美国文学
Part One Colonial America(17世纪早期到18世纪末）
Part Two The Literature of Romanticism(19世纪上半叶）
The frontier hero Andrew Jackson as the 7th President of the United States had brought an effective end to the “Virginia Dynasty” of American Presidents.
The United States had begun to change into an industrial cause society, technology would bring vast material benefits and cause overwhelming social disorders.
Romantics shared certain general characteristics: （选择题常考）moral enthusiasm, faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a source of goodness and man’s societies a source of corruption.
Washington Irving华盛顿·欧文1783-1859
He was the first great prose stylist of American romanticism familiar style.
His “Sketch Book” appeared the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature to write good history and biography as literary entertainment. He introduced the familiar essay to America “Jonathan Old style”, satires of New York. His major works include: The Author’s Account of Himself The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
James Fenimore Cooper詹姆斯·芬尼莫·库珀1789-1851
The first important American novelist began his literary career on a dare.
“The Spy” was successful, it was a rousing tale about espionage against the British during the Revolutionary War. Cooper launched two kinds of immensely popular stories: the sea adventure tale, and the frontier saga.
The Pilot” the best of his many sea romances.
His frontier stories “Leather Stocking Tales” including five novels: “The Deerslayer”; The Last of the Mohicans”, “The Pathfinder”, “The Pioneers”, “The Prairie”. Allan Nevins calls these five novels “the nearest approach yet to an American epic”.
The Last of The Mohicans
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow亨利·沃兹沃思·朗费罗1807-1882
In his prose romance “Outre-Mer”, he uses Finish folk meter in his celebration of American Indian Legends in “Hiawatha”. His greatest virtue is that he made poetry seem worth reading and worth writing. His works include:A Psalm of Life My Lost Youth Song of Hiawatha Voices of the Night
William Cullen Bryant威廉·卡伦·布莱恩特1794-1878
The stately poem called ” Thanatopsis” (Greek, meaning “view of death”) introduced the best poet to appear in American up to that time.
“To a Waterfowl” is perhaps the peak of his work, “Most perfect brief poem in the language”.
His most important later works are his translations of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” into English blank verse.
As Irving had shown that American prose had come of age, so Bryant demonstrated to European readers that American poetry was ready to demand serious attention. He was the first American to gain the stature of a major poet.
Part Three New England Transcendentalism
（2015年川师大真题）New England Transcendentalism is regarded as the summit of American Romanticism. What do you know about Transcendentalism?
Transcendentalism is a literature, philosophical and artistic movement that flourished in New England from about 1836 to 1860. It originated from a small group of intellectuals who were reacting against the orthodox of Calvinism and the rationalism of the Unitarian church, developing their own faith centering on the divinity of humanity and the natural world. The major features of New England Transcendentalism can be summarized as follows: First, the Transcendentalism placed emphasis on spirit, or the over soul, as the most important thing in the universe. Second, the Transcendentalism stressed the importance of the individual. Thirdly, the Transcendentalism offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the spirit or god. New England Transcendentalism is the product of a combination of native American Puritanism and European Romanticism. The ideas of Transcendentalism were most eloquently expressed by Emerson in such essays as
Nature, and Self-Reliance and by Thoreau in his book Walden.
Ralph Waldo Emerson 拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生1803-1882
He was responsible for bringing Transcendentalism to New England and was recognized throughout his life as the leader of the movement, and he believed above all in individualism, independence of mind and self-reliance. He admired courage, he was not afraid of changing or clashing ideas. His works include:Nature The American Scholar The Divinity School Address Self-Reliance
Many of his lectures were later distilled into his famous “Essays”. Among his most important works are “Representative Men” and “English Traits” .His “Poems” appeared in 1847.
In his day, Emerson’s poems were criticized for their lack of form and polish. In recent years, however, his poetry has received high praise. His harsh rhythms and striking images appeal to many modern readers as artful techniques.
His prose style is sometimes as highly individual as his poetry. Many of his essays were put together from his journal entries, speeches, and random notes, and they are often somewhat disorganized. Yet his skill in polishing each sentence into a striking thought makes his writing memorable.
The American Scholar is called “our intellectual Declaration of Independence”(选择题常考）
Henry David Thoreau亨利·戴维·梭罗1817-1862
He was Emerson’s truest disciple, who put into practice many of Emerson’s theories.
The superb novel Walden is written by Thoreau,and was published in 1854.it came out of his two-year experiment lived at Walden.Thoreau explained many of the beliefs that led him to try this kind of life.He thought it better for a man to work one day a week and rest six,so that people could devote more time to thought.Thoreau maintained that this was purpose ,not a program for society .and in his book ,he think ,self-reliance and independence of mind ranked above all . From his experience in jail came his famous essay Civil Disobedience, which stated Thoreau’s belief that no man should violate his conscience at the command of a government.
Nathaniel Hawthorne纳撒尼尔·霍桑1804-1864
“The House of the Seven Gables”deals with the effects of a curse, and though the tale itself is fiction, the germ of the story sprang from the author’s family history.
Hawthorne gathered his material by observing and listening to others whose talk was filled with New England Lore, legend, and superstition. His works include:The Custom House The Blithedale Romance Mosses from an Old Manse The Marble Faun Young Goodman Brown The Scarlet Letter
Hawthorne’s unique gift was for the creation of strongly symbolic stories which touch the deepest roots of man’s moral nature. The finest example is the recreation of Puritan Boston, “The Scarlet Letter”. In this novel each word, image, and event works toward a single effect. It is a complex story of guilt, its effects upon various persons, and how deliverance is obtained for some of them.
Hawthorne shares with Edgar Allan Poe the distinction of advancing the art of the short story, giving to the form qualities that are uniquely American. To Hawthorne and Melville, however, the telling of a tale was a way of inquiring into the meaning of life.
（2014年川师大真题）What's symbolism? Please illustrate it with Nathaniel Hawthorne's works?
In literature, symbolism was an aesthetic movement that encouraged writers to express their ideas, feelings and values by means of symbols or suggestions rather than by direct statements. It enables writers to compress a very complex idea or sets of ideas into image or even one word. Hawthorne is a master of symbolism. The symbol can be found everywhere in his writing. His masterpieces The Scarlet Letter and Young Good Man Brown provided the most convincing proof.
In the Scarlet Letter, A is the biggest symbol of all. As a key to the whole novel, the letter takes on different layers of symbolic meaning as the plot develops. At first, it is a token of shame "Adultery", then it has been changed into "Able", and finally it signifies "Angel". People come up with different interpretations and they don't know which one is definite. The Scarlet Letter A is ambiguous and the ambiguity is one of the prominent characteristics of Hawthorne's art.
In Young Goodman Brown, Hawthorne masterfully uses symbolism in presenting the theme. For example, the names of protagonists carry strong symbolic meanings. Brown is an extremely common name, which stands for everyone. That means the problem that Brown met is a universal one. His wife is Faith, who should be the most faithful one to him. However, the fact proves that even she possess some evil secrets that he doesn't know.
Herman Melville赫尔曼·麦尔维尔1819-1891
Moby Dick, a tremendous chronicle of a whaling voyage in pursuit of a seemingly supernatural white whale. The book is steeped in symbolism, another strong appeal to readers of his century. Melville had the rebellious struggle of Captain Ahab against the overwhelming ,mysterious vastness of the universe and its awesome ,sometimes merciless force （选择题常考）The fitting symbol for his the“gliding great demon of the seas of life,”the white whale .Ahab’s ship,the Requod ,was like a world in miniature ,with characters ranging from the observer and narrator Ishmael to the savage harpooners and the motley crew.Melville said this book had been“broiled in hell-fire, referring to the turbulence of his own spirit from which the book sprang.
Typee, became known as the “man who lived among cannibals”
His works include:Omoo Mardi Billy Budd Moby Dick
Billy Budd a nd Moby Dick use a ship as symbol of society and searchingly examines the problems of good and evil.
Aha b’s ship was like a world in miniature with characters from all walks of life.
Walt Whitman沃尔特·惠特曼1819-1892
O ne of the great innovators in American literature. In the cluster of poems he called “Leaves of Grass” he gave America its first genuine epic poem. The poetic style he devised is now called free verse-that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. Whitman thought that the voice of democracy should not be haltered by traditional forms of verse. Most of the poems in “Leaves of Grass” are about man and nature. However, a small number of very good poems deal with New York, the city that fascinated Whitman, and with the Civil War. In his poetry, Whitman combined the ideal of the democratic common man and that of the rugged individual. In his poetry, Whitman combined the ideal of the democratic common man and that of the rugged individual. He envisioned the poet as a hero, a savior and a prophet, one who leads the community by his expressions of the truth. His works include:Song of Myself I sit and Look Out Drum-Taps Beat! Beat! Drums
Emily Dickinson爱米丽·狄金森1830-1886
She wrote her whimsical, darting verse with sublime indifference to any notion of being a democratic or popular poet. Her work illustrated the fact that one could take a single household and an inactive life, and make enchanting poetry out of it. She and her sister remained at home and did not marry. After 1862 she became a total recluse, not leaving her house nor seeing even close friends. Her later retirement from the world, though perhaps affected by an unhappy love affair, seems mainly to have resulted from her own personality, from a desire to separate herself from the world. The range of her poetry suggests not her limited experiences but the power of her creativity and imagination.
Emily, however, refused to revise her poems to fit the standards of others and took no interest in having them published; in fact she had only seven poems published during her lifetime.
Emily Dickinson’s poetry c omes out in bursts. The poems are short, many of them being based on a single image or symbol. But within her little lyrics Miss Dickinson writes about some of the most important things in life. His works include:I taste a liquor never brewed Because I Could not Stop for Death A Bird Came Down the Walk-
Edgar Allan Poe埃德加·阿伦·坡1809-1849
He won a contest with his story “Ms. Found in a Bottle” .Then he got a job as editor with the “Southern Literary Messenger”. His first collection of short stories “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque”.
In Europe, he was hailed as a pioneer in poetic and fictional techniques. His influence was especially strong on many French writers. His works include:The Fall of the House of Usher To Helen The Raven
Part Four The Age of Realism（19世纪下半叶）
In the Civil War 1861-1865，they sought to portray American life as it really was,, insisting that the ordinary and local were as suitable for artistic portrayal as the magnificent and the remote.
Realism had originated in France as real isme, a literary doctrine that called for “reality and truth” in the depiction of ordinary life. William Dean Howells defined realism as “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material”.（选择题常考）He spoke out against the writing of a bleak fiction of failure and despair. He called for the treatment of the “Smiling aspects of life” as being the more “American”, insisting that American was truly a land of hope and of possibility that should be reflected in its literature.
The bulk of Ameri ca’s literary realism was limited to optimistic treatment of the surface of life. Yet the greatest of America’s realists, Henry James and Mark Twain, moved well beyond a superficial portrayal of nineteenth-century America. James probed deeply into the individual psychology of his characters, writing in a rich and intricate style that supported his intense scrutiny of complex human experience. Mark Twain, breaking out of the narrow limits of local color fiction, described the breadth of American experience as no one had ever done before, or since.
(预测问答题）Naturalism, a new and harsher realism. America’s literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classed who were dominated by their environment and heredity, the naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment, that religious “truths” were illusory, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death.
Harriet Beecher Stowe哈丽雅特·比彻·斯托1811-1896
She was born into a respectable family that was to become famous, her father Lyman was a renowned clergyman. The family was dominated by the father who ruled with the kind of wrathful severity that he imagined were the chief characteristics of the God he worshiped and feared. The boys were expected to become preachers, the girls to marry preachers. She is an anti-slavery writer. Her works include:Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(问答题重点）Uncle Tom’s Cabin is the masterpiece of Harriet Beecher Stowe(an American realism novelist).The novel began serially in the National Era. When the novel did appear,however,it was an overnight success.It sold 350,000 copies during the first year,and since then has been published in some forty languages and has been read by millions of people around the world.The power of the novel unquestionably comes from the investment of the author’s sense of her own suffering and oppression(as well as her determination to be free) in characters of Tom and his fellow slave Eliza,the protagonists of the book’s two main plots.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin traces the trials, sufferings and human dignity of Uncle Tom, an old black slave. The novel helped tremendously Americans know more about the cruelty and inhumanity of slavery and hurried on a great war.
Howells
His major works include: A Modern Instance and The Rise of Silas Lapham.
He writes about the rising middle class and the way they lived.
Henry James亨利·詹姆斯1843-1916
H e received the major part of his education at home, his family’s travels in Europe were another source of education for Henry. The American with its “international” theme of the traditionless American confronting the complexity of European life. D aisy Miller, which one American critic described as “an outrage to American girlhood” but which brought James his first international fame. The Portrait of a Lady the finest example of James’s early work.
Unlike Howells James’s greatest influence was exerted not on his own age but on the one that followed. He had been attacked for criticizing his native land and for the narrow emotional and social range of his characters. And he had been ridiculed for the obscure and costive style of his final period, a style that was able to express the subtlest meanings but was based on the assumption that the reader was as well educated, as exquisitely attuned, and in as little hurry as the author. He helps to transform the novel from its alliances with journalism and romantic story-telling into an art form of penetrating analysis of individuals confronting society, chronicles of the psychological perceptions that James himself defined as the highest form of experience.
Local Colorism(预测问答题）
Generally speaking, the writings of local colorists are concerned with the life of a small, well-defined region or province. The characteristic setting is the isolated small town. 2) Local colorists were consciously nostalgic historians of a vanishing way of life, recorders of a present that faded before their eyes. Yet for all their sentimentality, they dedicated themselves to minutely accurate descriptions of the life of their regions, they worked from personal experience to record the facts of a local environment and suggested that the native life was shaped by the curious conditions of the local. 3) major local colorists is Mark Twain.
Mark Twain 马克·吐温1835-1910
H is formal education ended soon after his father’s death in 1847, when he became a printer’s apprentice. From 1853, he traveled widely, as a journeyman printer, in the eastern states and in the west, he met Horace Bixby, the captain of the boat, and turned to a career on the river. He left the Mississippi at the outbreak of the Civil War, and became, in swift succession, and army volunteer, a gold-prospector in Nevada, a timber speculator and a journalist.
W hile working for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, he adopted the pseudonym “Mark Twain”, the way of a boatman taking soundings, and meaning two fathoms, i.e. twelve feet. His works include: Jumping Frog Innocents Abroad The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
He pointed towards his uneasy acceptance of the values of nineteenth-century American society, he wrote three works expressing his acute pessimism. From that time until his death, he maintained a bitter skepticism, relieved at times by outraged commentary on world affairs. His last years were saddened by personal bereavement.
（2010年川师大真题）Give a brief description to the American realists of the later part of the 19th century?
In the later part of the 19th century, famous American realists include: Mark Twain, Henry James, Jack London and Theodorn Dreiser.
Mark Twain was the first literary giant in that he broke the narrow limits of local color and described the breadth of American as no one had ever done before. He was acclaimed as "the true father of our national literature". He first created the American boy in his book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It has always been regarded as one of the greatest books of western literature and western civilization. Hemingway described it as the book from which" all modern American literature comes." Other famous books of Mark Twain include: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi River and The Gilded Age.
Henry James is considered as the founder of psychological realism. He stresses the "psychology" of human being and his realism is characterized by his psychological approach to his subject matter. He was the first American writer to conceive his artistic work in international themes. His novels describe the life of the upper class, and they are marked by highly refined language. His famous works include: Daisy Miller and The Portrait of a Lady.
Jack London is one of the most articulate and militant spokesman of the working class at the turn of century. He is a leading figure of naturalism. His famous works include: Martin Eden, The call of the Wild and The Law of Life. The Call of the Wild is London's best-known story in which the protagonist is a sled-dog who under the pressure of the environment reverts to savagery.
Theodore Dreiser is generally acknowledged as one of American's literary naturalist. His famous work include Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy. Sister Carrie tells about a poor country girl who goes to Chicago to pursue the American dream. The novel shows Dresser's naturalistic view about life by illustrating the purposelessness of life. The dominant symbol of the novel is the rocking chair that is indicative of the uncertainty of life.
O. Henry 欧·亨利
H e wrote stories for different magazines, and when there came a big demand for his stories, the publishers of “Ainslee’s Magazing” invited him to come to New York.
Many of his stories tell about the lives of poor people in New York, as well as in other places, his works abound in good-natured humor. His stories are usually short, the plots are exceedingly clever and interesting; humor abounds, and the end is always surprising. Many of his stories contain a great deal of slang and colloquial expressions that make them hard to be understood by people outside of America. Such forms of speech are used to give what is called local, to make the stories fit in with the characters and scenes described.
His works include:The Gift of the Magi A Municipal Report The Cop and the Anthem
Jack London杰克·伦敦1876-1916
He grew up in extreme poverty: from earliest youth he supported himself with menial and dangerous jobs, experiencing profoundly the struggle for survival. His works include:The Call of the Wild The Son of the Wolf The Sea Wolf Martin Eden The Law of Life
The most enduringly popular of his stories involved the primitive (and melodramatic) struggle of strong and weak individuals in the context of irresistible natural forces such as the wild sea or the arctic wastes.
London’s stories of man in and against nature continue to be popular all over the world. In them, London strips everything
down to the symbolic starkness of dream, to a primordial simplicity that has the strange and compelling power of ancient myth.
Theodore Dreiser西奥多·德莱塞1871-1945
From his mother he seems to have absorbed a quality of compassionate wonder, from his father he seems to have inherited moral earnestness and the capacity to persist in the face of failure, disappointment, and despair.
Dreiser’s childhood was decidedly unhappy. The large family moved from house to house in Indiana dogged by poverty, insecurity, and internal division. Dreiser as a youth was as ungainly, confused, shy, and full of vague yearnings as most of his fictional protagonists, male and female, his education was to come from experience and from independent reading and thinking.
Sister Carrie, which traces the material rise of Carrie Meeber and the tragic decline of G·W·Hurstwood. It depicted social transgressions by characters who felt no remorse and largely escaped punishment, and it used “strong” language and used names of living persons.
H is best short fictions “Nigger Jeff” and “Butcher Rogaum’s Daughter”
”Trilogy of Desire”: “The Financier”; “The Titan”; “The Stoic”, Dreiser shifted from the pathos of helpless protagonists to the power of those unusual individuals who assume dominant roles in business and society.
The identification of potency with money i s at the heart of Dreiser’s greatest and most successful novel, “An American Tragedy”. The Center of this immense novel’s thick texture of biographical circumstance, social fact, and industrial detail is a young man who acts as if the only way he can be truly fulfilled is by acquiring wealth-through marriage if necessary. Part Five American Literature in the 1920s
Imagism came into being in Britain and U.S around 1910 as a reaction to the traditional English poetry to express the sense of fragmentation and dislocation. The imagists, with Ezra Pound leading the way, hold that the most effective means to express these momentary impressions is through the use of one dominant image. Imagism is characterized by the following three poetic principles: A.direct treatment of subject matter;B.economy of expression;C. as regards rhythm ,to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome. Pound’s In a Station of the Metro is a well-known imagist poem.
Ezra Pound埃兹拉·庞德1885-1972
He had a distinct poetic personality, he combined a command of the older tradition with impressive and often daring originality. He was a prolific essayist for the little magazines of New York, London, Paris, which then constituted a large and exciting literary world. He unselfishly and persistently championed the experimental and often unpopular artists. Most important of all, perhaps, was the advice and encouragement which he gave to T·S· Eliot.
Both Pound and Eliot required of their readers a familiarity with the classics, the productions of Italian and English Renaissance,, and specialized areas of Continental literature, including the works of the French symbolists. Pound’s continued to draw fundamentally upon his formidably recondite culture. His works include：The Cantos In a Station of the Metro A Virginal
Thomas Stearns Eliot托马斯·斯特恩斯·爱略特1888-1965
He won the Nobel Prize in 1948.
His first book of poems “Prufrock and Other Observations”, which concerns various aspects of the frustration and enfeeblement of individual character as seen in perspective with the decay of states, peoples, and religious faith.
The Waste Land, one of the major works of modern literature. Its subject, the apparent failure of western civilization which World War I seemed to demonstrate, suggested the spiritual debility of the modern individual and his culture while in satirical counterpoint his Sweeney poems had symbolized the rising tide of anticultural infidelity and human baseness. It used abundant of literary reference. It also introduced a form-the orchestration of related themes in successive movements. His works include:The Hollow Men Ash-Wednesday Four Quartets The Love Song of J·Alfred Prufrock Robert Frost罗伯特·弗洛斯特1874-1963
By the end of his life he had become a national bard; he won four Pulitzer Prizes; the United States Senate passed resolutions honoring his birthdays, and when he was eighty-seven he read his poetry at the inauguration of President John
F·Kennedy. Frost had rejected the revolutionary poetic principles of his contemporanes,(选择题常考）choosing instead “the old-fashioned way to be new”. He employed the plain speech of rural New Englanders and preferred the short, traditional forms of lyric and narrative, As a poet of nature he had obvious affinities with romantic writers. He saw nature as a storehouse of analogy and symbol, but he had little faith in religious dogma or speculative thought. His poetry, for all its apparent simplicity, often probes mysteries of darkness and irrationality in the bleak and chaotic landscapes of an indifferent universe where men stand alone, unaided and perplexed.
Carl Sandburg卡尔·桑德堡1878-1967
He lived to enjoy enormous popular acclaim, by the end of his life he had become a familiar figure to national television audiences who listened to him read his poems, sing folk ballads and relate anecdotes about Lincoln.
His works include:Chicago Poems Cornhuskers Flash Crimson Chicago Cool Tombs
F· Scott Fitzgerald F·司格特·菲茨杰拉德1896-1940
His works include:This Side of Paradise The beautiful and Damned The Great Gateby Tales of the Jazz Age Tender Is the Night
The Great Gateby had revealed the stridency of an age of glittering innocence. In vivid and graceful prose he had, at the same time, portrayed the hollowness of the American worship of riches and the unending American dream of love, splendor, and fulfilled desires.
（2013年川师大真题）Give a brief introduction to The Great Gatsby.
The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald's masterpiece. It is a sad story of an idealist Gatsby who was destroyed by the influence of the wealthy, pleasure-seeking people around him. The book mirrors the experiences and attitudes of the 1920
s. The novel embodies the disillusionment of the American dream.
The Great Gatsby recounts the rise and fall of Jay Gatsby, who was a poor youth from the midwest. He falls in love with Daisy, a wealthy girl, but is too poor to marry her. The girl then is married to a rich young man, Tom. Determined to win his lost love back, Gatsby engages himself in contraband and other "shabby" activities, thus earning enough money to buy a magnificent French villa. There he spreads dazzing parties every weekend in the hope of alluring Daisy and Tom to come. They finally come and Gatsby meets Daisy again, only to find that the woman before him is not quite the ideal love of his dreams. A sense of loss and disillusionment comes over him. Then Daisy kills a woman who is her husband's mistress in a car accident, and Tom misleads Myrtle's heartbroken husband George，implying that the accident was Gatsby's fault. Gatsby is consequently shot by George, and George commits suicide immediately afterward.
Ernest Hemingway厄恩斯特·海明威1899-1961
H e was awarded a Nobel Prize for his “mastery of the art of modern narration”.
In World War I,he volunteered to serve as a driver for an American ambulance unit in France, then transferred to duty on the Italian front, where he was seriously wounded.
Hemingway became the spokesman for what Gertrude Stein had called “a lost generation”.
His works include:The Sun Also Rises A Farewell to Arms Death in the Afternoon For Whom the Bell Tolls
His works have sometimes been read as an essentially negative commentary on a modern world(选择题常考）filled with sterility, failure, and death. Yet such a nihilistic vision is repeatedly modified by Heming way’s affirmative assertion of the possibility of living with style and courage. To Hemingway, man’s greatest achievement is to show grace under pressure, or “purity of line through the maximum of exposure”.
The lost generation（问答题重点）
The lost generation is a term first used by Gertrude Stein to describe the post-World War one generation of American writers: men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war. Full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literature to date. The three best-known representatives of the lost generation are F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos.
（2015, 2016年川师大真题）Give a brief introduction to Ernest Hemingway's novel A fare well to Arms.
A Farewell to Arms can be read as a footnote to a The Sun Also Rises in that it explains how people like Jake Barnes come to behave the way they do. A Farewell to Arms is a semi-autobiographical novel. It describes the poignant love between an
American soldier Henry and an English nurse Catherine. It is an anti-war novel.
It tells the story of a young American ambulance driver serving in the Italian army during World War I. Henry falls love with the English nurse Catherine. After he is wounded at the front, she tends to him in the hospital during his recuperation, and their relationship develops. But Henry must return to the front after the recuperation. Henry narrowly escapes death at the hands of fanatical Italian soldiers and flee to Switzerland with Catherine. Unfortunately, in Switzerland, their child dies soon after being born, and Catherine dies after due to hemorrhages. A Farewell to Arms caught the mood of the post-war generation, and brought international fame to young Hemingway.
William Faulkner威廉·福克纳1897-1962
Although his home was always in Mississippi, Faulkner traveled extensively. His central theme, however, was not Oxford, or Mississippi, or even America. It w as, as he put it, the universal theme of “the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself”.He won Nobel prize. His works include:The Sound and the Fury As I Lay Dying Light in August Absalom, Absalom Go Down, Moses A Rose for Emily
（2013年川师大真题）What do you know about the stream-of-consciousness technique？Please illustrate it with the facts in British and American literature.
In modern literature, quite many new trends appeared. Among them, "stream of consciousness" is very prominent. Stream of consciousness has something to do with a method of storytelling in which the author tells the story through the freely flowing thoughts and associations of one of the characters to external events rather than the events themselves. Famous writers to employ this technique in the English language include James Joyce and William Faulkner.
In British literature, Jame Joyce's Ulysses used the technique of stream of consciousness . Ulysses has virtually no story, nor plot, almost no action. Broadly speaking, the novel concerns the thoughts, experiences, and above all the encounter of two men during a single day, but marks nothing outwardly notable, a day of no historical significance, nor even of any clear personal significance to the protagonist. The technique used in the book is what is called "stream of consciousness". In American literature, In The Sound and The Fury, William Faulkner used the technique of "stream of consciousness" in which the whole story was told through the thoughts by one character. It describes the decay and downfall of and old Southern aristocrac family that symbolizes the old older. It was told from multiple points of view.
Part Six American Literature from the 1930s onwards.
John Steinbeck约翰·斯坦贝克1902-1968
Steinbeck’s treatment of the s ocial problems of his time, particularly the plight of the dispossessed farmer, earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1940, and, in 1962, a Nobel Prize for literature.
His sympathy for the migrant workers and the down-trodden, so evident in his writing, was the result of firsthand knowledge of their struggles. His writing reflected his concern with the rituals of manual labor.
His works include:Of Mice and Men The Grapes of Wrath The Long V alley
American Drama
（2011年川师大真题）What do you know about the American theatre in the 1920s?
In a sense, Eugene O'Neill dominated the theatre in the 1920s. Bound East for Cardiff marked the beginning office O'Neill's long and successful dramatic career and ushered in the modern era of the American theatre. O'Neill is regarded as America's greatest playwright and he is the only dramatist in American literary history to get Nobel prize. He is widely acclaimed as" founder of the American drama". Most of his works are tragedies, dealing with human existence and predicament, life and death, illusion and disillusion, etc. The Hairy Ape is O'Neill's greatest play that concerns the problem of modern man's identity.
He borrowed freely from modern literary techniques such as the stream of consciousness, which he managed to reveal the emotional and psychological complexities of modern man. He made use of setting and state property to help in history dramatic representation. O'Neill's ceaseless experimentation enriched American drama and influenced later playwrights.
《小王子英文版》精读笔记——第一章 第1 章 [ Chapter 1 ] ◆magnificent /m?ɡ?n?f?snt/ adj. 壮丽的;令人印象深刻的 ◆primeval /pra??miv?l/ adj. 原始的 ◆a boa constrictor 一条蟒蛇 ◆boa /'b???/ n. 蟒 ◆constrictor /k?n'str?kt?/ n. 大蟒 ◆swallow /'sw?l??/ v. 吞下 ◆called True Stories from Nature 可以看做非限制性定语修饰a book（解释补充说明）◆in the act of doing (sth.) 正在做某事时 ◆prey /pre?/ n[U].猎物v.捕食 ◆swallow sth. whole 把……囫囵吞下 ◆whole /h??l/ adj. 完整的 ◆chew /t?u?/ vt.咀嚼 ◆succeed in doing 成功地做某事 ◆drawing /'dr??(r)??/ n. 图画 ◆masterpiece /'mɑ?st?pi?s/ n. 杰作 ◆frighten /'fra?t(?)n/ v.使惊恐;吓唬 ◆show sth. to sb. 把某物给某人看 ◆digest /da?'d?est/ v.消化 ◆ask sb. sth. 询问某人某事 ◆whether the drawing frightened them 宾语从句 ◆be frightened by... 被……吓坏(吓一跳) ◆digesting an elephant 现在分词短语作后置定语 完整版笔记持续更新中ing 公主号：中学英语Club
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
第9章地方色彩小说?马克?吐温 9.1复习笔记 I.Local Colorism（地方色彩主义） The vogue of local color fiction was the outgrowth of historical and aesthetic forces that had been gathering energy since early19th century.Local colorism as a literary trend first made its presence felt in the late1860s and early seventies.It is a variation of American literary realism. Local colorists were consciously nostalgic historians of a vanishing way of life,recorders of a present that faded before their eyes.They 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.Major local colorists are Bret Harte,Hanlin Garland, Harriet Beecher Stowe,Kate Chopin and Mark Twain. 地方色彩小说的流行是自19世纪早期以来历史和艺术力量凝聚的产物。作为一种文学潮流，地方色彩主义在19世纪60年代晚期和70年代早期初展头角。它是美国现实主义文学的一个分支。 地方色彩主义作家是怀念正在消逝的生活方式的历史家，他们记录了在他们眼前逝去的现在。他们致力于展示描述自己地方的特色，倾向于赞颂地方生活并将其理想化，但是他们又注意不失地方生活的真实色彩。主要的地方色彩主义作家包括布莱特·哈特、汉林·加兰德、哈里耶特·比彻·斯托、凯特·肖邦及马克·吐温等。 II.Mark Twain(1835-1910)（马克·吐温） 1.Life（生平） Mark Twain,pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens,is a great literary giant of America. He was brought up in the small town of Hannibal,Missouri,on the Mississippi River.He was twelve when his father died and he had to leave school.He was successively a printer’s apprentice,a tramp printer,a silver miner,a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi,and a frontier journalist in Nevada and California.This knocking about gave him wide knowledge of humanity. With the publication of his frontier tale,he became nationally famous.His first novel The Gilded Age was an artistic failure,but it gave its name to the American of the post-bellum period.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was his masterwork.Mark Twain was essentially an affirmative writer.But toward the latter part of his life,due to some tragic events,he changed to an almost
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.
考研阅读精读笔记（98Passage Four - 99）(2009-06-30 17:58:21) Passage Four L: census n.人口普查 regional a.地区的region n. standstill n.停止 in years ahead 将来 enthrone vt.使加冕；使登王位；使成为最高/最大/最强... densely ad.稠密地；密集地dense a. populate = inhabit vt.居住 the most densely populated region 人口最密集的地区 the most thinly populated area 人口最稀少的地区 counting n.计数，计算，数数count v. numerically ad.数字地，数目地numerical a. add up to = amount to 总计，达到 except for 除了 the Depression (1929-1932)大萧条 migrate v. 迁徙，移动migration n. migrant n.迁徙者；候鸟 belt n.带，地带，腰带 be attributed to 被归因于 nonstop a.不停顿的 wave n.浪潮；波浪 immigrant n.移民immigrate v. crop n.庄稼，作物；一批 baby boom 婴儿潮，婴儿出生高峰 child-bearing a.生育孩子的 demographer n.人口学家 demography n.人口学 vast a.广大的，大的 respectively ad.各自地respective a. be composed of 由...构成，包括 square n./a.正方形；广场；平方 per square mile 每平方英里 crowded a.拥挤crowdedness n. bearable a.能承受的，能忍受的 dramatize v.戏剧化的表达；清楚地表达/表现 spacious a.宽敞的 smog n.烟雾 plague n.弊端；瘟疫；灾难；祸患 urbanization n. 城市化，都市化urbanize v. the Golden State 指California two thirds 三分之二 one fifth 五分之一
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
美国文学作者作品 Edwards: 爱德华兹 The Freedom of the Will 《论意志自由》 Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended 《论原罪》 The Nature of True Virtue 《论真实德行的本原》 名篇：Personal Narrative 《自述》 Sinners in the hands of an Angry God 《愤怒上帝手中之罪》 Benjamin Franklin:本杰明·富兰克林 Poor Richard’s Almanac《穷理查德年历》Autobiography 《自传》 Washington Irving:华盛顿·欧文 A History of New York《纽约外传》The Sketch Book 《见文札记》名篇：Rip Van Winkle《瑞普·温·凡克尔》 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow 《睡谷传奇》 James Fenimore Cooper:詹姆斯·费尼莫尔·库柏Leatherstocking Tales 《皮袜子故事集》 The Pioneer 《拓荒者》The Prairie 《大草原》 The Last of Mohicans《最后的莫希干人》 The Pathfinder《探路人》The Deerslayer 《猎鹿者》
Ralph Waldo Emerson:拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生 Nature 《论自然》Self-Reliance 《论自立》Essays 《随笔集》名篇：The American Scholar 《美国学者》（has been regarded as “American Declaration of Intellectual Independence”被誉为美国思想的独立宣言） The Poet Henry David Thoreau:亨利·戴维·梭罗 Walden 《瓦尔登湖》 Nathaniel Hawthorne:纳撒尼尔·霍桑 The Scarlet Letter《红字》 The House of the Seven Gables 《七个尖角阁的房子》 Mosses from an Old Manse《古厦青苔》 The Blithedale Romance《福谷传奇》 The Marble Faun 《玉石神像》 Ethan Brand 《伊桑布兰德》 Young Goodman Brown 《好小伙子布朗》 Dr. Heidggeger’s Experiment 《海德格博士的体验》 The Ambitions Guest 《野心勃勃的客人》 The Greast Stone Face 《巨石脸》
Amateur[??m?t?(r)] Naturalists[?n?t?r?l?st] Ecologists[i:?k?l?d??sts] are using a wealth of unusual data to predict he impact of climate change. 生态学家们通过大量民间数据来预测气候变化带来的影响 a wealth of Sn.大量;丰富If you say that someone or something has a wealth of good qualities or things, you are emphasizing that they have a very large number or amount of them. FORMAL 正式 ...such a wealth of creative expertise[?eksp?:?ti:z]... 如此丰富的创造性Un.专门技能 The city boasts[b??st]v.有，拥有（值得骄傲的成就或财产）a wealth of beautiful churches. 这座城市拥有众多美丽的教堂 A: Tim Sparks slides a small leather-bound装订的notebook out of an envelope[?env?l ??p]. Tim Sparks从信封里取出了一本皮面笔记本 slide out of The book’s yellowing pages contain beekeeping notes made between 1941 and 1969 by the late Walter Coates of Kilworth, Leicestershire. 笔记本的纸页已经微微泛黄，它记载了在Kilworth, Leicestershire居住的已故的养蜂人Walter Coates从1941年到1969年间的养蜂记录 late adj.已故的；已逝的；（尤指）新近去世的Y ou use late when you are talking about someone who is dead, especially someone who has died recently. His growing pile[pa?l] of local journals 他那堆越来越多的地方日报 a pile of
American Puritanism: Puritanism was a religious reform movement that arose within the Church of England in the late sixteenth century. Under siege from church and crown, it sent an offshoot in the third and forth decades of the seventeenth century to the northern English colonies in the New World--- a migration that laid the foundation for the religious, intellectual, and social order of New England, Puritanism, however,was not only a historically specific phenomenon coincident with the founding of New England; it was also a way of being in the world---a style of response to lived experience---that has reverberated through American life ever since. Doctrinally, Puritans adhered to the Five Points of Calvinism as codified at the Synod of Dort in 1619:(1) unconditional election ( the idea that God had decreed who was damned and who was saved from before the beginning of the world); (2) limited atonement ( the idea that Christ died for the elect only); (3) total depravity (humanity's utter corruption since the Fall); (4) irresistible grace (regeneration as entirely a work of God, which cannot be resisted and to which the sinner contributes nothing); and (5) the perseverance of the saints (the elect, despite their backsliding and faintness of heart , cannot fall away from grace). American Dream: The American Dream is the faith held by many in the United States of America that through hard work, courage, and determination one can achieve a better life for oneself, usually through financial prosperity. These were values held by many early European settlers, and have been passed on to subsequent generations. Nowadays the American Dream has led to an emphasis on material wealth as a measure of success and\ or happiness. Gothic tradition: Gothic novel or Gothic romance is a story of terror and suspense, usually set in a gloomy old castle or monastery. In an extended sense, many novels that do not have a medievalized setting, but which share a comparably sinister, grotesque, or chaustrophobic atmosphere have been classed as Gothic. It contributed to the new emotional climate of Romanticism. Historical novel: a novel in which the action takes place during a specific historical period well before the time of writing ( often one or two generations before, sometimes several centuries), and in which some attempt is made to depict accurately the customs and mentality of the period. The central character---real or imagined---is usually subject to divided loyalties within a larger historic conflict of which readers know the outcome. The pioneers of this genre were Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper American Romanticism:Romanticism refers to an artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th century and characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions. The romantic period in American literature stretched from the end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil
History And Anthology of American Literature （6） 附：作者及作品 一、殖民主义时期The Literature of Colonial America 1．船长约翰·史密斯Captain John Smith 《自殖民地第一次在弗吉尼亚垦荒以来发生的各种事件的真实介绍》 “A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia Since the First Planting of That Colony” 《弗吉尼亚地图，附：一个乡村的描述》 “A Map of Virginia: with a Description of the Country” 《弗吉尼亚通史》“General History of Virginia” 2．威廉·布拉德福德William Bradford 《普利茅斯开发历史》“The History of Plymouth Plantation”3．约翰·温思罗普John Winthrop 《新英格兰历史》“The History of New England” 4．罗杰·威廉姆斯Roger Williams 《开启美国语言的钥匙》”A Key into the Language of America” 或叫《美洲新英格兰部分土著居民语言指南》 Or “A Help to the Language of the Natives in That Part of America Called New England ” 5．安妮·布莱德斯特Anne Bradstreet 《在美洲诞生的第十个谬斯》 ”The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America” 二、理性和革命时期文学The Literature of Reason and Revolution 1。本杰明·富兰克林Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) ※《自传》“ The Autobiography ” 《穷人理查德的年鉴》“Poor Richard’s Almanac” 2。托马斯·佩因Thomas Paine (1737-1809) ※《美国危机》“The American Crisis” 《收税官的案子》“The Case of the Officers of the Excise”《常识》“Common Sense” 《人权》“Rights of Man” 《理性的时代》“The Age of Reason” 《土地公平》“Agrarian Justice” 3。托马斯·杰弗逊Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) ※《独立宣言》“The Declaration of I ndependence” 4。菲利浦·弗瑞诺Philip Freneau (1752-1832) ※《野忍冬花》“The Wild Honey Suckle” ※《印第安人的坟地》“The Indian Burying Ground” ※《致凯提·迪德》“To a Caty-Did” 《想象的力量》“The Power of Fancy” 《夜屋》“The House of Night” 《英国囚船》“The British Prison Ship” 《战争后期弗瑞诺主要诗歌集》 “The Poems of Philip Freneau Written Chiefly During the Late War” 《札记》“Miscellaneous Works” 三、浪漫主义文学The Literature of Romanticism 1。华盛顿·欧文Washington Irving (1783-1859) ※《作者自叙》“The Author’s Account of Himself” ※《睡谷传奇》“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” 《见闻札记》“Sketch Book” 《乔纳森·欧尔德斯泰尔》“Jonathan Oldstyle” 《纽约外史》“A History of New York” 《布雷斯布里奇庄园》“Bracebridge Hall” 《旅行者故事》“Tales of Traveller” 《查理二世》或《快乐君主》“Charles the Second” Or “The Merry Monarch” 《克里斯托弗·哥伦布生平及航海历史》 “A History of the Life and V oyages of Christopher Columbus” 《格拉纳达征服编年史》”A Chronicle of the Conquest of Grandada” 《哥伦布同伴航海及发现》 ”V oyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus” 《阿尔罕布拉》“Alhambra” 《西班牙征服传说》“Legends of the Conquest of Spain” 《草原游记》“A Tour on the Prairies” 《阿斯托里亚》“Astoria” 《博纳维尔船长历险记》“The Adventures of Captain Bonneville” 《奥立弗·戈尔德史密斯》”Life of Oliver Goldsmith” 《乔治·华盛顿传》“Life of George Washington” 2．詹姆斯·芬尼莫·库珀James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) ※《最后的莫希干人》“The Last of the Mohicans” 《间谍》“The Spy” 《领航者》“The Pilot” 《美国海军》“U.S. Navy” 《皮袜子故事集》“Leather Stocking Tales” 包括《杀鹿者》、《探路人》”The Deerslayer”, ”The Pathfinder” 《最后的莫希干人》“The Last of the Mohicans” 《拓荒者》、《大草原》“The Pioneers”, “The Praire” 3。威廉·卡伦·布莱恩特William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) ※《死之思考》“Thanatopsis” ※《致水鸟》“To a Waterfowl” 4。埃德加·阿伦·坡Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) ※《给海伦》“To Helen” ※《乌鸦》“The Raven” ※《安娜贝尔·李》“Annabel Lee” ※《鄂榭府崩溃记》“The Fall of the House of Usher” 《金瓶子城的方德先生》“Ms. Found in a Bottle” 《述异集》“Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” 5。拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) ※《论自然》“Nature” ※《论自助》“Self-Reliance” 《美国学者》“The American Scholar” 《神学院致辞》“The Divinity School Address” 《随笔集》“Essays” 《代表》“Representative Men” 《英国人》“English Traits” 《诗集》“Poems” 6。亨利·戴维·梭罗Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) ※《沃尔登我生活的地方我为何生活》 1
《美国文学选读》课程标准 一、课程性质与任务 美国文学选读是英语专业高年级的选修课。它与英美文学史密切结合，使学生在接触到浩繁的文学作品的同时，可以对繁杂的文学现象加以整理和梳理，并形成自己阅读文学作品的习惯，开阔视野，在学习过程中把握正确的理解文学作品的方法。美国文学选读通过向学生介绍文学作品及其作品创作的历史文化背景，培养学生阅读文学作品的兴趣，增强语感，增进学生对美国社会、历史、文化以及生活习俗的了解，提高他们对西方文学的欣赏能力及批评能力。 二、课程教学目标 1．知识目标 1）文学知识：通过本课程的学习，学生应深入、直观地理解各个时期的美国文学作品，把握其思想、语言及创作技巧上的特点；另外，还应对美国的文学评论流变具备相对清晰的认识。 2）语言知识：本课程是通过介绍不同文体的文学作品，深化学生对英语语言的认知、理解和应用的能力。并通过对不同时期英语原文资料的阅读和解析，以一种更加直观的方式了解这门语言的发展。 2．能力目标 1）文学作品鉴赏能力：通过作者作品的讲解，学生可以对作品的社会历史价值和艺术价值进行评价，培养并提高自我的鉴赏能力； 2）语言表达能力：通过课堂和课下阅读及评价任务的完成，学生的口头和书面表达能力能够得到全面的提高； 3）思辩能力：课上小组讨论环节和presentation环节能够激发学生的思辩能力，助其开拓思路，同时也为以后对英语的有效使用打下基础。 3．素质目标 1）文学文化修养：本课程作为英语专业高年级学生的素养课，旨在培养学生对美国文学及文化的理解，可以使学生以直观的方式全面接触这种语言和文化，并形成独立的开放的文化观，进一步强化其跨文化意识； 2）基本的研究素质：本课程通过对文学评论的介绍和讲解向学生传授文学鉴赏的不同视角，可使其具备基本的文学研究素质； 3）文学翻译的基础：本课程通过对文学作品的细读向学生介绍文字背后的人文、历史、政治、哲学及美学等因素，可为文学翻译课程提供较好的材料，并做好前期准备。 三、课程基本信息和内容要求