美國文學(xué)選讀知識(shí)復(fù)習(xí)材料

1、America n Purita nism殖民地時(shí)期(roughly from the settlement of America in the early 17th century through the end ofthe 18th)一、 Benjamin Franklin本杰明？富蘭克林作品：1、 Poor Richard's Almanac格言歷書 - A Collection of maxims, or proverbs, on the value of work and savi ngs for success.2、The Autobiography 自傳-"美國

2、夢(mèng)”的根源3、參與起草獨(dú)立宣言浪漫主義 American RomanticismThe Roma ntic Period stretches fromthe end of the 18th cen tury to the outbreak of the CivilWar . It is a period of the great flowering of American literature.The social and cultural backgro und of Roma nticismThe young Republic was flourishing into a politica

3、lly, economically and culturally independent coun try.The Roma ntic writi ngs revealed unique characteristics of their own in their works and they grew on the n ative Ian ds.The desire for an escape from society and a retur n to n ature became a perma nent convention of American literature.The Ameri

4、ca n Purita nism as a cultural heritage exerted great in flue nces over America n moral values.Roma ntics freque ntly shared certa in gen eral characteristics: moral en thusiasm , faith in value of in dividualism and in tuitive percepti on, and a presumpti on that the n atural world was a source of

5、goodness and man' societies as a source of corruption.二、Edgar Allan Poe 埃德加愛倫坡-poet, short story writer and literary critic (48 poems,70 short stories)He greatly in flue need the devotees of “ Arfor art 'sake. ”He was father of psychoanalytic criticism (心理分析批評(píng) ),and the detective story.詩歌的精髓

6、就是追求美 小說的主題常常是 恐怖和死亡，其中還運(yùn)用了 象征手法。The Poetic Prin ciple :1. The poem, should be short, readable at one sitti ng;2. Beauty (the rhythmical creation of beauty);3. Mela ncholy 憂傷(especially the death of a beautiful woma n).代表作：The Fall of the House of Usher厄舍大廈的倒塌Ligeia 莉蓋亞Ann abel Lee 安娜貝爾李The Rave n 烏

7、鴉The Cask of Amo ntillado阿芒提拉多的酒桶-gothic novel人物：蒙特利瑟 Montresor,弗圖納多Fortunato ，筵席上男人將喝醉的死對(duì)頭哄騙至地窖并砌墻活 埋的故事。三愛默生Emers on =The chief spokesma n of New En gla ndTranscenden talism超驗(yàn)主義He was a descendent(后裔)of a long line of New England clergymen牧師【pastor 】.散文家、詩人、超驗(yàn)主義的哲學(xué)的主要倡導(dǎo)者。America n Transcenden tali

8、smAs a philosophical and literary moveme nt, America n Transcenden talism (also known as“American Renaissanee” ) flourshed in New England from the 1830s to the Civil War. It isthe high tide of America n roma nticism and its doctri nes found their greatest literary advocatesin Emers on and Thoreau. T

9、ranscenden talists spoke for the cultural rejuven ati on and aga inst the materialism of American society.Transcendentalism超驗(yàn)主義(+ H. D. Thoreau; Nathaniel Hawthorne;)The major features of Transcenden talism: The Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most importantthin

10、g in the universe .思想 超靈 宇宙 The Tran sce nden talists stressed the importa nee of the in dividual.To them, the in dividualis the most important element of Society. 個(gè)體 + 社會(huì) The Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit orGod . Nature was not purely matter. It w

11、as alive, filled with Godg presenc6. s 自vrwhelmin上帝代表作： Nature論自然-the Bible of Transcendentalism by Emerson;Self-Relianee論自助-是表達(dá)他的超驗(yàn)主義觀點(diǎn)的最重要作品之一一The American Scholar 論美國學(xué)者；The Over-soul論超靈四、Nathaniel Hawthorne納撒尼爾霍桑-effected by超驗(yàn)主義He was born into a prominent Purita n family.One of the most ambivale

12、 nt(矛盾的) writers in the America n literary history.主要成就：美國心理分析小說的開創(chuàng)者浪漫主義小說家心理小說家代表作：Mosses from an Old Manse古宅青苔；Twice-Told Tales 故事重述 ; The Marble Faun 玉石雕像 ; The House of the Seven Gables 帶有七個(gè)尖角閣的房子 The Scarlet Letter 紅字Many of his earlier stories had treated themes that led to The Scarlet Letter.

13、Theme:Puritan severity toward sex and matrimony and its tendency to suppress bright color and t rue feelings.The Scarlet Letter 紅字 ：Hester Prynne-strong-willed, impetuous, a king of compassionate, maternal figure; Pearl-innocent, perceptive;Roger Chillingworth-a man deficient in human warmth, true e

14、vil in the story; Arthur Dimmesdale-intelligent and emotional.Symbolism in his works Hawthorne is a master of symbolism, which he took from the Puritan tradition清教徒傳統(tǒng)and bequeathed to American literature in a revivified form. In his masterpiece, by using Pearl as a thematic symbol, Hawthorne emphasi

15、zes the consequence the sin of adultery has brought to the community and people living in that community. With the scarlet A as the biggest symbol of all, which is ambiguous, he proves himself to be one of the best symbolists.五、Herman Melville 赫爾曼梅爾維爾The early sailing experiences were rewarding. 代表作

16、： White Jacket 白外衣Billy Budd畢利伯德,Typee 泰比 , Omoo 歐穆 , Mardi 瑪?shù)?.Moby Dick 1851 白鯨 -百科全書式性質(zhì) /海洋作品 /動(dòng)物史詩( 熊 福克納、 人與海 海明威、白鯨梅爾維爾) Moby Dick represents the sum total of Melville'blesak view of the worldin which he lived. It is at once Godless and purposeless . Man in this universe lives a meaningles

17、s and futile life,meaningless because futile.Once he attempts to seek power over it he is doomed. The idea that man can make the world for himself is nothing but a Transcendentalist folly. Moby Dick thus reveals the basic pattern of 19th century American life:loneliness and suicidalindividualism in

18、a self-styled democracy .(a negative reflection upon Transcendentalism)Symbolism in Moby Dick-It is regarded as the first American prose epic. It is not merely a whaling tale or sea adventure,considering that Melville is a great symbolist. It turns out to be a symbolic voyage of the mind in quest of

19、 the truth尋找真理and kno wledge of the uni verse, a spiritual explorati on intoman' Seep reality and psychology.-Differe nt people on board the ship are represe ntati ons of differe nt ideas and differe nt socialand eth nic groups; facts become symbols and in cide nts acquire uni versal meanin gs;

20、the Pequod isthe microcosm of huma n society and the voyage becomes a search for truth. The white whale,Moby Dick, symbolizes nature for Melville, for it is complex, unfathomable難以理解的，malignant 惡性的,and beautiful as well.六. H. D. Thoreau 梭羅 and his workWalde n 瓦爾登湖 not only fully dem on strates Emers

21、onian ideas of self-relia nee but also developsand tests Thoreau' s own transcendentabpbphy.七. He nry Wadsworth Lon gfellow朗費(fèi)羅Features of Longfellow' s poetic works1) lChief roma ntic tenden cies as huma nitaria n attitude, love of n ature and love of beauty.2) lThe first America n poet to w

22、rite n arrative poems.3) IConven ti onal style and subjects4) lGe nerally simple ideas expressed musically and powerfully.5) lSimplicity and detachme nt from the deep problems of con temporary life19世紀(jì)美國最偉大的浪漫主義詩人之一。傳統(tǒng)派，勵(lì)志型。詩集：夜吟Voices of the Night歌謠及其他Ballads and Other Poems伊凡杰琳Evan gel ine海依華沙之歌Th

23、e Song of Hiawatha詩歌：我射出一支箭I Shot an Arrow.A Psalm of Life生命頌/人生頌-第一首被完整地介紹到中國的美國詩歌八. Walt Whitman 沃爾特惠特曼美國著名詩人、人文主義者，他創(chuàng)造了詩歌的自由體(Free Verse-without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.),The first editi on of Leaves of Grass 草葉集 was published in 1855.In this gia nt work,ope nn ess, freedom , and abo

24、ve all, in dividualism are all thatconcerned him.Writ ing features of Whitma n-A sin ger for the ideals of equality, democracy and huma n dig ni ty.-S ongs for himself, for the labour of com mon America n people, n atural creati on, the in depe nden ce of the coun try, love and frien dship, and for

25、the memoriz ing of Preside nt Lincoln. -Free verse,rhythmical un it, phon etic recurre nee.詩歌：我歌唱自我 On e's Self I Si ng噢，船長！我的船長！O Captai n! My Capta in!九、Emily Dick in son（19世紀(jì)唯一出名的女作家）-I Died for Beauty, because I could not stop for Death.美國女詩人，狄金森一生都沒有離開過自己的家鄉(xiāng)，對(duì)她的詩歌風(fēng)格產(chǎn)生直接影響的是愛默生的詩歌,她的詩歌預(yù)示了 20

26、世紀(jì)詩歌的誕生。宅女，想象力，詩歌（死亡、愛情、失敗、無標(biāo)點(diǎn)）Whitma n: societyDick inson: inner life of the in dividualMost of her poems are about death and immortality. Nature is to her both ben evole nt and cruel.Emily was an en ergetic and outgo ing woma n while atte nding the Academy and Semin ary.Most of her poems are about

27、 life and n ature. They are short; many of them are based on a sin gle image or symbol.作品：要描繪一片草原To Make a Prairie最美妙的勝利感覺Success Is Cou nted Sweetest我是無名之輩 I'm Nobody!The Age of RealismThe war led many to question the assumptions shared by the transcendentalists - natural good ness, the optimis

28、tic view of nature and man, benevolent God. It taught men that life was not good, man was not and God was not.As a literary moveme nt, the Age of Realism came into existe nee after Roma nticism with the Civil War It was a reactio n aga inst “ thdie 6fRoma nticism and sen time ntalism, and paved the

29、way to Modernism. This literary interest in the so-called“ reality of life started a new period in theAmerica n literary writi ng known as The Age of Realism.The three dominant figures of the period:William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Henry JamesJames wrote mostly of theupper reaches of America n soci

30、ety.Howells concerned himself chiefly with middle class life.Twain dealt largely with the lower strata of society.Mark Twain and Howells seemed to have paid more atte nti on tothe "life of'theAmerica ns , and Henry James had appare ntly laid greater emphasis on the"inn eworldof man.十、M

31、ark Twa in 馬克吐溫Writi ng:humor and local colorismThe characteristics of local colorism:-Twain preferred to have his own region and people at the forefront of his stories. This particularconcern about the local character of a region came about as“ locatolorism a”nique variation ofAmerica n literary re

32、alism.-Local Colorism or Regionalism first appeared in the late 1860s and early seventies in America.Hamli n Garla nd defi ned local colorism as hav ing such quality of texture and backgro und that it could not have been written in any other place or by anyone else than a native.” The ultimate aim o

33、f the local colorists is to create the illusi on of an in dige nous土產(chǎn)的 little world with qualities that tell it apart from the world outside.-Local colorists concerned themselves with prese nting and in terpret ing the local character oftheir regi ons. They ten ded to idealize and glorify, but they

34、n ever forgot to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life.代表作：Life on the Mississippi密西西比河上The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 湯姆 索亞歷險(xiǎn)記The Adve ntures of Huckleberry Fi nn哈克貝里 費(fèi)恩歷險(xiǎn)記-(Mark Twain ' most representative work)The Adve ntures of Huckleberry Finn-The novel is written in a Ianguage that

35、 is totally different from the rhetorical Ianguage used byEmers on, Poe, and Melville.-His characters, confined to a particular region and to a particular historical moment, speak witha stro ng acce nt, which is true of his local colorism.-The rich material of his boyhood experie nee on the Mississi

36、ppi became the en dless resourcesfor his fiction, and the Mississippi valley and the West became his major theme.-His humor, a kind of artistic style used to criticize the social injustice and satirize the decayedroma nticism, is remarkable. 人物： Huckleberry Fi nn、Jim、Tom Sawyer、Widow Douglas and Mis

37、s Wats on、Pap The Duke and Dauphi n (公爵和法國皇太子)He nry James 亨利詹姆斯作品：The Portrait of a Lady一個(gè)女士的畫像Daisy Miller黛西密勒The intern ati onal theme:the meet ing of America and Europe, America n innocence in con tact and con trast with Europea n decade nee and the moral and psychological complicati ons aris in

38、g there from.Like Hawthor ne, James regarded evil as esse ntially of in ward cause and repeatedly emphasized m agnani mity and the beauty of good ness.Psychological Realism心理現(xiàn)實(shí)主義It is the realistic writ ing that probes deeply intothe complexities of characters thoughts and motivati ons.And Henry Jam

39、es is con sidered the foun der of psychological realism. He believedthat reality lies in the impressions made by life on the spectator, and not in any facts of which the spectator is un aware. Such realism is therefore merely the obligati on that the artist assumes to re prese nt life as he sees it.

40、America n Naturalism 自然主義The impact of Darwin ' s evolutionary theory達(dá)爾文進(jìn)化論 on the American thought andthe 19th cen tury French literature on the America n men of letters gave rise to ano ther school of realism: American naturalism .The naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral與道德無關(guān)的，that

41、 men andwome n had no free will, that lives were con trolled by heredity遺傳 and environment,that the dest iny of huma nity was misery in life and oblivio n湮沒 in death.代表作家Stephen Crane ； Frank Norris ； Theodore Dreiser ； Edwin Arlington Robinson ; Upton Sinclair ； Jack London ; O' HenryStephen Cr

42、ane : Maggie: A Girl of the Streets街頭女郎麥姬；The Red Badge of Courage ;紅色英勇勛章 The Open Boat ;海上扁舟Theodore Dreiser : Trilogy of Desire:1.The Financier2. The Titan3. The Stoic ；Sister Carrie ； Jennie Gerhardt ； An American TragedyO.He nry (William Syd ney Porter) : The Gift of the Magi ； The Cop and the

43、an themThe Moder n PeriodThe Modern Period: The 1920s-1930s ( the second renaissanee of American literature)又稱：-The Roari ng Twen ties (ec ono mically)-The Jazz Age (socially)-"lost” and “waste land ” (spiritually)，其中， "lost ” 來源： Gertrude Stein “waste land ”來源 T.S.EliotThe historic and cu

44、ltural backgro und-The USA ' s participation in World War I marked a crucial stage in the nation' s evolution to aworld power.-By the sec ond decade of the 20th cen tury, the USA had become the most powerful in dustrialized nation in the world.-There was a decline in moral standard and the f

45、irst few decades of the 20th century was best described as a spiritual wastela nd.There had been a big flush of new theories and new ideas in both social and natural sciences.Darwi nism (Darw in), Socialism (Karl Marx), Psychoa nalysis (Sigm und Freud)The Lost Gen erati onThe term " Lost Gen er

46、atio n ” came from Gertrude Ste in, who had a sal on in heehouE nglish andAmerican expatriates in Paris. The Phrase was a remark she made to a mechanic in Hemingway prese nee that“ You are all a lost gen eratio n.”Gertrude Stein used the term to describe the post-World War I gen erati on of America

47、n writers: men and wome n haun ted by a sense of betrayal and empti ness brought about by the destruct iven ess of the war.The term is com mon ly applied to Ern est Hemin gway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Sherwood An ders on, Joh n Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings and some others.Winners of Nobel Priz

48、e for Literature during this period : Si nclair Lewis (1930)第一個(gè)獲獎(jiǎng)的美國人(特點(diǎn)：Main Street, Babbitt); Eugene O ' Neill (1936); Pearl S. Buck (1938); T.S. Eliot (1948); William Faulk ner (1949); Ernest Hemi ngway (1954); Joh n Stein beck (1962)十一、F. Scott Fitzgerald 弗斯科特菲茨杰拉德America n DreamIn the Unite

49、d States ' Declaration of Independence 獨(dú)立宣言,our founding fathers:" , held certa in truths to be self-evide nt, that all Men are created equal, that they are en dowed by th eir Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, Liberty and the Pursuit of H app in ess.",

50、.作品：The Side of Paradise 人間天堂The Beautiful and the Damn ed漂亮的冤家Flappers and Philosophers姑娘們與哲學(xué)家們Tales of the Jazz Age爵士樂時(shí)代的故事Ten der is the Night夜色溫柔The Crack-up 崩潰The Last Tyco on (unfini shed)The Great GatsbyJay Gatsby is a man driven by greed, ambition and, most of all, an unwavering desire for a

51、 woma n he met before the Great War, whe n he was poor and she was uno bta in able. As Gatsby reinvents himself in an attempt to buy his way into the social elite of Long Isla nd's Gold Coast, he year ns to rekindle his romance with the woman who stole his heart years before. But when the chance

52、 final ly arrives, a shadow of tragedy is cast over what Gatsby long imagined would be his triumphant m ome nt.The Great Gatsby了不起的蓋茨比被視為美國文學(xué) "爵士時(shí)代”的象征，以美國夢(mèng)AmericanDream 為主線。"迷惘的一代” 人物：Gatsby 蓋茨比，Daisy黛西，Tom湯姆，Nick尼克，Myrtle(湯姆的情婦)，Wils on (湯姆情婦的丈夫)十二.William Faulk ner(1897-19621949 Nobel p

53、rice:“for his powerful a nd artisticallyunique con tributi on to the moder n America n no vel.”“ Stream of Con scious ness意識(shí)流 or "in terior mono logue內(nèi)心獨(dú)白 is one of the moder nliterary tech niq ues. It is the style of writi ng that attempts to imitate the n atural flow of a character thoughts,

54、feeli ngs, reflect ions, memories, and men tal images as the character experie nces them. Itwas first used in 1922 by the Irish novelist James Joyce.He ofte n employs stream of con scious ness n arrative, discards and no ti on of chrono logical order, uses multiple n arrati ons, shifts betwee n the

55、prese nt and past ten se, and tends toward impossibly long and complex senten ces.寫作特點(diǎn)、內(nèi)容：?Yok napatawpha Cou ntry-以故鄉(xiāng)為原型虛構(gòu)的，表現(xiàn)南方貴族家庭的沒落?Souther n family? The Town of Jeffers on作品：The Sou nd and the Fury (1929)喧囂與騷動(dòng)，取自莎士比亞的麥克白As I Lay Dyi ng (1930)我彌留之際Light in the August ( 1932)Absalom, Absalom (19

56、36)Go Dow n Moses (1942)23部長篇小說，11個(gè)短篇小說，八月之光押沙龍，押沙龍！去吧，摩西7個(gè)詩集，6個(gè)電影劇本，1個(gè)電視劇劇本十三.Ernest Hemingway厄內(nèi)斯特海明威-"迷惘的一代”作家的主要人物Iceberg Prin ciple (Theory):冰山法則The dig nity of moveme nt of the iceberg is due to only on e-eighth of it being above water.文學(xué)作品能看到的只要外在的1/8,影響力深邃，隨著時(shí)代不同人而改變，不會(huì)失去光澤；萬物之所以精彩在于深藏不露

57、Code hero 鐵漢子Hemin gway heroesa noble but tragic hero; fighting with the overwhelming force; though he knows that he will be defeated at last, he decides to act like a hero .In one sense Hemin gway wrote all his life about one theme, which is neatly summed up in the famous phrase“ grace (重壓下的風(fēng)uMajor Works:The Sun Also Rises1926 (Jake Barnes) 太陽照常升起A Farewell to Arms1928 (a tragic story about war and love) (Frederic Henry and Cathe