1. Calvinism（strongly influenced Puritanism）
Total Depravity - through Adam and Eve’s fall, every person is born sinful - concept of Original Sin. （完全堕落 性恶说）
Unconditional Election - God “saves” those he wishes - only a few are selected for salvation - concept of predestination. （上帝无条件拣选）
Limited Atonement - Jesus died for the chosen only, not for everyone. （有限救赎）
Irresistible Grace – God’s grace is freely given; it cannot be earned or denied. Grace is defined as the saving and transfiguring power of God.（不可抗拒的恩典）
Perseverance of the “saints” - those elected by God have full power to interpret the will of God, and to live uprightly. If anyone rejects grace after feeling its power in his life, he will be going against the will of God - something impossible in Puritanism.（已得的恩典不会丧失，上帝保持其拣选者的权利） Tulip
Puritan values (creeds):
·Make pure their religious belief and practices;
·Restore simplicity to church services and the authority of the Bible to theology.
·Hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety, simple tastes.
· Puritans are more practical, tougher, to be ever ready for any misfortune and tragic failure and optimistic. Influence on American Literature
America literature is in good measure a literary expression of the pious idealism of the American Puritanism bequest.
All literature is based on a myth of garden of Eden.
Symbolism: the American puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chiefly instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American. Symbolism as a technique has become a common practice in American literature. Captain John Smith
A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia Since the First Planting of That Colony. True Relation of Virginia (1608) Description of New England (1616)
General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624) William Bradford (1590----1657) The History of Plymouth Plantation John Winthrop (1588--1649) The History of New England Cotton Mather (1663--1728)
Magnalia Christi Americana (新英格兰教会史 1702),
Anne Bradstreet (1612----1672)
Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up In America (1650) To My Dear and Loving Husband Contemplation 《沉思》 Edward Taylor (1645----1729)
Metrical History of Christianity (mainly a history of martyrs) The Poetical Works (1939) Poems of Edward Taylor
The Literature of Reason and Revolution Jonathan Edwards
The Freedom of the Will 《论意志自由》
The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended 《论原罪》 The Nature of True Virtue 《论真实德行的本原》 Benjamin Franklin
The Autobiography 《自传》
Poor Richard’s Almanac 《穷理查德格言历书》 Thomas Paine
The Case of the Officers of Excise (1772)
Common Sense The Crisis (1776-83) The Rights of Man The Age of Reason (1794-96) Thomas Jefferson (1743----1826)
Declaration of Independence Notes on the State of Virginia
Philip Freneau (1752----1832) 1. The Wild Honey Suckle The Analysis of the Poem
In regular tetrameter stanzas, with 6 lines for each stanza and a rhyme scheme of “ababcc”.
American subject, the fresh perception of the natural scenes on the new continent.
A philosophical meditations by the description of the fate of a trivial wild plant. It is a deistic celebration of nature, romantic use of simple nature imagery, inspired by themes of death and transience. Much of the beauty of the poem lies in the sounds of the words and the effects created through changes in rhythm. Flower vs. Human Being, Duration vs. Life
Show us how to live a useful life. In a revolution, one should not do nothing for his country for fear of being hurt, harmed and destroyed. 2. The Indian Burying Ground The Age of Romanticism Washing Irving (1783-1859)
History of New York from the beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty «纽约外史» The Sketch Book «见闻札记» A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada «攻克格拉纳达» The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus «哥伦布的生平和航行史»
The Alhambra «阿尔罕伯拉» Life of Oliver Goldsmith «哥德斯密斯传» Life of Washington «华盛顿传» James Fenimore Cooper (1789—1851)
Precaution 《戒备》(1820) The Spy «间谍» ( 1821 ) The Leatherstocking Tales, 《皮袜子故事集》 The Deerslayer 《杀鹿者》(1841)
The Last of the Mohicans (1826)《最后的莫西干人》
The Pathfinder 《探路人》(1840) The Pioneers 《拓荒者》(1823) The Prairie 《大草原》(1827) William Cullen Bryant (1794--1878)
Poems: Thanatopsis (1817) A Forest Hymn (1825) The Prairies (1832) To a Waterfowl (1815)
To a Waterfowl, called by Matthew Arnold “The most perfect brief poem in the language,” was composed by Bryant after a walk from Cummington to Plainfield, Massachusetts, in December 1815. Arranged in alternating rhymed quatrains, it expressed both the poet’s grateful view, at the close of a day of self-doubt and despair, of a solitary bird on the horizon, and his sense of a divine power guiding and protecting everything in nature. The clarity of the central image and the aptness and simplicity of the moral analogy have always been admired, even by those who dislike “preaching” in poetry. The effect of the stanza form has been described as “gliding,” appropriate to the visual image of the second stanza.
Edgar Allen Poe (1809—1849)
The Raven” 《乌鸦》 Annabel Lee” 《安娜贝尔·李》 The Sleeper” 《睡梦人》A Dream Within a Dream” 《梦中梦》 Sonnet—To Science” 《十四行诗—致科学》 To Helen” 《致海伦》 The City in the Sea” 《海中的城市》earlier entitled The Doomed City 《衰败的城市》
New England Transcendentalism General introduction to Transcendentalism
American Transcendentalism was an important movement in philosophy and literature that flourished during the early to middle years of the nineteenth century (about 1836-1860).
It began as a reform movement in the Unitarian church.
For the transcendentalists, the soul of each individual is identical with the soul of the world and contains what the world contains. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803----1882)
Nature «论自然» The American Scholar «论美国学者» The Divinity School Address «神学院致辞» Poet «诗人» Henry David Thoreau
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers «在康科德与梅里马克河上一周» Civil Disobedience «论公民之不服从»
A Plea for John Brown «为约翰·布朗申辩» Walden «沃尔登湖» Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864) Short story collections:
Twice-Told Tales 《故事新编》 Mosses from an Old Manse《古屋青苔》 2) Novels:
The Scarlet Letter《红字》
The House of Seven Gables《七个尖角阁的房子》
The Blithedale Romance《福谷传奇》The Marble Faun《大理石神像》 Some short stories: Young Goodman Brown
The Minister’s Black Veil 《教长的黑面纱》 The Birthmark 《胎记》 Herman Melville (1819 - 1891)
Typee «泰皮» Omoo «欧穆» Mardi «玛地» Redburn «雷得本» White Jacket «白外衣» Pierre «皮埃尔»
7) Billy Budd 《比利•巴德》(a sign that he had resolved his quarrel with God) 8) Moby-Dick
Louisa May Alcott (1832----1888) Little Women The Boston Brahmins
The “Brahmins” refers to the famous group of aristocratic writers who lived in Boston in the 19th century. Most Brahmins came from rich, old Boston families. They considered Boston “ the thinking center of the (American) continent, and
therefore the planet”.
The Boston Brahmins: the patrician, Harvard-educated class supplied the most respected and genuinely cultivated literary arbiters of the United States. Their lives fitted a pleasant pattern of wealth and leisure directed by the strong New England work ethic and respect for learning.
Most of the Brahmin poets traveled or educated in Europe: They were familiar with the ideas and books of Britain, Germany, and France, and often Italy and Spain.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) Primary Works
Voice of the Night (1839), Hyperion (1839), Ballads and Other Poems (1842), Evangeline (1847),
The Song of Hiawatha (1855), The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863) Christus (1872). A Psalm of Life (1838)
The poem was written in 1838 when Longfellow was struck with great dismay: his wife died in 1835, and his courtship of a young woman was unrequited. Longfellow tried to encourage himself by writing a piece of optimistic work. The relationship of life and death is a constant theme for poets. Longfellow expresses his pertinent interpretation to that by warning us that though life is hard and everybody must die, time flies and life is short, yet, human beings ought to be bold “to act,” to face the reality straightly so as to make otherwise
meaningless life significant. Daybreak 《破晓》 American Realism Walter Whitman Leaves of Grass «草叶集» Including
“Song of Myself” 《自我之歌》
“There Was a Child Went Forth” 《有个小孩走过来》 “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” 《过布鲁克林渡口》 “Democratic Vistas” 《民主的前景》 “Passage to India” 《向印度行进》
“Proud Music of the Storm” 《骄傲的风暴之音乐》
“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”《走出永不休止地摇动着的摇篮》 “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”《当紫丁香上次在庭院开放的时候》
Emily Dickinson
I Died for Beauty—but was scarce I Heard a Fly Buzz—when I died— Because I could not stop for death— The Great 3 of American Realism Mark Twain (1835-1910)
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”
“卡拉韦拉斯县驰名的跳蛙” a frontier tale The Adventures of Tom Sawyer «汤姆·索耶历险记»
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn «哈克贝里·费恩历险记»
The Gilded Age 《镀金时代》 written in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner
Life on the Mississippi 《密西西比河上》
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court 《亚瑟王朝里的康涅狄格州美国佬》
The Man That Corrupted Hardleybug 《败坏了哈德莱堡的人》 The Mysterious Stranger 《神秘的陌生人》 Autobiography
These works contain bitter attacks on the human race
The Innocents Abroad «傻子国外旅行记» Roughing It《艰难岁月》 Pudd'nhead Wilson《傻瓜维尔逊》
The Prince and the Pauper《王子与贫民》American Claimant《美国申请人》 Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy\"《残害一个男童》
\"Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again,\" 《哥德斯密斯的朋友又出国了》 \"The Treaty with China\"《与中国的条约》
\"To the Person Sitting in Darkness\"《致坐在黑暗中的人》 These works show Mark Twain’s attitude towards the Chinese
William Dean Howells (1837-1920)
The Rise of Silas Lapham 《塞拉斯•拉帕姆的发迹》
A Chance Acquaintance 《偶然相遇》A Modern Instance 《一个现代例证》 Criticism and Fiction 《批评与小说》 Henry James (1843-1916) 1.1865~1882: international theme
The American 《美国人》Daisy Miller 《黛西·米勒》 The Portrait of a Lady 《贵妇画像》
3.1895~1900: novels and tales dealing with childhood and adolescence, then back to international theme
The Turn of the Screw《螺丝在拧紧》What Maisie Knew 《梅西所知道的》 The Ambassadors 《奉使记》The Wings of the Dove 《鸽翼》 The Golden Bowl 《金碗》 American Naturalism
Muckraking is applied to American journalists, novelists, and critics who in the first decade of the 20th century attempted to expose the abuses of business and the corruption in politics.
Muckraking novels used eye-catching journalistic techniques to depict harsh working conditions and oppressions. Norris’s Octopus (1901) exposed big railroad companies while Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906) painted the squalor of the Chicago meat-packing houses, and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, emphasizes the quiet poverty, loneliness, and despair in
small-town America.
The muckraking movement lost support in about 1912. Historians agree that if it had not been for the revelations of the muckrakers the progressive movement would not have received the popular support needed for effective reform. Jack London (1876 – 1916)
The Call of the Wild The Sea-Wolf Martin Eden Stephen Crane(1871 – 1900) Maggie: A Girl of the Streets The Red Badge of Courage Frank Norris (1870 - 1902) The Octopus Theodore Dreiser
Sister Carrie 1900 《嘉莉妹妹》 Jennie Gerhardt 1911 《珍妮姑娘》 The Financier 1912 《金融家》 The Titan 1914 《巨人》 The Genius
1915 (autobiography)《天才》
An American Tragedy 1925《美国悲剧》 Dreiser Looks at Russia 1928《德莱赛看俄罗斯》 The Stoic (posthumously) 《斯多葛》 The American Modernism Imagism:
It is a Movement in U.S. and English poetry characterized by the use of concrete language and figures of speech, modern subject matter, metrical freedom, and avoidance of romantic or mystical themes, aiming at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images.
It grew out of the Symbolist Movement in 1912 and was initially led by Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and others.
The Imagist manifesto came out in 1912 that showed three Imagist poetic principles: direct treatment of the “thing” (no fuss, frill, or ornament), exclusion of superfluous words (precision and economy of expression), the rhythm of the musical phrase rather than the sequence of a metronome (free verse form and music). Ezra Pound (1885- 1972)
The Cantos In a Station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. 人群中幽然浮现的一张张脸庞， 黝黑的湿树枝上的一片片花瓣。 About the poem:
The “Metro” is the underground railway of Paris.
The word “apparition”, with its double meaning, binds the two aspects of the observation together:
Apparition meaning “appearance”, in the sense of something which appears, or
shows up; something which can be clearly observed.
Apparition meaning something which seems real but perhaps is not real; something ghostly which cannot be clearly observed.
The poem is an observation of the poet of the human faces seen in a Paris subway station. It looks to be a modern adoption of the Japanese haiku. He tries to render exactly his observation of human faces seen in an underground railway station. He sees the faces, turned variously toward light and darkness, like flower petals which are half absorbed by, half resisting, the wet, dark texture of a bough.
Repeating it, you can have a colorful picture, also you can feel the beauty of music through its repetition of different vowels and consonants, such as /p/ and /au/. Especially the repetition of /e/ in the second line emphasize its sense of music.
In this brief poem, Pound uses the fewest possible words to convey an accurate image, according to the principles of the “Imagists”. Pound wrote an account of its composition, which claims that the poem’s form was determined by the experience that inspired it, evolving organically rather than being chosen arbitrarily.
Whether truth or myth, the piece has become a famous document in the history of Imagism.
Carl Sandburg (1878－1967)
Chicago Poems (1916), and then Cornhuskers (1918) Smoke and Steel (1920)
Wallace Stevens(1879-1955) Anecdote of the Jar T.S.Eliot (1888 - 1965) The Waste Land (1922)
Ash Wednesday (1930) and The Four Quartets (1935–42) The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933) Essays Ancient and Modern (1936)
Notes towards a Definition of Culture (1948). Murder in the Cathedral (1935) Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955) Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)
Collection of poems:
A Boy’s Will（1913）North of Boston（1914）New Hampshire（1923） Collected Poems（1930）A Further Range（1936）A Witness Tree（1942）
Poems:
Birches After Apple-Picking
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening The Road Not Taken Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
It is a peaceful poem and makes man feel relaxed when we read the lines: \"The only other sound’s the sweep of easy wind and downy flake.\" Frost also uses alliteration and repetition in his poems. The rhyme scheme he uses is a-a-b-a. It is one of the most quietly moving of Frost’s lyrics. On the surface, it seems to be simple, descriptive verses, records of close observation, graphic and homely
pictures.
It uses the simplest terms and commonest words. But it is deeply meditative, adding far-reaching meanings to the homely music. It uses its superb craftsmanship to come to a climax of responsibility: the promises to be kept, the obligation to be fulfilled. Few poems have said so much in so little. The Road Not Taken
Frost claims that he wrote this poem about his friend Edward Thomas, with whom he had walked many times in the woods near London. Frost has said that while walking they would come to different paths and after choosing one, Thomas would always feel wondering what they might have missed by not taking the other path.
About the poem, Frost asserted, “You have to be careful of that one; it’s a tricky poem– very tricky.” Superficially, the poem has been and continues to be used as an inspirational poem, encouraging self-reliance, not following where others have led. But a close reading of the poem proves not so. E.E.Cummings (1894 - 1963) William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) To A Poor Old Woman The Red Wheelbarrow
这首小诗体现了诗人的主张：诗歌创作扎根于现实生活中。写平平淡淡的一组景象（手推车、雨珠和白鸡），却带给读者很多大的惊喜。
骤雨初歇时农家院子中的情景，以静物写生的手法，寥寥数笔，把雨痕著
物的澄澈景象栩栩如生的展现在读者眼前。诗人以细腻的感受力，通过物体在画面中的特殊定位和鲜明的色彩对比，使邻家院子里的雨霁天晴时那番熟悉景象永恒定格在美国文学史上。整首诗读来清新自然，色彩鲜明，动静结合，情景堪画 The Lost Generation:
The Lost Generation is a term used to describe a group of American intellectuals, poets, artists and writers who fled to France in the post WWI years to reject the values of American materialism and to seek the bohemian lifestyle in Paris. 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.
American poet Gertrude Stein actually coined the expression \"lost generation.\" Speaking to Ernest Hemingway, she said, \"you are all a lost generation.\" The term stuck and the mystique surrounding these individuals continues to fascinate us.
The main representatives of the Lost Generation include F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos.
The Lost Generation writers all gained prominence in the 20th century literature. Their innovations challenged assumptions about writing and expression, and paved the way for subsequent generations of writers. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940)
This Side of Paradise The Beautiful and the Damned (1922)
The Great Gatsby Tender is the Night (1934) Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)
The Sun Also Rises (1926): The novel concerns a group of psychologically bruised, disillusioned expatriates living in postwar Paris, who take psychic refuge in such immediate physical activities as eating, drinking, traveling, brawling, and lovemaking. With the publication of it, he was recognized as the spokesman of the “lost generation” (so called by Gertrude Stein).
A Farewell To Arms (1929) tells of a tragic wartime love affair between an ambulance driver and an English nurse.
Death in the Afternoon (1932), a nonfiction work about bullfighting
Green Hills of Africa (1935), a nonfiction work about big-game hunting, glorify virility, bravery, and the virtue of a primal challenge to life. To Have And Have Not (1937) The Fifth Column (his only play 1938)
For Whom The Bell Tolls (1940), in detailing an incident in the war, argues for human brotherhood.
Across the River and into the Trees (1950)
The Old Man And The Sea (1952, Pulitzer Prize), celebrates the indomitable courage of an aged Cuban fisherman. A Moveable Feast (1964) Islands in the Stream (1970) His Collections of Stories
Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923), In Our Time (1924)
Men without Women (1927) Winner Take Nothing (1933) First Forty-nine Stories (1938)
His famous stories:
The Killers The Undefeated
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
The main working corollary of Hemingway's “iceberg principle” is that the full meaning of the text is not limited to moving the plot forward: there is always a web of association and inference, a submerged reason behind the inclusion (or even the omission) of every detail.
Some comments on Hemingway’s theme and writing style:
Works of Hemingway, portraying the dilemma of modern man utterly thrown upon himself for survival in an indifferent world, reveal man's impotence and his despairing courage to assert himself against overwhelming odds. To Hemingway, man's greatest achievement is to show grace under pressure, or what he described in The Sun Also Rises as holding the \"purity of line through the maximum of exposure.\" \"grace under pressure\" is a repeated theme in his novels. For him, in a world which is crazy and meaningless, there is nothing one can do but to take care of himself and be tough against fate and tough with grace under pressure.
His works have sometimes been read as an essentially negative commentary on a modern world filled with sterility, failure, and death. Yet such a nihilistic vision is repeatedly modified by Hemingway's affirmative assertion of the possibility of living with style and courage. His primary concern was an individual's \"moment of truth,\" and his fascination with the threat of physical, emotional, or psychic death is reflected in his lifelong preoccupation with stories of war (A Farewell to Arms, 1929, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940), the bullfight (Death in the Afternoon, 1932), and the hunt (The Green Hills of Africa, 1935).
For his novels and for his short stories, which include some of the finest in the English language, Hemingway received wide acclaim. In 1954 he was awarded a Nobel Prize for his “mastery of the art of modern narration”. Taking his cue from Mark Twain's masterpiece, Hemingway brought the colloquial style to near perfection in American literature. In Paris, Hemingway -- along with Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and James Joyce --accomplished a revolution in literary style and language. He developed a spare, tight, reportorial prose based on simple sentence structure and using a restricted vocabulary, precise imagery, and an impersonal, dramatic tone.
His language is characterized by features including: economy of expression, short sentences and paragraphs, vigorous and positive language, and deliberate avoidance of gorgeous adjectives, and etc. William Faulkner (1897 - 1962)
Faulkner's most celebrated novels include
The Sound and the Fury (1929) As I Lay Dying (1930) Light in August (1932) The Unvanquished (1938)
Absalom, Absalom! (1936), usually considered his masterpiece.
His first short story collection, These 13 (1931), includes many of his most acclaimed (and most frequently anthologized) stories, including \"A Rose for Emily,\" \"Red Leaves,\" \"That Evening Sun,\" and \"Dry September.\" Yoknapatawpha County 约克纳帕塔法郡
因篇幅问题不能全部显示，请点此查看更多更全内容