【VIP专享】美国文学复习大纲

1The Significant Differences between British Literature and American Literature

⒈non-existence of folk literature

⒉ the subject of American dream

⒊ strong concept of democracy, freedom, individualism, liberation of personality

⒋diversity and complexity

⒌ rich flavor of life and civilian color

2Periodization of American Literature

⒈Early American Literature (17th century and 18th century)

①The Literary Scene in Colonial America (ab.1607-1765)

②Literature of Enlightenment and Revolution (1765-1790s)

⒉19th_century American Literature (1st golden time)

1) Romanticism;

2)Realism; 3)Naturalism

⒊American Literature of the 20th century and the present

1)modernism (2nd golden time); 2)postmodernism (3rd)

3Outline of American Literature

1Colonial Period (1607—1765)

2Revolutionary Period (1765—1790s)

3The Age of Romanticism (1800—1865)

4The Age of Realism (1865—1918)

5American Modernism (1918—1945)

6Contemporary Literature (1945-- )

█Colonial Period (1607-1765)

㈠American Puritanism: one of the most enduring shaping influences in American thought and American literature.

㈡Major writers

①Captain John Smith （约翰·史密斯

the first American writer

②Anne Bradstreet (安妮·布拉德斯特里特) the first American woman poet a Puritan poet, once

called “Tenth Muse”

●General features of Colonial Literature(p15-p16)

a. Humble origins: diaries, histories, letters etc.

b. In content: serving either God or colonial expansion or both

c. In form: imitating English literary traditions

█Literature of Reason and Revolution

㈠Background（从标题就可看出）

The Enlightenment Movement

The War of Independence

2Major Writers and Works

①Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Poor Richard's Almanack

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

②Thomas Paine (1737-1809）

Common Sense

The American Crisis

③Philip Freneau(1752-1832)

“Father of American Poetry”

“Pioneer of the New Romanticism”

㈢ Nature lyrics:

The Wild Honey Suckle

The Indian Burying Ground

█Romantism 1800---1861/1865

㈠The phase of New England Transcendentalism is the summit of American Romanticism.

㈡ Classification of the Romantic Writers

⒈Early Romantic writers/ pioneers

Washington Irving

James Fenimore Cooper

⒉Edgar Allan Poe

⒊Transcendentalists

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Henry David Thoreau

⒋Novelists

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Herman Melville

Harrite Beecher Stowe

⒌Poets

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Walt Whitman

Emily Dickinson

●Washington Irving

⒈the first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame

⒉the father of American short stories

⒊Major Works

①A History of New York《纽约外史》

②The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon《见闻札记》a collection of essays and short stories

③“Rip Van Winkle” 《瑞普·凡·温克尔》

④“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” 《睡谷的传说》

●James Fenimore Cooper

⒈Frontier Novel

⒉the first authors to write about the Frontier Novelone of American Westward movement and introduced the “Western” tradition into American literature

⒊Works:

Leatherstocking Tales《皮袜子故事集》

The Pioneers

The Last of The Mohicans

The Prairie

The Pathfinder

The Deerslayer

●Edgar Allan Poe

⒈the first author in American literature to make the neurotic the hero and the protagnist

⒉Father of psychoanalytic criticism(精神分析) and detective story

⒊Poetic Theory

①chief aim -- beauty

②the most beautiful thing described by a poem is the death of a beautiful woman;

③the desirable tone of a poem is melancholy

●Ralph Waldo Emerson

⒈Ralph Waldo Emerson is the chief spokesman of New England Transcendentalism.

⒉Major Works: