美国文学笔记

美国文学笔记

I. Colonial Period（殖民地时期）（约1607-1765）

II. The Revolutionary period（革命时期) :( 1765-18世纪末）Benjamin Franklin（1706-1790）

III.The Romantic period （浪漫主义时期）: （1800-1865）Edgar Allan Poe（1809-1849）

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Henry Daivd Thoreau (1817-1862)

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

Herman Melville (1819-1891)

Walt Whitman (1819~1892)

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

IV.The Realism and Naturalism（现实主义和自然主义) : （1865-1918）

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Henry James (1843-1916)

Stephen Crane (1881-1900)

V. The Modern period (现代主义时期）: 1918-1945

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

William Faulkner (1897-1962)

Ernest Hemingway (1899—1961)

Ezra Pound (1885—1972)

Robert Frost（1847-1963）

Eugene O’ Neil (1888-1953)

VI. Contemporary literature（当代文学):（1945- ）

I. Colonial Period（殖民地时期）（约1607-1765）

II. The Revolutionary period（革命时期): (1765-18世纪末）Benjamin Franklin（1706-1790）：

1. Summary:

One of the greatest founding fathers of the American Nation

First great self-made man in America

The embodiment of American dream

2. Major works:

The Autobiograph y《自传》：the first of its kind in literature, one of the classics of

the genre

Poor Richard’s Almanack《穷人理查德的年历》

III. The Romantic period （浪漫主义时期）: （1800-1865）Edgar Allan Poe（1809-1849）

1. Summary:

Novelist, poet, critic

good at writing Gothic(哥特式）and detective fiction

Father of western detective stories and psychoanalytic criticism

2. Major works:

Poetry

The Raven《乌鸦》

To Helen《献给海伦》

Short stories

Horror ( suspense, terror, Insanity, death，Revenge and rebirth）

The Fall of the House of Usher《厄舍古屋的倒塌》

The Masque of the Red Death 《红色死亡的化妆舞会》

The Black Cat《黑猫》

The Cask of Amontillado《一桶白葡萄酒》

Ligeia《丽姬娅》

Detective /ratiocinative(推理的）(originator)

The Purloined Letter 《窃信案》

The Muder in the Rue Morgue 《莫格街谋杀案》

The Mystery of Marie Rog《玛丽.罗热疑案》

The Gold Bug 《金甲虫》

American Transcendentalism

(美国超验主义）

（1830s- Civil War）

Summit of Romanticism/ American Renaissance

1. Appearance

1836, ―Nature‖ by Emerson

2. Features of Transcendentalism

(1). Spirit(思想）/Oversoul（超灵）

(2). importance of individualism

(3). nature – symbol of spirit/God；garment of the oversoul

(4). focus in intuition (irrationalism and subconsciousness)

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882):

1. Summary:

American essayist,lecturer, poet

The Founder of Transcendentalism

2. Major works:

Nature《论自然》：the manifesto of American transcendentalism

The American Scholar《论美国学者》: American's Declaration of Intellectual

Independence

Self-reliance《论自助》

Henry Daivd Thoreau (1817-1862)

1. Summary:

American Essayist, Poet, Philosopher

2. Major Works

Civil Disobedience ?论公民之不服从?

Walden , or Life in the woods 《瓦尔登湖，或林中的生活》: Walden is a record of Thoreau’s two year experiment of living alone at Walden pond in a self-built house at the edge of the woods.

Late Romanticism

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864):

1. Summary:

American novelist and short story writer

2. His point of view : Hawthorne is influenced by Puritanism（清教主义）deeply.

(1). Evil is at the core of human life

(2).whenever there is sin, there is punishment. Sin or evil can be passed from

generation to generation

(3). Evil educates.

(4). He has disgust in science. One source of evil is overweening (自负的) (too

proud of oneself) intellect . His intellectual characters are villains, dreadful and cold-blooded

3. Major Works

The Scarlet Letter《红字》

Herman Melville (1819-1891): Novelist, Poet

Major works:

Moby Dick 《白鲸》,1851

Main characters:

Ishmael(以实玛利）: the narrator

Ahab（埃哈伯）: the protagnist

Moby Dick

Walt Whitman (1819~1892)

1. Summary:

American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist/

The father of free verse（自由诗）

2. Major works:

Leaves of Grass《草叶集》

Famous poems

Song of Myself《自我之歌》

One’s Self I Sing 《我歌唱一个人的自己》

O Captain! My Captain! 《噢，我的船长！我的船长！》

3. Writing themes (almost everything):

equality of things and beings

divinity of everything

Immanence（无所不在）of God

democracy

evolution of cosmos（宇宙）

multiplicity of nature

self-reliant spirit

death, beauty of death

expansion of America

brotherhood and social solidarity（团结一致）(unity of nations in the world) pursuit of love and happiness

4. S tyle: ―free verse（自由诗）: the verse that does not follow a fixed metrical pattern,

the verse without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.

(1).Parallelism（排比）

(2).phonetic recurrence（同字起句法）（the repetition of words or phrases at the

beginning of the line, in the middle or at the end)

(3).the use of a certain pronoun ―I‖ (the first person narrator)

(4).strong tendency to use oral English

(5).the habit of using snapshots

(6).a looser and more open-ended syntactic structure

(7).use of conventional image

(8).vocabulary –powerful, colourful, rarely used words of foreign origins, some

even wrong

(9). sentences – catalogue technique: long list of names, long poem lines

5. Significance of Leaves of Grass

Leaves of Gras s, either in content or in form, is an epoch-making work in American literature:

→Its democratic content marked the shift from Romanticism to Realism.

→Its free-verse form broke from old poetic conventions to open a new way for American poetry.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

1. Summary: American poet

She wrote altogether 1775 poems, of which only 7 appeared in print in her lifetime.

2. Some famous poems:

I Died for Beauty

Because I Can’t Stop for Death

A Narrow Fellow in the Grass

I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died

ToMake a Prairie

I’m Nobody

3. Theme

Mainly based on her own experiences/joys/sorrows (inner world):

(1). Death and immortality

(2) .Love—sufferings and frustration caused by love

(3) .Nature-Kind and cruel

(4). Religion-doubt and belief about religious subjects

(5) .Beauty (beauty, truth and goodness are ultimately one)

(6). physical aspect of desire

(7). free will and human responsibility

4. Style

1). Poems without titles

2) .Use of capital letters –emphasis and dashes-create cadence (抑扬顿挫）

3).Economy of expression. (Plainest words, directness, brevity)

4). Short poems, mainly two stanzas

5). Fresh and strange images

6) .Bold and unconventional and often startling metaphors

7) .Rhetoric techniques: personification —make some abstract ideas vivid

8). off-rhyme(半韻) and defamiliarization(陌生化）

IV. The American Realism 现实主义时期(1865-1918) 1. Three Giants in Realistic Period

William Dean Howells –―Dean of American Realism‖

Henry James

Mark Twain

2. Comparison:

Theme:

Howells –middle class

James –upper class

Twain –lower class

Technique:

Howells –smiling/genteel realism

James –psychological realism

Twain –local colourism and colloquialism

Mark Twain (1835-1910):

1. Summary:

American writer, short story writer/

Humorist

2. Major works:

The Celebrated jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865)

《卡拉维拉县弛名的跳蛙》

Innocents Abroad (1869) 《傻子国外旅行记》

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) 《汤姆.索亚历险记》

Life on the Mississippi (1883) 《密西西比河上》

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1886)《哈克贝里.费恩历险记》: All modern American literature comes from his masterpiece ―The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.‖——Ernest Hemingway

3. Style:

(1). colloquial language（口语）, vernacular (本土的）language, dialects

(2). local colour

(3). syntactic feature: sentences are simple, brief, and sometimes ungrammatical

(4). humour

(5). tall tales (highly exaggerated) （荒诞不经的故事）

(6). social criticism (satire on the different ugly things in society)

4. Contribution

One of Mark Twain’s significant contributions to American literature lies in the fact that he made colloquial speech an accepted, respectable literary medium in the literary history of the country.

Henry James (1843-1916)

1. Summary:

An American and British novelist, literary critic

Founder of psychological realism

First of the modern psychological novelist

Initiator of the international theme: American innocence in face of European sophistication

2. Major works:

Daisy Miller （1878）《戴茜·米勒》

The Portrait of a Lady (1881) 《贵妇的肖像》

The Wings of the Dove (1902)《鸽翼》

The Ambassadors (1903)《专使》

The Golden Bowl (1904)《金碗》

The Art of Fiction(1884)《小说的艺术》

3. His Point of view

(1). Psychological analysis, forefather of stream of consciousness

(2).Psychological realism

(3). Highly-refined language

4. Style –―stylist‖

(1). Language: highly-refined, polished, insightful, and accurate

(2).V ocabulary: large

(3). Construction: complicated, intricate

Naturalism（自然主义）

1. Background:

(1). Darwi n’s theory: ―natural selection‖

(2).Spenser’s idea: ―social Darwinism‖

(3). French Naturalism: Zora

2. Features

(1). environment and heredity

(2). scientific accuracy and a lot of details

(3). general tone: ironic and pessimistic, hopelessness, despair, gloom, ugly side of

the society

St ephen Crane (1881-1900)

1. Summary:

Novelist, poet

Pioneer in the naturalistic tradition

Precursors（先驱）of Imagist poetry

2. Major Works:

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets 《街头女郎麦姬》: the first naturalistic novel in

America

The Red Badge of Courage 《红色英勇勋章》

The Open Boat《海上扁舟》

V. AMERICAN MODERNISM (1918-1945)

（美国现代主义）

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

1. Summary:

Famous American novelist, short story writer, and essayist

the representative of the 1920s

the spokesman for the Jazz Age

one of the“lost generation”writers

2. Major Works

This Side of Paradise (1920) 《人间天堂》

Tales of the Jazz Age (1922) 《爵士乐时代的故事》

Tender Is the Night (1934) 《夜色温柔》

The Great Gatsby (1925) 《了不起的盖茨比》:

Narrative point of view – Nick Carraway

Theme: The decline of the American Dream

3. His Point of view

(1). He expressed what the young people believed in the 1920s, the so-called

―American Dream‖ is false in nature.

(2). He had always been critical of the rich and tried to show the integrating

effects of money on the emotional make-up of his character. He found that

wealth altered people’s characters, making them mean and distrusted. He

thinks money brought only tragedy and remorse.

(3). His novels follow a pattern: dream – lack of attraction – failure and despair.

4. His ideas of ―American Dream‖

It is false to most young people. Only those who were dishonest could

become rich.

William Faulkner (1897-1962)

1. Sumary:

An American novelist and poet

Initiator of American Southern Renaissance

One of the most influential modern novelists of 20th century

Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1949

2. Major Works:

The Sound and the Fury 《喧哗与骚动》

As I Lay Dying 《在我弥留之际》

Light in August 《八月之光》

Absalom, Absalom 《押沙龙，押沙龙！》

Go Down, Moses 《去吧，摩西》

Barn Burning 《烧牲口棚》

Yoknapatawpha County（约克纳帕塔法县）:

--- A fictional county in northern Mississippi, the setting for most of William Faulkner’s novels and short stories, and patterned upon Faulkner’s actual home in Lafayette County, Mississippi.

3. Major Themes of his Works

(1). history and race

(2). Deterioration

(3). Conflicts between generations, classes, races, man and environment

(4). Horror, violence and the abnormal

4. Faulkner's narrative technique

(1).Withdrawal of the author as a controlling narrator

(2). Dislocation of the narrative time: The most characteristic way of structuring his

stories is to fragment the chronological time.

(3). the modern stream-of-consciousness（意识流）technique and the interior

monologue（内心独白）：

(4). Multiple points of view（多重视角）

(5). symbolism and mythological and biblical（圣经的）allusions

Ernest Hemingway (1899—1961)

1. Summary:

Novelist and short-story writer

One of the great American writers of the 20th century

The Spokesman of the ―Lost Generation‖

Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1954

2. Major works

The Sun Also Rises 《太阳照常升起》

A Farewell to Arms《永别了，武器》

For Whom the Bell Tolls 《丧钟为谁而鸣》/ 《战地钟声》

The Old Man and the Sea 《老人与海》

A Clean, Well-lighted Place 《一个干净，明亮的地方》

3. Major Themes

(1).The ―Nada‖(虚无) Concept

(2).Grace under pressure(压力下的优雅）

―Man is not made for defeats. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.‖------The Old Man and the Sea

(3). Code Hero（准则英雄/ 硬汉）

a. The Hemingway hero is not a thinker; he is a man of action.

b.―Grace under pressure is their motto.

c.The Hemingway code heroes are best remembered for their

indestructible(不可毁灭的）spirit.

4. Artistic features

(1) .The iceberg（冰山）technique

The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.

(2). Language style

a. simple and natural

b.direct, clear and fresh

c. lean and economical

d.simple, conversational, common found, fundamental words

e. simple sentences

f. Iceberg principle: understatement, implied things

g.Symbolism

Ezra Pound (1885—1972)

1. Summary:

A leading spokesman of the ―Imagist Movement‖(意象主义运动）

One of the most influential American poets and critic

2. Major works:

Cathay:《华夏集》《神州集》《中国诗章》

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley《休·赛尔温·毛伯利》

Cantos /《诗章》

3. Imagism (1909-1917)

(1) .Background:Imagism was influenced by French symbolism, ancient Chinese

poetry and Japanese literature ―haiku‖

(2). Defintion : The imagists, with Ezra Pound leading the way, hold that the most

effective means to express the these momentary impressions is through the use of one dominant image.

(3): Manifesto of Imagism:

?Direct treatment

?Economy of expression

?New rhythm

In a station of the Metro《在一个地铁站》: a quintessential（典型的）imagist text Robert Frost（1847-1963）

1. Summary:

the most popular American poet

Won Pulitzer Prize four times

Received honorary degrees from forty-four colleges and universities

Read ―The Gift Outright‖at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961

2. Famous Poems:

F ire and Ice《火与冰》

The Road Not Taken 《未选择的路》

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening 《雪夜伫立林边有感》

Mending Wall《补墙》

After Apple-Picking《摘罢苹果》

3. Frost’s writing feature

His combination of the traditional verse pattern and a colloquial distinctive language (New England Speech)

Eugene O’ Neil (1888-1953)

1. Summary:

America's greatest playwright

Won the Pulitzer Prize four times

Won Nobel Prize in 1936

Founder of the American drama

2. Major Works

Beyond the Horizon (1920) 《天边外》

The Emperor Jones(1920) 《琼斯皇帝》

The Hairy Ape (1922)《毛猿》

Desire under the Elms (1924) 《榆树下的欲望》