美国文学史
美国文学史
一.知识点
1.清教主义代表人物:Edwards Franklin
2.富兰克林的作品:《Poor Richard’s Almanac》《Autobiography》
3.富兰克林自传中的十三个美德:Temperance(节制)silence (少言) order(秩序) frugality (节俭)Industry(勤勉) sincerity (真诚) resolution(决心)justice (公正)
moderation (中庸)cleanliness(整洁)chastity(镇定) tranquility(节欲)humility(谦逊)
This work is a puritan document. It is puritan because it is a record of self-examination and
self-improvement.
4.富兰克林作品中的谚语:lost time is never found again. A penny saved is a penny earned.
God help them that help themselves. Fish and visitors stink in three days. Early to bed,
early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
5.美国浪漫主义代表人物:Irving Cooper
6.Irving was the first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame.His
works are《The Sketch Book》《Rip Van Winkle》《The Legend of Sleepy Hollow》
7. Cooper’s claim to greatness in American literature lies in the fact that he created a myth about
the formative period of the American nation. “Leatherstocking tales” is a series of five novels
described the frontier life of American settlers, that is, 《The Pioneers》《The Last of the
Mohicans》《The Prairie》《The pathfinder》《The Deerslayer》
8. Emerson 的代表作《Nature》. “The American Scholar” has been regarded as the American’s
declaration of intellectual independence.
9.Thoreau的代表作《Walden》
10.美国黑色浪漫主义代表人物:Hawthorne Melville Allan Poe
11.Whitman的作品《Leaves of Grass》《Song of Myself》. 用来赞扬林肯的诗歌“When Lilacs
Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”“Captain, My Captain”
12.Dickinson的诗歌“My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close”“Wild Nights”. Dickinson was
original. She sees nature as both gaily benevolent and cruel. On the ethical level she emphasizes
free will and human responsibility. Like Emerson, she holds that beauty, goodness, truth are the
ultimately one. She is good at catching the charm of something but dropping the thing itself.
13. Allan Poe: Father of modern short story;
Father of detective story;
Father of psychoanalytic criticism;
Father of mental analytic theory.
14. Local Colorism的代表人物:Mark Twain
15.Naturalism 时期:
Crane的作品:《Maggie:A Girl of the Street》《The Red Badge of Courage》
Dreiser的作品:《Sister Carrie》
Jack London;O’Henry
16. Imagism 的代表人物:Pound他的作品“In a Station of the Metro”(has been regarded as
a classic specimen of imagist poetry) “Cantos”(has been called his intellectual diary since
1915).
17. Eliot 的作品《The Waste Land》
18. Robert Frost的作品“Mending Wall”这里的名言是good fences make good neighbors.
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”“The Road not Taken”
19. Fitzgerald的作品《This Side of Paradise》《Tender is the Night》《The Last Tycoon》《The Great
Gatsby》(代表作)
二.名词解释
1. American puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of puritans. The puritans are
originally members of a division of the protestant church who wanted to purify their religious
beliefs and practices. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin, total depravity
and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from god. It had become, to some
extent, so much a sense of mind, so much a part of national cultural background, rather than a
set of tenets.
2. Transcendentalism: it was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture and philosophy
that emerged in newEngland in the early middle 19th century. Transcendentalists spoke for
cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism in American society. It place emphasis on
spirit, or the over soul as the most important thing in the world. It stressed the importance of
the individual and offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the spirit or god.
Prominent transcendentalists included Edwards and Thoreau.
3. Local Colorism: Mark Twain was the representative of local colorism. It as a trend became
dominant in American literature in the late 1860s and early 1870s, it is defined by Hamlin
Garland as having such quality of texture and background that it could not have been written
in any other place or by anyone else than a native, as local colorists tried to immortalize the
distinctive natural, social and linguistic features. It is characteristic of vernacular language and
satirical humor. 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.
4. Imagism: 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 oral 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 poetry. Its representative was Pound.
5. Modernsim: American modernism was the phenomenon of international modernism
transplanted in the American context. The modernists have a more complex view of reality.
They believe that reality is experienced from different perspectives and at different levels.
Modernism is pluralistic in styles and inclusive of diverse responses to the human condition in
the modern world.
6. The Lost Generation: it is a term used to characterize a general feeling of disillusionment of
American literary notables who lived in Europe, most notably Paris, after the First World
War.Figures identified with the lost generation included authors and artists such as Hemingway,
Fitzgerald, Pound and SherwoodAnderson.
三.解答题
1.超验主义三大特点。
First,the transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the over soul as the most important thing
in the world. Secondly, transcendentalists stressed the importance of the individual; to them
the individual was the most important element of society. Thirdly, the transcendentalists
offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the spirit or god.
2.霍桑的三部作品。
《The House of the Seven Gables》《The Marble Fawn》《The Scarlet Letter》“Young Goodman
Brown”“The Minister’s Black Veil”“The Birthmark”
3.爱伦坡的五部作品。
《The Cask of Amontillado》《The Fall of the House of Usher》《Legeia》《The Murders in the Rue
Morgue》《Black Cat》《The Raven》made Poe famous as a poet.
4.马克吐温的五部作品。
《The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn》(代表作,这个作品被称为现代文学之父) 《The Adventures of Tom Sawyer》《Life on the Mississippi》《Autobiography》
《A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court》《The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg》《The
Mysterious Stranger》
5.海明威的五部作品。
《The Sun Also Rises》《The Torrents of Spring》《In Our Time》《The Fifth Column》《A Farewell
to Arms》《For Whom the Bell Tolls》《The Old Man and the Sea》(代表作)
6.爱伦坡的诗歌理论。
The poem should be short, concise and readable at one sitting.
The aim of poem writing is beauty; the most beautiful thing described by a poem is the death of a
beautiful woman; the desirable tone of a poem is melancholy(忧郁的).
He opposed didactic(说教的) poems.
He stressed the form of poem, especially the beautiful and neat rhyme.
7.爱伦坡的短篇小说理论。
The short story must be such length as to be read at one sitting, so as to ensure the totality of
impression.
The very first sentence ought to help to bring out the “single effect”of the story.
No word should be used which does not contribute to the “pre-established” design of the work.
A tale should reveal some logical with “the fullest satisfaction” and should end with the last
sentence, leaving a sense of finality with the reader.
8.米尔维尔的《白鲸》中的象征主义。
The voyage itself is a metaphor for “search and discovery, the search for the ultimate truth of
experience.”
The Pequod is the ship of the American soul, and the endeavor of its crew represents “the crazy
fanaticism of our white mental consciousness.”
Moby Dick, the white whale is capable of many interpretations. It is a symbol of evil to some, one
of goodness to others, and of both to still others. Its whiteness signifies death and corruption as
well as purity, innocence and youth. It represents the final mystery of the universe which man
will do well to desist from pursuing.
四.论述题
1.《了不起的盖茨比》中的美国梦。
2.海明威作品的主题(硬汉精神)。
《The Great Gatsby》 about the American dream
It is well-known to most of us that describes the life and death of Jay Gatsby. I have learned a lot from this novel, especially the symbolic of the American dream.
Gatsby is a poor youth 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 named Tom. Determined to win his lost love back, Gatsby tried to earn money through breaking the law. He became very rich and bought a very big house against Daisy’s house. He often holds big parties every weekend so as to attract Daisy to come. This finally comes true, but unfortunately, when she killed a woman in an accident, and plotted with Tom to shift the blame on Gatsby. At last, Gatsby is shot and Daisy escapes.
From this novel, we can see the pursuing as well as failing of Gatsby’s dream. On the one hand, Gatsby seeks for his dream, both money and love. He holds that once he got money, Daisy would come back to him and the past can be recovered. This is a symbol of American experience up to the first few decades of the 20th century. At that time, American had been fresh and new, they believe that as long as they work hard, they can have a good life and bright future. But on the other hand, time is changing. He comes a long way, and his dream seems so close that is hardly to fail to grasp. He does not know what was already behind him. He does not succeed and in the end he is killed almost by accident because of his determination to shield Daisy from disgrace(耻辱). All these clearly denote the vanishing of the great expectations which the first settlement of the American continent had inspired. The hope is going; despair and doom have set in.
In a word, from the point of my view, I do reckon that only becoming rich is not far enough. We should also place emphasis on enriching our spirit. Just as the sentence from this novel“stretch out our arms further, then a fine morning will come, so we beat on, both against the current ”.
The theme of Hemingway’s works
It is well-known to all of us that Hemingway is a very famous American writer around the world. Most of his works share a common theme, that is, the code hero. They are such people who always preserve a sense of hope regardless of the hit caused by huge pressure and misfortune. They maintain both dignity and bravery of human mankind.
At first, let’s have a look at his masterpiece《The Old Man and the Sea》. After reading this short story, I have a better understanding of the code hero. It is about an old Cuban fisherman Santiago and his battle with a great marlin. For 84 days, he does not catch a single fish but he does not feel discouraged. He goes far out into the sea and hooks a giant marlin. A desperate struggle ensues in which Santiago manages to kill the fish and tie it to his boat, only to find that on the way home he has to fight a more desperate struggle with some dangerous giant sharks, which eat up the marlin, leaving only a skeleton. The old man brings it home and goes to bed to dream, almost dead with exhaustion.
We can see some symbols from this short story. The marlin represents the ideal of our life while sharks stand for the tragedy fate that we can’t resist. The sea signifies the changeable of human society. But the most important thing is that Santiago is the representative of the code hero who is brave enough to fight against force.
In a word, I do reckon that a code hero is one who, wounded but strong, more sensitive, enjoys the pleasure of life(sex, alcohol, sport) in face of ruin and death, but he is still a winner because of his unconquerable spirit, is still a code hero. Just as the sentence from this short story“a man is not made for defeat……a man can be destroyed but not defeated”.