《美国文学史》复习指南(常耀信版)
美国文学简史常耀信版Chapter_3_The_Literature___of_Romanticism
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American Romanticism
The
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.
1).Walter Scott: Waverly novels, The Lady of the Lake 2).Byron: Oriental romances 3).Gothic tradition, the cult of solitude and of gloom
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Romanticism
started
ended
Backgrounds of American Romanticism
National
influences influences
International
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National Influences
A. In politics: democracy and political equality lay the foundation of Romanticism; B. In economics: the spread of industrialism; the sudden influx of immigration and the pioneers pushing the frontier further west; C. In culture: the publication of Webster’s Dictionary marked the beginning of the American English; the appearance of many magazines and newspapers.
美国文学简史常耀信版讲义6-The Writers of the “Lost Generation”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Dropped out of Princeton University in 1917 to fight in WWI, but the war ended before he shipped out. • one of the most popular and accomplished writers of the movement. • major works
This Side of Paradise The Last Tycoon
The Beautiful and the Damned The Great Gatsby
About The Great Gatsby:
The setting is New York City and Long Island during the 1920s. Nick, the narrator, is a young Princeton man, who works as a bond broker in Manhattan. He becomes involved in the life of his neighbor at Long Island , Jay Gatsby, shady and mysterious financier, who is entertaining hundreds of guests at lavish parties.
Montparnasse
Montparnasse served as the heart of artistic creativity and intellect in Paris after the war. Contained many cheap studios, apartments, and was also an area filled with important cafes and other nightlife. All of the Lost Generation writers found themselves here at one time or another.
美国文学简史常耀信版讲义7
My Antonia
In the novel, he looks back on the course of events that shaped her life and made h er the woman she is. It is a story of Nebraska, celebrated the la nd and the immigrant pioneers, and linked the enduring figure of Antonia to the life fo rce itself.
Willa Cather 薇拉· 凯瑟
1873~1947
"Restlessness such as ours, suc cess such as ours, striving such as ours, do not make for beauty. Other things must come first, go od cookery, cottages that are ho me, not playthings; gardens, rep ose." 21 Droduction
Her fiction is unique in its powerful repres entation of setting and character and rich i n its language and imagery. Her style of w riting is condensed and subtle, but noneth eless tremendously expressive. A quote:
Sinclair Lewis
style (1)photographic,verisimilitude (2) colloquialism (3) characterization: he often created a type of character rathe r than an individual (4) old fashioned in theme (5) lack in psychological exploration
美国文学简史常耀信版讲义1
❖ (4) Limited atonement: Only the “elect” can be saved.
❖ 2. Influence
❖ (1) A group of good qualities – hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety (serious and thoughtful) influenced American literature.
❖ (2) It led to the everlasting myth. All literature is based on a myth – garden of Eden.
❖ (3) Symbolism: the American puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chiefly instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American.
American Drama Black American Literature
Colonial Period
❖ Background information ❖ Writers and works
New England
❖ New England 's composed of six states, including from north to south : Maine缅因州, New Hampshire新罕布什尔州, Vermont佛蒙 特州, Massachusetts马萨诸塞州, Rhode Island罗德岛州, Connecticut康涅狄格州.
常耀信《美国文学简史》(第3版)笔记和考研真题详解(5-8章)【圣才出品】
第5章霍桑•麦尔维尔5.1复习笔记I.Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864)（纳撒尼尔·霍桑）1.Life（生平）Hawthorne was born in Salem,Massachusetts.Some of his ancestors were men of prominence in the Puritan theocracy.One of his ancestors was a colonial magistrate,notorious for his part in the persecution of the Quakers,and another was a judge at the Salem Witchcraft Trial in1692.Gradually,the family fortune declined.Hawthorn was intensely conscious of the wrongdoing of his ancestors,and this awareness led to his understanding of evil being at the core of human life,so he seemed to be haunted by his sense of sin and evil in his life.霍桑出生于马萨诸塞州的萨勒姆镇，他的一些祖先是17世纪新英格兰清教神权统治中的显赫人物。
他的一位祖先是殖民地行政官，因参与迫害贵格党人而臭名昭著。
另一位祖先则是1692年萨勒姆审巫案的法官。
家族渐渐走向没落。
霍桑强烈地意识到他祖先的恶性，这也让他明白了邪恶存在于人生命的核心部分，因此他的一生心中的罪恶感都挥之不去。
2.Ideas（思想）(1)He was haunted by his sense of sin and evil in life,therefore we see“black vision”in his works—the power of blackness.Evil seems to be man’s birthmark.In almost every book he wrote, Hawthorne discussed sin and evil.(2)He rejected the Transcendentalists'transparent optimism about the potentialities of human nature.(3)Whenever there is sin,there is punishment.Sin or evil can be passed from generation to generation.In his opinion,evil educates.(4)He believed that romance was the predestined form of American narrative.He took a great interest in history and antiquity.To him these furnished the soil on which his mind grew to fruition.(5)Hawthorne had a negative attitude toward science.(1)霍桑一生心中都萦绕着罪恶感，因此我们可以在他的作品中感受到“黑色视觉”——邪恶的力量。
美国文学简史常耀信版讲义8
Yoknapatawpha 约克纳帕塔法
Yoknapatawpha County: --- A county in northern Mississippi, the setting for most of William Faulkner’s novels and short stori es, and patterned upon Faulkner’s actual home i n Lafayette County, Mississippi.
The Southern Renaissance was the rei nvigoration of American Southern literat ure that began in the 1920s and 1930s with the appearance of writers such as William Faulkner, Wolfe, Tennessee Williams, etc.
Plot: 小说的故事发生在杰弗生镇上的康普生家。这是一个曾经显赫一时的 望族，祖上出过一位州长、一位将军。家中原来广有田地，黑奴成群， 如今只剩下一幢破败的宅子，黑佣人也只剩下老婆婆迪尔西和她的小 外孙勒斯特了。一家之长康普生先生是一九一二年病逝的。他在世时 算是一个律师，但从不见他接洽业务，他整天醉醺醺，唠唠叨叨地发 些愤世嫉俗的空论，把悲观的情绪传染给大儿子昆丁。康普生太太自 私冷酷，无病呻吟，总感到自己受气吃亏，实际上是她在拖累、折磨 全家人。她时时不忘南方大家闰秀的身分，以致她仅仅成了一种“身 分”的化身，而完全不具有作为母亲与妻子应有的温情。家中没有一 个人能从她那里得到爱与温暖。女儿凯蒂可以说是全书的中心，虽然 没有以她的观点为中心的单独的一章，但书中一切人物的所作所为都 与她息息相关。物极必反，从古板高傲、规矩极多的旧世家里偏偏会 出现浪荡的子女。
常耀信美国文学简史重点笔记
常耀信美国文学简史重点笔记美国文学Part One Colonial America(17世纪早期到18世纪末）Part Two The Literature of Romanticism(19世纪上半叶）The frontier hero Andrew Jackson as the 7th President of the United States had brought an effective end to the “Virginia Dynasty” of American Presidents.The United States had begun to change into an industrial cause society, technology would bring vast material benefits and cause overwhelming social disorders.Romantics shared certain general characteristics: （选择题常考）moral enthusiasm, faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a source of goodness and man’s societies a source of corruption.Washington Irving华盛顿·欧文1783-1859He was the first great prose stylist of American romanticism familiar style.His “Sketch Book” appeared the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature to write good history and biography as literary entertainment. He introduced the familiar essay to America “Jonathan Old style”, satires of New York. His major works include: The Author’s Account of Himself The Legend of Sleepy HollowJames Fenimore Cooper詹姆斯·芬尼莫·库珀1789-1851The first important American novelist began his literary career on a dare.“The Spy” was successful, it was a rousing tale about espionage against the British during the Revolutionary War.Cooper launched two kinds of immensely popular stories: the sea adventure tale, and the frontier saga.The Pilot” th e best of his many sea romances.His frontier stories “Leather Stocking Tales” including five novels: “The Deerslayer”; The Last of the Mohicans”, “The Pathfinder”, “The Pioneers”, “The Prairie”. Allan Nevins calls these five novels “the nearest approach y et to an American epic”.The Last of The MohicansHenry Wadsworth Longfellow亨利·沃兹沃思·朗费罗1807-1882In his prose romance “Outre-Mer”, he uses Finish folk meter in his celebration of American Indian Legends in “Hiawatha”. His greatest virtue is that he made po etry seem worth reading and worth writing. His works include:A Psalm of Life My Lost Youth Song of Hiawatha Voices of the Night William Cullen Bryant威廉·卡伦·布莱恩特1794-1878The stately poem called ” Thanatopsis” (Greek, meaning “view of death”) introduced the best poet to appear in American up to that time.“To a Waterfowl” is perhaps the peak of his work, “Most perfect brief poem in the language”.His most important later works are his translations of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” into English blank verse.As Irving had shown that American prose had come of age, so Bryant demonstrated to European readers that American poetry was ready to demand serious attention. He was the first American to gain the stature of a major poet.Part Three New England Transcendentalism（2015年川师大真题）New England Transcendentalism isregarded as the summit of American Romanticism. What do you know about Transcendentalism?Transcendentalism is a literature, philosophical and artistic movement that flourished in New England from about 1836 to 1860. It originated from a small group of intellectuals who were reacting against the orthodox of Calvinism and the rationalism of the Unitarian church, developing their own faith centering on the divinity of humanity and the natural world. The major features of New England Transcendentalism can be summarized as follows: First, the Transcendentalism placed emphasis on spirit, or the over soul, as the most important thing in the universe. Second, the Transcendentalism stressed the importance of the individual. Thirdly, the Transcendentalism offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the spirit or god. New England Transcendentalism is the product of a combination of native American Puritanism and European Romanticism. The ideas of Transcendentalism were most eloquently expressed by Emerson in such essays asNature, and Self-Reliance and by Thoreau in his book Walden.Ralph Waldo Emerson 拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生1803-1882He was responsible for bringing Transcendentalism to New England and was recognized throughout his life as the leader of the movement, and he believed above all in individualism, independence of mind and self-reliance. He admired courage, he was not afraid of changing or clashing ideas. His works include:Nature The American Scholar The Divinity School Address Self-RelianceMany of his lectures were later distilled into his famous “Essays”. Among his most important works are “Representative Men” and “English Traits” .His “Poems”appeared in 1847.In his day, Emerson’s poems were criticized for the ir lack of form and polish. In recent years, however, his poetry has received high praise. His harsh rhythms and striking images appeal to many modern readers as artful techniques.His prose style is sometimes as highly individual as his poetry. Many of his essays were put together from his journal entries, speeches, and random notes, and they are often somewhat disorganized. Yet his skill in polishing each sentence into a striking thought makes his writing memorable.The American Scholar is called “our int ellectual Declaration of Independence”(选择题常考）Henry David Thoreau亨利·戴维·梭罗1817-1862He was Emerson’s truest disciple, who put into practice many of Emerson’s theories.The superb novel Walden is written by Thoreau,and was published in 1854.it came out of his two-year experiment lived at Walden.Thoreau explained many of the beliefs that led him to try this kind of life.He thought it better for a man to work one day a week and rest six,so that people could devote more time to thought.Thoreau maintained that this was purpose ,not a program for society .and in his book ,he think ,self-reliance and independence of mind ranked above all . From his experience in jail came his famous essay Civil Disobedience, which stated Thoreau’s belief that no man should violate h is conscience at the command of a government.Nathaniel Hawthorne纳撒尼尔·霍桑1804-1864“The House of the Seven Gables”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.Hawthorne gathered his material by observing and listening to others whose talk was filled with New England Lore, legend, and superstition. His works include:The Custom House The Blithedale Romance Mosses from an Old Manse The Marble Faun Young Goodman Brown The Scarlet LetterHawthorne’s unique gift was for the creation of strongly symbolic stories which touch the deepest roots of man’s moral nature. The finest example is the recreation of Puritan Boston, “The Scarlet Letter”. In this novel each word, image, and event works toward a single effect. It is a complex story of guilt, its effects upon various persons, and how deliverance is obtained for some of them.Hawthorne shares with Edgar Allan Poe the distinction of advancing the art of the short story, giving to the form qualities that are uniquely American. To Hawthorne and Melville, however, the telling of a tale was a way of inquiring into the meaning of life.（2014年川师大真题）What's symbolism? Please illustrate it with Nathaniel Hawthorne's works?In literature, symbolism was an aesthetic movement that encouraged writers to express their ideas, feelings and values by means of symbols or suggestions rather than by direct statements. It enables writers to compress a very complex idea or sets of ideas into image or even one word. Hawthorne is a master of symbolism. The symbol can be found everywhere in his writing. His masterpieces The Scarlet Letter and Young Good Man Brown provided the most convincing proof.In the Scarlet Letter, A is the biggest symbol of all. As a key to the whole novel, the letter takes on different layers of symbolic meaning as the plot develops. At first, it is a token of shame"Adultery", then it has been changed into "Able", and finally it signifies "Angel". People come up with different interpretations and they don't know which one is definite. The Scarlet Letter A is ambiguous and the ambiguity is one of the prominent characteristics of Hawthorne's art.In Young Goodman Brown, Hawthorne masterfully uses symbolism in presenting the theme. For example, the names of protagonists carry strong symbolic meanings. Brown is an extremely common name, which stands for everyone. That means the problem that Brown met is a universal one. His wife is Faith, who should be the most faithful one to him. However, the fact proves that even she possess some evil secrets that he doesn't know.Herman Melville赫尔曼·麦尔维尔1819-1891Moby Dick, a tremendous chronicle of a whaling voyage in pursuit of a seemingly supernatural white whale. The book is steeped in symbolism, another strong appeal to readers of his century. Melville had the rebellious struggle of Captain Ahab against the overwhelming ,mysterious vastness of the universe and its awesome ,sometimes merciless force （选择题常考）The fitting symbol for his the“gliding gre at demon of the seas of life,”the white whale .Ahab’s ship,the Requod ,was like a world in miniature ,with characters ranging from the observer and narrator Ishmael to the savage harpooners and the motley crew.Melville said this book had been“broiled in he ll-fire, referring to the turbulence of his own spirit from which the book sprang.Typee, became known as the “man who lived among cannibals”His works include:Omoo Mardi Billy Budd Moby DickBilly Budd a nd Moby Dick use a ship as symbol of society and searchingly examines the problems of good and evil.Aha b’s ship was like a world in miniature with characters from all walks of life.Walt Whitman沃尔特·惠特曼1819-1892O ne of the great innovators in American literature. In the cluster of poems he called “Leaves of Grass” he gave America its first genuine epic poem. The poetic style he devised is now called free verse-that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. Whitman thought that the voice of democracy should not be haltered by traditional forms of verse. Most of the poems in “Leaves of Grass” are about man and nature. However, a small number of very good poems deal with New York, the city that fascinated Whitman, and with the Civil War. In his poetry, Whitman combined the ideal of the democratic common man and that of the rugged individual. In his poetry, Whitman combined the ideal of the democratic common man and that of the rugged individual. He envisioned the poet as a hero, a savior and a prophet, one who leads the community by his expressions of the truth. His works include:Song of Myself I sit and Look Out Drum-Taps Beat! Beat! DrumsEmily Dickinson爱米丽·狄金森1830-1886She wrote her whimsical, darting verse with sublime indifference to any notion of being a democratic or popular poet. Her work illustrated the fact that one could take a single household and an inactive life, and make enchanting poetry out of it. She and her sister remained at home and did not marry. After 1862 she became a total recluse, not leaving her house nor seeing even close friends. Her later retirement from the world, though perhaps affected by an unhappy love affair, seems mainlyto have resulted from her own personality, from a desire to separate herself from the world. The range of her poetry suggests not her limited experiences but the power of her creativity and imagination.Emily, however, refused to revise her poems to fit the standards of others and took no interest in having them published; in fact she had only seven poems published during her lifetime.Emily Dick inson’s poetry c omes out in bursts. The poems are short, many of them being based on a single image or symbol. But within her little lyrics Miss Dickinson writes about some of the most important things in life. His works include:I taste a liquor never brewed Because I Could not Stop for Death A Bird Came Down the Walk-Edgar Allan Poe埃德加·阿伦·坡1809-1849He won a contest with his story “Ms. Found in a Bottle” .Then he got a job as editor with the “Southern Literary Messenger”. His first collection of short stories “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque”.In Europe, he was hailed as a pioneer in poetic and fictional techniques. His influence was especially strong on many French writers. His works include:The Fall of the House of Usher To Helen The RavenPart Four The Age of Realism（19世纪下半叶）In the Civil War 1861-1865，they sought to portray American life as it really was,, insisting that the ordinary and local were as suitable for artistic portrayal as the magnificent and the remote.Realism had originated in France as real isme, a literary doctrine that called for “reality and truth” in the depiction of ordinary life. William Dean Howells defined realism as “nothingmore and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material”.（选择题常考）He spoke out against the writing of a bleak fiction of failure and despair. He called for the treatment of the “Smiling aspects of life” as being the more “American”, insisting that American was truly a land of hope and of possibility that should be reflected in its literature.The bu lk of Ameri ca’s literary realism was limited to optimistic treatment of the surface of life. Yet the greatest of America’s realists, Henry James and Mark Twain, moved well beyond a superficial portrayal of nineteenth-century America. James probed deeply into the individual psychology of his characters, writing in a rich and intricate style that supported his intense scrutiny of complex human experience. Mark Twain, breaking out of the narrow limits of local color fiction, described the breadth of American experience as no one had ever done before, or since.(预测问答题）Naturalism, a new and harsher realism. America’s literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classed who were dominated by their environment and heredity, the naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment, that religious “truths” were illusory, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death.Harriet Beecher Stowe哈丽雅特·比彻·斯托1811-1896She was born into a respectable family that was to become famous, her father Lyman was a renowned clergyman. The family was dominated by the father who ruled with the kind of wrathfulseverity that he imagined were the chief characteristics of the God he worshiped and feared. The boys were expected to become preachers, the girls to marry preachers. She is an anti-slavery writer. Her works include:Uncle Tom’s Cabin(问答题重点）Uncle Tom’s Cabin is the masterpiece of Harriet Beecher Stowe(an American realism novelist).The novel began serially in the National Era. When the novel did appear,however,it was an overnight success.It sold 350,000 copies during the first year,and since then has been published in some forty languages and has been read by millions of people around the world.The power of the novel unquestionably comes from the investment of the author’s sense of h er own suffering and oppression(as well as her determination to be free) in characters of Tom and his fellow slave Eliza,the protagonists of the book’s two main plots.Uncle Tom’s Cabin traces the trials, sufferings and human dignity of Uncle Tom, an old black slave. The novel helped tremendously Americans know more about the cruelty and inhumanity of slavery and hurried on a great war.HowellsHis major works include: A Modern Instance and The Rise of Silas Lapham.He writes about the rising middle class and the way they lived.Henry James亨利·詹姆斯1843-1916H e received the major part of his education at home, his family’s travels in Europe were another source of education for Henry. The American with its “international” theme of the traditionless American confronting the complexity of European life. D aisy Miller, which one American critic described as “an outrage to American girlhood” but which brought James his firstinternational fame. The Portrait of a Lady the finest example of James’s early work.Unli ke Howells James’s greatest influence was exerted not on his own age but on the one that followed. He had been attacked for criticizing his native land and for the narrow emotional and social range of his characters. And he had been ridiculed for the obscure and costive style of his final period, a style that was able to express the subtlest meanings but was based on the assumption that the reader was as well educated, as exquisitely attuned, and in as little hurry as the author. He helps to transform the novel from its alliances with journalism and romantic story-telling into an art form of penetrating analysis of individuals confronting society, chronicles of the psychological perceptions that James himself defined as the highest form of experience.Local Colorism(预测问答题）Generally speaking, the writings of local colorists are concerned with the life of a small, well-defined region or province. The characteristic setting is the isolated small town. 2) Local colorists were consciously nostalgic historians of a vanishing way of life, recorders of a present that faded before their eyes. Yet for all their sentimentality, they dedicated themselves to minutely accurate descriptions of the life of their regions, they worked from personal experience to record the facts of a local environment and suggested that the native life was shaped by the curious conditions of the local. 3) major local colorists is Mark Twain.Mark Twain 马克·吐温1835-1910H is formal education ended soon after his father’s death in 1847, when he bec ame a printer’s apprentice. From 1853, hetraveled widely, as a journeyman printer, in the eastern states and in the west, he met Horace Bixby, the captain of the boat, and turned to a career on the river. He left the Mississippi at the outbreak of the Civil War, and became, in swift succession, and army volunteer, a gold-prospector in Nevada, a timber speculator and a journalist.W hile working for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, he adopted the pseudonym “Mark Twain”, the way of a boatman taking soundings, and meaning two fathoms, i.e. twelve feet. His works include: Jumping Frog Innocents Abroad The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Adventures of Huckleberry FinnHe pointed towards his uneasy acceptance of the values of nineteenth-century American society, he wrote three works expressing his acute pessimism. From that time until his death, he maintained a bitter skepticism, relieved at times by outraged commentary on world affairs. His last years were saddened by personal bereavement.（2010年川师大真题）Give a brief description to the American realists of the later part of the 19th century?In the later part of the 19th century, famous American realists include: Mark Twain, Henry James, Jack London and Theodorn Dreiser.Mark Twain was the first literary giant in that he broke the narrow limits of local color and described the breadth of American as no one had ever done before. He was acclaimed as "the true father of our national literature". He first created the American boy in his book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It has always been regarded as one of the greatest books of western literature and western civilization. Hemingway described it as the book from which" all modern American literaturecomes." Other famous books of Mark Twain include: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi River and The Gilded Age.Henry James is considered as the founder of psychological realism. He stresses the "psychology" of human being and his realism is characterized by his psychological approach to his subject matter. He was the first American writer to conceive his artistic work in international themes. His novels describe the life of the upper class, and they are marked by highly refined language. His famous works include: Daisy Miller and The Portrait of a Lady.Jack London is one of the most articulate and militant spokesman of the working class at the turn of century. He is a leading figure of naturalism. His famous works include: Martin Eden, The call of the Wild and The Law of Life. The Call of the Wild is London's best-known story in which the protagonist is a sled-dog who under the pressure of the environment reverts to savagery.Theodore Dreiser is generally acknowledged as one of American's literary naturalist. His famous work include Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy. Sister Carrie tells about a poor country girl who goes to Chicago to pursue the American dream. The novel shows Dresser's naturalistic view about life by illustrating the purposelessness of life. The dominant symbol of the novel is the rocking chair that is indicative of the uncertainty of life.O. Henry 欧·亨利H e wrote stories for different magazines, and when there came a big demand for his stories, the publishers of “Ainslee’s Magazing” invited him to come to New York.Many of his stories tell about the lives of poor people in New York, as well as in other places, his works abound in good-natured humor. His stories are usually short, the plots are exceedingly clever and interesting; humor abounds, and the end is always surprising. Many of his stories contain a great deal of slang and colloquial expressions that make them hard to be understood by people outside of America. Such forms of speech are used to give what is called local, to make the stories fit in with the characters and scenes described.His works include:The Gift of the Magi A Municipal Report The Cop and the AnthemJack London杰克·伦敦1876-1916He grew up in extreme poverty: from earliest youth he supported himself with menial and dangerous jobs, experiencing profoundly the struggle for survival. His works include:The Call of the Wild The Son of the Wolf The Sea Wolf Martin Eden The Law of LifeThe most enduringly popular of his stories involved the primitive (and melodramatic) struggle of strong and weak individuals in the context of irresistible natural forces such as the wild sea or the arctic wastes.London’s stories of man in and against nature continue to be popular all over the world. In them, London strips everything down to the symbolic starkness of dream, to a primordial simplicity that has the strange and compelling power of ancient myth.Theodore Dreiser西奥多·德莱塞1871-1945From his mother he seems to have absorbed a quality of compassionate wonder, from his father he seems to have inherited moral earnestness and the capacity to persist in the faceof failure, disappointment, and despair.Dreiser’s childhood was decidedly unhappy. The large family moved from house to house in Indiana dogged by poverty, insecurity, and internal division. Dreiser as a youth was as ungainly, confused, shy, and full of vague yearnings as most of his fictional protagonists, male and female, his education was to come from experience and from independent reading and thinking.Sister Carrie, which traces the material rise of Carrie Meeber and the tragic decline of G·W·Hurstwood. It depicted social transgressions by characters who felt no remorse and largely escaped punishment, and it used “strong” language and used names of living persons.H is best short fictions “Nigger Jeff” and “Butcher Rogaum’s Daughter””Trilogy of Desire”: “The Financier”; “The Titan”; “The Stoic”, Dreiser shifted from the pathos of helpless protagonists to the power of those unusual individuals who assume dominant roles in business and society.The identification of potency with money i s at the heart of Dreiser’s greatest and most successful novel, “An American Tragedy”. The Center of this immense novel’s thick texture of biographical circumstance, social fact, and industrial detail is a young man who acts as if the only way he can be truly fulfilled is by acquiring wealth-through marriage if necessary. Part Five American Literature in the 1920sImagism came into being in Britain and U.S around 1910 as a reaction to the traditional English poetry to express the sense of fragmentation and dislocation. The imagists, with Ezra Pound leading the way, hold that the most effective means to expressthese momentary impressions is through the use of one dominant image. Imagism is characterized by the following three poetic principles: A.direct treatment of subject matter;B.economy of expression;C. as regards rhythm ,to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome. Pound’s In a Station of the Metro is a well-known imagist poem.Ezra Pound埃兹拉·庞德1885-1972He had a distinct poetic personality, he combined a command of the older tradition with impressive and often daring originality. He was a prolific essayist for the little magazines of New York, London, Paris, which then constituted a large and exciting literary world. He unselfishly and persistently championed the experimental and often unpopular artists. Most important of all, perhaps, was the advice and encouragement which he gave to T·S· Eliot.Both Pound and Eliot required of their readers a familiarity with the classics, the productions of Italian and English Renaissance,, and specialized areas of Continental literature, including the works of the French symbolists. Pound’s continued to draw fundamentally upon his formidably recondite culture. His works include：The Cantos In a Station of the Metro A VirginalThomas Stearns Eliot托马斯·斯特恩斯·爱略特1888-1965He won the Nobel Prize in 1948.His first book of poems “Prufrock and Other Observations”, which concerns various aspects of the frustration and enfeeblement of individual character as seen in perspective with the decay of states, peoples, and religious faith.The Waste Land, one of the major works of modern literature. Its subject, the apparent failure of western civilization whichWorld War I seemed to demonstrate, suggested the spiritual debility of the modern individual and his culture while in satirical counterpoint his Sweeney poems had symbolized the rising tide of anticultural infidelity and human baseness. It used abundant of literary reference. It also introduced a form-the orchestration of related themes in successive movements. His works include:The Hollow Men Ash-Wednesday Four Quartets The Love Song of J·Alfred Prufrock Robert Frost罗伯特·弗洛斯特1874-1963 By the end of his life he had become a national bard; he won four Pulitzer Prizes; the United States Senate passed resolutions honoring his birthdays, and when he was eighty-seven he read his poetry at the inauguration of President JohnF·Kennedy. Frost had rejected the revolutionary poetic principles of his contemporanes,(选择题常考）choosing instead “the old-fashioned way to be new”. He employed the plain speech of rural New Englanders and preferred the short, traditional forms of lyric and narrative, As a poet of nature he had obvious affinities with romantic writers. He saw nature as a storehouse of analogy and symbol, but he had little faith in religious dogma or speculative thought. His poetry, for all its apparent simplicity, often probes mysteries of darkness and irrationality in the bleak and chaotic landscapes of an indifferent universe where men stand alone, unaided and perplexed.Carl Sandburg卡尔·桑德堡1878-1967He lived to enjoy enormous popular acclaim, by the end of his life he had become a familiar figure to national television audiences who listened to him read his poems, sing folk ballads and relate anecdotes about Lincoln.His works include:Chicago Poems Cornhuskers Flash Crimson Chicago Cool Tombs。
常耀信美国文学史第三版Chapter 6 Whitman·Dickinson
First edition(1855)
It contained twelve poems and did not sell well, but it made a stir on the American literary scene. It broke with the poetic convention, and its sexuality and exotic and vulgar language brought harsh criticisms on it.
➢In 1848, he traveled south to work in the New Orleans.
➢In 1855, the first edition of his work, Leaves of Grass came out with his own money, which contained twelve poems.
ideas about death, and beauty of death. ❖ Attacks the slavery system and racial
discrimination.
Literary points of view
❖Whitman was a catalog of American and European thought.
The Leaves were called “noxious weeds ,” it’s poetry “poetry of barbarism ” and “a mass of stupid filth.” 邪恶的种子，野蛮的诗歌，一滩愚蠢的污 秽物。
Whitman’s Major Works
❖ Responds enthusiastically to the expansion of America.
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《美国文学史》复习指南时间：2010年12月使用教材：《美国文学史》（第二版）常耀信著Chapter 1 Colonial America★1607 Jamestown, Virginia：the first permanent English settlement in America★1620 Plymouth, Massachusetts: the second permanent English settlement in America★Captain John Smith: the first American writer writing in English★Anne Bradstreet: the first American woman poetMajor work: The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America (1650)Contemplations (9) on P. 17 （熟悉这首诗歌）To My Dear and Loving Husband《致我亲爱的丈夫》★Philis Wheatley: the first black woman poet in American literature★Edward Taylor: the most famous poet in the colonial periodHuswifery on P. 19 （熟悉这首诗歌）★Roger Williams: The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for the Cause of Conscience (1644)Translated the Bible into the Indian tongue★John Winthrop: “Model of Christian Charity”（〈基督慈善之典范〉）The History of New England (two volumes, 1825, 1826)(〈新英格兰史〉) 1630 --- 1649 in diary★Thomas Paine: Common Sense, The American Crisis, The Rights of Man, The Age of Reason ★Philip Freneau: Poet of the American RevolutionThe Wild Honeysuckle, The Indian Burying Ground, The Dying Indian: TomoChequi★Charles Brockden Brown: the first important American novelistWieland, Edgar Huntly, Ormond, Aurthur MervynChapter 2 Edwards, Franklin, Crevecoeur★the 18th century: Age of Reason and Enlightenment★Jonathan Edwards: America’s first systematic philosopherThe Freedom of the Will, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God★Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac熟悉37页的引文★Hector St. John de Crevecoeur: Letters from an American FarmerChapter 3 American Romanticism, Irving, Cooper★Washington Irving: the first American writer to win international acclaimThe Sketch Book: Rip V an Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow★James Fenimore Cooper: Leatherstocking Tales (五个故事的题目)Natty Bumpo (人物形象)Chapter 4 New England Transcendentalism, Emerson, Thoreau★Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature (the Bible and manifesto of New England Transcendentalism)The American Scholar (America’s Declaration of IntellectualIndependence)★Henry David Thoreau: Walden, or Life in the WoodsChapter 5 Hawthorne, Melville★Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter, Twice-Told Tales, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun, Young Goodman Brown★Herman Melville: Moby Dick, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, White Jacket, PierreChapter 6 Whitman, Dickinson★Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass; free verse; Song of Myself★Emily Dickinson: Of the 1775 poems, only 7 poems were published in her lifetime.熟悉教材中98至102页所选的诗歌Chapter 7 Edgar Allan Poe★Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher, The Philosophy of Composition, The Poetic Principle, The Raven，To Helen熟悉教材中107页所选的The Raven中的部分诗行Chapter 8 The Age of Realism, Howells, James★William Dean Howells: The Rise of Silas Lapham, Criticism and Fiction★Henry James: important writings listed on P. 125the international themeChapter 9 Local Colorism, Mark Twain★Hamlin Garland: Crumbling Idols, Veritism (真实主义)★Bret Harte: The Luck of Roaring Camp★Mark Twain: 主要作品, vernacular literature, colloquial style★Harriet Beecher Stowe 斯托夫人& her Uncle Tom’s Cabin《汤姆叔叔的小屋》★Louisa May Alcott 路易莎·梅·奥尔科特& her Little Women 《小妇人》★Kate Chopin 凯特·肖班& her The Awakening 《觉醒》Chapter 10 American Naturalism, Crane, Norris, Dreiser, Robinson★Stephen Crane: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (the first naturalistic novel in American literature), The Red Badge of Courage (the first anti-war novel in American literature),Famous short stories: The Open Boat, The Bride Comes to the Yellow Sky★Frank Norris: The Octopus, McTeague★Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, the Desire Trilogy, The Genius★Edwin Arlington Robinson: Richard Cory★Jack London: The Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Sea Wolf, Martin Eden★O. Henry (William Sidney Porter): famous for his short stories such as The Gift of the Magi★Upton Sinclair: The Jungle, the Muckraking MovementChapter 11 The 1920s, Imagism, Pound★The first American Renaissance: the first half of the 19th century★The second Renaissance: the 1920s★The three principles of the Imagist Poetry★熟悉四首意象派诗歌：In a Station of the Metro, Oread, The Red Wheelbarrow, Fog, 并会分析其中的第一和第四首★Ezra Pound: The Cantos, Hugh Selwyn MauberleyChapter 12 T. S. Eliot, Stevens, Williams★T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land （五个部分的题目）, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 其他主要作品founder of New Criticism: depersonalization, objective correlative★William Carlos Williams: PatersonChapter 13 Frost, Sandburg, Cummings, Hart Crane, Moore★Robert Frost: New England poet, lyrical poet, the unofficial poet laureate, won the Pulitzer Prize four timesThe Road Not Taken (熟悉此诗), Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,Mending Wall, Apple-picking <<摘苹果>>★Carl Sandburg: Fog, The Harbor (two famous Imagist poems)★ E. E. Cummings: the most interesting experimentalist in modern American poetry★Hart Crane: The BridgeChapter 14 Fitzgerald, Hemingway★F. Scott Fitzgerald: the spokesman of the Jazz AgeThe Great Gatsby★Ernest Hemingway: Hemingway hero with “grace under pressure”, the iceberg principle“I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn’t show. ”冰山运动之雄伟壮观，是因为它只有八分之一在水面上。