美国文学学期论文-作业

关于美国文学的论文美国梦作为美国文学中一个永恒的主题，始终贯穿于美国文学之中。

下文是店铺为大家搜集整理的关于美国文学的论文的内容，欢迎大家阅读参考!美国文学的论文篇1浅析美国文学中的旅行与美国梦摘要: 对于美国人而言，上路旅行不仅是自由和美国梦的隐喻，而且是实现“显明的命定”(Manifest Destiny)的物质手段和方式。

本文以惠特曼的《草叶集》和克鲁亚克的《在路上》等作品为例，说明旅行以及过路仪式表现了典型的美国经验，表达了对美国梦的追寻、实现和传播，成为美国文化传统的重要组成部分。

关键词: 旅行;美国梦;《草叶集》;《在路上》一道路将人们从一地引向另一地，它是不同地点彼此沟通的不可或缺的桥梁。

原本各自独立、互不关联的两地因而被连接起来，产生互动，拥有了更加丰盈的生命。

几乎所有的文化都赋予道路以特别的价值，对之倾注了连绵不断的情感。

在美国，道路四通八达，如同一张网把人们的日常生活联系起来，而由于美国人生性“不安分”，不愿久居一地，加上酷爱户外活动，上路旅行便成了美国生活的一种实现方式，同时也成为美国文化的一大隐喻。

这一隐喻对于美国有着特别的意义，因为美国毕竟是由旅行者创建的：当初，清教徒远离家国，跨越大西洋来到这片陌生的土地;后来，他们从偏居美利坚东北一隅的新英格兰逐步西进，扩展畛域，奠定今日美国之格局。

毫不夸张地说，道路在美国的建立和发展过程中建立了不朽的功勋。

此外，美国幅员辽阔、地域广袤，加上经济繁荣，汽车工业发达，美国成为举世闻名的车轮上的国家。

出于工作和生活的需要，美国人花费不少的时间“在路上”，驱车出行几乎成为他们的必需。

旅行不仅是指从出发地到目的地的跨越，而且常被视为对某种历程的经历，例如，它可以象征性地指代个人的成长，或者是对某种信仰(如宗教信仰)的追寻。

穿越全美、尤其是跨越大片未开发地区的旅行，是勇气和冒险精神的体现，这种对未知领域的探索伴随着美国向西部的扩张而被放大甚至神化。

英美文学论文范文英美文学是一种重要的文化艺术表现形式,虽然是文学,其实也是反映当时时期的是思想文化和社会现实,体现的是西方文化的发展过程,也反映的是西方文化和思想。

下面是店铺为大家整理的英美文学论文，供大家参考。

英美文学论文范文一：历史文化在英美文学中的作用摘要：在诸多历史、社会、文化、政治、经济、生活方式、地域、宗教、价值观等因素差异下，英美文学作品势必出现千姿百态的形式和文学风格，只有深刻地理解上述因素对于英美文学著作的影响作用，才能够透析英美文学著作的实质，才能更好地理解英美文学著作中机智隽永的内涵。

关键词：历史文化;英美文学一、历史与文化差异影响下英美文学著作所具有的特点(一)历史与文化差异影响下英国文学著作的特点英国文学源远流长，经过了漫长的时间和时代的演变。

在这个过程中，文学本体以外的各种现实的、历史的、政治的、文化的力量对英国文学产生着影响。

英国文学是对于当时社会环境的一种映衬与写照。

文学内部遵循自身规律，历经不同历史阶段。

如盎格鲁-萨克逊史诗《贝奥武甫》;中古英国文学著作时期，代表作乔叟(Chaucer)的《坎特伯雷故事集》;文艺复兴下的莎士比亚代表作《威尼斯商人》《罗密欧与朱丽叶》《哈姆雷特》《暴风雨》等;新古典主义下的英国文学著作，浪漫主义时期，华兹华斯的《抒情歌谣集》;现实主义下的英国文学著作时期，代表作为夏洛蒂•勃朗特的《简•爱》，哈代的《德伯家的苔丝》，大作家查尔斯•狄更斯的《大卫•科波菲尔》《远大前程》《双城记》;现代主义下的英国文学著作康拉德的《黑暗的心脏》(1899)。

语言和风格的“标新立异”是英国现代派的最大特点。

战后英国文学代表作约翰•福尔斯的《法国中尉的女人》大致呈现从写实到实验和多元的走势。

从厚重的文学底蕴出发，英国文学著作发展到今天正在朝着百家争鸣、百家齐放的方向发展。

(二)历史与文化差异影响下美国文学著作所具有的特点美国的文学历史与美国资本主义的发展如影随形，虽然早期的文学著作隐约还有英国文学的痕迹，随着美国资本主义的民主与自由的不断演绎升华，美国的文学著作也大放异彩，形成了美国民族的特有色彩。

美国文学史课程论文A Brief Summary of the Historyof American Literature From Romanticism to Postmodernism姓名：叶红立学号：2011212831班级：2011级3班分数：2013年12月21日IntroductionAmerican is a multi-national country because of its history. Just like a big container, it puts in various kinds of elements. When different cultures mixed together, that can not only be co-existed but also form a sharp contrast, which makes American literature has a flavor of distinct and various aesthetic feeling.The history of America literature began with the swarming in of immigrants with different background and cultures. After that, American literature had been greatly influenced by the European culture for a long period. It was not until America’s independence, did Americans realize that they need national literature strongly, and American literature began to develop. Romantics emphasized individualism and intuition. This was an exciting period in the history of American literature. Like the flowers of spring, there were suddenly many different kinds of writing at the same time. The Civil War was a watershed in the history, after which American literature entered a period of full blooming. Influenced by the Civil War, the American society was in a turbulent situation. The writings about local life, critical realism, unveiling the dark side of the society and yearning for nature were increased. After the First World War, Americans were at a loss postwar, and the Modern American literature and Postmodern American literature began.This passage will have a further discussion on this period by dividing them into several parts: Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, Modernism and Post-modernism.1.Romanticism PeriodRomanticism is a movement of the 18th and 19th centuries that marked the reaction in literature, philosophy, art, religion, and politics against the neoclassicism and formal orthodoxy of the preceding period. And the American Romantic period stretched from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War.Romantic Period is one of the most important periods in the history of American literature. When Americans were constructing their country, they also began to realize their differences from their European counterparts. They began to hope to see an entirely different literature model which expressed American cultures. Great writers of that period captured on their pages the enthusiasm and the optimism of that dream.There were plenty of good historical reasons why literature was so prominent during that period. Politically the time was ripe. After the 1812 war against England, the United States was finally free. Economically America had never been wealthier, but the Industrial Revolution and the nation’s change in status from a small, agricultural country to a major commercial and industrial power led to a massive impulse towards rapid urbanization. Culturally American own value emerged. There were American publishers and copyright laws to protect the writers from having their works printed. And also there were readers eager to expand their minds.American Romanticism shares many characteristics with British Romanticism. It was greatly inspired by Wordsworth’s poetic encounter with nature in The Prelude. However, developing as it did, Romanticism in America exhibited features of its own. It was mainly in the American romantic writers’ works. For examp1e, the American national experience of "pioneering into the west" proved to be a rich source of material for American writers to draw upon. They celebrated America's landscape with its virgin forests, meadows, groves, endless prairies, streams, and vast oceans. The wilderness came to function almost as a dramatic character that symbolized moral 1aw. The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became a permanent convention of American literature. Such a desire is particularly evident in Cooper’s Leather Stocking Tales, in Thoreau's Walden and, later, in Mark Twain’s Adventures ofHuckleberry Finn. With the growth of American national consciousness, American character types speaking local dialects appeared in poetry and fiction with increasing frequency. Then the American Puritanism as a cultural heritage exerted great influences over American moral values and American Romanticism. One of the performances is the fact that American romantic writers tended more to moralize than their English and European counterparts. Here are going to introduce two representative writers and their works:Washington Irving(1783-1859) was the first American storyteller to be internationally recognized as a man of letters and the first great prose stylist of American romanticism, and his familiar style was destined to provide a model for the prevailing prose narrative of the future. His first book A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (1809), written under the name of Diedrich Knickerbocker, was a great success and won him wide popularity. He is best known for his The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon,Gent (1819-1820), especially in which two short stories Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow have become American classics. Later he wrote works of history and biographies, such as The History of Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828), A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada and The Alhambra(1832). After that, he spent the rest of his life living a life of leisure and comfort, and writing The Life of Goldsmith (1840) and a five-volume Life of Washington (1855-1859). He died in 1859.James Fennimore Cooper (1789-1851) is respectfully remembered as a master of adventurous narrative and as the creator of an American hero-myth. According to a charming legend, Cooper’s first novel Precaution(1820) was a response to his wife’s challenge to improve on the current British society fiction, and the failure of this work turned him to historical novels. Later, The Spy, a tale of the Revolution he wrote, became a great success in America and Europe. In 1823, Cooper published The Pioneers (1823), which together with other 4 novels The Deer slayer (1841), The Last of the Mohicans(1826), The Pathfinder(1840) and The Prairie(1827) became his well-known Leather-stocking Tales. Cooper went on to write over thirty novels,including exciting adventures of the sea like The Pilot. Cooper created the American historical novel using authentic American subject.2.Realism PeriodAs the economy developed, the nation witnessed an incredible expansion, among which the most influential one was westward expansion. The conquest of the new territories opened new horizons, but the country was also torn by the risk of internal division, which led to American Civil War.By the end of the Civil War a new nation had been born, and it was to demand and receive a new literature less idealistic and more practical, less exalted and more earthy, less consciously artistic and more honest than produced in the age when the American dream had glowed with greatest intensity and American writers had created a great literary period by capturing on their pages the enthusiasm and the optimism of that dream. Gradually, the Romanticism era in the United States was surpassed by another entirely different age.At about 1900s, American literature came to another entirely different age—the age of Realism. Realists searched for the social and human nature more directly. In part, Realism was a reaction against the Romantic emphasis on the strange, idealistic, and long-ago and far-away. It has been mainly concerned with the commonplaces of everyday life among the middle and lower classes.American realism was the outcome of the Civil War from all the aspects of politics, economy and culture. Politically the Civil War affected both the social and the value system of the country. America had transformed itself into an industrialized and commercialized society. The war also brought some obvious changes to the American economy. It had stimulated the technological development, and new methods of organization and management were tested to adapt to industrial modernization on a large scale. As far as the culture was concerned, the harsh realities of life as well as the disillusion of heroism resulting from the dark memories of the Civil War had set the nation against the romance.As a new literature, Realism emerged for an age. Under the influence of the Civil War and industrialization, Realism surely formed its own features. Realism aims at the description of the actualities of the life and free from subjective prejudice,idealism or romantic color. The writings are about local life, critical realism and unveiling the dark side of the society, and focuses on commonness of the common people, settings and events. Mark Twain is one of the representatives.Mark Twain (1835-1910) was the true father of American literature. He was an American humorist, lecturer, essayist, and author. His primary works are The Innocents Abroad, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. He intentionally deviates from classical genteel and tends to use local dialects, colloquial language, even Black English, slang, clipped structures and ungrammatical sentences. He was a combination of realism with romanticism. His works combine American folk humor and serious literature, characterize a local culture, elements such as speech, customs, and more peculiar to one particular place. The physical settings, and people’s behavior and thoughts are different from the other places.There are many other great writers in this period, such as William Dean Howells, Henry James, O. Henry, and so on. They have made great contribution to the world’s literature.3.Naturalism PeriodAfter the Civil War, it seemed that overnight the rapid industrialization of American society changed an agrarian nation into an industrial giant. As the westward expansion continued to push the frontier nearer the Pacific coast, the settlers found themselves subject to the ruthless manipulation of forces including the railroad, as can been seen in Frank Norris’wheat novels. The rapid social changes caused by industrialization brought serious social problems. While the captains of industry piled up huge personal fortunes, the ordinary man became the victim of industrialization. The harsh reality of the industrialization period changed man’s understanding about himself and the world in which he lived in. Living in a cold, indifferent, and essentially godless world, man was completely thrown upon himself for survival. During this special period, the literary naturalism was transplanted from France to the United States and became a very important literary movement in America.Naturalism was a literary movement of the late 19th century that yielded influence on the twentieth. It was an extension of Realism, a reaction against the restrictions inherent in the realistic emphasis on the ordinary, as naturalists insisted that the extraordinary is real, too.Naturalism, with its new techniques and new ways of writing, appealed to the imagination of the younger generation like Crane, Norris, and Theodore Dreiser. They tore the mask of gentility to pieces and wrote about the helplessness of man, his insignificance in a cold world, and his lack of dignity in face of the crushing forces of environment and heredity. They reported truthfully and objectively, with a passion for scientific accuracy and an overwhelming accumulation of factual detail. They painted life as it was lived in the slums, and were accused of telling just the hideous side of it. In naturalistic literature, man is always subject to the law of nature, which may not only be indifferent but also hostile. Therefore, gloom and despair characterize American literature of this period.American literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme economic classes who were determined by theirenvironment and heredity. In presenting the extremes of life, the naturalists sometimes displayed an affinity to the sensationalism of early romanticism, but unlike their romantic predecessors, the naturalism emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that lives were controlled by heredity and environment, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. The pessimism and deterministic ideas of naturalism pervaded the works of such American writers as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London and Theodore Dreiser.Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is the first American naturalism work. Norris’s McTeague is the manifesto of American naturalism. Dreiser’s Sister Carrie is the work in which naturalism attained maturity. These writers’ detailed description of the lives of the downtrodden and the abnormal, their frank treatment of human passion and sexuality, and their portrayal of men and women overwhelmed by blind forces of nature still exert a powerful influence on modern writers.Without satisfying people’s needs and refl ecting social conditions, Naturalism the same as Realism no longer stood on the historical stage. Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform. This combination of grim reality and desire for improvements is typical of America as it moved into the twentieth century, and paved the way to modernism.4.Modernism PeriodIn the year of 1914, the World War I broke out. World War I produced great misfortune to all human beings, but brought big fortune to Americans. Since the war was not fought on the American soil, by the second decade of the 20th century, the United States had become the most powerful industrialized nation in the world, outstripping Britain and Germany in terms of industrial production. After the war there was an economic boom and a deceptive affluence. American entered the era of big industry and big technology, a mechanized age that deprived individuals of their sense of identity. Along with the changes in the material landscape came the changes in the non-material system of belief and behavior. The war destroyed not only the lives of many promising young men, but also the early innocent beliefs of a whole generation, casting them into an age of disorientation, alienation and dissent. At the beginning of the 1930s, the economic crisis in America left a mark in the literary creations of this period. In addition, in Europe, there had been a big flush of new theories and new ideas in both social and natural sciences, as well as in the field of art which played an indispensable role in the conversion of American ideologies. The era of 1914 to 1945, marked by tremendous social upheaval and economic and political transformation, gave gave rise to modernism.Modernism originated at the end of the 19th century. It was a complex and diverse international movement in all creative arts: painting, novel, poem and play. It spread worldwide, particularly in the years following World War I. Towards the 1920s, these trends converged into a mighty torrent of modernist movement, which swept across the whole Europe and America. Modernist literature in America reached its peak in the 1920s up to the 1940s when this period ended.Literature of this period struggled to understand the new and diverse responses to the advent of modernity. Some writers celebrated the changes; others lamented the loss of old ways of being. Some imagined future utopias; others searched for new forms to speak of the new realities.The most recognizable "modernist" figures i n fiction are “the Lost Generation.”They were permanent expatriates living in Europe such as Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. The Lost Generation writers all gained prominence in 20th century literature. Their innovations challenged assumptions about writing and expression, and paved the way for subsequent generations of writers. Ernest Hemingway once took part in the First Would War, so many of his works deal with war or injury, and nearly all of them examined the nature of courage. By suffering from the violent of war, he felt that he was cut off from all his old beliefs and assumptions about life. He thought “The War had broken America`s culture and traditions, and separated it from its toots”. The works he wrote—The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea—inferred the state of mind, and they became the representatives of the feeling of this generation.Along with the greatest figures in “the Lost Generation” are famous poets such as Ezra Pound, Thomas Stearns Eliot, William Carlos Williams, and Robert Frost. African Americans also made significant contributions to the American modernist movement. Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and E. E. Cummings are three poets who opened the way to modern poetry. Ezra Pound started the “Imagist” movement, and his The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock has been called the first masterpiece of modernism. The Waste Land of T. S. Eliot particularly comments on the inhumanity and decadence of large modern cities.5.Postmodernism PeriodThe period after World War II has witnessed great changes of the United Stated of America in many aspects. The war, on the one hand, provided the base for the country to grow into a dominating superpower both in the western world and in international affairs on the global scale; on the other hand, it brought about tension and crisis within the country. Because the politics of America were influenced by two great fears. First, there was the fear of the Bomb; many Americans were sure there would be a war with the Soviet Union using atomic bombs. Also, in the late forties and early fifties, fear of Communism became a national sickness. Against such background emerges and develops the postmodernism in the 1970s.Postmodernism is regarded as a term encompassing all the new critical theories since the late 1960s. It is, accordingly, more reflective about what is subject, truth, metaphor, and human. Postmodernism is a literary experimentation focused mostly on fiction in the United States from the mid-1960s till about 1975. It became aligned with Post-structuralism and deconstruction between 1975 and 1985. Postmodernism became a general term for the cultural logic in post-industrialist society or the late stage of capitalism that is service-oriented and information-oriented.Post-modernism seems to grow or emerge from Modernism. Post-modernism involves not only a continuation, sometimes carried to an extreme, of the counter traditional experiments of modernism, but also diverse attempts to break away from modernist forms which had, inevitably, become in their turn conventional, as well as to overthrow the elitism of modernist “high art” by recourse to the models of “mass art”. In this regard, Postmodernism is a movement against Modernism.Postmodernism as a new development of literature was believed to be nothing, this group of postmodernists created some new rules for the game. For them, existentialist angst should not be what defines literature; instead literary imagination shows a virtual geography.The term of Post-modernism is in fact not an inclusive description of all literature since the 1950s or 1960s, but is applied selectively to those works in widereference to fiction. Firstly, war novels become an important genre after World War II, represented by Norman Mailer. Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead has been held as the masterpiece of its category. James Jones’ best novel From Here to Eternity is a powerful story of army life in Hawaii just before the attack on the Pearl Harbour. Secondly, metafiction as Chris Baldick puts it, is “more especially a kind of fiction that openly comments on its own fictional status.” A notable modern example i s John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Barth’s The Floating Opera, Barthelme’s Snow White, etc.EpilogueRomantic period stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War. Then the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism and Naturalism came into existence, which were against the lie of romanticism. The period between World War I and World War II is referred to as the era of Modernism. During that period, a large number of artists and literary movements are totally different from those of the 19th-century’s in style, form and content. Since 1945, the United States of America experienced some successive social, political and racial upheavals. Against such background emerged and developed the postmodernism.American literature has gone though the progress of development over 200 years. It is characterized by the distinct individualism, which is optimistic, free and always creative. The living American literature has been providing potent thinking headsprings for the writers past and nowadays, and it will continue reanimating the talents to bequeath and enrich the tradition of American literature, of which deserved to be proud.Bibliography1.Malcolm Bradbury, Richard Ruland, Published in Penguin Books 1992, AmericanLiterature From Puritanism to Postmodernism2.李权文，王卓，华中师范大学出版社2010年8月第一版，《美国文学史》3.王守仁，《<新编美国文学史>简介》。

美国文学毕业论文美国文学记录了美国人民不断探索、向西拓展、追求幸福的历程,艺术地再现了美国200多年的发展历史,并在不同时期以不同的表现形式表现出来。

下文是店铺为大家搜集整理的关于美国文学毕业论文的内容，欢迎大家阅读参考!美国文学毕业论文篇1浅析美国文学中的美国梦摘要：美国梦是美国文学中贯穿始终的主题。

不同历史时期美国文学中的美国梦有着不同的表现，如殖民时期的开拓致富梦、建国后的自由民主梦、内战后的扩张发迷梦，而到一战后传统美国梦开始出现迷茫与失落、二战后则走向了绝望与反叛。

关键词：美国文学;美国梦;本质;资产阶级美国文学从诞生到现在虽然只有200多年的历史，却产生了一大批对世界文学有着巨大影响的作品，在这些作品当中美国梦是一个贯穿始终的主题。

美国梦是目前国内人文社会学科的一个研究热点。

本文试图从论述美国文学中美国梦的演变过程人手，研究其变化的原因及在文学中的表现，进而揭示其本质。

一、美国梦产生的历史背景美国梦的产生有其特定的历史背景。

自从哥伦布发现新大陆之后，欧洲人就梦想着到这块土地上去掠夺财富，开拓疆域。

英国清教徒更梦想着到这里来建立起新的耶路撒冷&mdash;上帝在人间的王国。

而当时的士著印第安人尚未建立国家，整个“新大陆”都是“无主土地”，无边无际、任人开垦和占有的无限土地带来了无限的机会，许多在旧世界中不可想象的事情在这里发生了。

如果说得天独厚的自然条件是美国梦形成的基础，那么《独立宣言》的发表便使美国梦有了思想依据。

《独立宣言》不仅宣布了人“生而平等”，还将追求幸福规定为不可剥夺的天赋人权。

在欧洲旧大陆的封建等级制度下，灰姑娘只是童话里的人物，而在美国，白手起家“从破衣烂衫到腰缠万贯”的大亨则比比皆是。

在一个尚未定型的国度中，尚未定型的年代里，只要抓住机会，梦想就会实理。

于是，在美国文学中，美国梦也就成了一个贯穿始终的主题。

二、不同历史时期的美国梦一部文学史也可以说是一部美国梦的历史，有着200多年历史的美国文学记录了不同时期美国人的梦想。

美国文学学期作业（2016-2017学年度第一学期）年级：姓名：学号：论文成绩：An Analysis of Scarlett’s Character inGone with the WindA war swallowed a beautiful woman, a perfect family and a love. Everything seemed to be a dream, going with the wind.Recently,I have just finished reading a famous novel written by Margaret Mitchell—Gone with the Wind,which is one of the most popular works among American novels.It took the author about 10years.Gone with the Wind is one of the most popular American novels. W hen it was published, its sales broke many records among the publishing circles, and it is famous all over the world. The novel mainly describes th e life of Scarlett who is the daughter of Tara’s master during the American Civil War. Meanwhile with the hint of a triangular love between Scarlett, Ashley and Rhett, the novel depicts a wide and prosperous picture of the social life of the South in America. Not only the rich content of the novel but also the complex plots and the contradictions between the figures of t he novel have an important artistic effect on shaping the characters in the novel. Among all the roles, Scarlett, is the most successful one who is full of conflicting and complicated features.Before the Civil War, spoiled and beautiful Scarlett is a proud prince ss. She is also naïve and carefree for she is brought up in a rich family, in which they have many large fertile fields to grow cottons and many slave s that work for them. It is no necessary for her to think about anything butjust to dress in new costumes to attract the sights of the boys and to join t he balls.Wherever she goes, she is always the focus and center among the young girls, and she is adored by many men, which irritates the other girl s. So she gradually becomes a girl who is coddled, undisciplined, egotisti c, fractious and narcissistic. She believes every man around the village will fall in love with her, and she can‟t endure the talk without a topic of her. But her self-centered and exclusive character causes the tragedies of her love. After her failure to confess to Ashley, she doesn’t fall down or le ave away which shows her courage for life at the first time.With the outbreak of the war, she loses everything she owns. In the summer of 1864, Sherman starts to attack Atlanta and everyone is fleeing the city. But Scarlett has to stay at Atlanta with Melanie for she has made a promise to Ashley to look after Melanie who is going into labor，she even braves the life danger to escort Melanie and her newly-born baby to go back to Tara in the flames of war. Her kindnessconquers theselfishness, which shows her nice aspect. She is so horrible but she sticks to go back home, but what she sees in Tara is only the endless loneliness and desolation.The war absolutely changes the way of her life and her affectionate h omestead, Tara. Scarlett can‟t lead a life comfortably as a child any more , for the reason that no one can protect her from threat. Scarlett changes h er concepts for the new life. She lays down her position of a lady of noblebirth and changes her concepts of the old Southern life. She wants to fee d her family and herself through her own work, which shows her realistic character towards life. When her sisters and the house servants complain, Scarlett even works in the fields of Tara herself to ensure a good harvest o f cotton. To her, the memory of hunger is clearer than the memory of brai n. She vows her famous line, "As God as my witness I will never be hung ry again.”The transition of the living environment is the exterior reason for Sc arlett‟s changing her character, which causes Scarlett‟s distinctive charac ter. Before the war, Scarlett lives in the traditional and conservative planta tion and the life style forms her plantation master‟s character of loving la nd than anything else in the world and her rebellious character spontaneo usly. She leads an extremely poor life during and after the war, and that a bominable environment molds her character to confront the reality bravel y; and her independence and selfishness to overcome difficulties. The rich life experience before war; the unstable life during the war and the extre mely poor life after war provide the foundation to form the character of S carlett. And thus in such environment, Scarlett’s character can be complic ated.Scarlett has the strong courage to face fresh and blood and to overco me difficulties, but this wish of independence is not accepted by the socie ty at that time. But in modern society, Scarlett is definitely an independent female who has strong will. She has the spirit of not admitting failure ev en it is at present.Scarlett is a hybrid who exhibits more of her Irish father’s hard-headedness than her mother’s refined Southern manners. Although initially she tries to behave prettily, her instincts rise up against social restrictions. Scarlett’s mother Ellen and Mammy also teach her all that a gentlewoman should know, but Scarlett never learns nor does she see any reason for learning it. Scarlett shows her distain for the artificial manners. She does as what she says with the development of the novel. Scarlett does not like the other girls at that time, who lead a life of waiting, they wait for men’s allegiance and acceptance; they wait for love and they wait for appreciation and compliment. Scarlett is completely different from them at all; instead, she strives for love and happiness actively. Her action is not different from the modern people.Scarlett hates the rules of the society. When she becomes a widow who has to wear black weeds and can’t show her face in the public, she is very displeased. After the war, in order to rebuild and protect Tara, she even goes outside to manage a sawmill herself and does other business successfully. People at that time can’t endure women to appear in public for earning money, and the men can’t tolerate the women who can defeat them. But Scarlett disregards of what people say, but just does what she believes.As f or Scarlett’ view of love and marriage spends most of her life being adored and loved by others. Wherever she goes, she is always the center and focus among the girls. Although she marries three times, she never understands the meaning of love or gets the true love. Scarlett divides love and marriage into two parts, which proves that she is a character full of contradictory and complexity. In the novel, Scarlett has been thinking that she loves Ashley and some decisions she made are also related with Ashley. However, she never considers marriage as a serious matter but just treats it as a play game, and she marries with the men she doesn’t love just in order to resolve living problems.Life is filled with various contradictions, and when a contradiction is over; another is coming, so the plots of the story will develop further and the portrayed image will be more charming.As readers, in my opinion, we don’t browse it, but peruse mind of it and apperceive it. To learn how to depict a character and to deliver a mind though the character is what we should do after perusing it.。

美国文学选读期末论文英文学院11级13班1101011302陈欢A Rose for Emily----William Faulkner1.Introduction of the authorWilliam Faulkner (1897-1962), American novelist, born in an old Southern family in the town of Oxford, is regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.Faulkner trained in Canada as a cadet pilot in the Royal Air Force in 1918, attended the University of Mississippi from 1919 to 1920, and lived in Paris briefly in 1925. In 1930, he bought a pre-Civil War mansion, “Rowanoak” in Oxford, Mississippi, where he lived,a virtual recluse, for the rest of his life. As a writer, Faulkner’s primary concern was toprobe his own region, the deep South. One of his primary themes is the abuse of black by the Southern whites. As a master of a rhetorical, highly symbolic style, Faulkner was alsoa brilliant literary technician, making frequent use of convoluted time sequences and ofthe stream of consciousness technique. Though, his work was published as early as 1919, and largely during the 1920s and 1930s, Faulkner was relatively unknown until receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and his last novel The Reivers(1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked his 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury sixth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century; also on the list were As I Lay Dying (1930) and Light in August (1932). Absalom, Absalom! (1936) is often included on similar lists.2.Summary of the storyA Rose for Emily is Faulkner's published short novel in April 1930, which seems asthe most famous short fiction among his works. The story happens in a southern town-Jefferson after the civil war in the United States. Emily is a member of a family in the antebellum Southern aristocracy. After the Civil War, the family has fallen on hard times.She and her father, the last two of the clan, continue to live as if in the past. Neither will consent to a marriage for Emily to a man below their perceived status. Her father dies when Emily is about thirty. After her acceptance of her father's death, Emily revives somewhat and she becomes friendly with Homer Barron, a Northern laborer who comes to the town as a contractor to pave the sidewalks. This gives Emily's dull and stuffy life a little warm color. But Emily can't get rid of the constraint from family's dignity and the influence from her father. So, when she finds out that Homer doesn’t want to marry her, she kills him with arsenic. She thinks only this way can save her love and reputation.From that time, Emily lives a life of insular in her shabby closed house and sleeps with Homer's dead body for 40 years till she is died. The residents of the town know this amazing news till in her funeral.3.Writing Style of the storyFaulkner’s work is noted for its complexity partly because he deliberately places a considerable burden upon the reader. Instead of telling a simple straightforward story, he often exploits vague sequences, ambiguities, symbolism, experimental points of view, jumbled time sequences, avoidance of clear transition, withholding of vital information to compel the reader to join in the writer’s search for truth. Some of these techniques are used in A Rose for Emily.Faulkner’s chronology is unlike that of other writers of his time. He does not tell his story in linear fashion, but rather jumbles the sequential order. This technique builds suspense for the reader as the plot unfolds bit by bit. The whole story is a portrait of Miss Emily’s refusal to change. To highlight the thematic concern, Faulkner constantly shifts the focus of the attention to the retrospect of Emily’s life by way of flashbacks. Emily Grierson dies at the very beginning of the story. Then there goes to the recollection of Emily’s refusal to pay tax in 1926. The time of the second part jumps back to some thirty years ago, during which her father dies and she kills Home Barron two years after that.When Emily buys arsenic, the time is over a year after they have begun to say “PoorEmily”. Then for six months she does not appear on the streets. The fourth part deals with things that happen in 1987 and after 1897. In the last part, the time turns back to the year of the 1940 when Emily dies at seventy four. After the funeral, the town people go to her room and all the secrets are revealed. The displacement in the chronological time sequence allows the narrator to tell story in a most dramatic way and to fill in useful background details.4.My understanding of the storyThematically, this story is not as simple as it seems. The conflicts in the story can be interpreted on different level, just as can many of his longer fiction works. On the superficial level, it is a murder story with elements of Gothic literature—an eccentric woman living in isolation, an old decaying mysterious house that other people had not been in for decades, and, of course, a dead body in the house finally discovered after so many years. On another level, the story explores the inner world of human beings, or the inner struggle in the human heart. But what gives me the deepest impression is the conflict between the South and the NorthThe novel A Rose for Emily is written at a background of social change of the south after war in America. It tells a tragic lifelong story of a noble seed Emily Grison to show that the contradictions of people in South America when the north became to replace the south. Emily as a protagonist of the novel has complicated means. Firstly she stands for tradition, social model as an aristocrat. Secondly she represents romantic love when she falls in love with Homer. And when she is refused by Homer, instead of crying, she kills him with poison. Now she stands for a person who is cruel and callous. Emily is a character who stands for a victim in the confliction between the traditional south and new conception of north.The mentality of residents of the small town in the novel of respecting Emily is the symbol of common mind of the south people to the traditional south culture after civil war.People respect and call for her Miss Emily. In the long time to them, the Emily family is like the characters living in a picture. They see Emily as the tradition, obligation, even a monument which reveal a nostalgic emotion to a gradually fading away traditional culture.The residents send their children to Emily to learn ceramics and painting punctually and devoutly just as to the church in Sunday. We can see clearly that the residents are so struggling with helping Emily in her income to maintain her noble image. They use a nostalgic, protecting tradition mood to pay attention to Emily, even prevent Emily and Homer to get married to maintain her noble position. They hope to see a no corrupting, real kingly noble. The differences reflect a condition that south tradition is coming to be replaced by north. That the old colonel prevents Emily's tax to help her reveals the old generation's attention to vulnerable group. But, new senators are dissatisfied with this. They call a meeting especially for tax, send letters to Emily and make a delegation to visit Emily for tax. When new generation was sent to Emily to learn painting, they knew they can't learn something from Emily. So they stop to send their children to Emily. Actually, compared to the old generation, new generation thinks more about themselves instead of others. To some degree, it is their selfishness and indifference that cut the relation between Emily and outside. All these show the deep confliction between the traditional south and new conception of north.。

[美国文学的论文]美国文学论文选题美国文学的论文篇1浅析禅文化在美国文学中的渗透和发展一、渗透阶段：从爱默生到狄金森，异曲同工的超验主义和禅爱默生及其同伴梭罗是美国第一代热爱佛学的人物。

早在1820年爱默生的日记中多次提到印度宗教思想，他熟读《薄伽梵歌》，并且向朋友们推荐。

1844年在其主办的刊物《日晷》上发表了《法华经》的译文，这是美国第一部佛教经典译作。

作为美国文化的精神领袖，爱默生终其一生想摆脱欧洲的文化束缚，因此，他转向古老的东方文化以寻求帮助，中国儒家思想和印度哲学成为其超验主义学说的重要源头。

爱默生的超验主义有许多内容与禅宗思想不谋而合，如万物一统、活在当下、热爱自然、自立、修身等精神。

①禅宗完全摆脱了外来偶像崇拜和繁琐教义的束缚，爱默生也竭力推动美国的文化独立和个性的解放。

百丈禅师说：“日日是好日”，爱默生宣称：“如果我们能始终‘活在当下’，我们应该受到祝福，我们懂得利用每一降在我们身上之事……”②受爱默生影响，狄金森写了五百多首描写自然、探讨自然与人的关系的诗篇(约占她全部诗作的三分之一)。

除此之外，她的诗歌主题多是对死亡的独特理解、对自身的反省、对内心直觉的描述，甚至对“无我”之境、对“空”的领悟。

梭罗、惠特曼的作品也或多或少有禅的影子。

二、借鉴阶段：从庞德到史蒂文斯，从禅诗到诗禅19世纪末禅宗被介绍到西方之前美国文坛对禅的关注从对中国古典诗歌和日本俳句的关注中开始了。

唐代诗人接受禅学影响，导致了在一定程度诗的禅化。

禅诗在唐朝达到高峰，流传到日本后又与日本文化相结合形成了具有日本特色的俳句，这两种诗歌形式都成为禅的重要传播媒介，尤其在20世纪初意象主义诗歌运动的上升时期，大量的意象和简洁的俳句手法成了意象派诗人们借鉴的首选。

以意象派的压轴之作、庞德的《在地铁站内》{1}为例：这些面孔在人群中幽灵般地显现：湿漉漉的黑树枝上朵朵花瓣。

意象主义诗歌运动对以后的英美诗歌创作走向产生了深远的影响，它把禅的人生态度和处理题材的方式植入了西方诗歌。

Term Paper学期论文许昌学院2012-2013学年第二学期外国语学院美国文学学期论文论文题目：姓名：班级：学号：阅卷人：交论文时间：2013-6-4titleAbstract: F．Scott Fitzgerald is firmly regarded as one of the greatest writers in the history of American literature of the 20th century. His The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a classic works in his magical short stories. It tells a curious story of Benjamin Button who is born as a seventy-year old man and turns younger as the time goes by, and finally lonely died as a baby. The paper is intended to interpret the tragedy and reality of the story, and then further probes the reasons of the characters’ tragedy, the collapse of the American Dream and the characteristics of the Jazz Age reflected in the story.Key words: Fitzgerald; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; tragedy; realityF. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the greatest writers in America, because not only he created a lot of works in his life but also these works are greatly popular among readers. During his lifetime, he finished four novels, including The Great Gatsby (1925), This Side of Paradise (1920), The Beautiful and Damned (1922), Tender Is the Night (1934), with another published posthumously, The Last Tycoon(published posthumously, 1942). He also wrote more than 160 short stories, and some of them were collected in his short story collections, like Flappers and Philosophers(Short Story Collection, 1920), Tales of the Jazz Age (Short Story Collection, 1922), All the Sad Young Men (Short Story Collection, 1926), and so on. The theme of the majority of his works was the collapse of the American Dream.The 1920s were also called the Roaring Twenties and the Boom and the Jazz Age that is invented by F. Scott Fitzgerald himself. It was an economic boom, culture flourishing and mores shaking age (Wu, 2001: 45). Especially for the history of American literature, in the 1920s, there were a large number of great writers producing a great amount of brilliant literary works. And Fitzgerald was one of the greatest writers in that time (quoted in Wei, 108).Honestly speaking, Fitzgerald was an indelible literary giant in the history of American literature. He was called the spokesman of the Jazz Age, and also regarded asthe member of the “Lost Generation”who “caught in the war and cut off from the old values and yet unable to come terms with the new era when civilization had gone mad”(Wagner, 86). Meanwhile his tremendous literary works and…Fitzgerald used simple language to tell a curious case of Bebjamin Button, but the tragedy and reality of this story leave a deep impression on every reader.Every character in this story is a tragic image. Even though their tragedies are different, they have a common reason that is Benjamin’s backward life. Just because of Benjamin’s inverse-growth, his father is laughted at by others, and his wife suffers the sorrows of his betrayal. It is Benjamin that is the biggest tragic figure in this story. He has to accept his fate from his birth, even thoug he wants to find the way to cure his curious desease. He finds that he becomes younger and younger than before, but he can’t do anything just to accept it. However, on one hand, he is indulged in his youth. On the other hand, he has to accept the truth of becoming a baby who can’t remember anything. He forgets his past and even his current.This magic story shows the consistent theme of Fitzgerald’s works: the collapse of American dream. Just as the paper analyzed, the characters in the story had different kinds of dreams. Na matter what they were, they collapsed finally. The story also shows a deal of realitic things of the 1920s such as the worship of money and the new objects emerging in the 1920s. And the flappers were the obvious characteristic in the 1920s, which is also showed in the paper.Bibliography:[1] Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Shanghai: ShanghaiTranslation Publishing House, 2009.[2] Fitzgerald, F. Scott. This Side of Paradise. New York: Pocket Books, 1995.[3] Wagner, Nathan. “Turning Back Time: Duration, Simultaneity, and the Timeless inFitzger ald and Fincher's Benjamin Button”. English Theses. 2010: 85-86.[4] Wilson, Edmund, ed. Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Crack Up. New York: New DirectionsBooks, 1964.[5]成丽.“浅析菲茨杰拉德短篇小说《本杰明·巴顿奇事》中的魔幻现实主义色彩.”延边教育学院学报.(2) 2011:12-14.[6] 李斌. “传奇具备真实,魔幻饱含情理—《返老还童》评析兼与原作比较.”贵州大学学报(艺术版). (3) 2009: 59-62.注：1.文中请勿出现I, we, you等人称代替，如需表示论文中的作者，请使用the authorof the thesis;2.请勿使用口语来撰写论文；3.课从中国知网、万方数据库（可下载硕士论文）下载文章作为参考，但严谨抄袭；4.该模板的页码设置不合适，同学们请选择A4纸的自定义模式，行间距为1.5倍，从左侧装订。

Catcher in the Rye: the Naivety of ChildhoodSummary: Discusses J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye." Describes main character Holden Caulfield's fixation on childhood. Details how he struggles through teenage life because he cannot accept the responsibilities that come with growing up.In the novel, "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D Salinger, the main character, Holden, is a teenager who refuses to grow up because he is naively fixated on childhood. Throughout the novel, Holden struggles through teenage life because he cannot accept the given responsibilities that come with growing up. Holden is obsessed with childhood because he chooses to be wedged between a world of the innocence of children and the complex world of adulthood. Holden deities his two younger siblings as if they're candidates for sainthood because of his fixation.Holden is a teenager who refuses to grow up because he is afraid of gaining the responsibilities that come with it. So, Holden struggles hard to stay childish. For example, throughout the book, he does not want to take responsibility to communicate with others that may want to help him. He refuses to go home and confront his parents and face the consequences. Along with this, he also pulls the childish silent treatment toward his parents; because that's the only knife he has to hurt them: ."..she wouldn't've been the ones that answered the phone. My parents would be the ones. So that was out." (pg. 59) He is afraid to talk to people close to him because they'll be critical to him. This would also explain his lack of interaction with Jane Gallagher: ."..I kept standing there, of giving old Jane a buzz- I mean calling her long distance at B.M... The only reason I didn't call him was because I wasn't in the mood." (pg. 63) Since he is afraid of interaction with people close to him, he tries to get strangers to talk to, so the conservations he has with them won't go too into depth. He does not want to face the world of reality. For example, in chapter nine, Holden asks his cab driver, who is a complete stranger to him, for a cocktail once he's done driving Holden to the Edmont Hotel: "Would you care to stop on the way and join me for a cocktail"" (pg. 60) Therefore, Holden will try to get some random stranger for a beer, as they won't criticize him.Among other responsibilities, Holden tries to set rules up for himself like an adult, but ends up breaking them right away: "Last year I made a rule that I was going to quit horsing around with girls that, deep down, gave me a pain in the ass. I broke it though, the same week I made it- the same night, as a matter of fact." (pg. 63) Holden cannot maintain his rules, and ends up acting like a child, who needs someone else to set the rules up for him.However, Holden does show some transition toward adulthood. For example, he has a sexual temptation toward things he also considers perverted. When he stays at Edmont, he admits: "It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes." (pg. 12) In some aspects, he does show that he is growing up into an adult, even if he doesn't want to. Holden's strong focus of the ducks in the lagoon is also symbolic to his life. He is constantly concerned about where the ducks will go when the lake freezes: "I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away." (pg. 13) Just like the ducks, Holden is wondering where he's going to go in life. He wonders if someone will guide him to the right direction, or if he'll guide himself through it by instinct. In addition, the lake itself is also somewhat symbolic toHolden's life. When Holden visits Central Park to see if there were any ducks still around, he mentions: "Then, I finally found it. What it was, it was partly frozen and partly not frozen." The lake is transitioning into two different states, frozen and not frozen, while Holden is transitioning between childhood and adulthood. Since Holden chooses to be frozen between the transitions, Holden hates change. When Holden goes to visit the Museum of Natural History, he states that he likes the museum because it will always be the same each time he visits:"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deer would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket." (pg. 121)Therefore, Holden would love to live in a world where everything stays frozen, where nothing changes. This way, Holden can never grow up to be an adult.Holden is a growing teenager who chooses to be frozen between a world of the innocence of children and complex world of adulthood. He is wedged between these two worlds because he possesses a fixation with childhood. Throughout the novel, Holden sounds like he is some grumpy old man who's angry about everything in the world as he narrates his story. However, when Holden constantly shows his curiosity for the ducks in the lagoon at Central Park, we see his genuine, more youthful side: .".. I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go." (pg. 13) This shows that Holden does have thoughts and concerns that others would consider being childish. At the moment, he is fastened between the world of innocence and the adult world.Holden finds the adult world very repulsive. In chapter ten, when he is in the lavender room of Edmont, he makes several comments that support this. For example, he finds the band, which consists of adults, as putrid: "The band was putrid." (pg. 69) Among this, he also states that the older guys in the lavender room were old and show-offy: "They were mostly old and show-offy looking guys" (pg. 69) He looks around the room, and sees these adults around home, and all he could state, is negativity toward them.Since Holden has a strong attraction to the innocence of childhood, Holden struggles to stay as a kid, and ends up doing childish things. For example, in chapter ten, in the lavender room, he looks like a kid trying to act grown up when he tries to impress the three thirty year old at the table: "I started giving the three witches at the next table the eye again. That is, the blond one... I just gave all three of them this very cool glance and all." (pg. 70) To try and impress the ladies, he tries to create a cool façade of himself by trying to act older. However, even if Holden thinks he knows what's going on around him, he ends up knowing nothing, which shows innocence in his character. Throughout his time in the lavender room with the three girls, he says the trio is of lower intelligence than him: "You could hardly tell which one is the stupidest of them." (pg. 73) However, at the end of the chapter, they leave him to pay for their drinks, which actually is prettywitty: "I think they should've at least offered to pay their drinks they had before I joined them..." (pg. 75) So, in the end, due to his innocence, Holden is left as the dumb one, with a bill to pay.Holden wants to be the "catcher in the rye." In chapter twenty-two, Phoebe asks Holden what he's going to do in his life. Holden then states:"Anyways, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around- nobody big, I mean- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy." (pg. 173)Metaphorically, Holden wants to be the person to save the children before they fall out of their innocent knowledge into the repulsive world of adults.Throughout the book, Holden constantly praises his two siblings, Allie and Phoebe, as if they were candidates for sainthood. This is a very big example of Holden's attraction for childhood. In chapter 5, Holden is writing a composition for Stradlater, and states many wondrous things about Allie: "He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent. He never got mad at anybody." (pg. 38) Holden exaggerates that Allie is fifty more times as Holden is, but, how smart can one kid really be? Also, he says that he never got mad at anyone, but, every kid has been mad at least once to their friends and family, unless they're not human. When Holden was up in his hotel room, she explains for the first time in the book, what Phoebe is like: "You should see her. You never saw a little kid so pretty and smart in your life. She's really smart." (pg. 67) Similar to Allie's description, Holden deities his sister as if she's a child prodigy. Seven if she was smart for her age, it really doesn't say much. Again, how smart can a ten year old really be? Holden overrates his two siblings considerably, which is because of his fixation of childhood.However, Phoebe is the only person alive that he seems to actually love throughout the novel. Phoebe is the family connection to Holden, and becomes the catalyst for Holden's metamorphosis to adulthood. She is the only one throughout the book that is actually critical toward Holden and tries to push him to do better by agitating him: "You don't like any schools. You don't like a million things." (pg. 169) When Holden hears this, he becomes very upset: "'I do! That's where you're wrong-that's exactly where you're wrong! Why the hell do you have to say that"' I said. Boy, was she depressing me." When Holden's only connection of comfort is lost, he becomes knocked back into reality, and ends up saying that he's going to apply himself better at the end of the novel:."..this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I'm going to apply myself with I go back to school next September. It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is you don't. I think I am, but how do I know"" (pg. 213)Holden cannot accept the responsibilities and consequences that come with growing up, so toavoid the painfulness of maturing, Holden struggles to remain childish. He finds the adult world perverted and repulsive, but does not realize that he is slowly growing into the world. Due to his struggle to remain immature to society, he is fixated on the incorruption that children possess. He wants to be the 'catcher in the rye', which is a person who will catch kids that unintentionally run off a cliff covered in rye. Metaphorically, he wants to save the kids before they fall into the corruption that the adult world will entrap them in. Since Holden has a strong attraction to the innocence of childhood, he then worships his two younger siblings as if they were mini gods. When he finally gets to talk to the only close person he has, he is rudely awakened back into reality, by his kid sister, and is pushed to succeed.Work Cited:Salinger, J.D. "Catcher in the Rye"。

美国文学课程学期论文论文题目：（中文）从写作技巧分析《厄舍府的倒塌》（英文）A simple analysis of TheFall of the House of Usherfrom Writing Techniques学生姓名冶延菊学生学号201107050201411学生班级2011--2班学科专业英语学年学期2013--2014学年第二学期指导教师杨华所在学院语言文化学院2014年7月1日摘要作为爱伦坡恐怖小说代表作之一，《厄舍府的倒塌》不仅成功地塑造了典型的“不正常的”人物角色，而且在文章的框架结构、情节安排上有很多巧妙的设计。

文章中有许多对外界环境以及人物心理的细节描写，作者以娴熟的写作技巧将它们融合，并生动地创造了一个充满恐惧的氛围。

读者明知恐怖氛围是“被安排”好的，且其目的性显而易见，但是读者还是被恐惧紧紧包围，这就是爱伦坡所强调的“预期效果”。

关键词：写作技巧；恐怖氛围；预期效果AbstractAs one of the masterpieces of Edgar Allan Poe’s horror fictions, The Fall of the House of Usher in which the author not only successfully creates some typical characters who are usually “abnormal”, but also builds the whole essay through a clever design,especially in frame structure and organization of plots. Based on the skilled writing techniques, the writer make a horrific atmosphere vividly by lots of detail description about the outside environment and characters’psychology. Although it appears that this atmosphere is managed from “deliberate policy”, the readers are still wrapped by a great fear, which is emphasized by Poe---”the expected effect”.Key words:writing technique; horrific atmosphere; “the expected effect”A simple analysis of The Fall of the House of Usher fromWriting TechniquesWe all know, The Fall of the House of Usher is one of the most successful works of Edgar Allan Poe is considered the father of the modern short story. As to this writing, which is also an example of psychoanalytic criticism. And there are something meaningful and interesting worthing our efforts to study and appreciate, so I want to share some my own analysis about this great work with you.First of all, a great peculiarity of the writing is based on a clever structure design. On the one hand, the author does his utmost to create an impressive outside world (or we call it natural environment). And the author not only takes advantage of adjectives and adverbs in order to build a mysterious and scary atmosphere, but also relies on repetition of these key words. For instance, “During the whole of a dull, dark ,and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low the heavens,... within view of the melancholy House of Usher. ”At the beginning of the story, Poe is eager to create a depressive scene for us, and like these adjectives “dull”“dark”“soundless” whose appearance has decided the keynote of the whole article. When you read the first sentence, you can be grasped by the potential scare instantly as if you tended to be out of breath. And with the constant duplication of those main words, the environment is depicted more and more specific, vivid and appealing. All of these preparations provide a perfect setting for the characters’ activities.On the other hand, at the same time, the writer also creates an inner world of the leading character----” I”. When it comes to the inward world, there are also a lot of significant words are used, such as adjectives, nouns, verbs, adverbs, and so on. Especially, the writer is apt to use adjectives and adverbs to describe the subtle changes of the character’s mood, feeling and expression. For example, the writing is started with “...but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.”“...with an utter depression of soul which I can...”“...above all things startled and even awed me”, and the last reaction of the character is , “From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast”(Allan Poe, 2005). Throughout the entire story,actually, the reactions of the inner world are always changing with the variation of the outward world. What’s more, with the rapid changes of the outside environment, the changes of the inner world become more and more fierce and shaper, of course, catching our more eyes.Secondly,Allan Poe achieves his purpose of creating fear with the help of muti-pronged approach that is an effective writing technique to get an “the expected effect”. Because Allan Poe proposes that “It is only with the denouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention”(2013: P17), there is nearly no redundant words in his work. In order to quickly bring about a terrific air for readers, the author depicts the environment through visual sense. For instance, in paragraph five, “The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread ... web-work from the eaves”, “No portion of the masonry had fallen... the individual stones”(Allan Poe, 2005). All those descriptions of objects provides the receivers with a visual impact through which can make an impressive picture.paragraph twenty-five to the last paragraph, there are several obvious sounds, like “rustled uneasily”“a light step”“the ordinary commingled noises”“a low and apparently distant, but harsh,protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound”, and so on, which is mentioned frequently and always designed in a very silent setting. They are so intensive and vivid that the readers have no time to put together their imagination when they are involved in reading, so the writer tries his best to simplify the process of shaping a “expected effect” air, and he shows every details frequently and even deliberately. However, it is not attractive for Poe to build a perfect atmosphere just through the combination of vision and hearing ,as a result. He also adds the psychological description of the characters. At the beginning of the article, “I know not how it was---but , with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit”, and there follows another strange feeling, “It was the manner in which all this,...and I accordingly obeyed forth with what I still considered a very singular summons”(Allan Poe, 2005). With the time passing by, the fierce degree of the characters’inner motion becomes fiercer and fiercer. What’more, the changes of the characters’psychology tends to be more apparent and intensive,which brings the readers a strong feeling of fear. Even though the readers know that all of those plots are organized on purpose, they still can’t get rid of the great fear when they indulge into the wonderful and constant structure design. That is the reason why Poe’s essays are popular in spite of over a century.From what I have discussed, we can know that Allan Poe can not only create plenty of excellent details and plots, but also can make full use of his deliberate arrangement to his readers’ attention, and give them a feeling of “personally on the scene” . So, when you are caught by the fear, Poe’s “expected effect” has been achieved.References1.Allan Poe,Edgar The Fall of the House of Usher, Beijing: China people's Liberation Army Publishing House, 20052. 陶洁编著，《美国文学选读》（第三版），高等教育出版社，2011.63./p-454954734.html, 20124. /article/164bc968-bcfc-4db7-929d-08c922be3db0.htm, 2011。