American Literature (1)

Unit1 - Unit 17Benjamin Franklin 本杰明·富兰克林代表作：《The Autobiography》《自传》13 Virtues:Temperance 节制Silence 寡言Order 秩序Resolution 决心Frugality 俭朴Industry 勤勉Sincerity 诚恳Justice 公正Moderation 适度Cleanliness 清洁Nathaniel Hawthorne 纳撒尼尔·霍桑代表作：《The Scarlet Letter》《红字》Herman Melville 赫尔曼·梅尔维尔代表作：《Moby Dick》《白鲸》Jonah Complex 约拿情节：对成长的恐惧Ishmael 以实玛利：意为被驱逐的人Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 亨利·沃兹沃思·朗费罗背诵：《人生颂》A Psalm of Life······Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!Let the dead Past bury its dead!Act--act in the living Present！Heart within，and God o’er head!Lives of great men all remind usWe can make our lives sublime.And, departing, leave behind usFootsteps on the sands of time;Footprints, that perhaps another,Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,Seeing,shall take heart again.Let us, then, be up and doing,With a heart for any fate;Still achieving, still pursuing,Learn to labor and to wait.Walt Whitman 沃尔特·惠特曼代表作：《草叶集》《Leaves of Grass》《噢，船长！我的船长！》《O Captain! My Captain!》《噢，船长！我的船长！》运用了哪三种修辞？1.首语重复法Anaphora2.对比Contrast3. 排比形式Parallelism惠特曼诗特点：1.超验主义Transcendentalism2.自由体、无韵诗free verseMark Twain 马克·吐温原名：Samuel Langhorne Clemens 萨缪尔·朗荷恩·克莱门斯代表作：《卡拉维拉县驰名的跳蛙》《The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County》《汤姆·索耶历险记》《The Adventures of Tom Sawyer》《密西西比河上》《Life on the Mississippi》《哈克贝里·费恩历险记》《The Adventures of Huckleberry》三大写作特色：1.本土特色Local colors2.口语特色Colloquialism3.幽默/夸张Humor/Hyperbole写作结构：信封式叙述体Envelope narrativeErnest Hemingway 厄内斯特·海明威代表作：《太阳照常升起》《The Sun Also Rises》《永别了，武器》《A Farewell to Arms》《丧钟为谁而鸣》《For Whom the Bell Tolls》《老人与海》《Old Man and the Sea》写作手法：冰山原则iceberg theory迷惘的一代：the Lost GenerationEzra Pound 埃兹拉·庞德贡献：意象主义的先驱Forerunner of Imagism1.现代艺术诗歌modernist artistic poetry2.普及意象主义promulgation of Imagism3.明晰、精确、简洁的语言clarity, precision, economy of language4.翻译中国传统诗歌translation of Chinese traditional poems诗歌特色：1.direct treatment of poetic subjects 直接表现事物2.elimination of merely ornamental of superfluous 删无助“表现”词3.rhythmical composition in the same sequence 口语节奏代替传统格律背诵：《在一个地铁车站》In a Station of the MetroThe apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black bough.Robert Frost 萝卜特·弗洛斯特代表作：《雪夜林边驻脚》《Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening》《未选择的路》《The Road Not Taken》四大原则：Dramatic quality 戏剧性Metaphorical 比喻性Cannot be forced 不能强迫Giving patterns to man’s existence 给出参考声明：仅供参考。

AmericanLiteratureUnit1,Unit2Unit 1.Benjamin Franklin:The AutobiographyKey Words: American, Franklin, The AutobiographyTargets: Through the study of this reading, the students should learn the main ideas of Benjamin Franklin’s life story,literary career, his contributions to science, politics, social life and literature. They should be able to understand and appreciate the excerpt.Study Points: 1 The author’s life story.2. The author’s contribution to literature.3. The excerpt from The AutobiographyIntroduction to the Author:Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790) was born in the family of a small merchant in Boston. He went to school at the age of eight, but when he was ten, he quit his study and worked in his father’s grocery.At 12,he became an apprentice in the printing house of his elder brother. Since his childhood he loved reading and writing. He worked in the daytime and taught himself at night. Through self-study, he mastered several foreign languages and read many literary and philosophical books from European countries. At 17,Franklin went to Philadelphia and began his career as a printer. When he was 24, he had his own printing house and became an editor of a newspaper. His newspaper grew quickly to a circulation of 10000---by far the greatest of any publication in America at that time .From 1732 to 1758, he wrote and published his famous Poor Richard’s Almanac, an annual collection of proverbs. It soon became the most popular book of its kind, largely because of Franklin’sshrewd humor, and first spread his reputation. While still a young man, he founded the Junto, a club for informal discussion of scientific, economic and political ideas. In Philadelphia, Franklin established America’s first circulating library. Later he founded the college that was to become the University of Pennsylvania. His scientific achievements won international acclaim（称赞）. His energy and versatility（多才多艺）were remarkable. his many inventions, besides the lightning rod, included the Franklin stove, bifocal glasses, a miniature printing press, and even a strange musical instrument called an “armonica”. He contributed to the theories of electricity and first applied the terms “positive” and “negative” to e lectrical charges.Successful in business, renowned in science, this most modern-spirited man of early Americans also served his nation brilliantly. He developed and improved the postal system, making it run at a profit after years of losses.As a representative of the Colonies, he tried in vain to counsel the British toward policies that would let America grow and flourish in association with England. When this aim became hopeless, he supported the cause of independence, served in the Continental Congress, and aided Jefferson in writing the Declaration of Independence. He conducted the difficult negotiations with France that brought financial and military support for America in the war. In 1787 he was a delegate to the convention that wrote the Constitution. Franklin was the first major writer in American literature. He had a definite gift for writing. As an author he had power of expression, simplicity, a subtle humor. He was also sarcastic. His best writing is found in his own Autobiography. His Poor Richa rd’s Almanac is still wellknown, and is perhaps the most quoted of all his writings. His Collected Works contain writings from his periodical publications, odd essays and publications.Introduction to The Autobiography :Franklin began to write his autobiography in 1771 when he was 65 years old. Due to his busy political activities and many other affairs, he could not finish it until 1790, only a few weeks before his death. The autobiography gives vivid accounts of his family, his childhood and his youth, his self-study and his work, his main experiences before 1757, his achievements in politics ,economy and science. His recalling lasts until 1757 when he was 51 years old.The Autobiography is considered as a classic in all autobiographies. It crystallizes the great spirit of Franklin----an American puritan and a great model in the Period of Enlightenment in the 18 century. In his narration about his meaningful and colorful life experiences, we can find his philosophy of practicalism and his teachings of morality. His narration is vivid and refreshing, his tone isoptimistic and humorous.Excerpt (I) From The AutobiographyFrom a Child I was fond of Reading, and all the little Money that came into my Hands was ever laid out in Books. Pleas’d with the Pilgrim’s Progress, my first collection was of John Buny an’s1work, in separate little V olumes. I afterwards sold them to enable me to buy R.. Burton’s2Historical Collections; they were small Chapmen’s Books3 and cheap, 40 or 50 in all, My Father’s little Libra ry consisted chiefly of Books in polemic Divinity , most of which I read ,and have since often regretted, that at a time when I had such a Thirst for knowledge ,moreproper Books had not fallen in my way , since it was now resolve’d I should not be a Clergyman .Plutarch’s Lives4there was ,in which I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great Advantage. There was also a book of Defoe’s5 called an Essay on Projectsand another of Dr. Mather’s6call’d Essays to Do Good,which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an Influence on some of the principle future Events of my life.This Bookish Inclination at length determin’d my Father to make me a printer, tho’ had already one son , ( James ) of that Profession .In 1717 my Brother James return’d from England with a Press and Letters7 to set up his Business in Boston , I lik’d it much better than that of my Father, but still had a hanking for the sea. To prevent the apprehended Effect of such a Inclination , my Father was impatient to have me bound8 to my Brother . I stood out some time , but at last was persuaded and signed the Indentures9, when I was yet but 12 Years old. I was to serve as an Apprentice till I was 21 Years of Age , only I was to be allow’d Journeyman’s Wages10 during the last Year. In a little time I made great Proficiency in the Business ,and became an useful Hand to my Brother. I nowhad Access to better Books. An Acquaintance with the Apprentices of booksellers, enable me to sometimes to borrow a small one , which I was careful to return soon and clean. Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest Part of Night, when the Book was borrowed in the Evening and to be return’d early in the Morning lest it should be miss’d or wanted. And after some time an ingenious Tradesman11 who had a pretty Collection of Books, and who frequented our Printing House, took Notice of me, invited me to his Library, and very kindly lent me such Booksas I chose to read. I now took a Fancy to Poetry ,and made some little Pieces. My Brother, thinking it might turn to account encourge’d me , and p ut me on composing two occasional Ballads. One was called the light house tragedy, and contain’d an Account of the drowning of Capt. Worthilake with his Two Daughters; the other was a Sailor Song on the Taking of Teach or Blackbeard the Pirate12. They were wretchedStuff, in the Grubstreet Ballad Stile13, and when they were printed he sent me about the Town to sell them . The first sold wonderfully , the Event being recent , having made a great Noise. Thi s flatter’d my Vanity. But my Father discou rag’d me ,by ridiculing my Performances , and telling me Verse-makers were generally Beggars; so I escap’d being a poet , most probably a very bad one . But as Prose Writing has been of great Use to me in the Course of my life; and was a principal Means of my Advancement, I shall tell you how in such a Situation I acquir’d what little Ability I have in that way.There was another bookish Lad in the Town, John Collins by Name, with whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed , and very fond we were of Arguments. And very desirous of confuting one another. Which disputatious Turn, by the way , is apt to become a very bad Habit, making people often extremely disagreeable in Company, by the Contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice, and thence, besides souring and spoiling the Conversation, is productive of Disgusts and perhaps Enmities where you may have occasion for Friendship. I had caught it by reading my Father’s Books of Dispute about Religion. Persons of good Sense, I have since observ’d, seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university Men and Men of all sorts that have been bred at Edinborough14. AQuestion was once somehow or other started between Collins and me. Of the Propriety of education the Female Sex in learning, and their Abilities for Study. He was of Opinion that it was improper ; and that they were naturally unequal to it. I took the contrary Side. Perhaps a little for Dispute sake . He was naturally more eloquent, had a ready Plenty of Words, and sometimes as I thought bore me down more by his Fluency than by the Strength of his Reasons. As we partedwithout settling the Point, and were not to see one another again for some time, I sat down to put my Arguments in Writing, wh ich I copied fair and sent to him. He answer’d and I reply’d . Three or four Letters of a Side had pass’d, when my Father happen’d to find my Papers, and read them.. Without entering into the Discussion, he took occasion to tell me about the Manner of my W riting, observe’d that tho’ I had the Advantage of my Antagonist in correct Spelling and pointing ( which I ow’d to the Printing House ) I fell far short in elegance of Expression, in Method and in Perspicuity, of which he convinc’d me by several Instances. I saw the Justice of his Remarks, and thence grew more attentive to the Manner in Writing, and determin’d to endeavour at Improvement.Notes:1.J ohn Bunyan (1628- 1688) published Pilgrim’s Progress in 1678; his works were enormously popular and available in cheapone-shilling editions.2.B urton was a pseudonym for Nathaniel Crouch (1632 ?-1725 ? ), a popularizer of British history.3.P eddlers’ books, hence inexpensive.4.P lutarch ( A. D. 46 ?—120 ? ), Greek biographer who wroteParallel Lives of noted Greek and Roman figures.5.D aniel Defoe’s Essay on Projects(1697 ) proposed remedies for economic improvement.6.C otton Mather published Bonifacius: An Essay upon the Good in 1710.7.T ype.8.A pprenticed.9.A contract binding him to work for his brother for nine years. James Franklin (1697- 1735 ) had learned the print er’s trade in England.10.I was to be …,be paid for each day’s work, having served his apprenticeship.11.“Mr.Mathew Adams” (Franklin’s note ).“Pretty”: exceptionally fine.12.George Worthylake , lighthouse keeper on Beacon Island, Boston Harbor, and his wife and daughter were drowned on November 3,1718; the pirate Blackbeard was killed off the Carolina coast on November 22,1718.13.Grub Street in London was inhabited by poor literary hacks who capitalized on poems of topical interest.14.Scottish presbyterians were noted for their argumentative nature.Comprehension and Appreciation:Franklin is a great statesman, a great scientist and a great writer. How could he become so great ?His autobiography gives us a good answer to this question. As we know, the hardships in one’s childhood is very valuable wealth for him. Franklin’s family was not rich, and he had to work when he was a ten-year-old boy.But in such unfavorable conditions he kept on reading andstudying, and never stopped. As a result, he became so versatile and achieved so much in many fields. In this part we see how Franklin was reading different books. He spent “all the little Money that came” in his hand on books. He “had su ch a Thirst for knowledge” ,that he borrowed books from the apprentices of books ellers and “sat up …reading the greatest Part of the Night”. Then Franklin tells us how he argued with another bookish lad on the question of educating the Female Sex, and how they continued their argument by writing letters to each other, which greatly improved his prose writing.The style of the autobiography shows Franklin’s gift for writing. As an author he had power of expression ,simplicity, a subtle humor. For example, When he tells us about his Ballads, he says, “They were wretched Stuff…”, “so I escaped being a Poet, mostprobably a very bad one.” These statements seem simple, but they are full of implications, especially the two words “stuff” and “escaped” are very meaningful; “stuff’ shows the bad quality of his early ballads, while “escaped” implies his relief that it was lucky for him that he had not become a bad poet. Here we really appreciate his subtle humor. Comprehensive Questions:1 In what kind of family was Franklin born ?2.How much schooling did he have ?3.How long should he work in his brother’s printing house ?4.Why did he sit up late in his room ?5.What is Franklin’s most important work ?6.Why is The Autobiography considered a classic of its kind ?7.What are the characteristics of the style of The Autobiography ?8.Why does Franklin say the desire to confute others is a badhabit ?9.What was Frankl in’s opinion abouteducating the female sex ?10 How did Franklin’s father help him in his prose writin g ?Answers:1.F ranklin was born in a family of a grocer .2.H e had only two year s’ schooling.3.H e was supposed to work in his brother’s printing house for nine years.4.B ecause he had to finish reading the books he borrowed from the apprentices of booksellers so that he could return them in the morning.5.T he most important work of Franklin is The Autobiography.6.B ecause it shows the strong will and noble spirit of a great man; it also has very strong artistic charm.7.T he characteristics of the style of the work are power of expression, simplicity and a subtle humor.8.B ecause it makes people often disagreeablein company, sours and spoils the conversation and causes disgusts and enmities.9.H e thought educating the Female Sex was not improper.10.His father took occasion to tell him about the manner of his writing and pointed out the weak points in his writing .Reference book:History and Anthology of American Literature 吴伟仁编外语教学与研究出版社(End)Unit 2. Benjamin Franklin:TheAutobiography (II)Target: Through the study of this unit, the students aresupposed to understand and appreciate the second excerpt of Franklin’s The Autobiography.They should follow Franklin’s example in language learningStudy Points :1.T he general idea of the second excerpt2.T he implications of some parts3.T he writing skill of the workExcerpt (II) from The AutobiographyI had begun in 1733 to study Languages. I soon made myself so much a Master of the French as to be able to read the Books with Ease. I then undertook the Italian. An Acquaintance who was also learning it, us’doften to tempt me to play Chess with him. Finding this took up too much of the Time I had to spare for Study, I at length refus’d to play any more unless on this condition, that the Victor in every game, should have a Right to impose a Task, either in Parts of the Grammar to be got by heart, or in Translation, etc., which Tasks the Vanquish’d was to perform upon Honor before our next Meeting. As we play’d pretty equally we thus beat one another into that language. I afterwards with a little Pains-tasking acquir’d as m uch of the Spanish as to red their Books also.I have already metion’d that I had only one Year’s Instruction in a Latin School, and that when very young, after which I neglected that Language entirely. But when I had attained an Acquaintance with the French, Italian and Spanish , I was surpris’d to find, on looking over a Latin Testament1, that I understood so much of that Language。

American LiteratureLiteratureWhat is literature?•Literature has been the high skills of writing with imagination since the 19th century.•Types of literature:FictionPoetryDramaEssayMajor Literary SchoolsI. Classicism and neoclassicism•Advocation of rationalism(Reason should be above everything else.)Samuel Johnson, Alexander PopeII. Romanticism•Opposition to neoclassicism•Emphasis on emotion, imagination and intuition.William Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron…III. Realism•Focus on common lives of the average people•And unromantic observation of human experiences.Dickens, Bronte, Austen…IV. Modernism•Synonym of revolution against traditional art.•Emphasis on instinct and subconsciousness.The Spirit of American Literature★(the thread throughout American literature)★Individualism★•Personal ability•Hard work leads to success.Compared with the spirit of Chinese literatureConfucianism•ModerateTo attack human pride, avoid extremes and keep human desires within appropriate reason and order.Introduction•American literature may be the youngest national literatures in the world. Its real history, if calculating from the end of the revolutionary war, is only about 200 years or more. Within such a short period, American literature swiftly developed, began to receive international recognition, and has had a great effect upon world literature.•I. Literature of the Colonial Period (1607—1776)★•II. Literature of Reason and Revolution (1776--1820)★•III. Romanticism (1820--1860)★•IV. Rise of Realism (1860--1914)★•V. Modern Period (1914--)★1.Literature of the Colonial Period殖民统治时期文学(1607-1776)From my years young in days of youth,God did make known to me His Truth,And call’d me from my native placeFor to enjoy the Means of Grace.In wilderness He did me guide,William Bradford•God teaches me and guides me to a right wayI. Historical Background•Settlement★The result of religious motives and mercantile motives•Puritanism★•Puritan thoughts: ★predestination (God decides everything before things occur) ★Original sin (Human beings were born to be evil.)★Puritan values:Hard work, thrift, and piety.•Individualism and American DreamII. Features of Literature•The first American literature was neither American nor real literature. ★•Types of WritingDiary, history, journal, letter, narrative…•It was the work mainly of immigrants from England.★•It was not in the form of poetry, essay or fiction, but the mixture of travel accounts and religious writings.★III. Writers•John Smith★•As the first Amercan writer★He is a British soldier of fortune,and strictly speakly speaking,was not litirature at all.A Ture Relation Of Such Occurences and Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia was a long report recording what he saw and heard in the New World, which he sent back to England and was printed in 1608 whitout his knowledge.•Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor★(English immigrants)•The work of the two writers rose to the level of real poetry.★2.The Age of Reason and Revolution理性与革命时期文学(1776--1820)I. Historical Background•The Age of Revolution•The Age of ReasonThe Age of Revolution★American Revolution of Independence (1776--1783)★•Britain’s suppression on America in economy and politics•Revolt against BritainThe Age of Reason★Enlightenment•Intellectual movement in Europe (1660’s—1780’s)★•Humanism: the equality and freedom among men(to stimulate Americans to strive for the establishment of their independent and democratic nation)•Rationalism: reason and orderII. Features of Literature•Utilitarian tendency(Nothing is good or beautiful but in the measure that is useful.)•Clear, concise and powerful expression•Essay as a prominent partIII. Writers and WorksEssayists•Thomas Paine: Common Sense★(to make Americans see the necessity to have an independent nation of their own)•Thomas Jefferson: Declaration of Independence★(to inspire his contemporaries)•Benjamin Franklin本杰明.富兰克林: Autobiography★Poor Richard’s Alman ac★Poet•Philip Freneau飞利浦.费瑞诺: To the Memory of the Brave Americans★The Wild Honeysuckle★Benjamin Franklin本杰明.富兰克林(1706 – 1790)Identity•He’s a writer.•He’s a scientist.•He’s a businessman.•He’s a politician.•He’s an inventor.•He’s the most v ersatile and enligh-tened man of his generation•Born on Milk Street in Boston, Massachusetts from a very large family.•At the age of 12, apprenticed to be a newspaper printer in Boston.•In 1729, already owned his own printing shop and published the newspaper Pennsylvania Gazette《宾夕法尼亚报》.•In 1732, offered his Poor Richard’s Almanac《格言历书》.★•From 1771 to 1790, wrote his Autobiography《自传》.★•Being one of those who drafted articles leading to the Declaration of Independence. •Served to draft the constitution, which was finally adopted in 1789.Literary term•Autobiography:- A written account of one’s own life.- Autobiographical writing as a literary genre.•It is significant: (1) it is a classic of its kind in American literature; (2) it indicates the fact that Franklin was the spokesman of American enlightenment. •Franklin embodied the transition from Puritan piety, and idealism to the more secular and utilitarian values of the American enlighten-ment.Significance of Franklin’s Autobiography•Franklin’s autobiograph y remains one of the classics of its kind. It shows Franklin as a man of versatile energy and new ideas, a man who represented American.enlightenment and the fulfillment of American dream.It is a humorous and fascinating record of an old man’s reflection s on his rise from a poor boy to a rich and famous personage through self-examination, self-reliance, and self improvementPhilip Freneau飞利浦.费瑞诺(1752—1832)I. LifePoet of the American Revolution★•Involvement in the War, and brutal treatment by British in 1780•Political satires•Patriotic revolutionary versesFather of American Poetry★•Return to nature after political position•Love of rural life•Beauty and perfection of natureRomantic Attitudes★(浪漫主义先驱)II.Features of poemsClassification of two categories•Poems on American RevolutionHatred toward the British colonistsResentment toward slavery•Poems of natural beautySubject matter: American landscape and imagesTo avoid imitation of English poetsIII. Works•To the Memory of the Brave Americans《纪念英勇的美国人》★•The Wild Honey Suckle《野金银花》★3.American Romanticism美国浪漫主义时期文学(1820-1860)(From the end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the civil war)★Feature of American Romanticism was both imitative and indepandent.★Imitative:English and European Romanticists★Independent:Emersn and Whitman★Romanticism →romantic →romance•Romanticremote from the real life•Romancestory about the adventure and love of knights•Romanticismthe revival of romancePrecondition of Romanticism•IntellectuallyReaction against enlightenment•PoliticallyInspired by French revolution•SociallyGuided by progressive causes•EmotionallyEmphasis on the value of individual•focus on the individual’s expression of emotion and imagination“All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”• a heightened interest in natureAmerican RomanticismThe First Renaissance of American LiteratureI. BackgroundDevelopment of politics, economy and culture•Expansion of the West•Rise of industrialism•Transmission of literature•Progressive and developing societyRomantic movement in European countriesEsp. in BritainII. Features of American Romanticism•American puritanism as a cultural heritage•American romanticism was both imitative and independent•It presented a new experience;the exotic landscape, the frontier life and the westward expansionSection I Early Romanticismi. W. Irving华盛顿.欧文★Popularize romanticism in American•The Sketch Book《见闻札记》（the first work to win financial success on both sides of the Atlantic）★•Legend of Sleepy Hollow《睡谷传说》★•Rip V an Winkle《瑞凡.凡.温克尔》★ii. J.F. Cooper库伯•Leatherstocking Tales《皮袜子故事集》(the American national experience of adventure into the West)★•The spy《间谍》★iii. W.C. Bryant布莱恩特•To A Waterfowl《致水鸟》★Section II. Summit of Romanticism—American TranscendentalismI. Appearance: Nature by Emerson in 1836★II. Focus on intuition and oversoul:nature—the symbol of spiriti. R. W. Emerson爱默生★•Nature《论自然》★ii. H. D. Thoreau梭罗★•Walden《瓦尔登湖》★•Civil Disobedience《论公民之不服从》★Section III. Late Romanticismi. N. Hawthorne霍桑★•The Scarlet Letter《红字》★ii. H. Melville赫尔曼.梅尔维尔★•Moby Dick《白鲸》★•Typee《泰比》★iii. E. A. Poe库泊★•Annabel Lee《安娜贝尔.李》★iv. H. W. Longfellow★• A Psalm of Life, Song of Hiawatha★v. W. Whitman★•The Leaves of Grass《草叶集》vi. E. Dickinson★Edgar Allan Poe 爱伦.坡•Famous American poet, short-story writer and critic★•Father of modern short story★•Father of detective story and story of horror ★I. Life (1809—1849)•Death of his parents•Break with his foster father(gambling and drinking)•Work as an editor•Marriage to his cousin•Poverty, little reputation in his life timeLife Story•Born in Boston in 1809, Poe was orphaned at the age of two.•Poe was adopted by John Allan.•Poe ran away from home, due to his gambling and drinking debts.•Poe had to make a living by writing or editing some magazines•Poe married his 13-year old cousin. Her early death may have inspired his writing.•Poe died in poverty and with little reputation.•An artist with literary genius, indulging himself in a bohemian life style.II.Position in Literary History•The most controversial figure in the history of American literature•The unique importance of Poe as a great writer of fiction, a poet of first rank, and a critic of insight•The position among the greatest writers of the world.Writing Features•Poe’s writing style is traditional.•Poe is not easy to read, just because of his ability to make good use of implications.•The object of poetry is pleasure, not truth.III. WorksPoetry•The Raven《乌鸦》★•To Helen《致海伦》★•Annabel Lee《安拉贝尔.丽》★The poem is a mourning song for the death of his wife.Poe did not use her real name, nor did he use the real background.★Short Story•The Fall of the House of Usher《厄舍房屋倒塌记》★Nathaniel Hhawthorne霍桑(1804-1864)I. LifeThree important things in his life:•Puritan family background•Study in Bowdoin College•Publication of The Scarlet LetterLife Story•Hawthorne was born in Salem Massachusetts. (His ancestors were men of prominence in the Puritan theocracy of seventeenth-century New England. ) •His relatives financed his education at Bowdoin College.•Among his classmates were many of the important literary and political figures of the day.•The Scarlet Letter represents the height of Hawthorne's literary geniusII. WorksFours novels:The Scarlet Letter (his masterpiece)《红字》★The House of the Seven Gables《七个尖角阁的房子》★The Blithedale Romance: experience of transcendentalists experiment. 《福谷传奇》★The Marble Faun: evil educates. 《大理石雕像》★Two collections of short stories:❖Twice-Told Tales 《故事重述》★❖Mosses form an Old Manse 《古宅青苔》★Features of his worksSetting Puritan New EnglandThemes Evil & sinIdea Dark view toward human beingsTechnique symbolismHawthorne as a Literary Artist•First professional writer•Hawthorne displayed a love for allegory and symbol.•His writing is representative of 19th century.The Scarlet Letter•Hester sin★•Chillingworth(Hester’s husband) evil★•Dimmesda le(Hester’s lover) sin★•Pearl(Hester and Dimmesdale’s child)★•What does A in The Scarlet Letter symbolize?★Adultlery--------Ability-----------Angel★Walt Whitman华特.惠特曼1. Representative work:Leaves of Grass — first genuine epic poem★2. Free verse — the poetic style he devised★3. InfluenceContemporary American poetry, whatever school or form, bears witness to his great influence.Free Versea poem without regular rhymes and metersO Captain! My Captain!Emily Dickinson 艾米丽.迪金森1. Liferecluse—to separate herself from the world at the age of 23single in her lifeunhappy love affairdeath of her teacher, lover, father before her2. Themes: based on her own experiences, joys and sorrows(1) nature – kind and cruel (300 poems)★(2) love – suffering and frustration caused by love （120 poems)★Alter? When the hills doFalter? When the sunQuestion if his gloryBe the perfect one.……I will of you! (729)(3) death (About one third of the total collection of her poems deal with death.)★— desire for death★— moment of death★— death and immortality★MY life closed twice before its close;It yet remains to seeIf Immortality unveilA third event to me,So huge, so hopeless to conceive,As these that twice befell.Parting is all we know of heaven,And all we need of hell. (1732)3. Style(1) poems without titles.★(2) severe economy of expression.★(3) capital letters, dash – emphasis.★(4) short poems, mainly two stanzas.★She is one of the most innovative poets of 19th-century American literature.Because I Could Not Stop for Death4.Realism现实主义时期(1860--1914)The rise of realism and the decline of romanticismI. Historical Background•Civil War (1861--1865)★•Capitalism—freedom and democracyDevelopment of society before 1880Financial crisis—unrest society after 1880II. Features of LiteratureTwo literary streams★•Realism (1860--1880)★Truthful description of lifeObjective rather than idealizedTone: hopeful and optimistic★•Naturalism (1880--1914)★Theory of Darwinism: survival of the fittestFocus on environment and humanTone: hopeless and gloomy★III. Writers and Works•Three giants: M. Twain, H. James and W. D. Howells★Writers of realism•W.D.Howells:The Rise of Silas Lapham★•Mrs. Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin★•Mark Twain: the true father of American literature★representation of local colour★The Adventures of Tom Sawyer(1883)★The Adventures of Huckle Finn(1884)★•O. Henry: founder of American short story★The Cop and the Anthem★•Henry James: psychological novels★The Art of fiction★Writers of Naturalism•Jack London: The Sea Wolf★The Call of the Wild★•Stephen Crane:The Red Badge Courage(his most successful work)★•Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie★An American Tragedy(the most successful one)★5.The Modern Period现代主义时期(1914-- )Literature during WWI and WWII (1914--1945)★•Section I: Literature in the 1920’sI. IntroductionA flowering period of American literatureThe Second Renaissance of American literature★II. Background★1. The first world war:★•Economically: great wealth, economic boom, highly-consuming society •Spiritually: fragmentation2. Freud’s theory (psychology)★3. Emigration (to Asia)★•the influence of Japanese and Chinese culture and literatureIII. Literary Schools★1. Imagism (poets)★•Representatives: E. Pound, T. S. Eliot,R. Frost2. Lost Generation (novelists)★• E. Hemingway, F. Scott. Fitzgerald3. Southern Literature★•W. FaulknerSection II: Literature in the 1930’sI. Background•Great Depression (1929)II. The Main Stream•Left-oriented•J. SteinbeckImagism•Image 意象意―意识，abstract ideas象―世间物象，concrete objectseg:圆月―思家之情longing for home•Imagismto use concrete objects to express abstract ideas •Symbolism•Symbol ― imageto compress a very complex idea into an imageeg: rose, springlove, life•(Both writers and readers know what the symbol represents.)eg: A in Scarlet Letteradultery, ability, angel•(Symbols created by writers to convey particular meanings.) Three Principles of ImagismI. Direct treatment of objectsII. Free verseIII. Economy of expressionsImages in Chinese and western literature•Strong will : pine, plum,oak•Love :peach blossom rosePurity: lotus lily•In Chinese the sound of bell, 梅、兰、竹、菊•In English paradise, snake, west wind, nightingale, daffodil E. Pound 庞德•He spearheaded the new school of poetry: Imagist Movement★•Imagism’s founder★I. Life•to emigrate to Asian and study Japanese literatureII. Works•Cantos (a collection of poems)In a Station of the Metro★T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965) 艾略特I. Life“A royalist in politics, a classicist in literature, and an Anglo-Catholic in religion”• a royalist: the change of his nationalityAmerican to English• a classicist: poetic theory, the use of allusion•an Anglo-Catholic: religious conversion to ChristianityII. Works1. Poems•The Waste Land《荒原》including 5 parts, has been called the first masterpiece of modernism in English★•Four Quartets《四个四重奏》(he found the way out and believed only God couldsave people)★2. Critical Essays•The Sacred Wood《圣林》(New Criticism)★3. Plays•Images in his worksthe waste land, water, firestory of king Fish, rain and river, burning and purifying ―death and rebirth Robert Frost 弗洛斯特Lost Generation❖The Lost Generation:The Lost Generation is a term used to describe a group of American intellectuals, poets, artists and writers fled to France in the post WWI years to reject the values of American materialism and to seek the bohemian lifestyle in Paris.His Poems1)After Apple-Picking《摘罢苹果》★2)Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening 《雪夜林边驻足》★3)The Road Not Taken 《没有选择的路》★F. Scott Fitzgerald 菲茨杰拉德(1890 - 1940)His masterpiece：The Great Gatsby《伟大的盖茨比》★Ernest Hemingway (1899 -1961)I. Biography:⏹Born in Illinois, the son of a country doctor, Hemingway worked as a reporter in 1917.⏹During World War I, he served as a driver for the American Red Cross in Italy.⏹During the Spanish Civil War, Hemingway served as a correspondent.⏹He fought in World War II and then settled in Cuba in 1945.In 1954, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (The Old Man and the Sea).⏹In 1961, depressed, and ill with cancer, he shot himself.Literary achievementsNovels:The Sun Also Rises (1926) With the publication of it, he was recognized as the spokesman of the “lost generation” .★A Farewell to Arms (1929) tells of a tragic wartime love affair between an ambulance driver and an English nurse. ★For Whom the Bell Tolls(1940) in detailing an incident in the war, argues for human brotherhood. ★The Old Man and the Sea(1952) celebrates the courage of an aged Cuban fisherman, Santiago. ★Story collections:In Our Time (1925) 《在我们的时代》Men without Women(1927)《没有女人的男人》Winner Take Nothing (1933) 《胜者无所得》The Lost Generation❖The Lost Generation:The Lost Generation is a term used to describe a group of American intellectuals, poets, artists and writers fled to France in the post WWI years to reject the values of American materialism and to seek the bohemian lifestyle in Paris. without a meaningful future to fall on, they were lost in disillusionment.Main Character:Santiago: The hero of the story. He is an old Cuban fisherman who is a perfectionist when it comes to fishing. Despite his precise methods, he has no luck at sea. Santiago wants to be unique: a greater and stranger person than his peers out at sea. He is alone, except for the company of Manolin. He is determined to catch one big fish.Writing Style:Hemingway’s fiction usually focuses on people living essential, dangerous lives—soldiers, fishermen, athletes, bullfighters—who meet the pain and difficulty of their existence with courage.His celebrated literary style is direct, terse, and often monotonous, yet particularly suited to his elemental subject matter.His language is characterized by features including: economy of expression, short sentences and paragraphs, vigorous and positive language, and deliberate avoidance of gorgeous adjectives, and etc.⏹Hemingway’s Iceberg TheoryEugene O’Neill 尤金.奥尼尔( 1888 – 1953)⏹“American Shakespeare”⏹Born in a Broadway hotel in New York City, a son of a famous and popular actor.⏹He came in close contact with the outcasts of society and tasted the bitterness of life.⏹In 1920 his first full-length play, Beyond the Horizon, was professionally produced on Broadway and won the Pulitzer Prize.⏹His major work Long Day’s Journey into Night 《长夜慢慢路迢迢》(1956).⏹Four Pulitzer Prizes (1920, 1922, 1928, 1957) and the Nobel Prize in 1936 show his achievement and influence at home and abroad.Joseph Heller (1923 – 1999)⏹New York author who served in the air force in World War II.⏹Received an A. B. from New York University, an M.A. from Columbia, studied at Oxford, and taught briefly before writing Catch-22 (1961) 《第二十二条军规》.What is Catch-22?If the men are really crazy, then they will want to fly the missions, regardless of whether or not they want to be killed. If they do not want to fly the missions, then they are sane and must fly them.。

美国文学（American literature美国文学的雏形早期的美国文学是从欧洲文学的样式和风格中衍生出来的。

例如，维兰德和查尔斯·布罗克登·布朗的小说创作就是对英格兰哥特小说的模仿。

就连华盛顿·欧文Washington Irving的杰作《李伯大梦》和《睡谷传奇》The Legend of Sleeping Hollow也是十足的欧洲风格，只是故事发生的场景改为美国而已。

美国文学的诞生美国第一位在小说和诗歌创作领域取得显著成就的作家是艾德加·爱伦·坡Edgar Allen Poe （1809－1849），他于1835年开始短篇小说的创作，其作品包括《红死病》The Red Death、《陷坑与钟摆》、《颓败之屋》和《莫尔格街凶杀案》The Murder of the Rue Morgue。

他的创作触及了前人很少涉及的心理学领域，并且将神秘、幻想等元素融入小说创作之中。

1837年，年轻的作家纳撒尼尔·霍桑Nathanial Howthorne（1804－1864）将他的一些短篇小说集结成册出版，名为《重讲一遍的故事》Twice Told Tales。

这是一部包含了丰富的象征主义及神秘主义元素的作品。

后来，霍桑又开始写作长篇的传奇小说、类寓言小说，他的本土小说《新英格兰》New England以人类的内疚、荣耀和情感上的压抑为主题。

霍桑的代表作是《红字》The Scarlet Letter，讲述一个因通奸adultary行为而被驱逐出社区的女人的故事。

[hide] 霍桑的小说创作对他的朋友，作家赫尔曼·麦尔维尔（1819－1891）产生了深远的影响。

麦尔维尔以自己早期的水手经历为蓝本创作了许多富有异国情调的小说。

在霍桑的影响下，麦尔维尔的小说中也融入了很多哲学上的思索。

在其代表作《白鲸》中，作家通过对一场惊心动魄的捕鲸历程的描述，表达了对人类痴迷状态、人性中罪恶成分以及人类如何战胜这些天性的思索。

Periods of American LiteratureThe following divisions of American literary history recognize the importance assigned by many literary historians to the Revolutionary War (1775-81), the Civil War (1861-65), World War I (1914-18), and World War II (1939-45). Under these broad divisions are listed some of the more widely used terms to distinguish periods and subperiods of American literature.1607-1775. This overall era, from the founding of the first settlement at Jamestown to the outbreak of the American Revolution, is often called the Colonial Period. Writings were for the most part religious, practical, or historical. Notable among the seventeenth-century writers of journals and narratives concerning the founding and early history of some of the colonies were William Bradford, John Winthrop, and the theologian Cotton Mather. In the following century Jonathan Edwards was a major philosopher as well as theologian, and Benjamin Franklin an early American master of lucid and cogent prose. Anne Bradstreet was the chief Colonial poet of secular and domestic as well as religious subjects. The publication in 1773 of Poems on Various Subjects by Phillis Wheatley, then a nineteen-year-old slave who had been born in Africa, inaugurated the long and distinguished, but until recently neglected, line of Black writers (or by what has come to be the preferred name, African-American writers) in America.The period between the Stamp Act of 1765 and 1790 is sometimes distinguished as the Revolutionary Age. It was the time of Thomas Paine's influential revolutionary tracts; of Thomas Jefferson's "Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom," "Declaration of Independence," and many other writings; of The Federalist Papers in support of the Constitution, most notably those by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison; and of the patriotic and satiric poems by Philip Freneau and Joel Barlow.1775-1865. The years 1775-1828, the Early National Period ending with the triumph of Jacksonian democracy in 1828, signalized the emergence of a national imaginative literature, including the first American comedy (Royall Tyler's The Contrast, 1787), the earliest American novel (William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy, 1789), and the establishment in 1815 of thefirst enduring American magazine, The North American Review. Washington Irving achieved international fame with his essays and stories; Charles Brockden Brown wrote distinctively American versions of the Gothic novel of mystery and terror; the career of James Fenimore Cooper, the first major American novelist, was well launched; and William Cullen Bryant and Edgar Allan Poe wrote poetry that was relatively independent of English precursors. In the year 1760 was published the first of a long series of slave narratives and autobiographies written by African-American slaves who had escaped or been freed. Most of these were published between 1830 and 1865, including Frederick Douglass' Nanative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861).The span 1828-1865 from the Jacksonian era to the Civil War, often identified as the Romantic Period in America, marks the full coming of age of a distinctively American literature. This period is sometimes known as the American Renaissance, the title of F. O. Matthiessen's influential book (1941) about its outstanding writers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne; it is also sometimes called the Age of Transcendentalism, after the philosophical and literary movement, centered on Emerson, that was dominant in New England. In all the major literary genres except drama, writers produced works of an originality and excellence not exceeded in later American history. Emerson, Thoreau, and the early feminist Margaret Fuller shaped the ideas, ideals, and literary aims of many contemporary and later American writers. It was the age not only of continuing writings by William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, and James Fenimore Cooper, but also of the novels and short stories of Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the southern novelist William Gilmore Simms; of the poetry of Poe, John Greenleaf Whittier, Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the most innovative and influential of all American poets, Walt Whitman; and of the beginning of distinguished American criticism in the essays of Poe, Simms, and James Russell Lowell.The cataclysm of the bloody Civil War and the Reconstruction, followed by a burgeoning industrialism and urbanization in the North, profoundly altered the American sense of itself, and also American literary modes. 1865-1900 is often known as the Realistic Period, by reference tothe novels by Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and Henry James, as well as by John W DeForest, Harold Frederic, and the African-American novelist Charles W. Chesnutt. These works, though diverse, are often labeled "realistic" in contrast to the "romances" of their predecessors in prose fiction, Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville. Some realistic authors grounded their fiction in a regional milieu; these include (in addition to Mark Twain's novels on the Mississippi River region) Bret Harte in California, Sarah Orne Jewett in Maine, Mary Wilkins Freeman in Massachusetts, and George W. Cable and Kate Chopin in Louisiana. Chopin has become prominent as an early and major feminist novelist. Whitman continued writing poetry up to the last decade of the century, and (unknown to him and almost everyone else) was joined by Emily Dickinson; although only seven of Dickinson's more than a thousand short poems were published in her lifetime, she is now recognized as one of the most distinctive and eminent of American poets. Sidney Lanier published his experiments in versification based on the meters of music; the African-American author Paul Laurence Dunbar published both poems and novels between 1893 and 1905; and in the 1890s Stephen Crane, although he was only twenty-nine when he died, published short poems in free verse that anticipate the experiments of Ezra Pound and the Imagists, and wrote also the brilliantly innovative short stories and short novels that look forward to two later narrative modes, naturalism and impressionism.The years 1900-1914—although James, Howells, and Mark Twain were still writing, and Edith Wharton was publishing her earlier novels—are discriminated as the Naturalistic Period, in recognition of the powerful though sometimes crudely wrought novels by Frank Norris, Jack London, and Theodore Dreiser, which typically represent characters who are joint victims of their instinctual drives and of external sociological forces.1914-1939. The era between the two world wars, marked also by the trauma of the great economic depression beginning in 1929, was that of the emergence of what is still known as "modern literature," which in America reached an eminence rivaling that of the American Renaissance of the midnineteenth century; unlike most of the authors of that earlier period, however, the American modernists also achieved widespread international recognition and influence.Poetry magazine, founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, published many innovative authors. Among the notable poets were Edgar Lee Masters, Edwin Arlington Robinson,Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Robinson Jeffers, Marianne Moore, T. S. Eliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and e. e. cummings—authors who wrote in an unexampled variety of poetic modes. These included the Imagism of Amy Lowell, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), and others, the metric poems by Frost and the free-verse poems by Williams in the American vernacular, the formal and typographic experiments of cummings, the poetic naturalism of Jeffers, and the assimilation to their own distinctive uses by Pound and Eliot of the forms and procedures of French symbolism, merged with the intellectual and figurative methods of the English metaphysical poets. Among the major writers of prose fiction were Edith Wharton, Sinclair Lewis, Ellen Glasgow, Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and John Steinbeck. America produced in this period its first great dramatist in Eugene O'Neill, a well as a group of distinguished literary critics that included Van Wyck Brooks, Malcolm Cowley, T. S. Eliot, Edmund Wilson, and the irreverent and caustic H. L. Mencken.The literary productions of this era are often subclassified in a variety of ways. The flamboyant and pleasure-seeking 1920s are sometimes referred to as "the Jazz Age," a title popularized by F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). The same decade was also the period of the Harlem Renaissance, which produced major writings in all the literary forms by Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, and many other African-American writers. Many prominent American writers of the decade following the end of World War I, disillusioned by their war experiences and alienated by what they perceived as the crassness of American culture and its "puritanical" repressions,are often tagged (in a term first applied by Gertrude Stein to young Frenchmen of the time) as the Lost Generation. A number of these writers became expatriates, moving either to London or to Paris in their quest for a richer literary and artistic milieu and a freer way of life. Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and T. S. Eliot lived out their lives abroad, but most of the younger "exiles,"as Malcolm Cowley called them (Exile's Return, 1934), came back to America in the 1930s. Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night are novels that represent the mood and way of life of two groups of American expatriates. In "the radical '30s," the period of the Great Depression and of the economic and social reforms in the New Deal inaugurated by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,some authors joined radical political movements, and many others dealt in their literary works with pressing social issues of the time—including, in the novel, William Faulkner, John Dos Passos,James T. Farrell, Thomas Wolfe, and John Steinbeck, and in the drama,Eugene O'Neill, Clifford Odets, and Maxwell Anderson.1939 to the Present, the contemporary period. World War II, and especially the disillusionment with Soviet Communism consequent upon the Moscow trials for alleged treason and Stalin's signing of the Russo-German pact with Hitler in 1939, largely ended the literary radicalism of the 1930s. A final blow to the very few writers who had maintained intellectual allegiance to Soviet Russia came in 1991 with the collapse of Russian Communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For several decades the New Criticism—dominated by conservative southern writers, the Agrarians, who in the 1930s had championed a return from an industrial to an agricultural economy—typified the prevailing critical tendency to isolate literature from the life of the author and from society and to conceive a work of literature, in formal terms, as an organic and autonomous entity. The eminent and influential critics Edmund Wilson and Lionel Trilling, however—as well as other critics grouped with them as the New York Intellectuals, including Philip Rahv, Alfred Kazin, and Irving Howe—continued through the 1960s to deal with a work of literature humanistically and historically, in the context of its author's life, temperament, and social milieu, and in terms of the work's moral and imaginative qualities and its consequences for society.The 1950s, while often regarded in retrospect as a period of cultural conformity and complacency, was marked by the emergence of vigorous antiestablishment and anti-traditional literary movements: the Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac; the American exemplars of the literature of the absurd; the Black Mountain Poets, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan; and the New York Poets Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, and John Ashbery. It was also a time of confessional poetry and the literature of extreme sexual candor, marked by the emergence of Henry Miller as a notable author (his autobiographical and fictional works, begun in the 1930s, had earlier been available only under the counter) and the writings of Norman Mailer, William Burroughs, and Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita was published in 1955). The counterculture of the 1960s and early '70s continued some of these modes, but in a fashion madeextreme and fevered by the rebellious youth movement and the vehement and sometimes violent opposition to the war in Vietnam.Important American writers after World War II include, in prose fiction, Vladimir Nabokov (who emigrated to America in 1940), Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, Bernard Malamud, James Gould Cozzens, Saul Bellow, Mary McCarthy, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, E. L. Doctorow, and Cynthia Ozick; in poetry, Marianne Moore, Robert Penn Warren, Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Wilbur, Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, A. R. Ammons, and John Ashberry; and in drama, Thornton Wilder, Lillian Hellman, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and a number of more recent playwrights, including Sam Shepard, David Mamet, Tony Kushner, and Wendy Wasserstein. Many of the most innovative and distinguished literary work of the latter decades of the twentieth century have been written by writers who are often identified as belonging to one or another "minority," or ethnic literary group. (An "ethnic group" consists of individuals who are distinguishable, within a majority cultural and social system, by shared characteristics such as race, religion, language, cultural modes, and national origin.) There is, however, much contention, both within and outside these groups, whether it is more just and enlightening to consider such writers simply as part of the American mainstream or to stress the identity of each writer as a participant in an ethnic culture with its distinctive subject matter, themes, and formal features. This is the era of the notable African-American novelists and essayists Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Albert Murray, Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison; the poets Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), Gwendolyn Brooks, Maya Angelou, and Rita Dove; and the dramatists Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson. It is also the era of the emergence of such prominent minority novelists as Leslie Marmon Silko (Native American); Oscar Hijuelos and Sandra Cisneros (Hispanic); and Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan (Chinese American). See Houston A. Baker, ed., Three American Literatures: Essays in Chicano, Native American, and Asian-American Literature Teachers of American Literature (1982).The contemporary literary scene in America is crowded and varied, and these lists could readily be expanded. We must await the passage of time to determine which writers now active will emerge as enduringly major figures in the canon of American literature.。

AmericanLiterature《英美文学选读》（美国文学部分）American LiteratureChapter one : The romantic periodI. Emerson’s transcendentalism and his attitude toward nature: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.2. Emerson’s transcendentali sm:The over-soul—it is an all-pervading power goodness, from which all things come and of which all are a part. It is a supreme reality of mind, a spiritual unity of all beings and a religion. It is a communication between an individual soul and the universal over-soul. And he strongly believe in the divinity and infinity of man as an individual, so man can totally rely on himself.3.His toward nature:Emerson loves nature. His nature is the garment of the over-soul, symbolic and moral bound. Nature is not something purely of the matter, but alive with God’s presence. It exercise a healthy and restorative influence on human beings. Children can see nature better than adult.II. Hawthorne’s Puritanism and his black vision of man:1. Puritanism—it is the religious belief of the Puristans, who had intended to purify and simplify the religious ritual of the church of England.2. his black vision of man—by the Calvinistic concept of original sin, he believed that human being are evil natured andsinful, and this sin is ever present in human heart and will pass one generation to another.3. Young Goodman Brown—it shows that everyone has some evil secrets. The innocent and na?ve Brown is confronted with the vision of human evil in one terrible night, and then he becomes distrustful and doubtful. Brown stands for everyone ,who is born pure and has no contact with the real world ,and the prominent people of the village and church. They cover their secrets during daily lives, and under some circumstances such as the wit ch’s Sabbath, they become what they are. Even his closed wife, Faith, is no exception. So Brown is aged in that night.IV. Whitman and his Leaves of Grass :1. Theme: sing of the “en-mass”and the self / pursuit of love, happiness, and ***ual love / sometimes about politics (Drum taps)2. Whitman’s originality first in his use of the poetic form free verse (i.e. poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme),by means of which he becomes conversational and casual.3.He uses the first person pronoun “I”t o stress individualism, and oral language to acquire sympathy from the common reader.III. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser:1. Theme: The author invented the success of Carrie and the downfall of Hurstwood out of an inevitable and natural judgment, because the fittest can survive in a competitive, amoral society according to the social Darwinism.2. The character analysis of Carrie: She follows the right direction to a pursuit of the American dream, and the circumstances and her desire for a better life direct to thesuccessful goal. But she is not contented, because with wealth and fame, she still finds herself lonely. She is a product of the society, a realization of the theory of the survival of the fittest.3. The character analysis of Hurstwood: He is a negative evidence of the theory of the survival of the fittest. Because he is still conventional and can not throw away the social morals, he is not fitted to live in New York.III. F. Scott Fitzgerald and his The Great Gatsby1. Theme: Gatsby is American Everyman. His extraordinary energy and wealth make him pursue the dream. His death in the end points at the truth about the withering of the American Dream. The spiritual and moral sterility that has resulted from the withered American Dream is fully revealed in the article. However, although he is defeated, the dream has gave Gatsby a dignity and a set of qualities. His hope and belief in the promise of future makes him the embodiment of the values of the incorruptible American Dream .2. The character analysis of Gatsby: Gatsby is great, because he is dignified and ennobled by his dream and his mythic vision of life. He has the desire to repeat the past, the desire for money, and the desire for incarnation of unutterable vision on this material earth. For Gatsby, Daisy is the soul of his dreams. He believe he can regain Daisy and romantically rebels of time. Although he has the wealth that can match with the leisured class, he does not have their manners. His tragedy lies in his possession of a naive sense and chivalry.IV. Ernest Hemingway’s artistic features:1. The Hemingway code heroes and grace under pressure:They have seen the cold world ,and for one cause, they boldly and courageously face the reality. They has an indestructiblespirit for his optimistic view of life. Whatever is the result is, the are ready to live with grace under pressure. No matter how tragic the ending is, they will never be defeated. Finally, they will be prevail because of their indestructible spirit and courage.2. The iceberg technique:Hemingway believe that a good writer does not need to reveal every detail of a character or action. The one-eighth the is presented will suggest all other meaningful dimensions of the story. Thus, Hemingway’s lang uage is symbolic and suggestive.V. The character analysis of Emily in A Rose for Emily:Emily is a symbol of old values, standing for tradition, duty and past glory. But she is also a victim to all those she cares and embrace. The source of Emily’s strang eness is from her born pride and self-esteem, the domineering behavior of her father and the betrayal of her lover. Barricaded in her house, she has frozen the past to protect her dreams. Her life is tragic because the defiance of the community, her refusal to accept the change and her extreme pride have pushed her to abnormality and insanity.。

美国文学之父the father of American literatureUnit 2美国文学之父The Father of American Literature2.1美国文学之父The Father of American Literature(1)Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens, was the first American writer to specifically dwell on American themes, American language and the American point of view. He was a master at rendering the different colloquial dialects of American English into wr iting so the reader can really “hear” the accent while reading the words. Twain was known particularly for his interest in portraying the American point of view. Tired of European writers who came to tour the United States and then go home to write critical things of it, Twain took to touring Europe and writing frankly (and critically) of what he saw there. Twain was also the first American writer to produce a tremendous volume of works. In fact, he wrote so much that there is no complete bibliography of his works. He used various pen names, wrote so many novels, short stories, newspaper and magazine articles, speeches and lectures that they have never been all compiled. Twain loved to travel, and many of his stories and books record his adventures and observations while traveling all over the United States. He was the first writer to do so thoroughly.马克·吐温真名萨缪尔·克莱门，他是第一位重视表达美国人的思想、语言和观点的美国作家。