美国文学史（1）所学知识点总结
I The Colonial Period
Captain John Smith
American Puritanism
II The Age of Enlightenment
“Reason ”
1. Benjamin Franklin
1）Aotubiography;
2）Poor Richard’s Almanac
2. Thomas Paine:
Common Sense
III Romantic Period
1. Washington Irving “Father of American Literature”
1)“Rip Van Winkle”
2)“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
2. James Fennimore Cooper
“frontier, wilderness”
Leatherstocking Tales : a series of 5 novels:
The Deerslayer; The Last of the Mohicans; The Pathfinder;
The Pioneers; The Prarie
3. Nathaniel Hawthonre
The Scaletter Letter
(Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingwoth, Arthur Dimmesdale, Pearl,) 4. Herman Melville:
Moby Dick (symbols, major themes, characters: Ishmael . Ahab) 5: Two transcendentalists:
New England Transcendentalism (major features;)
Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Nature”
Henry David Thoreau: Waldon and “Civel Disobedience”
6. Edgar Allan Poe
Gothic Tales : Major features
a short story: “The Fall of the House of Usher”;
Poems: “The Raven”; “To Helen”
7. Two Greatest poets in 19th century America
Walt Whitman : Free verse ; Leaves of Grass
“O Captain! My Captain!”
“Song of Myself”
Emily Dickinson:
“Because I could not stop for Death”
“Wild Nights, Wild Nights ”
IV. American Realism
(Definition; fidelity, actuality, truthful dipiction of life)
1. Willam Dean Howells
2. Mark Twain (Local Colorism)
3. Henry James (international theme) American Naturalism :
(3 major ideas; mood:pessimistic Stephne Crane :
The Red Badge of Courage (war) Maggie, A Girl of Streets
Frank Norris:
The Octopus
Theodore Dreiser:
Sister Carrie
