ⅠColonial America(17th century)殖民主义时期文学
1.In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered America and he mistook the native people on
the new continent for Indians.
Character of colonial literature:
a.content: religious, political
b.form: diary, journal, letters, travel books, sermons, history (personal
literature)
c.Style: simple. direct, concise
d.out of humble origins
Early in the 17th century, the English settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts began the main stream of what we recognize as the American national history.
The earliest settlers in America included Dutch, Swedes, Germans, French, Spaniards, Italians and Portuguese.
The first permanent English settlement in North America was established at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607(北美弗吉尼亚詹姆斯顿)
2.Captain Town Smith, the first American writer
3.Puritan Thoughts: hard work, thrift(节俭), piety(虔诚), sobriety(节制), 这些也成了早期
美国作品主导思想.
典型的清教徒：John Cotton & Roger William, John Cotton was called “the Patriarch of New England(新英格兰教父)”
清教徒采用的文学体裁：narratives(日记) and journals(游记)
清教徒在美国的写作内容：
1）Their voyage to the new land
2）Adapting themselves to unfamiliar climates and crops
3）About dealing with Indians
4）Guide to the new land, endless bounty, invitation to bold spirit
4.Private literature: theological, moral, historical, political
5.The work of two writers, Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor, rose to the level of real
poetry. Anne Bradstreet is one of the most interesting of the early poets, 英国最早移民到美国的诗人. The best of the Puritan poets was Edward Taylor.
ⅡReason and Revolution(18th century)理性和革命时期文学
1.The War for Independence (1776-1783) ended in the formation of a Federative
bourgeois democratic republic - the United States of America.
2.Bourgeois Enlightenment
3.Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard’s Almanac(穷人理查德的年鉴), an annual collection of
proverbs.
The Autobiography, 18世纪美国唯一流传至今的自传
⏹The Autobiography is, first of all, a Puritan document. It is Puritan because it is a record
of self-examination and self-improvement. The Puritans, as a type, were very much given to self-analysis.
⏹The Autobiography shows Franklin was spokesman for the new order of 18th-century
Enlightenment, and that he represented in America all its ideas, that man is basically good and free, by nature endowed by God with certain inalienable rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
⏹It is the pattern of Puritan simplicity, directness, and concision. The plainness of its style,
the homeliness of imagery, the simplicity of diction, syntax and expression are some of the obvious features we cannot mistake.
⏹Tone: Optimism
The American dream began with the settlement of the American continent –the Promised Land – the Garden of Eden – optimistic about the future
4.Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, 极大恢复士气
5.Thomas Jefferson:The Declaration of Independence
6.Philip Freneau, Father of American Poetry: The Indian Burring Ground(印第安人的坟地)
The Wild Honey Suckle(野忍冬花)
⏹The poem is an indication of the poet’s dedication to American subject
matter and the natural scenes on the new continent.
⏹Here in this poem Freneau deals with the themes of loveliness and the
transience of life.
⏹This poem, well within the melancholy genre, consists of the poet’s pensive
musings on the flower’s story.
⏹The first two stanzas picture the advantages of the flower’s country retreat.
⏹The next two stanzas unite the theme of the seasons with the thought that all
must die. Death and decay, as well as creation, are so common, so much a part of the universal law.
ⅢRomanticism(end of the 18th century——Civil War)浪漫主义文学
1.Washington Irving, Father of American literature: Sketch Book(见闻札记, the first
modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature, a collection of essays, sketches, and tales)
2.James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales(皮袜子故事集, the American
National Epic) contains of The Deerslayer(杀鹿者), The Last of the Mohicans(最后的莫希干人), The Pathfinder(探路人), The Pioneers(拓荒者), and The Prairie(大草原).
3.Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven(乌鸦), Annabel Lee(安娜贝尔·李), The Fall of the House of
Usher(鄂榭府崩溃记)
To Helen
○Edgar Allan Poe wrote “To Helen” as a reflection on the beauty of Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard, of Richmond, Va., who died in 1824. She was the mother of one of Poe’s school classmates, Robert Stanard. When Robert invited Edgar, then 14, to his home (at 19th and East Grace Streets in Richmond) in 1823, Poe was greatly taken with the 27-year-old woman, who is said to have urged him to write poetry. He was later to write that she was his first real love.
○ 1 stanza
⏹Helen: An allusion to Helen of Troy in Greek mythology.
⏹Nicean: Of or from Nicea (also spelled Nicaea), a city in ancient Bithynia (now
part of present-day Turkey) near the site of the Trojan War.
⏹Barks: small sailing vessels.
⏹End rhyme: A, B, A,B, B.
○ 2 stanza
⏹wont: accustomed to
