美国文学史整理
一、Colonial America 殖民时期
1、New England：Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and
Connecticut.
2、Doctrines of Puritanism清教
American Puritanism stressed predestination（命运神定), original sin（原罪）, total depravity (彻底的堕落), and limited atonement (有限的赎罪)from God’s grace.
3、Writing style：fresh, simple and direct and with a touch of nobility；the rhetoric is plain and
honest.
4、Life style：hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety.
5、Main writer:①Thomas Paine 托马斯·潘恩
work：Common Sense (1776) 《常识》
American Crisis (1776-1783)《美国危机》
The Rights of Man《人权》
The Age of Reason《理性时代》
②Benjamin Franklin（本杰明·富兰克林）
Poor Richard’s Almanac《穷查理历书》
Autobiography 《富兰克林自传》
③Thomas Jefferson 托马斯·杰弗逊
Declaration of Independence (1776)《独立宣言》
二、American Romanticism (early period) 浪漫主义前期
1、Characteristics：
①A rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism.
反对理性主义的客观性。
②Feelings, intuitions and emotions were more important for romantics than reason and common sense.
感受、直觉和情感重于理性和常识。
③An emphasis on individualism; placing the individual against the group, against authority.
强调个人主义,将个人与团体,反对权威。
④Stress on the close relationship between man and nature.
强调人与自然之间的密切关系。
⑤Fascination with the wild, the irregular, the indefinite, the remote, the mysterious, and the strange
疯狂的迷恋,不规则,不定,远程,神秘,奇怪
⑥Cherishing a strong interest in the past, especially the medieval.
对过去有强烈的兴趣,特别是中世纪。
2、Features：New experience in the American Romanticism.
A deep influence from the American Puritanism.
The “newness” of the Americans as a nation.
3、writers and works:
①Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 亨利·瓦兹沃思·朗费罗
A Psalm of Life (1838) 《人生礼赞》
V oices of the Night (1839) 《夜吟》
The Song of Hiawatha (1855) 《海华沙之歌》
The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858) 《迈尔斯·斯坦迪什的求婚》
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863) 《路边客栈的故事》
②Washington Irving 华盛顿·欧文
A History of New York (1809) 《纽约外史》
The Sketch Book (1819-1820) 《见闻札记》
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”《睡谷的传说》
“Rip Van Winkle”《瑞普·凡·温克尔》
(The cognomen o f Crane was not inapplicable to his person…..)
Bracebridge Hall (1822) 《布雷斯布里奇田庄》
Tales of a Traveller (1824) 《旅客谈》
③James Fennimore Cooper 詹姆斯·费尼莫尔·库柏
Leather-stocking Tales 《皮袜子故事集》
The Pioneer 《拓荒者》
The Prairie 《大草原》
The Spy 《间谍》
三、New England Transcendentalism (新英格兰超验主义)
1、Over-soul（超灵）~was an all-pervading power goodness, omnipresent and omnipotent.(简答)
Individualism individual was the most important
a fresh view of nature symbolic of the Spirit or God.
2、writers and works:
①Ralph Waldo Emerson 艾默生
Nature (1836)《论自然》
<节选：Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.>
The American Scholar (1837) 《论美国学者》
Divinity School Address (1838) 《神学院演说》
Self-Reliance (1841) 《论自助》
Representative Men (1850)《代表人物》
The Transcendentalist 《超验主义者》
The Over-Soul 《论超灵》
②Henry David Thoreau 梭罗
Walden; or Life in the Woods (1854)《瓦尔登湖；或林中生活》
<节选Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. ……We can never have enough of Nature. >
