美国文学学习重点

《美国文学》学习重点

说明：

1.

教材：常耀信著

《美国文学简史》< /p>

（第三版）南开大学出版社

2008< /p>

年

9

月

该教材的特点是文学史

作品评析，其中作品评析部分是非常好的文学分析范例，课堂时

间有限，涉及较少，学习重点中也 基本未列及，请同学们灵活自学。

2.

学习重点是需要重点掌握的内容，其他部分可略读，但并不表示不需要读。

3.

本重点适用整个学期，请同学们预习复习的时候都参考使用。

4.

重点概念及重点作家和重点作品在下文中都已列出，请大 家尤其重视。

Introduction

p. 1-10

Colonial Period

(1607-1800)

–

Rise of the American Dream

1.

Puritanism

p. 11-12, 14-15

2.

Jonathan Edwards

p. 27-29

3.

Benjamin Franklin:

Poor Richard’

s Almanac

,

Autobiography

p. 32(para. 3)-36

Romanticism (1800-1865)

–

Prime of the American Dream

1.

American Romanticism: p.40-44

2.

Washington Irving:

“

Rip Van Winkle

”

,

“

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

”

p. 44-45

4.

James Fenimore Cooper:

Leather stocking Tales

, American Westward movement p. 50

5.

New England Transcendentalism: Oversoul p. 56-59

6.

Ralph

Waldo

Emerson:

“< /p>

Nature

”

(The

Bible

for

Transcendentalism),

“

The

American

Scholar

”

(intellectual independence),

“

The Poet

”

p.59-64

7.

Henry David Thoreau:

Walden

, prose

8.

Nathaniel Hawthorn:

novelist,

dark

side

of

human

beings,

The Scarlet

Letter

,

“

Young

Goodman Brown

”

,

“

The Minister

’

s Black Veil

”

p.70-74

9.

Herman Melville: novelist, sea life,

Moby Dick

,

Billy Budd

10.

Walt

Whitman:

free

verse,

Leaves

of

Grass

,

“

Song

of

Myself

”

,

“

O

Captain!

My

Captain!

”

, national poet of America, social and national topics, strongly influenced by

Emerson

p. 88-96

11.

Emily Dickinson: poet, regional and inner world, topics on religion, death, love, nature

p.96-103

12.

Edgar Allan Poe:

poet

and short

story

writer,

“

The

Raven

”

,

The

Fall

of

the House

of

Usher

,

Murders in the Rue Morgue

,

The Purloined Letter

p.104-111

Realism and Naturalism (1865-1918)

—

Questioning the American Dream

1.

William Dean Howells: middle class,

The Rise of Silas Lapham

p.116-122

2.

Henry James: rich class, international theme, psychological descriptions,

The Portrait of

a Lady, The Ambassadors, The American, Daisy Miller

p124-126

3.

Mark

Twain:

Samuel

Clemens,

lower

class,

local

colorism,

The

Adventures

of

Huckleberry Finn/Tom Sawyer, The Gilded Age

p. 130-140

4.

Stephen

Crane:

pioneer

writing

in

the

naturalistic

tradition,

Maggie:

A

Girl

of

the

Streets

,

The Red Badge of Courage

p.141-145

5.

Frank Norris:

McTeague

, the first full- bodied naturalistic American novel, a case study

of the inevitable effect of environment and heredity on human lives

6.

Theodore Dreiser:

Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, The Financier

,

An American Tragedy

1

p.147-150

7.

Jack London:

The Call of the Wild, Martin Eden

8.

O Henry: short story writer, the American Maupassant, surprise endings, “The Gift of

the Magi”

,

“The Cop and the Anthe

m

”

Modernism (1918-1945)

—

Disillusionment of the American Dream

1.

Imagist poetry: imagism, direct treatment of the thing, use as few words as possible

p.154-161

2.

Ezra

Pound:

“

In

a

Station

of

the

Metro

”

,

The

Cantos

,

Hugh

Selwyn

Mauberley

p.

163-169

3.

T. S. Eliot:

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

;

The Waste Land

p.171-182

4.

Wallace Stevens:

“

Anecdote of the Jar

”

,

“

The Idea of Order at Key West

”

p.183

5.

William Carlos Williams:

“

The Red Wheelbarrow

”

p. 189-191

6.

Robert

Frost:

New

England

poet,

“

The

Road

Not

Taken

”

,

“

Mending

Wall

”

,

“

After

Apple- picking

”

p. 195-200

7.

Modernist Novels: the Lost Generation

8.

F. Scott Fitzgerald:

The Great Gatsby

, the Jazz age p. 213-220

9.

Ernest Hemingway: the Lost Generation, Hemingway hero, iceberg theory,

The Sun Also

Rises

,

A

Farewell

to

Arms

,

For

Whom

the

Bell

Tolls

,

The

Old

Man

and

the

Sea

p.220-228

10.

William Faulkner: the Southern Renaissance/myth, Yoknapatawpha,

The Sound and the

Fury

,

As

I

Lay

Dying

,

Light

in

August

,

Absalom,

Absalom!

,

stream

of

consciousness

1949 Nobel Prize winner

p.229-232

11.

Sherwood Anderson:

Winesburg, Ohio

; describing the grotesque

12.

Sinclair

Lewis:

Main

Street

,

sociological

writer,

first

American

Nobel

Prize

winner,

(1930)

13.

Willa Cather: female writer, writing about the Old West in traditional way,

My Antonio

14.

John Dos Passos: 1930s, Depression,

U.S.A.

p.254-264

15.

John Steinbeck: 1930s, Depression,

The Grapes of Wrath

,

Of Mice and Men

,

The Pearl

p.265-268

16.

Drama:

A

renaissance

of

drama

in

1920s

—Eugene

O’Neill

,

The

theatre

of

the

Depression in 1930s

17.

Eugene O’Neill

:

American dram began in 1916 when O’Neil’s first play Bound East f

or

Cardiff

was

produced,

The

Hairy

Ape

,

The

Iceman

Cometh,

Long

Day

’

s

Journey

into

Night

18.

Arthur Miller:

Death of a Salesman

Post-War American Literature

—

Multi-faceted

1.

Post-war Poetry: p.313-318

2.

The

Beat

Generation

in

1950s:

Howl

by

Allen

Ginsberg

(poet),

On

the

Road

by

Jack

Kerouac (novelist), p.362, p365-371

3.

Post-war Novel: p. 411-412

4.

Saul Bellow:

Herzog, The Adventures of Augie March

5.

J. D. Salinger:

Catcher in the Rye

p. 424-427

6.

The Post- modernist Novel: p.455-459

7.

Black Humor:

Catch-22

by Joseph Heller p.459-464

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