自考英美文学选读(美国文学史)

PART TWO: AMERICAN LITERATURE

Chapter1 The Romantic Period

1. 主要作家及其作品：

i. Washington Irving:

The Sketch Book; Rip Van Winkle;

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

ii. Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Essays; The American Scholar; Self-Reliance;

The Over-Soul; The Poet; Experience; Nature

iii. Nathaniel Hawthorne:

Mosses from an Old Manse; The Scarlet Letter;

The Snow-Image and Other Twice-Told Tales;

The House of the Seven Gables;

The Blithedale Romance;

The Marble Faun

iv. Walt Whitman:

Leaves of Grass; There was a Child Went Forth;

Drum Taps; Cavalry Crossing a Ford; Song of Myself;

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d

v. Herman Melville:

Moby-Dick; Billy Budd; Typee; Omoo;Mardi; Redburn; White Jacket.

2. 清教主义

Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans. As the word itself hints，

Puritans wanted to purify their religious beliefs and practices. They felt that the

Church of England was too close to the Church of Rome in doctrine form of worship，

and organization of authority. American Puritans， like their brothers back in

England， were idealists， believing that the church should be restored to complete

"purity". They accepted the doctrine of predestination， original sin and total

depravity， and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God. But

in the grim struggle for survival that followed immediately after their arrival in

America， they became more and more practical， as indeed they had to be. Puritans

were noted for a spirit of moral and religious earnestness that determinated their

whole way of life. As a culture heritage， Puritanism did have a profound influence on

the early American mind and American values. American Puritanism also had a

conspicuously noticeable and an enduring influence on American literature. It had

become， to some extent， so much a state of mind， so much a part of the national

cultural atmosphere， rather than a set of tenets.

3. 超验主义

Transcendentalism has been defined philosophical1y as "the recognition in man

of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively， or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses." Emerson once proclaimed in a speech， "Nothing is at last

sacred but the integrity of your own mind." Other concepts that accompanied

Transcendentalism inc1ude the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that the

individual is divine and， therefore， self-re1iant. The transcendentalists reacted

against the cold， rigid rationalism of Unitarianism in Boston. They adhered to an

idealistic system of thought based on a belief in the essential unity of all creation ，

the innate goodness of man， and the supremacy of insight over logic and experience

for the revelation of the deepest truths.

4. 象征主义

5. 自由诗

Whitman is also radically innovative in terms of the form of his poetry. He adopted

"free verse，" that is， poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. A looser

and more open-ended syntactical structure is frequently favored. Lines and sentences

of different lengths are left lying side by side just as things are， undisturbed and

separate. There are few compound sentences to draw objects and experiences into a

system of hierarchy. Whitman was the first American to use free verse extensively. By

means of "free verse，" Whitman turned the poem into an open field， an area of vital

possibility where the reader can allow his own imagination to play.

6. 爱默生的超验主义思想及他的自然观

In his essays, Emerson put forward his philosophy of the over-soul, the importance of

the Individual, and Nature. Emerson rejected both the formal religion of the churches

and the Deistic philosophy. Emerson and other Transcendentalists believed that there

should be an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal

―over-soul,‖ since the over-soul is an all-pervading power from which all things come

from and of which all are a part. Emerson is affirmative about man’s intuitive

knowledge, with which a man can trust himself to decide what is right and to act

accordingly. The ideal individual should be a self-reliant man.. he means to convince

people that the possibilities for man to develop and improve himself are infinite.

Emerson’s nature is emblematic of the spiritual world, alive with God’s overwhelming

presence; hence, it exercises a healthy and restorative influence on human mind. ―God

back to nature, sink yourself back into its influence and you’ll become spiritually

whole again.‖ By employing nature as a big symbol of the Spirit, or God, or the

over-soul. Emerson has brought the Puritan Legacy of symbolism to its perfection.

7. 《小伙子布朗》中的寓言和象征

In ―Young Goodman Brown,‖ Hawthorne set out to prove that everyone

possesses some evil secret. The story illustrates Hawthorne's allegorical theme of

human evil. In the manner of its concern with guilt and evil， it exemplifies what