美国文学1

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美国文学(本杰明富兰克林)

American literatureChapter 1 The Embryo of American Literature1、Benjamin FranklinA Brief Introduction of Benjamin FranklinFranklin was one of the leading founding fathers of the United States of America. He was a member of the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence and was one of its signatories(签名人)。

He also signed the Constitution of the United States, and served as the new nation’s ablest diplomat. Franklin was also unequaled in America as an inventor until Thomas Edison. He invented the Franklin stove(火炉，窖，温室)，bifocal eyeglasses and the lightning rod.※BiographyBenjamin Franklin was born on January 17,1706 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the youngest child ,and tenth boy of 17 children. Franklin’s formal schooling ended early but his education never did. He believed that “the door to wisdom are never shut,” and read every book he could get his hands on. Franklin taught himself simple algebra and geometry ,navigation, logic, history, science, English grammar and a working knowledge of five other languages.Franklin had a simple formula for success. He believed that successful people worked just a little harder than other people. Benjamin Franklin certainly did. He built a successful printing and publishing business in Philadelphia; he conducted scientific studies of electricity and made several important discoveries; he was an accomplished diplomat and statesman; he helped establish Pennsylvania’s first university and America’s first city hospital. He also organized the country’s first subscription library.Franklin had strong belief that good citizenship included an obligation of public service. Franklin himself served the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the new United States of America, in one way or the other, for most of his life. To Benjamin Franklin there was no greater purpose in life than to“live usefully.”※The Works·Poor Richard’s Almanac.1733·The Way to Wealth,1758·Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin ，1791·Benjamin Franklin’s Thirteen Virtues1TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.2SIlENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.3ORDER.Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.4RESOLUTION.Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.5FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e.,waste nothing.6INDUSTRY.Lose no time;be always employeed in something useful; cut off all unneccessary actions.7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.8. JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.9. MODERATION. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.11. TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.※Selected ReadingToo Dear for the WhistleWhen I was a child of seven years old , my friends , on a holiday ,filled my pocket with coppers . I went at once to a shop where they sold toys for children . Being charmed with the sound of a whistle that I had seen by the way , in the hands of another boy , I handed over all my money for one . I then came home , went whistling all over house , much pleased with my whistle , but disturbing all my family .My brother and sister and cousins ,when I told of the bargain I had made,said I had given four times as much as the whistle was worth . They put me in mind of what good things I might have bought with the rest of the money, and laughed at me so much for my folly that I cried with vexation(n.苦恼，恼怒，令人烦恼的事) . Thinking about the matter gave me more chagrin than the whistle gave me pleasure.This , however , was afterwards of use to me , for the impression continued on my mind . so that often , when I was tempted to buy something I do not need . I said to myself . “Don't give too much for the whistle ,”and I saved my money . As I grew up , came into the world，and observed the actions of men . I thought I met with many ,very many ,who “gave too much for the whistle .”When I saw some man too eager for cout favour, wasting his time at court getherings ,giving up his rest , his liberty ,his virtue, and perhaps his friends ,for royal favour , I said to myself “This man gives too much for the whistle.”When I saw another fond of popularity , constantly taking part in political affairs ,neglecting his own business ,and ruining it by neglect , “He pays , indeed ,”said I , “too dear for his whistle .”If I knew a miser（守财奴，吝啬鬼）who gave up every kind of comfortable living , all the pleasure of doing good to others , all the esteem of his fellow citizens and the joys of friendship , for the sake of gathering and keeping wealth —“Poor man.”said I , “you pay too dear for your whistle .”When I met a man of pleasure , who did not try to improve his mind or his fortune but merely devoted himself to having a good time ,perhaps neglecting his health ,“Mistaken man,”said I , “you are providing pain for yourself , instead of pleasure ; you are paying too dear for your whistle .”If I saw someone fond of appearance of who had fine clothes , fine houses , fine furniture , fine earrings , all above his fortune , and for which he had run into debt ,and ends his career in a prison .“Alas,”said I , “he has paid dear , very dear , for his whistle . ”In short the miseries of mankind are largely due to their putting a false value on things —to giving “too much for their whistles”.。

美国文学课件1-puritanism清教主义

❖“The king died and then the queen died.”
❖ “The king died and then the queen
died of grief.”
1. What is Literature?
❖ Literature is characterized by beauty of expression and form and by university of intellectual and emotional appeal.
Other approaches(2)
❖ Post- structuralism ❖ Decostructuralism
❖ Our textbook is arranged in chronological order, but we deal with each period analytically with emphasis on theme.
4.How to Define American Literature
❖ American literature mainly refers to literature produced in American English by the people living in the US. This generalization does not exclude literature produced in other languages by American expatriates or literature produced in other languages by minorities in the country such as the American Indian literature in the Indian language and the Jewish American literature in the Yiddish language.

美国文学第一册练习(有答案)

1. “God helps them that help themselves.” is found in ____________work.A. Paine’sB. Franklin’sC. Freneau’sD. Jefferson’s2. Which of the following stirred the world and helped form the American republic?A. The American Crisis.B. The Federalist.C. Declaration of Independence.D. The Age of Reason.3. “These are the times that try men’s souls”, these words were once read to Washington’s troops and did much to spur excitement to further action with hope and confidence. Who is the author of these words?A. Benjamin FranklinB. Thomas PaineC. Thomas JeffersonD. George Washington4. Which work is written by Freneau?A. The Right of ManB. The Wild honey SuckleC. Poor Richard’s AlmanacD. The Day of Doom5. Who was considered as the “Poet of American Revolution”?A. Anne BradstreetB. Edward TaylorC. Michael WiggleworthD. Philip Freneau6. In Moby Dick, the voyage symbolizes ___________.A. the microcosm of human societyB. the search for truthC. the unknown worldD. nature7.Thoreau was often alone in the woods or by the pond, lost in spiritual communication with _________________.A. natureB. transcendentalist ideasC. human beingsD. celestial beings8. The Transcendentalist group includes two of the most significant writers America has produced so far, Emerson and ____________-.A. Henry David ThoreauB. Washington IrvingC. Nathanel HawthorneD. Walt Whitman9. ___________is regarded as the first American prose epic.A. NatureB. The Scarlet letterC. WaldenD. Moby Dick10. The Romantic Period of American literature started with the publication of Washington Irving’s ___________ and ended with Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.A. The Sketch BookB. Tales of a TravelerC. The AlhambraD. A History of New York11. The convention of the desire for an escape from society and a return to nature in American literature is particularly evident in ___________________.A. Cooper’s Leatherstocking TalesB. Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.C. Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.D. Irving’s Rip Van Winkle.12. As a philosophical and literary movement, _________ flourished in New England from the 1830s to the Civil War.A. modernismB. rationalismC. sentimentalismD. transcendentalism13. For Melville, as well as for the reader and ____________, the narrator, Moby Dick is still a mystery, an ultimate mystery of the universe.A. StarbuckB. StubbC. IshmaelD. Arab14. All of the following are works by Nathaniel Hawthorne except_____________.A. The House of Seven GablesB. White JacketC. The Marble FaunD. The Blithdale Romance15. In the following works, which signs the beginning of the American literature?A. The Sketch BookB. Leaves of GrassC. Leatherstocking Tales..D. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn16. The main theme of Emily Dickinson is the following except_______________.A. religionB. love and marriageC. life and deathD. war and peace17. Emily Dickinson’s poetic idiom is noted for the following except_____________.A. brevityB. directnessC. plainestD. obscure18. “There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, trough the whole life, but circumstances may rouse it to activity.” Which of the following writings is the thought reflected in?A. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Yo ung Goodman Brown.B. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.C. Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.D. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.19. The publication of ____________established Emerson as the most eloquent spokesman of New England Transcendentalism.A. NatureB. Self-RelianceC. The American ScholarD. The Over Soul20. Most of the poems in Whitman’s leaves of Grass sing of the “en-mass” and the ___________as well.A. natureB. lifeC. selfD. self-relianceII. Fill into the blanks with suitable phrase or term. (2x10=20%)1.The American of Scholar is regarded as the “Declaration of Intellectual Independence”.2.In 1620, a number of Puritans who tried to purify or reform the church of Englandstepped on the New England shore at Plymouth in the ship named Mayflower3.Among all the settlers in the New Continent, English settlers were the mostinfluential.4.In American Literature, the eighteenth century was an Age of Reason andRevolution.5.In Franklin’s Autobiography he talks first of all about how he studied language.6.Irving was best known for his famous short stories such as Rip Van Winklewhich is about a good-natured lazy husband who falls into a 20-year sleep. 7．Published in 1823, The Pioneers was the first of the Leatherstocking Tales, in their order.8．Philip Freneau was considered as the “poet of the American Revolution” and the “Father of American Poetry.”9．A superb book Walden came out of Thoreau’s two-year experiment at Walden pond. 10．As one of America’s first and foremost realists and humorists, Mark Twain , the pen name of Samuel Langhorne. Clemens, usually wrote about his own personal experiences and things he knew about from firsthand experiences.III. Match the writer in Column A with the works in Column B (1X10=10%)Column A Column Ba.Franklinb.John Smithc.William Cullen Bryantd.James Fennimore Coopere.Philip Freneauf.Washington Irvingg.Nathaniel Hawthorneh.Edgar Allan Poei.Ralph Waldo Emersonj.Walt Whitman1.( b) A Description of New England2.( h) The Raven3.( g) The Scarlet Letter4.( a) Autobiography5.( e) The Wild Honey Suckle6.( c) To a Waterfowl7.( d) The Deerslayer8 ( j)Leaves of Grass9.( f) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow10.( i ) Nature。

美国文学题 1

第一部分殖民地时期的美国文学What are the characteristics of Colonial America?All of the works written during this period are utilitarian , polemical , or didactic .The purpose of literature for these Puritans was first of all usefulness . It should teach some kond of lesson . In content , the literature of the colonial settlement served either God or colonial expansion or both . The literary style of the earliest American writers , in fact seems to have been determined by a practical consideration of the sort of impression each writer wanted to make upon a selected group of readers . Puritans’metaphorical mode of perception helped to develop literary symbolism as they saw the physical world a symbol of God . Hence symbolism as a technique was a common practice in writing . The Piritans placed unusual stress upon plainness in writing because they were unusually interested in influencing the simp;e-minded people . Bearing the direct influence fo the Christian Biblical poetics , the Puritan writings are fresh , simp;e ,direct , and with a touch of nobility . As it faithfully imitated and transplanted European forms to the new experience , early American literature was as much a product of continuities as an indigenous creation.第二部分理性文学和革命文学1 As we have seen , theology dominated the Puritan phase of American writing . Politics was the next great subject to command the attention of the best minds.2 From 1732 to 1758 , Franklin wrote and published his famous Poor Richard’s Alman ac , an annual collection of proverbs .3 EnlightementThe eighteenth –century England is also , and better , known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age fo Reason . The Enlightenment was a progressive intellectual movement going on throughout Europe at the time , with France in the vanguard . The Enlightenment celebrated reason (rationality) , equality , science and human beings’ ability to perfect themselves and their society . The movement was based on the basic theories provided by the philosophers of the age , which ranged from John Locke’s materialism , Lord Shaftsbury’s deism , and George Berkeley’s immaterialism to David Hume’s skepticism . Whatever philosophical beliefs they might have , they held the eommom faith in human rationality and the possibility of human perfection through education . They believed that when reason served as the yardstick for the measurement of all human activities and social relations , superstition , injustice , privilege and oppression were to yield place to “eternal truth” ,”eternal justice” , and “natural equality” or inalienable rights of men . Everything was put under scrutiny , to be measured by reason . No authorities , political or religious or otherwise , were acepted unchallenged while almost allthe old societies and governments and all the traditional concepts , including Christianity , were examined and criticized . The belief provided theory for the French Revolution in 1789 and the American War of Independence in 1776 .Alexander Pope (1688~1744) , Joseph Addison (1672~1719) , Richard Steele (1672~1792) , Jonathan Swift (1667~1745) , Daniel Defoe (1660~1731) , Henry Fielding (1707~1754) , Richard B. Sheridan (1751~1816) , Oliver Goldsmith (1730~1774) , Edward Gibbon (1737~1794) , and Samuel Johnson (1709~1784) were among the famous enlighteners in England . As England had already gone through its bourgeois revolution , what the English enlighteners were lege to do was to strive the bring the revolution to and end by clearing away the feudal remnants and rep;ace them with bourgeois ideology .第三部分美国的浪漫主义文学1 In 1828 the election of the frontier hero Andrew Jackson as the seventh President of the United States had brought an effective end to the “Virginia Dynasty” of American Presidents .2 Wsahington Irvi ng’s Skwtch Book bacame the first work by an American writer to win financial success on both sides of the Atlantic .3 Washington Irving was the first great prose stylist of American romanticism , and his familiar style was destined to outlive the formal prose of such eontemporaries as Acott and Cooper ,and to provide a model for the prevailing prose narrative fo the future .4 What are the unique features of American Romanticism? Although foreign influnences wre strong,American romanticism exhibited from the very outset distinct features of its own.It was different from its English and European counterpart because it originated from an amalgam of factors which were altogether American rather than anything else.American romanticism was in essence the e xpression of”a real new experience”and contained”an alien quality”for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place”was radically new and alen.Foe instance ,the American national experience of “pioneering “ into the west proved to be a rich fund of material for Ameican writers to draw upon.The wilderness with its virgin forests ,the sound of the axe cutting its way westward, the exotic landscape with its different sights, smells,and sounds(the robin rather than the nightingale is Emily Dicckinson’s “criterion of tone,”for example), and the quaint,picturesque civilization of a primitive race—all these constituted an incomparably superior source of inspiration for native authors.A rude Natty Bumppo in buckskin, dweling in a fromtier blockhouse, treading a solitary bridle path through virgin forests was ,perhaps , matter enough for any romantic genius.And indeed, American authors were quite responsive to thestimulus which American life offered.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s tentive treatment of the frontier and the Indians in his works such as Hudson valley, William Cullen Bryant’s sketches of the wild west prairie where no human being had ever set foot and James Fenimore Cooper’s five Leatherstocking tales with”their majestic descriptions of American’s limitles s forests and broad blue inland lake”—these are but aafew instances whereby the new American sensibility began to make itself felt.And ,of course , we should not forget to mention Emerson,Thoreau,Hawthorne,Melville and Whitman, all people who were instrumental ,in one way or another ,in creating an indigenous American literature.Then there is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider.American moral values were essentially Puritan.Public opinion was overwhelmingly Puritan;social life and cultural taste were predominantly conditioned by the Puritan and cultural taste were predominantly conditioned by the Puritan atmosphere of the nation.Nothing has left a deeper imprint on the character of the people as a whole than did Puritanism;no one has been so successful in imposing his way of thinking on the continent as the American Puritan.puritanical influence over Ameican romanticism w3as conspicuously noticeable.One of its palpable manifestations is the fact that American romantic authors tended more to moralize than their English and European brothers.It is true that Edgar Allan poe fought vehemently against “the heresy of the didactic”,and writers like John Greenleaf Whittier tried to advocate both beauty and goodness.But the fact remains, nonetheless ,that many American romantic writings intended to edify more than theyentertained.There seemed to be areas of life which it was better for them to leave alone, taboos of a kind that most of the literary world agreed,however tacit it may have been, on not breaking.Sex and love werem for instance, subjects American authors were particularly careful in approaching.Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter talks eloquently about the sin itself ,and Whitman was for a long time misunderstood by his own countrymen because Leaves of Grass contains lines and passages not at all palatable to their “genteel” taste.练习二1.Emerson was recognized throughout his life as the leaderof_________ movement, yet he never applied the term to himself or to his beliefs and ideas.2.Emerson’s truest disciple, the man who put into practice many ofEmerson’s theories, was_________.Define the literary terms listed belowAmerican TranscendentalismKeys: 1. Transcendentalist, 2, H.D ThoreauTerm: American Transcendentalism or “New English Transcendentalism” or “American Renaissance” is more of a tendency, an attitude, than the philosophy of Transcendentalists.To “transcend” something is to rise above it, to pass beyond its limits. Transcendentalists took their ideas from the romantic literature of Europe, from new-Platoism, from German idealistic philosophy, and from the revelations of Oriental-mysticism. They spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society. The major features of New England Transcendentalism can be summarized as the follows.Firstly, the Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the Universe. Secondly, they stressed the importance of the individual. To them, the individual was the most important element of society. Thirdly, they offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spi rit or God. Nature was , to them, alive, filled with God’s overwhelming presence. Transcendentalism is based on the belief that the most fundamental truths about life and death can be reached only by going beyond the world of the senses.As a philosophical and literary movement, Transcendentalism flourished in New England from 1830s to the Civil War. Its doctrines found their greatest literary advocates in Emerson and Thoreau. Emerson’s Nature has been called the “Manifesto of American Transcendentalism” an d his The American Scholar has been rightly regarded as America’s “Declaration of Intellectual Independence.” Thoreau built and went to live in a small cottage on Walden Pond for a little over two years, and then came back to write about his experience there in his famous book Walden. To later generations, scarred by the horrors of the Civil War, the transcendentalist persuation that humanity was godlike and that evil was non-existent appeared to be an optimistic folly. As a philosophy, Transcendentalism was neither logical nor systematical. It exalted feeling over reason, individual expression over the restraints of law and custom. Yet Transcendentalism wasa powerful expression of the intellectual mood of the age, and theideas it represented have remained a strong influence on great American writers from the days of Hawthorne and Whitman to the present.练习31．_________deals with the effects of a curse, and though the tale itself is fiction, the germ of the story sprang from the author’s family history.2. Hawthorne’s unique gift was for the creation of strongly_________stories which touch the deepest roots of man’s moral nature. The finest example is the recreation of Puritan Boston, _________.3. _________ is a tremendous chronicle of a whaling voyage inpursuit of a seemingly supernatural white whale.Define the literary terms listed belowSymbolismKeys:1.The House of the Seven Gables 2, symbolic The scarlet letter3. Moby-Dick.Symbolism: Symbolism is the writing technique of using symbols. A symbol is something that conveys two kinds of meaning; it is simply itself, and it stands for something other than itself. In other words, a symbol is both literal and figurative. People, places, things and even events can be used symbolically. A symbol is a way of telling a story and a way of conveying meaning. The best symbols are those that are believable in the lives of the characters and also convincing as they convey a meaning beyond the literal level of the story. Hawthorn and Melville were the two masters of symbolism. For example, the scarlet letter “A” on Hester’s breast can give you symbolic meanin gs. If the symbol is obscure or ambiguous, then the very obscurity and the ambiguity may also be part of the meaning of the story.Answer the following questions.1.Give a brief analysis of the main characters in The scarlet Letter2.Give a brief analysis of the character Ahab in Moby-Dick.3.What is the theme in Moby-Dick?4.What is Hawthorn’s style?Keys:2, The way in which Hawthorn wrote The Scarlet Letter suggests that American Romanticism adapted itself to American Puritan moralism. The load of didacticism is nowhere heavier and the desire to elevate nowhere stronger than it is, perhaps, in this 19th American classic. Reading it, one wonders whether it is a story of love. The answer is yes, but then no, because the love part of the story is long over before the book begins. One wonders whether it is a story if sin. The answer is yes, but then no, for the sinning part is long over before the book opens Modern and contemporary authors would have written pageswhere Hawthorn uttered not a word, What he was predominantly concerned was the moral, emotional, and psychological effect of the sin on the people in general and those complicated in it in particular. In the strong character of Hester Psynne we see the tension between society and solitude which, as Marius Bewley put it, lies near the center of all Hawthorn’s art, The Scarlet Letter is not a praise of a Hester Prynne sinning, but a hymn on the moral growth of the woman when sinned against. Hawthorn’s female characters tend to fall into two broad categories. (答案未完)4．Ahab may have been Melville’s portrait of an Emersonian self-reliant individual. Melville lost no opportunity in his criticism of New England Transcendentalism. Constantly under his attack is its emphasis on individualism and Oversoul. To say that the whole of Moby-Dick is a negative reflection upon Transcendentalism is not in fact an exaggeration. Take Emerson’s self-reliance for instance. Ahab is too much of a self-reliant individual to be a good human being. He stands alone on his own one leg among the millions of the peopled earth, For him the only law is his own will. To him the world exists for his sake. His selfhood must be asserted at the expense of all else: lives may be sacrificed, and nature may have to be vanquished in order that he may do what he will. He never stops to think---and he never bothers about it---that, in asserting his private personality, he denies ruthlessly the humanity and individuality of his fellowmen. Ahab is no Odysseus, and this crew seems to be a ship of fools too much under the captain’s evil spell to exercise their discretion. Between them, they encompass their own undoing. Richard Chase is right when he says that the idea Melville conveys in Moby-Dick is “Death-spiritual, emotional, physical,” which is the p rice of self-reliance when it is pushed to the point of solipsism. Ahab is, to be more exact, a victim of solipsism, his tragedy stemming in the main from extreme individualism, selfish will, a spirit too much withdrawn to itself to warrant salvation, Moby-Dick thus reveals the basic pattern of 19th century American life: loneliness and suicidal individualism in a self-styled democracy,5. One of the major themes in Melville is alienation, which he sensed existing in the life of his time on different levels, between man and man, man and society, and man and nature. Captain Ahab seems to be the best illustration of it all. He cuts himself off from his wife and kid, and stays away most of the time from his crew, and he hates Moby---Dick which is am embodiment of nature. He is angry because his pride is wounded. After the loss of his leg in his encounter with the white whale, he seems to hold God responsible for the presence of evil in the universe. Thus his anger assumes the proportions of a cosmicnature. He is bent on avenging himself. He hears of no objection. In his egocentric obsession within “the masoned, walled town of a captain’s exclusiveness,” he loses his sanity and humanity and becomes a devilish creature rushing headlong toward his doom. And he know s it most clearly of all. When D.H Lawrence remarks,”“he {Melville}records also, almost beyond pain or pleasure, the extreme transitions of the isolated, far-driven soul, the soul which is now alone, without any real human contact” he had Ahad topmost in his mind. In a sense Ahab embodies all of the evil he once consigned to Moby-Dick9. A. Hawthorne wrote romance because he thought it the predestined form of American narrative. He presented material on the alienation between fact and fancy. The purpose of a novel, as it developed in 18th century Europe, was to record the actual events of life, to stick to what actually happened, but Hawthorn explained that the purpose of romance was to present the truth of the human heart by the writer’s own choice or cre ation. He wanted to reveal reality and satirize it but not to offend the Puritan conventions, For Hawthorne, romance, unlike the novel, was not tied to conventional reality. Romance had the freedom to depart from novelistic realism. Hawthorne felt that the literary artist was justified in changing events around if that could better get to the truth of the individual psychology. Psychological truth was more important than actual truth. Hawthorne used atmosphere to help reach the truth of the heart. Often he would use shadow to create effect. He used this because the world of light and shadow was the world of imagination. Therefore, for Hawthorne romance was the meeting place of the actual and the imaginary. In this stories, there is a strong fairytale element, He would use his imagination to change the actual events, but the purpose was to reach psychological truth. Hawthorne mingled the supernatural with the actual and developed analytic, psychological romanticism.B, Hawthorne used symbols and setting to reveal the psychology of the characters. It is characteristic of Hawthorne. He used masks, veils, shadows, emblems to give dramatic forms to the universal dilemmas of humanity. A black veil stands for the wickedness of man; a marble heart symbolizes an indivi dual’s unpardonable sin; and a garden of poisonous flowers represents hell.C. He wrote stories with narrative interest, ease in transition, coherence, and complexity, One of the means he adopted is making stories parable in form and symbolic in style.D. His style is soft, flowing, and almost feminine. His touch is light, but his observation is somber.E. He used ambiguity to keep the reader in a world of uncertainty. Important questions are never fully resolved. The simple word “or”enjoys high frequency in his stories. Hawthorne gave the reader many ways to interpret the story and then he stopped without telling the reader which one he wanted the reader to choose. To create ambiguity, the author often employed the technique of multiple views.。

美国文学1

1.约翰·史密斯（探险家）约翰·史密斯上校（1580.1-1631.6.21），新英格兰的舰队司令，是英国军人，探险家和作家。

他因在北美弗吉尼亚州建立了英国第一个永久殖民地詹姆斯敦而扬名天下。

作品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: with a Description of the Country (1612)The Proceedings of the English Colony in Virginia (1612)A Description of New England (1616)New England's Trials (1620, 1622)The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624)An Accidence, or the Pathway to Experience Necessary for all Young Seamen (1626)A Sea Grammar (1627) – the first sailors' word book in EnglishThe True Travels, Adventures and Observations of Captain John Smith (1630)Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New England, or Anywhere (1631)2.威廉·布拉德福德（William Bradford，1590年-1657年）五月花号公约签署人之一，于1620年参与创立了普利茅斯殖民地，并在长达30余年的时间里担任普利茅斯总督。

美国文学选读课后习题答案

美国⽂学选读课后习题答案Unit 1 Benjamin Franklin1.Why did Franklin write his Autobiography?Franklin says that because his son may wish to know about his life, he is taking his one week vacation in the English countryside to record his past. He also says that he has enjoyed his life and would like to repeat it2.What made Franklin decide to leave the brother to whom he had been apprenticed?His brother was passionate, and had often beaten him. The aversion to arbitrary power that has stuck to him through his whole life .After a brush with the law, Franklin left his brother.3.How did he arrive in Philadephia?First he set out in a boat for Amboy, the boat dropped him off about 50 miles from Burlington, the next day he reached Burlington on foot, in Burlington he found a boat which w as going towards Philadelphia, he arrived there about eight or nine o’clock, on the Sunday morning and landed at the Market Street wharf.4.What features do you find in the style of the above selection?It is the pattern of Puritan simplicity, directness, and concision(⾔简意赅). The narrative is lucid(易懂的), the structure is simple, the imagery is homely(朴素的).Unit 2 Edgar Allen Poe1.Who is the narrator? What wrong does he want to redress?Montresor.Fortunato,one of wine experts insulted him, so he wanted to murder him.2.What is the pretext he uses to lure Fortunato to his wine cellar?He baits Fortunato by telling him he has obtained what he believes to be a cask of Amontillado a rare and valuable sherry wine. Fortunato is anxious to determine whether or not it is truly Amontillado, so he goes to the vault with Montresor.3.What happens to Fortunato in the end?He was walled up alive behind bricks in a wine cellar.Unit 4 Nathaniel Hawthorne:1.Why is the prison the setting of Chapter 1 ?No matter how optimistic the founders of new colonies may be, they are quick to establish a prison and a cemetery in their “Utopia,” for they know that misbehavior, evil, and death are unavoidable.This belief fits into the larger Puritan doctrine, which puts heavy emphasis on the idea of original sin—the notion that all people are born sinners because of the initial transgressions of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. he is therefore using the prison building to represent the crime and the punishment which are aspect of civilized life. What is the implication of the description of the roses?The rosebush symbolizes the ability of nature to endure and outlast man's activities. The narrator suggests that roses offer a reminder of Nature's kindness to the condemned; for his tale, he sa ys, it will provide either a “sweet moral blossom” or else some relief in the face of unrelenting sorrow and gloom.2.Describe the appearance of Hester Prynne and the attitude of the people towards her.The second paragraph on page 30.The crowd in front of the jail is a mixture of men and women, all maintaining severe looks of disapproval. Several of the women begin to discuss Hester Prynne, and they soon vow that Hester would not have received such a light sentence for her crime if they had been the judges. One woman, the ugliest of the group, goes so far as to advocate deathfor Hester.3.What has happened to Hester? As a young woman, Hester married an elderly scholar, Chillingworth, who sent her ahead to America to live. While waiting for him, she had an affair with a Puritan minister named Dimmesdale, after which she gave birth to Pearl. The scarlet letter is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy. Why does she make the embroidery of the letter A so elaborate?It seems to declare that she is proud, rather than ashamed, of her sin. In reality, however, Hester simply accepts the “sin” and its symbol as part of herself, just as she accepts her child. And although she can hardly believe her present “realities,” she takes them as they are rather than resisting them or trying to atone for them. How does this tell us about her character? Throughout The Scarlet Letter Hester is portrayed as an intelligent, capable. It is the extraordinary circumstances shaping her that make her such an important figure.Unit 6 Henry David Thoreau1. Where indeed did Thoreau live, both at a physical level and at a spiritual level? He lived in a cabin on Walden Pond,which belonged t o Emerson’s property.2.Had Thoreau ever bought a farm? Why did he enjoy the act of buying? No, he h adn’t. He avoided purchasing a farm because it would inevitably tie him down financially and complicate his life. Thoreau didn’t see the acquisition of wealth as the goal for human existence, he saw the goal of life to be an exploration of the mind and of the magnificent world around us. He regarded the places as an existence free of obligations and full of leisure.3. Is it significant that Thoreau mentioned the Fourth of July as the day on which he began to stay in the woods? Why? Yes, it is. Because The Fourth of July is known as Independence Day, the birthday of the United States. Here Thoreau uses the day to express his beginning of regeneration at Walden. It also means a symbol of his conquest of being.Unit 7 19th Century American Poets1. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(1) I Shot an Arrow…1. Why did the speaker lose sight of his arrow and song?The arrow flies too swiftly and too far away to be seen by the speaker; whereas the song is naturally invisible.2. In what circumstances did he find them again?He finds them unexpectedly years later from the trunk of a tree and the heart of a friend.3. What do arrow and song stand for in this poem?The images of arrow and song here may stand for friendship.(2) A Psalm of Life1. What kind of person is the speaker of this poem?The speaker is a man of action, always optimistic and cheerful, trying to achieve as much as possible in the short span of life.2. According to the poem, how should our lives be led to overcome the fact that each day brings us nearer to death?We should work harder and live happier.3. Interpret the metaphor of "Footprints on the sand of time" (line 28).The metaphor refers to human deeds in real life.2. Walt Whitman(1) One’s Self I Sing1. What is the significance of singing about one's self? It is an exaltation of the individual spirit, which is typical of American people.2. What is the difference between physiology and physiognomy?Physiology is a science that deals with the functions and life process of human beings, whereas physiognomy refers to an art of judging character from contours of face itself or the appearance of a person.3. What does Whitman mean by the term of "the Modern Man"?He means that a man should be free from any prejudice and pride, totally different from the traditional one that is full of bias.(3) O Captain! My Captain!1. Why is the word "Captain" capitalized throughout the poem?In this poem the word “Captain” specially refers to Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States.2. What overall metaphor does the poet employ in this poem? Life is a journey.3. Why do people on the shores exult and bells ring, while the speaker remains so sad?They welcome the ship returning from its hard trip, whereas the speaker is sad because the captain fails to receive his own honor.3. Emily Dickinson(1) To Make a Prairie …1. What things are needed to "make" a prairie? In what sense can one really do it?Some grass and insects and small animals. People can make a prairie with their imagination. 2. How can "revery alone" create a prairie?The prairie stays in one's mind.(2) Success Is Counted Sweetest1. Why is success "counted sweetest by those who ne'er succeed"?Those who have tasted the bitterness of failure would have a keener desire for success.2. Who are "the purple host"?The so-called successful people in the world.3. Who is "he" in the last stanza? Anyone who is pursuing his success.(3)I'm nobody!1. Who are the "pair of us" and "they?"in this poem? The "pair of us" refers to the speaker in the poem and the reader, and "they" refers to the public, especially those in power.2. What does "an admiring bog" really mean?" (line 28). It implies the vain and empty common people, who are always admiring and pursuing the celebrities.3. What is the theme of this poem?The real admirable life is a secluded and common one.4. Do you want to be "nobody" or "somebody"? Explain your reasons. Different persons would have different answers to his question. Personally, I prefer to be nobody.Unit8 mark twainQuestions1: Why do you think Mr. Wheeler is so eager to tell these stories?From Mr. Wheeler’s behaviors and contents of his narration. First, when "I" asked him to tell "me" something about W. Smiley, he “backed me into a corner and blockaded me with his chair, and then sat down and reeled off the narrative”. And during the process of telling his stories, he never paid any attention to others' response to his story and just went on telling what amused him. At last when the listener felt boring and wanted to leave, Mr. Wheeler even didn't notice it and still asked him to sit there listening to him.Question2: Does his audience share his enthusiasm in telling the stories?No. the audience does not show any interest in Mr. Wheeler’ stories. In fact, the narrator was very feverish about his stories, but, in the eyes of the listener, the stories were very boring and had nothing to do with his preoccupation. As an educated man, the listener couldn't understand the way of laborers for joy, and he would never bother himself to understand it. So after the longtime of Mr. Wheeler’ solo narration and when the audience got a chance, he fled away. Question3: Do you think the narrator and his listener ever suspect the presence of humor? Why? How do you interpret their interactions?The narrator and his listener never noticed or suspected the presence of humor. During the intercourse, the narrator went vigorously on his monotonous narrative "without a little smiling" talking about the animals and the things like, while the listener felt rather puzzled or bothered by his stories. It seemed to be kind of coarse things. So the two different scenes go on separately without an intersection. And their interaction was a complete failure according tour common sense about communication. But it in this sense produced the effect of humor which can be tasted by our readers due to the skills adopted by Mark Twain .Unit14 The Great GatsbyDo you think G atsby deserv es to be called “the great”? Why?(1)I think it is too complicated to simply say Gatsby deserves to be ―great‖or not.For one thing, Gatsby was ambitious, hardworking, generous and passionate. He was so extremely loyal to his love and Daisy that he could do anything to get Daisy back. In this respect, he ismuch ―greater‖ than his contemporaries. For another thing, Gatsby never realized that Daisy wasn’t the girl he loved anymore. Gatsby was so innocent that he staked everything on his dreams, not realizing that his dreams are unworthy of him. He wasn’t sober enough to be great. 2.Does “the green light” Gatsby believed in exist in reality? Why orwhy not ?(1)I think ―the green light‖does not exist in reality. Because the green light which situated at th e end of Daisy’s East Egg dock and barely visible from West Egg lawn represents Gatsby’s unattainable dream. Although the color itself can be seen as hope and bright future, Gatsby’s quest for Daisy back is doomed to be impossible. Daisy livedin ―a materi al world without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dream like air‖. The distinction between ideal and reality was huge. As if American dream between golden past and golden future always suffered from the realistic betrayal and crush.3.What does Gats by’s Schedule reveal about him and how does it relate to the American Dream?(1)The schedule is a reflection of Gatsby’s determination and ambition. It reveals that he is hard on himself in pursuitof his goal—to be an upper-class man.(2)On one hand, we can know that he is persistent in pursuing his American Dream-- to attain wealth and happiness through his struggle. On the other hand, he is too idealistic and naive. The girl he loves is as vulgar andsuperficial as others in her circle, she is unable to meetsGatsby’s romantic fantasy. So his dream is destined to shatter,which indicates the disillusion of American Dream. 4.Whenyou read the line “He (the man with owl-eyed glasses)took off his glasses and wiped them again, outside andin ,” what images does it create in your mind, given thenovel’s numerous references to the strikingly strangescene of the spectacled eyes?(1)From this line , superficially, owl-eyes is a person with thick and blurry glasses who can not see clearly all the things in the world. However, we know he is actually an owl-wise observer and sees more clearly than anyone else in the novel. Owl-Eyes, except Nick, is the only friend to appear at the rain-soaked burial of Gatsby, when others are unwilling to come. He feels sympathy for Gat sby’s tragedy.Unit 16 Ernest Hemingway1.How do you interpret the irony of the title after readingthe story?(1)The title ―A Clean Well-Lighted Place‖ refers to thecaféin the text. The caféwas very clean and well- lighted.From the literary meaning, we may feel this place was verywarm and comfortable, was a place where people needwarmth wanted to go. So the old man, who was rich butdeaf and lonely came here to find warmth and avoided nada.It was the only place he could go and could find somecomfort.(2)However, the younger waiter was very selfish.Therefore, he refused to offer the old man another cup ofwine by the excuse that the business was finished. This caféshould be warm but the younger waiter forced the lonely anddeaf to leave without any sympathy. This is the irony of thetitle.2.Do you think youth and confidence can help onewithstand the metaphorical dark?Why or why not?(1)I don’t think so.In our opinion, the m etaphorical darkmeans nada,nothing in one’s inner heart. In the article, the younger waiter had both youth and confidence; however, he never made full use of them. As we can see, he didn’t understand the old man’s suicide and excessive drinking, and failed to see his tomorrow through the old man’s present situation.3.The older wait er said to the younger waiter:“We are of two different kinds.” In what way do you think they are different? (1)I think they are different from each other in the following four aspects:In the beginning, they are in different ages.The older waiter was in his middle age; while the other was much younger.(2)Then, they have different attitudes towards the old man. From the article, the older waiter could understand the old manand show sympathy to him. However, the young man was very selfish. He showed hatred rather than sympathy to the old man.(3)Next, they have different attitudes towards life. The older waiter had a deep sense of life. He was brave and wanted to fight again nada. Besides, he cared about others. he has a shadow understanding of life. He satisfied with his present love and work, he only care about himself. He even never thought of his future.(4)Finally, they have different attitudes towards nada. The older waiter had realized that it is impossible to avoid nada in one’s whole life. The only thing h e can do is to keep a kind of clearness in his own mind. But out of youth and confidence, he failed to overcome nada. On the contrary, the younger waiter had the two most important factors for withstanding nada; however, he didn’t realize the nada in his heart at all. Then his youth a nd confidence became useless.Unit 17 20th -Century American Poets1.Ezra Pound In A Station of the Metro1.Why does the poet call the faces of pedestrians "apparition"?These pedestrians are all walking in a hurry amidst the drizzling rain. What do "petals" and "bough" stand for? Petals refer to the faces while the bough stands for the floating crowd.2.Wallace Stevens Anecdote of the Jar1.What does the jar in poem symbolize? Why does the speaker place it on top of a hill?The jar here symbolizes a certain perspective on looking at this world. If the perspective of the viewing iscreative and unique, it will change the conventional order of the old world. When a new perspective comes out, it will certainly hold attention from the rest.2. The jar is "round" and "of a port in air," meaning that it has a stately importance. What effect does it have on surroundings when placed on the ground? Maybe the round jar assumes the air of a domineering figure, which helps to form a certain order out of the disordered surrounding.3. How did the wilderness of Tennessee characterized? What words or phrases does the poet use to describe it?Tennessee seems to a place full of life and energy. “Slovenly,” “sprawl” and “wild” are some of the words used to describe the place. (See Anecdote of the Jar ) 3.Robert Frost(1)Fire and Ice 1. What are the symbolic meanings of fire in this poem? Fire symbolizes natural disaster, human passion, as well as war. 2. Why does the speaker say that ice is also great for destruction? Explain what ice stands for here. Ice, oppose to fire, is also a dreadful natural disaster in this world, and ice is always related to indifference, coldness, hatred, and the other negative sentiments of human beings. 3. What is your opinion about fire and ice? Which one is more destructive? Both fire and ice can destroy this beautiful world if they are beyond control of human beings. Therefore we should be open-minded and reduce our prejudice and pride so as to keep this world in peace.(2)Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening 1. In your opinion, what was the reason that made the speaker stop by the woods on a snowy evening? The poet was deeply attracted by the natural beauty of the scene at that very moment. 2. Why did the horse give the harness bell a shake? The horse grew impatient by stopping in the middle of the dark, cold woods at midnight. It was eager to go home.3. Why couldn't the speaker stay longer by the woods to appreciate its mysterious beauty? He realized that it was late at night and he would have to hurry home to get some food and sleep, because the next morning he would have a lot of work to do.4. What is the effect of repetition in the last two lines? The refrain-like repetition in the last two lines reminds the reader a simple fact of life: whatever happens, one must go forward in the journey of his or her life.(3) The Road Not Taken 1. What is the speaker's initial response to the divergence of the two roads? The speaker is at a loss which road he should choose, and he feels sorry that he cannot explore both roads at the same time. 2. Describe the similarities and differences of these two roads. Which one does the speaker take?Two roads are similar except one of them is more “grassy,” which impl ies that it is less traveled by people. The speaker prefers the less traveled one, because he likes adventure. 3. What might the two roads stand for in the speaker's mind? One road stands for the traditional one and the other is unconventional one and full of challenges and difficulties. To follow other people's footsteps or to open a new road for himself is really not an easy decision for us to make in our lives.。

美国文学 1. Romantic

第一章美国浪漫主义时期一、美国浪漫主义时期概述Ⅰ.本章学习目的和要求通过本章学习，了解１９世纪初期至中叶美国文学产生的历史、文化背景；认识该时期文学创作的基本待征、基本主张，及其对同时代和后期美国文学的影响；了解该时期主要作家的文学创作生涯、创作思想、艺术特色及其代表作品的主题思想、人物刻画、语言风格等；同时结合注释，读懂所选作品并了解其思想内容和艺术特色，培养理解和欣赏文学作品的能力。

Ⅱ.本章重点及难点：1．浪漫主义时期美国文学的特点2．主要作家的创作思想、艺术特色及其代表作品的主题结构、人物刻画、语言风格、思想意义。

3．分析讨论选读作品Ⅲ.本章考核知识点和考核要求：1.美国浪漫主义时期概述(1)．"识记"内容：美国浪漫主义文学产生的社会历史及文化背景(2)．"领会"内容：美国浪漫主义在文学上的表现a.欧洲浪漫主义文学的影响b.美国本土文学的崛起及其待证(3)．"应用"内容：清教主义、超验主义、象征主义、自由诗等名词的解释2.美国浪漫主义时期的主要作家Ａ．华盛顿·欧文1．一般识记：欧文的生平及创作主涯2．识记：《纽约外史》《见闻札记》3．领会：欧文的创作领域、创作思想，及其作品的艺术风格4.应用：选读《瑞普·凡·温可尔》的主题及其艺术特色Ｂ．拉尔夫·华尔多·爱默生1．一般识记：．爱默生的生平及创作生涯2．识记：爱默生的超验主义思想3．领会：（1）爱默生的散文：《论自然》《论自助》《论美国学者》等（2）．爱默生与梭罗：梭罗的超验主义思想和他的《沃尔登》4．应用：《论自然》节选：爱默生的基本哲学思想及自然观Ｃ．纳撒尼尔·霍桑1．一般识记：霍桑的生平及创作主涯2．识记：霍桑的长短篇小说3．领会：（1）《红字》的主题、心理描写、象征手法和、小说结构（2）霍桑的清教主义思想及加尔文教条中的"原罪"对霍桑的影响（人性本恶的观点）（3）霍桑对浪漫主义小说的贡献4．应用：选读《小伙子布朗》的主题结构、象征手法及语言特色Ｄ．华尔特·惠特曼1．一般识记：惠特曼的生平及其创作生涯2．识记：惠特曼的民主思想3．领会：（1）惠特曼的《草叶集》的主创意图、思想感情及诗体形式、语言风格（2）．惠特曼的个人主义4．应用：选读《草叶集》诗选："一个孩子的成长"、"涉水的骑兵'"、"自己之歌"的主题结构、诗歌的艺术特色、语言风格Ｅ．赫尔曼·麦尔维尔1．一般识记：麦尔维尔的生平及创作生涯2．识记：麦尔维尔的早期作品：《玛地》《雷得本》《白外衣》，后期作品《皮埃尔》《骗子的化装表演》《比利伯德》等3．领会：《白鲸》的（1）主题：表层及深层意义（2）小说结构：浪漫主义和现实主义的统一（3）象征手法和寓言的运用（4）语言特色4．应用：选读《白鲸》最后一章的节选：主题思想、人物刻画、象征手法、语言特色Chapter l The Romantic Period(一)"识记"内容：1.The origin of Romantic American literatureThe Romantic Period, one of the most important periods in the history of American literature, stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War. It started with the publication of Washington Irving's The Sketch Book and ended with Whitman's Leaves of Grass.2.The American Renaissance or New England Renaissance is a period of the great flowering of American literature, from the i830s roughly until the end of the American Civil War. It came of age as an expression of a national spirit. One of the most important influences in the period was that of the Transcendentalists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau. The Transcendentalists contributed to the founding of a new national culture based on native elements. Apart from the Transcendentalists, there emerged during this period great imaginativewriters ---Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman---whose novels and poetry left a permanent imprint on American literature.3.Its social historical and cultural backgroundThe development of the American society nurtured "the literature of a great nation." America was flourishing into a politically, economically and culturally independent country. Historically, it was the time of westward expansion in America economically, the whole nation was experiencing an industrial transformation. Politically, democracy and equa1ity became the ideal of the new nation, and the two-party system came into being. Worthy of mention is the literary and cultural life of the country. With the founding of the American Independent Government, the nation felt an urge to have its own literary expression, to make known its new experience that other nations did not have: the early Puritan settlement, the confrontation with the Indians, the frontiersmen's life, and the wild west. Besides, the nation's literary milieu was ready for the Romantic movement as we11. Thus, with a strong sense of optimism, a spectacular outburst of romantic feeling was brought about in the first ha1f of the 19th century.4.Major writers of this periodThere emerged a great host of men of letters during this period, among whom the better-known are poets such as Philip Freneau, William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wordsworth Long Fellow, James Russel Lowell, John Greenleaf Whitter, Edgar Ellen Poe, and, especially, Walt Whitman, whose Leaves Of Grass established him as the most popular American poet of the 19th century. The fiction of the American Romantic period is an original and diverse body of work. It ranges from the comic fables of Washington Irving to the The Gothic tales of Edgar Allen Poe, from the frontier adventures of James Fenimore Cooper to the narrative quests of Herman Melville, from the psycho1ogical romances of Nathaniel Hawthorne to the social realism of Rebecca Harding Davis.(二)．领会内容1.The impact of European Romanticism on American Romanticism Foreign literary masters, especially the English counterparts exerted a stimulating impact on the writers of the new world. Born of one common cultural heritage, the American writers shared some common features with the English Romanticists. They revolted against the literary forms and ideas of the period of classicism by developing some relatively new forms of fiction or poetry.(1) They put emphasis upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature, which included a liking for the picturesque, the exotic,the sensuous, the sensational, and the supernatural.(2) The Americans also placed an increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions and disp1ayed an increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters.Heroes and heroines exhibited extremes of sensitivity and excitement.(3) The strong tendency to exalt the individual and the common man was almost a national religion in America. Writers like Freneau, Bryant, and Cooper showed a great interest in external nature in their respective works.(4) The literary use of the more colorfu1 aspects of the past was also to be found in Irving's effort to exploit the legends of the Hudson River region, and in Cooper's long series of historical tales.(5)In short, American Romanticism is, in a certain way, derivative.2.The unique characteristics of American RomanticismAlthough greatly influenced by their English counterparts, the American romantic writers revealed unique characteristics of their own in their works and they grew on the native lands. For examp1e,(1) the American national experience of "pioneering into the west" proved to be a rich source of material for American writers to draw upon. They celebrated America's landscape with its virgin forests, meadows, groves, endless prairies, streams, and vast oceans. The wilderness came to function almost as a dramatic character that symbolized moral 1aw. (2)The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became a permanent convention of American literature.Such a desire is particularly evident in Cooper's Leather Stocking Tales, in Thoreau's Walden and, later, in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (3) With the growth of American national consciousness,American character types speaking local dialects appeared in poetry and fiction with increasing frequency. (4) Then the American Puritanism as a cultural heritage exerted great influences over American moral values and American Romanticism. One of the manifestations is the fact that American romantic writers tended more to moralize than their English and European counterparts. (5) Besides, a preoccupation with the Calvinistic view of origina1 sin and the mystery of evil marked the works of Hawthorne, Melville and a host of lesser writers.(三)．应用内容1. The American Puritanism and its great influence over American moral values, as is shown in American romantic writings.(1) American PuritanismPuritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans. (The Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church, who came into existence in the reigns Queen Elizabeth and King James Ⅰ.The first settlers who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quitea few of them Puritans. They came to America out of various reasons, but it should be remembered that they were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles. As the word itself hints, Puritans wanted to purify their religious beliefs and practices. They felt that the Church of England was too close to the Church of Rome in doctrine form of worship, and organization of authority.) The American Puritans, like their brothers back in England, were idealists, believing that the church should be restored to complete "purity".They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God. But in the grim struggle for survival that followed immediately after their arrival in America, they became more and more practical, as indeed they had to be. Puritans were noted for a spirit of moral and religious earnestness that determinated their whole way of life. Puritans' lives were extremely disciplined and hard. They drove out of their settlements all those opinions that seemed dangerous to them, and history has criticized their actions. Yet in the persecution of what they considered error, the Puritans were no worse than many other movements in history. As a culture heritage, Puritanism did have a profound influence on the early American mind and American values. American Puritanism also had a conspicuously noticeable and an enduring influence on American literature. It had become, to some extent, so much a state of mind, so much a part of the national cultural atmosphere, rather than a set of tenets.(2) One of the manifestations is the fact that American romantic writers tended more to moralize than their English and European counterparts. Besides, a preoccupation with the Calvinistic view of origina1 sin and the mystery of evil marked the works of Hawthorne, Melville and a host of lesser writers.2. New England TranscendentalismNew England Transcendentalism is the mot clearly defined Romantic literary movement in this period. It was started in the area around Concord, Mass. by a group of intellectual and the literary men of the United States such as Emerson, Henry David Thoreau who were members of an informal club, i. e. the Transcendental Club in New England in the l830s. The transcendentalists reacted against the cold, rigid rationalism of Unitarianism in Boston. They adhered to an idealistic system of thought based on a belief in the essential unity of all creation , the innate goodness of man, and the supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the revelation of the deepest truths. The writings of the transcendentalists prepared the ground of their contemporaries such as Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.The main issues involved in the debate were generally philosophical, concerning nature, man and the universe. Basically, Transcendentalismhas been defined philosophical1y as "the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses." Emerson once proclaimed in a speech, "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." Other concepts that accompanied Transcendentalism inc1ude the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, self-re1iant.3. American Romanticists differed in their understanding of human nature.To the transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau, man is divine in nature and therefore forever perfectible; but to Hawthorne and Melville, everybody is potentially a sinner, and great moral courage is therefore indispensab1e for the improvement of human nature, as is shown in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.二.美国浪漫主义时期的主要作家Ⅰ. Washington Irving(1783-l859)Irving's position in American literature Washington Irving was one of the first American writers to earn an international reputation, and regarded as an early Romantic writer in the merican literary history and Father of the American short stories.一．一般识记His life and major worksWashington Irving was born in New York City in a wealthy family. From a very early age he began to read widely and write juvenile poems, essays, and plays. In l798, he conc1uded his education at private schools and entered a law office, but he loved writing more.His first successful work is A History Of New York from the Beginning Of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, which, written under the name of Diedrich Knickerbocker, won him wide popularity after it came out in 1809. With the publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in serials between 1819 and 1820, Irving won a measure of international fame on both sides of the Atlantic. The book contains familiar essays on the Eng1ish life and Americanized versions of European folk tales like "Rip Van Winkle ＂, and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Geoffrey Crayon is a carefully contrived persona and behind Crayon stands Irving, juxtaposing the Old World and the New, and manipulating his own antiquarian interest with artistic perspectives.The major work of his later years was The Life of George Washington.二．识记1.Irving's great indebtedness to European literatureMost of Irving's subject matter are borrowed heavily from European sources, which are chiefly Germanic. Irving's relationship with the Old World in terms of his literary imagination can hardly be ignored considering his success both abroad and at home.A History of New York is a patchwork of references, echoes, and burlesques. He parodies or imitates Homer, Cervantes, Fielding, Swift and many other favorites of his. He was also absorbed in German Literature and got ideas from German legends for two of his famous stories "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." The Alhambra is usually regarded as Irving's "Spanish Sketch Book" simply because it has a strong flavor of Spanish culture. Most of the thirty-three essays in The Sketch Book were written in England, filled with English scenes and quotations from English authors and faithful to British orthography. Washington Irving brought to the new nation what its peop1e desired most in a man of 1etters the respect of the Old World.2.Irving's unique contribution to American literatureIrving's contribution to American literature is unique in more than one way. He was the first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame. Although greatly influenced by European literature, Irving gave his works distinctive American flavor. "Rip Van Winkle" or "The Legend of Sleepy Hol1ow", however exotic these stories are, are among the treasures of the American language and culture. These two stories easily trigger off American imagination with their focus on American subjects, American landscape, and, in Irving's case, the legends of the Hudson River region of the fresh young 1and. It is not the sketches about the Old World but the tales about America that made Washington Irving a household word and his fame enduring.He was father of American short stories. And later in the hands of Hawthorne and Melville the short story attained a degree of perfection.三．领会1.Irving's theme of conservatism as is revealed in "Rip Van Winkle"Irving's taste was essentia1ly conservative and always exa1ted a disappearing past.This socia1 conservatism and literary preference for the past is revea1ed, to some extent, in his famous story "Rip Van Winkle." The story is a tale remembered mostly for Rip's 20-year s1eep, set against the background of the inevitably changing America. Rip went to sleep before the War of Independence and woke up after it. The change that had occurred in the 20 years he slept was to him not always for the better. The revolution upset the natural order of things. In the story Irving ski1lfu1ly presents to us paralleled juxtapositions of two totally different worlds before and after Rip's 20 years' s1eep. By moving Rip back and forth from a noisy world with his wife on the farm to a wild but peaceful natural world in the mountains, and from a pre-Revolution villageto a George Washington era, lrving describes Rip's response and reaction in a dramatic way, so that we see clearly both the narrator and Irving agree on the preferabi1ity of the past to the present, and the preferability of a dream-like world to the real one. Irving never seemed to accept a modern democratic America.2.Irving's literary craftsmanshipWashington Irving has always been regarded as a writer who "perfected the best classic style that American Literature ever produced."(1) We get a strong sense impression as we read him along, since the language he used best reveals what a Romantic writer can do with words. We hear rather than read, for there is musicality in almost every line of his prose.(2) We seldom learn a mora1 lesson because he wants us amused and relaxed. So we often find ourselves lost in a world that is permeated witha dreaming quality.(3) The Gothic elements and the supernatural atmosphere are manipulated in such a way that we could become so engaged and involved in what is happening in a seemingly exotic place.(4) Yet Irving never forgets to associate a certain place with the inward movement of a person and to charge his sentences with emotion so as to create a true and vivid character. He is worth the honor of being "the American Goldsmith" for his literary craftsmanship.四．应用Selected Reading:An Excerpt from "Rip Van Winkle"The story of Rip Van WinkleRip, an indolent good-natured Dutch-American, lives with his shrewish wife in a village on the Hudson during the years before the Revolution. One day while hunting in the Catskills with his dog Wolf, he meets a dwarflike stranger dressed in the ancient Dutch fashion. He helps him to carry a keg, and with him joins a party silently playing a game of ninepins. After drinking of the liquor they provide, Rip falls into a sleep which lasts 20 years, during which the Revolutionary War takes place. He awakes as an old man and returns to his home village that has greatly altered. Upon entering the village, he is greeted by his old dog, which dies of the excitement and then learns that his wife has long been dead. Rip is almost forgotten but he goes to live with his daughter, now the mother of a family, and is soon befriended with his generosity and cheerfulness.This excerpt below is taken from the story, describing for us Rip's difficulties at home, which he often escapes by going to the local inn to spend his time with his friends and sometimes by going hunting in thewoods with his dog, and then focusing on Rip 's return from his 20 years' sleep to his greatly altered home village. Here, Irving's pervasive theme of nostalgia for the unrecoverable past is at once made unforgettable.What are the theme and the artistic features of "Rip Van Winkle"?(1) The theme:Irving's taste was essentia1ly conservative and always exa1ted a disappearing past.This socia1 conservatism and literary preference for the past is revea1ed, to some extent, in his famous story "Rip Van Winkle." The story is a tale remembered mostly for Rip's 20-year s1eep, set against the background of the inevitably changing America. Rip went to sleep before the War of Independence and woke up after it. The change that had occurred in the 20 years he slept was to him not always for the better. The revolution upset the natural order of things. In the story Irving ski1lfu1ly presents to us paralleled juxtapositions of two totally different worlds before and after Rip's 20 years' s1eep. By moving Rip back and forth from a noisy world with his wife on the farm to a wild but peaceful natural world in the mountains, and from a pre-Revolution village to a George Washington era, lrving describes Rip's response and reaction in a dramatic way, so that we see clearly both the narrator and Irving agree on the preferabi1ity of the past to the present, and the preferability of a dream-like world to the real one. Irving never seemed to accept a modern democratic America.(2) The artistic features:"Rip Van Winkle" is not only well-known for Rip's 20-year sleep but also considered a model of perfect English in American Literature and in the English language as well. Washington Irving has always been regarded as a writer who "perfected the best classic style that American Literature ever produced." He has a clear, easy style.(a) We get a strong sense impression as we read him along, since the language he used best reveals what a Romantic writer can do with words. We hear rather than read, for there is musicality in almost every line of his prose.(b) We seldom learn a mora1 lesson because he wants us amused and relaxed.So we often find ourselves lost in a world that is permeated with a dreaming quality. He uses genial humor to exaggerate the seriousness of situation. He uses dignified words to produce a half-mocking effect.(c)The Gothic elements and the supernatural atmosphere are manipulated in such a way that we could become so engaged and involved in what is happening in a seemingly exotic place.( Rip Van Winkle was overwhelmed by the magic power of the drink and fell into sleep for 20 years.)(d)Yet Irving never forgets to associate a certain place with theinward movement of a person and to charge his sentences with emotion so as to create a true and vivid character. He is worth the honor of being "the American Goldsmith" for his literary craftsmanship.II. Ralph Waldo Emerson一.一般识记His life: Ralph Waldo Emerson is the chief spokesman of New England Transcendentalism, which is unanimously agreed to be the summit of the Romantic period in the history of American literature.Emerson was son of a Unitarian minister. Though born of an impoverished family, Emerson never failed to receive some formal education. Whi1e a student at Harvard he began keeping journals, a practice he continued throughout his 1if e. He later drew on the journal for materials for his essays and poetry. After Harvard, he taught as a schoolmaster, which he soon gave up for the study of theology. He began preaching in 1826 and three years later he became a pastor in a church in Boston. Emerson was ardent at first in his service in religion, but gradually grew skeptical of the beliefs of the church; feeling Unitarianism intolerable, he finally left the ministry in l832.Emerson was greatly influenced by European Romanticism. He Carlyle, and listened to some famous Romantic poets like Coleridge and Wordsworth. Through his acquaintance with these men he became closely involved with German idea1ism and Transcendentalism. After he was back from Europe, Emerson retreated to a quiet study at Concord, Massachusetts, where he began to pursue his new path of "self-reliance." Emerson formed a club there at Concord with peop1e like Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, which was later known as the Transcendenta1 Club. And the unofficial manifesto for the Club was Nature(l836), Emerson's first little book, which established him ever since as the most eloquent spokesman of New England Transcendentalism. Nature was the fundamental document of his philosophy and expressed also his constant, deeply-felt love for nature. It was called "the Manifesto of American Transcendentalism". He also helped to found and edit for a time the Transcendental journal, The Dial. Emerson lived an intel1ectually active and significant life between the mid-1830s and the mid-1840s, 1ecturing all over the country, and occasionally, abroad. He preached his Transcendental pursuit and his reputation expanded dramatically with his lectures and his essays. Though the rest of Emerson's life was a slow anticlimax to his midd1e years, people continued to honor the most influentia1 prophet and the intellectua1 liberator of their age, and his reputation as a family man of conventional life and a decent, solid citizen has remained always.二．识记内容：His major works:Emerson is generally known as an essayist. During all his life he worked steadily at a succession of essays, usually derived from his journals or lectures he had already given. Nature did not establish him as an important American writer. His lasting reputation began only with the publication of Essays(1841 ). Many of his famous essays are included in Essay, which convey the best of his philosophical discussions and transcendental pursuits, such as The American Scholar, Self Reliance, The Over Soul.The second collection of Emerson's essays, Essays: Second Series (1844) demonstrated even more thorough1y than the first that Emerson's intellect had sharpened in the years since Nature. The Poet and Exprience are examples, the former a reflection upon the aesthetic problems in terms of the present state of literature in America and the latter a discussion about the conflict between idealism and ordinary 1ife.三．领会1. Emersonian TranscendentalismEmersonian Transcendentalism is actual1y a philosophical school which absorbed some ideological concerns of American Puritanism and European Romanticism, with its focus on the intuitive knowledge of human beings to grasp the absolute in the universe and the divinity of man. In his essays, Emerson put forward his philosophy of the over-sou1, the importance of the Individual, and Nature.(1) Emerson's philosophy of the over-sou1Emerson rejected both the formal religion of the churches and the Deistic philosophy; instead he based his religion on an intuitive belief in an ultimate unity, which he called the "over-soul."Emerson and other Transcendentalists believed in the transcendence of "over-soul". It is an impersonal force that is eternal, moral, harmonious, and beneficient in tendency. They believed that there should be an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal "oversoul", since the over-sou1 is an all-pervading power from which all things come from and of which a1l are a part. One of the tendencies of the "over-soul " is to express itself in form, hence the world of nature as an emanation of the world of spirit. Emerson's remarkable image of "a transparent eyebal1" marks a paradoxical state of being, in which one is merged into nature, the over-soul, whi1e at the same time retaining a unique perception of the experience.(2) Emerson's philosophy of the importance of the IndividualEmerson is affirmative about man's intuitive knowledge, with which a man can trust himself to decide what is right and to act accordingly. The ideal individual should be a self-reliant man. "Trust thyself," hewrote in Self Reliance, by which he means to convince people that the possibilities for man to develop and improve himself are infinite.(3) Emerson's view on natureEmerson's nature is emblematic of the spiritual world, alive with God's overwhelming presence. It mediates between man and God, and its voice leads to higher truth; hence, it exercises a healthy and restorative inf1uence on human mind. "Go back to nature, sink yourse1f back into its inf1uence and you'1l become spiritually who1e again." By employing nature as a big symbol of the Spirit, or God, or the over-soul, Emerson has brought the Puritan 1egacy of symbolism to its perfection.Emersonian Transcendentalism inspired a whole generation of famous American authors like Thoreau, Whitman, and Dickinson.2.Thoreau's TranscendentalismHenry David Thoreau (1817-1862) is most often mentioned as inspired by Emerson, the most representative of the phi1osophical and literary school which is American Transcendenta1ism. Thoreau embraced his master's ideas as a disciple. In 1845 he built a cabin on some land belonging to Emerson by Walden Pond and moved in to live there in a very simple manner for a litt1e over two years, which gave birth to a great transcendentalist work Walden (1854). The book not only fully demonstrates Emersonian ideas of self-reliance but also develops and tests Thoreau's own transcendental philosophy.(1)For Thoreau, nature is not merely symbolic, but divine in itself and human beings can receive precise communication from the natural world by way of pure senses. So he was often alone in the woods or by the pond, lost in spiritual communion with nature.(2)Thoreau strongly believed in se1f-culture and was eager to identify himself with the Transcendental image of the self-reliant man. To achieve personal spiritual perfection, he thinks, the most important thing for men to do with their lives is to be self- sufficient, so he sought to reduce his physical needs and material comforts to a minimum to get spiritual richness.(3)His positiveness about the importance of individual conscience was such that he even considered the society fetters of the freedom of individuals.Though Thoreau became more than Emerson's disciple eventually, his indebtedness to Nature and its author has never been over1ooked.3. The style of Emerson's essaysEmerson's essays often have a casual style, for most of them were derived from his journals or lectures. They are usually characterized by a series of short, declarative sentences, which are not quite logically。

美国文学英文版本1

Examples of almost every oral genre can be found in American Indian literature: lyrics, chants, myths, fairy tales, humorous anecdotes, incantations, riddles, proverbs, epics, and legendary histories. Accounts of migrations and ancestors abound, as do vision or healing songs and tricksters' tales. Certain creation stories are particularly popular. In one well-known creation story, told with variations among many tribes, a turtle holds up the world. In a Cheyenne version, the creator, Maheo, has four chances to fashion the world from a watery universe. He sends four water birds diving to try to bring up earth from the bottom. The snow goose, loon, and mallard soar high into the sky and sweep down in a dive, but cannot reach bottom; but the little coot, who cannot fly, succeeds in bringing up some mud in his bill. Only one creature, humble Grandmother Turtle, is the right shape to support the mud world Maheo shapes on her shell -- hence the Indian name for America, "Turtle Island."

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1．第1题Stylistically, Henry James’ fiction is characterized by _______. D.highly refined language 2．第2题When we say that a poor young man from the West tried to make his fortune in the East but was disillusioned in the quest of an idealized dream, we are probably discussing about ______’s thematic concern in his fiction writing. B.Scott Fitzgerald3．第3题After the success of ____, Herman Melville became known as a man who lived among cannibals.A.Typee4．第4题___ wrote Rights of Man in 1792 to suggest the overthrow of the British monarchy.A.Thomas Paine5．第5题_______ does not belong to the school of naturalism in history. D.Walt Whitman6．第6题William Sidney Porter was the real name of ________. B.O’ Henry7．第7题There is a good reason to state that New England Transcendentalism was actually ___ on the Puritan soil. A.Romanticism8．第8题____ made many translations, among which, Dante’s Divine Comedy was the best.B.Henry W. Longfellow9．第9题____, first governor of Plymouth, left a wealth of letters after he died. A.William Bradford 10．第10题___ is not a name to refer to Natty Bumppo in Cooper’s frontier saga. D.Mohican11．第11题______ is not a character in the novel The Scarlet Letter. C.Goodman Brown12．第12题5. Puritan values do not include ____. D.debauchery13．第13题The first great American juvenile literature was _____. A.Sketch Book14．第14题1.牋牋？___ is not written by Ralph Waldo Emerson. D.. The Bells15．第15题______ translated the Bible into the Indian tongue. C.. John Eliot16．第16题The first writings that we may call American were the narratives and ___ of the early English settlements. D.files17．第17题The Fall of the House of Usher was a horror story by ______. B.Edgar Allan Poe18．第18题The arbiter of nineteen-century literary realism in America was ______. D.William Dean Howells 19．第19题Most of the poems in Whitman’s Leaves of Grass sing of man and ____. A.nature20．第20题As a Modernist poet, Pound is noted for his active involvement in the ______B.Imagist Movement21．第21题Most critics have agreed that __ is both an insider and an outsider of the Jazz Age with a double vision. D.Hemingway22．第22题in 1952, Hemingway portrayed an old fisherman named ___ in The old Man and the Sea.C.Santiago23．第23题Mrs. Stowe’s did not ever write _______. C.The Stoic24．第24题Where Mark Twain satirized European manners at times, ____ was an admirer.C.Henry James25．第25题Eugene O’Neil did not write ______. D.The Saloon26．第26题With the precedent of Whitman, ___also undertook as a spokesman for the common pople. He was proud later to “favor simple poems for simple people.” D.Carl Sandburg27．第27题The collections of his occasional lectures on poetry entitled ___ established Wallace Stevens as a major American poet. B.The Necessary Angel28．第28题The novel which was described by a critic as “an outrage to American girlhood” is ____.C.Daisy Miller29．第29题1.？？？？？Realism, a literary doctrine that called for “reality and truth”in the depiction of ordinary life, originated in ______ , B.France30．第30题Mark Twain’s first book is ________. D.Jumping Frog31．第31题The novel which was described by a critic as “an outrage to American girlhood” is ____.C.Daisy Miller32．第32题Franklin shaped his writings after the ____ of the English essayist Addison and Steel.A.Spectator papers33．第33题“I heard the merry grasshopper then sing,/The black-clad cricket bear a second part” These lines written by ____________. C.Anne Bradstreet34．第34题1.？？？？？Realism, a literary doctrine that called for “reality and truth”in the depiction of ordinary life, originated in ______ , B.France35．第35题“We hold these truths to be elf-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” This sentence is taken from ___. B.The Declaration of Independence 36．第36题____ was considered to be the first American writer. C.John Smith37．第37题Which of the following works best illustrates the Calvinistic view of original sin?D.Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.38．第38题Perhaps Dickinson's greatest rendering of the moment of is to be found in I Heard a Fly Buzz--When I Died---a poem universally considered one of her masterpieces.B.death39．第39题1.牋牋？Franklin had never been _____. D.an atheist40．第40题4. The most quoted among Franklin’s writings could be ___, an annual collection of proverbs.B.Poor Richard’s Almanac41．第41题The Declaration of Independence was the product of the joint efforts by ___, B.Thomas Jefferson 42．第42题Mark Twain’s first book is ________. D.Jumping Frog43．第43题Mark Twain had never been a _______. B.ambassador44．第44题In all his novels Theodore Dreiser sets himself to project the ______ American values. For example, in Sister Carrie, there is not one character whose status is not determined economically.B.materialistic45．第45题___ might be considered as a great realist of human spirit. B.Henry James46．第46题My Lost Youth written by ____ is about his hometown of Portland, Maine.A.Henry W. Longfellow47．第47题___’s A Map of Virginia: with a Description of the Country was a guide to the country and an invitation to the bold spirits needed to enlarge and strengthen the English plantation in the new land. A.John Smith48．第48题Puritans emphasized a ____God. B.wrathful49．第49题___ did not ever show his/her concern for the Indians. A.Anne Bradstreet50．第50题A Key into the Language of America was a significant work by____. A.Roger Williams。

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