美国文学史及选读教案

闽江学院

教案

课程名称:主要英语国家文学史及文学作品选读 2 课程代码: 31020022

授课专业班级：英语本科, 英语师范, 英语专升本

授课教师：吴文南

系别：外语系

2010年3 月2 日

Introduction

Teaching aid tool: a map of early America

Teaching aim: the students learn why and how to learn literature course, get the general idea of the colonial America and their literary forms.

Key Points: a. learning aim;

b. Learning method;

c. Colonial American characteristics.

I.Introduction of the course

1.Why should we learn the course:

a.One of the main reasons might be that literature offers a bountiful and extremely varied body of written material, which is “important in the sense that it says something about fundamental human issues and which is enduring rather than ephemeral. Its relevance moves with the passing of time, but seldom disappears completely the Shakespeare plays whose ending were rewritten to conform to late 17th century taste and which were later staged to give maximum prominence to their romantic hero figures are now explored for their psychoanalytic import. In this way, though its meaning does not remain static, a literary work can transcend both time and culture to speak directly to a reader in another country or a different period of history.

Literature is authentic material. By that we simply mean that most works of

literature are not fashioned for the specific purpose of teaching a language.

Recent course materials have quite rightly incorporated many authentic

samples of language---for example, travel timetable, city plans, forms,

pamphlets, cartoons, advertisements, newspaper or magazine articles.

Learners are thus exposed to language that is as genuine and undistorted as

can be managed in the classroom context. In reading literary texts, students

have also to cope with language intended for native speakers and thus we

gain additional familiarity with many different linguistic uses, forms and

conventions of the written mode with irony, exposition, argument, narration

and so on.

b. Cultural enrichment:

For many language learners, more indirect routes to understand a country must be adopted so that they gain an understanding of the way of life of the country: radio programmers, films and videos, newspapers and last, literary works. It is true of course that the “world” of a novel, play, or short story is a created one, yet it offers a full and vivid context in which characters from many social backgrounds can be depicted. A reader can discover their thoughts, feelings, customs, and possessions: what they buy, believe in, fear, enjoy; how they speak and behave closed doors. Reading the literature of a historical period is one of the ways we have to help us imagine what life was like in that other foreign territory. Literature is perhaps best seen as a complement to other materials used to increase the foreign learner?s insight into the country whose language is being learnt.

c. language enrichment: we have said that reading literary works exposes the student

to many function of the written language, but what about other linguistic advantages? Language enrichment is one benefit often sought through literature, while there is little a=doubt that extensive reading increases a learner?s receptive vocabulary and facilitates transfer to a more active form of knowledge, it is sometimes objected that literature does not give learners the kind of vocabulary they really need. It may be “authentic” in the sense already mentioned, but the language of literary works is not typical of the language of daily life, nor is it like the language used in learners?textbooks. We would not wish students to think that Elizabeth Berret Brownning?s “How Do I love Thee? Is the kind of utterance normally whispered into a lover?s era nowadays! The objection to literature on the grounds of lexical appropracy has some validity, but it need not be an overriding one if teachers make a judicious choice of the text to be read, considering it as a counterpoise and supplement to other materials.

On the positive side, literature provides a rich context in which individual lexical or syntactical items are made more memorable. Reading a substantial and contextual zed body of text, students gain familiarity with many features of the written language ---the formation and function of relines, the variety of possible structures, the different ways of connecting ideas---which broaden and enrich their own writing skills. The extensive reading required in tackling a novel or long play develops the student?s ability to make inferences from linguistic clues, and to deduce meaning from context, both useful tools in reading other sorts of material as well. Literature helps extend the intermediate or advanced learner?s awareness of the range of language itself. Literary language is not always that of daily communication, as we have mentioned, but it is special in its way. It is heightened: sometimes elaborate, sometimes marvelously simply yet, somehow, absolutely “right”.

2.What should we learn?

History and Anthology of American literature

3.Some Literary works:

Selected Reading in American Literature 扬岂深

Selected Reading in American Literature 陶洁

Selected Reading in American Literature 常耀信

Contemporary American Literature with Collateral Readings 秦小孟

High Lights of American Literature 钱青

An Anthology of 20th Century American Fiction 万培德

A Survey of American Literature 常耀信

20世纪美国文学导论李公昭

二十世纪美国文学导读张立新

Part I The Literature of Colonial America

I.Teaching Time: 2 teaching hours.

II.Teaching Aim: through introduction, the students should get an idea about the history and development of American nation and how did the American literature came into being and what is the characteristic of its early literature.

III.Teaching method: Teacher?s Presentation.

IV.Teaching Tool: multi-medium.

V.Key points: the characteristics of early literature.

Introduction

I.The native Americans and their culture:

Before being explored by European adventurers the American Continent had long been inhabitated by the natives---American Indians. Physical characteristics of the American Indians are mongolocial or a mixture of that with something else. They probably first began coming from Asia to America during the Ice …Age,8000-5999 BC. They crossed Berring Strait by raft. Through hundred and thousands of years these earliest inhabitants developed their own civilizations. They learned agriculture, basketry and pottery. The most striking achievements were in agriculture. Maize---“Indian Corn” was developed from a wild grass. The white potato, the cacao bean, tobacco were all developed by Indians. Indians remained in tribe society.

II.The historical background of the Colonial Time:

1.the first England settlement: Christophe Columbus (1451 he

believed the world is round, find the route to East by sailing West, he

asked the help from Queen of Spain to support him. On Aug. 3. 1492,

three small vessels set sail with 100 crews, after several months of

sailing they arrived at Balama Island---San Salvador on Oct. 12.

1492. He landed and in March 1493 returned. He had 4 voyages in

his lifetime.

2.English settlement:

1607 Captain Christopher Newport, three ships --- Chesapeake Bay

Jamestown Mayflower 1620 Plymouth

Puritans New England area

3.Conflicts with Indians and the founding of 13 colonies.

III.The development of Literature:

American literature emerged out of obscurity into history only some four centuries ago. It is the newest of the literatures of great nations, yet it is original in many aspects. It is original because it mirrors the history of America, and epitomizes the development of political and economics, social and psychological institutions. It is original because upon it has played most of those great historical forces and factors that have molded the modern world: immigration, nationalism, individualism, imperialism, religion,

science, technology and democracy. In addition to its realistic and vivid

reflection of the madding of the distinctly shaped character of American

people, it is original in variety and cultural colors; such features of American

literature may find expression in its products in the colonial period.

John Smith a British soldier of fortune

“A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as hath

happened in Virginia”

“New England Trials”

“The General History of Virginia”

Within a few decades a considerable number of learned people, such as

Puritan clergymen and governors, produced a considerable body of writing of

high literary quality, yet they were not literary people in the professional

sense. Their writing included diaries, travel books, collections of letters,

journals, histories, poetry, biographies, autobiographies and prose, to which

the Puritans contributed much. In addition to being true believers of their

religious doctrines, the early puritans generally have college education with a

sound knowledge of the literary classics, and learned much about the basic

qualities of literature from the ancient and contemporary authors in the old

continent. Such responsible for the two essential characteristics of the early

American literature: their religious subject and imitation of English literary

traditions.

(1)William Bradford (1590-1657)

Of Plymouth Plantation

(2) John Winthrop (governor of Massachusetts Bay)

Journal 1790

The History of New England

(3) Edward Taylor

The New England Quarterly

(4) Cotton Mather

Magnolia Christi Americana

Characteristics:

In spite of the unique features that the colonial men of letters, reflected in their writings, some common characteristic run through almost all the principal works of the major literary figures of the colonial period, which mirrored the nature of colonial American literature and continued to be the subsequent development of American literature and of America itself. Puritanism was central to colonial American literature and its impact could find expression in almost all respects concerning literature. The conviction that all religious progress centered in the individual led colonial writers to make records of his spiritual development in the forms of diary and autobiography: a strenuous self-analysis and ceaseless searching of conscience in the writings of the Puritans was the result of their belief that “election” would show itself in the behavior and in the experiences of the inner life of the individual. In keeping with the belief

that American literature should concern itself with spiritual and in the experiences of the inner life of the individual. In keeping with the belief that literature should concern with spiritual values, the sermon became the most highly developed and the most popular of Puritan and compact expression, and its avoidance of rhetorical decoration excellently illustrated Puritan aesthetic and moral theories. In accordance with their way of life, the Puritans preferred a style characterized by homeliness of imagery, simplicity of diction and an emphasis on the values most easily recognized by their readers. It is for the same reason that they disliked the sensuous appeal of certain types of imagery and favored the figures and images drawn from the common experiences of the New England settlers.

Questions for discussion:

1.What were the features of colonial America?

2.What were the literary characteristics?

3.What was the Puritanism?

Reference Books: 1. 《美国文学教程》第一章常曜信

2．《美国文学的周期》 E. Spiller

3. 《新编美国文学史》第二章刘海平

Part II The Literature of Reason and Revolution

I, Teaching time: 2 teaching hours

II.Teaching Aim: the students should know the reason and effect of American Revolution, and the characteristics of the literature. Through learning the selected works, the students get to know the writing style of them.

III.Teaching Method: a. presentation, b. analysis of the contexts of the works, c.

questions and discussion.

IV.Key points: writing style of the prose works.

Introduction:

I.The Historical Background:

a)two revolutions {American Revolution

Enlightenment

(1)European?s conflicts in the New Continent;

(2)The cause of the Revolution;

(3)The procedure of the Revolution;

(4)The significance of the Revolution.

II.The Development of Literature:

(1)prose of Thomas Paine, Franklin and Thomas Jefferson;

(2)Poetry of Byrant

Questions for Discussion:

(1)What do you know about American Revolution?

(2)What do you know about Washinton?

(3)What is the main trend of literature?

III.Authors and their writings in this period:

(1)Benjamin Franklin

a.his life and works: Benjamin Franklin was a brilliant, industrious and versatile man. Starting as a poor boy in a family of 17 children, he became famous on both sides of the Atlantic as a statesman, scientist and author. Despite his fame, he always remained a man of industry and simple tastes.

Franklin?s writings range from informal sermons on thrift to urbane essays. He wrote gracefully as well as clearly with a wit which often gave an edge to his words. Though the style he formed came from imitating two noted English essayists, Addison and Steele, he made it into his own. His most famous work is his Autobiography. Before his autobiography, his “Poor Richard?s Almanac(1733-1758) became popular readings which contain many proverbs like:

Early to bed, and early to rise,

Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Franklin?s Autobiography is many things. First of all it is an inspiring account of a poor boy?s rise to a high position. Franklin tells his story modestly, omitting some of

his misdeeds, his errors as being much less than perfect. He is resigned to the fact that his misdeeds will often receive a punishment of one sort or another. Viewing himself with objectivity, Franklin offers his life story as a lesson to others. It is a positive lesson that teaches the reader to live a useful life. In fact the Autobiography is a how-to-do it book, a book on the art of self-improvement.

In 1771, while living in England and serving as ambassador for most of the colonies, Franklin began his autobiography as a letter to his son, Willliam. He got as far as the year 1730(including his arrival in Philadelphia) being interrupted by “the affairs of the Revolution”. In 1784, while living at Passy, France, then a suburb of Paris, he extended his Autobiography through 1731. The bulk of the remainder of the work was added in 1788 and the final few pages were written in1790, the year of his death. None of this was published while Franklin lived. Shortly after his death, a French translation of his life to 1731 ( the first two section that Franklin wrote) was published. Though this was soon translated into English and published in London, the “official text did not appear until 1818, as part of the works of Benjamin Franklin,”edited by his grandson William Temple Franklin. The first “complete”Autobiography---with the pages written in 1790---did not appear until 1868, edited by John Bigelow, who had bought Franklin?s original manuscript from a Franklin family the previous year.

The Autobiography covers Franklin?s life only until 1757 when he was 51 years old, well before his major accomplishments as a diplomat. The work as a whole was written by a man well beyond the normal age of retirement, yet it is not the less lively for that fact. Franklin?s mastery of a prose style characterized by clarity, concision, flexibility and order was central to his fame as a great man of letters. Such major features of his style was summarized by himself in a short paragraph:

The words used should be the most expressive that the language affords, provided that they are the most generally understood. Nothing should be expressed in two words that can as well be expressed in one; that is, no synonyms should be used, or rarely, but the whole should be as short as possible, consistent with clearness: the words should be placed as to agreeable to the ear in reading; summarily, it should be smooth, clear, and short for the contrary qualities are displeasing.

(2)Analysis of the Selected part:

A.3 paragraphs: a. what interest did Franklin have as a child;

a.Being an apprentice to his brother, Franklin began writing;

b.Improving argumentation.

Summary: Franklin was thirty to knowledge and trying to learn the language with practical methods.

B a. the way of learning languages;

b.Practice makes perfect;

c.Relations to his relatives;

d.Learning club.

Summary: Franklin was a practical man. In learning languages we know he had a strong endurance and leaver mind.

Part III The Literature of Romanticism

I.Teaching Time : 8 periods.

II.Teaching Aim: the students should know the characteristic of the origin and development of romanticism in American literature. Transcendentalism as a typical American literature trend developed in American land should be mastered. The students should know how to analyze Bryant?s two poems.

III.Key Points: characteristic of American romanticism and their writers.

Part One: Historical Introduction:

We are now dealing with one f the most important periods in the history of American literature, the Romantic period, which stretches from the end of the eighteenth century through the outbreak of the Civil War. Here we see a rising America fast burgeoning into a political, economic and cultural independence it had never known before. Democracy and political equality became the ideals of the new nation. Radical changes came about in the political life of the country. Parties began to squabble and scramble for power, and a new system was in the making. The spread of industrialism, the sudden influx of immigration, and the “pioneers”pushing the frontier further west---all these produced something of an economic boom and, with it, a tremendous sense of optimism and hope among the people. A nation bursting into new life for literary expression. The buoyant mood of the nation and the sprit of the times seem in some measure responsible for the spectacular outburst of romantic feeling in the first half of the nineteenth century. The literary milieu proved fertile and conducive to the imagination as well. Among other things, magazines appeared in ever-increasing numbers, of which The North American Review, The New York Mirror, The American Quarterly Review, The New England Magazine, The Southern Review, The Southern Literary Messenger, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper?s Magazine and Knickerbockers Magazine played an important role in facilitating literary expansion in the country.

Foreign influences added incentive to the growth of romanticism in America. The Romantic Movement, which had flourished earlier in the century both in England and Europe, proved to be a decisive influence without which the upsurge of American romanticism would hardly have been possible. Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor Cole ridge, William Wordsworth, Byron, Robert Burns and many other English and European masters of poetry and prose all made a stimulating impact on the different departments of the country?s literature. The influence of Sir Walter Scott was particularly powerful and enduring. His border tales and Waverley romances inspired many American authors such as James Fennimore Cooper with irresistible creative impulses. Scott?s Waverley novels were models for American historical romance, and his The Lady of the Lake, together with Byron?s Oriental romances, helped toward the development of American Indian romance. He was, in a way, responsible for the romantic description of landscape in American literature. The Gothic tradition, and the cult of solitude and of gloom came through interest in the works of writers like Mrs. Radcliff, E.T.A. Hoffman, James Thomson and the “graveyard?poets. Robert Burns and Byron both inspired and spurred the American imagination for lyrics of

love and passion and despair. The impact of Lyrical Ballads of Wordswoth and Coleridge added, to some extent, to the nation?s singing strength. Thus American romanticism was in a way derivative: American romantic writing was some of them modeled on English and European works.

On the other hand, American romanticism had distinct features of its own. Different from their European counterparts, American romantics tended to moralize, to edify rather than to entertain. They presented an entirely new experience alien to European culture. The exotic landscape, the frontier life, the westward expansion, the myth of a New Garden of Eden in America, and the Puritan heritage were just a few examples of the native material for an indigenous literature. Evidently, it produced a feeling of “newness” which inspired the romantic imagination.

Part II. Writers of the period

1.Washington Irving (1783-1859)

I.Introduction of his life and works: Washington Irving was the first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame. He became, in the words of the English novelist Thakeray, “the first Ambassador whom the new World of letters sent to the old.” Irving was born the youngest of seven children of a precious reader and the author of juvenile poems, plays and essays when he was 16; he began the study of the law for which he had little relish. He preferred instead to pass his time in desultory reading and in the society of literary wits of New York. At 19, he began to contribute a serious of sketches or “letters” on society and the theater to the Morning Chronicle, a New York newspaper. When he was 21, Irving went on a grand tour of Europe. Two years later he returned to New York to be admitted to the bar and to begin the leisurely life of a gentleman lawyer; shortly afterward, Irving started work on what was to be his first literary triumph, his “History of New York (1809) by “Derrick Knickerbockers.”It was an irreverent to spoof of historical scholarship, salted with off-color comments. The book satirized the complacent Dutch burghers of early New York and pointed at the political follies of 19th century America. It also marked the beginning of the “Knickerbockers school” of New York literary satirists including Paulding, Fitzgreen Hallack and Joseph Rodman Drake who took their names and humorous tone from Irving?s knickbocker History and flourished in New York in the first decades of the 19th century.

At the end of the war of 1812, Irving was sent to England to supervise the Liverpool Branch of the family firm, but in 1818, as a result of the war and bad management, the firm went bankrupt. Irving was left only with a dislike for the “dirty soul-killing”world of business and a need to find a livelihood. His “History of New York”has earned the magnificent sum of $3000, so he turned to writing and began preparation of “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent(1820). It was the first work by an American to receive wide international acclaim and it made Irving a celebrity, praised alike in America and England. In it was the two tales that brought him his most enduring fame. “Rip Van Winckles” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

With his new literary success, Irving gave up all thought of returning to America and the world of trade or law. He set out to become a professional man of letters. The Sketch Book was soon followed by Bracebridge Hill (1822), a series of sketches on

England country life. In 1824, he published “Tales of a Traveller”, his first volume of fiction, filled with years of the supernatural and clanking with the ghostly machinery of romantic Gothicism. In 1826 his literary fame earned him appointment as an American diplomatic attaché in Spain and there he gathered material for a biography of Christopher Columbers(1826). He wrote severy such kind of biographies.

Irving then returned to England, where he accepted appointment as an American diplomat in London and three years later when he was nearing 50, he returned to the United States after an absence of 17 years. He bought “Sunnyside” his famous home on the Hudson River at Tarrytown and there, except for four years as United States minister to Spain he lived as a country spire, writing a series of histories and biographies.

A study of Irving?s works would lead to the conclusion that humor was at the root of almost everything that was significant in them. What was more impressive was that his humor was always well meaning, mild and easy to be accepted. Early in the 19th century when most of the American writers were speaking in the authoritative voice of a gentleman who seems to be superior in maturity, knowledge, sense, and good taste, and when the majority of American periodicals depended heavily on a broad, explosive humor and sarcasm that gradually vulgarized the periodical essay tradition, Irving?s humor did much to cultivate a new literary taste.

The style of Irving?s work is characterized by simplicity, poise and ease flow. Unlike the tightly structured stories of Poe and Hawthorne, the tastes of Irving lie in his literary innovations and transitional role in the development of American literature. III.Analysis of the tale:

1.Plot structure of action:

e.Exposition: time, place, persons preliminary condition of affairs;

f.Development

Conflicts Crane to Brom Bones; Crane to the girl; Crane to farmers;

Crane to ghost;

g.Summary ----pumpkin, Bones marries the girl, some still believe in

ghosts,

h.Setting -----

i.Style

Questions for discussion:

1.What is the plot of the story?

2.How did the conflict develop in the story?

3.What is the function of the setting?

4.What is the style of the story?

Homework: Read the story Rip Van Winkle.

2.James Fennimore Cooper (1789-1851)

(a)Introduction: Cooper never saw the frontier. The advanced line of settlement that moved westward from the Atlantic had passed beyond Cooperstown, New York before his birth and throughout his life; he never traveled farther west than Michigan. Yet his writing helped create a mythical west that transcended the reality of life on the

frontier, and in his greatest character ---Natty Bumppo, or “Leatherstocking”---Cooper created an archetypal western hero whose many literary descendants range from the cowboys of popular fiction and the movies to the hero of Melville, Twain and Faulkner.

James Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey. When he was thirteen months old, he was taken with his family to a small wildness settlement on Lake Otsego, 150 miles north of New York City. The village was named Cooperstown after his father, William Cooper, a rich member of the landed gentry who had acquired vast tracts of land in New York State following the American Revolution. James Cooper was raised in the rural family “Manor House”, and he roamed the edge of a wildness that stretched a thousand miles to the Mississippi. Although he saw the white hunters and the numerous wagon trains of settlers that passed through Cooperstown on their way west, he saw little of the once numerous reedmen of the eastern forests. Later in life he acknowledged, “ I was never among the Indians. All that I know of them is from reading and from hearing my father speak of them.”

When Cooper was fourteen, he entered Yale, but in his junior years after a series of undergraduate brawls and pranks he was expelled and was sent to sea as a common sailor on an Atlantic merchant ship. In 1808, he became a mild shipman in the U.S navy and served on Lawrence. In 1811, after the death of his father left him an inheritance of $50,000, Cooper resigned from the navy. He then married and began the free-spending life of a wealth gentleman. By 1819, his inheritance was gone and he was heavily in debt. To regain his fortunes, he speculated in land, invested in a frontier store and a whaling ship, and in 1820 he began writing the fiction that eventually brought him wealth and worldly fame.

According to tradition, he once tossed aside a popular-sentimental novel with the comment that he could do better himself. When his family challenged him to fulfill his boast he wrote a tale that he quickly recognized as a botch and destroyed. His second attempt was Precaution (1820). It was a full-length novel of English life, written in imitation of Jane Austin and filled with the conventional sentimentality of the day?s best sellers. Precaution was dull, and a financial failure, but it brought Cooper recognition and helped prepare the way for his next work. The Spy (1821), a novel of the American Revolution. The Spy appealed to patriotic American hungry for exciting fiction that dealt with American scenes and events. It soon went through three editions; it was translated into several European languages and turned into a stage play. And it started Cooper on his career as the first eminent American novelist.

Two years later Cooper published The Pioneers (1823), a romance of the American frontier that was an immediate best seller. It was the first of the “Leatherstocking Tales,”five novels of the life of Natty Bumppo. They included “The Last of Mohicans”(1826), The Prairie(1927), The Pathfinder(1840), and the Deerslayer(1841). Following his success with The Pioneer, Cooper drew upon his own experiences and wrote The Pilot(1841) the first of eleven novels of the sea that he wrote over a period of three decades.

In 1926, with his financial burdens eased by the profits from his writing Cooper left America to live abroad, partly to escape his remaining debts and partly to experience

what he saw as the rich context of European society, while living in Paris and London and touring the Continent, he completed seven more novels and he received the adulation of a vast audience that read the numerous European translations of his works. In 1833, now financially independent, he returned to the United States and eventually settled in Coopstown. There he continued his prolific writing of novels (he eventually wrote 32), histories and essays on society.

Patriotic, early critics honored Cooper for creating a literature out of nature materials and they railed him as the American Scott---an accurate but patronizing comparison that Cooper came to detest. But his greatest achievement was his portrayed of the age-old theme of Christian innocence struggling in a paradise lost, the majestic them of the irresistible force of civilization that destroyed the American wilderness and all its noble simplicities. It was a theme that Cooper embodies in his archetypal hero, Natty Bumppo, a character whose flights from society and domesti9city mark him as the first of the symbolic rebels in American writing and one of the most memorable characters in all of fiction.

(b) Analysis of the selected part:

Questions for understanding:

1.How does Uncas demonstrate his courage?

2.Do you think that the Hurons were afraid of Uncas and Chingachgook?

3.How was Hawkey?s weapon different from those used by the others?

4.How many Hurons were there?

5.Describe how Cora was saved from being scalped?

6.How does Magua escape from Chingachgook?

7.What observation does Hawkey make on the difference in defeat in battle between

a huron and a Mohican?

8.What advice does Hawkey give to David?

9.Do you think it was unmanly for Heyward to cry?

10.Do you think the fight believable?

4.William Cullen Bryant(…1704-1878)

I.Introduction of his life and works:

Long famous as the first American lyric poet of distinction, William Cullen Bryant glorified the morning of the American national literature with several volumes of his brilliant poetry, some of which have proved to be timeless to enrich the treasure house of American poetry. Besides his achievement in poetry, Bryant, as one of the great personalities of his age, was central to the American romantic movement, his force, courage and liberalism as critic and editor provided effective leadership in American cultural and political life for half a century, from the age of Jackson throughout the Civil /war and reconstruction period.

The son of an enthusiastic naturalist, Bryant was born in Cummington, Massachusetts, whose beautiful natural landscape exerted such an potential influence upon the future poet that he recalled later his experience when reading The Lyrical Ballads at the age of sixteen: “ a thousand springs seemed to gush up

at once into my heart and the force of nature, of sudden, to change into a strange freshness.”In addition to the inspiration of nature, Bryant received the best possible education from his childhood, both at a local school at his hometown and at William College, as well as through his reading in his father?s ample library. His uncle was also responsible in preparing the way for the growth of the future poet by tutoring him in classical language and literature.

Bryant was only 9 when he began to write poems. At the age of 14 he published his satire The Enbargo(1808), a poem in reaction against Jefferson?s trade restriction. In 1811 he had finished the first draft of his best poem “Thanatopsis”, whose publication in 1817 brought him not only his first success but also general attention to his extraordinary genius. His first collection poems appeared in Boston in 1821, which consisted eight of his poems, such as his most famous poems “To a Waterfowl”, “Thantopsis”and “The Yellow violet”and thereafter established his position in the history of American literature. In 1825 he went to New York, the literary capital of the period and served as assistant editor of the Evening Post, a position providing more opportunities for him to display his dynamic force in American cultural and political life. The year 1829 saw that Bryant became editor in chief of the paper, one of the first great national newspaper in America, and from this time onward he grew to be a dominant leader in American literature and public causes. He established close relationship with Cooper, Irving and other major literary figures, with whom he gave an American formulation to the romantic movement and moreover his frequent lectures on poetry brought him popularity as influential critic. From 1832 to 1864 he published six volumes, including The Fountain (1842), The White-Footed Deer (1944) and The Food of Years (1878), with which he remained a popular favorite. His ever increasing achievements and reputation inn literature also made him become a public speaker, who as a liberal democrat, wrote and published continuously in his newspaper articles to strive for various freedoms, such as freedom of religion, of speech, of free trade, of the masses from the intolerable exploitation of debtor as well as banking and currency regulation and the freedom of the slaves. His devotion to public affairs drained him time and energy, but he never stopped his literary creation. His library of Poetry and song (1871-1872), the first great critical anthology, was his last literary effort. Another treasure that Bryant left was his poetic translation of Homer?s Iliad (1870) and Odyssey (1871).

Nature was the chief theme of Bryant?s poetry and besides religion and concern for humanitarian reforms and national morality were persistent themes. As a poet, Bryant wrote of his own experience in nature and society, opposed to the conventional insipid generalization about nature, and the best of his poems provided an excellent example of truthful experience, precise expression, and disciplined imagination. Varieties of influences on Bryant?s early activity as a poet included the neoclassical forms of Addison and Poe, the attitude of the “graveyard poets”like Young and Thomson, and the romantic conceptions of Scott, Burns and Wordsworth. His early poetry reflected some features of

imitation, but soon learned to absorb them into his independent style. In addition to the alien influence, nature played a crucial role in the awakening of Bryant as a poet and in his poetic creation. To Bryant, nature was the symbol of the Maker, the mighty cause, and the infinite source; and the purpose of nature as the artifact of the Maker was to keep man?s mind directed to the Supreme Craftsmen. Bryant held that nature should impact moral instruction and that it should elevate man. II. Analysis to the poem: Thanatopsis

Questions for discussion:

1.Look up the word thantopsis in a dictionary and explain its origin and

meaning.

2.Bryant divides his poem into three parts. Discuss why you think he made

these particular divisions.

3.What advice does the speaker give to those who shudder tat the thought of

death?

4.What does the speaker mean when he says that the person who dies does not

retire alone?

5.Interpret the following passage: “each one as before will chase/His favorite

phantom…”

6.Explain how the person addressed as thou” gains in stature and importance as

the poem progress.

7.What is the message of the poet?

Comment on the poem

This poem is written in blank verse, namely, in unrhymed iambic pentameter, for the advantage to express with more freedom.

At the idea of death, the beauty of nature will make a person less pessimistic. At the age of 16, when other kids were indulging in juvenile frivolity, Bryant already began to meditate over the significance of life and death. As a poet of the early 19th century, Bryant develops a view of man?s final destiny. To the Puritans, death was seen as a preliminary to an afterlife. Bryant, however, treats death as part of nature, as the destiny of us all, and as the great equalizer in this world.

In Bryant?s view, to those “who in th e love of nature,”nature offers all the kindness by presenting a smile and eloquence of beauty when one is in “gayer hours”; it shows sympathy and steals away their sharpness when one is in his darker musings. The death of a man means nothing but the returning to the origin, or a returning to nature. With this prospect, the reader may first be shocked, and soon after, he may shudder and grow sick at heart. However, if at that moment one just goes out to listen, a voice confirms that “Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim thy growth, to be resolved to earth again.” Then he would become brother to rocks, clod, birds and to oak trees, he would lie side by side with patriarchs, with the wise, the good and the beauteous. Running around, is the all-beholding sun. In this kingdom, he is not the first, nor ought to be the last. Before the eternity of nature, a human being is rather frail and weak. Once he joins in the “one mighty sepulcher,” he becomes a part of the hill, the vale, the woods, the river and he is tremendously stronger. Without a single exception, human beings

will all share his destiny.

To a Waterfowl

Stanza 1: With the arrival of evening and in the setting sun and falling dew, where will the waterfowl, through the rosy clouds, fly?

Stanza 2: In the rosy light of the setting sun, the hunter might see the bird, but it is too distant to be harmed. Thus it is able for the bird to fly easily and delightedly.

Stanza 3: The poet is enquiring the destination of the fowl: Is it by the lake, along the river or at the ocean side?

Stanza4: The poet believes that a supernatural power is guiding and protecting the bird.

Stanza 5: The evening is falling and the bird, though rather exhausted, kept on flying.

Stanza6: Soon the weary flight will end and a shelter will be found.

Stanza 7: Though the bird has flown out of sight, the lesson it taught will stay in my heart forever.

Stanza 8: As God leads the bird; my life should be guided by the same power, too. Comment on the poem

In the first three stanzas, there is no hint of any morals. However, in the fourth stanza, all of a sudden, a new figure as a god appears. The god has a supernatural power which directs the bird?s flight. Bryant interrupted himself from describing

a bird into teaching a lesson. Bryant may think it is not enough for a poem written

just for the sake of its own, or just for the beauty of it, it should say something more than beauty, it should carry morals.

It rhymes “abab”, while the lengthy of each line is so different that you cannot find a regular foot. However, the two long lines in the middle of each stanza may refer to the balance in the floating of the bird. The first and the fourth lines, which are relatively shorter, look like two wings. The stanzaic form reminds one of a flying bird.

Questions for further understanding:

1.List some specific details that tell at what time of day the action of the poem

is taking place.

2.How would you argue for or against the idea that the time of day suggests or

symbolizes death?

https://www.sodocs.net/doc/7012119634.html, two or three things that the speaker and the bird have in common.

4.As specified in the poem, what is the end of the bird?s journey?

5.What might be the end of the speaker?s journey?

6.What is the “lesson “ that the speaker learns?

7.Discuss the idea that it is a poem about blind faith.

8.Scanning Poetry.

5.Edgar Allan Poe(1809-1849)

I. Introduction: Poe was born in Boston, the child of traveling actors. Before he was 3, his father deserted the family, his mother died and he was taken into the home

of John Allan, a prosperous merchant of Richmond, Virginia. Allan treated his foster child with leniency and harsh severity. He had Poe baptized with the middle name of Allan but failed to adopt him legally. In 2815 Allan moved to Europe on business, setting his family in England, where Poe was entered in school. Five years later, the Allans returned to Virginia, where Poe?s school master judged him: not especially studious” but an “excellent classicist” and “the best reader of Latin verse.”

When he was 17, Poe entered the University of Virginia. He distinguished himself in Latin and French and soon gained a reputation as a self-proclaimed “aristocrat”, a poet, a wit, a gambler, and a heavy drinker. The next year, after bitter quarrels with Allan, who refused to pay Poe?s gambling debts---he had lost $2000 at cards---Poe left the university and ran off to Boston, where he enlisted in the U.S. Army.

While stationed in Boston, he arranged the publication of a slim volume of verse, “Tamerlane and other poems”(1827), his first book of poetry. In April. 1829, he gained his release from the army and eight month later, his second volume of poems “Al Aaraaf, Tamerlan and Minor Poems” was published in Baltimore. Following the death of his foster-mother, Poe was briefly reconciled with Allan, who helped him secure appointment to West Point. Poe entered the academy as a cadet, when he was 21, but he remained only eight months. Galled by academy regulations and angered by a lack of support from his foster father, he deliberately violated a series of minor regulation, cut his classes, disobeyed orders to attend church, and early in 1831 he was dismissed. Just after he left West Point, his third volume of poetry was published, dedicated to “the U.S Corps of Cadets.”He then moved to Baltimore and devoted himself to earning his way as a writer.

In 1832, five of Poe?s stories were published in the Saturday Courier, a Philadelphia literary weekly. In 1833 he won first prize of $100 in a short story contest run by a Baltimore newspaper. He then returned to Richmond, where he was appointed editor---in which he published a series of stories, poems and acid literary reviews. When he was 27, he married his 13 years old cousin, Virginia Clemn.

The remaining years of his life were filled with intense creativity by fits of acute mental depression and drinking bouts. In 1838 he published “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym”, his one full length novel. The next year he became co-editor of Burton?s Gentleman?s Magazine, a Philadelphia literary monthly to which he contributed “The Fall of the House of usher”(1839) and his sonnet “Silence”(1840). Later in 1839 his “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque”appeared, his first collection of short stories. Then he became an editor of another Philadelphia monthly, Graham?s Magazine, which printed “The Murder in the Rue Morgue” the ancestor of American detective stories. While living in New York, “The Raven”, his most famous work and an immediate success got published. When his wife died, he felt a great assault, he continued to write, say, “I have a great deal to do; and I have made up my mind not to die till it is done.” On October 3, 1849 he was found unconscious on the streets and four days later, he died.

Poe?s life had been a series of disasters: psychologically crippling childhood deprivations, bitter literary quarrels, overwhelming poverty, failed publishing ventures, even in 1848, an unsuccessful attempt at suicide. American?s long judged his writing

according to the legends. Poe?s work was sometimes careless and derivative. He was rarely able to break from the need to do profitable hard work. The gothic terror he achieved was often commonplace, little above the popular, overheated romantic fiction of the times. Poe found his inspiration in a romanticism divorced from the actualities of American life, a world of disorder, perversity and romantic emotion. He helped established one of the world?s most popular literary genres, the detective story. His writing influenced a variety of writers. He was among the first modern literary theorists of America, and his arguments against the didactic motive for literature and for the creation of beauty and intensity of emotion, though they ran counter to the prevailing literary ideals of his time, have had profound effect on the writers and critics who followed him.

II.Analysis on his poems and story:

To Helen

Understanding Questions:

1.Although a real person inspired this poem, whose name was Jane; Poe addressed it

to “Helen”. Why might he have done this?

2.In the final stanza, “Helen” is addressed as “Psyche” the Greek word for “breath:

or “soul”. How do you reconcile this with the earlier references to Helen of Troy, whose legendary beauty led to the Trojan War?

3.Note that all three stanzas end with a reference to a place. How are these related to

each other? To the meaning of the poem as a whole?

Stanza 1: The poet first mentioned Helen, the most famous beauty in Greek mythology. Then Poe compared himself to Odysseus, who wandered for ten years over the sea to get home. As Odysseus, Edgar Allan Poe was persistent in his chasing after fine arts with the sincere belief that art or beauty and truth, is the ultimate aim, the home, for the wandering poet; while Helen, the embodiment of ancient beauty, is the guider to that dreamland.

Stanza 2; all the art and literature originated from one thing---beauty. Having taken Helen as the embodiment of beauty, the poet was confident that once he saw Helen, he was sure to be led by Helen to the home of beauty---fine art and pure literature. Poe insisted that Greece and Rome are the homes of beauty, the treasure houses of fine art and literature.

Stanza 3: The speaker sees Helen standing in the bright niche and holding in her hand an agate lamp. She is quite similar to goddess Psyche from Greek Myth. Through his description of his passion to Helen, Poe expressed his pursuit and sincere devotion to beauty.

In this poem, three beauties in ancient Greek mythology---Helen, Naiad and Psyche---are mentioned just to show that beauty is something that existed; it is very holy but it is hard to reach.

Comment on the poem

This poem is believed to have been written when the poet was only fourteen, inspired, as Poe admitted by the beauty of Mrs. Jane Sitlth Stanard, the young mother of a school fellow who was “the first purely ideal love of my soul.”In this poem, the personal element of the young poet was almost completely sublimated in the

idealization of the tradition of supernal beauty in art. The lady died in 1824, but she appeared in this poetic work in the figure of Helen, the well-known ancient beauty, with all the adoration of poet to her.

In the first stanza, Helen?s beauty is compared to the Nicean barks---a suggestion of classical associations; what?s more, “of yore,”instead of “before” or “long ago”, is applied to add the classical atmosphere to the poem. As the ancient ships had transported the ancient hero---Ulysses—home from Troy, so will the beauty of Helen lead the poet to the home of art? The second stanza starts with “On desperate seas.”Actually, the transferred epithet is used just to show the poet?s cordiality to the goddess of art. In classic myth, the flower Hyacinth preserved the memory of Apollo?s love for the dead young Hyacinthus. (Hyacinthus is a very handsome young man of Greek myth and the object of Apollo?s affections. Unfortunately, he was badly hurt by a discus when Apollo was gaming and dead soon. Very disappointed by that, Apollo changed him into the plant of hyacinth which had been taken as a symbol for affection.) All of these, the hyacinth hair, the face of classic beauty and the expression of Naiad, are charming enough to lead me to the home of art---ancient Greece and ancient Rome.

In the third stanza, Helen is directly compared to goddess Psyche from the Holy Land. Through his description of his passion to Helen, Poe expressed his pursuit and sincere devotion to beauty.

In the poem, three beauties in ancient Greek mythology are mentioned just to show that beauty is something that existed ; it is very holy but it is hard to reach.

The Raven

Stanza 1: One night, while the poet was tired with reading and pondering, he heard the gentle knocks at his chamber door.

Stanza 2: In a cold night when the poet was alone, he was awakened by the tapping and realized that he had failed, by reading a book, to ease his sorrow for the lost Lenore.

Stanza 3: The poet felt frightened so he had to calm himself down by persuading that the tapping means a late visitor, and it could not be anything worse than that.

Stanza 4: The poet was suddenly excited as to apologize for not hearing the gentle rapping, but when the door is widely opened, he found nothing but darkness outside. Stanza 5. The door was opened but it was all darkness and tranquility outside. The only sound echoing to the poet?s ear was his murmuring of “Lenore.”He began to wonder who might have done the tapping. But the more he wondered, the more frightened he became.

Stanza 6: The poet returned to his chamber but the tapping appeared again and louder. He made up his mind to calm down and find out the truth.

Stanza 7: The poet opened the window and finally found that the tapping comes from a Raven perching on a bust of Pallas.

Stanza 8: The poet was beguiled into smiling by the black bird and he asked its name and was replied with: “Nevermore,” which becomes the repetitive refrain of several stanzas.

Stanza 9: The poet was astonished by the fact of a bir d?s talking, because neither had

anybody ever experienced this nor was any bird named “Nevermore” before, despite the widely held belief that crows and ravens can mimic human speech if their tongues are “split” with a sharp tool.

Stanza 10: The bird?s repetition of “Nevermore”accidentally corresponds with the poet?s self-talk; as if the bird is ensuring him “I will never leave.”

Stanza 11: After his astonishment, the poet realized that the bird was repeating the only word it accidentally picked up from its depressed master and it, as a matter of fact, shared nothing about the poet?s murmuring about Hope.

Stanza 12: The poet came nearer to the bird and began to fancy why the bird repeated that word.

Stanza 13: Thinking about that word reminds the poet of his lost Lenore.

Stanza 14: The poet felt too much troubled by the memory of Lenore so he wanted some magic drug to release him from thinking about her.

Stanza 15: In stanza 14, the poet was inclined to release himself from the memory of Lenore. In the present stanza, he wants to find some magic drug to cure him.

Stanza 16: The poet expressed his desire for meeting Lenore, but was boldly denied by a “Nevermore,” and this brings the poem to the climax.

Stanza 17: The poet was so irritated by the bird?s reply in the former stanza that he wanted to drive the bird away from him. However, the bird again responded with a “Nevermore”.

Stanza 18: The Raven was rather innocent to the poet?s reverie about “Lenore”. However, the poet was obsessively in a mood of frustration.

Comment on the poem

The Raven was published in the New York Evening Mirror in 1845. Being regarded as the first poem with hazy conception in the West, it is the poem of which Poe himself felt quite proud and had been frequently taken by Poe as an example to illustrate his poetic art. Consisting of 18 stanzas, each with 6 lines, with the first five lines being trochaic octameter and the last line as trochaic tetrameter, this poem corresponds in every aspect with Poe?s aesthetic standard for poetry: It took the lament over the death of a beautiful woman as its them; with the 108 lines, it is readable at one sitting; it is pervaded with a sense of melancholy.

Although this poem was written in traditional feet and regular meters, Poe diverged from tradition with dramatic variation of the tone; mournful at the beginning (vainly I had sought to borrow from my book surcease of sorrow---sorrow for the lost Lenore.); then trepid at some spots; sometimes it showed a touch of humor, sometimes a mood of melancholy. But finally, a very pessimistic illusion.

Once upon a dreary midnight, while the poet was pondering weak and weary, with the napping and tapping at the chamber door, the poet was led to a fantasy world of a dialogue between him and a raven. The whole scene might be a real one or just a dream, but the mysterious Raven must be a symbolic character. It may be symbolic in various ways:

a.The Raven symbolizes disaster and misfortune. Raven, the large bird like

crow with black feathers, in Western countries, as well as it is in China, is conventionally regarded as an ominous fowl, a symbol of misfortune. Thus

美国文学史及选读试卷 (1)

美国文学史及选读试卷 Ⅰ.Each of the following statements below is followed by four alternatives. Choose the one that would best complete the statement. (60points in all, 2 for each) 1. Which of following can be said of the common features which are shared by the English and American Romanticists ? A. An increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions. B. An increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters. C. An increasing emphasis on the desire to return to nature. D. both A and B. 2. Which of the following statements about the Romantic period in the history of American literature is NOT true? （） A. In most of the American writings of this period there was a new emphasis upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature. B. The writers of this period placed an increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions and displayed an increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters. C. There was a strong tendency to exalt the individual and the common man. D. Most heroes and heroines in the writings of this period exhibited extremes of reason and nationality. 3.______ is unanimously agreed to be the summit of the American Romanticism in the history of American literature. A. New England Transcendentalism B. England Transcendentalism C. the Harlem Renaissance D. New Transcendentalism 4.Hawthorn e’s unique gift was for the creation of ______ which touch the deepest roots of man’s moral nature. A. symbolic stories B. romantic stories

美国文学史期末参考复习资料

仅作参考，最主要还是要自己消化，整理 Chapter 1 Colonial Period 1. Puritanism: American puritans accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God. 2. Influence (1) A group of good qualities – hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety (serious and thoughtful) influenced American literature. (2) It led to the everlasting myth. All literature is based on a myth – garden of Eden. (3) Symbolism: the American puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chi efly instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American. (4) With regard to their writing, the style is fresh, simple and direct; the rhetoric is plain and honest, not without a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible. II. Overview of the literature 1. types of writing diaries, histories, journals, letters, travel books, autobiographies/biographies, sermons 2. writers of colonial period (1) Anne Bradstreet (2) Edward Taylor III. Benjamin Franklin 1. life 2. works (1) Poor Richard’s Almanac (2) Autobiography 3. 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. American Romanticism 1. Background (1) Political background and economic development (2) Romantic movement in European countries Derivative – foreign influence 2. features (1) American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new experience and contained “an alien quality” for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place” was radically new and alien. (2) There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider. American romantic authors tended more to moralize. Many American romantic writings intended to edify more than they entertained. (3) The “newness” of Americans as a nation is in connection with Am erican Romanticism. (4) As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American romanticism was both imitative and independent. II. Washington Irving: Father of American Literature 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. life 3. 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 Voyages of Christopher Columbus (4) A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (5) The Alhambra 4. Literary career: two parts (1) 1809~1832

美国文学史及选读期末复习题

1.Captain John Smith became the first American writer. 2.The puritans looked upon themselves as a chosen people. is an annual collection of proverbs written by Benjamin Franklin. 4.Thomas Paine’s famous pamphlet Common Sense boldly advocated a “Declaration for Independence”. 5.Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston.

has been called the “Father of American Poetry”. 7.In Washington I rving’s appeared the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature. 8.Cooper’s enduring fame rests on his William Cullen Bryant’s wok. is considered “father of American detective stories and American gothic stories”. 10.Emerson believed above all in

美国文学史及选读期末复习

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美国文学史及选读复习重点

Captain John Smith (first American writer). Anne Bradstreet；The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America （colonists living） Edward Taylor(the best puritan poet) John Cotton ”the Patriarch of New England” teacher spiritual leader Benjamin Franklin The Autobiography Poor Richard’s Almanack Thomas Jefferson： Political Career Thoughts The Declaration of Independence we hold truth to be self-evidence Philip Freneau“Father of American Poetry” The Wild Honey Suckle American Romanticism optimism and hope Nationalism Washington Irving“Father of American Literature short story”The first “Pure Writer” A History of New York The Sketch Book marked the beginning of American Romanticism! “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”Rip Van Winkle James Fenimore Cooper Father of American sea and frontier novels Leather stocking Tales The Last of the Mohicans The Pioneers The Prairie The Pathfinder The Deerslayer Edgar Allan Poe father of detective story and horror fiction Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque “MS. Found in a Bottle” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” “The Fall of the House of Usher”“The Masque of the Red Death”“The

华师自考美国文学史及选读试题

美国文学史及选读试题 I. Multiple Choice 10’ 1. Who is different from others according to the division of writing period? A. Washington Irving B.William Cullen Bryant C. Captain John Smith D. James Fenimore Cooper 2. The American Romantic Period lasted roughly from ____ to ____. A. 1798-1832 B. 1810-1860 C. 1860-1864 D. 1776-1783 3. How many syllables are there in this first line of Raven? (“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,”) A. 11 B. 12 C. 13 D. 16 4. What dominated the Puritan phase of American writing? A. theology B. literature C. esthetics D. revolution 5. At the initial period of the spread of ideas of the Enlightenment was largely due to ____. A. typography B. journalism C. revolution D. the development of paper-making industry 6. Who has been called the “Father of American Literature”? A. Walt Scott B. Geoffrey Chaucer

美国文学史及选读期末复习题

1.C aptain John Smith became the first American writer. 2.T he puritans looked upon themselves as a chosen people. collection of proverbs written by Benjamin Franklin. 4.T homas Paine’s famous pamphlet Common Sense boldly advocated a “Declaration for Independence”.

5.T homas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. has been called the “Father of American Poetry”. 7.I n Washington Irving’s appeared the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature.

8.C ooper’s enduring fame rests on his frontier stories, especially the five novels that comprise the is perhaps the peak of William Cullen Bryant’s wok. “father of American detective stories and American gothic stories”.

美国文学史及选读考研复习笔记6.

History And Anthology of American Literature （6） 附：作者及作品 一、殖民主义时期The Literature of Colonial America 1．船长约翰·史密斯Captain John Smith 《自殖民地第一次在弗吉尼亚垦荒以来发生的各种事件的真实介绍》 “A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia Since the First Planting of That Colony” 《弗吉尼亚地图，附：一个乡村的描述》 “A Map of Virginia: with a Description of the Country” 《弗吉尼亚通史》“General History of Virginia” 2．威廉·布拉德福德William Bradford 《普利茅斯开发历史》“The History of Plymouth Plantation”3．约翰·温思罗普John Winthrop 《新英格兰历史》“The History of New England” 4．罗杰·威廉姆斯Roger Williams 《开启美国语言的钥匙》”A Key into the Language of America” 或叫《美洲新英格兰部分土著居民语言指南》 Or “A Help to the Language of the Natives in That Part of America Called New England ” 5．安妮·布莱德斯特Anne Bradstreet 《在美洲诞生的第十个谬斯》 ”The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America” 二、理性和革命时期文学The Literature of Reason and Revolution 1。本杰明·富兰克林Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) ※《自传》“ The Autobiography ” 《穷人理查德的年鉴》“Poor Richard’s Almanac” 2。托马斯·佩因Thomas Paine (1737-1809) ※《美国危机》“The American Crisis” 《收税官的案子》“The Case of the Officers of the Excise”《常识》“Common Sense” 《人权》“Rights of Man” 《理性的时代》“The Age of Reason” 《土地公平》“Agrarian Justice” 3。托马斯·杰弗逊Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) ※《独立宣言》“The Declaration of I ndependence” 4。菲利浦·弗瑞诺Philip Freneau (1752-1832) ※《野忍冬花》“The Wild Honey Suckle” ※《印第安人的坟地》“The Indian Burying Ground” ※《致凯提·迪德》“To a Caty-Did” 《想象的力量》“The Power of Fancy” 《夜屋》“The House of Night” 《英国囚船》“The British Prison Ship” 《战争后期弗瑞诺主要诗歌集》 “The Poems of Philip Freneau Written Chiefly During the Late War” 《札记》“Miscellaneous Works” 三、浪漫主义文学The Literature of Romanticism 1。华盛顿·欧文Washington Irving (1783-1859) ※《作者自叙》“The Author’s Account of Himself” ※《睡谷传奇》“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” 《见闻札记》“Sketch Book” 《乔纳森·欧尔德斯泰尔》“Jonathan Oldstyle” 《纽约外史》“A History of New York” 《布雷斯布里奇庄园》“Bracebridge Hall” 《旅行者故事》“Tales of Traveller” 《查理二世》或《快乐君主》“Charles the Second” Or “The Merry Monarch” 《克里斯托弗·哥伦布生平及航海历史》 “A History of the Life and V oyages of Christopher Columbus” 《格拉纳达征服编年史》”A Chronicle of the Conquest of Grandada” 《哥伦布同伴航海及发现》 ”V oyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus” 《阿尔罕布拉》“Alhambra” 《西班牙征服传说》“Legends of the Conquest of Spain” 《草原游记》“A Tour on the Prairies” 《阿斯托里亚》“Astoria” 《博纳维尔船长历险记》“The Adventures of Captain Bonneville” 《奥立弗·戈尔德史密斯》”Life of Oliver Goldsmith” 《乔治·华盛顿传》“Life of George Washington” 2．詹姆斯·芬尼莫·库珀James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) ※《最后的莫希干人》“The Last of the Mohicans” 《间谍》“The Spy” 《领航者》“The Pilot” 《美国海军》“U.S. Navy” 《皮袜子故事集》“Leather Stocking Tales” 包括《杀鹿者》、《探路人》”The Deerslayer”, ”The Pathfinder” 《最后的莫希干人》“The Last of the Mohicans” 《拓荒者》、《大草原》“The Pioneers”, “The Praire” 3。威廉·卡伦·布莱恩特William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) ※《死之思考》“Thanatopsis” ※《致水鸟》“To a Waterfowl” 4。埃德加·阿伦·坡Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) ※《给海伦》“To Helen” ※《乌鸦》“The Raven” ※《安娜贝尔·李》“Annabel Lee” ※《鄂榭府崩溃记》“The Fall of the House of Usher” 《金瓶子城的方德先生》“Ms. Found in a Bottle” 《述异集》“Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” 5。拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) ※《论自然》“Nature” ※《论自助》“Self-Reliance” 《美国学者》“The American Scholar” 《神学院致辞》“The Divinity School Address” 《随笔集》“Essays” 《代表》“Representative Men” 《英国人》“English Traits” 《诗集》“Poems” 6。亨利·戴维·梭罗Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) ※《沃尔登我生活的地方我为何生活》 1

美国文学史及选读考试整理

Washington Irving Bracebridge Hall 布雷斯布里奇田庄 (1822) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Tales of a Traveller 旅客谈 (1824) Christopher Columbus (1828) c. writing characteristics (1) humorous: the function of his writing is to amuse, to entertain instead of teaching or instruction (2) vivid and true character portrayal (3) finished (refined) and musical language, thus regarded as “the Amn. Goldsmith ” d. analysis on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow(选自the sketch book 见闻札记 ) 1. the story:setting,character, plot 2. theme:conflicts and praise conflict betw. Ichabod and Brom conflict betw. the village and the outside world James Fenimore Cooper The Spy (1821): a historical novel The Pilot (1824): a sea novel Leatherstocking Tales 皮裹腿故事集(1823-1841): frontier novels The Last Mohicans (1826) (Colonial War betw. Britain and France) e. writing features: strong points: we can see a variety of incidents and tensions, complicated plot and structure and a beautiful description of nature. Weak points: characterization is weak. There is unsatisfactory description of characters (esp. female). He is not free from syntactical awkwardness, heavy-handed attempt at humor. “Where Irving excels Cooper is weak.” Dialect is not authentic. Edgar Allan Poe The Fall of the House Usher Feature: i. brevity (15 pages) ii. Single effect iii. originality in theme To Helen It was inspired by the beauty of the mother of a schoolmate of Poe in Richmond, Virginia. The poem is famous for a number of things: 1. its rhyme scheme: ababb 2. its varied line lengths 3. its metaphor of a travel on the sea 4. its oft-quoted lines: "To the glory that was Greece,/And the grandeur that was Rome." theme: praise the ideal love and beauty and ancient Greek and Roman civilizations The Raven 乌鸦 theme: the lament over the death of a beautiful woman tone: melancholy Transcendentalism (essayists, poets, novelists) Their journal is “The Dial ” . Definition: Transcendentalism is idealism. (Emerson) b. features (1) stress on Oversoul, that is spirit. (2) stress the importance of individual. (3) fresh conception of nature. c. significance (1) inspired a whole generation of writers such as Whitman, Melville and Dickinson. (2) dresses man ’s subjective initiative as opposed to materialism. (3) liberated people from Calvin ’s original sin d. limitation (1) shallow: cut off from real life or reality; initiated by the rich, they were limited in a certain circle. So, in some degree, they have been cut off from social life and can ’t understand the sufferings of the common people. (2) inward contradiction: gain knowledge by intuition, shows its idealistic aspect. R.W. Emerson (Ralph Waldo) Nature (1836): the Bible of New England transcendentalism The American Scholar (1837): "America's Declaration of Intellectual The Divinity School Address 神学院致辞 (1838) Essays (1841/1847) Representative Men (1850) English Traits (1856)

美国文学史及选读试卷 (4)

美国文学史及选读试卷 Ⅰ. Multiple choices. (60 points in total, 2 for each) 1. The Romantic Period in American literature started from the publication of Washington Irving's ______ and ended with Whitman's Leaves of Grass. A. The Sketch Book B. Tales of a Traveller C. A History of New York D. The Scarlet Letter 2. At the middle of 19th century, America witnessed a cultural flowering which is called “_____”. A. the English Renaissance B. the Second Renaissance C. the American Renaissance D. the Salem Renaissance 3. As a philosophical and literary movement, the main issues involved in the debate of Transcendentalism are generally concerning ______. A. nature , man and the universe B. the relationship between man and woman C. the development of Romanticism in American literature D. the cold, rigid rationalism of Unitarianism 14. In the following statements, _________ is NOT true about Washington Irving’s famous story “Rip Van Winkle.” A. The story is not only well-kno wn for Rip’s 20-year sleep but also considered a model of perfect English in American literature. B. The story is set against the background of the inevitably changing America. C. The social conservatism and literary preference for the past is revealed, to some extent, in the story. D. Irving describes Rip’s response and reaction in a dramatic way, so that we see clearly both the narrator and Irving agree on the preferability of the present to the past. 15. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay Experience is a serous discussion about the conflict between _________ and ordinary life.