美国文学选读复习资料
the settlement of North American continent by English
started in the early 17th century. Under siege from church and crown, it sent an
offshoot in the third and fourth decades of the seventeenth century to the northern
English colonies in the New World—a migration that laid the foundation for the
religious, intellectual, and social order of New England. Puritanism, however was not
only a historically specific phenomenon coincident with the founding of New
Zealand; it was also a way of being in the world—a style of response to lived
experience—that has reverberated through American life ever since. As a culture
heritage, Puritanism did have a profound influence on the early American mind.
American Puritanism also had a enduring influence on American literature.
American Romanticism
The Romantic Period stretches from the end of the 18th \century through the
outbreak of the Civil War.
• Romanticism was a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism.
(subjectivity)
• For romantics, the feelings, intuitions and emotions were more important than
reason and common sense.
• They emphasized individualism, placing the individual against the group,
against authority.
• The affirmed the inner life of the self, and wanted to be free to develop and
express his own inner thoughts.
New England Poets: William Cullen Bryant; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow;
Writers: James Fenimaore Cooper The Spy (1821) The Leatherstocking Tales
(1823—1841)
The Pilot (1824) The Red Rover (1827)
Washington Irving（“The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Grayon” “Bracebridge
Hall”“Tales of a Traveller”“The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher
Columbus ”）
American Transcendentalism
In the realm of art and literature it meant the shattering of pseudo-classic rules and
forms in favor of a spirit of freedom, the creation of works filled with the new passion
for nature and common humanity and incarnating a fresh sense of the wonder,
promise, and romance of life.
Transcendentalism
① The Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most
important thing in the universe.
② The Transcendentalists stressed the importance of the individual. To them, the
individual is the most important element of Society.
③ The Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit
or God. Nature was not purely matter. It was alive, filled with God’s overwhelming
presence.
Writers
Emerson’s：Nature；Self-Reliance；The American Scholar；The Over-soul；
H. D. Thoreau：Walden
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Walt Whitman：Leaves of Grass Emily Dickinson：I Died for Beauty；Because I could
not stop for Death
William Faulkner(1897-1962 1949 Nobel price
As I Lay Dying (1930)
Light in the August ( 1932)
Absalom, Absalom (1936)
Go Down Moses (1942)
Ernest Hemingway
Iceberg Principle (Theory)
“grace under pressure”
Major Works:
The Sun Also Rises 1926 (Jake Barnes)
A Farewell to Arms 1928 (a tragic story about war and love) (Frederic Henry and
Catherine Barkley)
For Whom the Bell Tolls 1940 (Spanish civil war) (Robert Jordan)
The Old Man and the Sea 1952 (Santiago)
Herman Melville
代表作：白鲸Moby Dick Other Works are: Billy Budd,Typee, Omoo, Mardi.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter
Mosses from an Old Manse; Twice-Told Tales; The Marble Faun; The House of the
Seven Gables
Realism
As a literary movement, the Age of Realism came into existence after Romanticism
with the Civil War It was a reaction against “the lie” of Romanticism and
sentimentalism, and paved the way to Modernism.
This literary interest in the so-called “reality” of life started a new period in the
American literary writing known as The Age of Realism.
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 war.2>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 date.3>the three
best-known representatives of lost generation are F.Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and
John dos Passos.
American Dream
The is the idea held by many in the United States that through hard work, courage and determination one could achieve prosperity. These were values held by many early European settlers, and have been passed on to subsequent generations.
The term was first used by James Truslow Adams in his book The Epic of America. Puritanism
American Puritanism was practice and belief of Puritans. Puritans were the people who wanted to purify the Church of England and then were persecuted in England. They came to America for various reasons. But because they were a group of serious and religious people, they carried a code of value and a philosophy of life. To them, religion was the most important thing. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin, total depravity and limited atonement for God’s grace. They also believed in hard working, piety and sobriety. In a word, American Puritanism exerted great influences upon American thought and literature.
What is “stream-of-consciousness”?
Stream of consciousness is a term coined by William James in his The Principles of Psychology to describe the flow of thoughts of the waking mind. Now it is widely used in a literary context to describe the unspoken thoughts and feelings of the characters, without resorting(jiezhu) to objective description or conventional dialogue. It was adapted and developed by Joyce, V. Woolf, and others.The ability to represent the flux of a character’s thought, impressions, emotions, or reminiscences, often without logical sequence or syntax, marked a revolution in the form of novel at that time.
Era of Modernism（现代主义）
The years from 1910 to 1930 are often called the Era of Modernism, for there seems to have been in both Europe and America a strong awareness of some sort of “break” with the past. Movements in all the arts overlapped and succeeded one another with amazing speed. The new artists shared a desire to capture the complexity of modern life, to focus on the variety and confusion of the twentieth century by reshaping and sometimes discarding the ideas and habits of the nineteenth century. The Era of Modernism was indeed the era of the New.
美国文学选读复习资料
the settlement of North American continent by English
started in the early 17th century. Under siege from church and crown, it sent an
offshoot in the third and fourth decades of the seventeenth century to the northern
English colonies in the New World—a migration that laid the foundation for the
religious, intellectual, and social order of New England. Puritanism, however was not
only a historically specific phenomenon coincident with the founding of New
Zealand; it was also a way of being in the world—a style of response to lived
experience—that has reverberated through American life ever since. As a culture
heritage, Puritanism did have a profound influence on the early American mind.
American Puritanism also had a enduring influence on American literature.
American Romanticism
The Romantic Period stretches from the end of the 18th \century through the
outbreak of the Civil War.
• Romanticism was a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism.
(subjectivity)
• For romantics, the feelings, intuitions and emotions were more important than
reason and common sense.
• They emphasized individualism, placing the individual against the group,
against authority.
• The affirmed the inner life of the self, and wanted to be free to develop and
express his own inner thoughts.
New England Poets: William Cullen Bryant; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow;
Writers: James Fenimaore Cooper The Spy (1821) The Leatherstocking Tales
(1823—1841)
The Pilot (1824) The Red Rover (1827)
Washington Irving（“The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Grayon” “Bracebridge
Hall”“Tales of a Traveller”“The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher
Columbus ”）
American Transcendentalism
In the realm of art and literature it meant the shattering of pseudo-classic rules and
forms in favor of a spirit of freedom, the creation of works filled with the new passion
for nature and common humanity and incarnating a fresh sense of the wonder,
promise, and romance of life.
Transcendentalism
① The Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most
important thing in the universe.
② The Transcendentalists stressed the importance of the individual. To them, the
individual is the most important element of Society.
③ The Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit
or God. Nature was not purely matter. It was alive, filled with God’s overwhelming
presence.
Writers
Emerson’s：Nature；Self-Reliance；The American Scholar；The Over-soul；
H. D. Thoreau：Walden
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Walt Whitman：Leaves of Grass Emily Dickinson：I Died for Beauty；Because I could
not stop for Death
William Faulkner(1897-1962 1949 Nobel price
As I Lay Dying (1930)
Light in the August ( 1932)
Absalom, Absalom (1936)
Go Down Moses (1942)
Ernest Hemingway
Iceberg Principle (Theory)
“grace under pressure”
Major Works:
The Sun Also Rises 1926 (Jake Barnes)
A Farewell to Arms 1928 (a tragic story about war and love) (Frederic Henry and
Catherine Barkley)
For Whom the Bell Tolls 1940 (Spanish civil war) (Robert Jordan)
The Old Man and the Sea 1952 (Santiago)
Herman Melville
代表作：白鲸Moby Dick Other Works are: Billy Budd,Typee, Omoo, Mardi.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter
Mosses from an Old Manse; Twice-Told Tales; The Marble Faun; The House of the
Seven Gables
Realism
As a literary movement, the Age of Realism came into existence after Romanticism
with the Civil War It was a reaction against “the lie” of Romanticism and
sentimentalism, and paved the way to Modernism.
This literary interest in the so-called “reality” of life started a new period in the
American literary writing known as The Age of Realism.
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 war.2>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 date.3>the three
best-known representatives of lost generation are F.Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and
John dos Passos.
American Dream
The is the idea held by many in the United States that through hard work, courage and determination one could achieve prosperity. These were values held by many early European settlers, and have been passed on to subsequent generations.
The term was first used by James Truslow Adams in his book The Epic of America. Puritanism
American Puritanism was practice and belief of Puritans. Puritans were the people who wanted to purify the Church of England and then were persecuted in England. They came to America for various reasons. But because they were a group of serious and religious people, they carried a code of value and a philosophy of life. To them, religion was the most important thing. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin, total depravity and limited atonement for God’s grace. They also believed in hard working, piety and sobriety. In a word, American Puritanism exerted great influences upon American thought and literature.
What is “stream-of-consciousness”?
Stream of consciousness is a term coined by William James in his The Principles of Psychology to describe the flow of thoughts of the waking mind. Now it is widely used in a literary context to describe the unspoken thoughts and feelings of the characters, without resorting(jiezhu) to objective description or conventional dialogue. It was adapted and developed by Joyce, V. Woolf, and others.The ability to represent the flux of a character’s thought, impressions, emotions, or reminiscences, often without logical sequence or syntax, marked a revolution in the form of novel at that time.
Era of Modernism（现代主义）
The years from 1910 to 1930 are often called the Era of Modernism, for there seems to have been in both Europe and America a strong awareness of some sort of “break” with the past. Movements in all the arts overlapped and succeeded one another with amazing speed. The new artists shared a desire to capture the complexity of modern life, to focus on the variety and confusion of the twentieth century by reshaping and sometimes discarding the ideas and habits of the nineteenth century. The Era of Modernism was indeed the era of the New.