美国文学史总结.doc

Ⅰ Colonial America(17th century) 殖民主义时期文学
1. In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered America and he mistook the native people on the new continent for Indians.
Character of colonial literature:
a. content: religious, political
b. form: diary, journal, letters, travel books, sermons, history (personal literature)
c. Style: simple. direct, concise
d. out of humble origins
Early in the 17th century, the English settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts began the main stream of what we recognize as the American national history.
The earliest settlers in America included Dutch, Swedes, Germans, French, Spaniards, Italians and Portuguese.
The first permanent English settlement in North America was established at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607(北美弗吉尼亚詹姆斯顿)
2. Captain Town Smith, the first American writer
3. Puritan Thoughts: hard work, thrift(节俭), piety(虔诚), sobriety(节制), 这些也成了早期美国作品主导思想.
典型的清教徒： John Cotton & Roger William, John Cotton was called “the Patriarch of New England(新英格兰教父)”
清教徒采用的文学体裁：narratives(日记) and journals(游记)
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
4. Private literature: theological, moral, historical, political
5. The work of two writers, Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor, rose to the level of real poetry. Anne Bradstreet is one of the most interesting of the early poets, 英国最早移民到美国的诗人. The best of the Puritan poets was Edward Taylor.
Ⅱ Reason and Revolution(18th century) 理性和革命时期文学
1. The War for Independence (1776-1783) ended in the formation of a Federative bourgeois democratic republic - the United States of America.
2. Bourgeois Enlightenment
3. Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard’s Almanac(穷人理查德的年鉴), an annual collection of proverbs.
The Autobiography, 18世纪美国唯一流传至今的自传
n The Autobiography is, first of all, a Puritan document. It is Puritan because it is a record of self-examination and self-improvement. The Puritans, as a type, were very much given to self-analysis.
n The Autobiography shows Franklin was spokesman for the new order of 18th-century Enlightenment, and that he represented in America all its ideas, that man is basically good and free, by nature endowed by God with certain inalienable rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
n It is the pattern of Puritan simplicity, directness, and concision. The plainness of its style, the homeliness of imagery, the simplicity of diction, syntax and expression are some of the obvious features we cannot mistake.
n Tone: Optimism
The American dream began with the settlement of the American continent – the Promised Land – the Garden of Eden – optimistic about the future
4. Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, 极大恢复士气
5. Thomas Jefferson: The Declaration of Independence
6. Philip Freneau, Father of American Poetry: The Indian Burring Ground(印第安人的坟地)
The Wild Honey Suckle(野忍冬花)
n The poem is an indication of the poet’s dedication to American subject matter and the natural scenes on the new continent.
n Here in this poem Freneau deals with the themes of loveliness and the transience of life.
n This poem, well within the melancholy genre, consists of the poet’s pensive musings on the flower’s story.
n The first two stanzas picture the advantages of the flower’s country retreat.
n The next two stanzas unite the theme of the seasons with the thought that all must die. Death and decay, as well as creation, are so common, so much a part of the universal law.
Ⅲ Romanticism(end of the 18th century——Civil War) 浪漫主义文学
1. Washington Irving, Father of American literature: Sketch Book (见闻札记, the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature, a collection of essays, sketches, and tales)
2. James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales(皮袜子故事集, the American National Epic) contains of The Deerslayer(杀鹿者), The Last of the Mohicans(最后的莫希干人), The Pathfinder(探路人), The Pioneers(拓荒者), and The Prairie(大草原).
3. Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven(乌鸦), Annabel Lee(安娜贝尔·李), The Fall of the House of Usher(鄂榭府崩溃记)
To Helen
○ Edgar Allan Poe wrote “To Helen” as a reflection on the beauty of Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard, of Richmond, Va., who died in 1824. She was the mother of one of Poe’s school classmates, Robert Stanard. When Robert invited Edgar, then 14, to his home (at 19th and East Grace Streets in Richmond) in 1823, Poe was greatly taken with the 27-year-old woman, who is said to have urged him to write poetry. He was later to write that she was his first real love.
○ 1 stanza
n Helen: An allusion to Helen of Troy in Greek mythology.
n Nicean: Of or from Nicea (also spelled Nicaea), a city in ancient Bithynia (now part of present-day Turkey) near the site of the Trojan War.
n Barks: small sailing vessels.
n End rhyme: A, B, A,B, B.
○ 2 stanza
n wont: accustomed to
n Naiad: Naiads were minor nature goddesses in Greek and Roman mythology. They inhabited and presided over rivers, lakes, streams, and fountains.
n Naiad airs: Peaceful, gentle breezes or qualities
n The glory that . . .Rome: These last two lines, beginning with the glory that was, are among the most frequently quoted lines in world literature.
n End rhyme: A, B, A, B, A.  
Half rhyme: Face and Greece
○ 3 stanza
n Psyche: In Greek and Roman mythology, Psyche was a beautiful princess dear to the god of love, Eros (Cupid), who would visit her in a darkened room in a palace. One night she used an agate lamp to discover his identity. Later, at the urging of Eros, Zeus gave her the gift of immortality. Eros then married her.  
n End rhyme: A, B, B, A, B.
n from the regions which are Holy Land: from ancient Greece and Rome; from the memory Poe had of Mrs. Stanard
○ Theme
■ Beauty, as Poe uses the word in the poem, appears to refer to the woman's soul as well as her body. On the one hand, he represents her as Helen of Troy–the quintessence of physical beauty–at the beginning of the poem. On the other, he represents her as Psyche–the quintessence of soulful beauty–at the end of the poem. In Greek, psyche means soul.
4. Transcendentalism(超验主义):
v 19th-century movement of writers and philosophers in New England who were loosely bound together by adherence to an idealistic system of thought based on a belief in the essential unity of all creation, the innate goodness of man, and the supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the revelation of the deepest truths. In their religious quest, the Transcendentalists rejected the conventions of 18th-century thought; and what began in dissatisfaction with Unitarianism developed into a repudiation of the whole established order.
v Representative figures: some 30 men and a couple of women such as Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller, most of them teachers or clergymen, radicals against rigid rationalism of Unitarianism.
v Time: 1836-1855
v Essence: “Transcendentalism is idealism” in essence
v Major Features:
A. Emphasis on spirit;
B. The importance of the individual as the most important element of society;
C． Nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Father of American Essay, Essayist, poet, philosopher, orator, critic
: Nature(the Bible and manifesto(宣言) of the New England Transcendentalism), Self-reliance
Henry David Thoreau(The Prophet(提倡者) of Non-Violence Movement, he was Emerson’s truest disciple, who put into practice many of Emerson’s theories): Walden
5. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
⑴女主角honest, calmly face fault 诚实，坦然的面对罪过。
⑵弗洛伊德人格理论：Id 本我 → 欲望，只要快乐 →Roger 女主角的丈夫
Ego 自我 → 分辨对错，受约束，符合现实 →Hester 女主角
Superego 超我 → →Dim 女主角的情人，牧师
⑶女主角的自我成长和自我救赎的过程。Ego growth and redeem by her own of process
“The Scarlet Letter”分析：It is not a praise of a Hester sinning, but a hymn on the moral growth of the woman when sinned against. Young Hester borders on being licentious. Her drive is sexual. She does her best to keep her hold on the magic chain humanity. Her life eventually acquires a real significance when she reestablishes a meaningful relationship with her fellowmen Symbolic of her moral development is the gradual imperceptible change with the scarlet letter undergoes in meaning. At first it is a token of shame, “Adultery” but then the genuine sympathy and help Hester offered to her fellow villagers’ changes it to “Able”. Later in the story, the letter A appears in the sky, signifying “Angel”. There is reason to agree with the critical observation that A may represent Adamic, or prehistoric, an archetypal vice suggestive of “original sin,” Dimmesdale, on the other hand, banishes himself form society. Deeply preoccupied with himself, he lives a stranger among his admirers. The result is that, whereas Hester is able to reconstruct her life and win a moral victory, Dimmesdale undergoes the tragic experience of physical and spiritual disintegration. Between him and Hester they point to a moral as Hawthorne may intend them to do, that the best policy for man is to be true, honest, and ever ready to show one’s worst to the outside world.
6. Herman Melville: Moby Dick(白鲸)
①a tremendous chronicle of whaling voyage in pursuit of a seemingly supernatural white whale.主要讲述了一个为追捕一只想象中的神秘白鲸的漫长海上故事。②The book is steeped in symbolism. 本书达到了象征主义手法的创作高峰。③主人公：Ishmael，取自圣经。④在书中说：to write a mighty book you must have a mighty theme. 写一部宏大的著作，必须有一个宏大的主题。⑤故事人物：Captain Ahab.船长阿哈比；Queequeg，捕鲸人奎因奎格，was a friendly person；⑥the rebellious struggle of Captain Ahab against the overwhelming, mysterious vastness of the universe and its awesome, sometimes merciless forces. The fitting symbol for his theme was the “gliding great demon of the seas of life.”阿哈比舰长和各种危险之间的激烈斗争，他同那些强大的、神秘的自然展开斗争，他们令人毛骨悚然，有时还冷酷无情。他把那只大白鲸贴切的比喻为“生命海洋中滑行的恶魔”。
⑦“Moby Dick”：One of the major themes in Melville is alienation, which he sensed existing in the life of his time on different levels, between man and man, man and society, and man and nature. Captain Ahab seems to be the best illustration of it all. The voyage itself is a metaphor for “search and discovery, the search for the ultimate truth of experience.” He had Ahab topmost in his mind. In a sense Ahab embodies all of the evil he once consigned to Moby Dick.
7. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: A Psalm of Life(人生礼赞)
8. Walt Whitman(Father of American Poetry): Leaves of Grass
free verse (自由诗体) without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.无固定节奏，无有规律的韵脚,the first genuine epic poem美国历史上第一部真正的史诗
Poem’s 特点：Most of the poems in “Leaves of Grass” are about man and nature.
9. Emily Dickinson: Because I could not stop for Death
■ “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” is a lyric poem on the theme of death. It contains six stanzas, each with four lines. A four-line stanza is called a quatrain.
■ It reveals Emily Dickinson’s calm acceptance of death. It is surprising that she presents the experience as being no more frightening than receiving a gentleman caller—in this case, her fiancé (Death personified). 
■ The overall theme of the poem seems to be that death is not to be feared since it is a natural part of the endless cycle of nature.
■ Theme：死亡是实现永恒Immortality的途径
■ 特点：Her poetry in unique and unconventional in its own way. Her poems have no titles, hence are always quoted by their first lines.
Ⅳ Realism(Naturalism) (Civil War—World War I) 现实主义文学
1. Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin
2. William Dean Howells, middle class
3. Mark Twain, lower class: The Adventure of Tom Sawyer
A story of his seeking for freedom, fame, fortune, love, manhood. The novel reveals the American values: one is hero complex, the other is American dream. His adventures are the realization of American dream. On the other hand, the book records the rising Age of American Bourgeois system. It also bears the irony and satire toward the religion and by-then popular rigid, didactic children education, which curbs the imagination of children and their innate nature for freedom and adventures and molds them into a stereotype of lifeless man.
4. Henry James(international theme), upper class: The Portrait of A Lady, Isabel Archer
伊莎贝尔·阿切尔，一位美国少女，父母双亡后，被她富有的姨母(Mrs. Touchett)带到英国。在那，先后拒绝了英国贵族沃伯顿(Lord Warburton)和美国富商戈德伍德(Caspar Goodwood)的求婚。她的表兄拉尔夫(Ralph Touchett)也爱上她，但他知道自己患不治之症无法结婚，便说服父亲把一笔巨额遗产留给表妹。
伊莎贝尔又结识了梅尔夫人(Madame Merle)，对这位已彻底欧洲化了的美国女人十分倾倒。姨父死后，伊莎贝尔得到遗产去意大利游历。进入梅尔夫人布下的圈套。梅尔夫人介绍她认识了长期侨居意大利的美国人奥斯蒙德(Gilbert Osmond)，外表儒雅斯文。伊莎贝尔为之动心；他的女儿帕茜(Pancy)，也引起她的爱怜。她不顾亲戚朋友的警告和反对，自作主张下嫁于他。
婚后她发现自己受骗，奥斯蒙德是平庸卑鄙的小人。她还发现梅尔夫人是奥斯蒙德的情妇，帕茜是他们的私生女。痛苦中，她强作欢颜，对外人隐瞒了婚姻的不幸。表兄拉尔夫在英国病危，伊莎贝尔不顾丈夫的反对赶去看他。拉尔夫死后，伊莎贝尔出乎众人的预料，又回到罗马。
5. O. Henry: The Cop and the Anthem
6. Jack London: The Sea Wolf, Martin Eden(Martin Eden, Arthur Morse, Ruth)
7. Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie(嘉莉妹妹)
■ Sister Carrie tells the story of two characters: Carrie Meeber an ordinary girl who rises from a low-paid wage earner to a high-paid actress, and George Hurstwood, a member of the upper middle class who falls from his comfortable lifestyle to a life on the streets. Neither Carrie nor Hurstwood earn their fates through virtue or vice, but rather through random circumstance. Their successes and failures have no moral value; this stance marks Sister Carrie as a departure from the conventional literature of the period. 
■ Dreiser touches upon a wide range of themes and experiences in Sister Carrie, from grinding poverty to upper-middle class comfort. The novel dwells on the moment as it is experienced; the characters’ identities are constantly subject to change, reflecting the modern American experience that at that time thousands of rural Americans rushed to the cities to find jobs and to build themselves new lives and identities. Sister Carrie captures the excitement of that experience.
Ⅴ 20th century poets
1. Carl Sandburg
2. Ezra Pound: imagism, , The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
v About the poem, In a Station of the Metro:
① The “Metro” is the underground railway of Paris.
② The word “apparition”, with its double meaning, binds the two aspects of the observation together:
Ø Apparition meaning “appearance”, in the sense of something which appears, or shows up; something which can be clearly observed.
Ø Apparition meaning something which seems real but perhaps is not real; something ghostly which cannot be clearly observed.
③ The poem is an observation of the poet of the human faces seen in a Paris subway station. It looks to be a modern adoption of the Japanese haiku.
④ He tries to render exactly his observation of human faces seen in an underground railway station. He sees the faces, turned variously toward light and darkness, like flower petals on the wet, dark texture of a bough.
⑤ Repeating it, you can have a colorful picture, also you can feel the beauty of music through its repetition of different vowels and consonants, such as /p/ and /au/. Especially the repetition of /e/ in the second line emphasize