2011英美文学选读笔记依据新考纲

关于调整全国统考课程《英美文学选读自学考试大纲》的考核知识点与考核要求的通知https://www.360docs.net/doc/2611793122.html, 2008-10-14 来源：新疆自考办

考委办函［2008］54号

各省、自治区、直辖市高等教育自学考试办公室、解放军自学考试办公室：

经组织全国考委外语类专业委员会研究论证，全国考办决定对《英美文学选读自学考试大纲》的考核知识点与考核要求作部分调整。现将调整意见印发给你们，请及时向社会公布。

调整后的《英美文学选读自学考试大纲》将于2009年4月考试试行。

附件：《英美文学选读自学考试大纲》的考核知识点与考核要求

全国高等教育自学考试指导委员会办公室

二○○八年七月八日

《英美文学选读自学考试大纲》的考核知识点与考核要求

一、关于考核知识点的调整

考核知识点中的各章概述内容仍为考核内容；对知识点中的作家只保留对如下主要作家的考核。

英国文学：

Chapter 1 III. William Shakespeare

VI. John Milton

Chapter 2 III. Daniel Defoe

IV. Jonathan Swift

V. Henry Fielding

Chapter 3 I. William Blake

II. William Wordsworth

V. Percy Bysshe Shelley

VII. Jane Austen

Chapter 4 I. Charles Dickens

II. Charlotte Bronte

VI. Thomas Hardy

Chapter 5 I. George Bernard Shaw

IV. T. S. Eliot

V. D. H. Lawrence

美国文学：

Chapter 1 III. Nathaniel Hawthorne

IV. Walt Whitman

V. Herman Melville

Chapter 2 I. Mark Twain

II. Henry James

III. Emily Dickinson

IV. Theodore Dreiser

Chapter 3 II. Robert Lee Frost

IV. F. Scott Fitzgerald

V. Ernest Hemingway

VI. William Faulkner

二、关于考核要求的调整

考核要求中每章概述内容不作调整；“该时期的重要作家”只包

含对考核知识点中保留的重要作家的相关内容的考核。

该文章转载自搜学网：https://www.360docs.net/doc/2611793122.html,/kspx/zxks/zkzc/200810/93573.html

English literature

I Old English Literature ----(450—1066)

two groups : religious –-on biblical themes ----

Secular ---- heroic age ---- --- a protector of people ,fight against the nature. II Medieval period ---(1066---14th Century)

Fame :1066 Norman conquest ---- three changes—feudalism system established ( politically )

--- Catholic Church ( Religiously )

--- French, Latin, English (co-existed language )

In comparison with old English literature: (1) wider range of subjects (2) themes concerned with the personal salvation (3) romance love (4) the language is simple and straightforward

?The epic reflects a heroic age ,the romance reflects a chivalri c one’骑士

Chaucer : 1 titles: the English Homer , the father of English poetry (from), 2 verse : first use 'heroic couplet' , realistic picture of his time , vivid characters from all works of his life , the characters are both typical and individual, his ideas is to pursue earthly happiness, opposed asceticism 禁欲主义, advocate humanism, replace alliterative verse with rhymed stanzas (古英语的押头韵变成中世纪的押尾韵)

first use rhymed 'heroic couplet'

octosyllabic 八音节诗

3.novel: the first modern novel.

III Renaissance (14th—17th)

Fame : ①move from feudalist ideas to the interest of rising bourgeoisie.

②recover from corruption of the Roman Catholic Church to the purity of the earthly church . England : the reign of Henry VIII -----England?s Go lden Age in literature

----- Bibles in English instead of Latin readable for common people -------- literary giants : Shakespeare ,Spenser ,Jonson Sidney, Marlowe ,Bacon ,and Donne

The time of Tudos ---- change monasteries修道院into schools and universities ------ the English Renaissance flourishing

-------first introduced printing into England and translated books in English(by William Caxton)

Traits of humanistic poetry : meter, rhyme, scheme, imagery and argument should be combined to frame the emotional theme. Poetry was to be a concentrated exercise of the mind , if craftsmanship and of learning.

The most famous dramatists : Shakesperar , Ben Jonson, and Marlowe

Writers : Wyatt (introduced the Petrarchan sonnet into England)

Surrey (brought in blank verse)

Sidney (brought in sestina and terza rima)

Marlowe(brought mighty lines to the blank verse )

Spenser( pastoral convention )

John Donne, George Herbert ( metaphysical poets)

Francis Bacon (the first important English essayist, the founder of modern science in England) III. William Shakespeare (1564—1616)

Background: from merchant’s family .父亲是个当地镇里的多面手，有点名气。他的戏剧分早期、中期，中晚期和晚期。（I，II，III，IV）.他的作品很多，影响很大。

I．Five history plays and four comedies.

历史剧‘Henry VI, Parts I,II’( It reveals a troubled reign in the 15th century, Shakespeares mounted over the loss of English territories in France. He condemns the War of the Roses , in which innocent people were killed)

II．Five history plays ,six comedies and two tragedies

喜剧：（an optimistic attitude toward love and youth, praise the friendship between Antonio and Bassanio, to idealize Portia as a heroine., and Shylock as an evil figure ）

)

悲剧： (eulogizes the faithfulness of love and spirit of pursuing happiness ,though a tragedy, is permeated with optimistic spirit) ,

III．His greatest four tragedies (each of the characters’s fates is closely connected with the fate of the whole nation. Each of them has his weakness of nature. )

选读（the first of the greatest tragedies, most popular play on the stage. It has the qualities of a ‘blood –and –thunder’thriller and a philosophical exploration of life and death. Hamlet is a melancholic 优柔寡断prince,who is too sophisticated to degrade his nature to the conventional role of revenger. Shakespeares condemns the hypocrisy and treachery and general corruption at the royal court）

(the old King Lear suffers form treachery背叛and infidelity不忠)

(Othello‘s inner weakness is made use of by the outside evil force)

(Macbeth ?s lust for power stirs up his ambition and leads him to endless crimes.)

two dark comedies (< Measure for Measure>)

IV．Romantic tragicomedies:

(the best of his final romances,it is a typical example of Shakespeare ?s pessimistic view toward human life and society in his late years. He wishes to solve the conflict by dreams and supernatural power).

,< Pericl es> ,

Two final plays: Henry VIII , The Two Noble Kinsmen.

Poems

long narrative poems : , .

Sequence of 154 sonnets: 选读 (Shakes has a faith in the permanence of poetry. A nice summer’s day is usually transient, but the beauty in poetry in poetry can last for ever.艺术的美常存)

艺术特征

人物塑造

1．He employs soliloquies独白in his plays to fully reveal the inner conflict of his characters.

2. He portrays his characters in pairs(可能指情侣) .

3. His characters are individuals representing certain types.

情节结构

1．He adopted plots from some old plays or storybooks

2．In order to make the play more lively , he would shorten the time and intensify the story. 3．There are usually several threads running through the play (,thus providing the story with suspense and apprehension)

语言风格

1. irony

2. Disguise

3. vocabulary ( He has an amazing wealth of vocabulary and idiom, his coinage of new words and distortion of the meaning of the old ones also create striking effects on the reader.)

Conscience (顾虑) does makes cowards of us all. (心有顾虑使人畏手畏脚，优柔寡断----Hamlet) VI John Milton

Life:商人后代，剑桥大学，有过旅欧经历，喜欢史诗，后来眼睛瞎了。the greatest prose writer of his age.

Fame: is the greatest epic in English literature since

Works:

早期诗歌： elegies , for his best friend Edward King,who died of drown.

The poem begins with grief and a feeling of immaturity. The emotion moves from sadness to acceptance in the end.

中期散文： plea for freedom of press -------smooth and carms

晚期史诗：选读 a long epic divided into 12 books. The story is taken from the Bible.. Satan and other angels rebel against God. Satan succeeds in seduce Eve to eat the apple form the tree of knowledge. As a result , Adam and Eve are exiled by God from the paradise. In the fall of man, Adam discovered his full humanity.

shows how mankind withstands the temper诱惑,Christ’s temptation in the wilderness is the theme.

The picture of Israel’s mighty champion英雄, blind ,alone, afflicted by cruel enemies but preserving a noble ideal to the end. is a fitting close to the life work of the poet himself, The whole poem strongly suggests Miltons himself could bring destruction down upon the enemy at the cost of his own life. The drama is the most perfect example of the verse drama after the Greek style in English.

Chapter Two The Neoclassical Period

Time: It starts from the return of the Stuarts to the English throne in 1660 to the publication of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798.

Traits: Age of Reason, or Age of Enlightenment.

Thoughts: 1. They believe in hard work, self-reliance, and self-restraint. To work, to economize 节俭and to accumulate wealth constituted the whole meaning of their life.

2. They called for order ,reason ,and rules, which can save people from superstition, injustice and oppression. They believe that if the masses were well educated, they may be capable of perfection, the equal human society may come into being.

Literature ideas:

1. The literature is heavily didactic 教导and moralizing说教的.

2.They believe that the artistic ideals should be order, logic ,restrained emotion and accuracy. And that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity.

3.Prose should be precise, direct ,smooth and flexible. by Jonathan Swift is regarded as the best model of satire in the whole English literary history.

4. Poetry should be lyrical , epical ,didactic, satiric or dramatic.

5.Drama should be written in Heroic Couplets .The three unities of time, space and action should be strictly observed. Regularity in construction should be adhered to .and type characters rather than individuals ,should be represented.

Schools of literature:

1.the modern English realistic novel gives a realistic presentation of life of the common English people. Among the pioneer were Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Herry Fielding. Laurence Sterne, Tobias George Smollett, and Oliver Goldsmith.

2.Gothic novels takes places in some haunted or dilapidated Middle Age castles. .Such stories often contains mystery and horror.

3. Graveyard School : lamenting lyrics.

4 Neoclassicism: In the field of literature , the Englightenment movement brought about a revival of interest in the old classical works. This tendency is known as neoclassicism.

III. Daniel Defoe

Life: butcher’s family. Interested in business (也是一位热衷冒险的人).his “The True born Englishman”won him friendship from the king. He found The Review. When he was sixty ,he begun to write novels. his first novel “Robinson Crusoe”was a great success.

Fame：

Four novels about lower-class people are the first literary works devotes to the study of problems of the lower-class people. ―Robinson Crusoe‖ considered to be his masterpiece. Works:

Novels about middle-class people----选读

. 主角介绍Robinson is a typical 18 century English lower-class people man, with a great capacity for work., persistence in overcoming obstacles, in struggling against the hostile environment..

文章目的In describing Robinson’s life on the island, Defoe glorifies human labor and the Puritan fortitude, which save Robinson form despair and and are a source of pride and happiness. 作品文采Defoe is a very good story-teller. He organized minute details in a vivid way.His sentences are sometimes short , crips and plain ,sometimes long and rambling. His language is smooth ,easy ,colloquial (口语) and mostly vernacular(方言).

Four Novels about lower-class people----and

The novel reflects the struggle of the poor unfortunate for mere existence. Their desire for great wealth comes into conflicts with the social environment , which prevents them from obtains their goals ,thus forces them into criminal actions or bold adventures.

Others : (它是伦敦大瘟疫的别传)

IV．Jonathan Swift

life：爱尔兰都柏人，一位posthumous child（遗腹子）。叔叔资助他完成学业，在远房一位亲戚那里受职，了解许多官场的内幕，成为爱尔兰人民反抗英国严酷统治的著名民主斗士。他曾是英国托利党党报‘The Examiner’的主编，当任过都柏林圣Patrick大教堂的主教。Fame：他的两部著作（《A Tale of Tub》和《A Battle of Books》分别反映宗教腐败和学术界

腐败现象）established his name as a satirist. ‘Gulliver’s Travels’is Jonathan Swift’s best work of satiric. 他是英国散文史上最杰出的大师。

他的风格是把每个单词都放在它们最恰当的位置（‘proper words in proper places’）

In his opinion. The nature of human is seriously and permanently flawed. To better the human life. Enlightenment is needed, but to redress(mend) it is very hard. In his writing ,he intends not to condemn but to reform and improve human nature and human institution.

选读：< Gulliver’s Travels>

.内容：It contains four parts , which is an organic whole (小人国Lilliput，大人国Broddingnag，哲学宗教王国Flying Island 和智力像人的动物王国Houyhnhnm Land)

思想：It is Jonathan Swift’s best work of satiric。It criticizes and satirizes all aspects in the English and European life.----(politically,socially , religiously,philosophycally, and sciencifically and morality ) .Its social significance is great. 语言：The language is simple.direct and precise.

IV. Henry Fielding

生平：出生贵族家庭，写剧本唯生，办报纸。他的写作目的不只是为了娱人，更是为了育人。他的作品特色是戏剧化的对话和充满悬念、巧合和出乎意料的结局。

名声：father of the English novel.The first to give the modern novel its structure and style. (他之前的小说家叙事方式是采用书信体或是传奇体（picaresque），但是作者采用第三人称叙述法，作者扮演全知的“上帝”，可以很好地表现人物的内心活动，他在极力保留古典的史诗形式时，又能忠实于现实生活，他主要关心普通人生活中戏剧性的一面)，‘prose Homer’.

作品：

第一部小说“Joseph Andrews”拥有hearty的幽默，excellent的人物刻画，timely的人物出场和退场，及robust的基调。开创”Comic epic in prose”

第二部作品The history of Jonathan Wild the Great 属于Satiric biography. 主题是所谓的伟人有时看上去不过像个“伟大的”恶棍。是他的代表作。

第三部作品（选读）is a masterpiece on human nature, brings him the name of ‘Prose Homer’. The novels presents the country and city life of 18th century England with scores of different places and a whole gallery of about 40 characters. The whole novel is divided into three sections : In the country , on the highway, and in London.

Fielding adopted the third-person narration, so he is able to present the internal workings of their minds. His language is easy,unlaboured and familiar, often Latinate (拉丁词)and frequently polysyllabic(多音节)。His sentences are long and distinguished by logic and rhythm. The structure of the novel are carefully planned towards an inevitable ending.

第四部作品 is a story of the unfortunate life of an idealized woman ,a maudlin (easy to tear) picture of the social life at the time.

The Romantic Period (1798---1832)

背景:法国哲学家Rousseau的两本书和影响了全欧洲.书中他阐述了关于自然、社会和教育的新观点，该书掀起法国人民反抗暴君专制的思想，引发后来法国革命。引导人们追求自由、平等和博爱。布克[BURKE]的文章《对法国革命的反思》受到进步诗人Willian Godwin,Shelly 等人的反驳.其中Thomas Paine’s 人权宣言引发妇女解放运动。

创作主张和Fame：They saw man essentially as an individual in the solitary state. They emphasized the special qualities of each individual’s mind. It places the individual at the center of

art ,and valuing its accuracy in portraying the individual’s experiences. 这是一个诗歌时代，wordsworth and Colleridge是当时的先锋人物。他们相信诗歌能净化个人的心灵和社会，他们认为诗歌应该不受任何规则限制。W认为诗歌是“人与人的交谈”，C认为“想象的世界是永恒的世界”，“想象是我们和永恒的力量联接的途径”。这也是一个散文的时代。代表人物有William Hazlitt 和Thomas De Quincey.。哥特式小说盛行。它的要素是暴力、恐怖和超自然，刺激读者的神经。诗歌剧有雪莱的《获得自由的普罗米修斯》和拜伦的《manfred》（man free ed ）。以及Coleridge’s（悔恨）.但这些只是写给读者看的，不是拿来演出的。

I William Blake

life：爱尔兰人，以雕刻和绘画维生，婚姻运好，但生活困苦，他的诗歌才能在死后才为人所知。儿童是布莱克诗歌中最关心的对象。

Fame：是这个时期最重要的诗人。观点：批评资本主义社会中残酷的剥削。认为工场制度是一切罪恶的根源。珍视个人的想象力。

作品：----最早作品，主题是欢乐，爱和和谐

< Song of Innocence >---选读 . Present a happy and innocent world. He experimented in meter and rhyme.

----- - 选读选读 (It presents a world of misery , poverty, disease,war and repression. He writes his poems in plain and direct language. .He tends to embody his views with visual images.Symbolism is also a distinctive Fame of his poetry. (e.g. lamb is a symbol of peace and purity)

is a poem. ―Without contraries‖,‖there is no progression ―in our life. Marriage is the reconciliation of the contraries.

II.William Wordsworth

life：出生律师之家，热爱自然，怀旧，同情穷人和弱者，钟情法国革命。在经济困难之际，他有幸得到一位朋友捐赠的900英镑遗产。他和他妹妹移居racedown，Dorsetshire。在那里他遇见coleridge，他们结成好友，共同发表了Lyrical Ballads,该诗成为英国诗歌中的里程碑.后来他们移居Dove Cottage in Grasmere,Westmoreland。诗人Southery也住在附近。W，C 和S三人并称“lake poets”.他在当时很到一份发行邮票的差事，后来他得到一笔政府的津贴。晚年，他成了著名诗人，取代Southery成为“桂冠诗人”。

Fame：他是英国浪漫诗歌的领头人物。是湖畔三诗人之一。他被认为是“worshipper of nature”,one of “Prophets of nature”, the one to start the modern poetry. He change the course of English poetry by using ordinary speech of the language and by advocating a return to nature. He produces a pure and profound poetry with simple language.

观点：①poetry originated from “emotion recollected in transquillity”②The source of poetic truth is the direct experence of the senses. ③The raw material of poetry comes from the scenes and event of everyday life and the speech of ordinary people .④Life is a cylical journey.

作品与分析：

①Poems about nature:

选读----describe a long belt of gold daffodilstossing(水仙花) dancing along the waterside.

②Poems about human life: < The Sailor’s Mother>

选读 .-----an octosyllabics poem,the stanza is ababccdd.

选读----the poet compares the girl as “a violet by a mossy stone”

③ is his masterpiece

选读describes a vivid picture of a beautiful morning in London . It is a sonnet.（十四行诗）

V. P.B.Shelly

life: 父亲是当地乡坤,家庭富裕.他从小不合群,喜欢自然,有反叛性格,曾娶过位两位妻子. 30岁淹死在异乡,就地火葬,墓碑上写着: “诗人中的诗人”。他的 成为英国共产党的选定党歌。

Fame: one of the greatest of all English poets , an original lyrical poet

思想:①against injustice and oppression②interested in social reforms③the evil in man’s mind may be loosed after revolution.

作品: is his masterpiece.The play is an exultant work in praise of humankind’s potential.

选读1 : A political lyrics .The author here calls upon all working people to rise up against their political oppressors .and point out to them the intolerable injustice of economic exploitation. The style abounds in personification and metaphor and other figures which describe vividly what we see and feel. (诗中的”工蜂”比喻不劳而获的资产阶级,把他们说成是“who would / Drain your sweat---nay ,drink your blood”,而把无产阶级比喻成”Bees of England”.) 选读2 metaphor and personification: The autumn wind, burying the dead year ,preparing for new Spring, becomes an image of shelley himself ,who would dedicated all his life to the war against injustice and oppression, The poem is written in the terza rima form. (“I fall upon the thorns of life!”I bleed!”----he could not bear being fettered 束缚to the humdrum脚镣realities of everyday!)

其他作品: < Adonais>---elegy for John Keat

VII. Jane Austen

life: 牧师之家, 终身未嫁, 与姐姐相伴一生,社交广泛, 对人与人之间的关系准则有自己独特的看法,. 她相信在婚姻与爱情中理智胜于激情.她把揭露愚蠢的行为和虚妄的想法为己任. 她提倡在小说创作中,要遵循理智,秩序,适度和优雅作风.

Fame: one of the greatest of all novelists. brings the English novel , as an art of form , to its maturity.

作品：选读(原名叫“第一印象”) is her most popular novel, deals with the five Bennet sisters and their search for suitable husbands.

风格①The plots in the novels are restricted to the England country life . ②The theme is that maturity is achieved through the loss of illusion.③She adopted satire and irony to shows the

follies and illusion of mankind. The style is graceful.and lucid.

其他作品: is a story about two sisters and their love affairs

satirizes those popular Gothic romance of the late 18th century

self-deceptive vanity < Persuasion>< Mansfield Park>

Uncompleted works

The Victorian Period (1836-1901`)

介绍: 仓廪足而知礼节, 英国成了世界工场. 企业家为追求最大利润大肆削剥工人,使工人阶级遭受极大的压迫.许多有良知的作家,如狄更斯等人对这种漠视人类情感和想象力和文化价值,只追求利润的时代风气进行无情的评判.他们写文章披露社会广泛存在的不公、贫困的事实,关心普通民众的命运.不仅如此，像Thomas Hardy 还在“Wessex man”系列作品中质问和攻击维多利亚时代的习俗和道德准则. Robert Brown 创造了“Verse novel”,使诗歌也具有小说的形式，诗中加入了一些心理分析的元素。

Fame: ①Common sense and moral propriety became the predominant preoccupation in literary works ②Utilitarianism was widely accepted and practised。The novelist begin to concern about the life of the common people. ③The poetry of this period was mainly characterized by experiments with new styles and new ways of expression.

1. Charcles Dickens

life：父亲欠债被关进监狱、，从小在饥饿中度过。曾当过记者、编辑。他的写作目标是揭露和批判他所处时代的贫困、不公、虚伪和腐败。他是一个擅长讲故事的作家。

Fame：Dickens is one of the greatest critical realist writers of the Victorian Age. Character-portrayal is the most distinguishing Fame of his works.

作品：

前期小说：attacks one or more specific social evil in each

揭露法律欺诈。但小说中洋溢着乐观精神。

< Oliver Twise>揭露非人道雇佣儿童的工场制度和黑暗的犯罪世界。

晚期小说：the stories ,though usually double-or multiple-plotted, are much better structured. 揭示维多利亚时代的英国社会制度和道德等方面的问题。中吃人的法律 中拘捕无辜的人在监的制度, 中毁灭年青人理想的英国教育制度, 和中造成社会道德滑坡和给个人带来毁灭的社会环境.

选读 (Oliver Twist is his first child hero and Fagin the first grotesque古怪figure. The pitiable state of the orphan boy and the cruelty and hypocrisy of the workhouse board. In language , Dickens adapted the vernacular and large vocabulary, His humour and wit seem inexhaustible. The language is full of tumor and pathos(哀婉动人)。

II The Bronte Sisters

life：家境贫困的牧师女儿。都曾当过家庭女教师，为了创办过一所学校，charlotte去比利时首都学习外语，在那里她认识了一位德国教授，一位已婚男人，这段爱情邂逅，在她的成名作《简爱》中有所体现。Charlotte Bronte 作品的主题都是关于个人意识的觉醒的被人忽视而孤独的年青女性，她们渴望爱情和得到理解，憧憬美好而幸福的生活。Emily是一位自然之子，喜欢接触自然。很少与人接触。

Fame：

作品：

Charlotte Bronte

选读 Jane Eyre is a little plain governess ,with a loving hearty and a spirit of independence and self-dignity . She has quick wit and is honest and frank. Jane Eyre , an orphan child with a longing to love and be loved, little governess who dares to love her master and even is brave enough to declare to the man her love for him.

Emilyu Bronte a story about two families and intruding stranger. It told mainly by Nelly, catherine‘s old nurse, to Mr.Lockwood. Part of the story is told through Isabella‘s letters to Nelly. The passion between Heathdiff and Catterine proves the most intense , the most beautiful ,and the most horrible passion ever to be found possible in human beings.

Anne Bronte

VI. Thomas Hardy

life：manan’s son, architect writes novels in his spare time, after the publication of “Far from Madding Crowd”,which enabled him to give up architecture for writing.

思想：①Man proves impotent before Fate, however he tries, and he seldom escapee his ordained destiny. ②Man’s fate is predeterminedly tragic.③Man is shown inevitably bound by his own inherent nature and hereditary traits which prompt him to go and search for some specific happiness or success and set him in conflict with the environment.

Fame：known as “novels for character and environment”, a critical realist writer and a naturalistic writer. Most of his novels are set in wessex,where people live in an agricultural setting.

作品：

选读 .Tess is a beautiful ,innocent peasant girl . Alec, the young master of d’Urbervilles seduces her and impregnates her.Tess returns homes and gives birth to a baby , who dies soon. Then she leaves home to work on a farm . There she meets Angel and falls in love with him. When Tess reveals her own past, Angel wouldn‘t forgive her a nd deserts her that very night. Helpless and hopeless, Tess has to wonder from place to place, Later she killed Alec, and flees with repentant Angel ,but is caught by the police and hanged.

This novel is a fierce attack on the hypocritical morality of the bourgeois society and the destruction the English peasantry towards the end of the century.

The novel is noted for its rustic dialect and its architectual structures .

其他作品：

Novel after the publication of the novel,Hardy gives up architecture for writing.

Novels of character and environment

The tragic sense becomes the keynote of his novels after ―The Return of the Native‖.The conflict between the traditional and the modern is b rought to the center of the stage.

Chapter 5 The Modern Period

介绍：经济Capitalism into monopoly stage. Frequent economic depressions and mass unemployment;战争First World War, Second World War. Britain suffered heavy lossed in the war.; 思想界人物Mark, Darwin , Einstein , Arthur Schopenhauer(直觉论提倡者), Nietzsche , Henry Bergsonx（emphasis on creation, intuition, irrationality, and unconsciousness）。

Fame: Modernist poets and novelists take many innovations in techniques and forms . Modernism: it comes out of skepticism and disillusion of capitalism. It takes theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base. The major themes of the modernist literature are the distorted, alienated and ill relationship between man and nature, man and society , man and man , and man and himself. The modernist writer concentrate more on the private than on the public , more on the private than on the public , more on the subjective than on the objective. They are mainly concerned with the inner being of an individual (*In their writings , the past ,the present, and the future are mingled together and exist at the same time in the consciousness of an individual )They casts away all the traditional elements in literature such as story ,plot, character, chronological narration, etc.

Modern poetry: Poets like Pound, Eliot and Yeat.

Fame :①Freedom in choosing subjects ②language of common speech ③hard, clear,and precise images in poems ④against emotionalism

Realistic novels: Novelist like H.G.Wells, Arnord Bennett, John Galsworthy.

Fame:①power against capitalist evils weakened both in width and depth in early20th century ②In the 1920s, the theme of man’s loneliness, shaped in different forms: social satires,comic satires, Catholic novels. Working-class writers-------Lewis Grassic Gibbon----trilogy ③Mid-1950s to early 1960s: the Angry Young Man –Amis ----working-0class language ④Stream-of –consciousness novelists : jamse Joyce, Virginia, Woolf , Dorothy Richardson----⑤Symbolism: D.H. Lawrence E.M.Forster.

Dramatist:Oscar Wilde,

--Oscar Wilde‘s masterpiece—disclose the corruption,snobbery and hypocrisy in upper-class

and ---Galsworthy—workers against their employers.

Irish National Theater Movement. Yeats is the leader of the movement. J.M. Synge was the most gifted dramatist of the Movement.His most popular play is the comedy, .Other artist like Sean O‘Casey. His urban drama and reflects the Dublin slum life.

Poetic Drama(verse play): T.S.Eliot regarded drama as the best medium of poetry. --T.S.Eliot. ---Christopher Fry

The Working-lcas drama : --John Osborne –first ―Angry young Man‖

The Theater of Absurd--- Samuel Beckett‘s is most famous and influential play ---reflects the meaningless life in an alien ,decaying world.

I. George Bernard Shaw

1. life:童年过得不愉快,青少年时帮人收房租,从中了解了底层人民的生活状况.自学成长.对社会改革的理论很感兴趣,参加了费边社(Fabian Society),与马克思提倡的暴力革命不同, 他主张循序渐进的改革方式,通过法律民主、教育和披露资本主义丑陋面的方式。他反对“为

艺术而艺术”(Art for art’s sake)的观点，认为艺术应该服务社会，反映人民大众的生活，揭示道德、经济和政治的真相，起到教育普罗大众的目的。

2．Fame：The best known English dramatist since Shakespeare . His plays is problem plays （Much of his play concerned with political ,economic, moral or religious problems ）

3．作品：Shaw writes more than 50 plays

Some of his early plays.

---Shaw‘s first play—explosure of slum landlordism

-- established Shaw‘s position as the leading playwright of his time .

--it preface writes “no longer be satisfied with fictitious虚伪的morals and fictitious good conduct…”

---history plays

about politics.

---exploring ―life force‖

选读--a play about the economic opppression of women.The play has plots, but they do not work by plots. The plot is usually the disregarded back bone to one long, unbroken conversation. Action is reduced to a minimum. Shaw’s characters are the representatives of ideas, points of view ,that shift and alter during the play.Much of his drama is constructed around the inversion of a conventional theatrical situation.He makes the trick of showing up one character vividly at the expense of another.

IV. T.S. Eliot

life:Harvard, Studied in France , Germany, an editor of a newpaper. To him, a poet’s mind should remain “inert内敛”and “neutral中立”toward his subject matter.

He believes the illness of modern world was of the sum of individual souls , and that the cure could only be obtained by the change of the individual souls through the religious salvation. Fame: ①He wons the Nobel Prize and the order of Merit. ②His “The Waster Land”becomes a landmark of the 20th-century English poetry . ③He is one of the important verse dramatists in the first half of the 20th century

作品:

Poem 选读 most famous single poem,in a form of dramatic monologue. The poem is anti-romantic with visual images of hard objects and hellish atmosphere, a man incapable of action .a tragic figure.(lonely men in shirt-sleeves at dusk narrow streets/ I should have been a pair of ragged claws / scuttling across the floors of silent seas) is the darkest of his poems,which presents a physical disorder and spiritual desolation in the modern western world. Reflects the popular mood of disillusionment and despair of a whole post-war generation. Its five sections are not logically constructed .They are. It is a poem concerned with the spiritual breakup of a modern civilization in which human life has lost its meaning, significance and purpose.

reflects his allegiance to the church of England,Man finds reconciliation in God.

…modern social comedy.All Christian themes----about inner conflict with various temptations

Dramatic monologue.

V. D. H. Lawrence

life: his father is a coal-miner, his mother , a school teacher. He brings psychology into his works. Human sexuality was ,to Lawrence, a symbol of Life Force.The mechanical civilization is responsible for the unhealthy development of human personalities, the perversion if love and the failure of human fulfilment in marital relatioships

Fame:greatest novelists of the 20th century.

作品:

condemns the civilized world of mechanism that distorts all natural relationships between men and women. He makes use of poetic imagination and symbolism in his writing. By using sets of natural images as poetic symbols to embody the emotional states of the characters and to illustrate human situations. He endows the traditional realism with a fresh psychological meaning.

选读:. Paul struggles to become free from his mother’s influence, But he is proved to be incapable of escaping the overpowering emotional bond imposed by his mother’s love. So he failed to achieve a fulfilling relationship with either girl. Finally, his mother has died and he is left alone , in despair. Mrs Morel , a strong-willed , intelligent and ambitious woman Her husband is a warm ,vigorous coal miner. Their son come under the strong influence of the mother in affections.

(―The difference between people isn‘t in their class , but in themselves‖-Paul)

are his masterpieces .

is a story about the three generations on the Marsh farm. 第一代灵肉型婚姻,结局很完美.第二代属性爱型婚姻. 第三代婚姻类型不明了.

a disillusioned man running away from his wife and children.

American Literature

Chapter 1 The Romantic Period (also called“the American Renaissance”)

时间:from The Sketch Book (by Washington Irving) to Leaves of Grass （by Whitman ）The end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War.

文化背景：随着美国建国后国力日渐的强大，表达美国本土特色的文学成为迫切需要：早期清教徒的定居，与印第安人的对抗，第一批移民者的生活，和西部荒原。美国文学借用英国文学形式表现美国生活。它一开始就关注农场主、穷人、文盲、儿童尤其是土著人的生活。通过美的熏陶和对人性的讨论，来提升个人和民众素质。美国文学的发展受到以下方面的影响：

清教徒主义思想/ 新英格兰超验主义/ 英国浪漫主义文学

Puritanism / New England Transcendentalism / European romantic literature

Puritanism exerted great influences over American moral values.

New England Transcendentalism : they believe man know truth intuitively, or attain knowledge transcending the reach of the senses. Nature is ennobling高贵的and the individual is divine and

therefore ,self-reliant .This group include Emerson and his friend Henry David Thoreau.They are against the cold, rigid rationalism 理智派in Boston.

美国文学特点：①. emphasis upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature., emphasis on the free expression of emotions and the psychic states of their characters.

②Reveals unique characteristic of their native lands

③The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became permanent convention习俗of American literature.

III. Nathaniel Hawthorne

Life: puritan family. Father , a sea captain, died early. In College, he decided to devote himself to writing .He has three children. Worked in the Untied States Custom House , which provide some authentic materials for his long works. In almost every book he wrote, Hawthorne discusses sin and evil.

Thoughts: ①.There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent , through the whole life;but circumstances, may rouse it to activity. ②Evil is man’s birthmark , something he is born with . ③The wrong doing of one generation lives into the successive ones. They should obey God to atone (赎罪)for their sins

Feature: most ambivalent (争议的)writer in the American literary history. A master of symbolism. Works:

选读is a profound tales. Brown’s journey to the dark forest and his encounter with the devil are symbolic of man’s life journey from innocence to knowledge , form good to evil. .Red could represent sin or evil. There isn’t much action in his works. He is good at exploring the complexities of human psychology. The symbol can be found everywhere in his writing. The ambiguity is one of the silent characteristics of Hawthorne‘s art..

短篇小说集家族史<>Blithedale Romance> told us a story in which four people are involved in and affected by the sin of adulters. The letter A takes on different layers of symbolic meanings as the plot develops. Hawthrone gives its tales a historical reallity and an air of authenticity.

IV. Walt Whitman

Life: Working-class family ,son of a carpenter. Journalist.sings of the ―en-masse‖.He believes poetry could play a vital part in the process of creating a new nation.. Difference should be recognized. The individual person and his desires must be respected. Pursuit of love and happiness is approved of repeatedly in his lines.

Fames: His leaves of Grass marks the end of the Amercian Romantic Period.

Works: ----民主思想, 美国成长史---选读(It describes the growth of a child who learned about the world around him and improved himself according. The style is the use of “I”, He becomes all those people in his poems by using”I”. He uses “free verse”, that is Poetry without a fixed beat, The structure is loose and open ended, Parallelism 头韵法at the beginning of the lines contribute to the musicality of his poems.. The language is his strong tendency to use oral English, He seldomly use rarely-uses words.) ---选读----- the theory of university, and the singularity and equality of all beings in

value.

----美国内战----选读 (describes a scene of American Civil War) ----- 选读 (describes a scene of American Civil War)

V Herman Melville

Life: from well-to-do families, his father died which made him leave school early, and works as a bank clerk , a salesman, a farmer, a teacher, a sailer, an Inspector of Customs his thought was affected by Hawthorne. His early work ,like ,

Fame: is the first American prose epic, one of the world‘s greatest masterpieces. Melville is a master of allegory and symbolism.

Works: 早期作品： (这三部作品的创作素材是取自他在南太平洋群岛的所见所闻) (是他的半自传小说，讲述他当水手时遭遇到的不愉快事情) (relates his life on a United States man-of-war) (for the feminine market, but provokeing an outrageous令人不能容忍的repudiation, his fame declines )

选读 白鲸is not merely a whaling tale or sea adventure .①It’s a symbolic voyage of the mind in quest of the truth and knowledge of the universe, a spiritual exploration into man’s deep reality and psychology. He uses symbols , that is different objects or persons present something else. The ship “Pequod”is the human society and the voyage becomes a search for truth. The white whale , Moby Dick , symbolizes nature for Melivile ,but symbolizes evil for the character Ahab. ②Ahab (captain)is a tragic hero, who becomes evil himself in his thirst to destroy evil ③Much of the language is old fashioned. ④Melville’s great gifts of language, invention , psychological analysis,speculative agility, and narrative power makes Moby Dick a world classic.

后期短篇小说：“Bartleby, the scrivener”(little man’s life in big cities) “Benito Cereno”(a ship with black slave cargo ) “The Confidence-Man”( the Confidence man in successive guises to explore the paradoxes of belief and optimisms and hypocrisies of American life.)生前未出版的著作 (1924年出版)(deal with the sea and sailors ) -------后期小说，作者与世俗作了妥协，ONE MUST LIVE BY RULES。

Chapter 2 The Realistic Period

Period:1865—1914(Cival war—World WarI)( The Gilded Age 金元时代)

时代背景:1. the dark memories of the Civil War 2. Sufferings of the laboring people(industrialization).3.one half of the American population concentrated in cities by the end of the First World War.(urbanization )

文学关注点: 1.the struggles of the working classes

2.the contemporary social and political issues

3. Da rwin‘s evolutionary theory

代表作家：Henry James laid a greater emphasis on the “inner world”of man,Howell and Mark Twain focus on the life of the Amercians.( Howell focused on the rising middle-class . Mark Twain writes the lower-class people )

文学特点: the Age of Realism. Vernacular style.pave way to Moderism

文学流派：①Local colorism: one of American literary realism. Concern about the local character of a region, a vanishing way of life. Mark Twain, S.O.Jewett, J. Kirkland, H. Garland. Etc.

②American naturalism: affected by Darwin’s evolutionary theory and the 19th century French literature. It is evolved from realism ,but the tune is ironic and pessimistic. First, the literary artist must operate with characters as the physiologist works on living.（面对赤裸的现实）Second, They chose their subjects from the lower ranks of society . Third, the lanuguage is usually unpolished , lacking in acdamic skills and unwielding 笨拙in structure . last, The author’s tone is pessimistic and ironic.

Dreiser‘s , Norris‘s (a crude dentist)

I Mark Twain

Life: 父早亡，１２岁外出谋生，早年到漂泊，当过内河河道引航员，报纸专栏作家，演讲者。他的两个孩子死于心脏病，投资失败。最佳作品是描写儿时经历之事，中年经历坎坷后，小说笔调从乐观主义者转向愤世嫉俗者。作品多描写和揭露社会黑暗面。

Fame: the true father of American national literature.and it sequence becomes milestone of Amercian literature.

Works

选读is a record of vanished way of life in the pre-Civil War Missisipppi valley and it has moved millions of people of different age and conditions all over the world;the book are noted for their colloquial(方言)yet poetic style, their wide-range humor, and their universally shared dream of perfect innocence and freedom. The language is simple ,direct, easy to understand, and full of local color. The sentence structures are simple, even un-grammatical . His humor is remarkable. Most of his works contain some practical jokes, comic details ,witty remarks. He used the humor to criticize the social injustice .Through the eye of Huck, we see the contrasts between innocence and experience, nature and culture, wilderness and civilization.

(书中的”Providence”指上帝。Ｎo-siree-bob 是方言，意思是not at all.)

II Henry James

Life: wealthy family.Son of theological writer. 不愁衣食.his novels and

Essays are famous.He admired of ancient European civilization. American life is lack of culture and sophistication. The aim of the novel is to present life in his own art form. Fames: ①the forerunner of the 20th-century “stream of consciousness”novels and the founder of psychological realism ②brings him international fame for the first time. ③the first American writer to conceive his career in international terms ④the most expert stylist of his time ⑤receive the Order of Merit

②Works:

The first period :international theme ,the crash between American and European cultures.

a story about a young and innocent American confronting the complexity of the European life.

选读 : a novel about a young American girl who gets “killed”by the winter in Rome.(He makes his characters reveal themselves with his minimal intervention(插入). We learn the main story by reading through one or several minds and share their perspectives. His language is easy to understand. With a large vocabulary , he is always accurate in word selection )

,some Europeans in American learn with difficulty to adopt themselves to the American life.

is his masterpiece. An American girl‘s journey in Europe cultural environment.

III Emily Dickinson (female)

Life: Clavinist family, her father is a prominent lawyer and Congressman.

a unhappy love affair , become a total recluse(隐士) an independent spinster(老姑娘).She wanted to live simply.She kept the house, sent letters to her friends , wrote poetry,and read intensively by herself.Her poems are usually based on her own experiences,her sorrows and joys. Her poems focus on death,immortality,love, nature.More than 500 poems are about nature.She believed nature revealed to man things about mankind and universe.She wrote about 1775 poems, of which only 7 had appeared during her lifetime.All her poem have no titles.

Works:

选读一is one of her masterpieces The form is like that of the hymns(教堂咏唱诗) .The sentence structure is sometimes irregular, confuses readers.The poem is noted for its brevity, directness and plainness. The poem focused on a single image---the moment of death .

选读二 The poem uses personifications to vivify some abstract ideas .Dickenson makes the train part of nature by animalizing it.

选读三 Dickinson personifies death and immortality ,She regarded the end of death is toward Eternity.

about love

about role of women .

IV Theodore Dreiser

Life: from a German immigrant family, a poor and religious family. A very unhappy children. 自学成才.read voraciously.. In his early times, he wrote short fictions. In the last decades of his life,he involved himself in political activities and debating (discuss)writing.He attended the Communist Party short before his death in 1945. Many of his works are familiar to Chinese readers,like

In his works , man is a ―Victim of forces over which he has no control‖. Heredity and environment are deterministic forces shaping individualized characters. Life is shown to be ironic ,even tragic. Fame: one of America‘s literary naturalists.

Works:

Early times fictions:

选读 traces the material rise of Carrie Meeber and the tragic decline of G.W. Hursthood. (The characters are subjects to the control of the environment and heredity.The time sequence is clear and the plot straightforward. But his writing are lack of concision, too many descriptions of characters and events.The sentence structure is awkward , and occasionally wrong in word selection, mixed and disorganized in voice and tone. The style is not polished but very serious and well calculates to achieve the thematic ends he sought)

and

(published posthumously in 1947) (about misunderstood artist, condemn for ―obscenity and blasphemy‖)

is his greatest work. Bannde in Boston.

Chapter 3 The modern Period

社会背景:

①America participated in World War(战争年代). The war changed young people’s attitude toward sex.There was a decline in moral standard and a spiritual wasteland appeared after The World WarI.

②Amercian became the most powerful industrialized nation after the world. The 1920s is The Jazz Age(爵士时代).

③The Great Economic Depression in the 1930s. Despise its booming industry and material prosperity, there was a sense of unease and restlessness underneath. Strikes took place for uneven distribution of wealth and unemployment due to the oversupply of goods. Some individuals felt powerles sness and hopelessness.They are called ―The Lost Generation‖,poets like Ezra Pound.

④Atomic bombs in Japan made the destruction of the Western civilization .The misuse of modern science and technology is spreading. People no longer believe God . They begin to think of life as a big joke and absurdity.

思想背景:Karl Marx ,Sigmund Freud, Darwinism, Willian James.Carl Jung

1.Karl Marx believes the root cause of all behavious was economic .

2.Freud emphasized the importance of the unconscious which controls a great deal of overt(surface)behavior. 3 .Willian James was famous for his theory of ―Stream of consciousness‖. 4 .Carl Jung is noted for his “collective unconscious”集体无意识and “archetypal symbol”as part of modern mythology. 文学特点: A typical work seem to begin arbitrarily, to advance without explanation, and to end without resolution. The book is just a juxtaposition of the past and present , of the history and memory, or a book of fragments drawn from diverse areas of experience,such of the life of street. There are shifts in perspective, vocie and tone, from the external to the internal , from the public to the private, from the chronological to psychic, from the objective description to the subjective projection.The literary losts its authority. The novels become shorter in average.

The realistic fiction featured an authoritative narration in telling a story , while modern fiction tended to employ the first person narration. The modernistic vision that truth does not exist objectively but is the product of a personal interaction with reality.

作家:

①Ezra Pound is the leading spokesman of the Imagist Movement. His one-image poem best demonstrates his principles.

②Robert Frosts’s poems are forever New England.

③E.E.Cummings,a poet, used “i”instead of “I”to refer to himself as a protest against self-importance.

④Fitzgerald ---爵士年代的纸醉金迷下的迷茫.

⑤Hemingway—参加了一战和内战的士兵的迷茫.

⑥Faulkner—反映了整个美国社会空虚的精神状况和美国南部社会.

⑦Sherwood Anderson ---反映了被文明异化的人类无法付出真爱.

⑧Lewis –反映了美国中产阶层商人的生活.

⑨John Steinbeck—记录了经济危机时代的故事.如反映悲惨农民

⑩Eugene O’Neill—反映人类的欲望和人类的受挫感.对戏剧结构进行改革

二战之后的作家

11 Robert Lowell—反映四十年代的历史和个人的忏悔.

12 Gray Snyder—反映50至60年代.使诗歌摆摊诗卷气回归到平民和通俗化.

13 Allen Ginsberg—他的诗反映50至60年代的“Beat Movement”.

14 Norman Mailer and Herman Wouk—他们的作品反映二战战场的经历.

15 Robert Penn Warren and Flanner O’Conner—继Faulter后反映40年代南方社会的作家.

16 Saul Bellow—Jewish-American writer, 反映犹太人的经历和传统.

17 Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison—黑人小说反映了黑人生活.确认黑人身份.

18 J.D. Salinger—二战后年青人的生活,其 是学生剧.

19 John Updike---省视了中产阶级的价值观及他们的生活.

20 Kurt V onnegut, Joseph Heller, John Bath , and Thomas Pynchon :forfront of ―new fiction‖ in the 1960s and 1970s.Considers human beings are trapped in a meanlingless world and the absurdist vision is integrated with comic exaggerations,ironic uses of parodies(打油诗), two-dimensional characters,a combination of fantastic events …

II Rober Lee Frost

Life: 做过毕业生代表,在肯尼迪总统就职典礼上朗诵过诗歌.因肺痛没有上完哈佛大学,后自己经营农场,做过许多行业：制鞋，办报纸等等。在大学任教和演讲。他是一位regional 诗人,他的作品都是反映新英格兰的风景和人物，作品主题讨论人类生活的基本主题。他的诗继承了田园诗风格。

Fame:四次获得普利兹奖(Pulitzer prize)。

Works:, a boy from self-centered idealism to maturity.his first volume of poems. collected many of his major poems, like ―Mending the Wall‖, in which Frost saw man as learning from nature the zones of his own limitations. ― Home Bruial‖ ,probes the darker corners of individual lives in a situation when man cannot accept the facts of his condition.

includes “The Road Not Taken”, “Birches”桦树

向西奔流的小河doubt the man’s prowess(bravity) and importance.

discuss ethics and man’s relations to God.Both are comic-serious dramatic narratives with biblical characters in modern settings.

四次获得普利兹奖的作品分别是 （first）（second） （third）---

选读一晚年作品，探讨的话题是：Can a man’s best efforts ever satisfy God? The poem is full of natural fragrance. The language is easy to understand, The profound ideas are delivered under the disguise of the plain language and simple form.(诗中的human sleep指死亡.)

选读二 determined to take a path that less traveled by .

Images and metaphors are drawn from the simple country life. Profound ideas under the simple image.选择一条别人很少去的路，暗示作者的人生选择有别与一般作家。

选读三 ，the beauty of the forest scene in a winter twilight.“..a farmhouse near /Between the woods and frozen lake”“..the sweep/Of easy wind and downy flake”“The wood are lovely , dark and deep”The poem is from

IV F. Scott Fitzgerald

Life: 来自美国富人阶层,因疾病和不喜欢学院式学习,大学未毕业,参过军,服役15个月, 小说使他赢得一位名法官女儿的芳心,她后来成为他的妻子.他们过着奢侈