美国文学选读第三版 作者与作品名

1.Benjamin Franklin（本杰明．富兰克林）

代表作:<自传>The Autobiography

<格言历书>Poor Richard’s Almanac

2.Edgar Allan Poe (埃德加．爱伦．坡)

代表诗歌:<帖木尔〉“Tamerlane and Other Poems”

<艾尔．阿拉夫〉“Al Araaf”

<乌鸦及其他诗篇〉“The Raven and Other Poems”

<致海伦〉 “To Helen”

Poe’s poetic theories

1,The poem should be short, readable at one sitting

2, Its chief aim is beauty, namely, to produce a feeling of beauty in the reader.

3, “the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.”

4, Poe is opposed to “the heresy of the didactic” and calls for “pure” poetry 5, Poe stresses rhythm, and declares that “music is the perfection of the soul, or idea, of poetry.”

短篇小说：《厄舍大厦的倒塌>“The Fall of the House of Usher”

<阿芒提拉多的酒桶〉“The Cask of Amontillado”

3.Emerson 爱默生

代表作:<论自然〉Nature宣扬超验主义代言人哲学

《论美国学者》“The American Scholar”地位：文学界独立宣言

《神学院致辞》“The Divinity School Address”

4.Hawthorne 霍桑

代表作：《红字》 The Scarlet Letter

<带有七个尖角阁的房子〉The House of the Seven Gables

<玉石雕像〉The Marble Faun

5．Melville梅尔维尔

代表作：《白鲸》Moby Dick

《玛地》Mardi

《白外衣》White Jacket

6．Thoreau梭罗

代表作：《沃尔登》Walden

《论公民的不服从》“On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”

<马萨诸塞州的奴隶制〉“Slavery in Massachusetts”

7 whiteman:沃尔特惠特曼

free verse【Free verse】 is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.

Some poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, must still display some elements of form. Most free verse, for example, self-evidently continues to observe a convention of the poetic line in some sense, at least in written representations, thus retaining a potential degree of linkage, however nebulous, with more traditional forms. Donald Hall goes as far as to say that "the form of free verse is as binding and as liberating as the form of a rondeau."[1] and T. S. Eliot wrote, "No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job."[2]

Some poets have considered free verse restrictive in its own way. In 1922 Robert Bridges voiced his reservations in the essay 'Humdrum and Harum-Scarum.' Robert Frost later remarked that writing free verse was like "playing tennis without a net".

; Leaves of Gras

main works: “Leaves of Gras”草叶集

“One’s Self I Sing”我歌唱自我

“O Captain!My Captain”噢，船长，我的船长

在草叶集中采用自由诗的诗歌形式，完全冲破了传统诗歌的限制，既没有诗行长短的规定也无对应的押韵，诗歌的节拍是按照日常说话的自然节奏，变化无常，出神入化，充满了个性。

? Leaves of Grass, either in content or in form, is an epoch-making work in American literature: its democratic content marked the shift from Romanticism to Realism, and its free-verse form broke from old poetic conventions to open a new road for American poetry. He thought that the voices of democracy should not be haltered by conventional forms of poetry.

8,Emily Dichinson艾米莉.狄金森

Main work:：“To Make a Prairie” 要描绘一片草原

“Success Is Counted Sweetest”最美妙的胜利感觉

“ I’m Nobody”我是无名之辈

Most of Dickinson’s poems are short, and sometimes even whimsical.

However, her poems are clever, witty and lively. They show close observation, intensity and mastery of art. Her poetry is filled with fresh and strange images, illuminating and exquisite metaphors, through which distant and important events, complicated feelings and profound philosophical thoughts are expressed.

狄金森的诗歌有很大的局限性，不像惠特曼那样包罗万象。

但她在摆脱旧诗体、创造新诗形式方面与惠特曼不谋而合。

她的诗歌诗行不多，口语色彩浓厚，不强调韵律，常常押半

韵或完全不押韵，没有标点符号，也不受语法限制，但意象

鲜明活泼，来自生活却又富有新意。虽然她的诗歌以描写日

常生活的普通事物为主，但内容深邃，别具一格。由于她经

常探讨的有关死亡、爱情、自然、永恒、人的自我本质和宗

教信仰等主题是20世纪诗人关心的问题，因此，她对现代派

诗歌影响较大，被誉为美国20世纪新诗的先驱。1955年出版

的《艾米莉·狄金森诗集》确立了狄金森在美国文学史上的重

要地位。

9Mark Twain:

:“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County ”卡拉维拉县驰名的跳蛙

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn哈克贝里。费恩历险记

The Gilded Age镀金时代

Local color 是他的小说的突出特点，表现了一个地区的语言特点，习俗和生活方式。

Style:

His articles were popular and were famous for his writings about adventures of boys and his writings on assailing(痛斥) man’s shortcomings and falsenesses(虚伪).

10Henry James:

International theme: “international” theme of the traditionless American confronting the complexity of European life. American

Main works:Daisy Miller 黛西米勒 The Portrait of a Lady一个女士的画像三部曲：The Wings of the Dove鸽翼 The Ambassadors 专使 The Golden Bowl金碗

11Stephen Crane:

Maggie: A Girl of the Street (1893), the first work of American

literary Naturalism街头女郎麦姬

The Red Badge of Courage (1895)红色英勇勋章

The Open Boat海上扁舟

One of the represntatives of naturalism: Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser

基本概念：

1. Puritanism or purtain thoughts ：

1American Puritanism refers to the beliefs and practices of those Puritans who came out of different reasons to the New Continent and settled in what is now the United States.

2. The Features of Romanticism：American Romanticism

1.Historical background

*

(1) American development

(2) New England Transcendental Movement

(3) American westward expansion

2.General characteristics

(1) American Romantic writings are derivative

(a) Emphasis on the imaginative and emotional quality of literature

(b) Advocation of free expression of emotions and display of the psychic states of the characters

(c) Exaltation of the individual and the common man

(d) Fascination about the past and the exotic

(2) American Romantic writings have distinct features

(a) National experience of "pioneering into the west"

(b) The role of nature /American landscape

(c) Puritan morality

(d) Transcendental philosophy

3Transcendentalism

4Terms about the poetry

The elements of poetry which create musicality

1. Meter--- the beat or rhythm （节奏）of the poem. It is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables used in the poem.

Meter is shown by a visual code. The accent mark (‵) indicates the stressed syllables, the mark ( ˇ ) indicates an unstressed syllable.

Certain combinations of these syllables are most frequently employed in English verse. One unit, or combination, is called a foot. The following are the basic metric feet.

2. Rhyme（韵律）---(or rime)---the repetition of similar (or duplicate) sounds at regular intervals. (Usually this repetition occurs at the ends of lines) 1)End rhyme--- rhyme found at the ends of verse lines.

Ex. Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,

Who after birth did’st by my side remain.

2) Internal rhyme---this is rhyme contained within a line of verse

Ex. The long light shakes across the lakes.

3) Slant rhyme---an inexact rhyme where the final consonant sounds are the

same but the vowel sounds are different.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,

By his dead smile I knew we stood in hell.

4) Eye rhyme---the rhyme of two words look as if they had rhyme, but do not, such as “move” and “love.”

5)Feminine rhyme--- rhyme in which two consecutive syllables of the rhyme-words match. The first syllable carries the stress. Feminine thyme adds lightness to a poem.

Ex. We poets in our youth begin in gladness,

But thereof come in the end despondency and madness

6)Masculine thyme---the thyme of one-syllable words or, in the case of words of more than one syllable, the rhyming of stressed final syllables

Ex. The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

7) Alliteration---repetition of two or more initial consonant sounds in words within a line.

Ex. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

5 American Realism

Realism in America

Historical Background

* 1. By the 1870s New England Renaissance had waned. Hawthorne and Thoreau were dead. Emerson, Longfellow, and other New England celebrities, though still writing, were old and feeble. Melville had ceased to publish. Dickinson had not been brought to light. Of the older generation Whitman alone remained active, a solitary singer in the field with his Leaves of Grass. The age of Romanticism and Transcendentalism was by and large over.

* 2. Northern industrialism had triumphed over Southern agrarianism. (a time of steel and steam, the age of automobile)

* 3. Social contradiction became intense. ( The gilded Age)

* 4. Communication with European countries

* 5. Americans settled the last of the first forty-eight states.

6 Naturalism:

It began in France in the middle of the 19th century and prevailed in England, France and the United States at the turn of the 20th century. Its

founder was Zola, French novelist.

Naturalism

* Naturalism is a literary movement, which is regarded by many as related to but different form, realism. It began in France in the middle of the 19th century and prevailed in England, France and the United States at the turn of the 20th century. Its founder was Zola, French novelist.

* Naturalistic writers held that man’s existence is shaped by heredity and environment over which he has no control and plays in the movement emphasized the animal nature of man and portrayed characters engrossed in a helpless brutal struggle for survival in a cold world full of the crushing forces of environment and heredity. Unlike realistic writers, naturalists attempted to achieve fidelity(真实) to nature by rejecting idealized portrayals of life. Realists observed a general situation and invented incidents which would make that situation vivid, while naturalists followed Zola’s principle that a novelist dissect and analyze his subjects with dispassionate, scientific accuracy and minuteness, and did not allow to invent. The language used in literature, for naturalists, must be the actual language used by the people he was describing. A novelist must not only collect all the possible facts but must present those facts as exactly as they had occurred.

The Representatives of Naturalism

* Among adherents of naturalism are the American novelists: Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser. Some works of Earnest Hemingway, Eugene O’Neil, William Faulkner, and Thomas Hardy also bear some of the features of naturalism.

文本赏析

Moby Dick

The theme: Themes:Revenge racism politics the relationship between men and nature obsession isolation courage

The character of Ahab

“The Open Boat”,

first published in 1897, was actually based on Crane’s own experience of surviving a shipwreck off the coast of Florida while traveling to Cuba to work as a newspaper correspondent. There are four character in the story: the correspondent, the captain, the cook and the oiler, Billie, the only one referred by the name, and the story was told from the point of view of the

correspondent.

The four survive a shipwreck and are drifting at sea in a small dinghy. Realizing that nature is indifferent to their fates, the four become fatigued and begin to quarrel with one another. The oiler and the correspondent take turns to row the boat to reach the shore. However, the small boat capsizes and the men decide to abandon it and to swim ashore. The captain, the correspondent, and the cook swim together, holding onto parts of the boat for support; while, Billie, the strongest of the four, swims ahead alone.

After the three safely reach the shore and are rescued, they find Billie dead, his body washed up on the beach. “The Open Boat” is often considered a typical example of Naturalism, in which scientific principles of objectivity and detachment are employed to study humanity. It is also an allegorical tale with the sea standing for nature and the open boat for humanity in the same boat.