美国文学资料整理

Reason and revolution:

Benjamin Franklin-the only good American author before the Revolutionary War/founded

Junto,a club for informal discussion of science, economic and political ideas/found the university

of Pennsylvania/inventions: lighting rod,stove,bifocal glasses, printing press,armonica/served in

the Continental Congress/aided Jefferson in writing the Declaration of Independence/his

neswerpaper:Philadelphis Gazette./magazine:Gernaral Magazine./His shadow lies heavier than

any other man‟s on this young nation./Biographical Introduction.

Poor Richard‟s almanac

Romanticism:

Washington Irving-the first great prose stylist of American romanticism/the apparent ease of his

writing in not simply that of the gifted amateur; it results from his purposeful identification of his

whole personality with what he wrote/his enthusiasm for the current European romanticism

enabled him to combine these with his independents literary personality and American root/he was

the first great belletrist, writing always for pleasure/the didactic and utilitarian had formerly

prevailed/write good history and biography as literary entertainment/his influence abroad, as

writer,visitor,diplomat,was that of a gifted cultural ambassador/the only American writer of his

generation who could chide the British in an atmosphere of good humor/producing the

Salmagundi paper/In 1836 he made his home at Sunnyside, near Tarrytown, so lovingly described

years as “Sleepy Hollow” The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is—along with “Rip Van Winkle”—his most lasting artistic achievement.

Jonathan Oldstyle: satires of New York life/A History of New York, by Diedrich

Knickerbocker/Bracebridge Hall/social comedy: Charles the Second/the Merry Monarch/the

Alhambra/Life of George Washington

James Fenimore Cooper- two kinds of stories: the sea adventure tale and the frontier saga

(Leatherstocking Tales: the Deerslayer, the last of the Mohivans, the Pathfinder, the Pioneers, the

Prairie)/He made the American conscious of his past and the European conscious of

America)/Smith‟s question: who reads an American book?-Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Poe.

The spy

Edgar Allan Poe-in 1833, he won a contest wit his story “Ms.Found in a Bottle” in 1833/editor

with the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, Graham‟s Magazine, Burton‟s Gentleman‟s

Magazine (The Fall of the House of Usher first appeared)/his first collection of short stories, Tales

of the Grotesque and Arabesque, appeared in 1840/

Ralph Waldo Emerson-was responsible for bringing Transcendentalism to New England/the

leader of the movement/His first book-Nature/The American Scholar and the Divinity School

Address/most important works: Representation Men, English Traits/his harsh rhythms and striking

images appeal to many modern readers as artful technique/his unit of thought is generally the

sentence rather than the paragraph/our intellectual Declaration of Independence/Free should be the

scholar-free and brave.

Henry David Thoreau-Emerson‟s trust disciple/For Thoreau, as for Emerson, self-reliance and

independence of mind ranked above all. From Walden

Nathaniel Hawthorne-The House of the Seven Gables: deals with the effects of curse/his

material by observing and listening to others/he reveals the depth of his concern with the dark side

of the Puritanism, the harshness and the persecutions/Mosses from an old manse/Surveyor of the

Port Salem/a consular position in Liverpool/Rome: where he found the inspiration for his novel

The Marble Faun/his gift was for the creation of strongly symbolic stories which touch the deepest

roots of man‟s moral nature/In “Ethan Brand” a marble heart stands for pride and isolation from

one‟s fellow men/”Young Goodman Brown “uses the background of witchcraft to explore

uncertainties of belief that trouble a man‟s heart and mind/ “Dr.Heidegger‟s Experiment” and “The

Ambitious Guest” have symbolic and legendary qualities.“The Great Stone Face” is another of his

allegorical stories. „the largest brain with the largest heart” in American Literature-Melville/Poe

was concerned with the immediate emotional effects of literature and often seemed indifferent to

investigations of value or morality. To Hawthorne and Melville, the telling of a tale, was a way of

inquiring into the meaning of life.

Herman Melville-A whaling ship,he said ,was “my Yale College and my Harvard”/At

twenty-two he signed for a voyage on the whaler Acushnet /Typee was a romanticized account of

his stay among the Polynesians/was knows as the “man who lived among cannibals”/Omoo about

his adventures on Tahiti and other islands/Melville based Bedburn on his first voyage to England