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Transcendentalism
refers to a
kind of attitude that believes in the recognition
in man of the capacity of knowing
truth
intuitively
（直觉地）
or of attaining knowledge transcending
the reach of the senses. In a literal sense,
it
means the belief that
knowledge and principles of reality can be
obtained by studying thought, not necessarily by
practical experiences.
Realism
It is, in
literature, an approach that attempts to describe
life without idealization or romantic
subjectivity.
In
part.
Realism
was
a
reaction
against
the
Romantic
emphasis
on
the
strange,
idealistic,
and
long-ago
and
far-away.
Local
Colorism
the
writings
of
local
colorists
are
concerned
with
the
life
of
a
small,
well-
defined
region
or
province. The characteristic setting is
the isolated small town. Local colorists were
consciously nostalgic historians
of a
vanishing way of life, recorders of a present that
faded before their eyes.
1)
The Lost Generation
they had cut
themselves off from their past in America in order
to create new types of writ
ing which
had never
been tried before. Among
these writers, the most famous are Ernest
Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dos Passos.
Chapter Three
American Romanticism
*
Irving * Cooper
?
II. W
ashington Irving
(1783-1859)
?
1
Writing Style
Irving’s style
can
only be described as
beautiful though imitative.
A.
Irving avoids moralizing
as much as possible: he wrote to
amuse
and
entertain.
B.
He was good at enveloping his stories
in a
rich atmosphere
, which
is often more than compensation for
the
slimness of plot.
C.
His characters are
vivid
and
true
so
that they tend to linger in the mind of the
reader.
D.
He was such
a
humorous
writer that it is
difficult not
to smile and
occasionally even chuckle.
E.
His language
was
finished
and
musical.
2. Literary Status
?
Father of American literature
?
The
first professional American writer
?
The
first American Romantic writer
?
The
first American short story writer
?
The
first American imaginative writer
?
to be
recognized
by the
Europeans
3. His W
orks:
?
A
History of New Y
ork
(1809)
?
The Sketch
Book
(1819-20)
?
The
short story
as
a
genre
in
American
literature
probably
began
with
Irving’s
The
Sketch
Book
,
a
collection of essays,
sketches, and tales, of which the most famous and
frequently anthologized are
“
Rip
V
an
Winkle
”
and
“
The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow
”
?
Rip
V
an Winkle
《瑞普
*
凡
*
温尔克》
It
is a
fantasy tale
about a
man who somehow stepped outside the
main stream of life. Rip V
an
Winkle is a simple,
good-natured, and
hen-pecked
man. An amiable
man
whose home and farm
suffer from his lazy neglect, he is loved by all
but his wife. One autumn day he
escapes
his nagging wife
，
after drinking some of
ghosts of Henry Hudson’s
crew’
s liquor, he falls
asleep. He wakes up twenty years later
and returns to his village. He finds out that
everything changes.
?
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
?
The History of
the Life and Voyages of Christopher
Columbus
(1828)
?
The
Alhambra
《阿尔罕伯拉》
(1832)
?
Life of Goldsmith
,
Life of
Washington
?
Tales of a
Traveler
?
III.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
?
1. Literary
Status:
?
The first American Frontier novel
?
The first
American Sea novel
?
The first American Spy Novel
?
The first
American Historical Novel
?
His Leatherstocking Tales as the
American National Epic
?
3. His major
works:
?
Precaution
(1820)
?
The Spy
(1821)
?
“The Leatherstocking Tales”
includes
?
The Pioneers
(1823)
?
The Last of the
Mohicans
(
1826
)
?
The Prairie
(1827)
?
The Pathfinder
(1840)
?
The Deerslayer
(1841)
?
The
Leatherstocking
Tales
is
a
series
of
novels
by
American
writer
James
Fenimore
Cooper,
each
featuring
the
main
hero
Natty
Bumppo
,
known
by
European
settlers
as
'The
Pathfinder
La Longue
Carabine
age to
rebirth and youth.
?
5. Writing Features:
?
A. Plot
construction
:
Cooper was good at inventing plots. His
plots are sometimes quite incredible, but
his stories are immensely intriguing.
?
B. Landscape
description
: His landscape descriptions
are majestic and suggestive of sir Walter Scott,
the legendary spirit of whose border
tales might have been a source of inspiration for
him.
?
C. A
rich
imagination
: He had never been to the
frontier and among the Indians and yet could write
five
huge
epic
books
about
them
with
his
rich
imagination.
Free
from
injustice,
he
treated
the
American
Indians as noble
savages.
?
D.
Clumsy
style
: his style is dreadful; his
characterization seems wooden and lacking in
probability.
?
6. His Contribution
?
a.
Cooper hit upon the native subject of
frontier and wilderness.
?
b.
He
contributed
to American
literature
different
subgenres
of
novels:
spy
novel,
sea
novel,
frontier
novel, and
historical romance.
?
c.
He created the first
legendary frontier hero Natty Bumppo as the
typical Pioneering figure.
?
d.
He introduced the West and the frontier as a
usable past into American literature, thus
ushering in the
Western tradition into
American world of letters.
Chapter4
New England Transcendentalism * Emerson
* Thoreau
?
Principles of
Emerson
’
s
transcendentalism
The over-
soul
Primacy of Individual
Primacy of Nature
?
II. Ralph
W
aldo Emerson (1803-1882)
?
1. Literary
Status:
?
“Father of American Essay”,
?
The Concord
Sage
?
Leader and
spokesman of New England
Transcendentalism
?
Essayist, poet,
philosopher, orator, critic.
?
His major
works:
A. Collections
?
Poems
(1847);
Representative Men
(1850);
English Traits
(1856)
?
The
Conduct of Life
(1860);
May
Day and Other Poems
(1867)
?
Society and
Solitude
(1870);
Letters and
Social Aims
(1876)
?
Essays
Self-Reliance
Compensation
The Over-
Soul
The Poet
Experience
Nature
Emerson’s
Nature
has been
called the “Manifesto of
American Transcendentalism”
The American
Scholar
His The
American Scholar has been
rightly
regarded as America’s “Declaration of Intellectual
Independence”.
?
C. Poems
Concord
Hymn
The Rhodora
Nature
(1836):
“
The Universe is
composed of Nature and the
Soul,
Spirit is present
everywhere
”
The
book
presents a theory of the universe,
its origin, present condition, and final destiny.
Nature
’s voice pushed
American
Romanticism
into
a
new
phase,
the
phase
of
New
England
Transcendentalism,
the
summit
of
American
Romanticism/
American Renaissance.
The
American
Scholar
(1837):
In
this
essay,
Emerson
calls
for
a
distinctive
American
style,
dealing
with
American subjects.
Thus, regarded as
“
America
’
s Declaration of Intellectual
Independence
”
Self-Reliance
(1841): This essay focuses on his
discussion on the
individual
’
s
relation
’
s with his
culture
—
culture
in
the
broadest
definition,
thus
exploring
the
implications
of
the
fierce
individualism
at
the
heart
of
his
Transcendental faith:
the dignity, the ultimate sanctity[holiness] of
each human being
The Over-
Soul
(1841): It is a
philosophic work, in which Emerson gives an
explicit discussion on his idea of the
over-soul, with a most comprehensive
and sensitive analysis of the varieties of
religious experience
Evaluation to him:
1.
He
was
the
first
American
to
call
for
an
independent
culture
in
both
Nature
and
The
American
Scho
lar
.(America
’
s
Declaration
of
Intellectual
Independence).He
called
on
American
writers
to
write
about
America in a way
peculiarly American.
2.
Emerson
’
s
aesthetics places
emphasis
on
ideas,
symbol,
and
imaginative
words,
which
brought
about
a
revolution in American literature in
general and in American poetry in particular.
3.
He embodied a new
nation
’
s desire and struggle
to assert its own identity in its formative
period.
4.
In modern times he is
sometimes dismissed as having no sense of evil,
and his optimistic philosophy as so
much Transcendentalist folly.
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