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American critic Van Wyck Brooks attempted a general survey of eighteen-century America and American characters. He

stated that Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin shared the eighteenth century between them. The American

Puritanism is a two-faceted tradition of religious idealism and levelheaded common sense. Jonathan Edwards represents

the former aspect, and Franklin the latter. The one was as a good Puritan as the other.

I

Jonathan Edwards (1703 -1758)

1. Life

Edwards was born into a very religious family. He entered Yale at 13 and took his M. A. in 1723. Later He became the

minister of the church of Northampton, Massachusetts. His sermons taught the power of God and the depravity of man

and man

1

s need to communicate with Holy Spirit to receive God

1

s grace. He was instrumental in bringing about the

.”

He became famous not only in his own country, but won a measure of international recognition as

well.

2. Ideas

(1) He was the first modern American and the country

1

s last medieval man.

His works reveal the modern consciousness of the man. He was influenced to no small extent by Newton

?

s mechanical

view of the universe and the Lockean thesis. He tried to reconcile Puritan ideas with the new rationalism of Lock and

Newton.

The same works reveals the medieval mind of the man. He liked to walk in the woods, to be solitary, far from all mankind,

so

as

to

sweetly

converse

with

Christ,

to

be

wrapped

and

swallowed

up

in

God.

This

is

meant

by

the

inward

com-

munication of soul with god, by

(2) He was a good deal of a transcendentalist.

He holds that God is immanent. God manifests himself in nature and man, and that man, being a part of God, is divine.

His work

Images or Shadow of Divine Things

anticipated the nature symbolism of nineteenth-century

Transcendentalism. The

mystical implication of his Puritan idealism was to be developed and given full, explicit

realization by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the next century.

3. Major works

The Freedom of the Will

The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended

The Nature of True Virtue

Images or Shadow of Divine Thing

II. Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)

Franklin was a rare genius in human history. He became everything: a printer, postmaster, almanac maker, essayist,

scientist, orator, statesman, philosopher, political economist, ambassador,

—

1. Life

He was born into a poor candle-maker's family. He was a voracious reader. At 16 he published essays under the pseu-

donym Silence Dogood. At 17 he ran away to Philadelphia to make his own fortune. He became a printer. He helped

found the Pennsylvania Hospital, an academy which led to the University of Pennsylvania, and the American

Philosophical Society. He was a preeminent scientist of his day. He signed the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of

Alliance with France, the Treaty of Peace with England, and the Constitution. He was one of the makers of the new nation.

Franklin?s

claim to a place in literature rests chiefly on his

Poor Richard

’

s Almanac

and The

Autobiography.

2. Analysis of major works

?

Poor Richard

1

s Almanac

Franklin issued

Poor Richard

’

s Almanac

in 1732 and kept publishing it for almost a quarter of a century. Apart from

poems and essays, he managed to put in a good many adages and commonsense witticisms which became, very quickly,

household words and, for many, mottos of the most practical kind. He borrowed from maxims from others. But he made

good use of his own wit and wisdom to simplify and enrich their axioms which made

Poor Richard

1

s Almanac

to teach as

well as amuse.

?

The

Autobiography

(1)

The Autobiography

was probably the first of its kind in literature. It is the simple yet immensely fascinating record of

a man rising to wealth and fame from a state of poverty and obscurity into which he was born, the faithful account of the

colorful career of American

(2)

The Autobiography

is, first of all, a Puritan document. It is a record of self-examination and self- improvement. The

book is also a convincing illustration of the Puritan ethic that, in order to get on in the world, one has to be industrial,

frugal and prudent.

(3)

The Autobiography

is also an eloquent elucidation of the fact that Franklin was a spokesman for the new order of

eighteenth-century enlightenment, and that he represented in America all its ideas, that man is basically good and free by

nature, endowed by God with certain inalienable rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Through telling a success

story of self-reliance, the book celebrates the fulfillment of the American dream.

(4) The style of

The Autobiography

reveals that it is the pattern of Puritan simplicity, directness and concision.

Hector St John de Crevecoeur (1735-1813)

Crevecoeur was a French settler. His famous work is

letters from an American Farmer.

? Analysis of

Letters from an American Farmer

Crevecoeur wrote letters back to Europe to explain the meaning of America to the outside world.

Letters from an Amer-

ican Farmer

is made up of 12 letters. The first 8 letters reveal the pride of a man being an American. Starting from his

ninth letter, he began to speak with a different voice, the voice of a definitely disillusioned man. He became aware of the

existence of evil which he thought the American had left behind in the old world. The note of pessimism began to vibrate

in

Letters from an American Farmer.

第三章

美国浪漫主义

-

欧文

-

库柏

Overview of American Romanticism

In the history of American literature, the Romantic period is one of the most important periods. It stretched from the end

of the eighteenth century through the outbreak of the civil war.

1. Background

( 1 ) A nation bursting into new life cried for literary expression. The buoyant mood of the nation and the spirit of the times

seemed in some measure responsible for the spectacular outburst of romantic feeling. The literary milieu proved fertile

and conductive to the imagination. Magazine appeared in ever-increasing numbers. They played an important role in

facilitating literary expansion.

(2) Foreign influences added incentive to the growth of romanticism. The Romantic Movement, which had flourished

earlier in the century both in England and Europe, proved to be a decisive influence on the upsurge of American romanti-

cism.

(3) There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider.

2. Characteristics

( 1 ) American Romanticism exhibited from the very outset distinct features of its own. It originated from an amalgam of

factors that were altogether American rather than anything else. It was in essence the expression of

ence

( 2) As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American Romanticism was both imitative and inde-

pendent.

II. Washington Irving (1783 -1859)

1. Life

Irving was born into a wealthy New York merchant family. From a very early age he began to read widely and write ju-

venile poems, essays and plays. His first book A

History of New York

was a great success. With the publication of

The

Sketch Book,

he won a measure of international recognition. In 1826 he was sent to Spain as an American diplomatic

attache. From 1829 - 1832 he was Secretary of The United States Legation in London. He spent almost the rest of his life

at Sunnyside on the Hudson River. He was not married and died in 1859.

2. His literary contribution

Irving's contribution to American literature is unique in more ways than one. He did a number of things that have been

regarded as the first of their kind in America.

(1) He was first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame.

(2) He was the father of American literature. The short story as a genre in American literature probably began with Irving

?

s

The Sketch Book.

This book also marked the beginning of American Romanticism.

3. Literary career

Irving

?

s career can be roughly divided into two important phases, the first of which spanned from his first book up to

1832, the other stretching over the remaining years of his life.

( 1 ) In the first period, most of time, he wrote about subjects either English or European. He found value in the past and in

the tradition of the Old World.

(2) In the second period, Irving found a whole new spirit of nationalism in American feeling and art and letters.

4. Writing style

Irving was a highly skillful writer. The gentility, urbanity , and pleasantness of the man all seem to have adequate ex-

pression in his style.

( 1) First, Irving avoids moralizing as much as possible; he writes to amuse and entertain.

(2) He is good at enveloping his stories in an atmosphere, the richness of which is often more than compensation for the

slimness of plot

( 3 ) His characters are vivid and true so that they lend to linger in the mind of the reader.

(4) The humor has built itself into the very texture of his writings.

(5) The finished and musical language and the patent workmanship have been among the points of critical attention.

5. Major works

A History of New York

The Sketch Book

The history of Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus

A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada

Life of Goldsmith

Life of Washington

The Crayon Miscellany

“

A Tour on the Prairies

' Astoria

Adventures of Captain Bonneville

6-Analysis of major works

?

This story reveals the conservative attitude of its author. Before the war, there was peace and harmony. But there comes

now the scramble for power between parties and the tempo of life has quickened. The story might be taken as an il-

lustration of Irving' s argument that change

—

and revolution

—

upset the natural order of things and the fact that Irving

never seemed to accept a modem democratic America.

?

'

The creation of archetypes is a particularly subtle feat of Irving' s consummate craftsmanship. We may see in Ichabod

Crane a New Englander, shrewd, commercial, a city-slicker, who is rather an interloper, a somewhat destructive force, in

village life, and who comes along to swindle the villagers. He is driven away from where he does not belong, so that the

serene village remains permanently good and happy. Brom Bones, on the other hand, is a Huck Finn-type of country

bumpkin, tough, vigorous, boisterous but inwardly very good, a frontier type put out there to shift for himself. Thus the

rivalry in love between Ichabod and Brom, viewed in this way, suddenly assumes the dimensions of two ethical groups

locked in a kind of historic contest.

The style of the piece represents Irving at his best.

James Fenimore Cooper (1789 -1851)

1. Life

Cooper was born into a rich land-holding family of New Jersey. He was sent to Yale at 14 but was expelled because of

improper behavior. He went and spent five year at sea; In his early twenties, he inherited his father

1

s vast fortune and

them began to write. His second novel,

The Spy

, proved to be an immense success. In the three decades that followed, he

wrote thirty- odd novels, including eleven of the sea, and a voluminous amount of other writings. He was best known in his

own day and is still read and remembered today as the author of

Leatherstocking Tales.

2. Literary contribution

Cooper was one of the first authors to write about the American Westward movement Cooper's claim to greatness in

American literature lay in the fact that he created a myth about the formative period of the American nation. Cooper wrote

with increasing awareness of the importance to Fiction of the Western frontier where, American society may be conceived

as passing from one set of principle to another in two directions. Cooper

?

s power lay in his assurance that one direction

was morally right and the other practically inevitable. Here lies Cooper

1

s conflict of allegiance. He was devoted to the

principles of social order and responsible to the idea of nature and freedom in the wildness.

3. Writing style

( 1 ) Cooper is good at inventing plots. His plots are sometimes quite incredible, but his stories are immensely intriguing.

(2) His landscape descriptions are majestic and suggestive of Sir Walter Scott.

(3 ) He was quite conscious of the association of different locales. The fact that he had never been to the frontier and

among the Indians and yet could write five huge epic books a-bout them which is an eloquent proof of the richness of his

imagination. His Indians are among the first appearing in American fiction and probably the first group of noble savages.

(4) His style is dreadful. His characterization seems wooden and lacks probability, and his language, his use of dialect, is

not authentic.

4. Major works

The Spy

Leatherstocking Tales

The Pioneers

(1823)

The Last of the Mohicans

(1826)

The Prairie

(1827)

The Pathfinder

(1840)

The Deerslayer

(1841)

5. Analysis of major work

?

Leatherstocking Tales

( I)

Leatherstocking Tales

is a series of five tales about the life of American settlers. The protagonist Natty Bumppo is a

mythic figure. When he first appears, we see a real frontiersman, a man of flesh and blood in the virgin forests of North

America. But as the story moves on, he does so gathering more and more of the halo of a legendary and mythic nature

around him. He becomes a type, a representation of a nation struggling to be born, progressing from old age to rebirth and

youth. The Leatherstocking novels go backwards, from old age to golden youth. That is the true myth of America.

( 2)

The Pioneers

is the first of

Leatherstocking Tales.

Its historical importance lies in the fact that it was probably the first

true

romance

of

the

frontier

in

American

literature.

The

basic

conflict

of

the

story

is,

in

essence,

one

between

Leather-stocking who insists on

man?s

old forest freedom and Judge Temple to whom man remains savage without law

and order. Bumppo embodies the idea of brotherhood of man and of nature and freedom, and is morally right. Judge

Temple symbolizes law and civilization, and represents the practically inevitable aspect It is between them that they built

the wilderness into anything like a civilized place. Hence the plural in the tide of the book,

The Pioneers.

第四章

新英格兰超验主义

-

爱默生

梭罗

In 1836 Emerson

?

s

Nature

came out which made a tremendous impact on the intellectual life of America.

Nature

9

s

voice

pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New England Transcendentalism, the summit of American

Romanticism.

New England Transcendentalism

In the 1830s and 1840s some New Englanders , not quite happy about the materialistic-oriented life of their time, formed

themselves into an informal club, the Transcendentalist Club, and met to discuss matters of interest to the life of the nation

as a whole. They expressed their views, published their journal,

the Dial,

and made their voice heard. The club with a

membership of some thirty men and a couple of women included Emerson, Thoreau, Branson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller.

Most of them were teachers or clergymen, radicals who reacted against the faith of Boston businessmen and the cold, rigid

rationalism of Unitarianism. The word

Emerson put it,

n

1. Major features

( 1 ) The Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe. The

Oversoul was an all- pervading power for goodness, omnipresent and omnipotent, from which all things came and of

which all were a part. This represented a new way of looking at the world. It was a reaction to the eighteenth Newtonian

concept of the universe. It was also a reaction against the direction that a mechanized, capitalist America was taking,

against the popular tendency to get ahead in world affairs to neglect spiritual welfare.

(2)

The

Transcendentalists stressed the importance of the individual. To them the individual was the most important

element

of society. The ideal type of man were the self- reliant individuals. The individual soul communed with the

Oversold and was therefore divine. This new notion of the individual and his importance represented a new way of

looking at man. It was a reaction against the Calvinist conception of total depravity, against the process of dehumanization

that came in the wake of developing capitalism.

(3)

The Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the spirit or God. Things in nature tended to

become symbolic, and the physical world was a symbol of the spiritual. This in turn added to the tradition of literary

symbolism in American literature.

2. Sources

New England Transcendentalism was the product of a combination of foreign influence and the American tradition.

( 1

) Idealistic philosophy of Germany and France.

( 2

) Oriental mysticism.

( 3

) American Puritanism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 -1882)

I. Life

Emerson was the descendant of a long line of New England clergymen. When he was still a child, the family fortune fell.

He went to Harvard.

1

ater he embraced Unitarianism and became a Unitarian minister to the Second Church of Boston.

But not for long, he found the rationality of Unitarianism intolerable and left his job. He went to Europe and brought back

with him the influence of European Romanticism. He formed an informal Transcendentalists

1

club with some friends and

edited for a time the Transcendentalist journal,

the Dial,

to explain their ideas. He became the most eloquent spokesman

of New England Transcendentalism. During his lifetime he was considered one of the two or three best writers in America,

and certainly the most influential among his contemporaries. He was the prophet of his age and exerted great influence on

Thor-eau, Whitman, Hawthorne and others in varying degrees.

2. Analysis of major works

? Nature

(1)Published in

1836,

Nature is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism.

(2) In this book, Emerson emphasizes the transcendence of the

and Soul. He regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man, and advocates a direct in-

tuition of a spiritual and immanent God in nature.

(3) The spiritual God is operative in the soul of man, and that man is divine. The divinity of man became a favorite subject

in lectures and essays. Each man should feel the world as his, and the world exists for him alone. Emerson

?

s message was

eventually self-reliance. His self- reliance was an expression , on a very high level, of the buoyant spirit of his time.

(4) Nature is the emblematic of God. It mediates between man and God. A natural implication of Emerson's view on

nature is that the world around is symbolic.

?

“The

American

Scholar”

has been regarded as

?

s Declaration of Intellectual Independence,

say that the Americans should write a-bout here and now instead of imitating and importing from other lands. He called on

American writers to write about America in a way peculiarly American.

Emerson?s

importance in the intellectual history

of America lies in the fact that he embodied a new nation

?

s desire and struggled to assert its own identity in its formative

period.

Henry David Thoreau (1917 -1862)

1. Life

(1)Thoreau was a renowned New England Transcendentalist. He was a friend of Emerson and his junior by some fourteen

years. Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts. He went to Harvard at 17. After graduation, he made friends with

Emerson and embraced his ideas. In 1845 he moved in a cabin on Walden Pond and lived there in a very simple manner

for a little over two years. During his stay in Walden, he went back occasionally to his village, and on one visit he was

detained for a night in jail for refusing to pay a poll-tax he thought unjust. This inspired him to write his famous essay,

“Civil

Disobedience

Walden

, after he moved back to Concord.

He was one of the three great American authors of the nineteenth century who had no contemporary readers and yet

became great in the twentieth century, the other two being Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson. And he became a major

voice for nineteenth-century America, now better heard perhaps than

Emerson?s

. His influence goes l>eyond America.

His status was placed in the Hall of Fame in New York in 1969.

2. Major Works

A Week On the Concord and Merrimack Rivers Walden

3. Analysis of major work

? Walden

Thoreau?s

masterpiece,

Walden

, is a great Transcendentalist work. It is a faithful record of Thoreau ' s reflections when he

was in solitary communion with nature, an eloquent indication that he not only embraced Emerson' s Transcendentalist

philosophy but went even further to illustrate the pantheistic quality of nature. Walden can be many things and can be read

on more than one level.

( I ) It is a book about man, what he is, what he should be and must be. Thoreau holds that the most important thing for

men to do with their lives is to be self-sufficient and strive to achieve personal spiritual perfection. Thoreau has been re-

garded as a prophet of individualism in American literature.

(2) In this book, Thoreau was very critical of modem civilization. Modem civilized life has dehumanized man and placed

him in a spiritual quandary.

(3) Furthermore, the book is full of ideas expressed to jostle his neighbors out of their smug complacency. He records how

he tries to minimize his own needs on Walden Pond. He holds that spiritual richness is real wealth. One's soul might not

help one to get up in the world, but it will help make real progress in self-improvement

(4) Thoreau went to the woods to experiment a new way of life for himself and for his fellowmen. And he felt that he came

out of it a better man, reborn and reinvigorated. Thus, regeneration became a major thematic concern of

Walden

and it also

decided its structural framework.

第五章

霍桑

-

麦尔维尔

I. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 -1864)

1. Life

Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts. Some of his ancestors were men of prominence in the Puritan theocracy.

One of his ancestors was a colonial magistrate, notorious for his part in the persecution of the Quakers, and another was a

judge at the Salem Witchcraft Trial in 1692. Gradually, the family fortune declined. Hawthorn was intensely conscious of

the wrongdoing of his ancestors, and this awareness led to his understanding of evil being at the core of human life, so he

seemed to be haunted by his sense of sin and evil in his life.

2. Ideas

(1) He was haunted by his sense of sin and evil in life, therefore we see

—

the power of

blackness. Evil seems to be man

1

s birthmark. In almost every book he wrote, Hawthorne discussed sin and evil.

(2)

He rejected the Transcendentalists

1

transparent optimism about the potentialities of human nature.

(3) Whenever there is sin, there is punishment Sin or e-vil can be passed from generation to generation. In his opinion, evil

educates.

(4) He believed that romance was the predestined form of American narrative. He took a great interest in history and an-

tiquity. To him these furnished the soil on which his mind grew to fruition.

(5) Hawthorne had a negative attitude toward science.

3. Writing style

(1 )He is the most ambivalent writer, a consummate romantic in the American literature history. One salient feature of

Hawthorne

?

s art is his ambiguity, of which the technique of multiple views employed in the last part of his masterpiece

The Scarlet Letter

offers a good illustration.

( 2 ) He is good at exploring of the complexity of human psychology. He is anatomist of

works are full of mental activities.

(3 ) Allegory is used to hold fast against the crushing blows of reality, the symbolism serves as a weapon to attack and

penetrate it Hawthorne is a master of symbolism, which he took from the Puritan tradition and bequeathed to American

literature in a revivified form. The symbol can be found everywhere in his writing, and his masterpiece.

The Scarlet Letter,

provides the most conclusive proof.

4. Influence

Hawthorne's influence has been great. He was accorded due recognition by his contemporary James Russell Lowell in the

latter' s A

Fable for Critics.

He changed Herman Melville' s original scheme for his

Moby Dick.

William Dean Howells

learned to use Hawthorne's fiction as the benchmark for their novel-writing practice. In this century William Faulkner and

some Gothic novelists clearly show their indebtedness to him.

5. Major works

The Scarlet Letter

Twice-told Tales

Mosses from an Old Manse

The House of the Seven Gables

The Blithdale Romance

The Marble Faun

?

s Daughter

6. Analysis of bis major works

? The Scarlet Letter

( 1 ) Theme

—

This novel assumes the universality of guilt and explores the complexities and ambiguities of man

1

s

choices. Hawthorne does not intend to tell a love story nor a story of sin, but focuses his attention on the moral, emotional,

and psychological effects or consequences of the sin on the people in general and those main characters in particular, so as

to show us the tension between society and individuals. To Hawthorne, everybody is potentially a sinner, and great moral

courage is therefore indispensable for the improvement of human nature.

(2) Symbolism

—

Hawthorne portrays Hester as an aristocratic

and sensitive young woman who meets her sentence with

dignity and courage. When she is set free, she does not flee the community. She supports herself and her child by doing

fancy needlework, devotes her life to her child and helping the sick and the poor, and wins the admiration and love of her

fellow-men again. So,

The Scarlet Letter

is a hymn on the moral growth of the woman. The scarlet letter at first is a token

of shame. Adultery, then the genuine sympathy and help she offers to her fellow villagers change it to Able. Later in the

end, A appears in the sky, signifying Angel. Her life eventually acquires a real significance when she establishes a

meaningful relationship with her fellowmen.

Herman Melville (1819 -1891)

I. Life

Melville is a famous novelist and poet in American literature. He had little education and began to work after stopped

schooling. There are three things which deserve mention about his life: going out to sea, his marriage and his friendship

with Hawthorne. His experiences and adventures on the sea furnished him with abundant material for fiction. Melville had

to do hackwork for the money he needed to keep his wife in her extravagant style. Melville saw in Hawthorne the one

American who was expressively aware of the evil at the core of American life. He found Hawthorne

1

s understanding of

evil, that blackness of vision, unusually fascinating. A significant change came about in the original design of his

masterpiece

Moby Dick

when the two men met, and the novel was rewritten into the world classic that we read today.

2. Major works

Redburn

Typee

Omoo

Moby Dick

Mardi

White Jacket

Pierre

Billy Budd

The Confidence Man

Clarel

3. Analysis of major work

? Moby Dick

(1)

Moby Dick

represents the sum total of Melville

?

s bleak view of the world in which he lived. It is at once godless and

purposeless. The loss of faith and the sense of futility and meaningless which characterize modern life of the West were

expressed in Melville's work so well that the twentieth century has found it both fascinating and great

(2) One of the major themes of this novel is alienation, which exists in the life of Melville on different levels, between man

and man, man, and society, and man and nature. Melville also criticizes New England Transcendentalism of its emphasis

on individualism and Oversoul. Another theme of this novel is

(3) The novel is highly symbolic. The voyage itself is a metaphor for

truth of experience.

”

Moby Dick is the most conspicuous symbol in the book and it is capable of many interpretations. It

is a symbol of evil to some, one of goodness to others, and both to still others. Its whiteness is a paradoxical color,

signifying as it does 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.

(4) Melville manages to achieve the effect of ambiguity through employing the technique of multiple view of his narra-

tives.

He

tends

to

write

periodic

sentences.

His

rich

rhythmical

prose

and

his

poetic

power

have

been

profusely

commented upon and praised.

第六章

惠特曼

-

狄金森

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

1. Life

Whitman was brought up in a working- class background, on Long Island, New York. He had five years schooling and a

good deal of

and picked up a first hand knowledge of life and people in the new world. The experience with the people and the country

furnished both the material and the guiding spirit for his epic.

Leaves of Grass.

When the Civil War began, he worked as

a

taken good care of by his friends and where he spent the remaining years revising his

Leaves of Grass.

2. Literary point of view

( 1 ) Influenced by the leading New Englander Emerson , Whitman states that the greatest poet breathes into the world the

grandeur and life of the universe.

(2

) Art should be based organically on nature; the poet' s work grows out of nature and cosmic processes and derives its

form from within.

( 3 ) Whitman embraces idealism. He relies on insight and intuition.

3. Themes

(1 ) He shows concern for the whole hard-working people and the burgeoning life of cities.

(2

) He advocates the realization of the individual value. Most of the poems in

Leaves of Grass

sing of the

the self as well.

( 3 ) Pursuit of love and happiness is approved of repeatedly and affectionately in his lines. The individual person and his

desires must be respected.

( 4 ) Some of Whitman' s poems are politically committed. Before and during the Civil War, Whitman expressed much

mourning for the sufferings of the young Lives in the battlefield and showed a determination to carry on the fighting

dauntlessly until the final victory. Later, he wrote down a great many poems to air his sorrow over the death of Lincoln,

and one of the famous is

?

d.

4. Writing style

( 1 ) Whitman broke free from the traditional iambic pentameter and

wrote”

free verse

beat or regular rhyme scheme.

(2) There is a strong sense of the poems being rhythmical. Parallelism and phonetic recurrence at the beginning of the

lines contribute to the musicality of his poems.

(3) Most of the pictures he painted with words are honest, undistorted images of different aspects of America of the day.

(4) Whitman

?

s language is relatively simple and even rather crude. Another characteristic in Whitman' s language is his

strong tendency to use oral English. Whitman' s vocabulary is amazing. He would use powerful, colorful, as well as

rarely-used words.

5.

Whitman

’

s influence

Whitman?s

influence over modern poetry is great in the world as well as in America Whitman has been compared to

mountain in American literary history. For his innovations in diction and versification, his frankness about sex, his

inclusion of the commonplace and the ugly and his censure of the weakness of the American democratic practice- these

have paved his way to a share of immortality in American literature.

6. Major works

Leaves of Grass

“When

Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom

1

d

Hear America Singing

Two Riverlets

Drum Traps

7. Analysis of major works

? Leaves of Grass

( I ) Grass, the most common thing with the greatest vitality, is an image of the poet himself, a symbol of the then rising

American nation and an embodiment of his ideals about democracy and freedom.

(2) In this giant work, openness, freedom, and above all, individualism (the belief that the rights and freedom of individual

people are most important) are all that concerned him.

(3) In this book he also praises nature, democracy, labor and creation, and sings of man

?

s dignity and equality, and of the

brightest future of mankind. Most of the poems in

Leaves of Grass

sing of the

?

Myself

Whitman extols the ideals of equality and democracy and celebrates the dignity, the self-reliant spirit, and the joy of the

common man,

?

ooryard Bloom'd

It deals with the typical Whitmansque love-and-death motif. It was written as part of the memories of President Lincoln,

in the poem, when the poet looks up, he sees the western fallen star, and then when he looks around, he spots the lilac bush

blossoming in the dooryard. Here the star is associated with the thought of death, the lilac with a token of life for the dead.

Death is not the end, but the beginning of life.

Q. Emily Dickinson (1830 -1886)

1. Life

Dickinson was born into a Calvinist family. Her father, an old Puritan, with a heart

”,

influenced his

daughter in no small way. She was shy, sensitive, some-limes rebellious. It was during her mid-twenties that Emily be-

came a recluse. She wanted to live simply as a completely independent person.

2. Themes

(1 ) Based on her own experiences, joys or sorrows, she writes about doubt and belief about religious subjects, suffering

and frustration caused by love, success and failure.

(2) The largest portion of Dickinson's poetry concerns death and immortality. For Dickinson, death leads to immortality.

(3) Dickinson sees nature as both gaily benevolent and cruel.

(4) On the ethical level, Dickinson holds that beauty, truth and goodness are ultimately one.

(5 ) She emphasizes free-will and human responsibility.

3. Writing styles

(1 ) Her poetry abounds in telling images. In the best of her poems, every word is a picture. So she is regarded as the

precursor of Imagism poetry.

(2) Her poetic idiom is noted for its conciseness, directness and plainest words.

(3)

Dickinson?s

poems are usually short, and the first line of Dickinson

?

s poems is used to be the title.

(4) The capital letters in her poems are used for emphasis.

4. Comparison: Whitman VS. Dickinson Similarities:

( 1 ) Thematically, they both extolled, in their different ways, an emergent America, its expansion, its individualism and

its Americanness, their poetry being part of

(2) Technically, they both added to the literary independence of the new nation by breaking free of the convention of the

iambic pentameter and exhibiting a freedom in form unknown before: they were pioneers in American poetry.

Differences

(1) Whitman seems to keep his eye on society at large; Dickinson explores the inner life of the individual.

(2) Whereas Whitman is

(3) Dickinson has the

“catalogue

technique

?

t have.

5. Influence

Her poetry abounds in telling images. Her poetic idiom is noted for its laconic brevity, directness and plainest words. All

these characteristics of her poetry were to become popular through Stephen Crane with the Imagists such as Ezra Pound

and Amy Lowell in the twentieth century. She became the pre-cursor of the Imagist movement.

6. Major works

—

Wild Nights

—

but was scarce

第七章

埃德加

-

爱伦

-

坡< /p>

Edgar Allan Poe

1. Life

—

by the Right of the White Election

Poe?s

childhood was a miserable one. He lost both of his parents when still very small, and was taken care of by a wealthy

merchant of Virginia. Father and son enjoyed nothing but an unhappy relationship together. At 17 Poe entered the

University of Virginia but did not finish. He went to West Point as a cadet but was dismissed because of misbehavior. Poe

wrote and worked as editor most of his short life. He was poor all his life. At 27 he married his thirteen-year-old cousin,

whose death in 1847 left him inconsolable and bitter with life than ever. He died, in mysterious circumstances, in October,

1849. For a long time after his death Poe remained probably the most controversial and most misunderstood literary figure

in the history of American literature. But today Poe is recognized as a great writer of fiction, a poet of the first rank, and a

critic of acumen and insight. His works are read the world over with appreciation and understanding.

2. Literary point of view

(1) Theories for short story

The short story must be such length as to be read at one sitting (brevity) , so as to ensure the totality of impression.

(2)The very first sentence ought to help to bring out the

not contribute to the

（

3

）

A tale should reveal some logic with

of finality with the reader.

{2) Theories for Poetry

(1)Poems should be short, concise and readable at one sitting.

(2)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.

opposed didactic poems.

stressed the form of poem, especially the beautiful and neat rhyme. He defined poetry as

of beauty

3. Theme and style

He is a romantic poet who is preoccupied with the subject of the death of one' s beloved lover of great intelligence and

beauty. He also writes about horror (Gothic) stories, murder.

and insanity.

Poe's style is traditional.

It is much too rational, too ordinary to reflect the peculiarity of his theme.

Somehow he

failed to carry the newness of his idea into his style, which incidentally failed to echo his central theme. He is not easy

to

read. Poe?

s choice of words and his syntax may have been responsible for his difficult prose.

4. Influence

His influence is world-wide in modern literature. His aesthetics and conscious craftsmanship, his attack on

of

the

didactic

f

and

his

call

for

rhythmical

creation

of

beauty

have

influenced

French

symbolists

and

the

devotees of

5. Major works

Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque

The Philosophy of Composition

The Poetic Principle

6. Analysis of major works

? To Helen

“

To Helen

8

in Richmond, Virginia. The poem is famous for a number of things, for example, its rhyme scheme, its varied

lint-lengths , its metaphor of a travel on the sea, and its oft-quoted lines,

To the Glory that was Greece / And the grandeur

that was Rome.

?

sense of melancholy over the death of a beloved beautiful young woman pervades the whole poem; the portrayal of a

young man grieving for his lost Ignore, his grief being turned to madness under the steady one-word repetition of the

talking bird introduced right at the beginning of the poem. The young man, a neurotic on the brink of a mental collapse,

outpours his sorrow in his semi-sleep on the appearance of the bird. Poetic imagination externalizes itself in the phantom

of a bird and intermingles with it to enhance the effect of the tragedy of the bereavement. Poe

1

s poems are heavily tinted

in a dreamy, hallucinatory color. And the narrator is in a state of semi- stupor.

第八章

现实主义时 期

-

豪威尔

-

詹姆斯

American Realism

Realism was a reaction against Romanticism and paved the way to Modernism.

During this period a new generation of writers, dissatisfied with the Romantic ideas in the older generation

t

came up with

a new inspiration. This new attitude was characterized by a great interest in the realities of life. It aimed at the interpre-

tation of the realities of any aspect of life, free from subjective prejudice, idealism, or romantic color. Instead of thinking

a-bout the mysteries of life and death and heroic individualism, people

1

s attention was now directed to the interesting

features of everyday existence, to what was brutal or sordid, and to the open portrayal of class struggle.

So writers began to describe the integrity of human characters reacting under various circumstances and picture the pi-

oneers of the Far West, the new immigrants and the struggles of the working classes.

Mark Twain, Howells and Henry James are three leading figures of the American Realism. D

. William William Dean

Howells

1. Life

He was born in a small town in Ohio and brought up in humble surroundings. He had little formal education but read

widely. He was the first president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, once the editor-in-chief of the country

1

s most influential journal,

The Atlantic Monthly.

He was a prolific writer. He wrote volumes of drama, poetry, and novels

in addition to criticism, travelogues, and autobiography.

2. Literary point of view

( 1 ) He defines realism as

rather than the exceptional and the unique high or low.

(2) Man in his natural and unaffected dullness was the object of Howells

1

s fictional representation.

(3) Realism is by no means mere photographic pictures of externals but includes a central concern with

psychological conflicts.

(4) Realism, interpreting sympathetically the

to express the spirit of America.

(5) With regard to literary criticism, Howells felt that the literary critic should not try to impose arbitrary or subjective

evaluations on books but should follow the detached scientist in accurate description, interpretation, and classification.

3. Major works

The Rise of Silas Lapham

A Modern Instance

A Hazard of New Fortunes

Criticism and Fiction

4. Analysis of major work

? The Rise of Silas Lapham

In this novel Howells

?

qualities as a novelist are shown at their best. It relates the story of a new upstart in mid-19 th C in

Boston. It is a fine specimen of American realistic writing. There is nothing heroic, dramatic or extraordinary. Howells is

here so devoted to the small, the trivial, and the commonplace. In this novel the author emphasizes on ethics, stresses the

need for sympathy and moral integrity and the need for different social classes to adapt to one another. The author

criticizes the rise of materialism in American life.

Henry James

”

He is considered the founder of psychological realism. He was the first American writer to conceive his artistic work in

international themes.

1.

Life

Henry James was born into a wealthy cultured family of New England. His brother, William James, was to be the famous

philosopher and psychologist. To some extent, his family background decides his theme

:

he wrote about the wealthy,

deep-rooted leisure class. At a very early age, he was exposed to the cultural influence of Europe. In 1876, he settled down

in London, and spent the rest of his life there.

2. James1 literary point of view

(1 ) As a realist f

he

holds that art

must be related to life, the aim of the novel is to represent life. He advocates an

immense

increase

of

freedom

in

novel- writing

and

argues

for

inclusion

of

the

disagreeable,

the

ugly

and

the

commonplace.

(2)James's

realism

is

characterized

by

his

psychological

approach

to

his

subject

matter.

He

emphasized

the

inner

awareness and

inward

movements of

his characters in

face of outside occurrence rather than

merely portraying their

environment in any detail.

(3) James

was

concerned

with

of

view

which

is

at

the

center

of

his

aesthetic

of

the

novel.

James

avoids

the

authorial omniscience as much as possible and makes his characters reveal themselves with his minimal intervention.

3. Theme

During his lifetime his fame rested largely upon his handling of his major fictional theme,

”

the

meeting of America and Europe, American innocence in contact and contrast with European decadence, and its moral

and psychological complications.

For the American it was a process of progression from inexperience to experience,

from

innocence to knowledge and maturity.

4. Style

James

is

not

so

easy

to

understand.

He

is

often

highly

refined

and

insightful.

With

a

large

vocabulary,

he

is

always

accurate in word selection, trying to find the best expression for his literary imagination. Therefore Henry James is not

only one of the most important realists of the period before the First World War, but also the most expert stylist of his

time.

5. Major works

The American

Daisy Miller

The Portrait of a Lady

The Bostonians

The Princess Casamassima

The Turn of the Screw

When Maisie Knew

The Ambassadors

The Wings of the Dove

The Golden Bowl

6. Analysis of major works

?

The Portrait of a Lady

This novel tells about the fate of one of those splendid Jamesian American girls, Isabel Archer, arriving in Europe, full

of hope and with a will to live a free and noble life, only to fall prey to the sinister designs of two vulgar and

unscrupulous expatriates, Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond. Isabel ' s dreams and expectations evaporate; her

unawareness of evil a-round her and her money combine to work her undoing.

?

The Ambassador

The

Ambassador,

which

James

considered

his

perfect

work

of

art,

is

a

comedy

of

American

and

European

manners. Strether, the middle-aged American, is sent to Paris to bring back the young man too fascinated with Europe

to

return

home,

but

is

eventually

convinced

that

Paris

is

the

place

both

for

the

young

man

and

for

himself.

James

stresses mutual understanding and sympathy.

第九章

地方色 彩小说

-

马克

-

吐温

Local Colorism

The vogue of local color fiction was the outgrowth of historical and aesthetic forces that had been gathering energy

since early 19th century. Local colorism as a literary trend first made its presence felt in the late 1860s and early

seventies. It is a variation of American literary realism.

Local colorists were consciously nostalgic historians of a vanishing way of life, recorders of a present that faded before

their eyes. They concerned themselves with presenting and interpreting the local character of their regions. They tended

to idealize and glorify, but they never forgot to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life. Major local colorists are

Bret Harte, Hanlin Garland, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kate Chopin and Mark Twain.

Mark Twain (1835 -1910)

1. Life

Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, is a great literary giant of America. He was brought up in the

small town of Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi River. He was twelve when his father died and he had to leave

school. He was successively a printer

?

s apprentice, a tramp printer, a silver miner, a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi,

and a frontier journalist in Nevada and California. This knocking about gave him wide knowledge of humanity. With

the publication of his frontier tale, he became nationally famous. His first novel

The Gilded Age

was an artistic failure,

but

it

gave

its

name

to

the

American

of

the

post- bellum

period.

The

Adventures

of

Huckleberry

Finn

was

his

masterwork. Mark Twain was essentially an affirmative writer. But toward the latter part of his life, due to some tragic

events, he changed to an almost despairing determinist.

2. Comparisons among Howells, Henry James and Mark Twain

Although Howells, James and Mark Twain all worked for realism, there were obvious differences between them.

(1 ) In the thematic Terms, James wrote mostly of the upper reaches of American society, and Howells concerned

himself chiefly with middle class life, whereas Mark Twain dealt largely with the lower strata of society.

( 2) Technically, Howells wrote in the vein of genteel realism, James pursued an

psychological realism, but Mark Twain

?

s contribution to the development of realism and American literature was

partly through his theories of localism in American fiction, and partly through his colloquial style.

3. Comments on Mark Twain

( I ) Mark Twain was a famous American literary giant. He was a humorist and acclaimed as

national literature

(2) Mark Twain preferred to represent social life through portraits of local places which he knew best. He drew heavily

from his own rich fund of knowledge of people and places.

(3) One of Mark Twain

?

s significant contributions to American literature lies in the fact that he made colloquial speech

an accepted, respectable literary medium in the literary history of the country. His style of language influenced many

later writers like Sherwood Anderson, Hemingway, etc.

(4)

Mark Twain was also a social critic. All his life Mark Twain loved life and people, and freedom and justice, felt a

pride in human dignity and advocated brotherhood of man. He haled tyranny and iniquity, despised meanness and

cruelty.

(5)

Mark

Twain

was

a

friend

of

the

Chinese.

He

was

not

indifferent

either

to

the

Chinese

immigrants

persecuted

in

America or to china suffering intense agonies of humiliation by imperialist power.

4. Major works

Innocents Abroad

Roughing it

The Gilded Age

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Prince and the Pauper

Life on the Mississippi

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur

’

s Court

The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

The Mysterious Stranger

Autobiography

5. Analysis of major work

?

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

(1

) It is a sequel to

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,

but much deeper and more mature in theme and technique. It has

always been regarded as one of the greatest books of western literature and western civilization. Hemingway described

it as the book from which

”

.

(2

) The story tells a story about the

U.

S. before the Civil War, and takes place along the Mississippi River. It relates

the story of the escape of Jim from slavery and how Huck Finn, floating along with him and helping him as best he

could, changes his mind, his prejudice about Black people, and comes to accept Jim as a man and as a close friend as

well.

(3) It is a veritable recreation of living models. Most of the major characters had prototypes in real life. The portrayal of

individual incidents and characters achieved intense verisimilitude of detail. Serious problems are being discussed

through the narration of a little illiterate boy. The fact of the wilderness juxtaposed with civilization. Though a local and

particular book. It touches upon the human condition in a general indeed universal way: Humanism ultimately triumphs.

(4

)

Another

notable

feature

of

the

novel

is

its

language.

The

book

is

written

in

the

colloquial

style,

in

the

general

standard speech of uneducated Americans. Mark Twain made colloquial speech an accepted respectable literary medi-

um in the American literature.

L American Naturalism

1.

Historical Background

( I ) The post-bellum decades witnessed the emergence of

extremes of wealth and poverty. Slums appeared in great numbers, and the city poor lived a life of insecurity, suffering,

and violence.

(2) The westward expansion continued to push the frontier nearer the Pacific coast, the settlers found themselves

subjected to the ruthless manipulation of forces including the railroad, which charged heavy freight rates and drove

farmers to bankruptcy.

(3 ) Living in an indifferent, cold and Godless world, man was no longer free in any sense of the word. People

?

s

outlook toward life became pessimistic. The Darwinian concepts like

became popular catchwords and standards of moral reference in an amoral world.

2. Features of Naturalist writings

( 1 ) American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. It evolved from realism but went a step further than it in por-

traying social reality.

(2) The American naturalists tore the mask of gentility to pieces and wrote about the helplessness of man, his insignifi-

cance in a cold world, and his lack of dignity in face of the crushing forces of environment and heredity.

(3)

The

Naturalist

works

reveal

a

bitter

and

wretched

world

where

human

beings

battle

hopelessly

against

over-

whelming odds in a cold, harsh and at best apathetic environment , with their lives very much determined by forces they

have

no

means

whatever

of

manipulating.

The

whole

picture

is

somber

and

dark;

and

the

general

tone

one

of

hopelessness and even despair.

3. Major American Naturalists

Stephen Crane

Frank Norris

Theodore Dreiser

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Jack London

Upton Sinclair

Stephen Crane (1871 -1900)

1. Life

Stephen Crane was born into a New Jersey Methodist Clergyman

?

s family. He attended a military prep school where

he stayed for less than a year. Then he moved into New York to earn his living as a free- lance journalist. First hand

knowledge of New York slum area furnished him with material for his

Maggie: a Girl of the Streets.

In 1895

the

publication of

The Red Badge of Courage

and of his first book of poems,

The Black Riders,

brought him into

prominence. He once was a correspondent in Cuba covering the Spanish-American War. Because of his marriage he left

America and settled down in England, where he enjoyed the company of Conrad and James. He died of tuberculosis in

Germany in 1900

.

2. Literary contributions

(1 )

Crane was a pioneer writing in the naturalistic tradition. His writings gave the whole esthetic movement of the

nineties

(2)

He is also a pioneer in the field of modem poetry. His early poems, brief, quotable, with their unrhymed, unor-

thodox conciseness, and impressionistic imagery, were to exert a significant influence on modern poetry.

3. Major works

Maggie: a Girl of the Streets

The Black Riders

The Red Badge of Courage

4. Analysis of major work

?

The Red Badge of Courage

(1 ) It is a story set in the period of the Civil War. The basic theme of the animal man in a cold, manipulating world runs

through the whole book. Here Crane is looking into

man?s

primitive emotions and trying to tell the elemental truth

about human life.

(2) Crane's debunking of war has a singularly modern touch about it. War in this novel is a plain slaughter-house. There

is nothing like valor or heroism on the battlefield, and if there is anything, it is fear of death, cowardice, the natural

instinct of man to run from danger. By de-romanticizing war and heroism, Crane initiated the modern tradition of telling

the truth at all costs about the elemental human situation, and writing about war as a real human experience.

Frank Norris (1870 -1902)

1. Life

Frank Norris was born in Chicago and lived there until 1984 when the family moved to San Francisco. He studied art

briefly in Paris, and entered the University of California at Berkeley in 1890. During a year at Harvard he wrote

McTeague

Before his death he was writing a trilogy on the production, distribution, and consumption of wheat. The first

book

The Octopus

is his best work. The second is

The Pit

and the third is

The Wolf,

unfinished. Norris was also a

literary critic. His essays of literary criticism have been collected in

The Responsibility of the Novelist.

He died of

meningitis in 1902. Norris exerted a great influence on the writers of the 1920s and 1930s such as William Faulkner and

John Steinbeck.

2. Writing style

Norris' s works are sometimes written in loose structure and the story is over adventurous, but his language is concise,

quotable and poetic. And his vibrant and fresh imagery is also part of the literary legacy of the period.

3. Major works

Mcteague

The Octopus

The Pit

The Responsibility of the Novelist

4. Analysis of major work

McTcague

( I) It has been called

classic study of the inevitable effect of environment and heredity on human lives.

(2)

McTeague is a fine specimen of the

ties in the fact that he cannot shake himself free of the brutalizing influences destined to destroy him as a man.

(3

) This novel added strength to the naturalistic endeavor beginning to make its impact felt in the country.

IV. Theodore Dreiser (1871 -1945)

Dreiser was the greatest American literary naturalist

1. Life

Dreiser was born in Indiana, the ninth child of German-speaking parents. His child hood was spent in extreme poverty.

His first novel,

Sister Carrie

, was rejected because of his relentless honesty in presenting the true nature of American life.

Sister Carrie

came out in 1900, followed by other works. Dreiser was left- oriented. He visited Russia and had a strong

sympathy for communism. He wrote

Dreiser Looks at Russia

and

Tragic America

to express his new faith. He joined the

American Communist Party before he died.

2.

Dreiser’s

points of view

(1 ) Dreiser embraced the social Darwinism. He thought man is merely an animal driven by greed and lust in a struggle for

existence in which only the fittest survive. Life was determined and human beings had no power to assert his wil

l.

( 2

) He was scathingly critical of his country for in his o-pinion the moral and social codes of America misrepresent the

truth of human nature.

3. Major works

Sister Carrie Jennie Gerhardt The Financier The Titan The Stoic The Genius

An American Tragedy Dreiser Looks at Russia Tragic America The Bulwark

4. Analysis of major work

? Sister Carrie

( 1)

Sister Carrie

tells about a country girl comes to Chicago to look for a better life or to pursue the American Dream.

(2)

Sister Carrie

embodies Dreiser

?

s naturalistic belief that men are controlled and conditioned by heredity, instinct and

chance.

(3 ) To Sister Carrie, the world is cold and harsh. Alone and helpless, she moves along like a mechanism driven by desire

and catches blindly at any opportunities for a better existence. A feather in the wind, she is totally at the mercy of forces

she cannot comprehend, still less to say control.

(4) The obvious symbol of the novel is the rocking chair that stands for the uncertainty of life.

V. Other authors of the period

1. Edwin Arlington Robinson (1860 -1935)

Robinson was generally regarded as America

1

s greatest poet in the 1920s.

? Major works

Richard Cory

2. Jack London (1876 -1916)

Jack London was a very popular author in the first years of the 20 th century. He came from the bottom of society and

worked hard to make his way up to the summit of the social hierarchy. But when he became a millionaire, he found

fashionable society life empty and distasteful. He committed suicide, in despair.

? Major works

The Call of the Wild

White Fang

The Sea Wolf

Martin Eden

3.O. Henry (1862-1910)

0. Henry is the pseudonym of William Sidney Porter. He is one of the most prolific writers in the history of American lit-

erature and also one of the most famous short story writers in the world.

?

Major works