超验主义和美国文学
简析美国的超验主义及其对美国社会发展的影响
简析美国的超验主义及其对美国社会发展的影响【摘要】美国的超验主义是一种独特的哲学思潮，强调个人的直觉和灵感，追求超越理性认知的真理。
美国的超验主义传统源远流长，影响深远。
超验主义对美国文学的影响体现在作家们追求内心真实情感和个人体验的创作中。
在宗教和哲学领域，超验主义推崇个人灵性和直觉启示，对美国文化产生了积极影响。
在政治和社会方面，超验主义鼓励人们追求自由和平等，影响了美国的价值观和社会发展方向。
在艺术和文化领域，超验主义推崇个体的艺术表现和表达，丰富了美国的创作风格和文化底蕴。
超验主义对美国社会发展起到了积极的推动作用，促进了个体精神的自由发展和社会文化的多样性。
【关键词】超验主义、美国社会发展、美国文学、美国宗教、美国哲学、美国政治、美国社会、美国艺术、美国文化1. 引言1.1 定义超验主义超验主义是一种哲学和文学思潮，起源于19世纪美国。
这一思潮强调个人直觉和直觉知识的重要性，认为真理和智慧超越感官体验和逻辑推理。
超验主义者相信人类灵魂能够直接和神秘的层面联系，通过这种联系获取智慧和启示。
他们追求的是超越理性和经验的真实知识，通过直觉和感知来认识世界和自我。
在超验主义的世界观中，个人的内心和灵魂是最重要的，他们认为人类的灵魂具有无限的力量和智慧，可以直接与神秘的神性联系。
超验主义强调直觉和感知的重要性，认为通过深入的沉思和直觉体验，人类可以超越理性和经验的限制，接近真理和智慧的源泉。
超验主义是一种强调个人内在力量和直觉知识的哲学思潮，认为人类可以通过直觉和感知认识世界和自我，超越理性和经验的局限。
这种思想在19世纪美国的文学、宗教、哲学、政治、艺术和文化领域都有着深远的影响，对美国社会发展产生了重要的影响。
1.2 美国的超验主义传统美国的超验主义传统源自于19世纪初期的新英格兰地区，具有强烈的个人主义和反传统思想。
超验主义者强调个人直觉和经验，认为真理超越了理性和经验的限制。
他们主张通过直接体验自然和神秘领域来获取真知，反对社会规范和传统权威。
美国文学名词解释
American Puritanism清教主义: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the puritans. The Puritans were originally members of a division of the protestant church who wanted to purify their religious beliefs and practices. They accepted the doctrines of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God. American literature in the 17th century mostly consisted of Puritan literature. Puritanism had an enduring influence on American literature. It had become, to some extent, so much a state of mind, so much a part of national cultural atmosphere, rather than a set of tenets. Transcendentalism 超验主义: Transcendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early to middle 19th century. Transcendentalists spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society. It placed emphasis on spirit, or the Over soul, as the most important thing in the world. It stressed the importance of individual and offered a fresh perception nature ad symbolic of the spirit of God. Prominent transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thorough. American Naturalism自然主义: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. The naturalists attempt to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by environment and heredity. It emphasized that the world was amoral, the 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 naturalism pervaded the works of such American writers as Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser.American Naturalism(美国自然主义文学)：The American naturalists accepted the more negative interpretation of Darwin’s evolutionary theory and used it to account for the behavior of those characters in literary works who were regarded as more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes, their habits conditioned by social and economic naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic. It is no more than a gloomy philosophical approach to reality, or to human >Dreiser is a leading figure of his school.The Gilded Age镀金时代: the Gilded Age refers to the era of rapid economic and population growth in the United States during the post-Civil War and post-Reconstruction eras of the late 19th century. The term "Gilded Age" was coinedby Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their 1873 book, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Gilded Age is most famous for the creation of a modern industrial economy. The end of the Gilded Age coincided with the Panic of 1893, a deep depression. The depression lasted until 1897 and marked a major political realignment in the election of 1896. After that came the Progressive Era.The Lost Generation: The Lost Generation is a group of expatriate American writers residing primarily in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s. The group was given its name by the American writer Gertrude Stein, who used “a lost generation” to refer to expatriate Americans bitter about their World War I experiences and disillusioned with American society. Hemingway later used the phrase as an epigraph for his novel The Sun Also Rises. It consisted of many influential American writers, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Carlos Williams and Archibald MacLeish.The Lost Generation(迷惘的一代）：The lost generation is a term first used by Stein to describe the post-war I generation of American writers:men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the >full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literature to >the three best-known representatives of lost generation are Fitzgerald, Hemingway and John dos Passos.Tragedy: in general, a literary work in which the protagonist meets an unhappy or disastrous end. Unlike comedy, tragedy depicts the actions of a central character who is usually dignified or heroic. Through a series of events, this tragic hero is brought t o a final downfall. The causes of the tragic hero’s downfall vary. In traditional dramas, the cause can be fate, a flaw in character or an error in judgment. In modern dramas, where the tragic hero is often an ordinary individual, the causes range from moral or psychological weakness to the evils of society.Catch-22第22条军规: Catch-22 is a general critique of bureaucratic operation and reasoning. Resulting from its specific use in the book, the phrase "Catch-22" is common idiomatic usage meaning "a no-win situation" or "a double bind" of any type. The term was originally from Joseph Heller’s anti novel Catch-22.Beat Generation垮掉的一代: group of American writers of the 1950s whose writing expressed profound dissatisfaction with contemporary American society and endorsed an alternative set of values. The term sometimes is used to refer to those whoembraced the ideas of these writers. The Beat Generation's best-known figures were writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.The Beat Generation(垮掉的一代):The members of The Beat Generation were new bohemian libertines. Who engaged in a spontaneous, sometimes messy, > The Beat writers produced a body of written work controversial both for its advocacy of non-conformity and for its non-conforming > the major beat writings are Allen Ginsberg’s became the manifesto of The Beat Generation.Psychological Realism心理现实主义: it is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters’ thoughts and motivations. It places more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization and on the motives, and internal action which springs from and develops external action. In Psychological Realism, character and characterization are more than usually important. Henry James is considered a great master of psychological realism.Free Verse自由诗体: free verse is poetry that has an irregular rhythm and line length and that attempts to avoid any predetermined verse structure, instead, it uses the cadences of natural speech. While it alternates stressed and unstressed syllables as stricter verse form do, free verse dose so in a looser way. Walt Whitman’s poetry is an example of free verse.Confessional Poetry自白诗:it is a type of modern poetry in which poets speak with openness and frankness about their own lives, such as in poems about illness, sexuality and despondence. Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg and Theodore Roethke are the most important American poets.Imagism意象派: The 1920s saw a vigorous literary activity in America. In poetry there appeared a strong reaction against Victorian poetry. Imagists placed primary reliance on the use of precise, sharp images as a means of poetic expression and stressed precision in the choice of words, freedom in the choice of subject matter and form, and the use of colloquial language. Most of the imagist poets wrote in free verse, using such devices as assonance and alliteration rather than formal metrical schemes to give structure to their movement which had these as its aims is known in literary history as Imagism. Its prime mover was Ezra Pound. Imagism(意象主义)：Imagism came into being in Britain and around 1910 as a reaction to the traditional English poetry to express the sense of fragmentation and >the imagists, with Ezra Pound leading the way, hold that the most effective means to express these momentary impressions is through the use of one dominant >imagism ischaracterized by the following three poetic principles: treatment of subject matter; of expression;C. as regards rhythm ,to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome. 4> pound’s In a Station of the Metro is a well-known inagist poem.Black Humor: the use of morbid and the absurd for darkly comic purposes in modern fiction and drama. The term refers as much to the tone of anger and bitterness as it does to the grotesque and morbid situations, which often deal with suffering, anxiety, and death. Black humor is a substantial element in the Anti-novel and the Theatre of Absurd. Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is an almost archetypal example. Irony: a contrast or an incongruity between what is stated and what is really meant, or between what is expected to happen and what actually happens in drama and literature. There are types of irony: verbal irony, dramatic irony and irony of situation. Irony of situation typically takes the form of a discrepancy between appearance and reality, or between what a character expects and what actually happens. Both verbal and irony of situation share the suggestion of a concealed truth conflicting with surface appearances.Allusion: A reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a writer expects the reader to recognize and respond to. An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion.Satire讽刺: A kind of writing that holds up to ridicule or contempt the weaknesses and wrongdoings of individuals, groups, institutions, or humanity in general. The aim of satirists is to set a moral standard for society, and they attempt to persuade the reader to see their point of view through the force of laughter.Symbol: A symbol is a sign which suggests more than its literal meaning. In other words, a symbol is both literal and figurative. 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. If the symbol is obscure or ambiguous, then the very obscurity and the ambiguity may also be part of the meaning of the story. Symbolism: Symbolism is the writing technique of using symbols. It’s a literary movement that arose in France in the last half of the 19th century and that greatly influenced many English writers, particularly poets, of the 20th century. It enables poets to compress a very complex idea or set of ideas into one image or even one word. It’s one of the most powerful devices that poets employ in creation.Stream of consciousness(意识流)(or interior monologue);In literary criticism, Stream of consciousnes s denotes a literary technique which seeks to describe an individual’s point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character’s thought processes. Stream of consciousness writing is strongly associated with the modernist movement. Its introduction in the literary context, transferred from psychology, is attributed to May Sinclair. Stream of consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative leaps in syntax and punctuation that can m ake the prose difficult to follow,tracing as they do a character’s fragmentary thoughts and sensory writers to employ this technique in the english language include James Joyce and William Faulkner.American realism ：（美国现实主义）Realism was a reaction against Romanticism and paved the way to Modernism; 2).During this period a new generation of writers, dissatisfied with the Romantic ideas in the older generation, came up with a new inspiration. This new attitude was characterized by a great interest in the realities of life. It aimed at the interpretation of the realities of any aspect of life, free from subjective prejudice, idealism, or romantic color. Instead of thinking about the mysteries of life and death and heroic individualism, people’s attention was n ow directed to the interesting features of everyday existence, to what was brutal or sordid, and to the open portayal of class struggle;3) so writers began to describe the integrity of human characters reacting under various circumstances and picture the pioneers of the far west, the new immigrants and the struggles of the working class; 4) Mark Twain Howells and Henry James are three leading figures of the American Realism.Local Colorism(乡土文学)：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.A J azz age(爵士时代):The Jazz Age describes the period of the 1920s and 1930s, the years between world war I and world war II. Particularly in north America. With the rise of the great depression, the values of this age saw much decline. Perhaps the most representative literary work of the age is American writer Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.Highlighting what some describe as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individu alism. Fitzgerald is largely credited with coining the term” Jazz Age”. Feminism(女权主义): Feminisim incorporates both a doctrine of equal rights for women and an ideology of social transformation aiming to create a world for women beyond simple social >in ge neral, feminism is ideology of women’s liberation based on the belief that women suffer injustice because of their sex. Under this broad umbrella various feminisms offer differing analyses of the causes, or agents, of female > definitions of feminism by feminists tend to be shaped by their training, ideology or race. So, for example, Marxist and socialist feminists stress the interaction within feminism of class with gender and focus on social distinctions between men and women. Black feminists argue much more for an integrated analysis which can unlock the multiple systems of oppression. Hemingway Code Hero(海明威式英雄): Hemingway Code Hero ,also called code hero, is one who, wounded but strong more sentitive, enjoys the pleasures of life( sex, alcohol, sport) in face of ruin and death, and maintains, through some notion of a code, an ideal of > barnes in the sun also Rises, henry in a Farewell to arms and santiago in the old man and the sea are typical of Hemingway Code HeroImpressionism(印象主义):Impressionism is a style of painting that gives the impression made by the subject on the artist without much attention to details. Writers accepted the same conviction that the personal attitudes and moods of the writer were legitimate elements in depicting character or setting or >briefly, it is a style of literature characterized by the creation of general impressions and moods rather that realistic mood.Modernism(现代主义)：Modernism is comprehensive but vague term for a movement , which begin in the late 19th century and which has had a wide influence internationally during much of the 20th > modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical > the term pertains to all the creative arts. Especially poetry, fiction, drama, painting,music and > in england from early in the 20th century and during the 1920s and 1930s, in America from shortly before the first world war and on during the inter-war period, modernist tendencies were at their most active and >as far as literature is concerned, Modernism reveals a breaking away from established rules, traditions and ways of looking at man’s position and function in the universe and many experiments in form and is particularly concerned with language and how to use it and with writing itself.the gilded age: Plains Indians were pushed in a series of Indian wars onto restrictedperiod also witnessed the creation of a modern industrial economy. A national transportation and communication network was created, the corporation became the dominant form of business organization, and a managerial revolution transformed business operations. By the beginning of the twentieth century, per capita income and industrial production in the United States exceeded that of any other country except Britain. Long hours and hazardous working conditions, led many workers to attempt to form labor unions despite strong opposition from industrialists and the era of intense political partisanship, the Gilded Age was also an era of reform. The Civil Service Act sought to curb government corruption by requiring applicants for certain governmental jobs to take a competitive examination. The Interstate Commerce Act sought to end discrimination by railroads against small shippers and the Sherman Antitrust Act outlawed business monopolies. These years also saw the rise of the Populist crusade. Burdened by heavy debts and falling farm prices, many farmers joined the Populist party, which called for an increase in the amount of money in circulation, government assistance to help farmers repay loans, tariff reductions, and a graduated income Twain called the late nineteenth century the "Gilded Age." By this, he meant that the period was glittering on the surface but corrupt underneath. In the popular view, the late nineteenth century was a period of greed and guile: of rapacious Robber Barons, unscrupulous speculators, and corporate buccaneers, of shady business practices, scandal-plagued politics, and vulgar display. It is easy to caricature the Gilded Age as an era of corruption, conspicuous consumption, and unfettered capitalism. But it is more useful to think of this as modern America’s formative period, when an agrarian society of small producers was transformed into an urban society dominated by industrial corporations.Regionalism(地区主义)：In literature, regionalism or local color fiction refers to fiction or poetry that focuses on specific features –including characters, dialects, customs, history, and topography – of a particular region. Since the region may be a recreation or reflection of the author's own, there is often nostalgia and sentimentality in the the terms regionalism and local color are sometimes used interchangeably, regionalism generally has broader connotations. Whereas local color is often applied to a specific literary mode that flourished in the late 19th century, regionalism implies a recognition from the colonial period to the present of differences among specific areas of the country. Additionally, regionalism refers to an intellectual movement encompassing regional consciousness beginning in the 1930s. Even though there isevidence of regional awareness in early southern writing—William Byrd's History of the Dividing Line, for example, points out southern characteristics—not until well into the 19th century did regional considerations begin to overshadow national ones. In the South the regional concern became more and more evident in essays and fiction exploring and often defending the southern way of life. John Pendleton Kennedy's fictional sketches in Swallow Barn, for example, examined southern plantation life at length.multiple points of view（多视角）：Multiple Point of View: It is one of the literary techniques William Faulkner used, which shows within the same story how the characters reacted differently to the same person or the same situation. The use of this technique gave the story a circular form wherein one event was the center, with various points of view radiating from it. The multiple points of view technique makes the reader recognize the difficulty of arriving at a true judgment.Confessional poetry ：Confessional poetry emphasizes the intimate, and sometimes unflattering, information about details of the poet's personal life, such as in poems about illness, sexuality, and despondence. The confessionalist label was applied to a number of poets of the 1950s and 1960s. John Berryman, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, and William De Witt Snodgrass have all been called 'Confessional Poets'. As fresh and different as the work of these poets appeared at the time, it is also true that several poets prominent in the canon of Western literature, perhaps most notably Sextus Propertius and Petrarch, could easily share the label of "confessional" with the confessional poets of the fifties and sixties. Ecocriticism：Ecocriticism is the study of literature and environment from an interdisciplinary point of view where all sciences come together to analyze the environment and brainstorm possible solutions for the correction of the contemporary environmental situation. Ecocriticism was officially heralded by the publication of two seminal works, both published in the mid-1990s: The Ecocriticism Reader, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, and The Environmental Imagination, by Lawrence the United States, Ecocriticism is often associated with the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), which hosts biennial meetings for scholars who deal with environmental matters in literature. ASLE has an official journal—Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE)—in which much of the most current American scholarship in the rapidly evolving field of ecocriticism can be is an intentionally broad approach that is known by a number of other designations, including "green (cultural) studies", "ecopoetics", and "environmental literarycriticism".Dramatic Conflict：At least not the special kind of conflict that drives plays, the gas that fuels the dramatic engine. Arguments in real life are usually circular -- nobody gets anywhere, except a little steam's been blown off. And they're boring for everyone except the folks doing the Conflict draws from a much deeper vein, rooted in the Subtext of your central characters. It's driven by fundamentally opposing is a necessary element of fictional literature. It is defined as the problem in any piece of literature and is often classified according to the nature of the protagonist or antagonist。
美国文学名词解释
1. Transcendentalism—it is a philosophic and literary movement that flourish in New England, as a reaction against rationalism and Calvinism. It stressed intuitive understanding of god without the help of the church, and advocated independence of the mind. 超验主义，它是一个蓬勃发展的新英格兰的哲学和文学运动，反对理性主义和加尔文主义的反应。
它强调直观地了解上帝没有教会的帮助下，主张心灵的独立性。
2. Romanticism had appeared in England in the last years of the eighteenth century. It spread to conti nental Europe and then came to America early in the nineteenth century. It came into being as a re action against the prevailing neoclassical spirit and rationalism during the Age of Reason. 浪漫主义曾经出现在英国，在过去几年的十八世纪。
它蔓延到欧洲大陆，然后来到美国在十九世纪初。
它应运而生作为理性的时代中针对当时新古典主义精神和理性的反应。
3. Puritanism—it is the religious belief of the Puritans, who had intended to purify and simplify the religious ritual of the Church of England. 清教主义，它是清教徒，谁曾打算净化和简化英国教会的宗教礼仪的宗教信仰。
美国浪漫主义 超验主义
美国浪漫主义时期是指开始于十八世纪末，到内战爆发为止这一段是美国文学史上最重要的时期。
浪漫主义文学的基本特征：强烈的主观色彩，偏爱表现主观思想，注重抒发个人的感受和体验。
重主观，轻客观和重自我表现，轻客观模仿。
喜欢描写和歌颂大自然。
（尤为突出）作者们喜欢将自己的理解人物置身于纯朴宁静的大自然中，衬托现实社会的丑恶及自身理解的美好。
重视中世纪民间文学。
想象比较丰富、感情真挚、表达自由、语言朴素自然。
注重艺术效果。
美国浪漫主义文学的代表人物有惠特曼、霍桑、华盛顿·欧文等浪漫主义时期开始于十八世纪末,到内战爆发为止,是美国文学史上最重要的时期。
华盛顿·欧文出版的《见闻札记》标志着美国浪漫主义文学的开端,惠特曼的《草叶集》是浪漫主义时期文学的压卷之作。
浪漫主义时期的文学是美国文学的繁荣时期,所以也称为"美国的文艺复兴。
美国社会的发展哺育了"一个伟大民族的文学"。
年轻的美国没有历史的沉重包袱,很快在政治、经济和文化方面成长为一个独立的国家。
这一时期也是美国历史上西部扩张时期,到1860年领土已开拓到太平洋西岸。
到十九世纪中叶,美国已由原来的十三个州扩大到二十一个州,人口从1790年的四百万增至1860年的三千万。
在经济上,年轻的美国经历向工业的转化,影响所及不仅仅是城市,而且也包括农村。
蒸汽动力在工、农业生产上的运用、工厂的建立、劳动力的大量需求以及科技上的发明创造使经济生活得到了重组。
另外,大量移民促进了工业更加蓬勃的发展。
政治上,民主与平等成为这个年轻国家的理想,产生了两党制。
值得一提的是这个国家的文学和文化生活。
随着独立的美国政府的成立,美国人民已感到需要有美国文学,表达美国人民所特有的经历:早期清教徒的殖民, 与印第安人的遭遇,边疆开发者的生活以及西部荒原等。
这个年轻国家的文学富有想象,已产生了一种文学环境。
报刊杂志如雨后春笋,出现了一大批文学读者,形成了十九世纪上半叶蓬勃的浪漫主义的文学思潮。
美国文学中的几个主义
美国文学中的几个主义清教主义： Puritanism 代表人物： Anna Bradstreet ，Benjamin Franklin ，Thomas Paine ，Thomas Jefferson浪漫主义： Romanticism 代表人物：Washington Irving ，Edgar Allan PoeA超验主义：Transcendentalism ；代表人物：Ralph Waldo Emerson ，Emily Dickinson ，Walt Whitman自然主义：Naturalism ；代表人物：Henry D. Thoreau意向主义：Imagism ；代表人物：Ezra Pound心理现实主义：psychological realism ；代表人物：Henry James一清教主义对美国文学的影响清教徒文学传统形成于17世纪，清教主义与其它宗教相比,包含三个层面的价值体系,并对不同时期的美国文学产生了不同的影响,表现出不同时代特征,以清教主义作为参照系,可以说17世纪美国文学是“信仰时代的文学”,18世纪美国文学是“世俗时代的文学”,19世纪美国文学则可称为“宗教批判与宗教道德时代的文学”。
发端于英国的清教主义对美国社会有着更大的影响,“英格兰有过清教革命,却没有创建清教社会;美国没有经历清教革命,却创建了清教社会”①。
并且这种影响以其持久深厚而铸就了美利坚民族的灵魂。
正如朱世达先生所言:“清教传统像一条红线规范了从殖民时代到如今的美国的政治文化与社会文化”②。
作为美国文化一个独特的源头,清教主义在美国经历了由表及里、由明转暗的曲折发展,最终形成有美国特色的清教价值体系,从某种意义上说,文学是这一发展历程的最好见证。
一般而言,宗教都包含信仰与道德两个层面的价值体系。
清教主义的传播和渗入伴随着早期的移民拓荒、定居北美的整个过程。
作为一种教义 ,清教主义不再具有原有的意义 ,但它对新英格兰乃至整个美国由来已久的影响 ,却在美国形成了一种特殊的文化氛围 ,不仅与美国人性格中的个人主义有联系 ,对美国文学的发展和特点也起着重要作用。
美国文学特点
美国文学史的发展随着美国历史的发展，而在各个时期产生了不同的文学作品。
在殖民地时期，他们的作品一方面描述了发现新大陆和探索文学作品。
另一发面是清教作品。
清教作品是主要反映他们的自我的精神。
而随后代浪漫主义时期文学，他们以美国人为中心，描绘本土风情，反映美国的自身问题。
主要反映自由，拓展和个人主义精神。
随后到来的超验主义以爱默生为代表。
超验主义提倡崇高，谨慎，社会改革和教育，个人主义胜于传统和社会的原则。
但由于战争的影响，这个时期的作品主要是揭露社会的阴暗面。
这些文学作品带有浓厚的本土色彩和批判现实主义。
随着战争的爆发，美国文学也进入了现代主义时期。
现代主义文学作品在形式和内容上都有了很大的改革。
The development of American literature as American history of development, and in various periods produces different literary works. In colonial times, their works on the one hand describes from discovering the new continent and explore literature. Another charges Puritan work is. The Puritan work is mainly reflect their own spirit. And then the generation of romanticism in American literature, their artificial center, depicting local amorous feelings, reflect America's own problem. Mainly reflects the freedom, expanding and individualism spirit. Then coming transcendence represented by Emerson. Transcendence sublime, cautious, advocated social reform and education, individualism is better than the traditional and social principles. But because the war is this period, the influence of the main works are exposing the social anybody. These literary works with strong local color and critical realism. With the outbreak of the war, American literature has entered the modern socialist period. The modernist literature works in form and content had the very big reform.摘要：20世纪为美国文学的空前繁荣和发展提供了充分的时间和空间，该文从背景，美国文学创作主题，社会文化和思想等反面展示了20世纪美国文学发展的主体特征——多元化。
美国文学第5周超验主义
The Summit of American Romanticism
Transcendentalism
• (1) • (2) • (3) • (4)
Definition Features Influences Representatives
Emerson’s Point of View
“the infinitude of man” firmly believes in the transcendence of the “ oversoul ” regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803----1882)
~~went to Europe, and met Coleridge, Carlyle and Wordsworth and made friends with them, and brought back the influence of European Romanticism.
2.regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man ~~Nature as symbolic of God. ~~In the eyes of Emerson, “nature is the vehicle of thought,” and “particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts”. Thus everything bears a secondary and an ulterior隐秘的 sense. A flowing river indicates the ceaseless motion of the universe. The seasons correspond to the life span of man. The ant is the image of man himself, small in body but mighty in heart.
南开大学 外国语学院 美国文学课件 美国文学史4(超验主义)
Important terms (1)
Although transcendentalism was never a rigorously systematic philosophy, it had some basic tenets that were generally shared by its adherents. The beliefs that God is immanent in each person and in nature每人都有内在的神性 and that individual intuition is the highest source of knowledge led to an optimistic emphasis on individualism, self-reliance, and rejection of traditional authority.
社会和谐发展。
Important terms (3)
American Renaissance : The name is given to a flourishing of distinctively American literature in the period before the Civil War. This renaissance is represented by the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, H. D. Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman.
Important terms (2)
Individualism claims the ability to oppose "authority" 宣扬有能力与“权威”对抗, and to all manner of controls over the individual 反对一 切压抑个人的支配行为, especially when exercised by the political state or "society". It is thus directly opposed to collectivism 集体 主义, social psychology and sociology, which consider the individual's rapport to the society or community集体主义强调个人应注意与
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超验主义和美国文学
摘要：美国超验主义出现在美国浪漫主义时期的中后期，以爱默生和梭罗为代表，他们的思想彻底改变了美国文学，激励了美国的文学和文化发展，意义深远。
关键词：爱默生超验主义美国文学
中图分类号：g64 文献标识码：a 文章编号：1673-9795（2012）09（b）-0155-01
发生在19世纪的美国浪漫主义时期文学一直被美国学者们认为是美国本土文化诞生和成长的重要时期，也是自美国国家政治独立以后，美国国家精神、文化领域从欧洲地区的母体中分离而独自发展的重要时期。
在这个特别的时代里，超验主义思想出现了，它成为美国人精神领域真正意义上的独立宣言。
超验主义的代表作家爱默生和梭罗，他们热爱心灵和大自然的和谐统一，主张自助精神，非常看中精神生活，他们倡导的这些思想帮助美国人冲破了多年来依赖外国思想的束缚，树立了美国国民的自信心，最重要的是，这些思想造就了美国文学。
1 美国超验主义思想
谈到超验主义，先从定义说起。
从哲学上说，超验主义是“对人类直觉认识能力的认知，或者说是人类越过感官而得到知识的能力的认知”。
美国超验主义思想家、作家爱默生于1803年出生在美国波士顿的教会牧师家。
他于1882年离开人世。
在17岁的时候就从哈佛大学毕业。
在1826年他成功获得进入哈佛神学院的机会，
第二年，他就被获得讲道资格。
1828年，他荣任波士顿地区第二教堂的牧师，这在当时属于新英格兰地区具有优势的唯一的神教派。
但是后来由于不赞同这个教派的一些教义，爱默生离开神职，并在1833年开始到欧洲游历，他拜访了许多当时浪漫主义时期欧洲的伟大人物，与他们成为好朋友，并在哲学方面受到康德思想的影响。
回到美国以后，爱默生在1836年出版了著名的《论自然》，这本书中囊括了他一生重要思想的胚芽。
在1837年，爱默生参加美国当时的大学生联谊会，发表了重要演讲《论美国学者》，文中着重论述了人的价值，人本位思想；引出学习者的责任是有自由而且要敢于寻找并展示真理，从而鼓舞人、勉励人；他宣扬民族自尊心，反对过去美国一惯地追随外国的学说。
爱默生的这个演讲在当时的美国轰动全国，激发了美国人民对美国民族文化的热爱情感。
接下来，爱默生在1838年到剑桥大学的神学院发表了题为《神学院致辞》的讲演，立刻遭到来自新英格兰加尔文教派、唯一种教派等势力的抵抗和抨击。
在爱默生的观念中，他保留了前人思想积极成分，比如唯一神教中关于人的价值的理论，还有康德的哲学思想，同时，爱默生发展了这些思想，形成了超验主义思想。
超验主义的基本思想是要反对权威，崇拜直觉，尊重个性解放，冲破过去思想的束缚和外国教条的禁锢，在美国建立新的民族文化，集中体现出现代的美国精神。
爱默生和他的学生梭罗为新思想的传播在美国努力奔走着，但在当时还是有很多人无法立即接受新思想，但是随着时间的推移，
新思想被越来越多的人了解和理解，最后逐步成为当时美国的主流思想。
超验主义思想主要体现在三个大的方面：第一，超验主义认为精神的力量是第一位的，这是整个宇宙中最重要的因素。
第二，超验主义提倡用全新的目光去审视自然，他们认为自然才是精神的象征，自然是对人类最神圣和纯洁的思想，主张人们用自己的直觉去感受自然界中无处不在的上帝。
第三，美国超验主义认为个人的重要性是第一位的。
这个社会中最重要的组成因素是个人，通过个人的修养完善才能实现社会的革新。
所以我们每个人最主要的任务和责任是自我完备，而不是过去崇尚的只追求物质富贵。
2 超验主义与美国文学
美国的超验主义思想帮助美国文学由原先地依赖国外逐渐走向独立。
美国文学是美国本土文化形成的一个重要证明。
爱默生是超验主义的缔造者，同时也是美国本国文化独立的积极推动者，他最大的功绩就在于他在美国文学上的贡献，也就是他对于美国民族文学的影响。
他是第一个提出精神至上，冲破以往以神为中心的古老思想，认定人只要凭借自己的直觉是可以认识真理的，所以在一定程度上可以说人就是上帝本身，这个思想不仅仅肯定了人的作用，同时它强调了人的价值。
爱默生还主张解放个性，挑战权威。
爱默生认为，学习国外的思想理念模式肯定有必要，有益处，但是，不能一味的，毫无改变地，盲目跟风似的追随，那样做会成为了另一个模式，总之不会自己，从而失去了美国民族文化的根本，坚持自
己比一切都重要。
他在另一篇文章《论自然》中提到，“一定要坚持自己的东西，而不是一味模仿别人。
”这种思想逐渐被人们广为接受，并将当时的美国，政治和经济上完全独立的美国，在文化和精神上从欧洲大陆的文化束缚中彻底解脱出来，使美国文学从此以一个独立的形象屹立在世界。
爱默生还劝告学者们，要摒弃学究气，放弃纯粹的摹仿和信从。
他的言论被当时美国的学者们视为“美国思想的独立宣言”。
爱默生谈到美国文学独立的必要性和必然性，他说：“我们依赖于人的日子，我们心智向其他大陆智慧学习的学徒期，该结束了。
成百万簇拥着我们涌向生活的同胞，他们不可能永远的满于食用外国智慧收获的陈粮。
全新的事件和行为在发生中，这一切都需要被歌唱，它们自己也要歌唱自己。
”在爱默生的眼中，美国，美国民族，应当自立，自立在世界之上，要实现这个目标，需要做到的是自助自立。
而这其中有两方面是非常重要的，第一是不要去一味“迎合”，要考虑到自己国家的实际情况，具体问题具体分析，学会变通；第二，要实现这个目标，需要相信世界上的每个人都是有他的优势和伟大之处的，要善于发现和挖掘自身的伟大潜力。
过去的效仿就是在迷失自我，应该做的是把注意力放在当下，臣服于当下，比任何时候都要相信自己的直觉。
超验主义思想在当时将浪漫时期的美国文学彻底推向高潮，涌现出大批突出美国个性和独立的美国作家，美国文学真正意义上独立起来。
爱默生和梭罗号召人们相信“直觉”，不再依赖任何人和
固有的文化知识，提倡个性发展。
爱默生还认为美的真正目的，不是模仿，而是创造。
他特别主张在文学作品中用“目前的、平凡的、低贱的”新题材，主张美国文学民族化，独立化。
“我们要用自己的脚走路，我们要用自己的手工作，我们要发表自己的意见”。
这些思想真实地反映了当时美国大众追求民族文化和文学的强烈愿望，而且还集中表达了美国人想要冲破传统束缚、解放思想的进步立场。
爱默生的思想对于美国民族文学和文化的发展起到了非常积极的推动作用。
总而言之，爱默生发起和倡导的超验主义思想，以美国精神独立宣言的身份，对美国文学的影响深远广泛。
最重要的成就是塑造了独立的美国文学。