美国文学史
●Chapter 11 The 1920s Imagism Pound
1. economic boom
2. Idealistic views of war was turned to disillusionment
●the sense of life being dislocated and fragmented
●Literary scenes
●Since the 1920s, US literature stepped into the modern age. And the beginning part of
the 20th century was called the second renaissance in American literature.
●In the early twentieth century, American poetry began experimenting with new forms
and content to express the modern spirit, the sense of fragmentation and dislocation.
● A large group of writers began to make all kinds of literary experiments because they felt
old literary form can’t express the new spirits.
●Modernism
●It is a general term applied to the wide range of experimental and avant-garde (active in
the innovation and application of new concepts and techniques) trends in the literature (and other arts) of the early 20th century, including Symbolism, Futurism, Expressionism, Imagism, Vorticism漩涡主义, Dada, and Surrealism, along with the innovations of unaffiliated （无派别的）writers.
●Modernist literature is characterized chiefly by a rejection of 19th-century traditions.
Modernist writers disturbed their readers by adopting complex and difficult new forms and styles.
●In fiction, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf attempted new ways of tracing the flow of
characters’ thoughts in their stream-of –consciousness style.
●In poetry, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot replaced the logical exposition of thoughts with
collages(拼贴) of fragmentary images and complex allusions（用典）.
●Modernist writing is predominantly cosmopolitan, and often expresses a sense of urban
cultural dislocation, along with an awareness of new anthropological and psychological theories. It favors techniques of juxtaposition and multiple point of view. In England, its major landmarks are Joyce’s Ulysses乔伊斯的《尤利西斯》and Eliot’s The Waste Land (both 1922).
●Imagism
Imagism is the doctrine and poetic practice of a small but influential group of American and British poets calling themselves Imagists or Imagistes between 1912 and 1917.
Led at first by Ezra Pound, and then by Amy Lowell, the group rejected most 19th century poetry, and aimed instead at a new clarity and exactness in the short lyric poem.
The imagists cultivated concision and directness, building their short poems around single images; they preferred looser cadences(韵律) to traditional regular rhythms.
Apart from Pound and Lowell, the group also includes H.D., D. H. Lawrence, and William Carlos Williams.
●Three phases
●1908 – 1909. London. T. E. Hulme more discussion, less writing
●1912 – 1914. Ezra Pound
1）Imagist manifesto (three principles)1912
2）the first anthology（选集）of Imagist poems Des Imagistes (1914)《意象主义诗选》
●1914 – 1917. Amy Lowell No great achievements
●Three principles
Direct treatment of the “thing,” whether subjective or objective.直接表现事物，不论所表现的内容是主观还是客观。
To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.不使用无助于表现的词
As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.采用音乐性短句，不用节拍器(一种能在各种速度
中发出一种稳定的节拍的机械、电动或电子装置)的节奏写作。
●Major Features of Imagism
●Imagism produced free verse without imposing a rhythmical pattern.
●Imagism tried to record objective observations of an object or a situation without
interpretation or comment by the poet. The imagists remained totally objective.
●They merely wanted to give the reader an image. That was a picture, or a sound, or a
smell, or a taste, or a touch. Imagism required a poet to present just the picture, not his insight.
The typical Imagist poetry is written in free verse and undertakes to be as precisely and tersely as possible. Meanwhile, the Imagist poetry likes to express the writers’ momentary impression of a visual object or scene and often the impression is rendered by means of metaphor without indicating a relation. Most famous Imagist poem, “In a Station of the Metro”《在地铁车站》, was written by Ezra Pound. Imagism influenced almost all modern poets of Britain and America.
●Modernist Writers
Ezra Pound (1855 – 1972) ----a leading spokesman of the imagist movement and father of modern American poetry
●He traveled in Europe and led the Imagist movement
●He broke with Amy Lowell and lived in Italy.
●He supported Mussolini in the second world war and after the war he was jailed because
of betraying his motherland but was sent to crazy house after being declared insane.
●In 1958, with the help of T. S. Eliot and some other famous writers, he was released and
lived in hospital for 13 years.
●Then he returned to Italy and died there until 1972.
●Works
● a. Famous poems: “In a Station of the Metro”在地铁车站;“A Pact”合同“The River
Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”
● b. Collections:
●Homage to Sextus Propertius《献祭》
●Hugh Selwyn Mauberley《休·西尔文·毛伯莱》
●Cantos《诗章》
●In a Station of the Metro
●The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
●Petals on a wet, black bough.
在地铁车站
人群中这些面孔幽灵般呈现；
湿漉漉的黑枝条上朵朵花瓣
------飞白
●巴黎某地铁车站
幻魅众中面貌,
黝湿枝上疏花。(周珏良译)
●Faces here are compared to petals and refer to the faces of a few pretty women and
children in a crowd hurrying out of the dim, damp, and somber station.
●“The object” to be treated here is the faces in that dim and damp context.
●The dominant image is flower petals on a wet, black bough.
●Comment
●He was influenced by Greek, Italian and Chinese poets.
●He wrote some fresh short poems and also some all-inclusive long poems.
●Personal tone; open and spontaneous style
●His works are difficult to read and study; he had great influence on modern poetry.
●Chapter 12
poems:
1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 1915
杰.阿尔弗瑞德.普鲁弗洛克的情歌
2. The Waste Land 1922荒原
3. “Hollow Man” 1925
4. Ash Wednesday 1930
5. Four Quartets 1943
Drama(P.173)
Literary criticism: “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (manifesto of modernist poetry)P174 The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock
●Anti-hero: The chief character in a modern novel or play whose character is totally
different from the traditional heroes. Instead of manifesting largeness, dignity, power, or heroism, the antihero is petty, passive, ineffectual or dishonest. An anti-hero is a central character in modernistic works who lacks the qualities of nobility expected of traditional heroes and heroines in romances and epics.
●It is common in modernistic works. Prufrock is a good example.
●The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock
●假如我认为，我是回答
●一个能转回阳世间的人，
那么，这火焰就不会再摇闪。
●但既然，如我听到的, 果真,
●没有人能活着离开这深渊，
●我回答你就不必害怕流言。（P178 ）
●Let us go then, you and I
●Rhetorical devices
●Conceit: an unusually far-fetched or elaborate metaphor or simile牵强附会或复杂的的
隐喻。它通过使读者感到诧异、震惊、有趣而达到其艺术效果。
●Allusion: an indirect reference to some event, person, place or artistic work. The
relevance is not explained by the writer but relies on the reader’s familiarity wi th what is thus mentioned.
●Conceit 1 (奇喻)
●LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
●那么我们走吧，你我两个人，
正当朝天空慢慢铺展着黄昏
好似病人麻醉在手术台上
●Conceit 2 (奇喻)
●The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
●黄色的雾在窗玻璃上擦着它的背，
黄色的烟在窗玻璃上擦着它的嘴，
把它的舌头舐进黄昏的角落，
徘徊在快要干涸的水坑上；
让跌下烟囱的烟灰落上它的背，
它溜下台阶，忽地纵身跳跃，
看到这是一个温柔的十月的夜，
于是便在房子附近蜷伏起来安睡。
●Allusion 1
●Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
●是否我，在用过茶、糕点和冰食以后，
有魄力把这一刻推到紧要的关头？
然而，尽管我曾哭泣和禁食，哭泣和祷告，
尽管我看见我的头（有一点秃了）用盘子端了进来，
我不是先知——这也不值得大惊小怪；
●Allusion 2
●“I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
●"我是拉撒路，从冥界
来报一个信，我要告诉你们一切。"——
●Allusion 3
●No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
●不！我并非哈姆雷特王子，当也当不成；
我只是个侍从爵士，为王家出行，铺排显赫的场面，或为王子出主意，就够好的了；
无非是顺手的工具，
●我听见了女水妖彼此对唱着歌。
我不认为她们会为我而唱歌。
我看过她们凌驾波浪驶向大海，
梳着打回来的波浪的白发，
当狂风把海水吹得又黑又白。
我们留连于大海的宫室，
被海妖以红的和棕的海草装饰，
一旦被人声唤醒，我们就淹死。
●The Waste Land
●The Waste Land, Eliot’s most important single poem, has been hailed as a landmark and
a model of the 20th-century English poetry.
●Epigraph
●For I myself saw with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae (in Italy) hanging in a cage, and
when the boys cried to her, Sibyl, what do you want? She used to reply “I want to die.”
●“是的，我自己亲眼看见古米的西比尔吊在一个笼子里。孩子们在问她：西比尔，你
要什么，她回答说：我要死。”(P.179)
●献给埃兹拉·庞德
最卓越的匠人
●That epigraph in Latin summarizes the theme of the poem: the existential and spiritual
state of the Westerners is like that of Sibyl: “neither alive nor dead, both alive and dead, alive no better than dead, and dead is alive”--the Waste land state.
●现代西方人的生存状态和精神状态就是那种“西比尔式”的“不生不死、即生即死、
生不如死,死即是生”的荒原状态。
●Allusions (PP.179-180)
●Fisher King legend
●Holy Grail legend
●The Waste Land
Five parts of the poem（P.180）
●“The Burial of the Dead”死者的葬仪
●“A Game of Chess”对奕
●“The Fire Sermon”火诫
●“Death by Water”水里的死亡
●“What the Thunder Said”雷霆的话
●The Waste Land reveals the spiritual crisis of postwar Europe and established Eliot’s
position as the leader not only of new American poetry, but of a whole generation of
writers (“Waste Land Painters” like He mingway and Faulkner)
●It describes the gloominess(苦闷) of the modern man, full of desires but without
passions, expresses the sense of disillusionment of the whole generation and reveals the spiritual crisis.
●It was the poem of despair for the 1920s and 1930s. “Waste land” itself becomes a
symbol of the declining western civilization. It is a milestone of the modern western poetry.
●Comment
He was a poet, playwright, and literary critic.
His literary reputation is generally considered greater than his teacher and friend Ezra Pound.
He became the acknowledged leader of the new verse and criticism both in America and England by 1925.
●T.S. Eliot receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, December 1948.
●The Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948
“for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry” ，
“由于他对当代诗歌作出的卓越贡献和所起的先锋作用”。
●“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. ”
---- T. S. Eliot.
只有那些不怕走得太远的人，才有可能知道到底能走多远。—— T.S.艾略特
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
“Anecdote of the Jar”坛子轶闻
“Sunday Morning”星期天的早晨
“The Emperor of Ice-Cream”冰淇淋皇帝
Anecdote of the Jar
●Theme: It talks about the relationship between art and nature.
●William Carlos Williams
●William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
● A physician by training, Williams wrote poems about everyday subjects and the lives of
ordinary people, using clear, concrete language.
●an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism.
1.The source of information--
Life as it is lived is the beginning and the end (起点和终点) of the poet’s endeavor. Life is in itself poetry simple and pure. (地道的，不折不扣).
American poetry must be rooted in America as its fount of inspiration and its source of information and subject matter. What he wanted to achieve is to reach the universal plane of meaning through the representation of the local.诗歌只有体现出本土的状貌才能具有普遍意义He was committed to reproducing the life, the soul, and the music of America in poetry.
2. The language of his poetry---
He feels strongly that poetry must be grounded in everyday experience and in the speech of the common man. It must use the common meters of living speech（活语言的韵律）.
3.The use of image ---He is an excellent imagist poet. To him, philosophical(哲理的) and metaphysical（形而上学的）speculation has absolutely no place in poetry. He says, “No ideas but in things”. 思想仅寓于事物之中(Paterson) Don’t philosophize; visualize in terms of that which is
physical and particular. 通过具体事物进行艺术构思
poem:
The Red Wheelbarrow 红色手推车
Spring and All春天及一切
long poem: Paterson佩特森
(5 volumes, 1946-1958),
Prose work: In the American Grain美国性格
●The Red Wheelbarrow
●so much depends
●upon
● a red wheel
●barrow
●glazed with rain
●water
●beside the white
●chickens
●The Red Wheelbarrow
红色手推车
●有那么许多
●要靠
●一辆红色手
●推车
●被雨水淋得
●晶亮
●在一群白鸡
●近旁。
●The Red Wheelbarrow is a poem considered the masterwork of William Carlos
Williams.
●The weight of this brief poem rests entirely on the careful description of the thing itself,
the actual wheelbarrow, which is not a symbol for anything, but simply exists as it is.
●Form and structure
●The first line of each stanza has three words. The second line consists of only one word.
●Each of the word is a noun which names an image: barrow, water, chickens. Each image is
emphasized by being placed in a separate stanza. Each image is given more emphasis by being placed alone on the second line of the stanza.
●The image is concrete, familiar and vivid. The words that make the image esp. striking
visually are “red”, “glazed”, and “white for they help to intensify the visualization of the scene, so that it seems to be painted on a canvas.
●Contrast
●The colors stand out because of their contrast with each other: the white chickens
contrast with the red wheelbarrow; the static contrast with the dynamic; living thing contrasts with object without life; natural object contrasts with man-made object.
●So much depends upon
●The claim “so much depends” upon this wheelbarrow is quite accurate. On a farm, a
wheelbarrow is used for a number of important chores----to move upon tools from the barn to the fields; to transport feed to the cows and chickens; to carry seeds for planting and the product to the house.
●So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow. It’s like how so many things in life depend on
such seemingly insignificant entities. Everything depends on such small things in this world. The only difference is we can't see it.
●Theme
●The poem implies that one’s sense of reality, one’s vital connections with the real world
depend on a clear, true perception of these objects. We become aware that it is important to perceive them to make life fuller and that so much depends on how we perceive them in our life and in our writing of poetry.
●How a person looks at the reality and how he responds to the real world are
determined by what he sees in the world. That is, how a person views life and how he lives his life are determined by what he sees in the world. In short, how a person understands the world determines his life.
●Chapter 13
●Frost· Sandburg
●He began to write poems when he was in the middle school, but he was recognized as a
poet when he was nearly 40.
●He won the Pulitzer Prize four times. He was considered as the “unofficial poet
laureate无冕桂冠诗人of the nation”. In 1961, he was invi ted to read his poems in the inauguration ceremony of President Kennedy. He was the only poet who once had such an honor.
●Poetry Collections
A Boy’s Will (1913)少年的意志
“Stooping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
North of Boston（1914)波士顿以北
“Mending Wall “修墙
Mountain Interval (1916) 山间
“The Road Not Taken” 未选择的路
New Hampshire (1923)新罕布什尔
West-Running Brook (1928)西去的溪流
A Further Range (1936) 又一片牧场
A Witness Tree (1942)见证树
Features
●He is one of the most popular American modernist poets. The charm of his poetry is that
it seems to be natural,direct and simple and the fact is that it is deceptively simple.
Profound meanings are hidden underneath the plain language and simple form.
●Fr ost’s poems are New England in their setting.The subjects come from country life of
ordinary people. He used plain language, traditional poetics and symbols from everyday life to express profound ideas. He combined traditional poetic forms with American vocabulary and speech rhythms.----This is his innovation.
●He stood aside from the literary movements of the 20th century since he showed little
interest in experimentation in form. ( traditional forms & modern themes)
●But for him, form is as important as sense. The ordering of sound and sense(声音与意义
的统一) is one major concern of his career.
●Yet he stood aloof among his contemporary poets because of his modern thematic
concern. In his poems, he managed to construct a “ momentary stay against confusion”.
（暂时脱离现实的混乱）
famous poems:
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” 雪夜林边小驻
“The Road Not Taken” 未选择的路
“Mending Wall” 修墙
●Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
●Summary On the surface, this poem is
The speaker is stopping by some woods on a snowy evening. He or she takes part in the lovely scene in near-silence, and is tempted to stay longer. But he or she acknowledges the pull of obligations and the considerable distance yet to be traveled before he or she can rest for the night.
●雪夜林边小立飞白译
●我想我认识树林的主人
他家住在林边的农村；
他不会看见我暂停此地，
欣赏他披上雪装的树林。
我的小马准抱着个疑团：
干嘛停在这儿，不见人烟，
在一年中最黑的晚上，
停在树林和冰湖之间。
●它摇了摇颈上的铃铎，
想问问主人有没有弄错。
除此之外唯一的声音
是风飘绒雪轻轻拂过。
树林真可爱，既深又黑，
但我有许多诺言不能违背，
还要赶多少路才能安睡，
还要赶多少路才能安睡。
●雪夜林畔小驻余光中译
●想来我认识这座森林
●林主的庄宅就在邻村
●却不会见我在此驻马
●看他林中积雪的美景
●
●我的小马一定颇惊讶
●四望不见有什么农家
●偏是一年最暗的黄昏
●寒林和冰湖之间停下
●它摇一摇身上的串铃
●问我这地方该不该停
●此外只有轻风拂雪片
●再也听不见其他声音
●
●森林又暗又深真可羡
●但我还要守一些诺言
●还要赶多少路才安眠
●还要赶多少路才安眠
●雪夜林边小驻
●我知道林子的主人是谁，他轻摇铃具
虽村落是他所居之地。询问有错与否。
他不会看到我停留于此，唯一的回复来自，
凝视他的林子雪花纷飞。软雪和清风。
我的小马一定以我为怪，林子很美——昏暗而幽深，
近无房舍，为何停伫。但我已有约定。
况只有林子与冰湖，沉醉前还有一段路要走
和一年中最黑之夜。沉醉前还有一段路要走
●Analysis about the last stanza
●The last stanza shows a kind of sad, sentimental but also strong and responsible feeling.
The attraction of the beauty of the nature makes the speaker stop in the journey. He evidently would like to stay forever in comforting nature from the tiring life of commitments. But he finally turns away from it. He remembers that he has “promises to keep”, a nd is now ready to face the miles stretching before him. This stresses the central conflict of the poem between man's enjoyment of nature's beauty and his responsibility in society.
●In the last stanza, the three adjectives "lovely" "dark" "deep" reinforce one another. Not
only do they represent beauty and terror of nature symbolized by the dark woods, but they also reveal the speaker's love for nature and human isolation from it. Besides, the word "sleep" here means "die" symbolically.
●Theme
●The poem represents a moment of relaxation from the burdensome journey of life, an
almost aesthetic enjoyment and appreciation of natural beauty which is beneficial and restorative against the chaotic existence of modern man.
●This poem suggests deep thought about death and life. The strange attraction of death to
man is symbolized by the dark woods silently filled up with the coldness of snow.
●Symbolism
●the village (or "society," "civilization" ) --human world
●The woods (beyond the borders of the village) sit on the edge of civilization. It is restful,
seductive, lovely, dark, and deep–nature.
●the horse is a domesticated part of the civilized order of things. It is the nearest thing to
society's agent at this place and time.—animal world
●Promises ("duty," "responsibility")
●"The Road Not Taken"
●What would you say is the most important decision you have made thus far in your life?
How did you make this decision? Looking back, was it a good decision or do you have regrets?
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
●Literary Devices
Symbolism
1. “Roads” - The roads are symbolic of the paths we take in life. Every road leads to a specific place and the nature of one’s destination depends entirely on the decisions that are made.
2.“Woods” - a quiet, deserted place where the speaker is left alone to decide.
3. “Morning” - The morning represents a new beginning. The speaker is in the early years of his life and his future is spread out before him.
4. “Yellow” - representative of the light, hope, and promise. His future is bright and stretches before him.
●Literary Devices
Metaphor
The poem revolves around the metaphor comparing the decisions we make on the journey of life to a fork in the road. Just as we must decide which road to take when traveling in order to arrive at a location, we must make decisions in life that will greatly impact our destiny. The speaker is a “traveler” on the road of life.
●Theme
●This poem seems to be about the poet, walking in the woods in autumn, hesitating for a
long time and wondering which road he should take since they are both pretty. In the poem, he followed the one which was not frequently travelled by.
●Symbolically he chose to follow an unusual, solitary life; perhaps he was speaking of his
choice to become a poet rather than some common profession. But he always remembered the road which he might have taken, and which would have given him a different kind of life.
●"The Road Not Taken" seems to illustrate that once one takes a certain road, there is no
turning back. It can be seen as showing that choice is very important, and a thing to be considered.
●It symbolically concerns the important decisions which one must take in the course of
life, when one must give up one desirable thing in order to possess another. Then, whatever the outcome, one must accept the consequences of one's choice for it is not possible to go back and have another chance to choose differently.
●Mending Wall
●The picture you see on this page was photographed on the Robert Frost Farm, in Derry,
New Hampshire.
●Frost lived on this 30 acre farm in the southeastern corner of the state from 1900 to
1911. Although he lived in England when he wrote "Mending Wall" in 1913, it was on this farm where he would "meet to walk the line and set the wall between us once again" with his neighbor Napoleon Guay.
●"Mending Wall" is a metaphorical poem written in blank verse, published in 1914.The
poem appeared as the first selection in Frost's second collection of poetry, North of Boston. It is set in the countryside and is about one man questioning why he and his neighbor must rebuild the stone wall dividing their farms each spring.
●"Mending Wall"
●Summary: A stone wall separates the speaker's property from his neighbor's. In spring,
the two meet to walk along the wall and jointly make some repairs. The speaker sees no reason for the wall to be kept--there are no cows to be contained, just apple and pine trees. He sees no reason of having a wall. The neighbor resorts to an old saying: "Good fences make good neighbors."
●Two men meet on terms of civility and neighborliness to build a barrier between them.
They do so out of tradition, out of habit.
●Two types of people: those who stubbornly insist on building unnecessary walls and
those who would like to abandon this practice--wall-builders and wall-breakers.
●Symbolism: Wall
●It stands for all artificial barriers that needlessly separate one person from another in
isolation and the cold indifference and distance that keeps people apart. The speaker is clearly for tearing down the barriers. The wall is symbol of what keeps people apart, of all the things that keep us from loving each other.
●Analysis
●There is some intent and value in wall-breaking, and there is some powerful tendency
toward this destruction. The poet says “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
“Something” here means man’s longing for communication, or a desire to break the ice of indifference.
●The poet says there are many visible or invisible walls in the world that have no necessity
of existence. Therefore, they should be broken down. The image of “an old-stone savage”
suggests the difficulty in breaking the invisible wall between people.
Carl Sandburg
He is an important figure in the Chicago Literary Renaissance (Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson). His poetic aim was to celebrate the working people of America in poems that they could understand. He said: simple poems for simple people.
He was aware that American life was increasingly urban, and he had little interest in the small town and its conventional middle class. In the cities of the Midwest, the urban spectacle seemed to display both the vitality of the masses and their exploitation in an unequal class system. Sandburg’s Works
With three volumes of poetry, Sandburg became known for his free verse poems celebrating industrial and agricultural America, American geography and landscape, and the American common people.
Famous poems:
Chicago
Fog
The Harbor
●Chicago
●Summary: In the poem, he is telling us about the city Chicago. In each stanza he
describes the different problems that go on in the city life. The poem presents a striking and impressive description of the vigor and vitality of Chicago primarily by means of personification, images and metaphor.
●Theme: This poem talks about the industrialized city of Chicago. In the poem "Chicago",
Carl Sandburg portrays the city as a person and mentions the problems within the city.
However, he accepts and embraces Chicago despite all the problems within such as poverty and prostitution.
●Chapter 14
●Lost Generation
● F. Scott Fitzgerald(1896-1940)
●Literary spokesman of “ the roaring 1920s”（all gods are dead, all wars are fought, all
faith in man is shaken.)
● A member of the “Lost Generation”
●Life
●Torments of Fitzgerald in his late years: loneliness, alcohol, dissipation(浪费；挥霍) of
literary talents; P.216
●When he was 40 years old, he suffered from the tuberculosis and then he attempted to
commit suicide. After recovery, he worked for Hollywood for a period but later was dismissed. When he was 44 he died of heart attack.
novels: This Side of Paradise人间天堂1920
The Beautiful and Damned漂亮冤家1922
The Great Gatsby了不起的盖茨比1925
Tender is the Night夜色温柔1934
The Last Tycoon( unfinished)最后的大亨1942
short story collection:
Flappers and Philosophers新潮女郎与哲学家1920
Tales of the Jazz Age爵士乐时代的故事1922
All the Sad Young Man所有悲伤的年轻人1926
Taps at Reveille清晨起床号1935
The Crack-Up崩溃1945(essays)
Writing feature
●Fitzgerald's fictional world is the best embodiment of the spirit of the Jazz Age, in which
he shows a particular interest in the upper-class society, especially the upper-class young people.
●He dealt most with the double theme of love and money. His fiction reveals the
hollowness of the American worship of money and the unending American dreams. He believed that the wealthy class corrupted the whole of American society.
●Fitzgerald and the American Dream
●American Dream is a popular belief that people can achieve success, whether it is wealth,
fame or love through honest hard work in a new world of liberty, equality, chances and promises.
●Yet in the 1920s, the American Dream was bankrupt in the sense that the wealthy people
were spiritually disorientated and morally corrupted. The fact that the rich people turned to be more indifferent and careless brought forth the disillusionment of American Dream.
●The Great Gatsby
●The novel is the most representative work of Fitzgerald and a great masterpiece in
American literature. It is a typical story about the Jazz Age and the American Dream.
●it is set in Long Island's North Shore and New York City during the summer of 1922. Narrator: Nick Carraway
hero :Jay Gatsby
heroine: Daisy Buchanan
Character analysis: Gatsby
●It is a story of an idealist who tries to recapture his lost love but in vain and is finally
destroyed by the influence of the wealthy people around him. Gatsby is the true heir to the American dream.
●He fails to understand that he cannot recapture the past no matter how much money
he makes. Daisy refuses to leave the security of her established position for Gatsby’s adoration and precarious wealth.
●Narrative Techniques
●Point of view: first-person point view; using the “dramatic narrator” (means the narrator
is also a character in the novel); Nick Carraway is related with all the three groups of characters in the novel. He is a reliable person and makes no quick judgments. Limited omniscience creates an effect of mystery and suspense.P.219
●Theme
1.The fact that the rich people turned to be more indifferent and careless brought forth the disillusionment of American Dream.
2.It is the single most profound commentary in American fiction on American Dream. The novel deals symbolically with the frustration and despair resulting from the failure of the American dream. Fitzgerald deals with the bankruptcy of the American dream ,which is highlighted by the
disillusionment of the protagonists' personal dreams due to the clashes between their romantic version of life and the sordid reality.
●Literary achievement by The Great Gatsby (PP.217-220)
●Fitzgerald’s greatness lies in the fact that he found intuitively in his personal experienc e
the embodiment of that of the nation and created a myth out of American life. The story of The Great Gatsby is a good illustration.
●He has shown successfully the disintegrating effects of wealth on the emotional make-up
of his characters.
●His choice of a dramatic narrator.
●The Great Gatsby was “the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James”
●Ernest Hemingway (1899~1961)
●Nobel Prize winner in 1954 “for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently
demonstrated In The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.”因为他精通于叙事艺术，突出地表现在他的近著《老人与海》中，同时也由于他在当代风格中所发挥的影响。
●Born: July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Chicago
●Died: July 2, 1961 in Ketchum, Idaho.
●Life
●Born in a small town called Oak Park near Chicago
●Father: a successful physician, middle class, love fishing and hunting; Mother:a music
teacher
● A happy childhood; a lover of brutal sports, such as boxing and football in middle school
●Though his father hoped him to be a physician, Hemingway refused to enter university.
He chose to be a reporter.
●During the WWI, he wanted to join the army but was refused because of his poor
eyesight. Then Hemingway came to Italy to work as an ambulance driver. He was seriously wounded in the battlefield. The nightmarish war experience changed his life.
●Life
●After the war, he still worked as a reporter. He was sent to Paris and knew Gertrude Stein,
Sherwood Anderson and some other famous writers who encouraged him to write.
●He also worked as a war reporter in the Spanish Civil War and the WWII.
●He is a tough guy with rather masculine manner. In all his life, he loved tough games,
such as boxing, hunting, deep-sea fishing and so on. He was injured many times. In all the operations, 237 steel fragments were taken out from his body. He also suffered 3 car accidents and 2 air crushes. He was admired as a hero by lots of people and his life style was imitated.
●In 1961, Hemingway died.
●Point of View
●In some sense, all his life, he lived with war emotionally and continued to write about it
in order to relive and forget it. Therefore, he often dealt with war and its effects on people, and with the question of how to live with pain.
●All his works dramatize this concept: life is dangerous and always ready to defeat and
destroy you, but if you keep calm and stand on your set of principles, you may win on your own terms.
●Hemingway held a black, naturalistic (自然主义式的) view of the world, saw it as “all a
nothing,” and saw life in terms of battles and tension, which was nothingness (虚无) for him.
●In his fiction the nihilistic 虚无主义vision of sterility, failure, and death is modified by
his affirmative assertion of the possibility of living with style and courage. 与他活出风格、活出勇气的肯定观点相对照
Works
novel:
The Sun Also Rises(1926)
A Farewell to Arms(1928)
For whom the Bell Tolls(1940)
The Old Man and the Sea(1952)
(In 1954, Hemingway got the Nobel Prize)
Short stories: play: The Fifth Column
In Our Time non-fiction:
Winner Take Nothing Death in the Afternoon
Men without Women Green Hills of Africa
To Have and Have Not The Snows of Kilimanjaro
●The Sun Also Rises (1926)
●Through this book, he was recognized as the spokesman of the “lost generation”. (so
called by Gertrude Stein)
●It is about a group of psychologically bruised, disillusioned expatriates living in postwar
Paris.
● A Farewell to Arms (1929)
● A tragic wartime love-affair between an ambulance driver (Frederic Henry) and an
English nurse (Catherine Barkley).
●For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
●Written from his experience in the Spanish Civil War.
●Argues for human brotherhood.
(The left picture is the poster of the movie)
●The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
●won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1953.
●It epitomizes the indomitable courage of an aged Cuban fisherman.
●“A man is not made for defeat.…A man can be destroyed, but not defeated.”人不是生来
要被打败的，你尽可以把他消灭，可就是打不败他– a famous line from this book. The Old Man and the Sea (P.225)
1.symbolism
Santiago – mankind;
sea – nature and environment;
marlin – purpose of life;
shark –the evil force which control human’s fate
● 2. Theme
●To behave well in the lonely, losing battle with life is to show "grace under pressure" and
constitutes in itself a kind of victory, a theme clearly established in The Old Man and The
Sea. Though life is but a losing battle, it is a struggle man can dominate in such a way that loss becomes dignity; man can be physically destroyed but never defeated spiritually.
●Hemingway’s Code Hero（硬汉形象）
●It refers to some protagonists in Hemingway's works. Hemingway defined the Code Hero
as "a man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honor, courage and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful, and always painful."
●In the general situation of Hemingway's novels, life is full of tension and battles; the
world is in chaos and man is always fighting desperately a losing battle.
●Those who survive and perhaps emerge victorious in the process of seeking to master
the code with a set of principles such as honor, courage, endurance, wisdom, discipline and dignity are known as "the Hemingway code hero".
●Typical Hemingway theme
●All his life, Hemingway wrote about one theme, “grace under pressure”, and created one
hero who acts that theme out. There is a particular term “the code hero” for his character.
●The Hemingway hero possesses “despairing courage”(绝望中的勇气). It is this courage
that enables a man to behave like a man ,to assert his dignity in face of adversity. This is the essence of a code of honor（典型品质）, which all his heroes believe in.
●Colloquial style
●influence from Mark Twain and his journalist career
●Concrete, specific, common-found words
●Simple, short, even ungrammatical sentences
●Direct, clear and positive style, yet highly connotative.
●The style was described as “iceberg”
●“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things
that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water." - Death In the Afternoon His iceberg theory of writing:
（冰山原则）
1/8 of an iceberg is above the water. All of the rest is underneath the water. The same is true with Hemingway’s writing. His sentences only give one small bit of the meaning. The rest is implied. One must go very deep beneath the surface to understand the full meaning of his writing.
●According to Hemingway, good literary writing should be able to make readers feel the
emotion of the characters directly and the best way to produce the effect is to set down exactly every particular kind of feeling without any authorial comments, without conventionally emotive language, and with a bare minimum of adjectives and adverbs.
●Lost Generation: Name applied to the disillusioned intellectuals of the years
following WWI,who rebelled against former ideals and values but could replace them only by despair or a cynical hedonism.
●The remark of Gertrude Stein：“you are all a lost generation,” addressed to Hemingway,
was used as a preface to the latter’s novel The Sun Also Rises, which brilliantly describes
an expatriate group typical of the “lost generation.” (P. 228)
The representatives of the group include Fitzgerald and Hemingway.
?Chapter 15
The Southern Renaissance
?William Faulkner
?William Faulkner
(1897 -1962)
?1949 Nobel Prize winner for literature
?his works:19 novels, 3 short stories
?Soldier’s Pay 士兵的报酬(his first novel)
?Mosquitoes 蚊群
?Sartoris 沙多里斯
?The Sound and the Fury
?As I Lay Dying 在我弥留之际
?Absalom! Absalom!押沙龙，押沙龙
?Go Down, Moses 去吧，摩西
?Sanctuary 圣殿
?Light in August 八月之光
?Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,
?Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
?To the last syllable of recorded time;
?And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
?The way to dusty death.
?Out, out, brief candle!
?明天，明天，再一个明天，一天接着一天地蹑步前进，直到最后一秒钟的时间；我们所有的昨天，不过替傻子们照亮了到死亡的土壤中去的路。熄灭了吧，熄灭了吧，短促的烛光！
?Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
?人生不过是一个行走的影子，一个在舞台上指手画脚的拙劣的伶人，登场片刻，就在无声无息中悄然退下。它是一个愚人所讲的故事，充满了喧哗和骚动，却找不到一点意义。
?——莎士比亚《麦克白》
?The Sound and the Fury (1929) 《喧哗与骚动》
?The title of the novel comes from a drama written by William Shakespeare.( “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing”—Macbeth)
?The main story of the novel is about the family history of the Compsons, who were once the owner of a plantation.
?The novel is recounting the death of a family, including some of its members, as well as the decline of the traditional upper-class Southern family.
?Characters
?Benjy Compson: an idiot
?Quentin Compson: a student in Harvard, full of imagination, felt modern life unbearable, at last suicide
?Jason Compson: all vices of modern world, rationalism over feeling and compassion ?Dilsey: a black woman, a servant in the Compsons, a natural woman who had the common feeling and compassion
?Storyline
?The novel takes place in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County and is split into four parts narrated by four characters.
?Part 1 April 7, 1928 (Benjy)
?Part 2 June 2, 1910 (Quentin)
?Part 3 April 6, 1928 (Jason)
?Part 4 April 8, 1928 (Dilsey)
? 1. Theme: It is an account of the tragic downfall of the Compson family. The idealized past forms a contrast with the loveless present. It conveys a nostalgic feeling about the past and a strong sense of grief over the family’s deterioration.
? 2. Narration: a new and experimental technique – multiple points of view and unreliable narrator
?Multiple Points of View多重视角
?It is one of the literary techniques William Faulkner used, which shows within the same story how the characters reacted differently to the same person or the same situation.
The use of this technique gave the story a circular form wherein one event was the center, with various points of view radiating from it. The multiple points of view technique makes the reader recognize the difficulty of arriving at a true judgment.
? 3. Most parts of the novel were written in Stream-of-consciousness: telling the story by recording the thoughts of the characters. The traditional time order of the novel was totally broken in this novel. No capitalization, no proper punctuations. Most parts are fragments with mistaken information.
?Stream of consciousness
?It refers to the continuous flow of thoughts, feelings, and memories in the human mind.
As a literary method, it represents such a blending of mental processes in fictional characters, usually in the form of interior monologue.
?it is an important device of modernist fiction, pioneered by James Joyce in Ulysses and further developed by Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner.
?Special setting: Yoknapatawpha County
?Yoknapatawpha county (a typical small southern town) is not only a complete and detailed creation of a mythical kingdom, it functions also as an allegory of the South, with which Faulkner has managed successfully to show a panorama of the whole Southern society.
?The Yoknapatawpha stories deal, generally, with the historical period from the Civil War up to the 1920s when the First World War broke out, and people of a stratified society, the aristocrats, the new rich, the poor whites, and the blacks.
?Yoknapatawpha saga
?Faulkner’s works have been termed the Yoknapatawpha saga. Yoknapatawpha saga (P.232) is Faulkner's real achievement.
?He writes about the histories of a number of southern aristocratic families. In the very rise of these family fortunes, Faulkner sees their inevitable fall. When the same story of the tragic rise and fall recurs in one novel after another, it assumes symbolic proportions.
?The spiritual deterioration which characterizes modern life stems directly from the loss of love and want of emotional response ---that seems to be one important message of Faulkner’s stories.
?Yoknapatawpha county is not only a complete and detailed creation of a mythical kingdom, it functions also as an allegory of the South. Its appeal became universal as well as particular.
?Thematic concerns
?He lamented the decline of the old South and condemned the mechanized, industrialized society which has dehumanized people. they are prisoners of the past, or of the society, or of some social and moral taboos, or of their own introspective personalities.
?His works were in praise of eternal virtues in human history, love, pity, honor and self-sacrifice (Faulkner thought that the doom of the South was caused by ill-treatment of Indians and blacks and the way to change the meaningless modern life is recovering the traditional and eternal virtues.)
?Faulkner's narrative technique
?Withdrawal of the author as a controlling narrator: a writer should observe with no judgment whatsoever and reduce authorial intrusion to the lowest minimum.
?Multiple points of view: The employment of several narrators or narrative points of views to tell a story. For example, The Sound and the Fury uses four different narrative voices to piece together the story and thus challenges the reader by presenting a fragmented plot told from multiple points of view.
?Dislocation(混乱) of the narrative time: The most characteristic way of structuring his stories is to fragment the chronological time. He deliberately broke up the chronology of his narrative by juxtaposing the past with the present, in the way the montage does in a movie.
?The modern stream-of-consciousness technique
? A summary on his writing technique:
1.authorial transcendence（作家的超脱）
2.employing a fallible narrator （不可靠的叙述者）or multiple narrators（多位叙述者）
3.Juxtaposing（对位）scenes involving …
4.He adopted modern stream-of-consciousness technique. There were a lot of interior monologue in his works.
?福克纳写作的目的在于促使人们对生活采取肯定态度。他认为好的文学作品应当描写人的精神问题，描写老的、普遍的真理，他所讲的真理包括爱、荣誉感、自豪感、同情心和牺牲精神。
?福克纳拒不接受关于人的命运的悲观论点。他认为人不仅能持久，而且必定成为胜利者。人有灵魂，有同情心、牺牲精神及美好的心灵，因而是不朽的。诗人的责任，作家的责任，在于描写这些东西，以便振作人们的精神，提醒人们铭记曾经造就了他们光荣历史的品质——勇敢、荣誉感、希望、自豪感、怜悯、同情及牺牲精神，以帮助人们永恒长存。
?The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man
美国文学史-知识点梳理
Part I The Literature of Colonial America I．Historical Introduction The colonial period stretched roughly from the settlement of America in the early 17th century through the end of the 18th. The first permanent settlement in America was established by English in 1607. ( A group of people was sent by the English King James I to hunt for gold. They arrived at Virginia in 1607. They named the James River and build the James town.) II．The pre-revolutionary writing in the colonies was essentially of two kinds: 1) Practical matter-of-fact accounts of farming, hunting, travel, etc. designed to inform people "at home" what life was like in the new world, and, often, to induce their immigration 2) Highly theoretical, generally polemical, discussions of religious questions. III．The First American Writer The first writings that we call American were the narratives and journals of these settlements. They wrote about their voyage to the new land, their lives in the new land, their dealings with Indians. Captain John Smith is the first American writer. A True Relation of such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia Since the First Planting of That Colony (1608) A Map of Virginia: A Description of the Country (1612) General History of Virgini a (1624): the Indian princess Pocahontas Captain John Smith was one of the first early 17th-century British settlers in North America. He was one of the founders of the colony of Jamestown, Virginia. His writings about North America became the source of information about the New World for later settlers. One of the things he wrote about that has become an American legend was his capture by the Indians and his rescue by the famous Indian Princess, Pocahontas. IV．Early New England Literature William Bradford and John Winthrop John Cotton and Roger Williams Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor V．Puritan Thoughts 1. The origin of puritan In the mediaeval Europe, there was widespread religious revolution. In the 16th Century, the English King Henry VIII (At that time, the Catholics were not allowed to divorce unless they have the Pope's permission. Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife because she couldn't bear him a son. But the Pope didn't allow him to divorce, so he) broke away from the Roman Catholic Church & established the Church of
美国文学史总结
ⅠColonial America(17th century)殖民主义时期文学 1.In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered America and he mistook the native people on the new continent for Indians. Character of colonial literature: a.content: religious, political b.form: diary, journal, letters, travel books, sermons, history (personal literature) c.Style: simple. direct, concise d.out of humble origins Early in the 17th century, the English settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts began the main stream of what we recognize as the American national history. The earliest settlers in America included Dutch, Swedes, Germans, French, Spaniards, Italians and Portuguese. The first permanent English settlement in North America was established at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607(北美弗吉尼亚詹姆斯顿) 2.Captain Town Smith, the first American writer 3.Puritan Thoughts: hard work, thrift(节俭), piety(虔诚), sobriety(节制), 这些也成了早期 美国作品主导思想. 典型的清教徒：John Cotton & Roger William, John Cotton was called “the Patriarch of New England(新英格兰教父)” 清教徒采用的文学体裁：narratives(日记) and journals(游记) 清教徒在美国的写作内容： 1）Their voyage to the new land 2）Adapting themselves to unfamiliar climates and crops 3）About dealing with Indians 4）Guide to the new land, endless bounty, invitation to bold spirit 4.Private literature: theological, moral, historical, political 5.The work of two writers, Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor, rose to the level of real poetry. Anne Bradstreet is one of the most interesting of the early poets, 英国最早移民到美国的诗人. The best of the Puritan poets was Edward Taylor. ⅡReason and Revolution(18th century)理性和革命时期文学 1.The War for Independence (1776-1783) ended in the formation of a Federative bourgeois democratic republic - the United States of America. 2.Bourgeois Enlightenment 3.Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard’s Almanac(穷人理查德的年鉴), an annual collection of proverbs. The Autobiography, 18世纪美国唯一流传至今的自传 ?The Autobiography is, first of all, a Puritan document. It is Puritan because it is a record of self-examination and self-improvement. The Puritans, as a type, were very much given to self-analysis. ?The Autobiography shows Franklin was spokesman for the new order of 18th-century Enlightenment, and that he represented in America all its ideas, that man is basically good and free, by nature endowed by God with certain inalienable rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
美国文学史常耀信版
美国文学史常耀信版 很有用的哦！ 2008-08-10 22:02 阅读206 评论0 字号：大中小 美国文学史常耀信版 美国文学 Part 1. Colonial America浪漫主义American Romanticism(1815-1865) 早期浪漫主义early romanticism——Irving欧文, Cooper库柏, Bryant布莱恩特 先验主义transcendentalism and symbolic representation——Emerson 爱默森，Margaret Fuller玛格丽特福勒，Thoreau 梭罗 三位重要的小说家——Hawthorne 霍桑，Melville 梅尔维尔，Poe 坡 二位重要的诗人——Whitman 惠特曼，Dickinson 狄更生 现实主义American Realism（1865-1914） 带有地方色彩的写作local color writing——Mark Twain马克吐温 现实主义literary realism——James 詹姆士，Howells 豪斯尔斯 自然主义literary naturalism——Garland 加兰特，Grane 格雷恩，Frank Norris 弗兰克诺里斯，Jack London 杰克伦敦，Theodore Dreiser 西奥多德莱塞 现代主义American Modernism(1914-1945) 现代主义在欧洲American modernism in Europe——Gerturde Stein 格特鲁德斯坦因，Ezra Pound 艾兹拉庞德，Amy Lowell 艾米洛威尔，H.D.(Hilda Doolittle) 杜丽埃尔 战时的现代派小说modern fiction between the wars——William Faulkner 威廉福克纳，Hemingway 海明威，Fitzgerald 费兹杰罗，Passos 帕索斯，Steinbeck 斯坦贝克 现代派诗歌modern American poetry——T.S. Eliot 艾略特，Wallace Stevens 史蒂文斯，William Carols Williams 威廉姆斯，卡明斯 Thomas Paine托马斯?潘恩1737-1809 The Case of the Officers of Excise税务员问题；Common Sense常识；American Crisis美国危机；Rights of Man人的权利：Downfall of Despotism专制体制的崩溃；The Age of Reason理性时代 Philip Freneau菲利普?弗伦诺1752-1832 The Rising Glory of America蒸蒸日上的美洲；The British Prison Ship英国囚船；To the Memory of the Brave Americans 纪念美国勇士-----同类诗中最佳；The Wild Honeysuckle野生的金银花；The Indian Burying Ground印第安人殡葬地 Jonathan Edwards The Freedom of the Will The Great Doctrine of Original Sin defended The Nature of True Virtue Benjamin Franklin本杰明?富兰克林1706-1790 A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Moneyoor Richard’s Almanack穷查理历书；The Way to Wealth致富之道；The Autobiography自传 Part 2. American Romanticism Washington Irving华盛顿?欧文1783-1859 A History of New York纽约的历史-----美国人写的第一部诙谐文学杰作；The Sketch Book见闻札记The Legend of Sleepy Hollow睡谷的传说-----使之成为美国第一个获得国际声誉的作家；
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
美国文学史复习资料
美国文学史复习（colonialism) 第一部分殖民主义时期的文学 一、时期综述 1、清教徒采用的文学体裁：a、narratives 日记b、journals 游记 2、清教徒在美国的写作内容： 1）their voyage to the new land 2) Adapting themselves to unfamiliar climates and crops 3) About dealing with Indians 4) Guide to the new land, endless bounty, invitation to bold spirit 3、清教徒的思想： 1）puritan want to make up pure their religious beliefs and practices 净化信仰和行为方式 2) Wish to restore simplicity to church and the authority of the Bible to the theology. 重建教堂，提供简单服务，建立神圣地位 3）look upon themselves as chosen people, and it follow logically that anyone who challenged their way of life is opposing God's will and is not to be accepted. 认为自己是上帝选民，对他们的生活有异议就是反对上帝 4）puritan opposition to pleasure and the arts sometimes has been exaggerated. 反对对快乐和艺术的追求到了十分荒唐的地步5）religious teaching tended to emphasize the image of a wrathful God.强调上帝严厉的一面，忽视上帝仁慈的一面。 4、典型的清教徒：John Cotton & Roger William 他们的不同：John Cotton was much more concerned with authority than with democracy; William begins the history of religious toleration in America. 5、William的宗教观点：Toleration did not stem from a lack of religious convictions. Instead, it sprang from the idea that simply to be virtuous in conduct and devout in belief did not give anyone the right to force belief on others. He also felt that no political order or church system could identify itself directly with God. 行为上的德，信仰上的诚，并没有给任何人强迫别人该如何行事的权利。没有任何政治秩序和教会体制能够直接体现神本身的意旨。 6、英国最早移民到美国的诗人：Anne Bradstreet 7、在殖民时期最好的清教徒诗人：the best of Puritan poets is Edward Tayor. 学习指南： 1、Could you give a description of American Puritans? 关于美国清教徒的描绘 Like their brothers back in England, were idealists, believing that the church should be restored to the "purity" of the first-century church as established by Jesus Christ himself. To them religion was a matter of primary importance. They made it their chief business to see that man lived and thought and acted in a way which tended to the glory of God. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God, all that John Calvin, the great French theologian who lived in Geneva had preached. It was this kind of religious belief that they brought with them into the wildness. There they meaant to prove that were God's chosen people enjoying his blessings on this earth as in Heaven. 2、Hard work, thrift, piety and sobriety were the Puritan values that dominated much of the earliest American writing. 3、The work of two writers, Anne Bradstreet & Edward Taylor, rose to the level of real poetry.
(完整版)美国文学史复习资料
美国文学史复习1（colonialism) 第一部分殖民主义时期的文学 一、时期综述 1、清教徒采用的文学体裁：a、narratives 日记b、journals 游记 2、清教徒在美国的写作内容： 1）their voyage to the new land 2) Adapting themselves to unfamiliar climates and crops 3) About dealing with Indians 4) Guide to the new land, endless bounty, invitation to bold spirit 3、清教徒的思想： 1）puritan want to make up pure their religious beliefs and practices 净化信仰和行为方式 2) Wish to restore simplicity to church and the authority of the Bible to the theology. 重建教堂，提供简单服务，建立神圣地位 3）look upon themselves as chosen people, and it follow logically that anyone who challenged their way of life is opposing God's will and is not to be accepted. 认为自己是上帝选民，对他们的生活有异议就是反对上帝 4）puritan opposition to pleasure and the arts sometimes has been exaggerated. 反对对快乐和艺术的追求到了十分荒唐的地步5）religious teaching tended to emphasize the image of a wrathful God.强调上帝严厉的一面，忽视上帝仁慈的一面。 4、典型的清教徒：John Cotton & Roger William 他们的不同：John Cotton was much more concerned with authority than with democracy; William begins the history of religious toleration in America. 5、William的宗教观点：Toleration did not stem from a lack of religious convictions. Instead, it sprang from the idea that simply to be virtuous in conduct and devout in belief did not give anyone the right to force belief on others. He also felt that no political order or church system could identify itself directly with God. 行为上的德，信仰上的诚，并没有给任何人强迫别人该如何行事的权利。没有任何政治秩序和教会体制能够直接体现神本身的意旨。 6、英国最早移民到美国的诗人：Anne Bradstreet 7、在殖民时期最好的清教徒诗人：the best of Puritan poets is Edward Tayor. 学习指南： 1、Could you give a description of American Puritans? 关于美国清教徒的描绘 Like their brothers back in England, were idealists, believing that the church should be restored to the "purity" of the first-century church as established by Jesus Christ himself. To them religion was a matter of primary importance. They made it their chief business to see that man lived and thought and acted in a way which tended to the glory of God. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God, all that John Calvin, the great French theologian who lived in Geneva had preached. It was this kind of religious belief that they brought with them into the wildness. There they meaant to prove that were God's chosen people enjoying his blessings on this earth as in Heaven. 2、Hard work, thrift, piety and sobriety were the Puritan values that dominated much of the earliest American writing. 3、The work of two writers, Anne Bradstreet & Edward Taylor, rose to the level of real poetry. 4、The earliest settlers included Dutch, Swedes, Germans, French, Spaniards Italian, and Portuguese. 美国文学史复习2（reasoning and revolution) (2009-01-17 15:54:25) 一、美国的性质： The war for Independence ended in the formation of a Federative bourgeois democratic republic - the United States of America. 联邦的资产阶级民主共和国--美利坚合众国。 二、代表作家： 1、Benjamin Franklin 本杰明·富兰克林1706-1790 1）"Poor Richard's Almanac" 穷人查理德的年鉴annual collection of proverbs 流行谚语集 It soon became the most popular book of its kind, largely because of Franklin's shrewd humor, and first spread his reputation 2) Founded the Junto, a club for informal discussion of scientific, economic and political ideas. 建立了一个秘密俱乐部，讨论的主题是政治、经济和科学等时事方面的问题 3）established America's first circulating library, founded the college--University of Pennsylvania. 建立了美国第一个可租借的图书馆，还创办了一所大学——就是现在的宾夕法尼亚大学。 4）first applied the terms "positive" and "negative" to electrical charges. 5)As a representative of the Colonies, he tried in vain to counsel the British toward policies that would let America grow and flourish in association with England. He conducted the difficulty negotiations with France that brought financial and military support for America in the war. 作为殖民地的代表，他不断建议英国改变政策，使美国可以和英国一起发展、繁荣。他说服法国支持美国的独立战争。 6）As an author he had power of expression, simplicity, a subtle humor, sarcastic.作为作家具有非凡的才能，表达简洁明了，幽默，讽刺天才、 7）The Way to Wealth致富之道The Autobiography自传18世纪美国唯一流传至今的自传
美国文学史期末总结
美国文学史美国文学
全书的焦点集中于南太平洋一条名叫莫比·迪克的白鲸,以及捕鲸船皮廓德(Pequod)号的船长阿哈(Ahab)如何对它有不共戴天的仇恨.阿哈在一次航行中被莫比·迪克咬掉一条腿,立志报仇,指挥皮廓德号环航全球追踪,终于发现了它.经过三天放下小艇紧追.虽然刺中了这条白鲸,但它十分顽强狡猾,咬碎了小艇,也撞沉了大船.它拖着捕鲸船游开时,绳子套住阿哈,把他绞死了.全船人尽皆灭顶.只有一个水手借着由棺材改制的救生浮子而逃得性命.整个故事以这个水手伊希梅尔(Ishmael)自述的方式展开. The book focuses on a whale named Moby Dick lived in south pacific and the captain of whaler Pequod—Ahab. Ahab was once bite by Moby Dick and lost a leg, determined to revenge,he commanded whaler pequod do global tracking, and finally found it. After three days of hot pursuit with the skiff,while they stabbed this white whale, but it was very tenacious and cunning, eventually chewed the skiff, also sank the ship. It dragged whaler swimming away, the rope was around Ahab, he was hanged. Almost all of people on the boat drowned, only a sailor called Ishmael survived .
美国文学史作品作家汇总 全
美国文学史作品作家汇总 美国文学 Part 1. Colonial America Thomas Paine托马斯?潘恩1737-1809 The Case of the Officers of Excise税务员问题；Common Sense常识；American Crisis美国危机；Rights of Man人的权利：Downfall of Despotism专制体制的崩溃；The Age of Reason理性时代 Philip Freneau菲利普?弗伦诺1752-1832 The Rising Glory of America蒸蒸日上的美洲；The British Prison Ship英国囚船；To the Memory of the Brave Americans纪念美国勇士-----同类诗中最佳；The Wild Honeysuckle 野生的金银花；The Indian Burying Ground印第安人殡葬地 .Jonathan Edwards The Freedom of the Will 论意志自由The Great Doctrine of Original Sin defended论原罪The Nature of True Virtue论真是德行的本原 Benjamin Franklin本杰明?富兰克林1706-1790 A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Money; Poor Richard’s Almanac穷查理历书；The Way to Wealth致富之道；The Autobiography自传 Part 2. American Romanticism Washington Irving华盛顿?欧文1783-1859 A History of New York纽约的历史-----美国人写的第一部诙谐文学杰作；The Sketch Book见闻札记The Legend of Sleepy Hollow睡谷的传说-----使之成为美国第一个获得国际声誉的作家；Brace bridge Hall布雷斯布里奇田庄；Talks of Travelers旅客谈；The Alhambra阿尔罕伯拉 Jamie Fennimore Cooper詹姆斯?费尼莫尔?库珀1789-1851 The Spy间谍;The Pilot领航者;The Little page Manuscripts利特佩奇的手稿;Leather stocking Tales皮裹腿故事集:The Pioneer拓荒者；The Last of Mohicans最后的莫希干人;The Prairie大草原;The Pathfinder探路者;The Deer slayer杀鹿者 Part 3.New England Transcendentalism Ralf Waldo Emerson拉尔夫?沃尔多?爱默生1803-1882 Essays散文集:Nature论自然-----新英格兰超验主义者的宣言书;The American Scholar 论美国学者;Divinity; The Over soul论超灵;Self-reliance论自立;The Transcendentalist超验主义者;Representative Men代表人物;English Traits 英国人的特征;School Address神学院演说 Concord Hymn康考德颂;The Rhoda杜鹃花;The Humble Bee野蜂;Days日