Today, we tell about the life of writer Ernest Hemingway.
"A writer is always alone, always an outsider," Ernest Hemingway said. Others said that of the many people he created in his books, Hemingway was his own best creation.
Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899. He grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, near the middle western City of Chicago. He was the second child in a family of six. His father was a doctor. His mother liked to paint and play the piano.
Each summer the family traveled to their holiday home in northern Michigan. Ernest's father taught him how to catch fish, hunt, set up a camp and cook over a fire.
At home in Oak Park, Ernest wrote for his school newspaper. He tried to write like a famous sports writer of that time, Ring Lardner. He developed his writing skills this way. In 1917, Hemingway decided not to go to a university. The United States had just entered World War One and he wanted to join the army. But the army rejected him because his eyesight was not good enough. Ernest found a job with the Kansas City Star newspaper in Kansas City, Missouri. He reported news from the hospital, police headquarters, and the railroad station. One reporter remembered: "Hemingway liked to be where the action was." The Kansas City Star demanded that its reporters write short sentences. It wanted reporters to
see the unusual details in an incident. Hemingway quickly learned to do both.
He worked for the newspaper only nine months before he joined the Red Cross to help on the battlefields of Europe. His job was to drive a Red Cross truck carrying wounded away from battle.
The Red Cross sent him to Italy. Soon he saw his first wounded when an arms factory in Milan exploded. Later, he was sent to the battle front. He went as close to the fighting as possible to see how he would act in the face of danger. Before long, he was seriously wounded.
The war ended soon after he healed. Hemingway returned to the United States. Less than a year had
passed since he went to Europe. But in that short time he had changed forever. He needed to write about what he had seen. Ernest Hemingway left home for Chicago to prove to himself, and to his family, that he could earn a living from his writing.
But, he ran out of money and began to write for a newspaper again. The Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Star, liked his reports about life in Chicago and paid him well.
In Chicago, Hemingway met the writer Sherwood Anderson. Anderson was one of the first writers in America to write about the lives of common people. Hemingway saw that Anderson's stories showed life as it really was,
the way Hemingway was trying to do.
Anderson gave Hemingway advice about his writing. He told Hemingway to move to Paris, where living was less costly. He said Paris was full of young artists and writers from all over the world.
In return for Anderson's kindness Hemingway wrote a book called "The Torrents of Spring." It makes fun of Anderson and the way he wrote. There was something in Hemingway that could not say "thank you" to anyone. He had to believe he did everything for himself, even when he knew others helped him.
Hemingway decided to move to Paris. But before he did he married
a woman he had recently met. Her name was Hadley Richardson. Paris was cold and gray when Hemingway and his new wife arrived in 1921. They lived in one of the poorer parts of the city. Their rooms were small and had no running water. But the Toronto Star employed him as its European reporter, so there was enough money for the two of them to live. And the jo
b gave Hemingway time to write his stories.
Hemingway enjoyed exploring Paris, making new friends, learning French customs and sports. Some new friends were artists and writers who had come to Paris in the nineteen twenties. Among them were poet Ezra Pound, and writers Gertrude Stein, John dos Passos,
and F. Scott Fitzgerald. They quickly saw that Hemingway was a good writer. They helped him publish his stories in the United States. He was thankful for their support at the time, but later denied that he had received help.
As a reporter, Hemingway traveled all over Europe.He wrote about politics. He wrote about peace conferences and border disputes. And he wrote about sports, skiing and fishing. Later he would write about bull fighting in Spain. The Toronto Star was pleased with his work, and wanted more of his reports. But Hemingway was busy with his own writing.
He said: "Sometimes, I would start a new story and could not get it going. Then I would stand and look out
over the roofs of Paris and think. I would say to myself: 'All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.' So finally, I would write a true sentence and go on from there. It was a wonderful feeling when I had worked well. "
Hemingway's first book of stories was called "In Our Time." It included a story called "Big Two-Hearted River," about the effect of war on a young man.
It tells about the young man taking a long fishing trip in Michigan. Hemingway had learned from his father when he was a boy about living in the wild.
The story is about two kinds of rivers. One is calm and clear. It is where the young man fishes. The
other is dark. It is a swamp, a threatening place.
The story shows the young man trying to forget his past. He is also trying to forget the war. Yet he never really speaks about it. The reader learns about the young man, not because Hemingway tells us what the young man thinks, but because he shows the young man learning about himself.
"Big Two-Hearted River"is considered one of the best modern American stories. It is often published in collections of best writing.
After the book was published in 1925, Hadley and Hemingway returned to the United States for the birth of their son. They quickly returned to Paris.
Hemingway was working on a long story. He wanted to publish a novel so he would be recognized as a serious writer. And he wanted the money a novel would earn.
The novel was called "The Sun Also Rises." It is about young Americans in Europe after World War One. The war had destroyed their dreams. And it had given them nothing to replace those dreams.The writer Gertrude Stein later called these people members of "The Lost Generation."
The book was an immediate success. At the age of twenty-five Ernest Hemingway was famous. Many people, however, could not recognize Hemingway's art because they did not like what he wrote about. Hemingway's sentences
were short, the way he had been taught to write at the Kansas City Star newspaper. He wrote about what he knew and felt. He used few descriptive words. His statements were clear and easily understood. He had learned from earlier writers, like Ring Lardner and Sherwood Anderson. But Hemingway brought something new to his writing. He was able to paint in words what he saw and felt. In later books, sometimes he missed. Sometimes he even looked foolish. But when he was right he was almost perfect. With the success of his novel, Hemingway became even more popular in Paris. Many people came to see him. One was an American woman, Pauline Pfeiffer. She
became Hadley's friend. Then Pauline fell in love with Hemingway. Hemingway and Pauline saw each other secretly. One time, they went away together on a short trip. Years later, Hemingway wrote about returning home after that trip: "When I saw Hadley again, I wished I had died before I ever loved anyone but her. She was smiling and the sun was on her lovely face." But the marriage was over. Ernest Hemingway and Hadley separated. She kept their son. He agreed to give her money he earned from his books.
In later years, he looked back at his marriage to Hadley as the happiest time of his life.
At twenty-five, Hemingway was living in Paris. He was a famous writer. But the end of his first marriage made him want to leave the place where he had first become famous.
Years later he said: "The city was never to be the same again. When I returned to it, I found it had changed as I had changed. Paris was never the same as when I was poor and very happy. "
Hemingway and his new wife returned to the United States in nineteen twenty-eight. They settled in Key West, an island with a fishing port near the southern coast of Florida.
Before leaving Paris, Hemingway sent a collection of his stories to New York to be published. The book
of stories, called "Men Without Women," was published soon after Hemingway arrived in Key West. One of the stories was called "The Killers." In it, Hemingway used a discussion between two men to create a feeling of tension and coming violence. This was a new method of telling a story.
Nick opened the door and went into the room. Ole Anderson was lying on the bed with all his clothes on. He had been a heavyweight prizefighter and he was too long for the bed. He lay with his head on two pillows. He did not look at Nick. "What was it?" he asked.
"I was up at Henry's," Nick said, "and two fellows came in and tied
me up and the cook, and they said they were going to kill you. "
It sounded silly when he said it. Ole Anderson said nothing.
"They put us out in the kitchen," Nick went on. "They were going to shoot you when you came in to supper."
Ole Anderson looked at the wall and did not say anything.
"George thought I ought to come and tell you about it."
"There isn't anything I can do about it," Ole Anderson said.
Any new book by Hemingway was an important event for readers. But stories like "The Killers" shocked many people. Some thought there was too much violence in his stories.
Others said he only wrote about gunmen, soldiers, fighters and drinkers.
This kind of criticism made Hemingway angry. He felt that writers should not be judged by those who could not write a story. Hemingway was happy in Key West. In the morning he wrote, in the afternoon he fished, and at night he went to a public house and drank. One old fisherman said: "Hemingway was a man who talked slowly and very carefully. He asked a lot of questions. And he always wanted to get his information exactly right. "
Hemingway and his wife Pauline had a child in Key West. Soon afterward he heard that his father had killed himself. Hemingway was
shocked. He said: "My father taught me so much. He was the only one I really cared about. "
When Hemingway returned to work there was a sadness about his writing that was not there before. His new book told about an American soldier who served with the Italian army during World War One. He meets an English nurse and they fall in love. They flee from the army, but she dies during childbirth. Some of the events are taken from Hemingway's service in Italy. The book is called "A Farewell to Arms."
Part of the book talks about the defeat of the Italian army at a place called Caporetto.
"At noon we were stuck in a muddy road about as nearly as we could figure, ten kilometres from Udine. The rain had stopped during the forenoon and three times we had heard planes coming, seen them pass overhead, watched them go far to the left and heard them bombing on the main highroad. . . . "Later we were on a road that led to a river. There was a long line of abandoned trucks and carts on a road leading up to a bridge. No one was in sight. The river was high and the bridge had been blown up in the center; the stone arch was fallen into the river and the brown water was going over it. We went up the bank looking for a place to cross. . . . We did not see any troops; only abandoned trucks and stores. Along
the river bank was nothing and no one but the wet brush and muddy ground."
"A Farewell to Arms" was very successful. It earned Hemingway a great deal of money. And it permitted him to travel. One place he visited was Spain, a country that he loved. He said: "I want to paint with words all the sights and sounds and smells of Spain. And if I can write any of it down truly, then it will represent all of Spain."
A book called "Death in the Afternoon" was the result. It describes the Spanish tradition of bull fighting. Hemingway believed that bull fighting was an art, just as much as writing was an art. And he believed it was a true test of a man's
bravery, something that always concerned him.
Hemingway also traveled to Africa. He had been asked to write a series of reports about African hunting. He said: "Hunting in Africa is the kind of hunting I like. No riding in cars, just simple walking and feeling the grass under my feet. "
The trip to Africa resulted in a book called "The Green Hills of Africa" and a number of stories. One story is among Hemingway's best. He said a writer saves some stories to write when he knows enough to write them well.
The story is called "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." It tells of Hemingway's fears about himself. It is about a writer who betrays his art for money
I. Explain the following literary terms(名词解释). 1. Romanticism The most profound and comprehensive idea of romanticism is the vision of a greater personal freedom for the individual. Appeals to imagination; Stress on emotion rather than reason; optimism, gen iality. Subjectivity: in form and meaning. 2 American transcendentalism American transcendentalism was an important movement in philosophy and literature that flourished during the early to middle years of the nineteenth century (about 1836-1860). For the transcendentalists, the soul of each individual is identical with the soul of the world and contains what the world contains. 3 Realism: ―nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.‖ the Civil war a. verisimilitude of details derived from observation b. representative in plot, setting and character c. an objective rather than an idealized view of human experience or（American 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.） 4. Modernism like modernism in general is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic. The general term covers many political, cultural and artistic movements rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. American modernism is an artistic and cultural movement in the United States starting at the turn of the 20th century with its core period between World War I and World War II and continuing into the 21st century. 5、American Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans. The Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church. The first settlers who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quite a few of them. They were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles. As the word itself hints, Puritans wanted to purity their religious beliefs and practices. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace form God. As a culture heritage, Puritanism did have a profound influence on the early American mind. American Puritanism also had a enduring influence on American literature. 6、Transcendentalism: In New England, an intellectual movement known as transcendentalism developed as an American version of Romanticism. The movement began among an influential set of authors based in Concord, Massachusetts and was led by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Like Romanticism, transcendentalism rejected both 18th century rationalism and established religion, which for the transcendentalists meant the Puritan tradition in particular. The transcendentalists celebrated the power of the human imagination to commune with the universe and transcend the limitations of the material world. They found their chief source of inspiration in nature. Emerson’s essay Nature was the major document of the transcendental school and stated the ideas that were to remain central to it. 7、Free verse: free verse is the rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without attention to conventio nal rules of meter. Free verse was first written and labeled by a group of French poets of the late 19th century. Their purpose was to deliver poetry from the restrictions of formal metrical patterns and to recreate the free rhythms of natural speech. Walt Whitman was the precursor who wrote lines of varying length and cadence, usually not rhymed. The emotional content or meaning of the work was expressed through its rhythm. Free verse has been characteristic of the work of many modern American poets, including Ezra Pound and Carl Sandburg. 8、Naturalism: A more deliberate kind of realism in novels, stories and plays, usually involving a view of human beings as passive victims of natural forces and social environment. Naturalism was a new and harsher realism. It
名词解释 第一章文学观念 名词解释： 1、文学观念：文学观念就是对文学的看法，是对“文学是什么”的回答。文学观念是发展变化的。 2、文学四要素：当代美国学者艾布拉姆斯提出的，文学四要素是指世界、作家、作品、和读者。 3、再现说：在文学四要素中强调“世界”与“作品”的对应关系，即认为作品是对世界的摹仿或再现。 4、表现说：在文学四要素中强调“作品”与“作家”的关系，即认为作品是作家情感的自然流露、表现、传达。 5、实用说：在文学四要素中强调作品被读者所利用的关系，认为文学是一种工具，可以为某种社会目标服务。 6、客观说：在文学四要素中，把作品抬到高于一切、重于一切的地步，认为作品一旦从作家的笔下诞生之后，就获得了完全客观的性质，它既与原作家不相干，也与读者无涉，它从外界的参照物中孤立出来，本身是一个“自足体”，出现了所谓的“客观化走向”。 7、体验说：在文学四要素中强调读者对作品的意向性的体验这种关系，强调读者阅读作品是体验和现创造。 8、文学的定义：文学作为一种人类的文化形态，它是具有社会的审美意识形态性质的、凝聚着个体体验的、沟通人际的情感交流的语言艺术。 9、符号论的文化概念：从符号学的角度看，文化是人类的符号思维和符号活动所创造的产品及其意义的总和。这个观点是由德国的现代哲学家卡西尔提出的。 10、品质阅读：是指“试图尽可能完全地把握作品的肌质，表示首先注意到语言中的各种要素，重音和非重音，重复和省略，意象和含混等等，然后由此向人物、事件、情节和主题运动。这是就西语而言的，若是论汉语文学中…品质阅读”则是读者阅读是首先关注文本的用字、比兴、押韵、平仄、对仗和用事等，进一步再延伸到对情景的描写或人物、情节的叙述的理解。 11、经验和体验：个人和见闻和经历及所获得的知识和技能，统称为经验。所谓体验是经验中见出深义、诗意和个性的部分。经验是一种前科学的认识，它指向的是真理的世界（当然这还是常识、知识，即前科学的真理）；而体验则是一种价值性的认识和领悟，它要求“以身体之，以心验之”，它指向的是价值世界。 12、文以载道：中唐时期韩愈等古文运动家提出的，经宋代理学家的解释得到完善，“文以载道”的意思是说文像车，道像车上所载之货物，通过车的运载，可以达到目的地。如果车装饰得很漂亮，却不载物，那么车再美也是无用的。可见文学也就是传播儒家之道的手段和工具。这样的文学观念偏重于文学的教化目的。 13、寓教于乐：古罗马时期的思想家贺拉斯提出。认为文学的摹仿要达到“既劝谕读者，又使他喜爱，才能符合众望”。这是一种既重视摹仿又重视读者的快感和教益的文学观念。 14、价值阅读：“价值阅读”表示阅读者“试图尽可能敏锐和准确地描述出他在作品中所发现的价值”。当然这里所说的价值，首先是文化价值。 15、审美：审美是心理处于活跃状态的主体，在特定的心境、时空中，在有历史文化渗透的条件下，对于客体的美的观照、感悟、判断。 16、情致：由黑格尔提出。情致是两个方面的互相渗透，一方面是个体的心情，是具体感性的，是会感动人的，另一方面是价值和理性，可以作为认识。但这两个方面完全结合在一起，不可分离。因此对那些情致特别微妙深邃的作品，它的情致往往是无法简单地用语言传达出来的。 17、虚静：中国古代文论概念。“虚静”就是使人的精神进入一种无欲无得失无功利的极端平静的状态，这样事物的一切美和丰富性就会展现在眼前。所以虚静可以理解为审美活动时的心理状态。 18、艺术真实性：艺术真实性是指文学作品的艺术形象的合情合理的性质。 19、出入说：王国维提出的。作家的体验不但要能“入”，而且还要能“出…：诗人对宇宙人生，须入乎其内，又须出乎其外。入乎其内，故能写之。出乎其外，故能观之。入乎其内，故有生气。出乎其外，故有高致。”入乎其内就是移情式体验，出乎其外，就是体验主体对体验的反刍。
1、the Lost Generation In general, the post-World War I generation, but specifically a group of U.S. writers who came of age during the war and established their literary reputations in the 1920s. The term stems from a remark made by Gertrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway, “You are all a lost generation.” Hemingway used it as an epigraph to The Sun Also Rises (1926). The generation was “lost” in the sense that its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world and because of its spiritual alienation from a U.S. that, b asking under President Harding's “back to normalcy” policy, seemed to its members to be hopelessly provincial, materialistic, and emotionally barren. The term embraces Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, e.e. cummings and many other writers who made Paris the centre of their literary activities in the '20s. They were never a literary school. In the 1930s, as these writers turned in different directions, their works lost the distinctive stamp of the postwar period. The last representative works of the era were Fitzgerald's Tender Lost generation The lost generation is a term first used by Stein to describe the post-war I generation of American writers: men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war.2>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.3>the three best-known representatives of lost generation are F.Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and John dos Passos. Lost generation The Lost Generation is a group of expatriate American writers residing primarily in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s. The group was given its name by the American writer Gertrude Stein, who used “a lost generation” to refer to expatriate Americans bitter about their World War I experiences and disillusioned with American society. Hemingway later used the phrase as an epigraph for his novel The Sun Also Rises. It consisted of many influential American writers, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Carlos Williams and Archibald MacLeish. 2、Iceberg Theory It is a term used to describe the writing style of American writer Ernest Hemingway. The meaning of a piece is not immediately evident, because the crux of the story lies below the surface, just as most of the mass of a real iceberg similarly lies beneath the surface. Iceberg Theory Ernest Hemingway’s “iceberg theory” sugge sts that the writer include in the text only a small portion of what he knows, leaving about ninety percent of the content a mystery that grows beneath the surface of the writing. If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of
《美国文学作品选读》课程考核大纲 【考核目的】 了解学生对基本文学概念、文学流派及代表作家、文学表现手法、文学人物、文学现象和各种文学术语的掌握。考核学生对文学作品的理解分析能力和鉴赏能力，帮助学生认识到本课程的学习重点和难点，为以后的深入学习提供可依靠的途径和方法。 【课程学习的基础】 《美国文学史及作品选读》课是英语专业的必修课，学生在此前应完成了精读、泛读、写作等基本技能训练，掌握了一定的专业知识和技能，具备一定的语言表达能力和分析论述能力。先修课程不在考核范围之内。 【考核的内容范围】 本课程的考核主要包括基本文学概念、文学流派及代表作家、文学表现手法、文学人物、文学现象和各种文学术语。 【考核的具体内容】 第一部分文学基础知识介绍 知识点： 1．什么是文学2．文学的基本概念和要素3．学习文学的方法4．美国文学历史简介 考核目标： 1．识记：文学的基本分类 2．理解：文学的基本概念和要素 3．运用：学习文学的有效方法和途径 第二部分殖民时期的文学 知识点： 1．美国殖民时期文学概述2．北美拓殖的开始3．美国清教主义思想4．美国清教主义思想对早期美国文学的影响5．殖民时期的代表作家及作品 考核目标： 1．识记：（1）安妮?布雷兹特里特（Anne Bradstreet）（2）爱德华?泰勒（Edward Taylor） （3）迈克尔?维哥斯沃斯(Michael Wigglesworth) 及代表作品 2．理解：早期北美殖民地时期文学状况 3．运用：殖民地时期文学的主要特征
第三部分独立革命时期的文学 知识点： 1．独立时期文学的主要特征 2．启蒙运动及主要思想 3．启蒙运动的代表：本杰明?富兰克林（Benjamin Franklin） 考核目标： 1．识记：（1）托马斯?杰弗逊（2）托马斯?潘恩(Thomas Paine) （3）本杰明?富兰克林（Benjamin Franklin） 2．理解：启蒙运动 3．运用：（1）启蒙运动的主要思想（2）本杰明?富兰克林Benjamin Franklin）的思想意识及精神风貌 第四部分浪漫主义时期的文学 1．英格兰超验主义2．欧洲浪漫主义文学的影响3．美国浪漫主义文学的特4．美国本土文学的崛起及其特征5．浪漫主义时期代表作家及作品 考核目标： 1．识记：（1）华盛顿?欧文（Washington Irving）（2）詹姆斯?弗尼莫?库柏（James Fenimore Cooper）（3）威廉姆?卡兰?布赖恩特（William Cullen Bryant）（4）埃德加?爱伦?坡（Edgar Allan Poe）（5）纳撒尼尔?霍桑（Nathaniel Hawthorne）（6）拉多夫?瓦尔多?爱默生(Ralph Waldo Emerson) （7）亨利?大卫?梭罗（Henry David Thoreau）（8）赫曼?麦尔维尔（Herman Melville）（9）沃尔特?惠特曼（Walt Whitman）（10）艾米莉?狄金森（Emily Dickinson）及其作品。 2．理解：浪漫主义文学的特征及超验主义思想 3．运用：浪漫主义时期代表作家的创作思想及作品的艺术风格 第五部分现实主义时期的文学 1．美国现实主义文学产生的社会和文化背景2．美国现实主义时期的文学特3．现实主义时期作家及作品 考核目标： 1．识记：现实主义, 马克?吐温及其作品 2．理解：美国现实主义时期的文学特征，美国乡土文3．运用：马克?吐温的主要代表作及其主题思想和艺术风格 第一部分文学基础知识介绍
1.American Puritanism清教 2.It comes from the American puritans, who were the first immigrants moved to American continent in the 17th century. Original sin, predestination（预言）and salvation（拯救）were the basic ideas of American Puritanism. And, hard-working, piousness（虔诚,尽职），thrift and sobriety（清醒）were praised. Characteristics: 特点 1. Idealistic: Puritans pursue the purity and simplicity in worship. They focuse the glory of God, and the angry believe in the doctrine of destiny, original sin, limited atonement 2. Practical: Puritans come to Amrican to do business and make profits with the desire of chasing wealth and status. They have to struggle for survival under the severity of the western frontier. 3 .The struggle between the spiritual and the material is the basics of the Puritan mind. On the one hand, Puritans chase the purity of the early the other hand, they come to America to earn money. This contradictory will be reflected by their thoughts. 4. In a word, it rests on purity, ambition, harding work, and an intense struggling for success. Romanticism浪漫主义: the literature term was first applied to the writers of the 18th century in Europe who broke away from the formal rules of classical writing. When it was used in American literature it referred to the writers of the middle of the 19th century who stimulated（刺激）the sentimental emotions of their readers. They wrote of the mysterious of life, love, birth and death. The Romantic writers expressed themselves freely and without restraint. They wrote all kinds of materials, poetry, essays, plays, fictions, history, works of travel, and biography. Transcendentalism先验说,超越论: is a philosophic and literary movement that flourished in New England, particular at Concord, as a reaction against Rationalism and Calvinism (理性主义and喀尔文主义). Mainly it stressed intuitive understanding of God, without the help of the church, and advocated independence of the mind. The representative writers are Emerson and Thoreau. American Realism现实主义: 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 Local colorism乡土文学: as a trend became dominant in American literature in the 1860s and early 1870s，it is defined by Hamlin Garland as having such quality of texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place or by anyone else than a native stories of local colorism have a quality of circumstantial(详细的) authenticity(确实性), as local colorists tried to immortalize(使不朽) the distinctive natural, social and linguistic features. It is characteristic of vernacular(本国语) language and satirical(讽刺的) humor Naturalism自然主义: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. American naturalism had been shaped by the war; by the social upheavals（剧变）that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age. 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 classes who were determined by their environment and heredity. Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform. Stream of consciousness意识流：It is one of the modern literary techniques. It is the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images as the character experiences them. It was first used in 1922 by the Irish novelist James Joyce. Those novels broke
海南师范学院本科英语专业理论课教学大纲：美国文学 课程编号：03101026 学时：36 学分：2 一、课程的性质和任务 《美国文学史及选读》是英语语言文学专业（本科）的一门专业知识必修课。它简要介绍了美国文学从十七世纪殖民时期到二十世纪的发展历史及其主要作品。本课程是英语专业的专业基础课，目标是：通过文学史的教学拓宽学生的知识面，提高学生的文学修养，使学生了解英美文学各个历史时期的文艺思潮、文学流派、主要作家和作品； 通过美国文学作品的教学，提高学生对英文原著的理解能力、鉴赏能力，培养学生发现问题、分析问题和解决问题的能力； 通过课外实践活动，激发学生的文学兴趣，培养学生的文学鉴赏和批评能力及论文写作能力 二、相关课程的衔接 本课程是为英语专业高年级学生开设的，学生必须具有良好的英语阅读和理解基本功方能顺利地学习该课程，与此同时，它与美国历史、文化、社会背景等关系密切，因此，学生先期完成英语听说读写等技能训练基本课程，相关衔接课程有《英国文学》，《英语国家概况》《跨文化交际》等课程。 三、教学的基本要求 1．了解美国文学发展史上的重要时期和阶段，包括殖民地时期、独立战争时期、浪漫主义时代、南北战争时期和两次世界大战前后文学现象及特征。 2．了解各个重要发展阶段的代表作家及作品，熟知其内容、风格和艺术价值及其在世界文学史上的重要地位。 3．了解伴随美国文学各个阶段产生的文艺批评思潮，提高学生的文艺理论水平。 四、教学方法与重点、难点 教学方法：教学方法以课堂讲授为主，辅以讨论，并要求学生在课外大量阅读参考书，撰写读书报告及评论课上充分利用网络资源及现代化教学手段，使学生能够积极主动地进行学习 本课程的重点与难点相对来说是一致的 从时段上来说，19世纪20年代以后的美国文学由于处于第二次繁荣时期，对于美国文学的历史走向曾发生了相当重要的影响，自然是本课程的重点而这一阶段的文学语言丰富、色彩各异，且与哲学、史学、艺术学等结合得比较紧密，所以这一时期的文学作品在语言上和思想上都具备一定的难度，是本课程的难点所在另外，后现代文学作品的出现也增加了学生阅读的难度，因此了解后现代作品的创作手法，写作动机也是本科的一个难点解决的办法主要是在专业基础课之外，定期安排专家讲学，题目多涉及与课程难度相关的内容，旨在拓宽
一、课程设置的有关说明 1.美国文学是一门专业英语高年级开设的专业知识课，是一门必修课程。 2.设置本课程的目的和要求：美国文学课程的目的是培养学生阅读、欣赏、理解英语文学原著的能力，掌握文学批评的基本知识和方法。通过阅读和作品分析，促进学生语言基本功和人文素质的提高，增强学生对西方文化的了解。总体来讲，英语专业课程分为英语专业技能，英语专业知识和相关专业知识三种类型。美国文学课程是英语专业知识课程中比较重要的课程，一般在大四年级开设，按周学时统计，需两个学期完成。 3.美国文学课程内容大体分为两部分：文学史部分和文学作品选读部分。文学史部分从美国历史、语言、文化发展的角度，简要介绍美国文学各个历史断代的主要历史背景、文化思潮、文学流派、社会政治、经济、文化、等对文学发展的影响；主要作家的文学生涯、创作思想、艺术特色及其代表作品的主题结构、人物刻画、语言风格、思想意义等；选读部分主要节选了美国文学史上各个时期重要作家代表作品，包括诗歌、戏剧、小说、散文等。 二、具体教学内容 第一章殖民时期的文学(2 学时) 1.教学目的和教学基本要求 通过这一部分内容的学习，了解美国文学的起始可追溯到早期北美殖民主义时期。尽管这一时期的文学并不发达，主要以模仿为主，没有自己的鲜明特点，但那时的政治，经济和社会发展对美国文学的形成还是有很大的影响。例如：当年来美洲大陆移民的人基本上属于两种人，一类是为逃避国内政治迫害，追求宗教自由的英国清教徒，他们来到新英格兰地区，扎根发展；另一类是谋求发财致富的欧洲平民百姓，包括野心勃勃的冒险家。不论是哪一种人都相信在新大陆都可以得到自由平等的待遇，都有机会实现自己的理想。这种观点使“美国梦”成为日后美国文学的永恒主题。清教主义有关人生来有罪及上帝主宰一切等思想也影响了美国作家不断去思考人性与原罪、人与上帝的关系。由于这一时期文学不很发达，主要文学形式多为讲经布道之作，也有游记、书信等其他文学作品。 2.内容提要 第一节美国殖民时期文学概述
1. Transcendentalism—it is a philosophic and literary movement that flourish in New England, as a reaction against rationalism and Calvinism. It stressed intuitive understanding of god without the help of the church, and advocated independence of the mind. 超验主义，它是一个蓬勃发展的新英格兰的哲学和文学运动，反对理性主义和加尔文主义的反应。它强调直观地了解上帝没有教会的帮助下，主张心灵的独立性。 2. Romanticism had appeared in England in the last years of the eighteenth century. It spread to conti nental Europe and then came to America early in the nineteenth century. It came into being as a re action against the prevailing neoclassical spirit and rationalism during the Age of Reason. 浪漫主义曾经出现在英国，在过去几年的十八世纪。它蔓延到欧洲大陆，然后来到美国在十九世纪初。它应运而生作为理性的时代中针对当时新古典主义精神和理性的反应。 3. Puritanism—it is the religious belief of the Puritans, who had intended to purify and simplify the religious ritual of the Church of England. 清教主义，它是清教徒，谁曾打算净化和简化英国教会的宗教礼仪的宗教信仰。 4. Imagism is to present an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. An imagistic poem must present the object exactly the way the thing is seen. And the reader can form the image of the object through the process of reading the abstract and concrete words. Imagism 意象派：is a poetic movement of England and the United States, flourished from 1909-1917. Its credo, expressed in Some Imagist Poets, included the use of the language of common speech, project matter, the evocation of images in hard, clear poetry, and concentration. 英国是与美国的诗意动作，从1909-1917蓬勃发展。它的信条，在表达意象的一些诗人，包括使用共同的讲话，不管项目，图像的硬盘，明确诗歌和浓度唤起的语言。 5、Realism：（现实主义）appeared in the United States in the literature of local color, an amalgam of romantic plots and realistic descriptions of things was immediately observable. the dialects, customs, sights.现实主义有浓厚的美国本土特色，是浪漫主义故事情节和现实主义描写相结合的产物：美国风味的方言、风俗、各种观点 6.Naturalism：自然主义 a new and harsher realism, 新型的更为冷峻的现实主义，产生悲观的流派，产生于the end of the century 十九世纪末，因为Perception of society’s disorders 对社会无序的感知。Presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were dominated by their environment and heredity. 设法尽力客观真实地展现出受环境与出身局限的下层人民和各种经济阶层人物的真正生活。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, the religious “truths” were illusory, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. 强调世界的非道德性，人们没有意志的自由，宗教上的真理是虚幻的，现实生活是痛苦的。Deterministic 决定论，宿命的， 代表作家：Stephen Crane 史蒂芬.克莱恩, Frank Norris 弗朗克.诺里斯, Jack London 杰克.伦敦, Theodore Dreiser 西奥多.德莱塞. 6. The naturalists tend to depict the dark side of the socity, and always take the low classes as their heros or heroes. Compare to the realism and romanticism, they have a more pessimistic view toward the society, the life. Take Theodore Dreiser for example, his Sister Carrie or American Tragedy reveal that man can not control themselves, and is at the mercy of the nature, the heredity, the society and instinct.博物学家倾向于描绘社会的阴暗面,总是以低类为他们的英雄和英雄。比较现实主义和浪漫主义,他们对社会有更悲观的观点,生活。以西奥多·德莱塞为例,他的嘉莉妹妹还是美国的悲剧表明,男人不能控制自己,自然的摆布,遗传,社会和本能。