浪漫主义时期开始于十八世纪末,到内战爆发为止,是美国文学史上最重要的时期。华盛顿·欧文出版的《见闻札记》标志着美国文学的开端,惠特曼的《草叶集》是浪漫主义时期文学的压卷之作。浪漫主义时期的文学是美国文学的繁荣时期,所以也称为"美国的文艺复兴。"
美国社会的发展哺育了"一个伟大民族的文学二八原理"。年轻的美国没有历史的沉重包袱,很快在政治、经济和文化方面成长为一个独立的国家。这一时期也是美国历史上西部扩张时期,到1860年领土已开拓到太平洋西岸。到十九世纪中叶,美国已由原来的十三个州扩大到二十一个州,人口从1790年的四百万增至1860年的三千万。在经济上,年轻的美国经历向工业的转化,影响所及不仅仅是城市,而且也包括农村。蒸汽动力在工、农业生产上的运用、工厂的建立、劳动力的大量需求以及科技上的发明创造使经济生活得到了重组。另外,大量移民促进了工业更加蓬勃的发展。政治上,民主与平等成为这个年轻国家的理想,产生了两党制。值得一提的是这个国家的文学和文化生活。随着独立的美国政府的成立,美国人民已感到需要有美国文学,表达美国人民所特有的经历:早期清教徒的殖民,与印第安人的遭遇,鲑鱼降钙素边疆开发者的生活以及西部荒原等。这个年轻国家的文学富有想象,已产生了一种文学环境。报刊杂志如雨后春笋,出现了一大批文学读者,形成了十九世纪上半叶蓬勃的浪漫主义的文学思潮。
外国的,尤其是英国的文学大师对美国作家产生了重大影响。美国作家由于秉承了与英国一样的文化传统,形成了同英国一样的浪漫主义风格。欧文(Irving)、库柏(Cooper),坡(Poe),弗伦诺(Freneau)和布雷恩特(Bryant)一一反古典主义时期的文学样式和文学思潮,开创了较新的小说和诗歌形式。这一时期大多数美国文学作品中,普遍强调文学的想象力和情感因素,注重生动的描写、异国情调的表达、感官的体会和对超自然力的描述。美国作家特别注意感情的自由表达和人物的心理描写。作品中的主人公富有敏感激动的特质。注重表现个人和普通人是这一时期作品的强烈倾向,几乎成了美国的信仰。富雷诺、布雷思特和库柏等人的作品对客观自然的描写有强烈的兴趣。富雷诺在"帝国的废墟"主题中对过去情景的描写绘声绘,布雷恩特对北美五大湖区的史前印第安人描述引人入胜,欧文对哈德逊河传说的巧加利用炉火纯青,库柏的长篇历史小说深入细致。总的来说,美国浪漫主义时期的文学上接英国文学传统,下开美国文学之风。 虽然美国文学受到外国文学的影响,但这一时期著名的文学作品表现的却是富有美国彩的浪漫主义思想。"西部开拓"就是一个说明美国作家表现自己国家的恰好的例子。他们大量描述了美国本土的自然风光:原始的森林、广袤的平原、无际的草原、沧茫的大海、不一而足。这些自然景物成为人们品格的象征,形成了美国文学中离开尘世,心向自然的传统。这些 传统在库柏的《皮袜子的故事》(Leather Stocking Tales〉、梭罗的《沃尔顿》(Walden)以及后来马克·吐温的《哈克贝里·芬历险记》(Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn)中都得到了明显的表现。随着美国民族意识的增长,在小说、诗歌中美国人物都越来越明显地操本地方言,作品多表现农民、穷人、儿童以及没有文化的人,还有那些虽然没文化但心地高尚的红种人和白种人。美国清教作为一种文化遗产,对美国人的道德观念产生了很大影响,在美国文学中也留下了明显的印迹。一个明显的表现就是,比起欧洲文学麦博m520,美国文学的道德倾向十分浓厚。在霍桑(Hawthorne)、梅尔维尔(Melville)以及其他一些小作家的作品中加尔文主义的原罪思想和罪恶的神秘性都得到了充分的表现。
美国浪漫主义文学运动足能标炳的是新英格兰的超验主义运动。该运动开始于19世纪30年代的新英格兰的先验主义俱乐部。本来,这个超验主义只是对新英格兰人提出来的。它是针对波士顿的唯一神教派的冷淡古板的理性主义而提的。而后来逐渐影响到全国,特别是在高级知识分子和文学界人士当中影响颇大。超验主义文学的主要代表是爱默生(Emerson)和梭罗(Henry Davd Thoreau),他们的作品对美国文学产生了很大影响。超验主义"承认人类具有本能了解或认识真理的能力,能够超过感官获取知识"。爱默生曾说:"只有人心灵的尊严才是最神圣的。"超验主义还认为自然是高尚的,个人是神圣的,因此人必须自助。
夏商周断代工程这一时期涌现了许多作家,著名的有富雷诺(Philip Freneau〉、布雷恩特(William Cullen Bryant)、郎费罗(Henry Words worth longfellow)、娄威尔(James Rassel Lowell)、惠特(John Greenleaf whitter〉、爱伦·坡(Edgar Ellen Poe)、以及惠特曼(Walt Whitman)。惠特曼的《草叶集》(Leaves of Grass)是美国十九世纪最有影响的诗歌。美国浪漫主义时期的小说富有独创性、多样性,有华盛顿·欧文的喜剧性寓言体小说,有爱伦·坡的歌德式惊险故事,有库柏的边疆历险故事,有麦尔维尔长篇叙事红场事件,有霍桑的心理罗曼史,有戴维斯(Rebecca Harding Davis)的社会现实小说。美国浪漫主义作家在人性的理解上也各自不同。爱默生、梭罗等超验主义者认为人类在自然中是神圣的,因此人类是可以完善的,但霍桑和麦尔维尔则认为人们在内心上都是罪人,因此需要道德力量来改善人性。《红字》一书就典型地反映了这个观点。
The Romantic Period
(一)"识记"内容：
遵义铁通 1.The origin of Romantic American literature
The Romantic Period, one of the most important periods in the history of American liter
ature, stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War. It started with the publication of Washington Irving's The Sketch Book and ended with Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
2.The American Renaissance or Renaissance is a period of the great flowering of American literature, from the i830s roughly until the end of the American Civil War. It came of age as an expression of a national spirit. One of the most important influences in the period was that of the Transcendentalists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau. The Transcendentalists contributed to the founding of a new national culture based on native elements. Apart from the Transcendentalists, there emerged during this period great imaginative writers ---Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman---whose novels and poetry left a permanent imprint on American literature.
3.Its social historical and cultural background
The development of the American society nurtured "the literature of a great nation." was flourishing into a politically, economically and culturally independent country. Historically,
it was the time of westward expansion in economically, the whole nation was experiencing an industrial transformation. Politically, democracy and equa1ity became the ideal of the new nation, and the two-party system came into being. Worthy of mention is the literary and cultural lifeof the country. With the founding of the American Independent Government, the nation felt an urge to have its own literary expression, to make known its new experience that other nations did not have: the early Puritan settlement, the confrontation with the Indians, the frontiersmen's life, and the wild west. Besides, the nation's literary milieu was ready for the Romantic movement as we11. Thus, with a strong sense of optimism, a spectacular outburst of romantic feeling was brought about in the first ha1f of the 19th century.
4.Major writers of this period
There emerged a great host of men of letters during this period, among whom the better-known are poets such as Philip Freneau, William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wordsworth Long Fellow, James Russel Lowell, John Greenleaf Whitter, Edgar Ellen Poe, and, especi
ally, Walt Whitman, whose Leaves Of Grass established him as the most popular American poet of the 19th century. The fiction of the American Romantic period is an original and diverse body of work. It ranges from the comic fables of Washington Irving to the The Gothic tales of Edgar Allen Poe, from the frontier adventures of James Fenimore Cooper to the narrative quests of Herman Melville, from the psycho1ogical romances of Nathaniel Hawthorne to the social realism of Rebecca Harding Davis.
(二)．领会内容
1.The impact of European Romanticism on American Romanticism
Foreign literary masters, especially the English counterparts exerted a stimulating impact on the writers of the new world. Born of one common cultural heritage, the American writers shared some common features with the English Romanticists. They revolted against the literary forms and ideas of the period of classicism by developing some relatively new forms of fiction or poetry.
(1) They put emphasis upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature, w
hich included a liking for the picturesque, the exotic, the sensuous, the sensational, and the supernatural.
(2) The Americans also placed an increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions and disp1ayed an increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters. Heroes and heroines exhibited extremes of sensitivity and excitement.
(3) The strong tendency to exalt the individual and the common manwas almost a national religion in . Writers like Freneau, Bryant, and Cooper showed a great interest in external nature in their respective works.
(4) The literary use of the more colorfu1 aspects of the past was also to be found in Irving's effort to exploit the legends of the Hudson River region, and in Cooper's long series of historical tales.
(5) In short, American Romanticism is, in a certain way, derivative.
2.The unique characteristics of American Romanticism
Although greatly influenced by their English counterparts, the American romantic writers revealed unique characteristics of their own in their works and they grew on the native
lands. For examp1e,(1) the American national experience of "pioneering into the west" proved to be a rich source of material for American writers to draw upon. They celebrated 's landscape with its virgin forests, meadows, groves, endless prairies, streams, and vast oceans. The wilderness came to function almost as a dramatic character that symbolized moral 1aw. (2)The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became a permanent convention of American literature. Such a desire is particularly evident in Cooper's Leather Stocking Tales, in Thoreau's Walden and, later, in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (3) With the growth of American national consciousness, American character types speaking local dialectsappeared in poetry and fiction with increasing frequency. (4) Then the American Puritanism as a cultural heritage exerted great influences over American moral values and American Romanticism. One of the manifestations is the fact that American romantic writers tended more to moralizethan their English and European counterparts. (5) Besides, a preoccupation with the Calvinistic view of origina1 sin and the mystery of evil marked the works of Hawthorne, Melville and a host of lesser writers.
(三)．应用内容
1. The American Puritanismand its great influence over American moral values, as is shown in American romantic writings.
(1) American Puritanism
Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans. (The Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church, who came into existence in the reigns Queen Elizabeth and King James Ⅰ.The first settlers who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quite a few of them Puritans. They came to out of various reasons, but it should be remembered that they were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles. As the word itself hints, Puritans wanted to purify their religious beliefs and practices. They felt that the Church of England was too close to the Church of Rome in doctrine form of worship, and organization of authority.) The American Puritans, like their brothers back in , were idealists, believing that the church should be restored to complete "purity". They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a sp
ecial infusion of grace from God.But in the grim struggle for survival that followed immediately after their arrival in , they became more and more practical, as indeed they had to be. Puritans were noted for a spirit of moral and religious earnestness that determinated their whole way of life. Puritans' lives were extremely disciplined and hard. They drove out of their settlements all those opinions that seemed dangerous to them, and history has criticized their actions. Yet in the persecution of what they considered error, the Puritans were no worse than many other movements in history. As a culture heritage, Puritanism did have a profound influence on the early American mind and American values. American Puritanism also had a conspicuously noticeable and an enduring influence on American literature. It had become, to some extent, so much a state of mind, so much a part of the national cultural atmosphere, rather than a set of tenets.
(2) One of the manifestations is the fact that American romantic writers tended more to moralize than their English and European counterparts. Besides, a preoccupation with the Calvinistic view of origina1 sin and the mystery of evil marked the works of Hawt
horne, Melville and a host of lesser writers.
2. New England Transcendentalism
New England Transcendentalismis the mot clearly defined Romantic literary movement in this period. It was started in the area around Concord, Mass. by a group of intellectual and the literary men of the United States such as Emerson, Henry David Thoreauwho were members of an informal club, i. e. the Transcendental Club in New England in the l830s. The transcendentalists reacted against the cold, rigid rationalism of Unitarianism in . They adhered to an idealistic system of thought based on a belief in the essential unity of all creation , the innate goodness of man, and the supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the revelation of the deepest truths. The writings of the transcendentalists prepared the ground of their contemporaries such as Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The main issues involved in the debate were generally philosophical, concerning nature, man and the universe. Basically, Transcendentalism has been defined philosophical
1y as "the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses."Emerson once proclaimed in a speech, "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." Other concepts that accompanied Transcendentalism inc1ude the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, self-re1iant.
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