第一篇：《美国文学史》各章节知识点指南
《美国文学史》各章节知识点指南 时间：2011年2月 使用教材：《美国文学史》（第二版）常耀信著 Chapter 1 Colonial America ★ 1607 Jamestown, Virginia：the first permanent English settlement in America
★ 1620 Plymouth, Massachusetts: the second permanent English settlement in America ★ Captain John Smith: the first American writer writing in English ★ Anne Bradstreet: the first American woman poet
Major work: The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America(1650)
Contemplations(9)on P.17（熟悉这首诗歌）
To My Dear and Loving Husband《致我亲爱的丈夫》 ★ Philis Wheatley: the first black woman poet in American literature ★ Edward Taylor: the most famous poet in the colonial period
Huswifery on P.19（熟悉这首诗歌）
★ Roger Williams: The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for the Cause of Conscience(1644)
Translated the Bible into the Indian tongue ★ John Winthrop: “Model of Christian Charity”（〈基督慈善之典范〉）The History of New England(two volumes, 1825, 1826)
(〈新英格兰史〉)1630---1649 in diary
★ Thomas Paine: Common Sense, The American Crisis, The Rights of Man, The Age of Reason ★ Philip Freneau: Poet of the American Revolution
The Wild Honeysuckle, The Indian Burying Ground, The Dying Indian: Tomo Chequi
★ Charles Brockden Brown: the first important American novelist
Wieland, Edgar Huntly, Ormond, Aurthur Mervyn Chapter 2 Edwards, Franklin, Crevecoeur the 18th century: Age of Reason and Enlightenment Jonathan Edwards: America’s first systematic philosopher
The Freedom of the Will, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac 熟悉37页的引文
Hector St.John de Crevecoeur: Letters from an American Farmer Chapter 3 American Romanticism, Irving, Cooper Washington Irving: the first American writer to win international acclaim
The Sketch Book: Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow James Fenimore Cooper: Leatherstocking Tales(五个故事的题目)
Natty Bumpo(人物形象)Chapter 4 New England Transcendentalism, Emerson, Thoreau Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature(the Bible and manifesto of New England Transcendentalism)
The American Scholar(America’s Declaration of Intellectual Independence)Henry David Thoreau: Walden, or Life in the Woods Chapter 5 Hawthorne, Melville Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter, Twice-Told Tales, The House of the Seven Gables，The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun, Young Goodman Brown Herman Melville: Moby Dick, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, White Jacket, Pierre Chapter 6 Whitman, Dickinson Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass;free verse;Song of Myself Emily Dickinson: Of the 1775 poems, only 7 poems were published in her lifetime.熟悉教材中98至102页所选的诗歌 Chapter 7 Edgar Allan Poe ★ Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher, The Philosophy of Composition, The Poetic Principle, The Raven，To Helen 熟悉教材中107页所选的The Raven中的部分诗行 Chapter 8 The Age of Realism, Howells, James William Dean Howells: The Rise of Silas Lapham, Criticism and Fiction Henry James: important writings listed on P.125
the international theme Chapter 9 Local Colorism, Mark Twain Hamlin Garland: Crumbling Idols, Veritism(真实主义)Bret Harte: The Luck of Roaring Camp Mark Twain: 主要作品, vernacular literature, colloquial style Harriet Beecher Stowe 斯托夫人& her Uncle Tom’s Cabin《汤姆叔叔的小屋》 Louisa May Alcott 路易莎·梅·奥尔科特& her Little Women 《小妇人》 Kate Chopin 凯特·肖班& her The Awakening 《觉醒》
Chapter 10 American Naturalism, Crane, Norris, Dreiser, Robinson Stephen Crane: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets(the first naturalistic novel in American
literature), The Red Badge of Courage(the first anti-war novel in American literature)，Famous short stories: The Open Boat, The Bride Comes to the Yellow Sky Frank Norris: The Octopus, McTeague Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, the Desire Trilogy, The Genius Edwin Arlington Robinson: Richard Cory Jack London: The Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Sea Wolf, Martin Eden O.Henry(William Sidney Porter): famous for his short stories such as The Gift of the Magi Upton Sinclair: The Jungle, the Muckraking Movement Chapter 11 The 1920s, Imagism, Pound The first American Renaissance: the first half of the 19th century The second Renaissance: the 1920s The three principles of the Imagist Poetry 熟悉四首意象派诗歌：In a Station of the Metro, Oread, The Red Wheelbarrow, Fog, 并会分析其中的第一和第四首
Ezra Pound: The Cantos, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley Chapter 12 T.S.Eliot, Stevens, Williams T.S.Eliot: The Waste Land（五个部分的题目）, The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock 其他主要作品
founder of New Criticism: depersonalization, objective correlative William Carlos Williams: Paterson Chapter 13 Frost, Sandburg, Cummings, Hart Crane, Moore ★ Robert Frost: New England poet, lyrical poet, the unofficial poet laureate, won the Pulitzer Prize four times
The Road Not Taken(熟悉此诗), Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Mending Wall, Apple-picking <<摘苹果>> Carl Sandburg: Fog, The Harbor(two famous Imagist poems)E.E.Cummings: the most interesting experimentalist in modern American poetry Hart Crane: The Bridge Chapter 14 Fitzgerald, Hemingway ★ F.Scott Fitzgerald: the spokesman of the Jazz Age
The Great Gatsby Ernest Hemingway: Hemingway hero with “grace under pressure”, the iceberg principle
“I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg.There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows.Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg.It is the part that doesn’t show.”冰山运动之雄伟壮观，是因为它只有八分之一在水面上。水底的部分占整座冰山的八分之七。主要作品
The Old Man and the Sea won him the 1954 Nobel Prize for literature.Chapter 15 The Southern Renaissance, William Faulkner William Faulkner: Yoknapatawpha County(his fictional kingdom)主要作品（见教材）
Chapter 16 Anderson, Stein, Lewis, Cather, Wolfe Sherwood Anderson: Winesburg, Ohio, colloquial style Gertrude Stein: The Autobiography of Alice B.Toklas, Three Lives
“You are all a lost generation.”(To Hemingway)
Sinclair Lewis: the first American author to win the Nobel Prize for literature(in 1930)
Main Street, Babbit Willa Cather: My Antonia Thomas Wolfe: Look Homeward, Angel Chapter 17 The 1930s, Dos Passos, Steinbeck John Dos Passos: U.S.A.John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath(Joad family);Nobel Prize for literature in 1962 and Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction Chapter 18 Porter, Welty, McCullers, West, The New Criticism Katherine Anne Porter: The Flowering Judas, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall Eudora Welty: Death of a Traveling Salesman Carson McCullers: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Ballad of the Sad Café Nathanael West: Miss Lonelyhearts Chapter 19 American Drama ★ Eugene O’Neill: America’s greatest playwright so far, Pulitzer Prize winner four times, Nobel Prize Winner in 1936, 美国戏剧之父
The Emperor Jones, The Hairy Ape ★ Susan Glaspell: mother of American drama
Trifles Tennessee Williams 田纳西·威廉姆斯：P.301 在美国戏剧史上地位仅次于Eugene O’Neil The Glass Menagerie 《玻璃动物园》The Streetcar Named Desire Arthur Miller 亚瑟·米勒：P.305
Death of a Salesman 《推销员之死》 Edward Albee爱德华·阿尔比：P.313
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 《谁害怕弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫》 The Theater of the Absurd 荒诞派戏剧：P.313 Chapter 20 Postwar Poetry, Poets of the 1940s Generation Postmodernism 后现代主义：P.320 Elizabeth Bishop毕晓普：P.327 后现代主义时期传统型女性诗人 Chapter 21 The Confessional School, The Beat Generation The Confessional School 自白派诗歌: P.356 Three representatives: Robert Lowell & his Life Studies 《人生探索》P.357
Sylvia Plath 西尔维娅·普拉斯& her poem Daddy《老爸》，The Bell Jar 《钟形罩/瓶中美人》（自传体小说，美国青少年的必读书）P.364
Anne Sexton安妮·塞克斯顿 The Beat Generation 垮掉的一代：P.373 Three representatives: Allen Ginsberg爱伦·金斯堡(垮掉一代的奠基者)& his Howl《嚎叫》（垮掉一代的宣言书）P.374 & P.P.376-83.Jack Kerouac 杰克·凯鲁阿克& his On the Road《在路上》P.374
William Burroughs 威廉·巴罗斯& his Naked Lunch《裸体午餐》P.374 Chapter 22 The New York School, Meditative Poetry，The Black Mountain Poets New York School 纽约派（后现代主义时期的一个诗歌流派）: P.393 Representative: Frank O’Hara 弗兰克·欧哈拉& his Lunch Poems 《午餐诗》P.394 The Black Mountain Poets黑山派诗人（此诗歌流派的名称来源于北卡罗来纳Asheville的黑山学院，流派内的诗人多为该学院的教师）P.408 Representative: Charles Olson查尔斯·奥尔逊 P.409 Chapter 23 Postwar American Novel(I)(传统型小说)美国犹太文学P.P.429-48 Representatives：Saul Bellow索尔·贝娄(1915 – 2005)PP.429-36
1976 Nobel Prize winner(P.430)
Best work: Herzog《赫索格》
Norman Mailer诺尔曼·梅勒（1923 – 2007）P.P.436-41
Best work: The Naked and the Dead《裸者与死者》（反战小说）
J.D.Salinger
J.D.塞林格（1919-1-1 – 2010-1-27）P.P.441-44
Best work: The Catcher in the Rye 《麦田里的守望者》（美国青少年的必读书）
Bernard Malamud 伯纳德·马拉默德 P.P.444-48
Best work: The Assistant《店员/伙计》
Philip Roth 菲利普·罗斯
Best work: Goodbye, Columbus《再见吧，哥伦布》 John Updike(1932 – 2009)约翰·厄普代克 P.P.448-52
Best work: Rabbit pentalogy《兔子》五部曲 P.448 南方文学：P.P.454-63 Representatives: Flannery O’Connor 弗莱娜莉·奥康纳 P.P.454-58 Best work: A Goodman Is Hard to Find《好人难寻》
William Styron 威廉·斯泰伦（1925 – 2006）P.P.458-62
Best work: Sophie’s Choice《苏菲的选择》 女性文学：Joyce Carol Oates 乔伊斯·卡洛尔·奥茨 P.P.465-68
Best work: Them《他们》 Chapter 24 Postwar American Novel(II)（新型小说）
★荒诞派/黑色幽默小说 Black Humor/novels of the absurd
P.474
Representative: Joseph Heller 约瑟夫·海勒 P.P.476-481
Best work: Catch-22 《第二十二条军规》
（Catch-22已成为词典中的一个词条，意为“不合情理的处境，叫人左右为难的情况，难以逾越的障碍”）
Kurt Vonnegut 库特·冯尼格特（1922 – 2007）P.P.481-487
Best work: Slaughterhouse-Five《第五号屠场》（自传性作品）
Ken Kesey 肯·凯西（1935 – 2001）P.P.487-491
Best work: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest《飞越杜鹃巢》 前卫小说 avant-garde novel
Representative: Thomas Pynchon 托马斯·品钦 P.P.501-7
Best work: V, Gravity’s Rainbow《万有引力之虹》 Vladimir Nabokov 弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫 P.P.514 – 9 二十世纪公认的杰出小说家和文体家，出生于俄国，后入美国国籍。与英国籍的波兰裔作家Joseph Conrad相媲美。两位都用精美的英文书写了对生活的观察和感悟。
Best work: Lolita 《洛丽塔》（曾一度被视为禁书）Chapter 25 Multiethnic Literature(I)少数族裔文学： African American Literature 美国黑人文学
★美国黑人文学的发展轨迹 P.P.520530 美国黑人文学的桂冠诗人
主要作品：The Negro Speaks of Rivers 《黑人谈河流》
The Weary Blues《伤心的布鲁斯》 黑人小说的发展：Richard Wright 理查德·莱特（1908—1960）P.P.530-2 代表作品：Native Son《土生子》
Ralph Ellison 拉尔夫·埃里森（1913 – 1994）P.P.532-5 代表作品：Invisible Man 《看不见的人》（社会抗议小说）
James Baldwin 詹姆斯·鲍德温
P.P.536-40 代表作品：Go Tell It on the Mountain《向苍天呼吁》
Toni Morrison 托尼·莫里森 P.P.541-5
1993 Nobel Prize winner for literature, the 1st black Nobel Prize winner in American literature 代表作品：The Bluest Eye《最蓝的眼睛》
Sula 《秀拉》
Song of Solomon 《所罗门之歌》
Beloved 《宠儿》
Alice Walker 爱丽丝·沃克
P.P.546-9 代表作品：The Color Purple《紫色》
Alex Haley 艾列克斯·哈利
P.P.549 – 50 代表作品：Roots 《根》
Chapter 26 Multiethnic Literature(II)少数族裔文学 Native American literature美国印第安文学 P.P.555-69 Asian American literature亚裔文学 Pearl Buck 赛珍珠 P.569
1938 Nobel Prize winner for literature for her Good Earth《大地》，the first American woman author to win this prize ★美国华裔文学的发展：P.P.569-78
19世纪末至20世纪60年代开创阶段
20世纪70和80年代转折阶段
20世纪80年代末和90年代初走向繁荣阶段 代表人物：Maxine Hong Kingston汤婷婷& her The Woman Warrior《女勇士》、China Men 《中国佬》
Amy Tan 谭恩美& her The Joy Luck Club《喜福会》 教材中提到的诺贝尔奖获得者： 第一位：Sinclair Lewis
1930 第二位：Eugene O’Neill 1936 第三位：Pearl Buck
1938 第四位：T.S.Eliot
1948 第五位：William Faulkner
1949(1950 received the Prize)第六位：Ernest Hemingway 1954 第七位：John Steinbeck
1962 第八位：Saul Bellow
1976 第九位：Toni Morrison 1993
第二篇：美国文学史梗概
美国文学史梗概
一、殖民地时代和美国建国初期
最早来自这片新大陆的欧洲移民主要是定居在新英格兰的清教徒和马萨诸塞的罗马天主教徒，二者虽然在教义上有很多不同之处，但他们都信奉加尔文主义：人生在世只是为了受苦受难，而他们唯一的希望是争做上帝的“选民”，死后进天国，相信“原罪”。这时的文学作品也主要反映了这些思想，和欧洲文学一脉相承。
代表作家：考顿·马瑟，乔纳森·爱德华兹，安妮·布拉兹特里特，爱德华·泰勒。
二、18世纪独立战争胜利后，美国经济社会进入稳步发展时期
这一时期是启蒙主义文学运动的时期，主要文学指导思想是“自然神论（”Deism），强调理性，认为“宇宙的运动始于上帝”；自然万物是“神的体现”，人生在世，不再是受苦受难以换取来世的新生，而是要消灭种族、性别和信仰的不平等，建立自己的“人间乐园”。
主要特点：作家多是美国独立战争的积极拥护者和参加者；文学指导思想除了自然神论之外还有“唯理主义”和“新古典主义”，18世纪末还开始萌发了“早期浪漫主义”；文学种类主要有历史、日记和政论，也有诗歌，讽刺小品和劝人向善的故事，18世纪末还产生了话剧。
启蒙运动中出现大量优秀的散文作品，并多出自开国元勋之手，如本杰明·富兰克林，托马斯·潘恩，以及托马斯·杰斐逊。
三、19世纪南北战争时期
这一时期的文学先后发展了浪漫主义，现实主义和自然主义。
浪漫主义：18世纪70年代－19世纪30年代是浪漫主义发展的初期，南北战争前30年（1830－1860）为极盛时期，南北战争后10年逐渐衰微并向现实主义过度。浪漫主义注重“想象”、“激情”和“个性解放”，认为人本质是善良的，铲除邪恶和拯救人类的手段是抛弃一切传统束缚，摧毁一切陈规陋习而回归到“自然的原始状态中去。超验主义是其一分支，强调“天人合一”，认为上帝、人类和自然都是“超灵”的组成部分。
代表作家及作品：爱默生《自然》，索罗《瓦尔登湖》，霍桑《红字》，麦尔维尔《白鲸》，惠特曼《草叶集》。
现实主义：是美国政治、经济发展的必然产物，西部开拓运动、工业化、科学技术的进步都促进了其发展。现实主义的作家一般为实用主义和民主主义的信徒，他们追求和反映的是具有显而易见效果并被经验证实了的相对真理，他们创作题
材的是普通人平常事，是中产阶级艺术的最高表现。
豪威尔斯是现实主义的奠基人，他发现了马克·吐温，鼓励和帮助了亨利·詹姆斯，影响了自然主义作家弗兰·克诺里斯和斯蒂芬·克莱恩。
自然主义：是现实主义的发展和继续，是现实主义与19世纪科学所强调的“分析法”和“因果律”互相结合的产物，有时被称为“悲观的现实主义”，认为人是一种软弱无能的动物，被置于机械化的世界汇总而成为这一世界中难以驾御的几种势力（包括环境、自然、遗传等）的牺牲品
其里程碑是：19世纪70、80年代左拉的小说的出版，90年代克莱恩的《红色英勇徽章》，1900年德莱塞《嘉莉妹妹》，1912年《金融家》，1925年《美国的悲剧》。
四、20世纪美国文学经历了两次世界大战，跨越了三个时代
a)斯文时代（1880－1914，The Genteel Age）：这是一个跨世纪的，美国经济繁荣的时代。此时的美国文学与欧洲文学之间有着某种暧昧关系，本质上是欧洲式的和美国的小欧洲新英格兰式的。此时以西奥多·罗斯福为代表的民族主义在文学上有着强烈的反映，人们还念念不忘美国与欧洲的文化联系与差异。
b)爵士时代（1918－1929, The Jazz Age）：一战后，产生了一代不受约束，幻想破灭了和玩世不恭的年青人，被格特鲁德·斯坦因称为“迷惘的一代”。
c)经济萧条时代（1929－1941，The Depression Era）：20年代的玩世不恭的态度在此时转化为一种愤愤不平的悲观主义，30年代美国文学转向了“社会抗议文学”，“心理之学”和追求人的精神世界。
美国文学先后经历了现代主义，和后现代主义思潮：
现代主义：一战后到50年代，是一场自觉地反传统的文学艺术运动，表现无意识的荒谬心态，如斯坦因，乔伊斯的小说，运用意识流的手法，如福克纳的《喧哗与骚动》和《我弥留之际》；在组织构架上偏爱用神话，如艾略特的《荒原》，庞德的《诗章》，乔伊斯的《尤利西斯》；风格上以“意象”为主，语言上主张简洁、准确；题材上主要反映一战参与者的生活、思想、感情和前途命运，如多斯珀索斯的《三个士兵》，海明威的《太阳照样升起》，《永别了，武器》，描写了精神崩溃与幻想破灭的一代人。
邪恶是这是文学的主要题材之一，艾略特、弗罗斯特、奥尼尔、卡明斯、埃利森的作品中都有体现。
后现代主义：在二战后，纳粹极权主义大屠杀、原子弹、自然环境的破坏、世界人口过剩和饥荒造成西方人的精神摧残与危机，作家继续进行现代主义反传统的文艺实验，而且企图与当时业已形成规范的现代主义文艺形式决裂。后现代主义
主张否定社会秩序，表现支离破碎的世界，认为文艺批评就是现象学形式的理论。此时，美国黑人文学，犹太文学，南方文学，反战文学和女权主义文学竞相发展。
小说家托马斯·品钦，诗人西尔维亚·普莱斯，戏剧家艾玛穆·阿米里·巴拉卡为典型的后现代主义作家。
索尔·贝娄，艾伦·金斯伯格，拉尔夫·埃里森，田纳西·威廉斯，阿瑟·密勒和爱德华·阿尔比是从现代主义向后现代主义过渡的著名作家。
20世纪美国文学的两个特征：
1.现代主义作家一般是反对传统观念而提倡“个人主义”的或者说他们打破了美国社会、道德和文学的常规。
2.现代作家潜心探索一种真正属于美国人民的写作手法和语言风格，他们试图以纯美国的方式进行创作。
第三篇：美国文学史名词解释
It were flourishing from the beginning of 17th to the middle period of 18th.They stressed predestination, original sin, total depravity, and limited atonement from God‟s grace.They went to America to prove that they were God‟s chosen people who would enjoy God‟s blessings on earth and in Heaven.Finally, they built a way of life that stressed hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety.Both doctrinaire and an opportunist.Its Influence on literary were as follows:（影响）(1)American Literature is based on a myth------the Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden.(2)The American Puritan‟s metaphorical made of perception----symbolism.The representatives were Edwards(The Freedom of the Will), Franklin(On the Art of Self-improvement), Crevecoeur(Letters from an American Farmer).代表作家及代表作：Captain John SmithTrue Relation of Virginia(1608)
Anne Bradstreet“To My Dear and Loving Husband”
Benjamin Franklin:The Autobiography of Benjamin FranklinRomanticism was a complex artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution.Elements of Romanticism
1.Frontier: vast expanse, freedom, no geographic limitations.2.Optimism: greater than in Europe because of the presence of frontier.不要这么多，我就删掉了3、4、5条。。
Romantic Attitude
1.Appeals to imagination;use of the “willing suspension of disbelief.”
2.Stress on emotion rather than reason;optimism, geniality.3.Subjectivity: in form and meaning.Characteristics of Romanticism:
a.Romanticism was a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism.(subjectivity)
b.For romantics, the feelings, intuitions and emotions were more important than reason and common sense.c.They emphasized individualism, placing the individual against the group, against authority.d.The affirmed the inner life of the self, and wanted to be free to develop and express his own inner thoughts.e.Typical literary forms of romanticism include ballad, lyric, sentimental comedy, problem novel, historical novel ,gothic romance, metrical romance, sonnet.Representatives:
• New England Poets: William Cullen Bryant;Henry Wadsworth Longfellow;
• Writers: James Fenimaore Cooper, Washington Irving“The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Grayon”
• 浪漫主义的影响： The romantic exaltation of the individual suited the nation‟s revolutionary heritage and its
frontier egalitarianism.As a philosophical and literary movement, transcendentalism flourished in New England from 1830s to the Civil War.Its doctrines found their greatest literary advocates in Emerson who published „Nature‟ in 1836 which represented a new way of intellectual thinking in America and presented„The Universe is composed of Nature and the Soul, Spirit is present everywhere.‟ and romantic idealism on Puritan soil as well as Thoreau.Emerson‟s Nature has been called the “Manifesto of American Transcendentalism”.As a philosophy, transcendentalism was neither logical nor systematical.It exalted feeling over reason, individual expression over the restraints of law and custom.Yet transcendentalism was a powerful expression of the intellectual mood of the age.What is Transcendentalism?
In the realm of art and literature it meant the shattering of pseudo-classic rules and forms in favor of a spirit of freedom, the creation of works filled with the new passion for nature and common humanity and incarnating a fresh sense of the wonder, promise, and romance of life.Major Concepts(main ideas)
1, „transcend ere‟: to rise above, to pass beyond the limits
2, Believe people could learn things both from the outside world by means of the 5 senses and from the inner world by intuition.3, It placed spirit first and matter second
4, It took nature as symbolic of spirit or God.5, It emphasized the significance of the individual
6, Religion was an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal „oversoul‟.Major writers and Literary Works
Ralph Waldo Emerson(1803----1882)Self-Reliance
Henry David Thoreau(1817----1862)Walden
超验主义的影响：it could exercise a healthy and restorative influence on the human mind.The natural implication that things in nature tended to become symbolic, and the physical world was a symbol of the spiritual.This in turn added to the1
tradition of literary symbolism in American literature.the ideas it represented have remained a strong influence on great American writers from the days of Hawthorne and Whitman to the present.——latter half of the nineteenth century
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.Major Features:
1）Realism is the theory of writing in which familiar aspects of contemporary life and everyday scenes are represented in a straightforward or mother-of-fact manner.2）Open ending(means real life is complex and cannot be fully understood)
3）Focuses on the lives of the common people
4）Emphasize objectivity
Representatives:
Howells, Henry James
代表作：William Dean HowellsThe Rise of Silas Lapham
Henry James“The American”、“Daisy Miller”、“ in the Portrait of a Lady”
现实主义影响：Realism was a reaction against Romanticism and paved the way to Modernism。
thlocal colorism is a type of writing that was popular in the late 19(1860s—1870s).Local Color Fiction:
Local colorism as a trend became dominant in American literature in the late 1860s and early 1870.The frontier humorists who had been popular with their “tall tales” before the Civil War paved the way for local color fiction.Basic Features
Local color fiction presents a locale which is distinguished form the outside world.Local color fiction describes the exotic and the picturesque.It describes things that are not common in other regions.Local color fiction also attempts to show things as they as they are.Local color fiction glorifies the past.(nostalgic about the past)
Local color fiction stresses the influence of setting on character.Masters：
Mark Twain（笔名）
Samuel Langhorne Clemens
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
6.American naturalism
American naturalism was a new and harsher realism, and like realism, it had come from Europe.Naturalism was an outgrowth of realism that responded to theories in science, psychology, human behavior and social thought current in the late nineteenth century.Background:
In the last decade of the nineteenth century, with the development of industry and modern science, intelligent minds began to see that man was no longer a free ethical being in a cold, indifferent and essentially Godless universe.In this chance world he was both helpless and hopeless.Major Features:
Humans are controlled by laws of heredity and environment
The universe is cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desires.Representatives:
The pessimism and deterministic ideas of naturalism pervaded the works of such American writers as Stephen Crane,Crane‟s is the first American naturalism work.Norris‟s McTeague is the manifesto of American naturalism.Dreiser‟s is the work in which naturalism attained maturity.These writers‟ detailed description of the lives of the downtrodden and the abnormal, their frank threatment of human passion and sexuality, and their portrayal of men and women overwhelmed by blind forces of nature still exert a powerful influence on modern writers.Influence:
Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform.This combination of grim reality and desire for improvements is typical of America as it moved into the twentieth century.A poetic movement of England and the U.S.that flourished from 1909 to 1917.The movement insists on the creation of images in poetry by “the direct treatment of the thing” and the economy of wording.“poetic techniques to record exactly the momentary impressions”
Major features:
---it was one of the most essential technique of writing poetry in modern period.---with a spirit of revolt against conventions, imagism was anti—romantic and anti-victorian
---In a sense, imagism was equivalent to naturalism in fiction
---it produced free verse without imposing a rhythmical pattern.---Imagism tried to record objective observations of an object or a situation without interpretation or comment by the poet.---it produced free verse without imposing a rhythmical pattern.---Imagism tried to record objective observations of an object or a situation without interpretation or comment by the poet.The most outstanding figures:
Ezra Pound Amy Lowell Hilda Doolittle
The form of free verse(Ezra Loomis Pound)
影响：.its influence
1)the imagist theories call for brief language, describing the precise picture in as few words as possible.This new way of poetry composition has a lasting influence in the 20th century poetry.2)the second lasting influence of Imagism is the form of free verse.There are no metrical rules.There are apparent indiscriminate line breaks, which reflects the discontinuity of life itself.That is art of the poem.The poet uses the length of the lines and the strange groupings of words to show how life itself can be broken up into somehow meaningless clustersFree verse was originated by a group of French poets of the late 19th century.Poetry that is based on the irregular rhythmic cadence(韵律)of the recurrence, with variations, of phrases, images, and syntactical(依照句法的)patterns rather than the conventional use of meter（音步）.Rhyme may or may not be present in it, but when it is , it is used with great freedom.Their purpose was to free themselves from the restrictions of formal metrical patterns and to recreate instead the free rhymes of nature period.Walt Whitman„s leaves of grass is perhaps the most notable example.thIt has since been used Ezra Pound, T.S.Eliot and other major American poets of the 20 century.Walt Whiteman‟s Leaves of Grass is, perhaps , the most notable example.9.The Lost Generation is a group of expatriate American writers residing primarily in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s.The group was given its name by the American writer Gertrude Stein, who used “a lost generation” to refer to expatriate Americans bitter about their World War I experiences and disillusioned with American society.Hemingway later used the phrase as an epigraph for his novel The Sun Also Rises.It consisted of many influential American writers, including Ernest Hemingway, F.Scott Fitzgerald, William Carlos Williams and Archibald MacLeish.The lost generation is a term first used by Stein to describe the post-war I generation of American writers: men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war.2>full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literature to date.3>the three best-known representatives of lost generation are F.Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and John dos Passos.10.The Hemingway hero is an average man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and intelligent, a man of action, and one of few words.That is an individualist keeping emotions under control, stoic and self-disciplined in a dreadful place.These people are usually spiritual strong, people of certain skills, and most of them encounter death many times.The heroes in his book are all have something in common which Hemingway values: they have seen the cold world and for one cause or another, they boldly and courageously face the reality;whatever the result is, they are ready to live with grace under pressure.The Hemingway code hero has an indestructible spirit for his optimistic view of life, though he is pessimistic that is Hemingway.Ernest Hemingway‟s “iceberg theory” suggests that the writer include in the text only a small portion of what he knows, leaving about ninety percent of the content a mystery that grows beneath the surface of the writing.If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.A good writer does not need to reveal every detail of a character or action
The Jazz Age describes the period of the 1920s and 1930s, the years between World War I and World War II.Particularly in North America.With the rise of the great depression, the values of this age saw much decline.Perhapsthe most representative literary work of the age is American writer Fitzgerald‟s The Great Gatsby.Highlighting what some describe as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individualism.Fitzgerald is largely credited with coining the term” Jazz Age”.
第四篇：美国文学史论文
以《乞力马扎罗山的雪》为例浅谈海明威作品的悲观主义
2009级英语专业 黄娜
从《老人与海》,《太阳照样升起》,《永别了，武器》到《丧钟为谁而鸣》,我都能隐隐约约的感觉到海明威在作品中透露出的悲观。
在帮助海明威获得罗贝尔文学奖的《老人与海》中，海明威极力地把圣地亚哥塑造成一个百折不挠、坚强不屈、敢于面对暴力和死亡的“硬汉子”形象，但是圣地亚哥最终还是没有获得大马哈鱼，仍然是悲剧的。又例如海明威在1940年发表了以西班牙内战为背景的反法西斯主义的长篇小说《丧钟为谁而鸣》。作品描写了主人公美国青年乔顿，他志愿参加西班牙人民的反法西斯斗争，奉命在一支山区游击队的配合下，在指定时间炸毁一座具有战略意义的桥梁。这本来是英雄史诗般的行为，读者大多盼望这样一个伟大的英雄能够高唱凯歌回到祖国，受到英雄般的待遇，人民需要英雄。但是小说的结果又是悲观的。乔顿虽然成功完成了任务，炸毁了桥梁，但他自己也身负重伤，在敌强我弱的情况下阻击敌人，毋庸置疑等待他只有死亡，结局侨顿确实死了。
这样的情节在海明威的作品中很多。但是笔者今天重点谈谈在《乞力马扎罗山的雪》中海明威这种悲观主义。
1.故事中透露着对死亡的悲观。首先声明我是个乐观主义者。虽然小
时候这种价值观的作文，老师一般会发回重写。因为这和歌颂美好的生活的主题严重不搭调。为什么说故事透露出对死亡的悲观呢？这部《乞力马扎罗的雪》是海明威晚年的一部短篇小说。故事大致上是对于一个临死前的人的精彩描述。主要讲述一个作家哈里去非洲狩猎,途中汽车抛锚,皮肤被刺划破,染上坏疽病。他和他的妻子在等待一架飞机来把他送到医院治疗。故事围绕“死亡”和“即将死亡”来写,但根本的主题是哈里回到过去,从过去走到现在的历程回顾。哈里热爱这个世界,他有很多经历,跟不同女人的经历,以及自己所从事的不同职业的经历,他都想写下来但却没来得及写,他最终没有能达到心中的目标,死前,他悔恨至极。虽然故事说的是哈里，但是可以看出也体现了作者真实情况的反应。他和故事主人公有很多相似之处。例如都是作家，都经历了不同的女人，也都是喜爱狩猎，敢于冒险。但是在面对死亡的时候都充满了恐惧。道出了所有人与生俱来的害怕死亡的事实。
2.文章开始就体现了对生活的悲观。生活本来可以很美好的。可是《乞力马扎罗的雪》一开篇就把猎队的所有人送入到绝境，小说的主人公哈里的坏疽危及生命，烦躁不安的他认为自己就要死了，而且是由于一点点的小小的疏忽酿成此悲剧。他觉得这样悄无声息的，毫无价值的死太冤了。这种故事情节的设计固然增加了故事的可看性，但是把生活描述太过于坎坷和悲剧。
3.对人的描写过于悲观和狭隘。人本来是伟大的，我喜欢正面描写的人，堂堂正正，光明磊落。死而后已的形象。但是在故事中哈里由于害怕死亡，所以他恨不得毁掉一切以换取自己的生存，无法容忍别人还在健康的活着，他不停的找机会和海伦吵架，用各种各样的难听的、攻击性的话去刺激她，把自己遭受的一切不行强加在她的身上，而其实这种内心的愤怒与发泄又都源于内心的对于死的恐惧，死亡的忧惧扰得他五内俱焚。他想以写作掩饰心灵惊颤，想借酒浇灭精神痛苦，想以往日的荣耀抵平今日的失误，其实这些都没有用，只是更加使得自己遭受着百般的折磨，坠入毁灭自己的深渊。不可否认，任何一个垂死的人，都同哈里一样，知道死亡近在咫尺的时候，有着无法抗拒的恐惧和对人世间的留恋。
4.把死亡描写的过于恐惧。恐惧来源于人的内心。虽然我们都知道：无论我们如何抗争，作为生命、希望，只有死亡具有终结一切的意义。但是只要我们活着，能做些有意义的事情，死亡就不可怕。故事中哈里等待死亡一步步逼近的时候，他惧怕的过分敏感，毛骨悚然，不禁让人觉得心疼他，可是死神不管你是否愿意或者是如何挣扎，怎奈恐惧，终将如期降临在哈里的身上。哈里这样去对待死亡是完全没有意义的。
5.反映了海明威的世界观的局限。从全文的思想意义上看，里面的人物都带有一定的悲观主义色彩。主人公哈里，是写作生涯取得一定成就之后在奢靡中迷失自己的人。但作为一个作家的警觉，他意识到了自己的迷失。他企图回到非洲，那个曾经给过他历练的地方，找回自己。但其实他明白，过去的自己，再也找不回了。伤口生坏疽而死不是真正的原因，“哀大莫过于心死”，但好在，死的时候他已清醒认识了自己，认识了人生。
悲观主义也许就是海明威想要表现的思想之一，也是海明威独具风格的艺术形式。若干年以后，以硬汉形象著称的海明威把双筒猎枪塞进自己的嘴里但求一死，也许海明威早在许多年前就借哈里的相同身份体验了美丽而残酷的死亡。并以这样的方式诠释了其悲观主义。
第五篇：美国文学史及选读名词解释
1.American Naturalism: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism.American naturalism had been shaped by the war;by the social upheavals 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.In presenting the extremes of life, the naturalists sometimes displayed an affinity to the sensationalism of early romanticism, but unlike their romantic predecessors, the naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that lives were controlled by heredity and environment, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death.Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform.美国自然主义：美国自然主义是一种新的、更具批判性的现实主义。美国自然主义是在战争和影响人们早期信念的社会**的影响之下形成的。美国的自然主义者往往否定了广为接受的道德真理的正确性，他们想达到极端的客观与直率，他们所展现的人物往往都是下层社会的人，他们的命运受到环境和遗传的制约。在反应生活方面，自然主义作家往往表现出早期浪漫主义中感伤主义特征，但和浪漫主义不同的是，自然主义者认为，世界缺乏道德，人不论男女都没有自由的意愿，他们的生活都受到遗传和环境的控制，人在生前过着悲惨的生活，死后便被人所遗忘。虽然自然主义文学通过更为苛刻的现实主义手法来展现这个世界，但是他有时也是为了通过社会改革来改善这个世界。
2.American Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans.The Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church.The first settlers who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quite a few of them.They were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles.As the word itself hints, Puritans wanted to purity their religious beliefs and practices.They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace form God.As a culture heritage, Puritanism did have a profound influence on the early American mind.American Puritanism also had a enduring influence on American literature.美国清教主义：清教主义是新教徒的原来的一个分支——清教徒的行为和信仰。在美国的第一批居民中有很多就是清教徒，他们有着严格的宗教信仰和道德准则。就像这个词所暗指的那样，清教徒们想“清化”他们的宗教信仰和行为习惯。他们相信宿命论、原罪说、全体堕落和有限的赎罪。作为一种文化遗产，美国清教主义在早期美国人的思想上有着深刻的影响，他对美国文学的影响也是颇为持久的。
3.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.美国现实主义：在美国文学史上，内战宣告了浪漫主义的终结和现实主义的开始。现实主义反对浪漫主义和感伤主义的谎言，它从一个陌生的世界转向了普通人的真实生活的描写。它所关心的是普通的下层劳动人民而非理想中的人类本性和现实经历。American Romanticism: The Romantic Period covers the first half of the 19th century.A rising America with its ideals of democracy and equality, its industrialization, its westward expansion, and a variety of foreign influences were among the important factors which made literary expansion and expression not only possible but also inevitable in the period immediately following the nation’s political independence.Yet, romantics frequently shared certain general characteristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a source of goodness and man’s societies a source of corruption.Romantic values were prominent in American politics, art, and philosophy until the Civil War.The romantic exaltation of the individual suited the nation’s revolutionary heritage and its frontier egalitarianism.美国浪漫主义：浪漫主义阶段涵盖了19世纪前半页。美国的不断壮大和发展以及随之而来的明珠和平等的思想、工业化的发展、西北边疆的不断扩展和国外的各种影响使浪漫主义作家文学不但成为一种可能，而且使它成为美国政治独立后的一种必然。然而，浪漫主义文学往往有很多共性：他们热心于道德、相信个人主义价值观和对世界的直观感受，并且他们认为自然世界是真、善、美的源泉而人类社会则是堕落的根源。在内战以前，浪漫主义价值观占据是政治、艺术、和哲学等领域，浪漫主义者对个人的赞扬正好迎合了美国的革命遗风和边疆开拓者的品均主义。
5.American Transcendentalism: the emergence of the Transcendentalists as an identifiable movement took place during the late 1820s and 1830s, but the roots of their religious philosophy extended much farther back into American religious history.Transcendentalism and evangelical Protestantism followed separate evolutionary branches from American Puritanism, taking as their common ancestor the Calvinism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.They spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the Universe.They stressed the importance of the individual.To them, the individual was the most important element of society.They offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God.Nature was, to them, alive, filled with God’s overwhelming presence.Transcendentalism is based on the belief that the most fundamental truths about life and death can be reached only by going beyond the world of the senses.Emerson’s Nature has been called the “Manifesto of American Transcendentalism” and his The American Scholar has been rightly regarded as America’s “Declaration of Intellectual Independence”.美国超验主义：美国超验主义出现的19世纪20年代末期到三十年代，但是它的根源在宗教史上要远得多。超验主义和福音派新教分别是美国清教主义的两个分支，他们的祖先是17世纪和18世纪的加尔文神教。超验主义者主张文化的复兴，认为“超灵”是宇宙中最重要的事物。他们强调个人的重要性，反对精神上的物质主义。对他们来说，个人是一个社会最重要的元素。他们认为自然就是“精神”或“上帝”的象征，它是有生命的，而上帝又无处不在。他们认为生与死最基本的真理可以超越感官的世界而获得。艾默生的《自然》被称为是“美国超验主义的宣言”，他的《美国学者》则被认为是美国的“文化独立宣言书”。
6.Local Colorism: The definition of local colorism is made clear by Hamlin Garland in his Crumble Idols, he claims that it has “such quality and texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place or anyone else than a native.” Here “text” refers to the elements which characterizes a local culture, elements such as speech, customs, and mores peculiar to one particular place.And his “background” covers physical setting and those distinctive qualities of landscape which condition human thought and behavior.The ultimate aim of the local colorism is to create the illusion of an indigenous little world with qualities that differs from the world outside.7.Imagism: It’s a poetic movement of England and the U.S.flourished from 1909 to 1917.The 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.意象主义：意象主义是在1909到1917年之间在英国和美国的一次诗歌运动。意象主义主张在诗歌通过“直接描写事物”和简介的用词来产生意象，领导人物为庞德和艾米•罗威尔
8.The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s.At the time, it was known as the “New Negro Movement”, of which Harlem was the largest center.Writers and artists emphasized black liberation, retaining black cultural pride, and not giving in to white standards.They began to produce a wide variety of fine and highly original works dealing with African-American life.These works attracted many black readers.New to the wider culture, they also attracted commercial publishers and a large white readership.Writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance include Langston Hughes Who wrote The Weary Blues.HR was more than just a literary movement in AM history.9.Free Verse: Verse that has either no metrical pattern or an irregular pattern.自由诗：按照语言的抑扬顿挫和意象模式，而不是按照固定韵律写出的诗。它的韵律建立在音素、语词、短语、句子和段落等形式的基础上，而不是建立在音步传统格律单位上。因此，自由诗消除了很多不自然的成分和诗体表现的某些审美差距。20世纪初，在英国诗法中自由诗已经流行。
10.Blank verse: Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.素体诗：用五音步抑扬格写的无韵诗。
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