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?Part I The Literature of Colonial America (1607—1765)
?Part II The Literature of Reason and Revolution (1765—the end of 18th century)
?Part III The Literature of Romanticism (1800—1865)
?Part IV Literature of Realism (1865—1918)
?Part V Literature of Modernism (1918—1945)
?Part VI Contemporary literature (1945-- )
?Puritans brought with them a philosophy of life, which is popularly known as American Puritanism. A dominant factor in American life, Puritanism was one of the most enduring and shaping influences in American thought and American literature.
?American Puritanism is a two-fold cultural heritage, one being religious and the other practical. Puritans were therefore called "practical idealist" or "doctrinaire opportunist".
?Most of the early settlers were Puritans, a group of serious, religious people who advocated strict religious and moral principles.
a.They wanted to purify the English Church and to restore simplicity
b. They wanted to live a hard and disciplined life; opposed pleasure and art
c. They believed that the Bible was the revealed word of God, therefore, people should guide their daily behavior with the Bible
Influence upon American literature
Idealism and optimism:
?American literature, in a sense, is a literary expression of the pious idealism of the Puritan request. The Puritans dreamed of living under a perfect order and worked with hope and courage toward building a new Garden of Eden.
Therefore, they tended to look everything with a big amount of optimism. This went into the works of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and even James. No wonder there appeared a mood of frustration or despair in later periods, When the dream did not materialize, when a "Gilded Age"
came instead of the Golden one they dreamed of, how could anyone feel?
Symbolism:
?The Puritans' metaphorical mode of perception brought American literary symbolism into being. To the pious Puritans, the physical world was spiritual, nothing but a
symbol of God. The world, therefore, was one of multiple meanings. This idea was distinguishable in the works of Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville and Poe, this developed itself into symbolism
?The Puritan style of writing is characterized by simplicity.
The style of their writing was fresh, simple and direst, the rhetoric plain and honest, words simple and spare (not fancy).
?Style: tight and logic structure, precise and compact expression, avoidance of rhetorical decoration, adoption of homely imagery, simplicity of diction.
?Form: They were good at writing history, too, and biography was once a popular form of literature. Washington Irving
Father of American Imaginative literature
Father of the American short story
Irving’s Style
beautiful
highly skillful
?avoided moralizing; wrote to amuse and entertain, ?was good at enveloping his stories in an atmosphere,
?his characters are vivid and true
?filled with humor
?musical language
?(1)“The style is the man;”
?(2) neoclassical in form;
?(3) English style + German folktale + American life = Irving’s style;
?His graceful, humorous, stylistically careful writing is in the tradition of Addison, Steele, and Goldsmith.
1) A History of New York (纽约外史）from the Beginning of the W orld to the End of the Dutch Dynasty by Diedrich Knickerbocker.
a. written under the name of D. K.;
b. a popular and humorous handbook about the Dutch settlers;
(2) Biographies of Goldsmith and Washington
Bracebridge Hall 1822
Oliver Goldsmith 1840
Life of George Washington 1855-1859
The Sketch Book (1819 - 20)
见闻札记
a. a collection of essays, sketches and tales;
b. It marks the beginning of American romanticism;
c. Satire is woven throughout the book;
d. Two famous short stories in the collection: "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
Rip Van Winkle:
good-natured, hen-pecked,
idle, amiable和蔼的, careless,
conservative
Dame Van Winkle :
his termagant (泼妇般的）wife
睡谷传奇
●The main theme should be the conflict between reality and
ideal life
.
●The disharmony between city and countryside.
●
Washington Irving’s Contribution
1) Irving is the first belletrist in American literature, writing for pleasure at a time when writing was practical and for useful purposes.
2) He is the first American literary humorist.
3) He has written the first modern short stories. The short story as a genre in American literature probably began with Irving's The Sketch Book.
4) He is the first to write history and biography as entertainment.
5) He introduced the nonfiction prose as a literary genre.
6) He was the first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame
American Romanticism
?Such philosophers as Immanuel Kant (German idealism 德国唯心主义) and Auguste Comte (French positivism 法国实证主义) were introduced to America, whose works were widely read among intellectuals.
?As far as literature is concerned, influences are also obvious.
–Sir Walter Scott, with his border tales, helped toward the development of American Indian romance and
the romantic description of landscape in America
literature.
–The Gothic tradition and the graveyard tradition came to America and found their way into the works
of Poe.
–Burns, Byron, W ordsworth, with their lyric poems of love and passion and their concern for nature, added
to the nation’s singing strength
Characteristics of Romanticism
?an emphasis on freedom, individualism and imagination—rebellion against neoclassicism which stressed formality, order and authority
? a profound love for nature—nature as a source of knowledge, nature as a refuge from the present, nature as a revelation of the holy spirit
?the quest for beauty—pure beauty
?an innate and intuitive perception of man, nature and society—reliance on the subconscious, the inner life, the abnormal psychology
?the use of antique and fanciful subject matters—sense of terror, Gothic, grotesque, odd and queer
---imitative and innovative
Edgar Allan Poe
?Poet, editor, literary critic
?The first writer of the detective story
?He was the father of psychoanalytic criticism
? a pioneer in poetic and fictional techniques