美國文學 1. Romantic

word第一章美國浪漫主義時期一、美國浪漫主義時期概述 .本章學習目的和要求通 過本章學習，了解世紀初期至中葉美國文學產(chǎn)生的歷史、文化背景；認識該時期文學創(chuàng)作的基本待征、基本主，及其對同時代和后期美國文學的影響；了解該 時期主要作家的文學創(chuàng)作生涯、創(chuàng)作思想、藝術(shù)特色及其代表作品的主題思想、人物刻畫、語言風格等；同時結(jié)合注釋，讀懂所選作品并了解其思想容和藝術(shù)特 色，培養(yǎng)理解和欣賞文學作品的能力。.本章重點及難點：1浪漫主義時期美國文學的特點2主要作家的創(chuàng)作思想、藝術(shù)特色及其代表作品的主題結(jié)構(gòu)、人物刻畫、語言風格、思想意義。3分析討論選讀作品.本章考核知識點和考核要求：1.美國浪漫主義時期概述(1)"識記"容：美國浪漫主義文學產(chǎn)生的社會歷史及文化背景(2)"領(lǐng)會"容： 美國浪漫主義在文學上的表現(xiàn)a.歐洲浪漫主義文學的影響b.美國本土文學的崛起及其待證(3)"應用"容：清教主義、超驗主義、象征主義、自由詩等名詞的解釋華盛頓·歐文1一般識記：歐文的生平及創(chuàng)作主涯2識記：紐約外史見聞札記3領(lǐng)會：歐文的創(chuàng)作領(lǐng)域、創(chuàng)作思想，及其作品的藝術(shù)風格4.應用：選讀瑞普·凡·溫可爾的主題及其藝術(shù)特色拉爾夫·華爾多·愛默生1一般識記：愛默生的生平及創(chuàng)作生涯2識記：愛默生的超驗主義思想3領(lǐng)會：（1）愛默生的散文：論自然論自助論美國學者等（2）愛默生與梭羅：梭羅的超驗主義思想和他的沃爾登4 應用：論自然節(jié)選：愛默生的基本哲 學思想及自然觀納撒尼爾·霍桑1一般識記：霍桑的生平及創(chuàng)作主涯2識記：霍桑的長短篇小說3領(lǐng)會：（1）紅字的主題、心理描寫、象征手法和、小說結(jié)構(gòu) （2）霍桑的清教主義思想及加爾文教條中的"原罪"對霍桑的影響（人性本惡的觀點）（3）霍桑對浪漫主義小說的貢獻4應用：選讀小伙子布朗的主題結(jié)構(gòu)、象征手法及語言特色華爾特·惠特曼1一般識記：惠特曼的生平及其創(chuàng)作生涯2識記：惠特曼的思想3領(lǐng)會：（1）惠特曼的草葉集的主創(chuàng)意圖、思想感情及詩體形式、語言風格（2）惠特曼的個人主義4應用：選讀草葉集詩選："一個孩子的成長"、"涉水的騎兵'"、"自己之歌"的主題結(jié)構(gòu)、詩歌的藝術(shù)特色、語言風格赫爾曼·麥爾維爾1一般識記：麥爾維爾的生平及創(chuàng)作生涯2識記：麥爾維爾的早期作品：瑪?shù)乩椎帽景淄庖?，后期作品皮埃爾騙子的化裝表演比利伯德等3領(lǐng)會：白鯨的（1）主題：表層及深層意義（2）小說結(jié)構(gòu)：浪漫主義和現(xiàn)實主義的統(tǒng)一（3）象征手法和寓言的運用（4）語言特色4應用：選讀白鯨最后一章的節(jié)選：主題思想、人物刻畫、象征手法、語言特色Chapter l The Romantic Period(一)"識記"容：1.The origin of Romantic American literature The Romantic Period, one of the most important periods in thehistory of American literature, 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 New England 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." America was flourishing into a politically, economically and culturally independent country. Historically, it was the time of westward expansion in America 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 life of 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, especially, 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 ic 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)領(lǐng)會容1.The impact of European Romanticism on American RomanticismForeign literary masters, especially the English counterparts exerted a stimulating impact on the writers of the new world. Born of one mon cultural heritage, the American writers shared some mon 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, which 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 mon man was almost a national religion in America. 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 RomanticismAlthough 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 sourceof material for American writers to draw upon. They celebrated America'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, inMark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (3) With the growth of American national consciousness, American character types speaking local dialects appeared 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 moralize than 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)應用容1. The American Puritanism and its great influence over American moral values, as is shown in American romantic writings.(1) American PuritanismPuritanism 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 .The first settlers who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quite a few of them Puritans. They came to America 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 England, were idealists, believing that the church should be restored to plete "purity". They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God. But in the grim struggle for survival that followed immediately after their arrival in America, 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 bee, 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 Hawthorne, Melville and a host of lesser writers.2. New England Transcendentalism New England Transcendentalism is 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 Thoreau who 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 Boston. 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 philosophical1y 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 acpanied Transcendentalism inc1ude the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, self-re1iant.3. American Romanticists differed in their understanding of human nature.To the transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau, man is divine in nature and therefore forever perfectible; but to Hawthorne and Melville, everybody is potentially a sinner, and great moral courage is therefore indispensab1e for the improvement of human nature, as is shown in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Washington Irving(1783-l859) Irving's position in American literature Washington Irving was one of the first American writers to earn an international reputation, and regarded as an early Romantic writer in the merican literary history and Father of the American short stories. 一一般識記His life and major works Washington Irving was born in New York City in a wealthy family. From a very early age he began to read widely and write juvenile poems, essays, and plays. In l798, he conc1uded his education at private schools and entered a law office, but he loved writing more.His first successful work is A History Of New York from the Beginning Of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, which, written under the name of Diedrich Knickerbocker, won him wide popularity after it came out in 1809. With the publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in serials between 1819 and 1820, Irving won a measure of international fame on both sides of the Atlantic. The book contains familiar essays on the Eng1ish life and Americanized versions of European folk tales like "Rip Van Winkle, and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Geoffrey Crayon is a carefully contrived persona and behind Crayon stands Irving, juxtaposing the Old World and the New, and manipulating his own antiquarian interest with artistic perspectives.The major work of his later years was The Life of George Washington.二識記1.Irving's great indebtedness to European literatureMost of Irving's subject matter are borrowed heavily from European sources, which are chiefly Germanic. Irving's relationship with the Old World in terms of his literary imagination can hardly be ignored considering his success both abroad and at home.A History of New York is a patchwork of references, echoes, and burlesques. He parodies or imitates Homer, Cervantes, Fielding, Swift and many other favorites of his. He was also absorbed in German Literature and got ideas from German legends for two of his famous stories "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." The Alhambra is usually regarded as Irving's "Spanish Sketch Book" simply because it has a strong flavor of Spanish culture. Most of the thirty-three essays in The Sketch Book were written in England, filled with English scenes and quotations from English authors and faithful to British orthography. Washington Irving brought to the new nation what its peop1e desired most in a man of 1etters the respect of the Old World. 2.Irving's unique contribution to American literature Irving's contribution to American literature is unique in more than one way. He was the first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame. Although greatly influenced by European literature, Irving gave his works distinctive American flavor. "Rip Van Winkle" or "The Legend of Sleepy Hol1ow", however exotic these stories are, are among the treasures of the American language and culture. These two stories easily trigger off American imagination with their focus on American subjects, American landscape, and, in Irving's case, the legends of the Hudson River region of the fresh young 1and. It is not the sketches about the Old World but the tales about America that made Washington Irving a household word and his fame enduring. He was father of American short stories. And later in the hands of Hawthorne and Melville the short story attained a degree of perfection.三領(lǐng)會1.Irving's theme of conservatism as is revealed in "Rip Van Winkle"Irving's taste was essentia1ly conservative and always exa1ted a disappearing past. This socia1 conservatism and literary preference for the past is revea1ed, to some extent, in his famous story "Rip Van Winkle." The story is a tale remembered mostly for Rip's 20-year s1eep, set against the background of the inevitably changing America. Rip went to sleep before the War of Independence and woke up after it. The change that had occurred in the 20 years he slept was to him not always for the better. The revolution upset the natural order of things. In the story Irving ski1lfu1ly presents to us paralleled juxtapositions of two totally different worlds before and after Rip's 20 years' s1eep. By moving Rip back and forth from a noisy world with his wife on the farm to a wild but peaceful natural world in the mountains, and from a pre-Revolution village to a George Washington era, lrving describes Rip's response and reaction in a dramatic way, so that we see clearly both the narrator and Irving agree on the preferabi1ity of the past to the present, and the preferability of a dream-like world to the real one. Irving never seemed to accept a modern democratic America.2.Irving's literary craftsmanshipWashington Irving has always been regarded as a writer who "perfected the best classic style that American Literature ever produced."(1) We get a strong sense impression as we read him along, since the language he used best reveals what a Romantic writer can do with words. We hear rather than read, for there is musicality in almost every line of his prose. (2) We seldom learn a mora1 lesson because he wants us amused and relaxed. So we often find ourselves lost in a world that is permeated with a dreaming quality. (3) The Gothic elements and the supernatural atmosphere are manipulated in such a way that we could bee so engaged and involved in what is happening in a seemingly exotic place. (4) Yet Irving never forgets to associate a certain place with the inward movement of a person and to charge his sentences with emotion so as to create a true and vivid character. He is worth the honor of being "the American Goldsmith" for his literary craftsmanship.四應用Selected Reading: An Excerpt from "Rip Van Winkle" The story of Rip Van Winkle Rip, an indolent good-natured Dutch-American, lives with his shrewish wife in a village on the Hudson during the years before the Revolution. One day while hunting in the Catskills with his dog Wolf, he meets a dwarflike stranger dressed in the ancient Dutch fashion. He helps him to carry a keg, and with him joins a party silently playing a game of ninepins. After drinking of the liquor they provide, Rip falls into a sleep which lasts 20 years, during which the Revolutionary War takes place. He awakes as an old man and returns to his home village that has greatly altered. Upon entering the village, he is greeted by his old dog, which dies of the excitement and then learns that his wife has long been dead. Rip is almost forgotten but he goes to live with his daughter, now the mother of a family, and is soon befriended with his generosity and cheerfulness.This excerpt below is taken from the story, describing for us Rip's difficulties at home, which he often escapes by going to the local inn to spend his time with his friends and sometimes by going hunting in the woods with his dog, and then focusing on Rip 's return from his 20 years' sleep to his greatly altered home village. Here, Irving's pervasive theme of nostalgia for the unrecoverable past is at once made unforgettable.What are the theme and the artistic features of "Rip Van Winkle"?(1) The theme:Irving's taste was essentia1ly conservative and always exa1ted a disappearing past. This socia1 conservatism and literary preference for the past is revea1ed, to some extent, in his famous story "Rip Van Winkle." The story is a tale remembered mostly for Rip's 20-year s1eep, set against the background of the inevitably changing America. Rip went to sleep before the War of Independence and woke up after it. The change that had occurred in the 20 years he slept was to him not always for the better. The revolution upset the natural order of things. In the story Irving ski1lfu1ly presents to us paralleled juxtapositions of two totally different worlds before and after Rip's 20 years' s1eep. By moving Rip back and forth from a noisy world with his wife on the farm to a wild but peaceful natural world in the mountains, and from a pre-Revolution village to a George Washington era, lrving describes Rip's response and reaction in a dramatic way, so that we see clearly both the narrator and Irving agree on the preferabi1ity of the past to the present, and the preferability of a dream-like world to the real one. Irving never seemed to accept a modern democratic America.(2) The artistic features:"Rip Van Winkle" is not only well-known for Rip's 20-year sleep but also considered a model of perfect English in American Literature and in the English language as well. Washington Irving has always been regarded as a writer who "perfected the best classic style that American Literature ever produced." He has a clear, easy style.(a) We get a strong sense impression as we read him along, since the language he used best reveals what a