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美国文学思维导图
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编辑于2021-06-26 18:15:44- 美国文学
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American Literature
Introduction ---Outline of American Literature
1.We usually talk about American literature from the Colonial Period (1607)
2.But it is usually believed that American literature didn't begin until the 19th century ( the Romantic Period ).
Ⅰ.The Colonial Period
Ⅰ.Background
1.From the settlement of America in the early 17th century through the end of 18th century.
2.The first permanent English settlement in North America was established at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.
Ⅱ.Early New England Literature
1.The Amenican literature in this peniod is immature, the literary works are usualy historical records and journals of the settlements, religious statements, and poems in the form of contemporary English poety.
2.Personal literature in its various forms, like diaries, histories, journals, letters, commonplace books, travel books occupy a major position in the literature of the early colonial period.
3.In content these early writings served either God or colonial expansion（殖民扩张） or both.
4.In form, if there was any form at all, Engish literary traditions were faithfully imitated（模仿） and tansplanted（移植）.
5.Their literary value is far from their historic value, history was an important form of literature in the period.（文学价值远远小于历史价值）
Ⅲ.The First American Writer（第一位有名有姓的美国作家） ——John Smith (American Puritanism)
Ⅳ.Puritan Literature（请教文学）
⒈Puritanism（清教主义）
⑴Background
①Puritanism is the religious beliefs of the Puritans.
②As the word itself hints, puritans wanted to purify or simplify the religious rituals of the Church of England.
③They fell that the Church of England was too close to the Church of Rome in doctrine, form of worship, and organization of authority.
④They also thought that the Church of England was the official church of the state and that the influences of politics and the court had led to corruption within the church.
⑤These Puritans believed that the Church should be restored to the "purity" of the first-century church as established by Jesus Christ Himself.
⑦The New England Puritans and pilgrims free from the Old Word (Europe) for the sake of religious freedom, to find a place where they could worship in the way they thought true Christians should, and with a spiritual mission to create a New Land (the American Continent).
⑵Puritan Thoughts
①Puritanism is religious beliefs of the puritans, who wanted to restore simplicity to church services and the authority of the Bible to theology.
②The Puritans possessed a ife philosophy that holds that man is basically evil ---"orginal sin" and will surely be condemned.
③Backsliding: The belief that "saved" believers, those with visible signs of grace, can fall into temptation and become sinners. To prevent this, believers were expected not to become smug, do constant soul-searching, be introspective, and pray constantly. Satan was particularly interested in snaring such believers.
④Unconditional Election -God "saves" those he wishes - only a few are selected for salvation -concept of predestination.
⑤It values hard work, thift（节俭）, piety and sobriety and considers joy and laughter as symptoms of sin.
⑥However, they hold extreme opinions and were zealous in defense of their own belliefs but often intolerant of the beliefs of the others and thought that anyone who challenged their way of life was opposing God's will. In the persecution of what they considered error, the puritans were harsh.
2.Puritan Writers
Ⅰ.Mainly About
The Puritan writers mainly wrote histories and poetry which were in harmony with their sober religion.
Ⅱ.Writers
⒈Pritan History writers
⑴Wllilam Bradford
⑵John Winthrop
⑶Joinathan Edwards
⒉Puritan Poets
⑴Anne Bradstreet (poetess)
⑵Edward Taylor
3.Function of Puritan Writers
⑴Idealism---both religious and political
⑵Pragmaticism（实用主义）---practicality and purposiveness
Ⅱ.The Literature of Reason and Revolution 理性文学和革命文学（独立革命时期）（1776—1783）
Ⅰ.Background
Ⅱ.Influence of Enlightenment（启蒙运动）
⒈science（科学）
⒉reason（理智）
⒊gave a heavy blow to Puritanism.（反清教）
⒋反对封建愚昧
Ⅲ.Revolutionary War
Writer
⒈Thomas Jefferson
⒉Benjiamin Franklin
⒊Thomas Paine
Ⅳ.Literature
⒈Literary Trend
⑴清教主义的衰弱
⑵提倡一种理性的(rational),科学的(scientific)方式
⒉文学形式
⑴prose为主
⑵poetry, drama, novel
Ⅴ.Writers and Works
Ⅰ.Benjiamin Franklin 本杰明·富兰克林(1706-1790)
Ⅰ.Status
The epitome of the Age of Reason
Ⅱ.Life Achievement
A great statesman（政治家）, diplomat, scientist and the first major American writer.
Ⅲ.Philosophical ideas（哲学观点）
⒈Pragmatic and optimistic（实用主义者和乐观主义者）
⒉Paradoxical faith（矛盾和信仰）
⑴social order（社会的秩序）
⑵natural rights（自然的权利）
⑶love of stability（热爱稳定）
⑷devotion to revolutionary change（献身于革命的变化）
⒊positive representation（积极的代表）（of the values of the American Dream美国梦）
Ⅳ.Major Themes in Franklin's Writing
⒈Interest in the individual and society, the creation of an American national identity（身份）.
⒉Tension（张力，对抗） between aristocracy（权贵） and democracy（民主）, the awareness of America as distinct（区别） in values and interests form those of England.
⒊Tension between appearance（表向） and reality（现实）
⒋Tension between romantic idealism（浪漫的理想主义） and pragmatic rationalism（实用的理性主义）, theory should be tested primarily by experience（经验） not logic（逻辑推理）, reason（理性） should be tested pragmatically（实验）.（理性应该靠实验。）
Ⅴ.Important Works
⒈Autobiography（自传）
⑴His masterpiece, but left unfinished, his early life ＋life principles and philosophy, a how-to-do-good book and sets autobiography as a literature genre in American literature.
⑵Important selected readings
⒉Poor Richard's Almanac《穷理查德警句》
Ⅵ.Writing Style
⒈Neoclassicideals（新古典主义的观点）
⒉Clarity, restraint, simplicity, balance, simple, concise, clear, straightforward（直接的） and fluent（流畅的）.
⒊A subtle（微妙的） humor and sarcastic（幽默与讽刺） notion
Ⅱ.Thomas Paine（了解）（强调民主）
⒈Status
A " Great Commer of Mankind"（人类伟大的平民）
⒉Important works
⑴Common Sense《常识》
⑵The American Crisis《美国的危机》
⒊Writing Style
Ⅲ.Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
⒈Life Achievement
美国《独立宣言》主要的起草者
⒉Life philosophy
⑴提倡 the natural rights of man must be secured by law inalienably for all...”天赋人权“ "人必须无条件地受法律保护”
⑵相信 political equality（政治平等） and man's natural goodness.（人的天生的善）
⑶相信 iimportance of education（教育的重要性） as a vital part of democracy（民主）.
⒊Works
⑴The Declaration of Independence(1776）《独立宣言》
⑵Style:
Dignified（尊严的）, flexible（灵活的）, clear（清晰的） ,lyrical（抒情的） and logical（有逻辑的）.
Ⅳ.Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
⒈Life Achievement
⑴" the Father of American Poetry" “美国诗歌之父”
⑵the first important American poet 第一位重要的美国诗人
⑶a transitional（过渡时期） literary figure from the Enlightenment to the Romantic period.
⒉The feature of his works
⑴带有革命时期特点
⑵带有浪漫主义特点
⒊Freneau as Father of American poetry
⑴人性与孤独
⑵原始主义
⑶超乎自然的沉思
⒋Famous poems
⑴"The World Honey-Suckle" (1786)《野金银花/野忍冬花》
①The theme of transience（短暂）.
②To convey the poet's lament for the mutability（易变）of nature.（转瞬即逝）
③Bittersweet（苦乐参半的）
⑵" The Indian Burying Ground" (1787)
⒌Style
natural, simple, and concrete diction of his later poems. (couplets双韵体）
⒍Work：
The Indian Burying Ground (1788)《印第安人的坟墓》
Ⅲ.The Romantic Period
Ⅰ.Introduction
⒈From the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Gvil War
⒉Washington Lrving's: The Sketch Book (Starting)→Whitman's: Leaves of Grass《草叶集》(Ending)
Ⅱ.Background
Native material（逃离社会而回归自然）
Ⅲ.Literary Trend---Romanticism
Ⅳ.Transcendentalism（先验论）
⒈Figures
⑴Ralph Waldo Emerson
⑵Henry David Thoreau
⒉Stress the power of intuition（直觉）
⒊As romantic idealism, it piaced spirit first and matter second.
⒋Took nature as symbolic of spirit or God.
⒌Emphasized individualism
Ⅴ.Significance
⒈An ethical guide to life for a young nation of American.
⒉It is a powerful expression of the intellectual mood of the age.
Ⅵ.Weakness
⒈Never a systematic philophy. When ever the demand of logic became too insistent, it turned to myticism.
⒉It resulted far more often in rampant individualism than in a democracy of mutual helpfulness and equal opportunity.
⒊The denial of the reality of evil tended to make moral indignation an irrelevant emotion.
⒋It denied the real origin of the moral force in American life. People used it to justify their acquisitiveness.
Ⅶ.High Romanticism---Writers and Woks
⒈Poet: Edgar Allan Poe
Ⅰ.Introduction
a major romantic writer
⒈a great lyric poet---50 short poems.
⒉A famous short-story writer---about 7o short stories.
Ⅱ.Literary Ideas--Aesthetic Theory of Effect（效果美学理论）
⒈a single effect" of literary work, "art for art's sake".
⒉poetry: "beauty, purity, melody" (美、纯、谐）
Ⅲ.Theme
⒈Eternal literary themes---love, death and beauty.
⒉Some spiritual problems---isolation, boredom, anxiety and the lack of communication (recurrent themes of 20th century literature).
Ⅳ.Style
Major concern of his works:
⒈Beauty and melancholy (sadness)
⒉Death of a beautiful woman
Ⅴ.Works
⒈Poetry
⑴"The Raven"《乌鸦》
⑵“To Helen"《致海文》
⑶"Annabel Lee"
⑷Sonnet---To Science
⒉Short stories
⑴Features
①stange, grotesque
②heroes: often noble figures, rich and well-educated, lonely and nervous heroiness: often heavenly beautiful.
⑵Stories
①"The Fall of the House of Usher"《厄舍古屋的倒塌》
②"Ligeia"《丽基亚》
⒉Novelist
Ⅰ.Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Ⅰ.Literary Achievement
⒈A major Romantic novelist
⑴wide experiences at sea
⑵observations of real people and places
⑶combined his observations with a powerful imagination
⒉Thematic Concern
⑴conflicts:
① Good and evil
② nature and human civilization
③ individual freedom and the confinement of human society ( war, slavery, the abuse of immigrants).
⑵Greatness
ability to dramatize man’s tragic efforts to asserts his free will and dignity against fate and evil.
⑶---philosophical thoughts ---symbols
Ⅱ.Moby Dick《白鲸》
⒈Status
⑴a great epic romance（一部伟大的史诗浪漫主义作品）
⑵a successful sea adventure
⑶a highly philosophical allegorical(寓言）novel
⒉Background
Development of whaling 捕鲸业的发展
⒊Plot
⒋Characters
The Symbol of Moby Dick
⑴代表nature 中的evil/destructive forces（破坏力）——swallows many sailors
⑵Ishmael
⑶Starbuck
⑷Captain Ahab
⒌Theme
⑴Criticizes the cruelty of the capitalist society
⑵Reflects the conflict between Man and Nature
⒍Style
⑴Narrative Techniques
⑵Symbol
⑶Language
⑷Epic Novel
Ⅱ.Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
⒈Introduction
One of the most talented American novelists and short story writers of the Romantic Period.
⒉Philosophical Ideas（哲学观点）
Ambivalent attitude towards puritanism（对清教矛盾的观点）
⑴believe in original sin, thift, hard work
⑵against its harsh way of life
⒊Theme
⑴sin, guilt, and redemption（挽救，赎罪）,but shows that the sinful person不应被清教徒那样残酷的方式来对待
⑵combines moral discussion（伦理说教） with highly artist representation
⒋Style
⑴symbolism
⑵Psychoanalysis
⑶Delicate Writing Form
⒌与Edgar Allan Poe对比
similarity and difference: like Poe, he often used grotesque or fantastic events, but Hawthorne’s work is broader in range and has more depth of moralistic concerns. Poe was concerned with the immediate emotional effects of literature and often indifferent to value. Hawthorne, however, the telling of a tale was a way of inquiring into the meaning of life.
⒍Works
⑴Novel
①The Scarlet Letter
②The House of Seven Gables 《七角楼房》
③The Blithedale Romance 《福谷传奇》
④The Marble Faun 《玉石雕像》----The story deals with the effects of sin.
⑵Short Stories
①Mosses from an Old Manse 《古屋青苔》 : a collection of short stories
②“The Minister’s Black Veil”---describes a young minister whose black veil is symbolic of the secret sin hidden inwardly in everybody that keeps one at a distance from others.
③The Scarlet Letter《红字》
Ⅰ.Characters
⒈Hester Prynne
⒉Dimmesdale
⒊Chillingworth
⒋Pearl
Ⅱ. Symbolic Meaning of the Scarlet Letter A
⒈At the beginning it symbolizes the sin of Hester-----“adultery”
⒉and then gradually when Hester became accepted by the community, it stands for Hester’s intelligence and hard working----“able”.
⒊At the end of the novel, it represents the high virtues of Hester ----“angelic”.
Ⅲ.Theme
⒈The theme of sin and guilt
⒉criticizes the injustice and cruelty of the Puritan way of life.
Ⅳ.The Realistic Period
Ⅰ.Introduction
⒈from the Civil War (1861-1865) to World War I
⒉Romanticism ceased to be dominant after the Civil War (1861-1865). The three decades from the war to the end of the century were predominated by realism.
Ⅱ.Background
⒈After the Civil War, the United States witnessed rapid industrialization and urbanization and economic boom, a period Mark Twain called “the Gilded Age”, which comes from a novel of the same title by Mark Twain and Warner. This sped up the pace of dragging people back to the life of immediacy.
⒉America became increasingly self-conscious. American wanted to know what their country looked like, and how the varied races which made up their growing population lived and talked. It was the age of the first mappings and surviving of the West; it was the age of the mid-west in which the rails of the first transcontinental railroad had bound East and West.
⒊Literature, as a reflection, began to present life as it really happened. They insist that the ordinary and the local were as suitable for artistic portrayal as the magnificent and the remote.
Ⅲ.Characteristics of Realism
⒈Familiar aspects of contemporary life and everyday scenes are represented in a straightforward or matter-of-fact manner. It emphasizes objectivity and offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and experience.
Characters are examined in depth.
⒉Realism focuses on commonness of the lives of the common people, the average, the everyday, the non-extreme, the representative.
⒊ Realism presents moral visions. The morality of Realism is intrinsic, integral, relativistic - relations between people and society are explored.
⒋The style of Realism is the vehicle which carries realistic philosophy, subject matter, and morality. Emphasis is placed upon scenic presentation, de-emphasizing authorial comment and evaluation. There is an objection towards the omniscient point of view.
⒌ Realistic Characterization There is the belief among the Realists that humans control their destinies; characters act on their environment rather than simply reacting to it. Character is superior to circumstance.
Ⅳ.Transitional Figure 1---Emily Dickinson(1830-1886)
Ⅰ.Life
⒈A poetess, a transitional figure
⒉born in a prominent family. Father:a famous lawyer and politician, grandfather: established an academy and college.
⒊Emily and her sister remained at home and did not marry.
⒋the second child of the well-to-do family.
⒌attended Amherst Academy for 2 years, spent one more year at the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary-------- the formal education all her life.
Ⅱ. Theme and Work
⒈nature
⑴Nature was her close and loving friend. Natural phenomena, changes of seasons, heavenly bodies, animals, birds and insects, flowers of various kinds ---- writing materials
⑵On the one hand, she perceived beauty in the wholeness and harmonious relationship of nature. But on the other hand, she pondered on the transience of life and fame from the inevitable decay in nature and sees the cold indifference of nature.
①“A Bird Came down the Walk”
②“A Narrow Fellow in the Grass”
⒉mortality and immortality---death
⑴“I Died for Beauty---but Was Scarce”
⑵“Because I Could Not Stop for Death”
⒊success
⒋ love and lover
Ⅲ.Style---anti-tradition（反传统）
⒈short
⒉Whimsical and daring
⒊choice of words
⒋spelling and punctuation
⒌irregularities of grammar
Ⅳ.Works
⒈“A Bird came down the Walk”
⒈ Theme
depicts the ugliness of nature as well as its beauty and the distance between the natural world and the human world.
⒉Style
⑴Rhyme Scheme:
1st and 2nd stanza (abcb) 3rd—5th stanza (imperfect)
⑵Metric Meter:
iambic trimeter /tetrameter
⑶image:
bird
⑷Simile:
⑸Punctuation:
dash
⒉“Because I could not stop for Death----”
⑴Explanation:
①The poet uses a narrative structure to relate the cyclical phases of earthly life considering it as a journey by carriage
②Death is personified as a kind, well-mannered and understanding gentleman who takes an unwilling maiden in his carriage, and who displays his gallantry as the carriage travels along its way.
⑵Idea
The experience of death may be pleasant rather than terrifying. It leads to eternity.
Ⅴ.Transitional figure 2---Walt Whitman （1819-1892）（现实多于浪漫）
Ⅰ.Life
Ⅱ.Influence of his life on his literary career
⒈From his background, he derived the sense of being an average American;
⒉his childhood life on farms and the coasts of Long Island, nurtured his love for the sea as well as for nature;
⒊his New York experience made him embrace people of various races in movement;
⒋his witnessing of the hustling economic life of America gave him the idea that the country was vigorous and widespread.
⒌And finally, his commitment to journalism matured his notions of democracy.
⒍His grandmother passed on to him a mysterious habit of reaching truth by intuition.
ⅢTheme
⒈sing of first and foremost democracy and freedom of the greatness of the common laborers.----Realism
⒉exalt nature and life ---Romanticism
Ⅳ.Poetry
Ⅰ.Leaves of Grass《草叶集》
⒈The title
It symbolizes the vitality and growth of the common life
⒉Content
⑴It ran 9 editions with more than 400 poems all written in free verse form. ----- the summit of Whitman poetic achievements both in form and thematic depth.
⑵Most are about man and nature. a small number of very good poems deal with New York, and the Civil War.
⑶sing of the native American experience----an emergent America, its expansion, its individualism and its Americanness.
⒊Critics
⑴ “the Bible of Democracy" ”民主圣经“
⑵Democracy
⒋“Song of Myself”
⑴most famous poem in the first edition of Leaves of Grass.
⑵1346 lines, 52 sections, established Whitman’s major themes.
⑶The “self” is healthy, optimistic, immortal, all-loving, omnipresent, a working –class American and representative of all Americans, and through America, of life itself.
⒌Theme
⑴reveals a world of equality, without rank and hierarchy.
⑵reveals his belief of universality by identifying himself imaginatively with all the things of the world.
⑶ glorifies nature, the “miracles” of the soul.
⑷celebrates individualism as the cosmic “I” who sings the poem.
⑸hails brotherhood in taking all things and people as equal in value.
Ⅱ.Continued
⒈“I Hear America Singing”
⒉“O Captain! My Captain!”
⒊“I Sit and Look Out”
⒋“Beat! Beat! Drums!”
Ⅴ.Style
one of the great innovators in both content and form
⒈Content: the native American experience----an emergent (新兴的）America, its expansion, its individualism and its Americanness
⒉Form：organic(自然发展）, not restrained or disciplined， threw aside the traditional ornaments and prettiness of verse
⑴free verse
⑵use of words
①slang words, foreign words, scientific terms, learned words, and often coined new words and gave old words new meanings, but absence of elegant words as seen in other conventions of literature.
②Because of this, his poems were criticized in his day for being rough and uncivilized.
Ⅵ.Representative Writers and Works
⒈Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Ⅰ.Introduction
⒈An outstanding representative of American realistic literature,
⒉Humorist and satirist, “the wide humorist of the Pacific slope”
Ⅱ.Life
⒈Early Years
⒉Writing Career
⑴The unforgettable experience provided the material for his best books…Also during this time, he began to write humorous stories for a local newspaper.
⑵In 1867, he married Olivia Langdon, the daughter of a very wealthy industrialist and became part owner and editor of the Buffalo Express for a year. During the years later, he was building his reputation with his first books. And readers see the publication of most of Twain’s works.
⒊Late Years
Ⅲ.Life Space
⒈Every writer has his life space. Mark Twain’s life space is the Mississippi River. They came to river, to Jackson Island. He is eager to natural form of life. He believes river and the island are places of freedom and peace.
⒉The character Huck looks for peace, friendship and understanding. He escape from tyranny of his father and Douglas, Island became a place where he escapes prejudice on land.
Ⅳ.Theme
⒈He was very conscious of human shortcomings and never hesitated to make the reader aware of them through biting humors, esp. when he was older. His works bear an enormous moral force.
⒉His humor pierced rotten conventions, pretense and hypocrisy. It mocked the tyrannies of chivalry, of slavery, and of religion. His works glorified goodness, wisdom and worth of common people.
⒊He developed such themes as escape from society, individualism, brotherhood, and love of adventure.
Ⅴ.Style---informality
Ⅵ.Works
Ⅰ.Early Period
“The celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”
Ⅱ.Second Period----golden age for his writing, satirist
⒈ Roughing It
⒉The Gilded Age
⒊The Prince and the Pauper
⒋Life on the Mississippi
⒌The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
⑴ Local color
⑵Biographic elements: Tom’s life is like Mark Twain’s life
⑶ Vivid portrayal of psychology of children, one of the most popular of all novels about children <高玉宝>, <潘冬子>
⑷Characters are successful
⑸The ending
Happy ending in the normal way, found the treasures, Tom became rich.
⒍The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
⒈Introduction
⑴It is a masterpiece as Hemingway says “All Modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”
⑵Picaresque story, is the sequel of Tom Sawyer. Better than Tom Sawyer, as well as a keener realist portrayal, regional characters and frontier experience on the Mississippi River.
⒉Story
⒊Theme
The work shows Twain is a social critic and worked for realism. Though the novel seems to be simply a “children’s book”, it vividly depicts the life of the American Midwest in the mid-19th C through the adventures of Huck and Jim.
⒋Style
⑴Structure
In structure, the novel follows the tradition of picaresque fiction. The Mississippi River thus symbolically becomes a human journey, and by traveling down the river, Huck gets acquainted with all the colorful characters, the evils and stupidity of the adult world. The departures from and returns to the river result finally in his manhood.
⑵His works are full of witty humor, but they also carried the bitterest satire on human folly and vices.
⑶Language-----colloquial style, full of local color.
⒌Character
⑴HUck Finn
①a veritable recreation of living models. At the beginning, he is just an outcast white boy eager for freedom with social prejudices and discriminations, but the adventures results in his manhood.
②Contrast between Huck and Tom.
The concluding episode contrasts the boyish fantasy of Tom with the Huck’s hard sense of reality which Huck’s many sad experiences of life have given him. While Tom can still frolic in the world of make-believe, Huck understands that pretence is foolish and dangerous; but his habit of deference is such that he nevertheless submits his wisdom to Tom’s childishness.
⑵Jim
Represents an ideal black man. The significance of the character Jim lies in as a black slave, he advocates race equality and humanitarianism. Honest, loyal, superstitious.
⒎“The &1,000,000 Banknote"
Ⅲ. Third Period------anti-imperialist
⒈ Following the Equator
⒉To the Persons Sitting in Darkness
Ⅳ. Later Period
Became pessimistic
⒉Henry James (1843-1916) (formal)
Ⅰ. one of the greatest American novelists before the 1st World War
Ⅱ.Literary Achievement
⒈“psychological realism”(心理现实主义）----- the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters’ thoughts and motivations. He is considered the founder of psychological realism.
⒉His brother, William James, one year older, famous for his “pragmatism” and the term “stream of consciousness”（意识流）.
Ⅲ. Thematic concern --- International theme（国际主题）
Ⅳ. Literary works
⒈The American
⒉Daisy Miller
⒊The Portrait of a Lady（女士画像）
⒈Story
⒉Character
⑴Isabel Archer
The heroine of the novel. She is intelligent, rich, attractive, independent, idealistic, but inexperienced, she seems to be free to make her own choice, but the free choice is limited by circumstance.and character. She can understand good and evil, right and wrong. She is morally higher than those sophisticated ones who are almost always ready to victimize the innocents.
⑵Gibert Osmond
An American expatriate, a Europeanized American; he lives by convention. He finds in Rome and environment suited to his artistic taste and devotes his time and tastes just to pleasing himself, even ready to victimize others.
⒊Theme
⑴the innocent American in conflict with a sophisticated and sometimes corrupt European society.
⑵The conflict between the individual and society
⒋Style
⑴In his plot, he has achieved a very definite unity. Dialogue, scene, action----all has parallels and little appears in the novel that is unimportant.
⑵The sentences are well-balanced and diction deliberately chosen.
⑶Special efforts are made to describe the psychology of the character, the details of the inner working
⒋The Wings of the Dove
⒌ The Ambassadors
Ⅴ.Style---the most expert stylist before World War I
⒈Emphasis on psychology and on the human consciousness: his novels are concerned more with the inner life of human beings than with overt human actions.
⒉Long sentences, endless analysis, and tremendously elaborate expressions. These corresponds to the psychological movement.
⒊Well-plotted: Organic, all parts being in a relation to the whole, nothing is isolated, eg. Dialogue, description…
⒋Language: not easy to understand, highly refined and insightful, always accurate in word selection, trying to find the best expression for his literary imagination.
Ⅴ.Modernism
Ⅰ.Introduction
⒈spiritual wasteland（精神的荒原）
⑴发战争财
⑵God is dead（信仰没了）
⒉禁酒令
⒊反映了精神上的 isolation（孤独），emptyness/vanity（空虚）
⒋迷惘的一代
Ⅱ.Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
⒈Literary Achievement
the leader of the “Imagist Movement”, one of the most important modernist poets, and decisively affected the course of the 20th C American literature
⒉Imagism（意象运动）
⑴In 1912, Pound, together with Thomas Ernest Hulme launched a poetic movement----Imagism in England and America.
⑵Its aim was to go against the vagueness, the sentimentality and windy rhetoric of the poems at the beginning of the 20th C.
⒊The major principles for the movement
⑴Direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective
⑵To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation
⑶as regarding rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome ['metrənəʊm] （节拍器）.
⑷The literary theories and poetic forms have great influence on modern and contemporary poetry (Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, Carl Sandburg, and Marianne Moore).
⑸helped to open the first pages of modern English and American poetry.
⒋Work
⑴“In a Station of the Metro”
Ⅰ.Background:
Pound was once in a Paris subway station and was struck by the sight of the faces of a few pretty women and children in a crowd hurrying out of the dim, damp, and somber station. He was so impressed by the spectacle that he resolved to bring it out in poetic language.
Ⅱ.Analysis
⒈The objectto be treated: the faces in that dim and damp context
⒉the single, dominant image: flower petals on a wet, black bough, which serves as the most concise, direct and definite metaphor for the “faces in the crowd.”
⒊Therefore, the faces in the crowd become beautiful like flower petals on a rainy day.
⑵ The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter《船商的妻子：一封信》
⑶李白《长干行》
⒌ Pound and China
⑴The greatest cultural influence over Pound came perhaps from ancient China. He found a Messiah [məˈsaɪə] in Confucius and the medicine for the disease of the West in his teachings.
⑵（犹太人盼望的复国救主）弥赛亚；救世主耶稣；救星；解放者
Ⅲ.Robert Frost (1874-1963)
⒈Literary Achievement
⑴won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for 4 times
⑵the U.S. government awarded him a gold medal in 1960 for his contribution to American culture
⒉Thematic Concern
⑴ New England rural life: poetry in the pastoral tradition----About farmers, about shepherds, about small rural events, isolated from urban society( about building fences, picking apples).
⑵However, underneath the descriptions of country life, there is often a deeper and wider meaning, some experience or truth about life itself ----loneliness and poverty of isolated farmers; beauty as well as terror, tragedy in nature.
⑶These scenes of rural life reflect the fragmentation of modern experience----the alone, unaided and perplexed man in the bleak and chaotic landscapes of an indifferent universe.
⒊Style
in both the conventional metrical forms and the free verse.
⒋Works
⒈“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”--- New Hampshire
⒉“The Road Not Taken”----Mountain Interval
⑴Theme
①Conveys a poignant sadness, a haunting sense of life’s limitations. a wistful meditation on the consequence of choice for a creature whose vision runs beyond the realm of possibility.
②What described in the poem are sth every person can experience in his life.
⑵Rhyme Scheme
a b a a b
⒊“Mending Wall”---- North of Boston
⒋“After Apple-Picking” ---- North of Boston
Ⅳ.Ernest Hemingway (1896-1961)
⒈Life
⑴His father was a successful physician with a relish for hunting and fishing. His mother taught music and often took her 6 children to concert, plays and painting exhibitions. His father wanted him to be a doctor, but he refused.
⑵At high school he took a great interest in sports and wrote regularly for the school’s newspaper and literary magazines.
⑶During the Second World War, he was in Europe as a war respondent. Throughout his life he was a restless man, and a man of many contradictions. He once joined in the Communist Party, and then became a member of the Catholic Church.
⑷In his last years he suffered from physical ailments and emoti onal breakdowns, which caused him to doubt his own competence in writing. In July, 1961, following his father’s example, he used a gun to take his own life.
⒉ Literary Achievement
The greatest fiction writer in the 20th century American literature. With the publication of the Sun Also Rises, he became a spokesman of what Gertrude Stein called “the lost generation”-------a young generation of writers disillusioned by the war experience and replaced the traditional values democracy, patriotism and high sense of morality with either a nihilistic attitude or hedonistic self-indulgence.
⒊Thematic Concern
⑴Hemingway’s fictions are essentially concerned with one’s innocence, ignorance, youth, and illusion being destroyed the terrible reality（现实） of existence.
⑵“grace under pressure”, that is, to preserve self-respect and human dignity under critical circumstance（苛刻/严峻的环境下）.
⒋Works
⑴The Sun Also Rises
First important novel set in the postwar years in Paris and Spain. It tells how Jake Barns, the protagonist who was serious wounded during the war, face helplessly but courageously the circumstance of his world-----the impossibility for a meaning physical love. The novel earned Hemingway the name of the spokesman of the lost generation.
⑵A Farewell to Arms
⑶For the BeWhom ll Tolls
⑷The Old Man and the Sea
A powerful novel portraying an old fisherman, Santiago, who caught a marlin and fought with the sharks all the way back to shore. Although the marlin was reduced to a skeleton, the old man kept his pride and dignity, triumphant even in defeat.
⒌Style
"Iceberg Principie"
Ⅴ.F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Ⅰ.Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age
⒈American novelist and short-story writer of the Roaring Twenties
⒉"the Laureate of the Jazz Age"
Ⅱ.Thematic Concern
⒈American dream
⒉the bankruptcy of the American Dream
Ⅲ.Style
⒈accurate dialogues, accurate details from careful observation
⒉completely original diction and metaphors, bold impressionistic and colorful quality. ----perfect artistry
Ⅳ.Works
⒈The Side of Paradise
⒉ The Beautiful and the Damned
⒊The Great Gatsby
⑴Plot
⑵Characters
①Gatsby
a victim of American dream romantic, too innocent to believe that the past can be recovered.
②Daisy and Tom
Completely dehumanized and dehumanizing.
⑶Theme
①This is not only Gatsby’s personal failure, but also the failure of American society.
②First of all, it is a realistic demonstration of economic and social life of Jazz Age ---- its Prohibition, economic boom, and the dislocation on part of the younger generation.
③Secondly, it is also a dramatization of an Age of Confusion marked by business corruption, vulgarity, frauds and rigid prejudices in social and political life.
⑷Style
①The reserved narrator,
②the impressionistic descriptions
③the tight structure
④the naturally developed symbols like the Valley of Ashes, the glasses of Dr. Eklesburg and the green light.
⒋Tender Is the Night
⒌ Tales of the Jazz Age