美国文学史及选读考试整理
低碳生活从我做起手抄报-春节福字
Washington Irving
Bracebridge
Hall
布雷斯布里奇田庄
(1822)
The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow
Tales of a
Traveller
旅客谈
(1824)
Christopher
Columbus (1828)
c. writing characteristics
(1) humorous: the function of his writing is
to amuse,
to entertain instead of teaching or
instruction
(2) vivid and true character
portrayal
(3) finished (refined) and musical
language, thus
regarded as “the Amn.
Goldsmith”
d. analysis on The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow(选自the
sketch book
见闻札记
)
1. the story:setting,character, plot
2.
theme:conflicts and praise
conflict betw.
Ichabod and Brom
conflict betw. the village
and the outside world
James Fenimore Cooper
The Spy (1821): a historical novel
The
Pilot (1824): a sea novel
Leatherstocking
Tales
皮裹腿故事集
(1823-1841):
frontier
novels
The Last Mohicans (1826) (Colonial War
betw.
Britain and France)
e. writing
features:
strong points: we can see a variety
of incidents and
tensions, complicated plot
and structure and a
beautiful description of
nature.
Weak points: characterization is
weak. There is
unsatisfactory description of
characters (esp. female).
He is not free from
syntactical awkwardness,
heavy-handed attempt
at humor. “Where Irving
excels Cooper is
weak.” Dialect is not authentic.
Edgar Allan
Poe
The Fall of the House Usher
Feature:
i. brevity (15 pages)
ii.
Single effect
iii. originality in theme
To Helen
It was inspired by the beauty of
the mother of a
schoolmate of Poe in Richmond,
Virginia.
The poem is famous for a number of
things:
1. its rhyme scheme: ababb
2.
its varied line lengths
3. its metaphor of a
travel on the sea
4. its oft-quoted lines:
was Rome.
theme: praise the ideal
love and beauty and ancient
Greek and Roman
civilizations
The Raven
乌鸦
theme:
the lament over the death of a beautiful
woman
tone: melancholy
Transcendentalism
(essayists, poets, novelists)
Their journal
is “The Dial”.
Definition: Transcendentalism
is idealism. (Emerson)
b. features
(1)
stress on Oversoul, that is spirit.
(2)
stress the importance of individual.
(3)
fresh conception of nature.
c. significance
(1) inspired a whole generation of writers
such as
Whitman, Melville and Dickinson.
(2) dresses man’s subjective initiative as opposed
to
materialism.
(3) liberated people from
Calvin’s original sin
d. limitation
(1)
shallow: cut off from real life or reality;
initiated
by the rich, they were limited in a
certain circle. So,
in some degree, they have
been cut off from social
life and can’t
understand the sufferings of the
common
people.
(2) inward contradiction: gain
knowledge by
intuition, shows its idealistic
aspect.
R.W. Emerson (Ralph Waldo)
Nature
(1836): the Bible of New
England
transcendentalism
The American Scholar (1837):
The Divinity School
Address神学院致
辞(1838)
Essays (18411847)
Representative Men (1850)
English Traits
(1856)
Poems (1847)
d.
significance
(1) He embodied a new nation’s
desire
and struggle to assert its own identity
in
its formative period.
(2) his stress
on individualism
Limitation:self-centered,
individual
His ideas influence a lot of
writers such
as Dikinson, Hawthorne and
Whitman.
Henry David Thoreau
A Week on
the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
康考德和梅里马克河上的一周
(1849)
Walden, or Life
in the Woods (1854)
Civil Disobedience
不服从论(1849, an address)
c. Walden
main
ideas:
(1)on self-cultivation and human
perfectibility,
elevated from Puritan original
sin, believe in inner
virtue and inwardly
grace
(2) criticism on civilization and
capitalism
(3) only truth and knowledge can’t
be taken away,
trust in future and in man
Style: pithy (colloquial sayings), vivid
description,
symbols and images
Nathaniel
Hawthorne
Twice-Told Tales (1837): a
collection of short stories
Mosses from an
Old Manse
古屋青苔
(1846): another
collection of short stories
The House of
the Seven Gables
七个尖角的阁楼
(1851): on the
effect of a curse
The Scarlet Letter (1850):
masterpiece
It’s not a love story, trying to
show the moral,
emotional and psychological
effects of sin on his
characters.
“A”:
Adultery-Able-Angel
“A” on chest: sinner,
confessed, died, shows an
honest man
Moral: man should be true and honest and ready to
show one’s worst to the world（批评与自我批评）
Herman Melville
Typee (《泰比》1846)
Omoo (《奥穆》1847)
Mardi (《马尔迪》1847)
这三部作品描写塔希提群岛和马吉萨斯群岛以及
他在岛上的奇遇。
Redburn
(《莱德勃恩》1849)：描写了他的第一次
航海经验以及在利物浦港贫民窟的见闻。
White Jacket
(《白外套》1850)：根据他在美国海
军军舰上服役时期的生活体验写成。
Pierre (《皮埃尔》1852)
Israel Potter
(《伊斯莱尔·波特》1855): historical
novel
Piazza
Tales (《广场故事》1856): a collection of short
story
Moby Dick (《白鲸》1851): masterpiece
(1) a whaling book: an encyclopedia of
whalingdescription of a whaler’s life
(2)
a tragedy
about man fighting against
universe
(hostile)Man in this universe lives a
meaningless
and futile life, meaningless
because futile.
Man can observe and even
manipulate in a prudent
way, but he cannot
influence and overcome nature at
its source.
(3) alienation异化:
between man and man
between man and society (ship)
between
man and nature
Ahab is the best
representative.
To him the world exists for
his sake. His selfhood
must be asserted at the
expense of all else: lives may
be sacrificed,
and nature may have to be vanquished
in order
that he may do what he wills.
Richard Chase
says: the idea Melville conveys in it is
(5) theme: quest
(6) symbolism
the voyage: a metaphor for and discovery,
the
search for the ultimate truth of experience
the Pequod皮阔德: the ship of the American soul
the endeavor of the crews:
of our white mental
consciousness
Moby Dick: (many
interpretations) the symbol of
nature
W.
C. Bryant
the analysis on To a
Waterfowl
致水鸟
It is the perfect brief
poem in the language
(Matthew Arnold)
It is a poem of nature in
quatrains rhyming in abab.
theme: from a bird
and its flight to an ordinary
person and his
course of life, this poem conveys that
everything in nature is under the beneficence
and
protection of the Power.
Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow
Theme: idealized love,
children, family and friendship
A Psalm
of Life
The poem is divided into 9 stanzas,
each composed
of two iambic tetrameter lines
and two trochaic
trimeter lines rhyming abab.
The first two stanzas refute the pessimism
that life is
but a dream, affirming the
contrary that life is real.
The following
stanzas urge the reader to act in the
present
and to leave
in order to inspire the
followers.
The last stanza ends with a
resounding note while
admonishing people to
learn to wait as well as to
labor.
Realism（the 19th-century literary movement
that reacted
to romanticism by insisting on a
faithful, objective
presentation of the
details of everyday life.）
features:
ive
description (concern for the
commonplacethe
low)
ii. criticism of society and reality,
exposing and
criticizing the society; the
writers’ dissatisfaction; no
longer eulogize
human glority
iii. verisimilitude逼真性(true to
details)
iv. influenced by bourgeois’
中产阶级democratic
ideas (not overthrow but
reform, changes)
v. reformative: to reform
the society, not to change
completely
features: Naturalism（A post-Darwinian movement
of the late 19th century that tried to apply
the
of scientific determinism to fiction.）is a
theory which applied scientific concepts and
methods to such problems as plot development
and
characterisation.
Comparison between
Realism and Naturalism:
Realism.
i. objective
ii. creation of types
iii. influenced by British Rom. works with
hope
Naturalism
i. scientific
accuracy
ii. collect material from their
lives
t this, hopelessgloomy picture of the
society
Walt Whitman
Leaves of
Grass《草叶集》,
(1) themes
i. unity of all
man and of man within universe
ii. equality
of all man
iii. cycle of life and death
iv. enthusiastic idea toward Westward
Expansion
v. brotherhood
d. Song of
Myself
自我之歌
(1) influence of
Transcendentalism: praise of
individualism
(2) cycle of life and death
(3) ideal
of democracy: equality between different
races
and brotherhood
Emily Dickinson
A Bird
came down the walk
I died for Beauty---but was
Scarce
I Heard a Fly buzz---when I died---
Because I could not stop for Death-
H.B.
Stowe
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851): masterpiece
significance:
ified and strengthened
abolitionist sentiment;
2. gave a better
balanced, more specific picture of
plantation
life;
3. praised the merits of slaves and
showed great
sympathy for them
Henry James
The American (1877): begins with
international
theme
Daisy Miller (1878):
brings the author first
international fame
The Wings of the Dove (1902)
The
Ambassadors (1903)
The Golden Bowl (1904)
The Portrait of A
Lady
贵妇画像
:masterpiece
It tells about
the fate of one of those splendid
Jamesian
American girls, Isabel Archer, arriving in
Europe, full of hope, and with a will to live
a free
and noble life, only to fail prey to
the sinister designs
of two vulgar and
unscrupulous expatriates, Madam
Merle and
Gilbert Osmond
International theme国际主题:
the meeting of America and Europe; American
innocence in contact and contrast with
European
decadence and the moral and
psychological
complications arising therefrom;
for the American it
was a
process of progression from inexperience to
experience, from innocence to knowledge and
maturity. Those American heroes or heroins who
confronting European sophistication, either
triumphed over it or were overwhelmed.
Mark Twain
The Celebrated Jumping Frog
of Calaveras Count
卡
拉维拉斯县有名的跳蛙
(1865):a
short story
The Innocents
Abroad
国外的无辜者
(1869): letters
on his
travelling in Europe and Near East
Roughing
It
苦行记
(1872): on his experience in the
western America
The Gilded Age (1873):
his first novel, collaborated
with Charles
Dudley Warner
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
(1876)
The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn
哈克贝利·费恩
历险记
(1884): masterpiece
Life on the Mississippi (1883)
A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court
误闯亚
瑟王宫
(1889)
The Man That
Corrupted Hadleyburg
败坏了哈德莱
堡的人
(1900)
The Mysterious Stranger (1916)
e. The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
1. It is boy's
bookwhich sets 20 years before
Civil War.
2. themes:
1)picaresque以流浪汉和无赖为题材的(adventure
story)
2) moral growth of Tom
3. techniques:
verisimilitude, humor, colloquial style
Deadpan（铁面幽默）: oral humorthe teller has a
strict
face but the listeners are laughing.
Language: dialects as forms of art
Jack
London
The People of the
Abyss
深渊居民
(1903): about
London's slum
The Iron Heel 铁蹄(1908): the first
proletarian
criterion novel which envisages
the development of
fascism
The Call of
the Wild 野性的呼唤(1903): the most
widely read
book
The Sea Wolf
海狼
(1904)
These two novels reflect the ideas of the law of
survival and the will to power
Martin
Eden
马丁伊登
(1909): a reflection of the
contradiction between these competeing beliefs
c. Martin Eden--theme:the failure of American
Dream.
After he realized his dream of getting
into the upper class,
he also realized the
emptiness of it and committed
suicide.
critics. Written as an indictment of
individualism, it
was accepted as an
indictment of socialism; written
to show that
man cannot live for himself alone, it
was
accepted as a demonstration that success made
for death. Had Martin Eden been a socialist he
would
not have died.
Consciously London
meant the novel to show that
only a belief in
the people, only the devotion of one's
life to
a cause greater than onself, could give life any
real meaning.
T. Dreisser西奥多·德莱塞
Sister Carrie 嘉莉妹妹(1900): the first novel,
masterwork
Jannie Gerhardt (1911)
The Fanancier (1912)
The Titan (1914)
The Stoic (1947)
The Genius (1915)
An
American Tragedy
美国悲剧
(1925)
Dreiser
Looks at Russia (1928)
c. Sister Carrie
theme:the emptiness of Ameircan Dream
i.
jungle law
Famous actress bank manager(the
unfit is bound to
die) <——
Country girl (able to follow her instinct)
commit
suicide
ii. chance and luck
iii. criticism of American values: money and sex
—the standards to see if a person is
successful
iv. concern for the poor
Jazz
Age: the Jazz Age lasted from 1919-1929, the
decade enjoyed economic prosperity. The war
and economic
boom encouraged a breaking with
the tradition (Puritanism).
People upheld the
value of money-making and
pleasure-seeking.
Ezra Pound埃兹拉·庞德
Imagism意象派
Pound
became the most important figure. Imagist
poetry reached the peak of literature for
three things
appeared:
i. a manifesto
ii. three principles
iii. a lot of
writings
Pound said, an
image is which presents an
intellectual and
emotional complex in an instant of
time.
In
a Station of the Metro
在地铁车站
1. This
is the much-quoted masterpiece of Pound and
a
representative of the Imagist poetry.
2. In
form, the poem is similar to the Japanese haiku,
a two-line couplet with rhymes. Pound's poem
reminds the Chinese of two lines by a Tang
poet, Bai
Juyi. When describing the sad yet
beautiful face of
Yang Huifei, a Tang
emperess, the poet wrote,
The beautiful
face, lonesome with tears;
A pear branch,
radiant with rain.
3. The poem is a
representative of Imagist poems in
that the
image of petals on a wet, black bough best
represents the picture of those lovely faces
in the
crowd and that the image is dominant in
the
poem---the image itself is the poem.
T.S. Eliot
poetry:
Prufrock and
Other Observations (1917)
Poems (1920)
The Waste Land (1922)
The Hollow Men (1925)
Ash Wednesday (1930)
Four Quartets
(1943)
plays:
Sweeney Agonistes (1932)
Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
The
Cocktail Party (1950)
The Confidential Clerk
(1954)
critical essays:
The Sacred Wood
(1920)
For Lancelot Andrews (1928)
The
Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933)
After Strange Gods (1934)
On Poetry
and Poets (1957)
c. The Waste Land
荒原
5 parts: The Burial of Dead, The Game of
Chess, The
Fire Sermon, Death by Water, What
the Thunder
Said
chief characteristics
1. quotations and allusions暗示
2.
objective correlative
3. juxtaposition并列:
mingle brand image with
common image
4.
use of antiquity古风
The Love Song
modern
man; instead, he represents many other modern
westerners who are between passion and
timidity, between desire and impotence
4.
theme
This poem reflects the decadent modern
civilization
and the nightmarish inferno in
which modern
Westerners are living in.
5.
techiniques
1) irony
2) striking
images
3) the form of dramatic monologue
The poem is written in irregular lines, with
but a few
rhymes.
Robert Frost
b.
Characteristics
1. not in the main stream of
modern poetry, but with
conventional form and
plain language. That’s why
he’s the most
popular poet in the 20th century.
2. a kind
of a regionalist----New England, but not
local
colorism. He used New England as a metaphor
for the whole world and universe.
3. a
plain poet using symbols from everyday country
life. Simple symbols but express deep
meanings.
The Road Not Taken
1. The poem
was written in very regular lines with
iambic
pentametre and rhyme scheme of abaab.
2. The
symbolic meaning of the two divergent roads
is
rather clear. They represent any important
decisions in one's life.
3. details:
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
1.
It is a lyric poem with iambic tetrametre and
interlocking enclosed rhyme.
2. It
represents a moment of relaxation from the
onerous journey of life, an almost aesthetic
enjoyment and appreciation of natural beauty
which
is wholesome and retorative against the
chaotic
existence of modern man.
The Lost
Generation
1. term: It is a term in frequent
use after WWI in
reference to the young men
who survived physically
but were afterwards
spiritually and morally adrift. So
the lost
generation refers to disillusioned writers who
wrote after WWI. Many of them went to the
battle.
After the war, they rebelled against
former ideals and
values and can’t find new
ones to replace.
2. It first coined by
Gertrude Stein. In Paris, she
opens the door to American expatriates. She
once
said to Hemingway, “You’re all a lost
generation.”
3. It was used as preface to
The Sun Also Rises. Then
it became popular.
Fitzgerald once said they are “a
generation
grown up to find all gods died, all wars
fought, all faith in men shaken”.
Ernest
Hemingway
way themeherosituation. Theme:
“grace
under pressure”
sm: negative
attitude towards the world.
There is only one
thing man is certain---death
3. devotion to
truth. He believes the writer's job is to
tell
truth.
c. style
g principle. The
meaning here is that the
writer should say
only one eighth, in such a way that
the
remaining seven eighths be discerned and
provided by the reader.
ge: short,
common, fundamental words,
simple sentence,
effect of the language:
clearness, cleanness
and great care.
ue: plays a very important
part in his
writings. Hemingway’s dialogue can
show setting,
development of plot, characters,
even theme.
tic way: he uses showing
instead of telling.
He likes to describes
actions (kiss, withdraw hand)
vividly instead
of mental description.
ism
of stream
of consciousness
d. A Farewell to Arms
1. If we say The Sun Also Rises tells why they
lost,
this novel describes how they lost. Thus
it can be
read as a footnote to the former.
2. the double meanings of the title
3.
the hero Henry: Hemingway's hero
4. theme:
war and love. It shows a world of complete
unreason and reflects the mood of the post-war
generation.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
b.
The Great Gatsby
Theme:
1. about
reality and atmosphere of 1920s
2. failure
of American Dream
c. attitude towards the
rich: paradoxical
He is charmed by the rich.
He is critical of the rich who are corrupted
themselves and meanwhile corrupting others.
d. attitude towards the Jazz Age: insider and
outsider
John Steinbeck
b. The Grapes of
Wrath
愤怒的葡萄
1. significance
1)
it’s a great social document in 1930s.
2) A
protest novel. In the novel, the author attacks
the decadence, wickedness and cruelty of banks
and
land owners and the current social system
as a
whole.
3) themes: unity and faith
unity: Steinbeck believes that strength lies
in the
unity of people and he also stresses on
individualism.
faith: The Great Depression was
the most miserable
period in the 20th century.
Even though people suffered a
lot, they still
held on their hope and will live on.
2.
characters:
Ma Joad (the mother): embodiment
of the theme. She
asked Rose to save the
stranger.
1) she realized unity would bring
people strength.
2) the faith in future
Tom: shows the change from I (individualism)
to we
(unity)
Jim Casy: a preacher he
developed himself from a
labor to an organizer
and set up the guiding principle
and after his
death, Tom took over his role. The
initial of
his name: J.C.---Jesus Christ
William Faulkner
Sound and Fury: divided into 4 parts
1.
themes:
a) downfall of the South. The south
was in
deterioration. It’s going from bad to
worse. The
present and the past form a
contrast from Benjy’s
eyes. He’s an idiot so
his reactions were distinctive
feeling. He
felt strongly the loss of love. The
downfall
of Mr. Campson was not only a personal
one but
also a universal one---the society was in
disorder.
b) conflict between the
oldyoung generations
A Rose For Emily
Washington Irving
Bracebridge Hall
布雷斯布里奇田庄
(1822)
The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Tales of a
Traveller
旅客谈
(1824)
Christopher
Columbus (1828)
c. writing characteristics
(1) humorous: the function of his writing is
to amuse,
to entertain instead of teaching or
instruction
(2) vivid and true character
portrayal
(3) finished (refined) and musical
language, thus
regarded as “the Amn.
Goldsmith”
d. analysis on The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow(选自the
sketch book
见闻札记
)
1. the story:setting,character, plot
2.
theme:conflicts and praise
conflict betw.
Ichabod and Brom
conflict betw. the village
and the outside world
James Fenimore Cooper
The Spy (1821): a historical novel
The
Pilot (1824): a sea novel
Leatherstocking
Tales
皮裹腿故事集
(1823-1841):
frontier
novels
The Last Mohicans (1826) (Colonial War
betw.
Britain and France)
e. writing
features:
strong points: we can see a variety
of incidents and
tensions, complicated plot
and structure and a
beautiful description of
nature.
Weak points: characterization is
weak. There is
unsatisfactory description of
characters (esp. female).
He is not free from
syntactical awkwardness,
heavy-handed attempt
at humor. “Where Irving
excels Cooper is
weak.” Dialect is not authentic.
Edgar Allan
Poe
The Fall of the House Usher
Feature:
i. brevity (15 pages)
ii.
Single effect
iii. originality in theme
To Helen
It was inspired by the beauty of
the mother of a
schoolmate of Poe in Richmond,
Virginia.
The poem is famous for a number of
things:
1. its rhyme scheme: ababb
2.
its varied line lengths
3. its metaphor of a
travel on the sea
4. its oft-quoted lines:
was Rome.
theme: praise the ideal
love and beauty and ancient
Greek and Roman
civilizations
The Raven
乌鸦
theme:
the lament over the death of a beautiful
woman
tone: melancholy
Transcendentalism
(essayists, poets, novelists)
Their journal
is “The Dial”.
Definition: Transcendentalism
is idealism. (Emerson)
b. features
(1)
stress on Oversoul, that is spirit.
(2)
stress the importance of individual.
(3)
fresh conception of nature.
c. significance
(1) inspired a whole generation of writers
such as
Whitman, Melville and Dickinson.
(2) dresses man’s subjective initiative as opposed
to
materialism.
(3) liberated people from
Calvin’s original sin
d. limitation
(1)
shallow: cut off from real life or reality;
initiated
by the rich, they were limited in a
certain circle. So,
in some degree, they have
been cut off from social
life and can’t
understand the sufferings of the
common
people.
(2) inward contradiction: gain
knowledge by
intuition, shows its idealistic
aspect.
R.W. Emerson (Ralph Waldo)
Nature
(1836): the Bible of New
England
transcendentalism
The American Scholar (1837):
The Divinity School
Address神学院致
辞(1838)
Essays (18411847)
Representative Men (1850)
English Traits
(1856)
Poems (1847)
d.
significance
(1) He embodied a new nation’s
desire
and struggle to assert its own identity
in
its formative period.
(2) his stress
on individualism
Limitation:self-centered,
individual
His ideas influence a lot of
writers such
as Dikinson, Hawthorne and
Whitman.
Henry David Thoreau
A Week on
the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
康考德和梅里马克河上的一周
(1849)
Walden, or Life
in the Woods (1854)
Civil Disobedience
不服从论(1849, an address)
c. Walden
main
ideas:
(1)on self-cultivation and human
perfectibility,
elevated from Puritan original
sin, believe in inner
virtue and inwardly
grace
(2) criticism on civilization and
capitalism
(3) only truth and knowledge can’t
be taken away,
trust in future and in man
Style: pithy (colloquial sayings), vivid
description,
symbols and images
Nathaniel
Hawthorne
Twice-Told Tales (1837): a
collection of short stories
Mosses from an
Old Manse
古屋青苔
(1846): another
collection of short stories
The House of
the Seven Gables
七个尖角的阁楼
(1851): on the
effect of a curse
The Scarlet Letter (1850):
masterpiece
It’s not a love story, trying to
show the moral,
emotional and psychological
effects of sin on his
characters.
“A”:
Adultery-Able-Angel
“A” on chest: sinner,
confessed, died, shows an
honest man
Moral: man should be true and honest and ready to
show one’s worst to the world（批评与自我批评）
Herman Melville
Typee (《泰比》1846)
Omoo (《奥穆》1847)
Mardi (《马尔迪》1847)
这三部作品描写塔希提群岛和马吉萨斯群岛以及
他在岛上的奇遇。
Redburn
(《莱德勃恩》1849)：描写了他的第一次
航海经验以及在利物浦港贫民窟的见闻。
White Jacket
(《白外套》1850)：根据他在美国海
军军舰上服役时期的生活体验写成。
Pierre (《皮埃尔》1852)
Israel Potter
(《伊斯莱尔·波特》1855): historical
novel
Piazza
Tales (《广场故事》1856): a collection of short
story
Moby Dick (《白鲸》1851): masterpiece
(1) a whaling book: an encyclopedia of
whalingdescription of a whaler’s life
(2)
a tragedy
about man fighting against
universe
(hostile)Man in this universe lives a
meaningless
and futile life, meaningless
because futile.
Man can observe and even
manipulate in a prudent
way, but he cannot
influence and overcome nature at
its source.
(3) alienation异化:
between man and man
between man and society (ship)
between
man and nature
Ahab is the best
representative.
To him the world exists for
his sake. His selfhood
must be asserted at the
expense of all else: lives may
be sacrificed,
and nature may have to be vanquished
in order
that he may do what he wills.
Richard Chase
says: the idea Melville conveys in it is
(5) theme: quest
(6) symbolism
the voyage: a metaphor for and discovery,
the
search for the ultimate truth of experience
the Pequod皮阔德: the ship of the American soul
the endeavor of the crews:
of our white mental
consciousness
Moby Dick: (many
interpretations) the symbol of
nature
W.
C. Bryant
the analysis on To a
Waterfowl
致水鸟
It is the perfect brief
poem in the language
(Matthew Arnold)
It is a poem of nature in
quatrains rhyming in abab.
theme: from a bird
and its flight to an ordinary
person and his
course of life, this poem conveys that
everything in nature is under the beneficence
and
protection of the Power.
Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow
Theme: idealized love,
children, family and friendship
A Psalm
of Life
The poem is divided into 9 stanzas,
each composed
of two iambic tetrameter lines
and two trochaic
trimeter lines rhyming abab.
The first two stanzas refute the pessimism
that life is
but a dream, affirming the
contrary that life is real.
The following
stanzas urge the reader to act in the
present
and to leave
in order to inspire the
followers.
The last stanza ends with a
resounding note while
admonishing people to
learn to wait as well as to
labor.
Realism（the 19th-century literary movement
that reacted
to romanticism by insisting on a
faithful, objective
presentation of the
details of everyday life.）
features:
ive
description (concern for the
commonplacethe
low)
ii. criticism of society and reality,
exposing and
criticizing the society; the
writers’ dissatisfaction; no
longer eulogize
human glority
iii. verisimilitude逼真性(true to
details)
iv. influenced by bourgeois’
中产阶级democratic
ideas (not overthrow but
reform, changes)
v. reformative: to reform
the society, not to change
completely
features: Naturalism（A post-Darwinian movement
of the late 19th century that tried to apply
the
of scientific determinism to fiction.）is a
theory which applied scientific concepts and
methods to such problems as plot development
and
characterisation.
Comparison between
Realism and Naturalism:
Realism.
i. objective
ii. creation of types
iii. influenced by British Rom. works with
hope
Naturalism
i. scientific
accuracy
ii. collect material from their
lives
t this, hopelessgloomy picture of the
society
Walt Whitman
Leaves of
Grass《草叶集》,
(1) themes
i. unity of all
man and of man within universe
ii. equality
of all man
iii. cycle of life and death
iv. enthusiastic idea toward Westward
Expansion
v. brotherhood
d. Song of
Myself
自我之歌
(1) influence of
Transcendentalism: praise of
individualism
(2) cycle of life and death
(3) ideal
of democracy: equality between different
races
and brotherhood
Emily Dickinson
A Bird
came down the walk
I died for Beauty---but was
Scarce
I Heard a Fly buzz---when I died---
Because I could not stop for Death-
H.B.
Stowe
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851): masterpiece
significance:
ified and strengthened
abolitionist sentiment;
2. gave a better
balanced, more specific picture of
plantation
life;
3. praised the merits of slaves and
showed great
sympathy for them
Henry James
The American (1877): begins with
international
theme
Daisy Miller (1878):
brings the author first
international fame
The Wings of the Dove (1902)
The
Ambassadors (1903)
The Golden Bowl (1904)
The Portrait of A
Lady
贵妇画像
:masterpiece
It tells about
the fate of one of those splendid
Jamesian
American girls, Isabel Archer, arriving in
Europe, full of hope, and with a will to live
a free
and noble life, only to fail prey to
the sinister designs
of two vulgar and
unscrupulous expatriates, Madam
Merle and
Gilbert Osmond
International theme国际主题:
the meeting of America and Europe; American
innocence in contact and contrast with
European
decadence and the moral and
psychological
complications arising therefrom;
for the American it
was a
process of progression from inexperience to
experience, from innocence to knowledge and
maturity. Those American heroes or heroins who
confronting European sophistication, either
triumphed over it or were overwhelmed.
Mark Twain
The Celebrated Jumping Frog
of Calaveras Count
卡
拉维拉斯县有名的跳蛙
(1865):a
short story
The Innocents
Abroad
国外的无辜者
(1869): letters
on his
travelling in Europe and Near East
Roughing
It
苦行记
(1872): on his experience in the
western America
The Gilded Age (1873):
his first novel, collaborated
with Charles
Dudley Warner
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
(1876)
The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn
哈克贝利·费恩
历险记
(1884): masterpiece
Life on the Mississippi (1883)
A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court
误闯亚
瑟王宫
(1889)
The Man That
Corrupted Hadleyburg
败坏了哈德莱
堡的人
(1900)
The Mysterious Stranger (1916)
e. The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
1. It is boy's
bookwhich sets 20 years before
Civil War.
2. themes:
1)picaresque以流浪汉和无赖为题材的(adventure
story)
2) moral growth of Tom
3. techniques:
verisimilitude, humor, colloquial style
Deadpan（铁面幽默）: oral humorthe teller has a
strict
face but the listeners are laughing.
Language: dialects as forms of art
Jack
London
The People of the
Abyss
深渊居民
(1903): about
London's slum
The Iron Heel 铁蹄(1908): the first
proletarian
criterion novel which envisages
the development of
fascism
The Call of
the Wild 野性的呼唤(1903): the most
widely read
book
The Sea Wolf
海狼
(1904)
These two novels reflect the ideas of the law of
survival and the will to power
Martin
Eden
马丁伊登
(1909): a reflection of the
contradiction between these competeing beliefs
c. Martin Eden--theme:the failure of American
Dream.
After he realized his dream of getting
into the upper class,
he also realized the
emptiness of it and committed
suicide.
critics. Written as an indictment of
individualism, it
was accepted as an
indictment of socialism; written
to show that
man cannot live for himself alone, it
was
accepted as a demonstration that success made
for death. Had Martin Eden been a socialist he
would
not have died.
Consciously London
meant the novel to show that
only a belief in
the people, only the devotion of one's
life to
a cause greater than onself, could give life any
real meaning.
T. Dreisser西奥多·德莱塞
Sister Carrie 嘉莉妹妹(1900): the first novel,
masterwork
Jannie Gerhardt (1911)
The Fanancier (1912)
The Titan (1914)
The Stoic (1947)
The Genius (1915)
An
American Tragedy
美国悲剧
(1925)
Dreiser
Looks at Russia (1928)
c. Sister Carrie
theme:the emptiness of Ameircan Dream
i.
jungle law
Famous actress bank manager(the
unfit is bound to
die) <——
Country girl (able to follow her instinct)
commit
suicide
ii. chance and luck
iii. criticism of American values: money and sex
—the standards to see if a person is
successful
iv. concern for the poor
Jazz
Age: the Jazz Age lasted from 1919-1929, the
decade enjoyed economic prosperity. The war
and economic
boom encouraged a breaking with
the tradition (Puritanism).
People upheld the
value of money-making and
pleasure-seeking.
Ezra Pound埃兹拉·庞德
Imagism意象派
Pound
became the most important figure. Imagist
poetry reached the peak of literature for
three things
appeared:
i. a manifesto
ii. three principles
iii. a lot of
writings
Pound said, an
image is which presents an
intellectual and
emotional complex in an instant of
time.
In
a Station of the Metro
在地铁车站
1. This
is the much-quoted masterpiece of Pound and
a
representative of the Imagist poetry.
2. In
form, the poem is similar to the Japanese haiku,
a two-line couplet with rhymes. Pound's poem
reminds the Chinese of two lines by a Tang
poet, Bai
Juyi. When describing the sad yet
beautiful face of
Yang Huifei, a Tang
emperess, the poet wrote,
The beautiful
face, lonesome with tears;
A pear branch,
radiant with rain.
3. The poem is a
representative of Imagist poems in
that the
image of petals on a wet, black bough best
represents the picture of those lovely faces
in the
crowd and that the image is dominant in
the
poem---the image itself is the poem.
T.S. Eliot
poetry:
Prufrock and
Other Observations (1917)
Poems (1920)
The Waste Land (1922)
The Hollow Men (1925)
Ash Wednesday (1930)
Four Quartets
(1943)
plays:
Sweeney Agonistes (1932)
Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
The
Cocktail Party (1950)
The Confidential Clerk
(1954)
critical essays:
The Sacred Wood
(1920)
For Lancelot Andrews (1928)
The
Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933)
After Strange Gods (1934)
On Poetry
and Poets (1957)
c. The Waste Land
荒原
5 parts: The Burial of Dead, The Game of
Chess, The
Fire Sermon, Death by Water, What
the Thunder
Said
chief characteristics
1. quotations and allusions暗示
2.
objective correlative
3. juxtaposition并列:
mingle brand image with
common image
4.
use of antiquity古风
The Love Song
modern
man; instead, he represents many other modern
westerners who are between passion and
timidity, between desire and impotence
4.
theme
This poem reflects the decadent modern
civilization
and the nightmarish inferno in
which modern
Westerners are living in.
5.
techiniques
1) irony
2) striking
images
3) the form of dramatic monologue
The poem is written in irregular lines, with
but a few
rhymes.
Robert Frost
b.
Characteristics
1. not in the main stream of
modern poetry, but with
conventional form and
plain language. That’s why
he’s the most
popular poet in the 20th century.
2. a kind
of a regionalist----New England, but not
local
colorism. He used New England as a metaphor
for the whole world and universe.
3. a
plain poet using symbols from everyday country
life. Simple symbols but express deep
meanings.
The Road Not Taken
1. The poem
was written in very regular lines with
iambic
pentametre and rhyme scheme of abaab.
2. The
symbolic meaning of the two divergent roads
is
rather clear. They represent any important
decisions in one's life.
3. details:
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
1.
It is a lyric poem with iambic tetrametre and
interlocking enclosed rhyme.
2. It
represents a moment of relaxation from the
onerous journey of life, an almost aesthetic
enjoyment and appreciation of natural beauty
which
is wholesome and retorative against the
chaotic
existence of modern man.
The Lost
Generation
1. term: It is a term in frequent
use after WWI in
reference to the young men
who survived physically
but were afterwards
spiritually and morally adrift. So
the lost
generation refers to disillusioned writers who
wrote after WWI. Many of them went to the
battle.
After the war, they rebelled against
former ideals and
values and can’t find new
ones to replace.
2. It first coined by
Gertrude Stein. In Paris, she
opens the door to American expatriates. She
once
said to Hemingway, “You’re all a lost
generation.”
3. It was used as preface to
The Sun Also Rises. Then
it became popular.
Fitzgerald once said they are “a
generation
grown up to find all gods died, all wars
fought, all faith in men shaken”.
Ernest
Hemingway
way themeherosituation. Theme:
“grace
under pressure”
sm: negative
attitude towards the world.
There is only one
thing man is certain---death
3. devotion to
truth. He believes the writer's job is to
tell
truth.
c. style
g principle. The
meaning here is that the
writer should say
only one eighth, in such a way that
the
remaining seven eighths be discerned and
provided by the reader.
ge: short,
common, fundamental words,
simple sentence,
effect of the language:
clearness, cleanness
and great care.
ue: plays a very important
part in his
writings. Hemingway’s dialogue can
show setting,
development of plot, characters,
even theme.
tic way: he uses showing
instead of telling.
He likes to describes
actions (kiss, withdraw hand)
vividly instead
of mental description.
ism
of stream
of consciousness
d. A Farewell to Arms
1. If we say The Sun Also Rises tells why they
lost,
this novel describes how they lost. Thus
it can be
read as a footnote to the former.
2. the double meanings of the title
3.
the hero Henry: Hemingway's hero
4. theme:
war and love. It shows a world of complete
unreason and reflects the mood of the post-war
generation.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
b.
The Great Gatsby
Theme:
1. about
reality and atmosphere of 1920s
2. failure
of American Dream
c. attitude towards the
rich: paradoxical
He is charmed by the rich.
He is critical of the rich who are corrupted
themselves and meanwhile corrupting others.
d. attitude towards the Jazz Age: insider and
outsider
John Steinbeck
b. The Grapes of
Wrath
愤怒的葡萄
1. significance
1)
it’s a great social document in 1930s.
2) A
protest novel. In the novel, the author attacks
the decadence, wickedness and cruelty of banks
and
land owners and the current social system
as a
whole.
3) themes: unity and faith
unity: Steinbeck believes that strength lies
in the
unity of people and he also stresses on
individualism.
faith: The Great Depression was
the most miserable
period in the 20th century.
Even though people suffered a
lot, they still
held on their hope and will live on.
2.
characters:
Ma Joad (the mother): embodiment
of the theme. She
asked Rose to save the
stranger.
1) she realized unity would bring
people strength.
2) the faith in future
Tom: shows the change from I (individualism)
to we
(unity)
Jim Casy: a preacher he
developed himself from a
labor to an organizer
and set up the guiding principle
and after his
death, Tom took over his role. The
initial of
his name: J.C.---Jesus Christ
William Faulkner
Sound and Fury: divided into 4 parts
1.
themes:
a) downfall of the South. The south
was in
deterioration. It’s going from bad to
worse. The
present and the past form a
contrast from Benjy’s
eyes. He’s an idiot so
his reactions were distinctive
feeling. He
felt strongly the loss of love. The
downfall
of Mr. Campson was not only a personal
one but
also a universal one---the society was in
disorder.
b) conflict between the
oldyoung generations
A Rose For Emily