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A Concise History of American Literature
Chapter 1 Colonial Period
I.Jonathan Edwards
1.life
2.works
(1)The Freedom of the Will
(2)The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended
(3)The Nature of True Virtue
3.ideas – pioneer of transcendentalism
(1)The spirit of revivalism
(2)Regeneration of man
(3)God’s presence
(4)Puritan idealism
II.Benjamin Franklin
1.works
(1)Poor Richard’s Almanac
(2)Autobiography
2.contribution
(1)He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital and the American
Philosophical Society.
(2)He was called “the new Prometheus who had stolen fire (electricity
in this case) from heaven”.
(3)Everything seems to meet in this one man –“Jack of all trades”.
Herman Melville thus described him “master of each and mastered
by none”.
Chapter 2 American Romanticism
Section 1 Early Romantic Period
I.Washington Irving
1.several names attached to Irving
(1)first American writer
(2)the messenger sent from the new world to the old world
(3)father of American literature
2.works
(1)A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End
of the Dutch Dynasty
(2)The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (He won a measure of
international recognition with the publication of this.)
(3)The History of the Life and V oyages of Christopher Columbus
(4)A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada
(5)The Alhambra
3.Literary career: two parts
(1)1809~1832
a.Subjects are either English or European
b.Conservative love for the antique
(2)1832~1859: back to US
4.style – beautiful
(1)gentility, urbanity, pleasantness
(2)avoiding moralizing – amusing and entertaining
(3)enveloping stories in an atmosphere
(4)vivid and true characters
(5)humour – smiling while reading
(6)musical language
II.James Fenimore Cooper
1.works
(1)Precaution (1820, his first novel, imitating Austen’s Pride and
Prejudice)
(2)The Spy (his second novel and great success)
(3)Leatherstocking Tales (his masterpiece, a series of five novels)
The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The
Pioneer, The Prairie
2.point of view
the theme of wilderness vs. civilization, freedom vs. law, order vs.
change, aristocrat vs. democrat, natural rights vs. legal rights
3.style
(1)highly imaginative
(2)good at inventing tales
(3)good at landscape description
(4)conservative
(5)characterization wooden and lacking in probability
(6)language and use of dialect not authentic
4.literary achievements
He created a myth about the formative period of the American nation. If the history of the United States is, in a sense, the process of the American settlers exploring and pushing the American frontier forever westward, then Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales effectively approximates the American national experience of adventure into the West. He turned the west and frontier as a useable past and he helped to introduce western tradition to American literature.
Section 2 Summit of Romanticism – American Transcendentalism
I.Appearance
1836, “Nature” by Emerson
II.Features
1.spirit/oversoul
2.importance of individualism
3.nature – symbol of spirit/God
garment of the oversoul
4.focus in intuition (irrationalism and subconsciousness)
III.Influence
1.It served as an ethical guide to life for a young nation and brought about
the idea that human can be perfected by nature. It stressed religious tolerance, called to throw off shackles of customs and traditions and go forward to the development of a new and distinctly American culture.
2.It advocated idealism that was great needed in a rapidly expanded
economy where opportunity often became opportunism, and the desire to “get on” obscured the moral necessity for rising to spiritual height.
3.It helped to create the first American renaissance –one of the most
prolific period in American literature.
IV.Ralph Waldo Emerson
1.works
(1)Nature
(2)Two essays: The American Scholar, The Poet
2.point of view
(1)One major element of his philosophy is his firm belief in the
transcendence of the “oversoul”.
(2)He regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral
influence on man, and advocated a direct intuition of a spiritual and
immanent God in nature.
(3)If man depends upon himself, cultivates himself and brings out the
divine in himself, he can hope to become better and even perfect.
This is what Emerson means by “the infinitude of man”.
(4)Everyone should understand that he makes himself by making his
world, and that he makes the world by making himself.
3.aesthetic ideas
(1)He is a complete man, an eternal man.
(2)True poetry and true art should ennoble.
(3)The poet should express his thought in symbols.
