美国文学史及选读的名词解释(全)

美国文学史及选读的名词解释（全）

The American Enlightenment is the intellectual thriving

period in America in the mid-to-late 18th century (1715–1789),

especially as it relates to American Revolution on the one hand

and the European Enlightenment on the other. Influenced by the

scientific revolution of the

17th century and the humanist period during the

Renaissance, the Enlightenment took scientific reasoning and

applied it to human nature, society, and religion.

Politically, the age is distinguished by an emphasis upon

liberty, democracy, republicanism and religious tolerance –

culminating in the drafting of the United States Declaration of

Independence and Constitution. Attempts to reconcile science

and religion resulted in a rejection of prophecy, miracle and

revealed religion, often in preference for Deism. Historians have

considered how the ideas of John Locke and republicanism

merged to form republicanism in the United States. The most

important leaders of the American Enlightenment include

Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

1.

2. American Puritanism

it comes from the American puritans, who were the first

immigrants moved to American continent in the 17th century.

Original sin, predestination（预言）and salvation（拯救）were

the basic ideas of American Puritanism. And, hard-working,

piousness（虔诚,尽职），thrift and sobriety（清醒）were praised.

3. Romanticism: the literature term was first applied to the

writers of the 18th century in

Europe who broke away from the formal rules of classical

writing. When it was used in American literature it referred to the

writers of the middle of the 19th century who stimulated（刺激）the sentimental emotions of their readers. They wrote of the

mysterious of life, love, birth and death. The Romantic writers

expressed themselves freely and without restraint. They wrote all

kinds of materials, poetry, essays, plays, fictions, history, works of

travel, and biography.

4. Transcendentalism (先验说,超越论): is a philosophic and

literary movement that

flourished in New England, particular at Concord, as a

reaction against Rationalism and Calvinism (理性主义and喀尔文主义). Mainly it stressed intuitive understanding of God, without

the help of the church, and advocated independence of the mind.

The representative writers are Emerson and Thoreau.

5. Local colorism: as a trend became dominant in American

literature in the 1860s and early

1870s，it is defined by Hamlin Garland as having such

quality of texture and background that it could not have been

written in any other place or by anyone else than a native stories

of local colorism have a quality of circumstantial(详细的)

authenticity(确实性), as

local colorists tried to immortalize(使不朽) the distinctive

natural, social and linguistic features. It is characteristic of

vernacular(本国语) language and satirical(讽刺的) humor 6.

Stream of consciousness（意识流）：It is one of the modern

literary techniques. It is the

style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a

character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and

mental images as the character experiences them. It was first

used in 1922 by the Irish novelist James Joyce. Those novels

broke through the bounds of time and space, and depicted

vividly and skillfully the unconscious activity of the mind fast

changing and flowing incessantly。

7. American Realism: In American literature, the Civil War

brought the Romantic Period to

an end. The Age of Realism came into existence. It came as a

reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism.

Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward

a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really

lived. It expresses the

concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an

objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and

human experience

8. Naturalism: American naturalism was a new and harsher

realism. American naturalism

had been shaped by the war; by the social upheavals（剧变）that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age.

America’s literary naturalists dismissed the validity of

comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme

objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and

economic classes who were determined by their environment

and heredity. Although naturalist literature described the world

with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at

bettering the world through social reform.

9. Imagism（意象派）: It’s a poetic movement of Engl and

and the U.S. flourished from 1909

to movement insists on the creation of images in

poetry by “the direct treatment of the thing” and the economy

of wording. The leaders of this movement were Ezra Pound and

Amy Lowell.

10. Modernism：It was a complex and diverse （复杂多样的）international movement in all

the creative arts （创造性艺术），originating about the end

of the 19th century. It provided （出现）the greatest creative

renaissance of the 20th century. It was made up of many facets

（方面），such as symbolism，surrealism （超现实主义），cubism （立体主义），expressionism，futurism （未来主义），ect

11. The Lost generation：it refers to a group of young

intellectuals （知识分子）who came

back from war，were injured （受伤害）both physically （身体上）and mentally （精神上）. They lived by indulging （放任）themselves in the Bohemian （波西米亚）way

of life. Their American dream was disillusioned （破灭了）.

The best representative of the lost generation was Ernest

Hemingway.

12. American Dream: American dream means the belief that

everyone can succeed as long

as he/she works hard enough. It usually implies a successful

and satisfying life. It usually framed in terms of American

capitalism（资本主义）, its associated purported meritocracy,（知识界精华）and the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Bill of Rights.

13. The Harlem Renaissance：refers to the flowering of

African American literature, art, and

drama during the 1920s and 1930s. Though centered in

Harlem, New York, the movement impacted urban centers

throughout the United States. Black novelists, poets, painters,

and playwrights began creating works rooted in their own culture

instead of imitating the styles of Europeans and white Americans.

13：Free verse is a form of poetry that does not use

consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern. It

thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech.[1]

Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is

not free. Free verse displays 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, though 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,"[2] and T. S. Eliot wrote, "No

verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job."[3]

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." William

Carlos Williams said being an art form, verse cannot be free in

the sense of having no limitations or guiding principles.[4]

An Overview of American Literature

al period (early 17th—late 18th)

2. Romantic period (first half of 19th)

3. Realism (after 1865)

4. Naturalism (last decade of the 19th )

5. Modernism (the first half of the 20th)

American Romanticism

From the end of the 18th century To the Civil War

Background

The radical changes in American life and the buoyant mood

of the nation: Great immigration

Burgeoning industrialization

Westward expansion

European Influences

American Features

To moralize, to edify rather than to entertain

An enti rely new experience: a feeling of ?newness?

Native Material

Puritan heritage

The Early Romantics

Poetry

William Cullen Bryant

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Fiction

Washington Irving

James Fenimore Cooper

Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism: a late and localized manifestation of

romantic movement in literature and philosophy.

The condensation of American romantic movement in

literature of the period.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Henry David Thoreau

High Romantics

Poetry

Edgar Allan Poe

Walt Whitman

Emily Dickinson

Fiction

Edgar Allan Poe

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Herman Melville

Comparison between Early Romantics and High Romantics

Na?ve, experimental, conformist, self -conscious and

imitative?– Spiller

Their works were picturesque but lacked a deep power.

Depart from the complacent romantic impulse (not Whitman)

Well-conceived literary theories and well-structured literary

forms

Present dark and brooding pictures of the country (not

Whitman)

Not popular in lifetime

Early Romantics: Fiction Irving, Cooper

Washington Irving 华盛顿 · 欧文(1783-1859)

Father of the American Short Story

Life

Born to a wealthy Merchant family in New York City.

His first book: A History of New York from the Beginning of

the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty纽约史(1809), under

the nam e of ?Diedrich Knickerbocker?.

Lived in Europe for 17 years and gained literary reputation.

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent(1819-1820)札记集:

Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Returned to America in 1832.

Why is he important?

The first prost stylist of American romanticism.

The first American man of letters to support himself as a

professional writer.

The first American author to win international recognition.

The first modern American short stories. He gave an impetus

to the American humor and to the urbane wit.

He introduced the familiar essay to America.

He helped create what might be called an American

Mythology.

Style

Sentimentalism, modeled himself on Oliver Goldsmith

(1728-74)

Among the first to confront the difficulty of finding a literary

identity in a country lacking its own distinct cultural identity.

Graceful, refined, fluent, dignified, urbane, witty, melodious

—models of perfect English

Humor: tongue-in-cheek irony, exaggeration

The caricature, satire and local allusion in ?Knickerbocker?

The clarity and grace of the ?Crayon? style

Rip Van Winkle

Setting: when and where

a village in the mountains of upstate New York

Period of Revolution

Plot: hunting—gnomes—drinking—slumber—back—great

changes

Characterization:

Rip (Wolf), the lazy husband

the termagant wife

Style: humor achieved through irony, dignified words and

exaggeration

Theme and motif

The loss of manhood

Escapism

mutability

南朝(梁) 任昉《述异记》

晋王质入山采樵,见二童子对弈.童子与质一物如枣核,食之不饥.局终,童子指示曰: ?汝柯烂矣.?质归乡里,已及百岁.

James Fenimore Cooper1789-1851 The First Important

American novelist As a novelist

Genres: 3 kinds of novels

historical novels about the revolutionary past, eg. The Spy.

the first to write a novel exclusively focusing on the sea, eg.

The Pilot.

about the American frontier

The Leatherstocking Series: 皮袜子系列

The Pioneers开拓者,

The Last of the Mohicans最后的莫希干人

The Prairie大草原,

The Pathfinder探路人

The Deerslayer猎鹿人

As a critic

Conservative

Themes of Wilderness vs. civilization, freedom vs. law, order

vs. change, aristocrat vs.

democrat, natural rights vs. legal rights.

Features of Cooper’s Novels

Language

Plots

Stylistic features

Characters

Nature

Cooper’s interest in painting developed in him his excellent

pictorial imagination which he applied effectively,

counterpointing descriptions of conflict and violence with scenes

of forest beauty.?

The Leatherstocking Series An American Epic

Setting: the early frontier period of American history in the

American wilderness---the American West.

Central character:

Natty Bumppo: the essential American soul

The heritage left by Cooper

The figures in his novels helped create that part of American

mythology most popular today: the story of the cowboy and the

winning of the American West.

Two of the great stock figures: the stoic, daring frontiersman

and the bold, friendly Indian.

Cooper’s genius lay in his ability to transform the personal

terms of his crisis into larger terms—to give them a transpersonal

dimension with national and even mythic implications.?

William

Wordsworth

Life

Thanatopsis? 死亡随想曲, written when he was only sixteen.

A great editor

a leading advocate for the abolition of slavery, a supporter

of Lincoln.

The Central Park

One of America’s earliest naturalist poets

Theme:

The beauty and harmony of nature as a source of solace, joy,

and escape

The dignity of humanity

The sacredness of human freedom

The power and beneficence of God

Conventional in subject and style

Transition towards Romanticism (transcendentalism)

Thanatopsis ( Gr. a view of death)

B ryant ?develops a view of death which represents a sharp

Cullen Bryant(1794-1878) The American

break from the Puritan attitude toward man’s final destiny. To

the Puritans, death was seen as a preliminary to an afterlife.

Bryant, however, treats death as part of nature, the destiny of us

all, a nd the great equalizer.? --Carl Bode

TO A WATERFOWL William Cullen Bryant (1794 - 1878)

Vainly the fowler’s eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

As, darkly painted on the crimson sky

Thy figure floats along. (5-8)

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,--

The desert and illimitable air,--

Lone wandering, but not lost. (13-16)

He, who, from zone, to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright. (29-32)

致水鸟

威廉·柯伦·布莱恩特

在漂洒的露水中，

天空闪烁着白日最后脚步的光辉，

穿过玫瑰云霞的深处，你向哪里

去寻你孤独的路?

捕鸟者恶意的目光

徒然注意到你在远处的飞翔

因为，绛红的天幕映照出，

你潇洒飞翔的身影。

你在寻潮湿的栖地，

是芳草萋萋的湖畔，还是宽阔河流的岸边抑或，是在寻那波涛起伏

浪涛拍岸的海岸?

有一个神明关怀着你，

为你在没有路的岸边指路，——

寂寥无际的万里长空，——

孑然一身却从不迷途。你终日扑打双翼

在那浩淼的天际，穿过冰冷稀薄的空气疲倦了，你也从不俯身飞向热情的大地，尽管黑夜即将来临。

你辛劳的旅程即将告终

你将到夏日的家园，在那里

你将在同伴中休憩鸣唱，芦苇将俯身

遮掩你隐蔽的鸟窝。

你袅袅而去，深邃的天空

吞噬了你的身影；然而，我心中

却深深地镌刻你留下的教益，

不会轻易忘记。

他，人间无处不在，

在无垠的天空指引着你的飞行，

在我孤独跋涉的漫长路上，

他将为我正确地导航。

Bryant Park

Bryant Park was named after William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), a Lawyer, Poet and later in life, one of the nation's leading

advocates for the abolition of slavery.

The lawn at Bryant Park in Midtown Manhattan is a big thing

during most midday lunch-time hours in New York City. Usually,

you'll see hundreds of people along the sides on the benches and

within. Located between 40th - 42nd Streets at 6th Avenue

behind our infamous NY Public Library this park is quite a special

one.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49)

Tragic life, a gifted but tormented man

Poe was the first American writer to succeed in creating a

total life in art as a foil to the conflict and frustration of the

human predicament.?

Poet and short story writer( those of horrors

and ?ratiocination?)

Poe’s Theory of Poetry

Beauty is the only legitimate province of the poet: The sense

of the beautiful is an immortal instinct within men.

The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most

poetical topic in the world.?—Poe, 1846, ?The Philosophy of

Composition?

Poetry was, a ‘passion’, not merely a ‘purpose’; poetry

should appeal only to the sense of beauty, not truth;

informational poetry, or didactic poetry was illegitimate (in the

times to inculcate a moral); poetic emotion was a vague sensory

state, so against realistic details in poetry.

The music of Language: language as medium of pure musical

and rhythmic beauty

A pioneering aesthetician and psychological investigator

To Helen

致海伦

海伦，你的美丽对于我，

就像昔日尼斯安的小船，

在芳菲的大海轻轻颠簸，

载着精疲力竭的流浪汉

驶向他故乡的岸边。

早已习惯漂泊在汹涌的海上，

你堇的秀发，典雅的容颜

和仙女般的风姿已令我知详

何谓希腊的华美壮观，

何谓罗马的宏伟辉煌。

瞧！在那明亮的壁龛窗里，

我看你玉立多像尊雕塑，

那镶嵌玛瑙的明灯在手！

啊，普叙赫，你来自圣地，

那片天国净土！

His short stories

The first to develop the short story as a distinctive art form

and to elaborate criteria.

Subject: Morbidity, necrophilia, the no man’s land between

death and life; the strange,

incestuous vampirism of the dead with the living

Grotesque, Gothicism

Brevity, single effect, truth instead of beauty, psychological

effect on the reader

The earliest American detective fiction and science fiction

The Cask of Amontillado?

The Masque of the Red Death?

The Fall of the House of Usher?

The Murders in the Rue Morgue?

The Purloined Letter? –one of the world’s greatest detective

stories.

The Fall of the House of Usher?

A gothic masterpiece

The setting and symbols reveal character and conflict

Study of fear

Incestuous relationship (D. H. Lawrence)

Plot: arrival of the narrator-the eerie atmosphere (the

mansion, the lake)-Usher and

Madeline-Madeline’s death-the verse-the book reading-Madeline came-death of the twins-the collapse of the mansion.

Style: single effect

Theme: Terror, Murder, Madness

Symbolism: the mansion, the tarn, the bridge, the crack in

the house, the storm Transcendentalism New England

Transcendentalism

American Renaissance (1836-1855)

Transcendentalism and Romanticism

Transcendentalism: a late and localized manifestation of

romantic movement in literature and philosophy.

The condensation of American romantic movement in

literature of the period. Transcendentalism: Sources

Unitarianism

a revolt against orthodox Puritanism;

belief: God as one being, rejecting the doctrine of trinity

stressing the tolerance in religious opinion

Idealism from France and Germany

Kant (the father of Transcendentalism)

Hegel (whose dialectic method of thesis, antithesis, and

synthesis was used at times by Emerson).

Oriental mysticism in Hindu and Chinese classics

the Sayings of Confucius,

the Hindu Bhagavad Gita《福者之歌》（印度教经典《摩阿婆罗多》的一部分）, and the Upanishads《奥义书》（印度教古代吠陀教义的思辩作品，是后世印度各派哲学的依据．）The

Transcendental Club

The club

The journal: The Dial

The Experiments

Concepts

Definition:

The recognition in man of the capacity of acquiring

knowledge transcending the reach of the five senses, or of

knowing truth intuitively, or of reaching the divine without the

need of an intercessor.

Emerson: ?whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought?

Concepts--intuition

1. The power of intuition

Things learned from within were truer than the things they

learned from without, and transcended them.

Intuition was inner light within.

Concepts--spirit

2. Spirit first, matter second

The reality of spirit is greater than that of matter.

Transcendentalism stressed essence behind appearance.

Concepts--nature

3. Nature is symbolic of spirit or God.

Everything in the universe is viewed as an expression of the

divine spirit.

Nature is God’s enlightenment towards human beings:

morality, beauty.

Transcendentalism stresses unity of humanity and nature.

Concepts--individual

4. The significance of the individual

The individual is the most important element in society.

The ideal kind of individual is self-reliant and unselfish.

A greatness in all human beings that needs only to be set

free.

As an individual soul can commune with God, it is, therefore,

divine.

The individual soul can reach God without the help of

churches or clergy.

While stressing individuality, transcendentalism rejects the

restraints of tradition and custom.

Concepts--Oversoul

5. An emotional communication between an individual soul

and the universal ?oversoul?.

Oversoul: an all-pervading unitary spiritual power of

goodness; all things come from it and everyone is a part of it;

omnipresent and omnipotent; existing in nature and in humanity

alike.

Concepts—commerce is degrading

6. Commerce is degrading.

Characteristics of Transcendentalism

The triumph of intuition over five senses

The exaltation of the individual over society

The critical attitude toward formalized religion

The rejection of any kind of restraint or bondage to custom

The new and thrilling delight in nature

Significance—an ethical guide to life

Tolerance of difference in religious opinion and the free

control of its own affairs by each congregation

Throwing off shackles of custom and tradition

The development of a new and distinctly American culture

The essential worth and dignity of the individual as a

powerful force for democracy ?An idealism that was needed in a

rapidly expanded economy.

Significance—a new group of writers

Emerson and Thoreau

Under the influence of Emerson and Thoreau:

Almost all the writers of the period—Hawthorne, Melville,

Lowell, Dickinson, Whitman.

They created one of the most prolific periods in the history

of American Literature. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Transcendentalism’s most seminal force

Unitarianism, a Unitarian minister, resigned.

Traveled in Europe: Wordsworth, Carlyle, Coleridge.

a public speaker

The club and the journal: The Dial

Essays:

Nature: the manifesto of American transcendentalism

The American Scholar?: America’s Declaration of

Intellectual Independence Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Education

Emerson’s handyman

Living alone in Walden pond from July 1845 to September

1847

Put in jail for refusing to pay the poll-tax

Civil Disobedience? (1849)

Living with nature

Break convention, live in new ways.?

Walden

I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I

wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow to put

to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover

that I had not lived.

--Dead Poets Society From Walden

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to

front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn

what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I

had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so

dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite

necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of

life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that

was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life

into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved

to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness

of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime,

to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it

in my next excursion.

From Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Section I (paragraphs 1-6): Trust thyself.

1. The importance of thinking for oneself.

2. ?Trust thyself?.

Q: What does Emerson urge people to be?

3. The force of infancy and youth.

Q: Why are children models of self-reliance?

4. The analogy between boys and the idealized individual.

Q: In what ways are boys and the idealized individual similar?

Why does Emerson say that the careful adult is clapped into jail

by his consciousness?

5. The importance of an individual’s resisting the pressu re

to conform to the external norms.

Q: What does society conspire to do?

6. The necessity to follow one’s inner voice, whatever it is.

Be a nonconformist.

Q: How to resist this conspiracy?

Section II (paragraphs 7-13): Consistency is the hobgoblin of

little minds.

Q: what are the two enemies of the independent thinker?

7. Society’s disapproval or scorn.

Q: Which is more formidable, the scorn of the cultivated

classes or the outrage of the masses?

8. The individual’s own sense of consistency.

9. Consistency drains our creativity.

Q: what is the metaphor about memory?

10. The Condemnation of the society that demands

conformity.

Q: Who are the great minds that Emerson cites?

11. The ultimate consistency.

Q: What are the two metaphors that Emerson uses?

12. A true man is the center of things.

13. Humans determine the worth of an object, not vice versa.

Q: what is the fable of the drunkard about?

Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864)

The Scarlet Letter

“Young Goodman Brown”

He is ?remembered for helping to establish the short story?,

he is remembered as a ?proponent of instilling morals and

lessons into his writing? Nathaniel Hawthorne

His ancestral burden:

Hawthorne was ?burdened by the misdeeds of notorious

Puritan ancestors?

William Hathorne:

O ne of Hawthorne’s ancesters, he migrated to America

with the Puritans in

1630.

History records that William Hathorne once ordered that a

burglar be

branded with a B on his forehead?

Persecuted Quakers

John Hathorne (son of William Hathorne):

Nathaniel’s great-grandfather

was a prosecuting . . . magistrate at the infamous 1692 witch

trials in

Salem . . .?

W?

Family name

Hathorne

Nathaniel spells his:

Hawthorne

The House of the Seven Gables

considers the effects of one man’s sin upon succeeding

generations?

The wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive

ones, and divesting itself of every temporary advantage,

becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief.? Life

Hawthorne’s father, a sea-captain, died of yellow fever in

Dutch Guiana, leaving his widow to mourn him during a long life

of eccentric seclusion, and this influenced her son’s somber and

solitary attitude.

Read widely.

Graduated from Bowdoin College: Longfellow, Franklin

Pierce.

Returned to Salem.

Published his first novel Fanshawe and Twice-Told Tales.

Worked at the Customs House.

Joined the transcendentalist community of Brook Farm.

Turned to more profitable novels.

Enjoyed frequent visits with his neighbor Herman Melville.

Served as U.S. Consul at Liverpool.

Works

Collection of Short Stories

Twice-Told Tales (1837)

Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)

The Snow-Image and Other Twice-Told Tales (1851)

Young Goodman Brown?

The Minister’s Black Veil?

Ethan Brand?

Dr. Heidegger’s Experiement?

Novels:

The Scarlet Letter, a treatment of the effects of sin on the

human spirit.

The House of Seven Gables(1851)

The Blithedale Romance (1852)

The Marble Faun (1860)

Subjects and Themes

the New England past and the subject and setting.

Human psychology

Intellect vs. feeling and warmth

Sin and evil

Puritanism

A Moralist, a master of psychological insight, the first major

novelist to wed morality

to art.

Major Comment on Hawthorne’s Themes

Hawthorne was imbued with an inquiring imagination, an

intensely meditative mind, and an unceasing interest in the

ambiguity of man’s being. He was an anatomist of ?the interior

of the heart?, conscious of loneliness of man in the universe, of

the darkness that enshrouds all joys, and of the need of man to

look into his own soul.

---Bode Style

Romance

Symbols and setting

Narrative skills

Soft, flowing style

Ambiguity

Allegory

The supernatural

Works

Collection of Short Stories

Twice-Told Tales (1837)

Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)

The Snow-Image and Other Twice-Told Tales (1851)

“Young Goodman Brown”

The Minister’s Black Veil?

Ethan Brand?

Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment?

Novels:

The Scarlet Letter, a treatment of the effects of sin on the

human spirit.

The House of Seven Gables(1851)

The Blithedale Romance (1852)

The Marble Faun (1860)

Young Goodman Brown?

Written in 1835

Known for being one of literature’s most gripping

portrayals of seventeenth-century Puritan society?

Summary

‘Young Goodman Brown’ tells the tale of a young Puritan

man drawn into a covenant with the Devil. Brown’s illusions

about the goodness of his society are crushed when he discovers

that many of his fellow townspeople, including religious leaders

and his wife, are attending a Black Mass. At the end of the story,

it is not clear whether Brown’s experience was nightmare or

reality, but the results are nonetheless the same. Brown is unable

to forgive the possibility of evil in his loved ones and as a result

spends the rest of his life in desperate lo neliness and gloom.?

Comments

Characters:

Young Goodman Brown

Faith

Devil / Old Goodman Brown

Goody Cloyse, the Minister, and Deacon Gookin.

Goody Cloyse, Goody Cory, Martha Carrier.

Themes: Good / Evil; Alienation/Community

Hawthorne presents sin as an inescapable part of human

nature?.

Every human being is alone ‘in that saddest of all prisons,

his own heart’ ?Symbolism and allegory:

Point of view:

The Scarlet Letter

Synopsis

And aged English scholar sends his young wife, Hester

Prynne, to establish their home in Boston. When he arrives 2

years later, he finds her in the pillory with her illegitimate child in

her arms. She refuses to name her lover and is sentenced to wear

a scarlet A, signifying Adulteress, as a token of her sin. The

husband conceals his identity, assumes the name Roger

Chillingworth, the in the guise of a doctor seeks to discover her

paramour. Hester, a woman of strong independent nature,

becomes sympathetic with other unfortunates, and her works of

mercy gradually win her the respect of her neighbours.

Chillingworth meanwhile discovers that the Rev. Arthur

Dimmesdale, a revered, seemingly saintly young minister, is the

father of Hester’s beautiful, mischievous child, Pearl.

Dimmesdale has struggled fo r years with his burden of hidden

guilt, but though he does secret penance, pride prevents him

from confessing publicly, and he continues to be tortured by his

conscience. Chillingworth’s life is ruined by his preoccupations

with his cruel search, and he b ecomes a morally degraded

monomaniac. Hester wishes her lover to flee with her to Europe,

but he refuses and makes a public confession on the pillory in

which Hester had once been placed. He dies their in her arms.

But Hester lives on, triumphant over her sin because she openly

confessed it, to devote herself to ensuring a happy life for Pearl

and helping others in misfortune.

Themes

Sin and its Effects

Good and Evil

The individual and the society

Structure

Symmetry

Unity of place

Symbols

the first symbolic novel to be written in the United States?

A?

The scaffold

The sun

The forest

The meaning of the “A”

As the novel progresses, Hester ages and changes and the

townspeople begin to see both her and the symbol A in different

ways. Thus the ?A? comes to have a multiplicity of meanings,

each of which deepens and develops the meaning of the novel

A = Adulteress (Hester is guilty of the sin of adultery.)

A = Art (Hester is a very creative, skilled seamstress who

makes her living through this art)

A = Able(Hester is able to support herself and daughter and

to survive the town’s condemnation.)

A = Admirable (The townspeople begin to admire Hester.)

A = Angel(She tends the sick and dying and is an ?angel? of

charity toward others.)

A = Arthur (Everyone wants to know who the father of the

illegitimate child is, but Hester will not betray him. Ironically, his

initial is displayed in Hester’s punishment: his name is Arthur.

Herman Melville(1819-1891)

Life

Family and schooling

Education aboard the ship: Signed on to a merchant ship,

than a whaling cruise

Marriage

Writing career:

Established his reputation as an adventure writer.

Influences:

Hawthorne

Moby Dick: not well received,

1920s, revival of Moby Dick, one of the most dramatic

Shakespeare, Emerson, friendship with

reversal in all literary history.

A popular writer ?one of the half-dozen major American

literary figures of the 19th century?

Worked in New York City Custom House,20 years

Works

Early works

Typee(1846)

Omoo(1847)

Mardi(1849)

Redburn(1849)

White Jacket(1850)

Moby Dick(1851)

Late works

Pierre(1852)

The Confidence-Man(1857)

Billy Budd (1924) (finished before death)

Major Themes

Alienation, loneliness, suicidal individualism, rejection and

quest, confrontation of innocence and evil, morbidity and

demonism of the world, agonies of self-discovery, doubts over

the comforting 19th century idea of progress, mistrust of the idea

of unrestrained liberty, man as radically imperfect, and a world

filled with lost innocence and betrayed hope; the loss of faith and

sense of futility and meaninglessness.

Moby Dick

the greatest American Novel?

An epic novel

No other book as full of such action, religion, philosophy,

detailed information about a way of life, democratic beliefs,

humor, tremendous variety of style and allusions.

部分是戏剧,部分是历险故事,部分是哲学探讨,部分是科学研究,部分是史诗.

But it is first a symbolic voyage of the mind in quest of the

truth and knowledge of the universe, a spiritual exploration into

man’s deep reality and psychology.

Synopsis

The outcast youth Ishmael, feeling ? a damp, drizzly

November? in his soul, goes to New Bedford, planning to ship on

a whaler. There he draws as a roommate Queequeg, a Polynesian

prince, and the two become comrades. After Ishmael hears a

symbolic sermon by father Mapple, he and Queequeg go to

Nantucket and sign on the Pequod, which sails on Christmas Day.

The Captain, Ahab, is a monomaniac whose one purpose is to

capture the fierce, cunning white whale, Moby-Dick, which had

torn away his leg during their last encounter. He keeps below

deck for some time, but finally declares his purpose and posts a

doubloon on the mast as a reward for the man who first sights

the white whale.

The characters of the sailors are revealed by their reactions.

The chief mate, starbuck, earnest, prudent and fretful, dislikes it.

Stubb, the second mate, is happy-go-lucky and takes perils as

they come. Flask, the third mate, is incapable of deep thought

and for him killing whales is simply an occupation. Others in the

crew include Fedallah and his mysterious Asiatics; the American

Indian harpooner, Tashtego; the African, Daggoo; the black cabin

boy, Pip. Through the plot of the voyage, which carries the

Pequod nearly around the world, runs a comprehensive

discussion of the nature of the whale, the history of science and

art relating to the animal, and the facts of the whaling industry.

Whales are captured during the pursuit, but circumstances seem

to conspire against Ahab: storms, lightning, loss of the compass,

the drowning of a man, and the insanity of Ahab’s favorite, Pip.

The white whale is finally sighted, and in the first day’s chase he

smashes a whaleboat. The second day, another boat is swamped,

and the captain’s ivory leg is snapped off. On the third day the

whale is harpooned, but Ahab, fouled in the line, is pinioned to

Moby-Dick, who bears down on the Pequod. The ship is sunk and,

as the final spars settle in the water, one of the man nails to the

mast a sky hawk that pecks at the flag he is placing as a signal.

The ship, ?like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged

a living part of heaven along with her and helmeted herself with

it.? Ishmael, the only survivor, is rescued by another whaler, the

Rachel.

Themes

Vengeance:

Defiance: Father Mapple’s sermon about Jonah

And if we obey god, we must disob ey ourselves; and it is in

this disobeying

ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.?

Death: the oil painting at the Spouter-Inn, three prophets

( Elijah, Gabriel, Fedallah)

Man and nature

Search and discovery

Religion

Love and friendship

Style

Conscious literariness: references to former authors, the

Bible and Shakespeare, sailor talk and old style.

Threefold quality: the style of fact, oratory celebrating the

fact, and meditation

Symbolic and metaphorical: a story of whale-hunting and

romance of moral inquiry Encyclopedic; the non-narrative

chapters

The technique of multiple views ambiguity

Language and style

Some chapters are cast in dramatic form like a play.

Some times Ahab speaks almost in Shakespearian blank

verse.

Very nervous (strong) variation is one of the prime elements.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(1807-1882)

Life

Born in Portland, Maine. A seaside town

A classmate of Hawthorne’s; Bowdoin College.

First trip to Europe (3 years) , learned Italian, Spanish, French

Taught modern languages back home; Bowdoin(1829-35),

later at Harvard (1836-54) Second trip, improved his German,

learned Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish

Assumed the chair of modern languages at Harvard

Honors

Honorary degrees from the Oxford and Cambridge in

England

Queen Victoria gave him a private audience.

75th birthday celebrated nationally in America.

The only American to be honored with bust in the Poet’s

Corner at Westminster Abbey Achievements

Anthology: The Poets and Poetry of Europe

Translation: the Divine Comedy by Dante

Works: Voices of the Night, Ballads and Other Poems, The

Song of Hiawatha

A Psalm of Life

My Lost Youth

Hymn to the Night

The most celebrated poet of his time

Theme and style

American subjects and European styles

Simple ideas and mastery of rhyme and rhythm.

Tone: didactic, preachy, a manly and affirmative note.

A Psalm of Life

Didactic

stresses the importance of a full and sincere activity in

making the most of life’s brief span, rather than succumbing to

moods of vain regret and dejection.

人生颂

别用悲切的诗句对我唱：

“人生只是虚幻的梦一场！”

因为昏睡的灵魂已死亡，

而事物不是看来那模样。

人生多真切！它决非虚度！

一抔黄土哪里会是它归宿；

“你来自泥尘，得重归泥尘。”

这话所指的并不是灵魂。

我们命定的终点和道路，

既不是享乐，也不是悲苦；

行动吧；要让每一个明天

看我们比今天走得更远。

学艺费光阴，时日去匆忙，

任我们的心勇敢又坚强，

却依然像那蒙住的丧鼓——

敲打着哀乐走向那坟墓。

在风云世界的广阔战场，

在人生征途的野宿营帐，

别像默默的牛羊任驱赶！

要争做英雄，能征善战！

将来再美好也别空指望！

让死的过去把死的埋葬！

干吧，在活着的此刻就干！

胸内有红心，头顶有上苍！

伟人的生平向我们指出：

我们能使此生超脱俗——

一朝逝去，时间的沙滩上

将留下我们的脚印行行。

在庄严的生活之海航行，

也许有兄弟会遭遇不幸，

会因为航船沉没而绝望——

但见那脚印，又变得顽强。

就让我们振奋，行动起来，

凭着对付任何命运的胸怀；

不断去收获，不断去追求，

学会劳动，也要学会等候。