《美国文学》学习重点说明：1. 教材：常耀信著《美国文学简史》（第三版）南开大学出版社2008年9月该教材的特点是文学史+作品评析，其中作品评析部分是非常好的文学分析范例，课堂时间有限，涉及较少，学习重点中也基本未列及，请同学们灵活自学。
2. 学习重点是需要重点掌握的内容，其他部分可略读，但并不表示不需要读。
3. 本重点适用整个学期，请同学们预习复习的时候都参考使用。
4. 重点概念及重点作家和重点作品在下文中都已列出，请大家尤其重视。
Introduction p. 1-10Colonial Period (1607-1800) –Rise of the American Dream1.Puritanism p. 11-12, 14-152.Jonathan Edwards p. 27-293.Benjamin Franklin:Poor Richard’s Almanac, Autobiography p. 32(para. 3)-36 Romanticism (1800-1865) –Prime of the American Dream1. American Romanticism: p.40-442. Washington Irving: “Rip Van Winkle”, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” p. 44-454.James Fenimore Cooper: Leather stocking Tales, American Westward movement p. 505.New England Transcendentalism: Oversoul p. 56-596.Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Nature”(The Bible for Transcendentalism), “The AmericanScholar” (intellectual independence), “The Poet” p.59-647.Henry David Thoreau: Walden, prose8.Nathaniel Hawthorn: novelist, dark side of human beings, The Scarlet Letter, “YoungGoodman Brown”, “The Minister’s Black Veil” p.70-749.Herman Melville: novelist, sea life, Moby Dick, Billy Budd10.Walt Whitman: free verse, Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself”, “O Captain! MyCaptain!”, national poet of America, social and national topics, strongly influenced byEmerson p. 88-9611.Emily Dickinson: poet, regional and inner world, topics on religion, death, love, naturep.96-10312.Edgar Allan Poe: poet and short story writer, “The Raven”, The Fall of the House ofUsher, Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter p.104-111Realism and Naturalism (1865-1918)—Questioning the American Dream1.William Dean Howells: middle class, The Rise of Silas Lapham p.116-1222.Henry James: rich class, international theme, psychological descriptions, The Portrait ofa Lady, The Ambassadors, The American, Daisy Miller p124-1263.Mark Twain: Samuel Clemens, lower class, local colorism, The Adventures ofHuckleberry Finn/Tom Sawyer, The Gilded Age p. 130-1404.Stephen Crane: pioneer writing in the naturalistic tradition, Maggie: A Girl of theStreets, The Red Badge of Courage p.141-1455.Frank Norris: McTeague, the first full-bodied naturalistic American novel, a case studyof the inevitable effect of environment and heredity on human lives6.Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, The Financier, An American Tragedyp.147-1507.Jack London: The Call of the Wild, Martin Eden8.O Henry: short story writer, the American Maupassant, surprise endings, “The Gift ofthe Magi”, “The Cop and the Anthe m”Modernism (1918-1945)—Disillusionment of the American Dream1.Imagist poetry: imagism, direct treatment of the thing, use as few words as possiblep.154-1612.Ezra Pound: “In a Station of the Metro”, The Cantos, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley p.163-1693.T. S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; The Waste Land p.171-1824.Wallace Stevens: “Anecdote of the Jar”, “The Idea of Order at Key West” p.1835.William Carlos Williams: “The Red Wheelbarrow” p. 189-1916.Robert Frost: New England poet, “The Road Not Taken”, “Mending Wall”, “AfterApple-picking” p. 195-2007.Modernist Novels: the Lost Generation8. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby, the Jazz age p. 213-2209.Ernest Hemingway: the Lost Generation, Hemingway hero, iceberg theory, The Sun AlsoRises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Seap.220-22810.William Faulkner: the Southern Renaissance/myth, Yoknapatawpha, The Sound and theFury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, stream of consciousness1949 Nobel Prize winner p.229-23211.Sherwood Anderson: Winesburg, Ohio; describing the grotesque12.Sinclair Lewis: Main Street, sociological writer, first American Nobel Prize winner,(1930)13.Willa Cather: female writer, writing about the Old West in traditional way, My Antonio14.John Dos Passos: 1930s, Depression, U.S.A. p.254-26415.John Steinbeck: 1930s, Depression, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, The Pearlp.265-26816.Drama: A renaissance of drama in 1920s—Eugene O’Neill, The theatre of theDepression in 1930s17.Eugene O’Neill: American dram began in 1916 when O’Neil’s first play Bound East f orCardiff was produced, The Hairy Ape, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day’s Journey intoNight18.Arthur Miller: Death of a SalesmanPost-War American Literature—Multi-faceted1.Post-war Poetry: p.313-3182.The Beat Generation in 1950s: Howl by Allen Ginsberg (poet), On the Road by JackKerouac (novelist), p.362, p365-3713.Post-war Novel: p. 411-4124.Saul Bellow: Herzog, The Adventures of Augie March5.J. D. Salinger: Catcher in the Rye p. 424-4276.The Post-modernist Novel: p.455-4597.Black Humor: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller p.459-4648.African-American literature: Richard Wright, Native Son; Ralph Ellison, The InvisibleMan; Toni Morrison, Beloved p. 504-5069.Post-war drama: Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire;Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman10.Theatre of the Absurd: George Albee, Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf?Literary Terms:1. American Puritanism: Puritanism is a Protestant movement which spread its influence intothe New England colonies in 17th century. The American Puritans believed that the Church should be restored to the “purity” of the Church as established by Christ himself. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin, total depravity, and limited atonement. 2. American Romanticism: American Romanticism is the literary movement stretching fromthe end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil War. It was in essence the expression of “a real new experience” and contained “an alien quality”. There was American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider. The features can be found in the major works by Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman.3. Transcendentalism: Transcendentalism is a literary and philosophical movement, associatedwith Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcended the empirical and scientific and was knowable through intuition.4. American Realism: First, American realist authors described life truthfully. Second, they putthe typical characters under typical circumstances. Third, they were objective rather than idealized, in a close observation and investigation life. Finally, realistic works were concerned with social and psychological problems. The famous realistic works include Henry James’s The Ambassadors and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.5. Local Colorism: As a literary trend, local colorism made its presence felt in the late 1860s toearly 70s. Local colorists concerned themselves with presenting and interpreting the local characters of their regions. The representative works of local colorism include Bret Hart’s “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and H. B. Stowe’s Oldtown Folks.6. American Naturalism: American naturalism is a literary tendency that prevailed in 1890s.Under the influence of social Darwinism and inspired by French naturalism, American naturalists wrote about the helplessness of man in a cold, amoral world, and his lack of dignity in face of the crushing forces of environment and heredity. The features of naturalism can be found in the major works by Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser.7. Lost Generation: The Lost Generation refers to the group of American writers who came ofage during World War I and established their reputations in the 1920s. The writers considered themselv es “lost” because their inherited values could not operate in the postwar world. The term is commonly applied to Hart Crane, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others.8. Image(in Pound’s poetry): An image is defined by Pound as that which presents anintellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time, “a vortex or cluster of fused ideas”“endowed with energy”.9. Free Verse: Free verse means poetry that has no regular pattern of rhyme and rhythm.10. Code Hero: Code hero is the Hemingwayan hero, an average man of decidedly masculinetastes, sensitive and intelligent, a man of action, and one of few words.11. Southern Literature: Southern Literature is defined as American literature about theSouthern United States or by writers from this region. The Southern literature meets its renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s, and the famous Southern writers include Ellen Glasgow and William Faulkner.12. Anti-hero(as in William Faulkner’s works): A central character in a work of literature wholacks traditional heroic qualities such as courage, physical prowess, and fortitude. Anti-heroes typically distrust conventional values and are unable to commit themselves to any ideals.Anti-heroes usually accept, and often celebrate, their positions as social outcasts.13. Beat Generation: Beat generation is a term applied to a group of American poets andnovelists of the 1950s and 1960s who were in romantic rebellion against the culture and value systems of America. They expressed their revolt through the literary works of loose structure and slang diction. Among the leading members of the loose group were the poet Allen Ginsberg and the novelist Jack Kerouac.14. Black Humor: Black humor is a term applied to a large group of American novels beginningin the 1950s, represented by Joseph Heller’s Catch 22. In the novelists’ opin ion, their society is full of institutionalized absurdity. Therefore, all of them hold a cynical attitude toward society and the conventional moral values. This despondency is reflected in their novels by the use of exaggeration as a vehicle for satire.15. Iceberg Theory: The Iceberg Theory (also known as the "theory of omission") isthe writing style of American writer Ernest Hemingway in which written words in a story focus on surface facts, those easily seen, but beneath and behind the words is a more complete structure supporting the story. Hemingway believed the true meaning of a piece of writing should not be evident from the surface story, rather, the crux of the story lies below the surface and should be allowed to shine through. It is likening the story to an iceberg in which only the tip is visible, but under the surface there is an unseen mass.16. Metafiction: a form of writing about fiction in the form of fiction. It is a style of fictivenarrative that tries to tell the readers that fiction is fiction and is not an illusion of reality as the realists have tried to deceive the readers into believing.特别提示：文学术语部分中，含有括号的说明只提示该术语出现在某部或某些作品中，不表示它局限于某作品。
