美国文学简史
复习资料
2016年12月23日
殖民时期及十八世纪美国文学thrift
美国浪漫主义早期
新英格兰超验主义
美国浪漫主义后期
美国现实主义文学
美国乡土文学
美国现代诗歌
美国现代小说
美国南方文学
美国现代戏剧
美国黑人文学
美国华裔文学
殖民时期及十八世纪美国文学
New England：Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, named by Captain John Smith
Puritanism
Doctrines of Puritanism：predestination（命运神定), original sin, total depravity (彻底的堕落), and limited atonement (有限的赎罪)from God’s grace
Puritans left Europe for America in order to prove that they were God’s chosen people wh
o would enjoy God’s blessings on earth and in Heaven. They felt that they were exiles under the special grace of God to establish a theocracy in the New World.
Style of writing：the style is fresh, simple and direct; the rhetoric is plain and honest；a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible
Puritans’ way of Life：hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety.
In Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter there is a good description of the Puritans’ life.
Main writers
William Bradford
Of Plymouth Plantation普利茅斯垦殖记
Thomas Paine
Common Sense 常识；American Crisis美国危机；The Rights of Man人权；The Age of Reason理性时代
Philip Freneau
The Rising Glory of America蒸蒸日上的美洲；The Wild Honeysuckle野金银花
Benjamin Franklin
Autobiography富兰克林自传
Thomas Jefferson
Draft the Declaration of Independence.
美国浪漫主义早期
Romanticism
Background of Romanticism：Economic boom and national optimism ；Favorable literary milieu: increasing number of magazines ；Foreign influences: the Romantic Movement in Europe.             
Characteristics of Romanticism：
A rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism.
Feelings, intuitions and emotions were more important for romantics than reason and common sense.
An emphasis on individualism; placing the individual against the group, against authority.
Stress on the close relationship between man and nature.
Fascination with the wild, the irregular, the indefinite, the remote, the mysterious, and the strange
Cherishing a strong interest in the past, especially the medieval.
Features of American Romanticism：
New experience in the American Romanticism.
The exotic landscape, the frontier life, the westward expansion, the myth of a New Garden of Eden in America, and the Puritan heritage, etc., these were all materials for an indigenous literature.
A deep influence from the American Puritanism.                                       
Different from their European counterparts, American romantics tended to moralize, to edify rather than to entertain.
The “newness” of the Americans as a nation.               
The Americans are different from the Europeans. Their ideals of individualism and political equality, and their dream that America was to be a new Garden of eden for man were distinctly American.
The New England Poets:Henry W. Longfellow-A Psalm of Life 人生礼赞
Main writers
Washington Irving
The Sketch Book (1819-1820)见闻札记;The Legend of Sleepy Hollow睡谷的传说
James Fenimore Cooper
Leather-stocking Tales皮裹腿故事集;The Pioneers 拓荒者;The Last of the Mohicans 最后一个莫希干人;The Prairie 大草原;The Pathfinder探路人;The Deerslayer猎鹿人
新英格兰超验主义Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism
as a way of knowing, believes that individuals can intuitively receive higher truths otherwise unavailable through common methods of knowing, thus transcending the limits of rationalism.  Some of its major concepts are:
It placed emphasis on spirit, or the Over-soul（超灵）, as the most important thing in the universe.
It emphasized the importance of the individual and believed that the individual was the most important element in society and that the ideal kind of individual was self-reliant and unselfish.

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