famous woodsman,Natty Bumppo,who became the forerunner of all heroic forest scouts,bear hunters,and cowboys of later American novels and films.,4/48,Transcendentalists,5/48,Definition:Emerson,In 1836,he published a startling book called Nature.He claimed that by studying and responding
4、to nature individuals could reach a higher spiritual state without formal religion.,Emersons lectures were like sermons,with direct ad motivating language.,In his poetry,he developed a free-form,natural style,using symbols and imagery drawn from nature.,His work had an immense impact on other poets.
5、6/48,Definition:The Transcendentalists,A circle of intellectuals who were discontented with the New England establishment soon gathered around Emerson.They were known as the transcendentalists,based on their acceptance of Emersons theories about spiritual transcendence.,7/48,Definition:Thoreau,Thor
6、eau was passionate about individuals learning to think for themselves and being independent,both traditional American values.,Walden,published in 1854,about his experience beside a wooded pond.,The dictates of an individuals conscience should take precedence over the demands,even the laws,of the soc
7、iety.,8/48,Power of Imagination,9/48,Allan Poe,He published poems of musical language and extravagant imaginary,which made him a worthy rival of the European Romantic poets.,In 1835,he began writing bold,original stories,such as,The Masque of Red Death and The Fall of the House of Usher.,These suspe
8、nseful,terrifying tales plunged deep into human psychology,and explored the realms of science fiction and the mystery story long before such genres were recognized.,10/48,Nathaniel Hawthorne,His way was to write imaginative romances,stories and novels which were not necessarily realistic but which w
9、ere designed to explore certain moral themes such as guilt,pride and emotional repression.,His masterpiece was The Scarlet Letter,a novel published in 1850.set in the Puritan past,it is the stark drama of a woman harshly cast out from her community for committing the sin of adultery.,11/48,Herman Me
10、lville,He wrote novels which were fundamentally allegories on politics and religion.The public rejected.Ironically,the very books that proved unacceptable during his lifetime are the ones most admired today.,Moby Dick,published in 1851,uses a story of a whaling voyage to explore profound themes such
11、 as fate,the nature of evil,and the individuals struggle against the universe.It is considered an American masterpiece.,12/48,New Visions of America,13/48,Walt Whitman,In 1855,he published a ground-breaking book called Leaves of Grass.Readers were amazed by the free-flowing structure of his poetry w
12、ith its long irregular lines.,Whitman ventured beyond traditional forms to meet his need for more space to express the American spirit.,Whitman dwelt on himself simply because he saw himself as a prototype of the American.,He celebrated a sweeping panorama of the American landscape and sang of the r
13、hythms of life uniting all citizens of the democracy.,14/48,Reform and Liberation,15/48,Uncle Toms Cabin,An antislavery novel written by a New England woman named Harriet Beecher Stowe.,Sentimental and melodramatic as it was,Uncle Toms Cabin portrayed black slaves as sympathetic,suffering figures,an
14、d created an image of the cruel slaveowner.,As a result of this bestselling story,the slavery question became a passionately debated political issue.,16/48,Regionalism,17/48,The country had been growing;as pioneers settled new territories in the West,writers now focused on the differences between th
15、e various regions of the United States rather than on a single vision of the expanding country.,18/48,Mark Twain,The first major American writer to be born away from the East Coast.,Twain was a new voice,an original genius,a man of the people.,He captured a peculiarly American sense of humor.,Twain
16、had a cynical streak that matched the countrys skeptical post-Civil War mood.,His greatest book is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.,19/48,Emily Dickinson,A poet who has been admired by later generations,but who was barely known while she lived.,Her poetry mixed gaiety and gloom.,Her verses are fi
17、lled with the names of faraway,exotic places,on the other hand,she could make poetic drama out of things at hand.,She was fascinated by life,she was also more than a little in love with death.,Her poems are brief,but in small spaces she packed an emotional charge of surprising force.,20/48,A New Wav
18、e,21/48,Henry James,An American who lived in Europe,examined American society by observing the divergence between American and European in novels like,The American and Portrait of a Lady.,His other works are The Wings of the Dove,The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl,in which he plunged deep into the
19、characters and personalities of his subjects.,James interest was psychological rather than social.He drew his readers close to his characters mental and emotional processes.,22/48,Naturalists,They concentrated increasingly upon the grimmer aspects of reality and a deterministic view of life.,23/48,W
20、illiam Dean Howells,the Rise of Silas Lapham.,Stephen CraneMaggie,A Girl of the Streets;The Red Badge of Courage(the first impressionistic novel in America).,Theodore DreiserSister Carrie,SinclairThe Jungle,Jack LondonCall of the Wild,Edith WhartonThe House of Mirth;The Age of Innocence.,24/48,Sympa
21、thetic Views,25/48,Kate Chopin,The Awakening,is set in the heart of the South,in New Orleans.,Willa Cather,O Pioneers!,Depicts life on the sweeping plains of Midwestern Nebraska.,W.E.B.DuBois,Souls of Black Folk,a series of sketches of the common lives of black people since slavery.,26/48,Rebellious
22、 Spirit,27/48,Sinclair Lewis,Main Streetrevolt from the village,Gopher Prairiesuggests crudeness and lack of culture.,Babbitt and Arrowsmith,Lewis drew vivid caricatures and satirized the traditional American dream of success.He summed up what small town America was all about.,He was awarded the Nob
23、el Prize for Literature in 1930,the first American to be so honored.,28/48,The Modernists,29/48,Imagism,Poets focused on strong,concrete images.Ezra Pound was an Imagist.,30/48,T.S.Eliot,He wrote spare,intellectual poetry,carried by a dense structure of symbols.,His 1922 poem,The Waste Land spun out
24、in fragmented,haunting images,a pessimistic vision of post-World War society.,From then on,Eliot dominated the so-called Modern Movement in poetry.,31/48,Lost Generation,32/48,In the aftermath of World War,many novelists produced a literature of disillusionment.Some lived in Europe.They were known
25、as the Lost Generation.Two of the most representative writers of the Lost Generation were Hemingway and Fitzgerald.,33/48,F.Scott Fitzgerald,His novels captured the restless,pleasure-hungry,defiant mood of the 1920s.,The Great Gatsby,was of youths golden dreams turning to disappointment.,His prose w
26、as exquisite,yet his vision was essentially melancholy and nostalgic.,34/48,Ernest Hemingway,He adopted a moral code exalting simple survival and the basic values of strength,courage and honesty.,He cut out all unnecessary words and complex sentence structure,concentrating on concrete objects and ac
27、tions.,His best works were The Sun Also Rise,A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls.,He won the Nobel Prize and is considered one of the greatest American writers.,35/48,William Faulkner,The Sound and the Fury,Light in August,He won a Nobel Prize.,36/48,Harlem Renaissance,37/48,Harlem,a fash
28、ionable black neighborhood in New York City.,Jazz,a lively,powerful music brought by African-American.,The New Negro,an articulate urban black,conscious of his or her racial identity.,38/48,New Drama,39/48,Eugene ONeil,He was 20th American famous playwright.,He won a Nobel Prize in 1936 for literatu
29、re.,Among his major plays were Desire Under the Elms,Morning Becomes Electra,The Iceman cometh,and Long Days Journey into Night.,40/48,Depression,Realism and Escapism,41/48,John Steinbeckthe Grapes of Wrath,Margaret MitchellGone with the Wind,Historical fiction.,Joseph HellerCatch 22.,42/48,Postwar
30、Voices and the Beat Generation,43/48,Richard WrightNative Son,Ralph EllisonInvisible man,James BaldwinGo Tell It on the Mountain;The Fire Next Time,American Jews,Singer and Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature.,Tennessee WilliamsThe Glass Menagerie;Street Car Named Desire,Arthur MillerDeath of
31、a Salesman,J.D.SalingerThe Catcher in the Rye,44/48,Beat Generation,The San Francisco writers were part of a large group called the Beat Generation,a name that referred simultaneously to the rhythm of jazz music,to their sense that society was worn out,and to their interest in new forms of experienc
32、e,through drugs,alcohol or Eastern mysticism.Poet Alan Ginsbergs Howl set for them a tone of social protest and visionary ecstasy,in elaborate language reminiscent of Whitman.,45/48,New American Voices,46/48,The feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s fueled creative energies for many women writers
33、Women wrote less in protest and more in affirmation.,Toni Morrison and Alice Walker who portrayed strong black women as the source of continuity,the preserves of values,in black culture.,47/48,Toni MorrisonSong of Solomon and Beloved are her best works.She won Nobel Prize for 3iterature in 1993,and the first African-American writer to receive this honor.,Maxine Hong KingstonThe Woman Warrior and China Men.,Amy TanThe Joy Luck Club.,48/48,






