美国文学史期末复习资料

American Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans. The Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church. The first settlers who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quite a few of them Puritans. They were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles. They accepted to the doctrine of predestination, original sin, total depravity, limited atonement. American Puritanism had an enduring influence on American thought and American literature.

The Influence of American Puritanism: 1.American Puritanism is the basis of American literature. All literature is based on a myth – Garden of Eden. The Puritans dreamed of living under a perfect order and worked with indomitable courage and confident hope toward building a new Garden of Eden in America, where man could at long last live the way he should. Fired with such a sense of mission, the Puritans looked even the worst of life in face with a tremendous amount of optimism. All this event, in due time, into the making of American literature. 2. American Puritanism contributed to the development of Symbolism: a technique, widely used. Puritans thought that all the simple objects existing in the world connoted deep meaning. 3. The style is fresh, simple and direct; the rhetoric is plain and honest, not without a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible. Thus, American Puritanism has been, by and large, a healthy legacy of the Americans. Without understanding of Puritanism, there can be no good understanding of American culture and literature.

American Romanticism refers to an artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th century and characterized by a heighted interest in nature, emphasis on the individual’s expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, rebellion against established social rules and conventions. The Romantic period in American literature stretches from the end of 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil War.

Features of American romanticism: 1) It was the expression of ―a real new experience‖. (2) American Puritanism was a cultural heritage. (3) American Romanticism is full of ―newness‖.(4) American romanticism was both imitative and independent.

Transcendentalism is the summit of the Romantic Movement in the history of American

literature in the 19th century. Transcendentalism has been defined philosophically as ―the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively‖. Transcendentalists place emphasis on the importance of the Over-soul, the individual and Nature. The most important representatives are Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

Realism 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. American Realism refers to the period from 1865 to 1914. It is the truthful description of life and concerns with social and psychological problems. The representatives are William Dean Howells and Henry James.

Local colorism is a unique variation of American literary realism. Generally, the works by local colorists are concerned with the life of a small region or province. This kind of fiction depicts the characters from a specific setting or of an era, which are marked by its customs, dialects, landscape, or other peculiarities that have escaped standardizing cultural influence. Tasks of local colourists: to write or present local characters of their regions in truthful depiction distinguished from others, usually a very small part of the world.

Colonial America殖民主义时期17th 早~18th末

General features

Types of writing: diaries, histories, letters etc. Content: serving either God or colonial expansion or both Form: imitating English literary traditions

Writers

(1) Captain John Smith: the first American writer A Description of New England 《新英格兰叙事》

(2) William Bradford 布拉德福德: Of Plymouth Plantation Records 《普利茅斯种植园史》

(3) John Winthrop 温斯罗普: A Model of Christian Charity 《基督慈善的模式》

(4) Anne Bradstreet(安妮·布拉德斯特里特):the first American woman poet;

a Puritan poet, once called ―Tenth Muse‖;

her poems mainly about religious experience, family life and early settlers’ lives;

most famous poems—Contemplations《沉思录》In Reference to Her Children写给她的孩子 Upon the Burning of Our House家居被焚之后 The Flesh and the Spirit 灵魂与肉体 To My Dear and Loving Husband 给我挚爱的丈夫An Weary Pilgrim疲倦的朝圣者

(5) Edward Taylor 泰勒: poem ―Huswifery‖《家务》Upon a Spider Catching a Fly蜘蛛捕捉苍蝇之遐想

the authors who called for independence

（6）Roger Williams:异教徒 ―The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for the Cause of Conscience‖《血腥的迫害教义》

（7）John Woolman(伍尔夫): Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes 《蓄奴的思索》 A Plea for the Poor《为穷人请愿》 Journal《日记》: recording his spiritual experiences of inward communication with God

(8) Thomas Paine(潘恩)： Common Sense 《常识》American Crisis《美国危机》The Rights of Man《人权论》, The Age of Reason《理性时代》

(9)Philip Freneau （佛瑞诺）(1752-1832)the most important poet in the 18th century. He was entitled ―Father of American Poetry‖. He wrote lots of poems supporting American Revolution and human liberty. His poems presented Romantic spirits but his form was mainly influenced by Classicism. Most famous poems: ―The Indian Burying Ground‖《印第安人墓地》 and ―The Wild Ho …… 此处隐藏：22709字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……