美国文学史期末论文终极版

Contents

摘要 (1)

Abstract (1)

Chapter 1 American Romanticism(1810--1865) (2)

1.Background reasons (2)

1.1 Politically this period was ripe (2)

1.2 Economically American had never been wealthier (2)

1.3 Culturally American own value emerged (2)

2.Basic features and styles (2)

2.1 Expressiveness (2)

2.2 Imagination (2)

2.3 Worship of nature (2)

2.4 Simplicity (3)

2.5 Cultural nationalism (3)

2.6 Liberty,freedom,democracy and individualism (3)

3.Influence (3)

Chapter 2 American Realism(1865--1914) (3)

1. Background changes (3)

1.1 Politics (4)

1.2 Economics (4)

1.3 Cultural and social changes (4)

2. Basic features and styles (4)

2.1 Truthful description of the actualities of the real life and

material (4)

2.2 Focus on ordinariness (4)

3. Three dominant figures (4)

4. Influence (5)

Chapter 3 American Naturalism(1890--1914) (5)

1. Background information (5)

1.1 Cultural and Social Background (5)

1.2 Religion and theoretical basis (5)

2. Major ideas and features of Naturalism (5)

2.1 Determinism (5)

2.2 World: godless, indifferent, hostile (6)

2.3 Style: scientific objectivity (6)

2.4 Subjects and themes (6)

3. A representative work that show the ideas and features above (6)

3. Influence (6)

Chapter 4 American Modernism(1914--1945) (6)

1. Background information (6)

1.1 Politics (6)

1.2 Economy (7)

1.3 Cultural and social background (7)

2. Characteristics and features of Modernism (7)

3. Major genres and a representative of each one (7)

3.1 Modern poetry——Ezra Pound (7)

3.2 Modern fiction——Ernest Hemingway (7)

4. Influence (8)

Chapter 5 American Postmodernism(1914--1945) (8)

1. Background information (8)

1.1 Politics (8)

1.2 Economics (8)

1.3 Social and international background (8)

2. Characteristics and major features (8)

2.1 Experimental writing techniques (8)

2.3 Irony, playfulness and black humor (9)

3.Influence (9)

Bibliographies (9)

摘要

具有自身特点的新文学的出现，是一个国家真正形成的标志。自从美国在政治上取得独立后，便迎来了文学史的第一个高潮——浪漫主义文学。好景不长，19世纪中叶的内战使国内环境发生巨大变化，美国文学转向了对社会和人类本质的探讨。由此便诞生了现实主义和自然主义文学。紧接着，随着一战爆发，社会国际环境又发生了翻天覆地的变化。大批的作家开始改造传统的艺术形式，这就是美国的“第二次文艺复兴”——现代主义文学.而二战后的美国后现代主义文学也是美国文学史上不容忽视的一个百花齐放的时期。

而本篇论文对于美国文学史各时期的简述有以下几个重点：一，紧扣“变化”，分析各文学时期形成背景；二，总结各时期文学作品的特征及风格，并举例说明；

三，对各时期代表作家的介绍视情况而定；最后，对各文学时期的影响稍作总结。关键词: 主义；背景；改变；特征；影响

Abstract

The emergence of a literature with its own characteristics is the symbol of the real formation of a country.After America achieved its independence,it marched into the first climax of its literature---Romanticism. But not for long,the Civil War in the middle of the 19th century arouse radical changes in domestic social background.American literature turned to search for the nature of society and human beings.So Realism and Naturalism came into being.Next,with the outbreak of World War I.Social and international background went through radical changes again.A great number of writers began to reform the conventional art forms into Modernism,which is the second renaissance.And postmodernism after World War II is also a very important period with flourish literature genres.

As to a brief summary of American literature,this paper has several key points as below:Firstly,lay emphasis on “the changes”to analyze the background;secondly,make a summary of the characteristic and styles,giving some examples;thirdly,the introduction of representative writers will depends;at last,conclude the influence of each period.

Key Words: -ism;background;change;feature;influence

Chapter 1

American Romanticism(1810--1865)

The American Romantic period stretched from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War. And the literature of this period was crucial to the development of American literary traditions.So i will attach much importance to this part.

1.Background reasons

1.1 Politically this period was ripe.

For one thing,America winned its independence after the 1812 war against England.For another, the nation witnessed an incredible expansion such as the westward expansion.But this country was also torn by the risk of internal division, which led to American Civil War latterly.

1.2 Economically American had never been wealthier.

The Industrial Revolution made America become a major commercial and industrial country.At the same time,th e “American Dream” was in the process of formulating.

1.3 Culturally American own value emerged.

Although influenced by the English and European literature,American Romanticism was also searching for its own literature.And the coming of more and more immigrants also contributed to its multiculture.

2. Basic features and styles

American romantic writers of this period revealed unique characteristics of their own in their works.Here are some features of American Romanticism that will help us have a better understanding of the American romanticism.

2.1 Expressiveness

The romanticists held the view that the writers should express their emotions, feelings,or their beliefs in their works,which is against the classical writers.This feature is conspicuous in the romantic poetry.Such as Allan Poe’s two famous poems Annabelle Lee and To Helen,in these two poems,she expressed either his great admiration and regret to Helen or deep hopelessness and rejection of the world.

2.2 Imagination

Romanticism celebrated the triumph of feeling and intuition over reason.Here we take Irving,who is the first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame for example.One of his famous short story in the Sketch Book is “Rip Van Winkle”,i n this story,there were Gothic romances and many supernatural elements beyond our imagination——after 20-year sleep, Rip couldn’t adapt the days after the revolution.

2.3 Worship of nature

The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became a permanent convention of American literature.Such a desire was particularly evident in Cooper’s Leather Stocking Tales, in Thoreau's Walden and also in Melville’s famous work Moby-Dick.Also to Transcendentalists,they viewed nature as a source of goodness,instruction and nourishment for the soul.

2.4 Simplicity

In romantic works,writers turned to the humble people and the everyday life, adopted the everyday language.For example,The Leather-stocking Stories of Cooper were all written in common language,and Mr Brown in Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown is also an ordinary man.The famous poet Allan Poe also holds the view that “Poetry for poetry’s sake”: the poetry should be short and brief and the value of poetry exists in itself but not in any morality it carries.

2.5 Cultural nationalism

This kind of writers celebrated America's landscape with its virgin forests, meadows, groves, endless prairies, streams, and vast oceans.And this writing style could be seen in many works.Such as Cooper——the pioneer of sea adventure tale and the frontier saga ,wrote“The Prairie”,which is regarded as “the nearest approach yet to an American epic.”

2.6 Liberty,freedom,democracy and individualism

Writers of this period also blended these ideas of capitalist after America winned its independence.Emerson believed in individualism,independence of

mind and self-reliance.Whitman was a firm advocate of social democracy and he expressed his beliefs of self-reliance, dignity and rights of individuals in his Leaves of Grass.Emily Dickinson is also a supporter of individualism,and in his poet he wrote“I am nobody! Who are you?”

3. Influence

Romanticism was a creative period that is crucial to American literature.In the new nation’s search for a culturally independent identity, romanticism also helped build the bridge between the past and present,between America and Europe It was a Renaissance. However,after the Civil War a new nation was born,radical changes took place.Gradually,the Romanticism era in the United States was surpassed by the rise of Realism in the later 19th century.

Chapter 2

American Realism(1865--1914)

The period ranging from 1865 to 1914 has been referred to as the Age of Realism in the literary history of the United States,this period is also characterized with changes of every aspect of American life,politically,economically,culturally,and religiously.So change is the key word.

1. Background changes

1.1 Politics

Politically the Civil War affected both the social and the value system of the country.America had transformed itself from a Jeffersonian agrarian community into an industrialized and commercialized society.

1.2 Economics

Economically noticeable changes had been brought to the economy by the war.It had stimulated the technological development and new methods of organization.Great advances were also made in communications,electricity and mineral wealth.Therefore,the step of urbanization was also fastened.

1.3 Cultural and social changes

As far as the ideology was concerned, people were on a shaking ground.With the rapid development of urbanization,industrialization,science and technology,problems such as class contradictions and gap of wealth became more intenser.All the harsh realities of and the disillusion of heroism resulting from the Civil War set the nation against the romance.

2. Basic features and styles

2.1 Truthful description of the actualities of the real life and material

The Realism was against the “lie”of romanticism and sentimentalism’s emphasis on intuition, imagination, and optimistic idealism.We can also see

Realists’ emphasis on the fidelistic reflection of human reality from Howells’ words.

2.2 Focus on ordinariness

This is also can be said as Realism focused on commonness of the common people and the emphasis is on ordinary people, settings and events.It also expressed the concern for the world of experience,of the commonplace,and for the familiar and the low.

3. Three dominant figures

4. Influence

In American realist fiction, familiar aspects of contemporary life and everyday scenes are represented in a straightforward or matter-of-fact manner, in which characters from all social levels are examined in depth.As a powerful impulse to mirror the harsh realities of life, realism expresses its concern for the world of experience, of the commonplace, and for the familiar and the low.

Chapter 3

American Naturalism (1890--1914)

Mark twain Howells Henry James

Voice from the lower class Voice from the middle class Voice from the upper class Understanding

of the “truth” Paid more attention to the “life ” of the Americans Laid emphasis on the “inner world” of man

Themes

1,Love for the lower class,freedom, justice, man’s dignity . 2,Criticism on cruelty, privilege, corruption, moral decline. 3,Frontier spirit of self-reliance, equality. 1,Criticism on the materialism and the moral declination, 2,Sympathy for the common people, 3,Advocate for the morality, presentation of class distinction. 1,International

theme:America:(the

New World--innocent

girl)Vs.

Europe:(the Old

World--sophisticated)

2,Artist theme:Art

should be faithful to life

Styles 1,Local colorism. 2,sentences are simple, even ungrammatical. 3,The language is remarkably humorous 1,Smiling aspects of life:America is a land of hope and possibility 2,Genteel realism

1,Refined,elaborate and intricate style

2,Psychological realism

In the last decade of 19th century, the literary naturalism was transplanted from France by Frank Norris to the United States and became a very important literary movement.It is “the application of the principles of scientific determinism to fiction and drama”.

1. Background information

1.1 Cultural and Social Background

During the latter period of Realism,the harsh reality of the industrialization period changed man’s understanding about himself and the world in which he lived in---cold, indifferent, and essentially Godless world.

1.2 Religion and theoretical basis

Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species together with Descent of Man established a new theory of evolution which offered a great challenge to the old idea of man being created by God.Darwin’s evolutionary theories and Spencer’s social-Darwinism gave answers to the puzzled people.Th e“the survival for the fittest,m an’s life is determined by environment and heredity”. 2. Major ideas and features of Naturalism

2.1 Determinism

Determinism in naturalists eyes means laws of heredity and environment control humans,despite of their freedom of will.So works of this period emphasized either a biological determinism or a socio-economic determinism.And this can be concluded into a formula like “Fate=Hereditary+Environment+Chance”.

2.2 World: godless, indifferent, hostile

The universe is cold,godless,indifferent to human desires.Life becomes a struggle for survival,making people become hopeless and help less in the end.

2.3 Style: scientific objectivity

Naturalists are just like scientists and photographers,they depict the society deeply with a certain focal length.At the same time,the setting in those novels is frequently an urban one,gloomy and depressing.

2.4 Subjects and themes

The young naturalists were likely to write about the extra-ordinary group such as slums, or Negro quarters.In reaction against the conventional literature,the naturalists tended to dwell on sexual desire of the man,emphasize man’s animal nature to survive,exist and live.

3. A representative work that show the ideas and features above

Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets,which is the first American short novel is a fine example.Maggie Johnson,a pretty young woman who struggle to survive the brutal environment lives in violence and poverty.Her love with a bartender eventually forces her to make a living on the cruel city streets rather than relieve her.The environment around her is indifferent,she was condemned by her neighbors.And this novel happens in a slum and it also deals with the

themes of sexual desire,social morality and so on.Maggie had no free will and her life and destiny were determined,finally she was hopeless and helpless. 4. Influence

Naturalism was an important movement in American literature from the 1890s to the 1920s.The pessimism and determinism pervaded the works of many American writers at that time and to some extent it’s a new and harsher realism,paving the way to Modernism.

Chapter 4

American Modernism(1914--1945)

Between the beginning of World War I and the end of World War II,America became a “modern” nation, raven with internal fractures.Urbanization and industrialization had altered national demographics of the 1920s.The era following World War I gave rise to modernism.

1. Background information

1.1 Politics

The United States’ participation in the World War I marked a crucial stage in the nation’s evolution to a world power.By the second decade of the 20th century, the United States had become the most powerful industrialized nation in the world.After“The Great Depression”,Communist influence was growing among the unemployed and becoming more and more important.

1.2 Economy

There was an economic boom and a deceptive affluence after the war. American entered the era of big industry and big technology.However, the economic crisis in America at the beginning of the 1930s left a mark in the literary creations of this period.

1.3 Cultural and social background

The war and the latter“Great Depression” cast people into an age of disorientation, alienation and dissent.Also the.American literature in this period was deeply influence by the ideas of three philosophers in the 20th century: Nietzsche’s nihilism, Freud’s psychoanalysis and Marx’s theories about race, gender and class.

2. Characteristics and features of Modernism

The writers found much difficulty in presenting this changing world with the conventional way of perceiving and language patterns of expressing. They reformed the conventional writing skills and adopted some fresh skills or styles As to themes,the modernist writers tend to present a meaningless and purposeless life, a chaotic and dislocated world, the disillusionment and loss of faith, the fragmentary feeling in life and people’s hopelessness and despair.

As for writing styles, the modernist writers try to create new ways of writing---the adoption of point of view, perspectivism, stream of consciousness, irony and ambiguity, dependence on image in the poetry,attachment to the ancient moral values and so on.

3. Major genres and a representative of each one

3.1 Modern poetry——Ezra Pound

Father of the modern poetry in American literature,Pound exerted tremendous influence on modern American literature.He invented the term Imagism and was the leader of the Imagist movement in America.Major works of him are Cathay and The Cantos.And themes of his works are criticism on commercialization,frustration at the debasement of art and belief that Confucius’ ideas could be a remedy for such a world.

3.2 Modern fiction——Ernest Hemingway

Recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954, Hemingway is one of the representatives of the “lost generation.”The lost generation refers to both the American expatriates in Europe and the ordinary American people of the 1920's who rejected American post World War I values.Many works of him such as The Sun Also Rises,For Whom the Bell Tolls all talk about this.And The Old Man and the Sea presents to us the image of Hemingway’s code hero.He prefers to nouns and verbs rather than adjectives and his words are plain,understandable.He also invented the ice-berg theory: to say little and leave a large room for the reader to interpret

4. Influence

Literature of this period struggled to understand the new and diverse responses to the advent of modernity.Some writers celebrated the changes; others lamented the loss of old ways of being.All in all,modernism is flourish period of American literature which is called “the second renaissance”now.

Chapter 5

American Postmodernism(1914--1945) Post-modernism,as it is perceived at the beginning of the 21st century,is regarded as a term encompassing all the new critical theories since the late 1960s.It is more reflective about what is subject, truth, metaphor, and human.

1. Background information

1.1 Politics

By 1945, America had become a dominating superpower with huge international responsibilities.America also entered an age of anxiety. The politics of America were influenced by two great fears——a possible war with

the Soviet Union using atomic bombs and a fear of Communism.

1.2 Economics

The 1950s saw the delayed impact of modernization and technology in everyday life,left over from the 1920s—the Great Depression.World War II brought the United States out of the Depression,and the 1950s provided most Americans with time to enjoy long-awaited material prosperity.

1.3 Social and international background

The war in Vietnam, the computer and information explosion,the race riots,the shock of AIDS,the Gulf War---all these have shown us indeterminacy or uncertainty in human perception of the future of the American society and the world as a whole.

2. Characteristics and major features

The term of Post-modernism is in fact not an inclusive description of all literature since the 1950s or 1960s, but is applied selectively to those works in wide reference to fiction, including metafiction, black humor, and avant-pop literature, notably to the novels (or anti-novels) and stories of Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Vladimir Nabokov, William s. Burroughs, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Raymond Carver, Joyce Carol Oates, etc.

2.1 Experimental writing techniques

Postmodernists challenged traditional concepts about plots, characters, or even the way to write a literary work.And also reject of rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing parody, irony and playfulness.At the same time,postmodernists favor reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity.

2.3 Irony, playfulness and black humor

This irony, along with black humor and the general concept of "play"are among the most recognizable aspects of postmodernism.It's common for postmodernists to treat serious subjects in a playful and humorous way: for example, the way Heller, Vonnegut, and Pynchon address the events of World War II.The central concept of Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is the irony of the now-idiomatic "catch-22",and the narrative is structured around a long series of similar ironies. Thomas Pynchon in particular provides prime examples of playfulness, often including silly wordplay, within a serious context.

3.Influence

Post-modernism as a new development of literature was believed to be nothing,in the sense that it cannot save us from a world too corrupted by materialism,this group of postmodernists created some new rules for the game. For them,existentialist anxiety should not be what defines literature.Instead literary imagination shows a virtual geography and shockingly anticipated the virtual realities of the digital age today.

Bibliographies

Bercovitch,Sacven.The Cambridge History of American Literature [M] Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,1917,page 95-300

王卓，李权文.美国文学史[M] 武汉：华中师范大学出版社，2010，58-355页

张冲.新编美国文学史[M].上海：上海外语教育出版社，2000