Unit 3 Ralph Waldo Emerson拉尔夫-华尔多-爱默生作品1 《论自然》 Nature2 《论美国学者》 The American Scholar3 《神学院致辞》 The Divinity School Address4 《论文集》 Essays : First Series5 《论文集：第二辑》 Essays: Second Series6 《人类代表》 Representative Men7 《人生的行为》 The Conduct of Life8 《英国特征》 English Traits9 《诗集》 Poems10 《五月节》 May-Day and other PiecesUnit 4 Nathaniel Hawthorne纳撒尼尔-霍桑作品1 《范肖》 Fanshawe2 《故事重述》 Twice-Told Tales3 《古宅青苔》 Mosses from an Old Manse4 《红字》 The Scarlet Letter主人公：白兰（Hester Prynne）齐里沃斯（Chillingworth）狄姆斯台尔（Dimmesdale）5 《带有七个尖角阁的房子》 The House of the Seven Gables6 《福谷传奇》 The Blithedale Romance7 《玉石雕像》 The Marble FaunUnit 5 Herman Melville赫尔曼-梅尔维尔作品1 《泰比》 Typee2 《欧穆》 Omoo3 《玛地》 Mardi4 《雷德本》 Redburn5 《白外衣》 White Jacket6 《白鲸》 Moby Dick主人公：以实玛利（Ishmael）埃哈伯（Ahab）白鲸（Moby Dick）7 《骗子的化妆表演》 The Confidence Man8 《战士集》 Battle Pieces9 《克拉瑞尔》 Clarel10 《约翰-玛尔和其他水手》 John Marr and Other Sailors11 《梯摩里昂》 Timoleon12 《毕利-伯德》 Billy BuddUnit 7一、 Edgar Allan Poe埃德加-爱伦-坡作品1 《安娜贝尔-李》 Annabel Lee2 《乌鸦》 The Raven3 《十四行诗—致科学》 Sonnet---To Science4 《致海伦》 To Helen二、 Walt Whitman沃尔特-惠特曼1 《草叶集》 Leaves of Grass2 《我歌唱自我》One’s Self Sing3 《噢，船长！我的船长！》 O Captain! My Captain!Unit 8 Mark Twain马克-吐温原名：萨缪尔-朗荷恩-克莱门Samuel Langhorne Clemens作品1 《卡拉维拉县驰名的跳蛙》 The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County2 《傻瓜出国记》 The Innocents Abroad3 《镀金时代》 The Gilded Age4 《汤姆-索耶历险记》 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer5 《密西西比河上》 Life on the Mississippi6 《哈克贝里-费恩历险记》 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn7 《亚瑟王朝廷上的康涅狄格州美国佬》 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court8 《傻瓜威尔逊》 The Tragedy of Pudd’ nhead Wilson9 《败坏了哈德莱堡的人》 The Man That Corrupted HadleyburgUnit 9 Henry James亨利-詹姆斯1 《热衷游历的人》 A Passionate Pilgrim2 《罗德里克-赫德森》 Roderick Hudson3 《亨利-詹姆斯小说、故事集》The Novels and Tales of Henry James4 《一个美国人》 The American5 《黛西-密勒》 Daisy Miller6 《一个女士的画像》 The Portrait of a Lady7 《波士顿人》 The Bostonians8 《卡萨玛西玛公主》 The Princess of Casamassima9 《波音敦的珍藏品》 The Spoils of Poynton10 《螺丝在拧紧》 The Turn of the Screw11 《未成熟的少年时代》 The Awkward Age12 《鸽翼》 The Wings of the Dove13 《专使》The Ambassadors14 《金碗》 The Golden Bowl15 《小说的艺术》 The Art of FictionUnit 10 Stephen Crane作品1 《街头女郎麦姬》 Maggie : A Girl of the Streets2 《红色英雄勋章》 The Red Badge of Courage3 《海上扁舟》 The Open Boat4 《新娘来到黄天镇》The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky5 《蓝色旅店》 The Blue HotelUnit 14 F. Scott Fitzgerald弗-斯科特-菲茨杰拉德作品1 《人间天堂》 This Side of Paradise2 《漂亮的冤家》3 《姑娘们与哲学家》 The Beautiful and the Damned4 《爵士乐时代的故事》 Tales of the Jazz Age5 《了不起的盖茨比》 The Great Gatsby主人公：盖茨比(Jay Gatzby)黛西 (Daisy)汤姆(Tom)故事叙述人：Nick Carraway6 《夜色温柔》 Tender is the Night7 《崩溃》 The Crack-UpUnit 15 William Faulkner威廉-福克纳作品1 《大理石牧神》 The Marble Faun2 《士兵的报酬》Soldier’s Pay3 《蚊群》 Mosquitoes4 《喧嚣与骚动》 The Sound and the Fury5 《我弥留之际》 As I Lay Dying6 《八月之光》 Light in August7 《押沙龙，押沙龙！》 Absalom，Absalom!8 《沙多里斯》 Sartoris9 《村子》 The Hamlet10 《小镇》 The Town11 《大宅》 The Mansion12 《烧牲口棚》 Barn Burning主人公：阿伯纳（Abner）萨蒂（Sarty）哈里斯（Harris）Unit 16 Ernest Hemingway厄内斯特-海明威作品1 《在我们的时代里》 In Our Time2 《太阳照样升起》 The Sun Also Rises3 《永别了，武器》 A Farewell to Arms 主人公：亨利 Henry4 《丧钟为谁而鸣》 For Whom the Bell Tolls5 《老人与海》 The Old Man and the Sea6 A Clean ， Well-Lighted PlaceUnit 17Ezra Pound埃兹拉-庞德1 《狂喜》 Exultations2 《人物》 Personae3 《中国》 Cathay4 《诗章》Cantos5 《意象派诗选》 Des Imagistes6 《在一个地铁车站》 In a Station of the Merto Wallace Stevens华莱士-斯蒂文斯1 《必要的天使》 The Necessary Angel2 《坛子的轶事》Anecdote of the JarUnit 18 Eugene Glastone O’Neil尤金-格拉斯通-奥尼尔1 《东航加的夫》 Bound East for Cardiff2 《在这一带》 In the Zone3 《漫长的返航》The Long Voyage Home4 《加勒比的月亮》 The Moon of the Caribees5 《琼斯皇帝》 Emperor Jones6 《毛猿》 The Hairy Ape7 《大神布朗》 The Great God Brown8 《奇异的插曲》Strange Interlude9 《榆树下的欲望》Desire Under the Elms10 《悲悼》 Mourning Becomes Electra11 《送冰的人来了》 The Iceman Cometh12 《诗人的气质》 A Touch of the Poet13 《长日终入夜》 Long Day’s Journey Into Night14 《月照不幸人》 The Moon for the Misbegotten15 《休依》 Hughie16 《更庄严的大厦》More Stately MansionsUnit 21 Ralph Waldo Ellison拉尔夫-华尔多-埃利森作品1 《看不见的人》 Invisible Man2 《影子与行动》 Shadow and Act3 《走向领域》 Going to the TerritoryUnit 24 Saul Bellow索尔-贝娄1 《晃来晃去的人》 Dangling Man2 《受害者》 The Victim3 《奥吉-玛琪历险记》 The Adventures of Augie March4 《只争朝夕》 Seize the Day5 《雨王汉德森》 Henderson the Rain King6 《赫尔索格》 Herzog7 《塞姆勒先生的行星》 Mr Sammler’s Planet8 《洪堡的礼物》Humbolt’s Gift9 《院长的十二月》 The Deans December10 《更多人死于悲痛》 More Die of Heartbreak11 《盗窃》 The Theft12 《真实的》 The Actual13 《拉维尔斯坦》 Ravelstein14 《奥斯比的回忆及其其他故事》Mosby’s Memories and Other Stories15 《最后的分析》 The Last AnalysisUnit 25 Joseph Heller约瑟夫-海勒1 《第二十二条军规》 Catch-222 《我们轰炸了纽黑文》 We Bombed in New Haven3 《出了毛病》 Something Happened4 《像高尔德那样好》 Good As Gold5 《天晓得》 God KnowsUnit 26 Toni Morrison托尼-莫里森1 《在黑暗中游戏：白色与文学想象》Playing in the Dark : Whiteness and the Literary Imagination2 《最蓝的眼睛》 The Bluest Eye3 《秀拉》 Sula4 《所罗门之歌》Song of Solomon5 《柏油孩子》 Tar Baby6 《宠儿》 Beloved7 《爵士乐》 Jazz8 《天堂》 Paradise9 《爱》 LoveⅠ.Complete the following statements with a proper word or a phrase according to the textbook.1.The arbiter of nineteenth-century literary realism in America was __________ ( William Dean Howells )2._______________had already pointed towards Mark Twain’s uneasy acceptanceof the values of nineteen-century American society.( The Gilded Age)3._____________ (1878) which one American c ritic described as “an outrage toAmerican girlhood” brought James his first international fame.( Dassy Miller)4.______________(1900), which traces the material rise of Carrie Meeber and thetragic decline of G.W.Hurstwood, was Dreiser’s first novel.( Sister Carrie)5.In the years preceding World War I, nineteenth-century realism and_____________remained vital forces in American Literature. ( naturalism)6.Writers of the first postwar era self-consciously acknowledged that they were a“______________”, devoid of faith and alienated from a civilization.( Lost Generation)7.Early in the 1920s the most prominent of the new American playwrights,_______________established an international reputation.( Eugene O’Neil)8.Jazz music of the American ___________-- the most influential art form tooriginate in the United States-spread throughout the world.( Negro)9.In London, Frost’s first book, ______________, brought him to the attention ofinfluential critics(A Boy’s Will)10.Frost employed the plain speech of rural ________________and preferred theshort, traditional forms of lyric and narrative.( New Englanders)11.In his finest novels, The Great Gatsby and_________________, Fitzgerald hadrevealed the stridency of an age of glittering innocence.(Tender is the Night) 12.________________was the first American to be wounded in Italy during WorldWar I.( Hemingway)13.A Farewell to Arms portrayed a farewell both to ______and to _______ (war;love)14.In 1952, Hemingway portrayed an old fisherman____________ in The Old Manand the Sea.( Santiago)15.The only Faulkner novel that had come close to being a best seller in its daywas____________, a book more famous for its shock value than for its literary quality.( Sanctuary)16.*Oxford was with some fictional modifications, a prototype of Jefferson, in themythical county of Yoknapatawpha, the setting of ____________and most of Faulkner’s subsequent works.( Sartoris)17.Emerson was recognized throughout his life as the leader of_____________movement, yet he never applied the term to himself or to his beliefs and ideas.( Transcendentalist)18.Emerson’s truest disciple, the man who put into practice many of Emerson’stheories, was_________.( H.D Thoreau)19._______________deals with the effects of a curse, and though the tale itself isfiction, the germ of the story sprang from the author’s family history.( The House of the Seven Gables )20.Hawthorne’s unique gift was for the creation of strongly _________stories whichtouch the deepest roots of man’s moral nature. The finest examp le is the recreation of Puritan Boston, _______________.( symbolic; The scarlet letter)21._____________ is a tremendous chronicle of a whaling voyage in pursuit of aseemingly supernatural white whale. (Moby-Dick)22.As we have seen, __________dominated the Puritan phase of American writing .____________was the next great subject to command the attention of the best minds.( theology; Politics)23.From 1732 to 1758 , Franklin wrote and published his famous_______________,an annual collection of proverbs(Poor Rich ard’s Almanac)24.In 1828 the election of the frontier hero ________________as the seventhPresident of the United States had brought an effective end to the “Virginia Dynasty” of American Presidents .( Andrew Jackson)25.Washington Irving’s ______________became the first work by an Americanwriter to win financial success on both sides of the Atlantic .( Skwtch Book )26._____________________was the first great prose stylist of Americanromanticism , and his familiar style was destined to outlive the formal prose of such contemporaries as Acott and Cooper ,and to provide a model for the prevailing prose narrative for the future .( Washington Irving)II. Define the literary terms listed below.1.*American NaturalismAmerican naturalism was a new and harsher realism. It had been shaped by the war and by the social upheavals that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age. America’s literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes. In presenting the extremes of life, the naturalists sometimes displayed an affinity to the sensationalism of early romanticism, but the naturalists 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. Although naturalist literature described the world with brutal realism, it also aimed at bettering the world through social reform.2.*Local ColorismLocal Colorism or Regionalism as a trend first exist in the late 1860s and early 1870s in America. It may be defined as the careful attegogoms in speech, dress or behavior especially in a geographical locality. The ultimate aim of the local colorists is to create the illusion of an indigenous little world with qualities which tells it apart from the world outside. The social and intellectual climate of the country provided a stimulating milieu for the growth of local color fiction in America. Local colorists concerned themselves with presenting and interpreting the local character of their regions. They tended to idealize and glorify, but they never forgot to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life. They formed an important part of the realistic movement. Although it lost its momentum toward the end of the 19th century, the local spirit continued to inspire and fertilize the imagination of author.3.*Lost GenerationLost Generation or the Sad Young Men, which was created by F.S. Fitzgerald in his book All the Sad Young Men. It refers to the post-World War I generation, but a group of US writers who experienced the war established their reputation in the 1920s. It stems from a remark made by Ge rtrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway, “You are all a lost generation.” Hemingway used it as an epigraph to The Sun Also Rises, a novel that expressed the attitudes of a hard-drinking, fast living set of disillusioned young expatriates in postwar Paris. The generati on was “lost” in the sense and its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world and because of its spiritual alienation from US, they seemed hopelessly provincial, materialistic, and emotionally barren. The term includes Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings and so on.4.*ImagismImagism is a poetic movement of England and the U.S. flourished from 1909 to 1917.The movement insists on the creation of images in poetry by “the directtreatment of the thing” and the economy of wor ding. The leaders of this movement were Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell.5.*Hemingway Heroes“Hemingway Heroes “refer to some protagonists in Hemingway’s works. Such a hero is an average man of masculine tastes, sensitive and intelligent .And usually he is a man of action and of few words .He is such an individualist, alone even when with other people, somewhat an outsider, keeping emotions under control, stoic and self-disciplined in a dreadful place where one can not get happiness .The Hemingway heroes stand for a whole generation. It must end in defeat, no matter how hard he strives. This is the essence of a code of honor in which all of Hemingway’s heroes believe ,whether he is Nick Adams, Jake Barnes, Frederic Henry .But surely they differ some from others in their view of the world .The difference which comes gradually in view is an index to the subtle change which Hemingway’s outlook has undergone.6.*The Jazz AgeWorld War1 was a tragic failure of old values, of old politics, of old ideas .The social mood was often one of confusion and despair. But during the 1920s American did not seem desperate, Instead, they entered a decade of prosperity and exhibitionism that prohibition, the legal ban against alcoholic beverages more to encourage than to curb. Fashions were extravagant; more land more automobiles crowded the roads, advertising flourished, and nearly every American home had a radio in it .Fads swept the nation. This was the Jazz Age, when New Orleans musicians moved “up the river” to Chicago, and the theatre of New York’s Harlem pulsed with the music that had become a symbol of the times . The roaring of the decade served to mask a quiet pain, the sense of loss that Gertrude Stein had observed in Paris. F. Scott.Fitzgerald portrays the Jazz Age as a generatio n of “the beautiful and damned”, drowning in their pleasures.7.American TranscendentalismAmerican Transcendentalism is more of a tendency, an attitude, than the philosophy.To “transcend” something is to rise above it, to pass beyond its limits.Transcendentalists took their ideas from the romantic literature of Europe, from new-Platoism, from German idealistic philosophy, and from the revelations of Oriental-mysticism. They spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society. Features:1、they placed emphasis on spirit as the most important thing in the Universe.2、they stressed the importance of the individual..3、they offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God.8. SymbolismSymbolism is the writing technique of using symbols. A symbol conveys two kinds of meaning; it is simply itself, and it stands for something other than itself. In other words, a symbol is both literal and figurative. People, places, things and even events can be used symbolically. A symbol is a way of telling a story and a way of conveying meaning. The best symbols are those that are believable in the lives of the characters and also convincing as they convey a meaning beyond the literal level of the story.Hawthorn and Melville were the two masters of symbolism. For example, the scarlet letter “A” on Hester’s breast can give you symbolic meanings. If the symbol is obscure, then the very obscurity may also be part of the meaning of the story. Answer the following questions.III. Answer the following questions1.*What does Huck Finn reflect?Huck Finn is a veritable recreation of living models. Huck and his father, Jim, the swindlers, Colonel Sherburn and the drunkard Boggs—all these characters had prototypes in real life. The portrayal of individual incidents and characters achieved intense verisimilitude of detail. Serious problems are being discussed through the narration of a little illiterate boy. The fact of the wilderness juxtaposed with civilization, the people half wild and half civilized, many of whom are coarse, vulgar, and brutal; and the fact of brutal slavery an of human beings—Blacks—being sold in the market places like animals. All these and many other incidents are depicted in true-to-life detail as the background against which Huck Finn’s awareness of good and evil develops. Though a local and particular book, it touches upon the human situation in a general, indeed “universal” way: Humanitarianism ultimately triumphs.2.*What is Mark Twain’s contribution to American Lit erature?One of Mark Twain’s significant contributions to American literature lies in the fact that he made colloquial speech an accepted, respectable literary medium in the literary history of the country. The style has swept American literature and made books before Huck Finn and after it quite different. Its influence is clearly visible in twentieth-century American literature. It is continued in both prose and poetry. Among the number of American authors who acknowledged their indebtedness to Mark Twain are Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, T.S.Eliot, William Faulkner, and contemporary authors such as J.D.Salinger,E.A.Robinson, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, William Carlos Williams,E.E.Cummings and even Ezra Pound. The importance of the style in Americanliterature cannot be overrated.3.*What are the major features in American Realism?⑴ Realism is the theory of writing in which familiar aspects of contemporarylife and everyday life scenes are represented in a straightforward or matter-of-fact manner.⑵In realist fiction characters from all social levels are examined in depth.This is a major change, and it is one of the examples of the truthful treatment of material, because this is how real life is.⑶ Open ending is also a good example of the truthful treatment of material.⑷ Realism focuses on commonness of the lives of the common people whoare customarily ignored by the arts.⑸Realism emphasizes objectivity and offers an objective rather than anidealistic view of human nature and human experience.⑹ Realism presents moral visions.Realists are aware of accepted social standards. In their works they recreatereal life and show the dilemmas that the people are having as they try to understand what life means in an ethical way. They are able to probe deeply into these problems of the human conscience. Their method is completely objective and carries with it the whole theoretical meaning of why people choose to be objective.4.*What do you know about The Old Man and the Sea?It is a short novel ,a fable of a kind ,about an old Cuban fisherman Santiago and his battle with a great marlin . For 84 days Santiago does not catch a single fish but he does not feel discouraged .He goes far out into the sea and hooks a giant marlin. A desperate struggle ensues in which Santiago manages to kill the fish and tie it to his boat, only to find that on the way home he has to fight a more desperate struggle with other dangerous giant sharks, which eat up the marlin, leaving only a skeleton. The old man brings it home and goes to bed to dream, almost dead with exhaustion. Here in Santiago we see again the spirit of the noble—if tragic –Hemingway type of individualism, contending with a force he knows it is futile to battle with. He keeps on fighting because he believes that “a man is not made for defeat …A man ca n be destroyed but not defeated”.However ,the old man eventually comes to the realization that in going far out alone, “beyond all the people in the world ”,he has met his doom ,and he feels good to be one of the human and the natural world .That he begins to experience a feeling of brotherhood and love not only for his fellowmen but. For his fellow creatures in nature is a convincing proof that Hemingway ‘s vision of the world has undergone profound changed.5.*“Make a comparison between Hemingway and Fitzgerald.The world after the first World War was quite different. All the old certainties were gone, and everything was new. There was affluence and excitement on the one hand, and on the other, disturbing indications that the old world was simply dying. Against this background Fitzgerald and Hemingway wrote. Fitzgerald was an analyst. He stayed in the United States and wrote about the Jazz Age. We go to him know what this world was like. Hemingway, on the other hand, reacted to it; he did not describe it. He went away to Europe and wrote about the expatriates. His world was basically rootless. It is Fitzgerald who was so broken emotionally by their times. Both were talented writers; both lost the ability to write rather early in their career. Ultimately when the dust of time settles down and a clearer outline appears visible, it may be that both will remain great, the one as the other, but for different reasons: Hemingway predominantly for his style, and Fitzgerald for the fact that he tried to understand American culture at its roots and thus had more to say to posterity.6.*What are features of Faul kner’s language?Faulkner is a difficult writer. Like all modern authors his demand on the cooperative response of the readers is exacting. He always structures his stories in his own original fashion and is proficient in employing a distinctive narrative method of gradually fitting in and of withholding or even giving confusing information. Gradually confusions vanish as context and periphery are definedand the center is revealed. There is a lot of interior monologues; the modern stream of consciousness technique is frequently and skillfully used. Words are often run together, with no capitalization and no proper punctuation. Sentences are not always clearly indicated; many long ones are pushed together in peculiar ways.One fragment runs into another without which often causes irritating perplexity.There is also Faulkner’s handling of language to consider. His prose ranges from colloquial, regional dialects to highly charged courtroom rhetoric, covering a variety of “registers” of the English language. Fa ulkner was a master of his own particular style of writing.第一部分殖民地时期的美国文学What are the characteristics of Colonial America?All of the works written during this period are utilitarian , polemical , or didactic .The purpose of literature for these Puritans was first of all usefulness . It should teach some kond of lesson . In content , the literature of the colonial settlement served either God or colonial expansion or both . The literary style of the earliest American writers , in fact seems to have been determined by a practical consideration of the sort of impression each writer wanted to make upon a selected group of readers . Puritans’metaphorical mode of perception helped to develop literary symbolism as they saw the physical world a symbol of God . Hence symbolism as a technique was a common practice in writing . The Piritans placed unusual stress upon plainness in writing because they were unusually interested in influencing the simp;e-minded people . Bearing the direct influence fo the Christian Biblical poetics , the Puritan writings are fresh , simp;e ,direct , and with a touch of nobility . As it faithfully imitated and transplanted European forms to the new experience , early American literature was as much a product of continuities as an indigenous creation.第二部分理性文学和革命文学.1、EnlightementThe eighteenth –century England is also , and better , known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age fo Reason . The Enlightenment was a progressive intellectual movement going on throughout Europe at the time , with France in the vanguard . The Enlightenment celebrated reason (rationality) , equality , science and human beings’ ability to perfect themselves and their society . The movement was based on the basic theories provided by the philosophers of the age , which ranged from John Locke’s materialism , Lord Shaftsbury’s deism , and George Berkeley’s immaterialism to David Hume’s skepticism . Whatever philosophical beliefs they might have , they held the eommom faith in human rationality and the possibility of human perfection through education . They believed that when reason served as the yardstick for the measurement of all human activities and social relations , superstition , injustice , privilege and oppression were to yield place to “eternal truth” ,”eternal justice” , and “natural equality” or inalienable rights of men . Everything was put under scrutiny , to be measured by reason . No authorities , political or religious or otherwise , were acepted unchallenged while almost all the old societies and governments and all the traditional concepts , including Christianity , were examined and criticized . The belief provided theory for the French Revolutionin 1789 and the American War of Independence in 1776 .Alexander Pope (1688~1744) , Joseph Addison (1672~1719) , Richard Steele (1672~1792) , Jonathan Swift (1667~1745) , Daniel Defoe (1660~1731) , Henry Fielding (1707~1754) , Richard B. Sheridan (1751~1816) , Oliver Goldsmith (1730~1774) , Edward Gibbon (1737~1794) , and Samuel Johnson (1709~1784) were among the famous enlighteners in England . As England had already gone through its bourgeois revolution , what the English enlighteners were lege to do was to strive the bring the revolution to and end by clearing away the feudal remnants and rep;ace them with bourgeois ideology .第三部分美国的浪漫主义文学4 What are the unique features of American Romanticism?Although foreign influences were strong, American romanticism exhibited from the very outset distinct features of its own. It was different from its English and European counterpart because it originated from an amalgam of factors which were altogether American rather than anything else. American romanticism was in essence the expression of ”a real new experience ”and contained ”an alien quality” for t he simple reason that “the spirit of the place” was radically new and alien. For instance, the American national experience of “pioneering “into the west proved to be a rich fund of material for American writers to draw upon. The wilderness with its virgin forests ,the sound of the axe cutting its way westward, the exotic landscape with its different sights, smells, and sounds(the robin rather than the nightingale is Emily Dickinson’s “criterion of tone,” for example), and the quaint, picturesque civilizati on of a primitive race—all these constituted an incomparably superior source of inspiration for native authors. A rude Natty Bumppo in buckskin, dwelling in a frontier blockhouse, treading a solitary bridle path through virgin forests was , perhaps , matter enough for any romantic genius. And indeed, American authors were quite responsive to the stimulus which American life offered. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s tentive treatment of the frontier and the Indians in his works such as Hudson valley, William Cul len Bryant’s sketches of the wild west prairie where no human being had ever set foot and James Fenimore Cooper’s five Leatherstocking tales with”their majestic descriptions of American’s limitless forests and broad blue inland lake”—these are but aafew instances whereby the new American sensibility began to make itself felt.And ,of course , we should not forget to mention Emerson,Thoreau,Hawthorne,Melville and Whitman, all people who were instrumental ,in one way or another ,in creating an indigenous American literature. Then there is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider.American moral values were essentially Puritan.Public opinion was overwhelmingly Puritan;social life and cultural taste were predominantly conditioned by the Puritan and cultural taste were predominantly conditioned by the Puritan atmosphere of the nation.Nothing has left a deeper imprint on the character of the people as a whole than did Puritanism;no one has been so successful in imposing his way of thinking on the continent as the American Puritan.puritanical influence over Ameican romanticism w3as conspicuously noticeable.One of its palpable manifestations is the fact that。
