The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
作者，本杰明富兰克林。是启蒙主义代表人物（The Literature of Reason and Revolution）。杰明富兰克林，美国著名的思想家、政治家、外交家、科学家和实业家。出生于波士顿一个皂烛制造商家庭，但他通过在空闲时间刻苦学习，通晓了法语、意大利语、西班牙语和拉丁语，还大量阅读了欧洲各国的历史、哲学、文学著作，对自然科学和政治经济学也有很深的研究。这些努力使他成为18世纪的佼佼者，并领导美国人民打赢了独立战争。
他在20多岁时就提出了以十三项美德来完善自己的人格修养，鞭策自己在为人处世、待人接物方面臻于完美。这一举动改变了富兰克林的人生轨迹，使他成为后人仰慕的楷模。1706,born in Boston.He only spent two years in the local school because of lack of money. 1718,an apprentice with brother James in printing shop.only to be allowed Journeyman’s wages 1728,opened printing office in Philadelphia,PA
1729,becomes sole owner and publisher of Pennsylvania Gazette.
1730,married.
1731,found first public library.
1732,began to issue Poor Richard’ s Almance
(an annual collection of proverbs,first spreed his reputation,the most of book of its kind,largely because of Franklin’ s shrewd humor)
1736,lost one son and retired from printing
1744,invented stove（炉）.
1748,sold his business to get leisure（空闲）
1752,Kite experiment.lightning Rod
1757,be sent to England to protest against the influence of the Penns in the government of the colony.
1760,i nvented Armonica（口琴）
1764,was again dispatched to England as agent for the colony.This time to petition(向。。。请愿) the King to resume the government from the hands of proprietious.
1767,cross to France, received with honor.
1775,was dispatched to France as commission for the United States.
1776,signs Declaration of Independence.
1778,negotiated Treaty of Alliance with France.
1782,negotiated Treaty of Peace with Great Britain.
1782,invented bifocals(远视近视双用眼镜）
1787,signed Constitution of the United States.
1790,died in Philadelphia.
第一大人生错误
因刊登一篇政治观点不正确的文章，哥哥被捕了，当然后来被释放了。但他说在这个事件中犯了人生中第一个重大错误，导致与哥哥关系陷入困境。所以他决定离家出走，去纽约。二大错误，在财务上犯了错
富兰克林有一个发小柯林斯，他们从小就在一起读书，数学学得很好，后来还学了会计。他们在纽约相遇了并相约一起去费城。
富兰克林发现在他离开波士顿、柯林斯去纽约的那个时期，原先爱学习又上进的好青年柯林
斯染上了酗酒和赌博的毛病。酗酒让他丧失了很多机会。
在船上，当时的纽约总督伯内特得知有青年乘客带了很多书，就特地约见他俩。但是柯林斯喝得不省人事，富兰克林只得只身前往。总督非常客气，带他参观了硕大的藏书室。富兰克林说，这是让我享受其眷顾之荣的第二位总督，像我这样一个穷孩子，真是感到喜出望外。
与运气满满的富兰克林相反，满嘴酒气的柯林斯在费城想找一份财会工作的愿望一直没能实现。雇主一看到他醉醺醺的样子就拒绝雇佣他，因此，去往费城和待在费城的整个时期，富兰克林不得不负担起柯林斯的全部路费和生活费。
如果没有哥哥约翰让他代为保管的那笔钱，富兰克林可能都没法回到费城。而柯林斯知道这笔钱后，不断向他借钱，说是一有了工作就会还他。结果自然是永远都没有还上。富兰克林说动用这笔不属于自己的钱让他十分焦虑不安，而且，这也是他一生最早犯的大错之一。
柯林斯常常喝酒误事，因而两人发生口角也越来越多，关系越来越冷淡。当有一位雇主愿意找他去当儿子们的家庭教师时，柯林斯当即离开了富兰克林，答应一领到钱就立刻还钱给他。当然，此后此人便失去了音信
Purpose of writing the autobiography
1.Benjamin liked obtaining anecdotes of his ancestors, he thought his son may also want to know his life and there still many things his son didn’t know. So the autobiography was wrote .
2.To share his philosophy of life for children’s reference.Because his philosophy of life made him well success from poverty to some degree of reputation in the world and considerable share of felicity. At the same time,his posterity may like to know,as they may find some of them suitable to their own situations.Therefore he thought his philosophy of life was fit to be imitated and wrote this autobiography.
3.To make recollection as durable as possible. He had a wish to replay his life and correct some faults of his life, change some sinister accidents and events of it for others more favorable. This is human,regret did something or regret not do something and hope to change them,but it’s impossible. Due to its impossible to replay the life, he want to recollect his life and remember it. So he wrote this autobiography.
4.He shall a good deal gratify his own vanity.Because it is often productive of good to the possessor and to others that are within his sphere of action.Benjamin said that “In many cases,it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life.”That’s true,if there is a good thing happen to me ,I couldn’t help to tell it to my friends and family.So gratify is a purpose of his writing this autobiography.
All his writing purpose was mentioned in Chapter 1 of his autobiography. From the writing purpose we can see he was a good father or may grandfather. What his main purpose was to give his posterity a reference.
18 Century reflected by The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
We can see 18 century of American was full of business and people profits from the went after profits from the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.Benjamin was taken from grammar-school to learn wring and arithmetic because of obtain-reasons by his father. At ten
years old he was taken home to assist his father in business.And nearly most of his early life was do business of printing.
The government also encourage people to do business. When Keith knew Benjamin’s letter and his age, he encouraged Benjamin to open his own printing office. Although Benjamin’s father think he was too young to have a big business. Keimer and Colonel French assur’d him he should have their interest and influence in procuring the public business of both governments. From this,we can see that the government was support people to do business, at least, was not prohibited.
In the autobiography,Benjamin also mentioned that he had been a governor and his positions brought a lots of benefits to him,especially the postmaster-general. Postmaster-general facilitated the correspondence that improved his newspaper,increased the number demanded as well as the advertisements to be inserted.
To encourage the business,the government also give the patent to inventors.There were so many inventions in 18 century. Benjamin also invented some things,like open stove for the better warming of rooms.
During 18 century or all the time of American, people’s religion is free. Josiah, Benjamin’s father, came to American just expected to enjoy their mode of religion.May be religion freedom also a reason why American was full of business.
Anyway,18 century of American was full of business.
The Declaration of Independence
作者：Thomas Jefferson(1743-1826)
He is the leader and organizer of the American independent movement.He also is the rapporteur of the Declaration of Independence.The understanding he applied,with simple American directness,to a conception of democracy for a new land of plenty,where the people might have a fresh start toward liberty ,self-hood,and that excellence which he sought in all things.
The Scarlet Letter
作者：Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864）
美国文学笔记 I. Colonial Period（殖民地时期）（约1607-1765） II. The Revolutionary period（革命时期) :( 1765-18世纪末）Benjamin Franklin（1706-1790） III.The Romantic period （浪漫主义时期）: （1800-1865）Edgar Allan Poe（1809-1849） Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) Henry Daivd Thoreau (1817-1862) Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) Herman Melville (1819-1891) Walt Whitman (1819~1892) Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) IV.The Realism and Naturalism（现实主义和自然主义) : （1865-1918） Mark Twain (1835-1910) Henry James (1843-1916) Stephen Crane (1881-1900) V. The Modern period (现代主义时期）: 1918-1945 F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) William Faulkner (1897-1962) Ernest Hemingway (1899—1961) Ezra Pound (1885—1972) Robert Frost（1847-1963） Eugene O’ Neil (1888-1953) VI. Contemporary literature（当代文学):（1945- ） I. Colonial Period（殖民地时期）（约1607-1765） II. The Revolutionary period（革命时期): (1765-18世纪末）Benjamin Franklin（1706-1790）： 1. Summary: One of the greatest founding fathers of the American Nation First great self-made man in America
Chapter 3 The Romantic Period-the English Literature A basic introduction to the romantic period. 1) Began in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads and to have ended in 1832 with Sir Walter Scott's death and the passage of the first Reform Bill in the Parliament. 2) what are the characxteristics of the Romantic literature? A) In poetry writing, the Romantics employed new theories and innovated new techniques, for example, the preface to the second edition of the "Lyrical Ballads"acts as a manifesto for the new school B)The Romantics not only extol the faculty of Ballads acts as a manifesto for the new school. B) The Romantics not only extol the faculty of imagination, but also elevate the concepts of spontaneity and inspiration. C) They regarded nature as the major source of poetic imagery and the dominant subject. D) Romantics also tend to be nationalistic. 3) The Romantic period is an age of poetry. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, shelley and Keats are the major Romantic poets. They started a rebellion against the neoclassical literature, which was later regarded as the poetic revolution. 4) We can say that Romanticism actually consitutes a change of direction from attention to the outer 1) Literarily Blake was the first important Romantic poet , shwoing a contempt for the rule of reason,i th l i l t diti f th 18th t d t i th i di id l'i i ti )y y g world of social civilization to the inner world of the human spirit. In essence it designates a literary and philosophical theory which tends to see the individual as the very center of all life and all experience.William Blake opposing the classical tradition of the 18th century, and treasuring the individual's imagination.2) The Songs of Innocence is a lovely volume of poems, presenting a happy and innocent world, though not without its evils and sufferings; his Songs of Experience paints a different world, a world of misery,poverty, disease, war and repression with a melancholy tone . 3) particularly the practice of selling young children into apprenticeships, a practice which provides the context for the opening lines of the "Chimney Sweeper." The two "Chimney Sweeper" poems are good examples to reveal the relation between an economic circumstance,i.e.the exploitation of child labor,examples to reveal the relation between an economic circumstance, i.e. the exploitation of child labor,and an ideological cir cumstance, i.e. the role played by religion in making people compliant to exploitation. The poem from the Songs of Innocence indicates the conditions which make religion a consolation, a prospect of "illusory happiness;" the poem from the Songs of Experience reveals the true nature of religion which helps bring misery to the poor children. 4) Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell marks his entry into maturity(天堂与地狱的结合一诗标志着他创作上的成熟). 5) The Bok of Urizen, The Book of Los, The Four Zoas, and Milton (尤来森之书，洛斯之书，四个左义斯，弥尔顿）。 The Tyger The Chimney Sweeper ( from Songs of Innocence/Experien ce)
1. Transcendentalism The origin of it is a philosophical and literary movement centered in Concord and Boston, which marks the summit of American Transcendentalism. 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. The major features of American Transcendentalism are:It emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe. It stressed the importance of the individual. To them the individual was the most important element of society. It offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God. 2.Romanticism The Romanticism period stretches from the end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil War. It is a term associate with imagination boundlessness, and in critical usage is contrasted with classicism which is commonly associated with reason and restriction. The features of Romanticism are: American Romanticism was in a way derivative: American romantic writing was some of them modeled on English and European works. American romanticism was in essence the expression of "a real new experience "and contained"an alien quality".Representatives:William Cullen Bryant; Henry Longfellow and James Cooper, Washington Irving. 3.Realism: In American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came into existence. It came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism. Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived. It expresses the concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.The representatives are Howells, James, and Mark Twain. 4. Naturalism American naturalism was a new and harsher realism, it had come from Europe. Naturalism was an outgrowth of realism that responded to theories in science, psychology, human behavior and social thought current in the late nineteenth century. The background of naturalism are: In the last decade of the nineteenth century, with the development of industry and modern science, intelligent minds began to see that man was no longer a free ethical being in a cold, indifferent and essentially Godless universe. In this chance world he was both helpless and hopeless.Major Features of it are:Humans are controlled by laws of heredity and environment.The universe is cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desires.Representatives of it such as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser. 5.New Criticism The New Criticism as a school of poetry and criticism established itself in the 1940s as an academic orthodoxy in the United States. The school has its beginning in the 1920s. It focus on the analysis of the text rather paying attention to external elements such as its social background, its author's intention and political attitude, and its impact on society. Then it explores the artistic structure of the work rather than its author's frame of mind or its reader's responses. It also see a literary work as an organic entity, the unity of content and form, and places emphasis on the close reading of the text. These New Critics included T.S. Eliot,I.A.Richards,John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate and some other critics. The New Criticism has tended to divorce criticism from social and moral concerns, which was to become one salient feature of the movement. 6.Imagism: Between 1912 and 1922 there came a great poetry boom in which about 1000 poets published over 1000 volumes of poetry. Indeed ,to express the modern spirit, the sense of fragmentization and dislocation, was in large measure the aim of quite a few modern literary movements, of which Imagism was one.The first Imagist theorist, the English writer T.E.Hulme. Hulme suggests that modern art deals with expression and communication of momentary phases in the poet's mind. The most effective means to express these momentary impressions is through the use of dominant image.It is a literary movement launched American poets early in the 20th century that advocated the use of free verse, common speech patterns, and clear concrete images as a reaction to Victorian sentimentalism. The representatives are Ezra pound, William Carlos Williams and some other poets.
美国文学史及选读（第二册）笔记 The Literature of Realism 陈银2014/4/5 Lecture 6 （Jack London） Naturalism Definition Naturalism was a new and harsher realism in the late 19th century . Naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by their environment and heredity. In presenting the extremes of life, the naturalists sometimes displayed an affinity to the sensationalism of early romanticism, but unlike their romantic predecessors, the naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that lives were controlled by heredity and environment, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. In American literature, Jack London , Stephen Crane, Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser are representatives of naturalism. Themes 1. Walcutt identifies survival, determinism, violence, and taboo as key themes. 2. The "brute within" each individual, composed of strong and often warring emotions: passions, such as lust, greed, or the desire for dominance or pleasure; and the fight for survival in an amoral, indifferent universe. The conflict in naturalistic novels is often "man against nature" or "man against himself" as characters struggle to retain a "veneer of civilization" despite external pressures that threaten to release the "brute within." 3. The forces of heredity and environment as they affect--and afflict--individual lives. 4. Nature as an indifferent force acting on the lives of human beings. 5. An indifferent, deterministic universe. Naturalistic texts often describe the futile attempts of human beings to exercise free will, often ironically presented, in this universe that reveals free will as an illusion American Naturalism ?Representatives: ?Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London and Theodore Dreiser. ?These writers’ detailed description of the lives of the downtrodden and the abnormal, their frank treatment of human passion and sexuality, and their portrayal of men and women overwhelmed by blind forces of nature still exert a powerful influence on modern writers. Jack London (1876-1916) “I would rather be ashes than dust! 我宁愿化作灰烬，也不要做尘埃。 I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. 我愿做一颗华丽的流星，愿我的每一颗粒都呈现那动人的光辉，而不做那沉睡并永远不灭的行星。 The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” 人的恰当功能是活，而不是生。我不会用延长日子，把时光浪费，我要利用时间。
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.
Allegory is a narrative that serves as an extended metaphor. Allegories are written in the form of fables, parables, poems, stories, and almost any other style or genre. The main purpose of an allegory is to tell a story that has characters, a setting, as well as other types of symbols, that have both literal and figurative meanings. One well-known example of an allegory is Dante’s The Divine Comedy.In Inferno, Dante is on a pilgrimage to try to understand his own life, but his character also represents every man who is in search of his purpose in the world. Alliteration is a pattern of sound that includes the repetition of consonant sounds. The repetition can be located at the beginning of successive words or inside the words. Poets often use alliteration to audibly represent the action that is taking place. Aside is an actor’s speech, directed to the audience, that is not supposed to be heard by other actors on stage. An aside is usually used to let the audience know what a character is about to do or what he or she is thinking. Asides are important because they increase an audience's involvement in a play by giving them vital information pertaining what is happening, both inside of a character's mind and in the plot of the play. Gothic is a literary style popular during the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. This style usually portrayed fantastic tales dealing with horror, despair, the grotesque and other “dark” subjects. Gothic literature was named for the apparent influence of the dark gothic architecture of the period on the genre. Also, many of these Gothic tales took places in such “gothic” surroundings. Other times, this story of darkness may occur in a more everyday setting, such as the quaint house where the man goes mad fro m the "beating" of his guilt in Edgar Allan Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart.”In essence, these stories were romances, largely due to their love of the imaginary over the logical, and were told from many different points of view. CATHARSIS is an emotional discharge that brings about a moral or spiritual renewal or welcome relief from tension and anxiety. According to Aristotle, catharsis is the marking feature and ultimate end of any tragic artistic work. IMAGERY: A common term of variable meaning, imagery includes the "mental pictures" that readers experience with a passage of literature. It signifies all the sensory perceptions referred to in a poem, whether by literal description, allusion, simile, or metaphor. Surrealism is an artistic movement doing away with the restrictions of realism and verisimilitude that might be imposed on an artist. In this movement, the artist sought to do away with conscious control and instead respond to the irrational urges of the subconscious mind. From this results the hallucinatory, bizarre, often nightmarish quality of surrealistic paintings and writings. Sample surrealist writers include Frank O'Hara, John Ashberry, and Franz Kafka.
美文学美国部分——浪漫主义时期 Part two: American Literature Chapter 1 The Romantic Period浪漫主义时期 1. From the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of he Civil War. It started with the publication of Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book and ended with Whitman’s L eaves of Grass. It is also called “the American Renaissance”.浪漫主义时期开始于十八世纪末，到内战爆发为止，华盛顿.欧文出版的《见闻札记》标志着美国文学的开端，惠特曼的《草叶集》是浪漫主义时期文学的压卷之作。（也可称为“美国德文艺复兴”） 2. The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became a permanent convention of American literature.对逃离社会，回归自然的渴求成为美国文学的一个永恒的话题。 3. The American Puritanism as a cultural heritage exerted great influences over American moral values.美国清教作为一种文化遗产，对美国人的道德观念产生了很大的影响。 4. Besides, a preoccupation with the Calvinistic view of original sin and the mystery of evil marked the works of Hawthorne, Melville and a host of lesser writers. 在霍桑，麦尔维尔以及其他一些小作家的作品种加尔文主义的原罪思想和罪恶的神秘性都得到了充分的表现。 5. The most clearly defined Romantic literary movement in this period is New England Transcendentalism.美国浪漫主义文学运动足能标炳的是新英格兰的超验主义运动。 6. This Transcendentalist group includes two of the most significant writers America has produced so far, Emerson and his young friend, Henry David Thoreau, whose writing has a strong impact on American literature.超验主义文学的主要代表是爱默生和梭罗，他们的作品对美国文学产生了很大的影响。 7. Basically, Transcendentalism has been defined philosophically as “the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses.”超验主义承认“人类具有本能了解或认识真理的能力，能够超过感官获取知识”。 8. Emerson once proclaimed in a speech, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of you own mind.” Other concepts that accompanied Transcendentalism include the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, self-reliant.爱默生曾说过：“只有人心灵的尊严才是最神圣的”。超验主义还认为自然是高尚的，个人是神圣的，因此人必须自助。 9. It ranges from the comic fables of Washington Irving to the Gothic tales of Edgar Allen Poe, from the frontier adventures of James Fenimore Cooper to the narrative quests of Herman Melville, from the psychological romances of Nathaniel Hawthorne to the social realism of Rebecca Harding.美国浪漫主义时期的小说富有独创性，多样性，与华盛顿.欧文的喜剧性寓