美国文学论文

合集下载

关于美国文学的论文

关于美国文学的论文美国梦作为美国文学中一个永恒的主题，始终贯穿于美国文学之中。

下文是店铺为大家搜集整理的关于美国文学的论文的内容，欢迎大家阅读参考!美国文学的论文篇1浅析美国文学中的旅行与美国梦摘要: 对于美国人而言，上路旅行不仅是自由和美国梦的隐喻，而且是实现“显明的命定”(Manifest Destiny)的物质手段和方式。

本文以惠特曼的《草叶集》和克鲁亚克的《在路上》等作品为例，说明旅行以及过路仪式表现了典型的美国经验，表达了对美国梦的追寻、实现和传播，成为美国文化传统的重要组成部分。

关键词: 旅行;美国梦;《草叶集》;《在路上》一道路将人们从一地引向另一地，它是不同地点彼此沟通的不可或缺的桥梁。

原本各自独立、互不关联的两地因而被连接起来，产生互动，拥有了更加丰盈的生命。

几乎所有的文化都赋予道路以特别的价值，对之倾注了连绵不断的情感。

在美国，道路四通八达，如同一张网把人们的日常生活联系起来，而由于美国人生性“不安分”，不愿久居一地，加上酷爱户外活动，上路旅行便成了美国生活的一种实现方式，同时也成为美国文化的一大隐喻。

这一隐喻对于美国有着特别的意义，因为美国毕竟是由旅行者创建的：当初，清教徒远离家国，跨越大西洋来到这片陌生的土地;后来，他们从偏居美利坚东北一隅的新英格兰逐步西进，扩展畛域，奠定今日美国之格局。

毫不夸张地说，道路在美国的建立和发展过程中建立了不朽的功勋。

此外，美国幅员辽阔、地域广袤，加上经济繁荣，汽车工业发达，美国成为举世闻名的车轮上的国家。

出于工作和生活的需要，美国人花费不少的时间“在路上”，驱车出行几乎成为他们的必需。

旅行不仅是指从出发地到目的地的跨越，而且常被视为对某种历程的经历，例如，它可以象征性地指代个人的成长，或者是对某种信仰(如宗教信仰)的追寻。

穿越全美、尤其是跨越大片未开发地区的旅行，是勇气和冒险精神的体现，这种对未知领域的探索伴随着美国向西部的扩张而被放大甚至神化。

关于文学论文美国文学论文：美国文学中的代表性意识流小说研究

关于文学论文美国文学论文：美国文学中的代表性意识流小说研究摘要：意识流小说是典型的心理小说，人物的意识流动成为小说的绝对主体。

美国文学中的意识流小说代表人物有亨利·詹姆斯和威廉·福克纳等等。

他们在自己的代表作中将意识流手法发挥得淋漓尽致，并以此来探索文学表现的新方法，为小说艺术的表现力开辟了新的途径，而且取得了突出的成绩，成为公认的美国文学大师。

关键词：美国文学；意识流；心理；小说一、引言“意识流”一词是心理学家威廉·詹姆士提出来的，指人的思想或感觉的持续流动。

后来文学评论者借用该词形容现代小说中模仿这一过程的创作流派。

美国文学中的意识流小说代表人物有亨利·詹姆斯和威廉·福克纳等。

詹姆斯在小说中通常选一个有洞察力的人物，从他的角度来叙述，以他的意识为“中心意识”，再选几个配角，像许多镜子一般从各个角度反照出叙述者的思想情绪。

二、詹姆士与意识流小说亨利·詹姆斯是美国文学中意识流小说的开创者，他出身高贵、深受欧洲文化影响，是描写上层资产阶级精神面貌的代表作家。

他的风格高雅、细致，讲究表现形式，并开创了心理分析小说的先河，他的作品，尤其是后期作品如《鸽翼》(1902)，不厌其详地发掘人物“最幽微、最朦胧的”思想与感觉，把“太空中跳动的脉搏”转化为形象。

詹姆斯认为，小说创作不应停留在对客观事物的表面摹写上，而应追寻生活的内在真实。

这种内在真实就是生活现象在人们内心深处引发的变化多端、不可名状、难以界说的内在精神。

詹姆斯的代表作品《一个美国人》(1877)、《黛西·米勒》(1879)和《贵妇人的画像》(1881)就已经预示着现代小说专写主观意识的气氛：“着眼点”(point of view)和“视角”(angle of vision)，他们正是一部部实践了作者描绘内在真实的艺术主张的作品。

《黛西·米勒》突破传统小说的套路，没有情节，没有环境，也没有结局，作者只抓住人物瞬间的没有行动的印象感觉和沉思冥想，将我们引入人物的精神世界。

美国文学史论文

美国文学史课程论文A Brief Summary of the Historyof American Literature From Romanticism to Postmodernism姓名：叶红立学号：2011212831班级：2011级3班分数：2013年12月21日IntroductionAmerican is a multi-national country because of its history. Just like a big container, it puts in various kinds of elements. When different cultures mixed together, that can not only be co-existed but also form a sharp contrast, which makes American literature has a flavor of distinct and various aesthetic feeling.The history of America literature began with the swarming in of immigrants with different background and cultures. After that, American literature had been greatly influenced by the European culture for a long period. It was not until America’s independence, did Americans realize that they need national literature strongly, and American literature began to develop. Romantics emphasized individualism and intuition. This was an exciting period in the history of American literature. Like the flowers of spring, there were suddenly many different kinds of writing at the same time. The Civil War was a watershed in the history, after which American literature entered a period of full blooming. Influenced by the Civil War, the American society was in a turbulent situation. The writings about local life, critical realism, unveiling the dark side of the society and yearning for nature were increased. After the First World War, Americans were at a loss postwar, and the Modern American literature and Postmodern American literature began.This passage will have a further discussion on this period by dividing them into several parts: Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, Modernism and Post-modernism.1.Romanticism PeriodRomanticism is a movement of the 18th and 19th centuries that marked the reaction in literature, philosophy, art, religion, and politics against the neoclassicism and formal orthodoxy of the preceding period. And the American Romantic period stretched from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War.Romantic Period is one of the most important periods in the history of American literature. When Americans were constructing their country, they also began to realize their differences from their European counterparts. They began to hope to see an entirely different literature model which expressed American cultures. Great writers of that period captured on their pages the enthusiasm and the optimism of that dream.There were plenty of good historical reasons why literature was so prominent during that period. Politically the time was ripe. After the 1812 war against England, the United States was finally free. Economically America had never been wealthier, but the Industrial Revolution and the nation’s change in status from a small, agricultural country to a major commercial and industrial power led to a massive impulse towards rapid urbanization. Culturally American own value emerged. There were American publishers and copyright laws to protect the writers from having their works printed. And also there were readers eager to expand their minds.American Romanticism shares many characteristics with British Romanticism. It was greatly inspired by Wordsworth’s poetic encounter with nature in The Prelude. However, developing as it did, Romanticism in America exhibited features of its own. It was mainly in the American romantic writers’ works. For examp1e, 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. 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 ofHuckleberry Finn. With the growth of American national consciousness, American character types speaking local dialects appeared in poetry and fiction with increasing frequency. Then the American Puritanism as a cultural heritage exerted great influences over American moral values and American Romanticism. One of the performances is the fact that American romantic writers tended more to moralize than their English and European counterparts. Here are going to introduce two representative writers and their works:Washington Irving(1783-1859) was the first American storyteller to be internationally recognized as a man of letters and the first great prose stylist of American romanticism, and his familiar style was destined to provide a model for the prevailing prose narrative of the future. His first book A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (1809), written under the name of Diedrich Knickerbocker, was a great success and won him wide popularity. He is best known for his The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon,Gent (1819-1820), especially in which two short stories Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow have become American classics. Later he wrote works of history and biographies, such as The History of Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828), A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada and The Alhambra(1832). After that, he spent the rest of his life living a life of leisure and comfort, and writing The Life of Goldsmith (1840) and a five-volume Life of Washington (1855-1859). He died in 1859.James Fennimore Cooper (1789-1851) is respectfully remembered as a master of adventurous narrative and as the creator of an American hero-myth. According to a charming legend, Cooper’s first novel Precaution(1820) was a response to his wife’s challenge to improve on the current British society fiction, and the failure of this work turned him to historical novels. Later, The Spy, a tale of the Revolution he wrote, became a great success in America and Europe. In 1823, Cooper published The Pioneers (1823), which together with other 4 novels The Deer slayer (1841), The Last of the Mohicans(1826), The Pathfinder(1840) and The Prairie(1827) became his well-known Leather-stocking Tales. Cooper went on to write over thirty novels,including exciting adventures of the sea like The Pilot. Cooper created the American historical novel using authentic American subject.2.Realism PeriodAs the economy developed, the nation witnessed an incredible expansion, among which the most influential one was westward expansion. The conquest of the new territories opened new horizons, but the country was also torn by the risk of internal division, which led to American Civil War.By the end of the Civil War a new nation had been born, and it was to demand and receive a new literature less idealistic and more practical, less exalted and more earthy, less consciously artistic and more honest than produced in the age when the American dream had glowed with greatest intensity and American writers had created a great literary period by capturing on their pages the enthusiasm and the optimism of that dream. Gradually, the Romanticism era in the United States was surpassed by another entirely different age.At about 1900s, American literature came to another entirely different age—the age of Realism. Realists searched for the social and human nature more directly. In part, Realism was a reaction against the Romantic emphasis on the strange, idealistic, and long-ago and far-away. It has been mainly concerned with the commonplaces of everyday life among the middle and lower classes.American realism was the outcome of the Civil War from all the aspects of politics, economy and culture. Politically the Civil War affected both the social and the value system of the country. America had transformed itself into an industrialized and commercialized society. The war also brought some obvious changes to the American economy. It had stimulated the technological development, and new methods of organization and management were tested to adapt to industrial modernization on a large scale. As far as the culture was concerned, the harsh realities of life as well as the disillusion of heroism resulting from the dark memories of the Civil War had set the nation against the romance.As a new literature, Realism emerged for an age. Under the influence of the Civil War and industrialization, Realism surely formed its own features. Realism aims at the description of the actualities of the life and free from subjective prejudice,idealism or romantic color. The writings are about local life, critical realism and unveiling the dark side of the society, and focuses on commonness of the common people, settings and events. Mark Twain is one of the representatives.Mark Twain (1835-1910) was the true father of American literature. He was an American humorist, lecturer, essayist, and author. His primary works are The Innocents Abroad, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. He intentionally deviates from classical genteel and tends to use local dialects, colloquial language, even Black English, slang, clipped structures and ungrammatical sentences. He was a combination of realism with romanticism. His works combine American folk humor and serious literature, characterize a local culture, elements such as speech, customs, and more peculiar to one particular place. The physical settings, and people’s behavior and thoughts are different from the other places.There are many other great writers in this period, such as William Dean Howells, Henry James, O. Henry, and so on. They have made great contribution to the world’s literature.3.Naturalism PeriodAfter the Civil War, it seemed that overnight the rapid industrialization of American society changed an agrarian nation into an industrial giant. As the westward expansion continued to push the frontier nearer the Pacific coast, the settlers found themselves subject to the ruthless manipulation of forces including the railroad, as can been seen in Frank Norris’wheat novels. The rapid social changes caused by industrialization brought serious social problems. While the captains of industry piled up huge personal fortunes, the ordinary man became the victim of industrialization. The harsh reality of the industrialization period changed man’s understanding about himself and the world in which he lived in. Living in a cold, indifferent, and essentially godless world, man was completely thrown upon himself for survival. During this special period, the literary naturalism was transplanted from France to the United States and became a very important literary movement in America.Naturalism was a literary movement of the late 19th century that yielded influence on the twentieth. It was an extension of Realism, a reaction against the restrictions inherent in the realistic emphasis on the ordinary, as naturalists insisted that the extraordinary is real, too.Naturalism, with its new techniques and new ways of writing, appealed to the imagination of the younger generation like Crane, Norris, and Theodore Dreiser. They tore the mask of gentility to pieces and wrote about the helplessness of man, his insignificance in a cold world, and his lack of dignity in face of the crushing forces of environment and heredity. They reported truthfully and objectively, with a passion for scientific accuracy and an overwhelming accumulation of factual detail. They painted life as it was lived in the slums, and were accused of telling just the hideous side of it. In naturalistic literature, man is always subject to the law of nature, which may not only be indifferent but also hostile. Therefore, gloom and despair characterize American literature of this period.American literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme economic classes who were determined by theirenvironment and heredity. In presenting the extremes of life, the naturalists sometimes displayed an affinity to the sensationalism of early romanticism, but unlike their romantic predecessors, the naturalism emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that lives were controlled by heredity and environment, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. The pessimism and deterministic ideas of naturalism pervaded the works of such American writers as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London and Theodore Dreiser.Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is the first American naturalism work. Norris’s McTeague is the manifesto of American naturalism. Dreiser’s Sister Carrie is the work in which naturalism attained maturity. These writers’ detailed description of the lives of the downtrodden and the abnormal, their frank treatment of human passion and sexuality, and their portrayal of men and women overwhelmed by blind forces of nature still exert a powerful influence on modern writers.Without satisfying people’s needs and refl ecting social conditions, Naturalism the same as Realism no longer stood on the historical stage. Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform. This combination of grim reality and desire for improvements is typical of America as it moved into the twentieth century, and paved the way to modernism.4.Modernism PeriodIn the year of 1914, the World War I broke out. World War I produced great misfortune to all human beings, but brought big fortune to Americans. Since the war was not fought on the American soil, by the second decade of the 20th century, the United States had become the most powerful industrialized nation in the world, outstripping Britain and Germany in terms of industrial production. After the war there was an economic boom and a deceptive affluence. American entered the era of big industry and big technology, a mechanized age that deprived individuals of their sense of identity. Along with the changes in the material landscape came the changes in the non-material system of belief and behavior. The war destroyed not only the lives of many promising young men, but also the early innocent beliefs of a whole generation, casting them into an age of disorientation, alienation and dissent. At the beginning of the 1930s, the economic crisis in America left a mark in the literary creations of this period. In addition, in Europe, there had been a big flush of new theories and new ideas in both social and natural sciences, as well as in the field of art which played an indispensable role in the conversion of American ideologies. The era of 1914 to 1945, marked by tremendous social upheaval and economic and political transformation, gave gave rise to modernism.Modernism originated at the end of the 19th century. It was a complex and diverse international movement in all creative arts: painting, novel, poem and play. It spread worldwide, particularly in the years following World War I. Towards the 1920s, these trends converged into a mighty torrent of modernist movement, which swept across the whole Europe and America. Modernist literature in America reached its peak in the 1920s up to the 1940s when this period ended.Literature of this period struggled to understand the new and diverse responses to the advent of modernity. Some writers celebrated the changes; others lamented the loss of old ways of being. Some imagined future utopias; others searched for new forms to speak of the new realities.The most recognizable "modernist" figures i n fiction are “the Lost Generation.”They were permanent expatriates living in Europe such as Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. The Lost Generation writers all gained prominence in 20th century literature. Their innovations challenged assumptions about writing and expression, and paved the way for subsequent generations of writers. Ernest Hemingway once took part in the First Would War, so many of his works deal with war or injury, and nearly all of them examined the nature of courage. By suffering from the violent of war, he felt that he was cut off from all his old beliefs and assumptions about life. He thought “The War had broken America`s culture and traditions, and separated it from its toots”. The works he wrote—The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea—inferred the state of mind, and they became the representatives of the feeling of this generation.Along with the greatest figures in “the Lost Generation” are famous poets such as Ezra Pound, Thomas Stearns Eliot, William Carlos Williams, and Robert Frost. African Americans also made significant contributions to the American modernist movement. Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and E. E. Cummings are three poets who opened the way to modern poetry. Ezra Pound started the “Imagist” movement, and his The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock has been called the first masterpiece of modernism. The Waste Land of T. S. Eliot particularly comments on the inhumanity and decadence of large modern cities.5.Postmodernism PeriodThe period after World War II has witnessed great changes of the United Stated of America in many aspects. The war, on the one hand, provided the base for the country to grow into a dominating superpower both in the western world and in international affairs on the global scale; on the other hand, it brought about tension and crisis within the country. Because the politics of America were influenced by two great fears. First, there was the fear of the Bomb; many Americans were sure there would be a war with the Soviet Union using atomic bombs. Also, in the late forties and early fifties, fear of Communism became a national sickness. Against such background emerges and develops the postmodernism in the 1970s.Postmodernism is regarded as a term encompassing all the new critical theories since the late 1960s. It is, accordingly, more reflective about what is subject, truth, metaphor, and human. Postmodernism is a literary experimentation focused mostly on fiction in the United States from the mid-1960s till about 1975. It became aligned with Post-structuralism and deconstruction between 1975 and 1985. Postmodernism became a general term for the cultural logic in post-industrialist society or the late stage of capitalism that is service-oriented and information-oriented.Post-modernism seems to grow or emerge from Modernism. Post-modernism involves not only a continuation, sometimes carried to an extreme, of the counter traditional experiments of modernism, but also diverse attempts to break away from modernist forms which had, inevitably, become in their turn conventional, as well as to overthrow the elitism of modernist “high art” by recourse to the models of “mass art”. In this regard, Postmodernism is a movement against Modernism.Postmodernism as a new development of literature was believed to be nothing, this group of postmodernists created some new rules for the game. For them, existentialist angst should not be what defines literature; instead literary imagination shows a virtual geography.The term of Post-modernism is in fact not an inclusive description of all literature since the 1950s or 1960s, but is applied selectively to those works in widereference to fiction. Firstly, war novels become an important genre after World War II, represented by Norman Mailer. Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead has been held as the masterpiece of its category. James Jones’ best novel From Here to Eternity is a powerful story of army life in Hawaii just before the attack on the Pearl Harbour. Secondly, metafiction as Chris Baldick puts it, is “more especially a kind of fiction that openly comments on its own fictional status.” A notable modern example i s John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Barth’s The Floating Opera, Barthelme’s Snow White, etc.EpilogueRomantic period stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War. Then the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism and Naturalism came into existence, which were against the lie of romanticism. The period between World War I and World War II is referred to as the era of Modernism. During that period, a large number of artists and literary movements are totally different from those of the 19th-century’s in style, form and content. Since 1945, the United States of America experienced some successive social, political and racial upheavals. Against such background emerged and developed the postmodernism.American literature has gone though the progress of development over 200 years. It is characterized by the distinct individualism, which is optimistic, free and always creative. The living American literature has been providing potent thinking headsprings for the writers past and nowadays, and it will continue reanimating the talents to bequeath and enrich the tradition of American literature, of which deserved to be proud.Bibliography1.Malcolm Bradbury, Richard Ruland, Published in Penguin Books 1992, AmericanLiterature From Puritanism to Postmodernism2.李权文，王卓，华中师范大学出版社2010年8月第一版，《美国文学史》3.王守仁，《<新编美国文学史>简介》。

美国文学论文原创全英文版《美国三部曲》的主题

邯郸学院本科毕业论文题目析《“美国”三部曲》的主题思想—以《赚大钱》为例学生 ***学号20100120021005指导教师 ****教授年级 2010级专业英语（师范类）二级学院外国语学院*******外国语学院2014年5月B.A. ThesisOn the Themes of U. S. A. —A Case Study ofThe Big MoneyByXie WenpingSupervisor: Professor. Sun HongyanA Thesis Submitted to School of Foreign LanguagesOf Handan College in Partial FulfillmentOf the Requirement for the DegreeOf Bachelor of ArtsHandan, ChinaMay, 2014郑重声明本人的毕业论文是在指导教师孙红艳的指导下独立撰写完成的。

如有剽窃、抄袭、造假等违反学术道德、学术规范和侵权的行为，本人愿意承担由此产生的各种后果，直至法律责任，并愿意通过网络接受公众的监督。

特此郑重声明。

毕业论文作者：年月日AcknowledgementsIt is really a laborious task to accomplish this B.A. thesis. A lot of people have offered me friendly support and help in the process of writing the thesis. I would like to express my heart felt gratitude to all the respectable professors who have taught and helped me in my undergraduate study and given me much nourishment and inspiration for further study.Special thanks go to my supervisor, Professor Sun Hongyan. She has been available at all times with helpful advice and a helping hand throughout my whole writing process of the thesis. Her erudition and strictness as supervisors, kindness and consideration and tolerance as friends make my study here more meaningful. She teaches me not merely how to conduct research on literature but also how to be an upright person.I would like to express my heart-felt thanks to my family and my dear friends whose encouragement always helps me to carry on.Many thanks to all!AbstractJohn Dos Passos is a member of the extraordinary literary generation. His novel , U. S. A. Trilogy , which is John Dos Passos’s masterpiece, mirrors the dark side of America and revals the essence of the society, marking a higher level of John Dos Passos’s artistic achievements.This thesis tends to explore the themes of U. S. A. Trilogy from three chapters. Chapter one deliberates the theme—the pursuit of money, which is mainly formed by Charley’s pursuit of money and Moorehouse’s pursuit of money. Chapter two elaborates the theme—the protest against the society from two angles—Savage’s p rotest and Mary’s protest.Chapter three investigates the theme—the compromise on the destiny including Charley’s compromise on career and spirit and Margo’s compromise on dream and life.In conclusion, in U. S. A. Trilogy, employing the unique narrative art, John Dos Passos creates insightful themes—the pursuit of money, the protest against the society and the compromise on the destiny. Themes reflect the distorted effects of capitalism on the American people, which is of great realistic significance in modern society. Consequently, U. S. A. Trilogy enlightens that people should be brave, hard-working and hopeful so as to fabricate a more harmonious society.Key Words: John Dos Passos money protest compromise摘要约翰•多斯•帕索斯，是一位美国杰出的的文学家。

美国文学毕业论文

美国文学毕业论文美国文学记录了美国人民不断探索、向西拓展、追求幸福的历程,艺术地再现了美国200多年的发展历史,并在不同时期以不同的表现形式表现出来。

下文是店铺为大家搜集整理的关于美国文学毕业论文的内容，欢迎大家阅读参考!美国文学毕业论文篇1浅析美国文学中的美国梦摘要：美国梦是美国文学中贯穿始终的主题。

不同历史时期美国文学中的美国梦有着不同的表现，如殖民时期的开拓致富梦、建国后的自由民主梦、内战后的扩张发迷梦，而到一战后传统美国梦开始出现迷茫与失落、二战后则走向了绝望与反叛。

关键词：美国文学;美国梦;本质;资产阶级美国文学从诞生到现在虽然只有200多年的历史，却产生了一大批对世界文学有着巨大影响的作品，在这些作品当中美国梦是一个贯穿始终的主题。

美国梦是目前国内人文社会学科的一个研究热点。

本文试图从论述美国文学中美国梦的演变过程人手，研究其变化的原因及在文学中的表现，进而揭示其本质。

一、美国梦产生的历史背景美国梦的产生有其特定的历史背景。

自从哥伦布发现新大陆之后，欧洲人就梦想着到这块土地上去掠夺财富，开拓疆域。

英国清教徒更梦想着到这里来建立起新的耶路撒冷—上帝在人间的王国。

而当时的士著印第安人尚未建立国家，整个“新大陆”都是“无主土地”，无边无际、任人开垦和占有的无限土地带来了无限的机会，许多在旧世界中不可想象的事情在这里发生了。

如果说得天独厚的自然条件是美国梦形成的基础，那么《独立宣言》的发表便使美国梦有了思想依据。

《独立宣言》不仅宣布了人“生而平等”，还将追求幸福规定为不可剥夺的天赋人权。

在欧洲旧大陆的封建等级制度下，灰姑娘只是童话里的人物，而在美国，白手起家“从破衣烂衫到腰缠万贯”的大亨则比比皆是。

在一个尚未定型的国度中，尚未定型的年代里，只要抓住机会，梦想就会实理。

于是，在美国文学中，美国梦也就成了一个贯穿始终的主题。

二、不同历史时期的美国梦一部文学史也可以说是一部美国梦的历史，有着200多年历史的美国文学记录了不同时期美国人的梦想。

[美国文学的论文]美国文学论文选题

[美国文学的论文]美国文学论文选题美国文学的论文篇1浅析禅文化在美国文学中的渗透和发展一、渗透阶段：从爱默生到狄金森，异曲同工的超验主义和禅爱默生及其同伴梭罗是美国第一代热爱佛学的人物。

早在1820年爱默生的日记中多次提到印度宗教思想，他熟读《薄伽梵歌》，并且向朋友们推荐。

1844年在其主办的刊物《日晷》上发表了《法华经》的译文，这是美国第一部佛教经典译作。

作为美国文化的精神领袖，爱默生终其一生想摆脱欧洲的文化束缚，因此，他转向古老的东方文化以寻求帮助，中国儒家思想和印度哲学成为其超验主义学说的重要源头。

爱默生的超验主义有许多内容与禅宗思想不谋而合，如万物一统、活在当下、热爱自然、自立、修身等精神。

①禅宗完全摆脱了外来偶像崇拜和繁琐教义的束缚，爱默生也竭力推动美国的文化独立和个性的解放。

百丈禅师说：“日日是好日”，爱默生宣称：“如果我们能始终‘活在当下’，我们应该受到祝福，我们懂得利用每一降在我们身上之事……”②受爱默生影响，狄金森写了五百多首描写自然、探讨自然与人的关系的诗篇(约占她全部诗作的三分之一)。

除此之外，她的诗歌主题多是对死亡的独特理解、对自身的反省、对内心直觉的描述，甚至对“无我”之境、对“空”的领悟。

梭罗、惠特曼的作品也或多或少有禅的影子。

二、借鉴阶段：从庞德到史蒂文斯，从禅诗到诗禅19世纪末禅宗被介绍到西方之前美国文坛对禅的关注从对中国古典诗歌和日本俳句的关注中开始了。

唐代诗人接受禅学影响，导致了在一定程度诗的禅化。

禅诗在唐朝达到高峰，流传到日本后又与日本文化相结合形成了具有日本特色的俳句，这两种诗歌形式都成为禅的重要传播媒介，尤其在20世纪初意象主义诗歌运动的上升时期，大量的意象和简洁的俳句手法成了意象派诗人们借鉴的首选。

以意象派的压轴之作、庞德的《在地铁站内》{1}为例：这些面孔在人群中幽灵般地显现：湿漉漉的黑树枝上朵朵花瓣。

意象主义诗歌运动对以后的英美诗歌创作走向产生了深远的影响，它把禅的人生态度和处理题材的方式植入了西方诗歌。

美国文学史简述五篇范文

美国文学史简述五篇范文第一篇：美国文学史简述A Short Summary of the History of American LiteratureIn American Literature, Colonial and Revolutionary period, American Romanticism, The Realistic Period and American Modernism are the four important periods.During 17C and 18C is the American colonial and Revolutionary Period.Puritanism is the main school of this period, which is the practices and belief of puritans.The American puritans accept the doctrine and practice of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God.But due to the grim struggle for living in the new continent, they become more and more practical.American Puritanism is so much a part of the national atmosphere rather than a set of tenets.Jonathan Edwards was one of the great writers of the Puritanism, his works include The Freedom of the Will, The Nature of True Virtue and so on.Philip Freneau is “a poet of the American Revol ution” and “the father of American Poetry”.The Rising Glory of American and The Wild Honey Suckle are his famous works.Puritanism gradually declined at the end of 18C.As a result of the impact of European Literary Romanticism, there rapidly came into being the rise of romanticism in American.The American romanticism flourished from 1815 to 1865, which advocated importance to individual dignity and value, and they shared some characteristics— moral enthusiasm, individuality and intuitive perception.Transcendentalism, which appeared after 1830, marked the maturity of American Romanticism and the first Renaissance in the American literary history.It laid emphasis onspirit, individual and nature.Washington Irving is a writer of this period, who has been called “the father of American Literature”.He wins the international fame for The Sketch Book, which marked the beginning of American Romanticism.Ralph Waldo Emerson is the New England Transcendentalist.Nature, his famous work, is regarded as the “manifesto of Am erican Transcendentalism”.American industrialization was one of the important factors of the development of American Realistic Literature, which was the beginning of what Mark Twain called “The Gilded Age” from 1865 to 1914.American Realism came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism.It turned from an emphasis on the faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived.It expresses the common place and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.A realistic writer is more objective than subjective, more descriptive than symbolic.Realists looked for truth in any place.William Dean Howells is the champion of realism.He writes about the rising middle class and the way they live.The Rise of Silas Lapham, his masterpiece, is a fine example of the American realism.Mark Twain is a great literary artist and social critic.He writes about the story of the low class and is famous for his colloquial style and localism.The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn is his famous fiction, which has been regarded as one of the greatest books of western literature and western civilization.After the WWI, some young writers wondered pointlessly and restlessly, while at the same time the y were called the “Lost Generation”.Then, there came into being the modernism from 1914 to 1945, it is used to show the literary art possessing outstanding characteristics in conception, feeling, form and style after the WWI.It meanscutting off history and a sense of despair and loss.It refused to accept the traditional ideological influences.F.Scott Fitzgerald is widely regarded as one of the 20th century’s greatest writers.This Side of Paradise is his first novel, it became immensely popular for the simple reason that it caught the tone of the age.Ernest Hemingway is the famous writer of this period.He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea.A Farewell to Arms is his masterpiece in which the author deals with the war directly.This is what I want to say about the history of American literature.第二篇：美国文学史梗概美国文学史梗概一、殖民地时代和美国建国初期最早来自这片新大陆的欧洲移民主要是定居在新英格兰的清教徒和马萨诸塞的罗马天主教徒，二者虽然在教义上有很多不同之处，但他们都信奉加尔文主义：人生在世只是为了受苦受难，而他们唯一的希望是争做上帝的“选民”，死后进天国，相信“原罪”。

美国文学期末论文

美国文学期末论文( 2011届 )题目：女权主义批评视角下的《小伙子布朗》人物__浅析学院：外国语学院专业：英语学生姓名：方梦婧学号： 08090204指导教师：江玉娇职称：教授合作导师：职称：完成时间：2011年 1 月成绩：OutlineAbstract (3)摘要 (3)1. Introduction (4)1.1 Nathaniel Hawthorne (4)1.2 Young Goodman Brown (4)2. Background2.1 Puritan background (5)2.2 The role of Puritan women (5)3. Analysis of characters (5)3.1 Young Goodman Brown (5)3.2 Faith (6)3.3 The old fellow-traveler .............................................................. 错误!未定义书签。

3.4 Goody Cloyse............................................................................. 错误!未定义书签。

4. Conclusion (7)Work cited (8)Feminist Criticism PerspectiveFang MengjingAbstract:Feminist Criticism, broadly defined, examines how literature and other productions reinforce or undermine the oppression of women. It developed on the basis of women’s liberation movement. It is the concern of feminists critics to probe the marginalization of women in economic, political, social and psychology terms. Feminism represents one of the most significant social and aesthetic revolutions of modern times.From a feminist point of view, Young Goodman Brown, which was universally acclaimed as one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s best short stories and revealed the themes of the reality of sin, the secret sin as well as the hypocrisy of Puritanism and all human kinds, presents Hawthorne’s particular portraits of women go against the prevailing literary sexism of his day.Key words: Faith,feminism, Puritanism, character analysis女权主义批评视角下的《小伙子布朗》人物浅析方梦婧摘要：女权主义批评，概括地说，是检验文学和其他作品如何影响女性所受压迫的批评方法。

1、下载文档前请自行甄别文档内容的完整性，平台不提供额外的编辑、内容补充、找答案等附加服务。
2、"仅部分预览"的文档,不可在线预览部分如存在完整性等问题,可反馈申请退款(可完整预览的文档不适用该条件!)。
3、如文档侵犯您的权益，请联系客服反馈,我们会尽快为您处理(人工客服工作时间：9:00-18:30)。

Symbolism in the great gatsby文理学院英本0801班张海燕2008303010102I．IntroductionFrancis scott key Fitzgerald was American writer if novels and short stories,Fitzgerald is just the tragic hero of the period,whose works are evocatiive of the Jazz Ages,a term he coined himself.He is widely regard as one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers,Fitsgerald is considered a memberof the”Lost generation”of the tweties.He finished four novels,including The Great Gatsby and wrote dozens of short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age. The Great gatsby is considered Fitzgerald’s masterpiece.However, in 1925 no one predicted the eminence of the novel in the new century---not even Fitzgerald himself.At the age of 44,he died of frustration,After his death,some of his interesting writings were put together into a book entitled The Crack-up..The great Gatsby is a good illustration. Gatsby is a young gay from the Midwest.he falls in love with Daisy,a wealthy girl,but is too poor to marry her.the girl is then married to a rich young man, Tom buchanan,Determined to win back his lost love,Gatsby engages himself in boot legging and ather”shady”activities,thus earning enough money to buy a magnificent house,Then he spreads dazzling parties every weekend,hoping one day the buchanans will come.the buchanans finally come and Gatsby meets Daisy again,But the woman in front of him is not quiet the ideal love of his dream and they can never repeat the past.Then Daisy kills a woman (T om’ mistress)in an accident and plots with Tom to shift the blame on Gatsby. Finally ,Gatsby was shot and the buchanans escape,The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literatures of Fitzgerald’s period, which wins many favorable praises.one of the major reasons for The Great Gatsby’ high literary reputation is the using of symbolism.In the novel,symbolism runs through the whole story.The settings,the characters,the plots and the colors are all symbols and full of symbolic meanin.Fitzgerald is so creative and imaginative that he is skillful enough to use these symbols to reveal the theme of this novel.so it is very usful to view The Great Gatsby through the perspective of symbolism.II , the introduction of symbolA ,The Definition of symbol“in literature a symbol is a thing that refers or suggeste more than its literal meaning “,It is an object,animate or inanimate,which goes beyond the objective referent by evoking or suggesting to the reader a meaning on another level,a meanig byyond itself,Earnest carcior holds the view that language,art,myth,and religion are parts of the spritual symbolthey are the varied threads that weave the symbolist net,the tangled web of human experience.Literary symbols,combining imagges with suggestions,are classified into two broad types,one type refers to those embodying universal suggestions of meaning,For example,white color usually suggests purity,innocent and honesty.This tpye of symbols is widely used in western literature.It has been fomed as a tradition in the literrature.the other type of symbols secures its suggestiveness from the way in which it is used in a given work,in a special context,Thus ,in the novel The Great Gatsby the valley of ashes atands for the plight of the poor,Generally speaking,symbols in fictions are inanimate objects.But sometimes actions and gestures with large significance than its literal meaning are also symbolic,Raising arms may sense,the abundance of symbols exisit in many novels.B The Fuction of symbolismThroughout history the authors of literary works have used symbolism to develop a story or create an understanding,Many of the classics are filled with symbolism,and it is the symbolism that causes the story to stick in the reader’s mind and heart and make the story a classic,As barnet points out,”when we read,we may feel that certain characters and certain things in the story stand for more than themselvesmor the auhor has mentioned certain iterms or ideas in order to get us to think more deeply about something,This is because sometimes it is hard for writers to communicates the feelings evoked upon certain iterms concretely,exactly,and meaningfully,It would be very difficult to do, and in doing so the writer might lose the reader’s interest or worse,alienate them from the moment for the feeling is not the one they shared,but by allowing a symbol,the writer forces the reader to apply his or her own knowledge to the sitution,and the feelings evoked are the sole domain of the reader,not the author,As long as the feelings are well defended with evidence from the text,they are fine interpretations of the novels. Symbolism is used as one of the important devices in modern fiction and it is essentially an indirect mode of expression,which suggests much more than what is symbolism in literary works will be immensely helpful in determining the significance of the symbols used.symbolism as a literary movement with all its significance,meaning and association has astrong and deep influence on literature.III The Analysis of the symbolicA,symbolic colorsSymbolism is what makes a story complete.in the great gatsby ,F.scott Fitzgerald cleverly uses symbolism.Anything in a novel can be taken as a symbol,There are several colors used for symbolism in this novel,For example,the colors white,blue and green used through the book.Colors can accentuate the meaning of a story and explain certain actions of a character,In The Great Gatsby,F.scott Fitzgerald applies many important colors that allude to the personality of his characters.The colors given are repeatedmultiple times so that they can be established.1. whiteone color that is used frequently is white.The first time Nick meets his cousin Daisy at Tom and Daisy’s home,she was dressed totally white.so as the house and its furnishings are also turned in light shaeds .This fact might be interpreted as beuty,cleanliness,wealth,innocence .Daisy wears white dresses and recalls her “white girlhood”and this use of color helps her to characterize her laziness and uselessness . she is completely devoid of any knowledge of the outside world,something I found quite apparent was her obviusely shallow,money grubbing motives.For example,when she is taken into Gatsby’s home for a tour,she is shown Gatsby’ beautiful imported shirts,Daisy begins to cry,saying that these shirts are so beautiful.But what she is really expressing is her envy and jealousy of Gatsby’ new riches and all of his elaborate material possession.2 blueAnother symbolic color is blue,Blue stands out as symbol of melancholy and calmness.All of this manifests the author’s critical attitude to the contemporary tendency—ostentation, pursuit for material enjoyment and money worship.First, In the valley of ashes,there is an advertisement board of great size on which paints the blue and gigantic eyes of Doctor T.J.Ecklburg.In many days under sun and rain ,this pair of eyes is dimmed and seems to be tearing,looking at the valley of ashes and also the people there.The symbolized meaning of the blue eyes was not revealed untill the eighth chapter,when George wilson talked to Michael is about his wife’s disloyalty to him,he said “she might fool me but she couldn’t fool God.”Fitzgerald reused the blue color on George Wilson who is a little character in this great work.when wilson first comes to appear in this novel,he is described as follows”He was a blond,spiritlessman,and faintly handsome,when he saw us a gleam rang into his light blue eyes.”3 greenThe author uses green symbolizing hope.The image of green lamp appeared three times respectively at the crucial points of development,and played an important role in the process of modeling at the end of chapter one,where Nick went back home in the evening and saw that Gatsby stared at the green light means something special to Gatsby,for it has something to do with Daisy.Gatsby has chershed a dream,which is to marry Daisy who is an emblem of beauty and fortune to ter on ,Daisy married to Tom,but Gatsby still firmly believed that he could seize her back as long as he could own enough money.Thus ,that green light became the dream and hope in Gatsby’s heart.B symbolic theme1 American DreamThe American dream ,arising in the colonial period and developing in the nineteenth century,originally relates to a desire for spiritual and material improvement.For ordinaryAmericans ,the American dream is the success story;the American dream in the climbing of the ladder from rags to riches;the /American dream is to go west,and become a millionaire,We can recognize that Fitsgerald’s understanding transcends the popular trivializing of the American Dream.As a matter of fact,no novelist of his time had betterunderstood the nature of his joy-riding.extravagant and irresponsible society,and the spiritual desperation and sterility that it represented.2. The disillusionment of the American dreamfrom the 18th century to the 1920s,the American dream had been a dominant ideology enormously propagated,attributing one’s mateial success to self-improvement and hard working.and it became an unshakable ideal for generations,a power which brought about the prosperity of the American capitalism.However ,this dream ,as some critics and many writers pointed out,was an illusion that humans could never have fulfilled. Fitzgerald stresses here the need for hope and dreams to give meaning and purpose to man’s efforts.For Gatsby ,striving after some ideal is the way by which man can feel a sense of invovlement.a sence of his own identity.Gatsby is defeated by the buchanan in the end,his whole careers,his confidence in himself and in life are totally shattered when he fails to win Daisy back.with his dream vanished,he is spiritually dead.The collapse of Gatsby’s dream,however,is symbolic,his faliure of the American dream itself.。