mother country (Britain) were mainly political and economical.
145. The secular ideals of the American Enlightenment were exemplified in the life and career of Benjamin Franklin.
146. The famous Poor Richard’s Almanac was written by Benjamin Franklin, modeled on the sort of farmer‘s annual calendar widely sold at the time, and was an annual collection of proverbs.
147. The first colonial magazine, the General Magazine, was edited by Benjamin Franklin.
148. The Junto, a club for informational discussion of scientific, economic and political ideas, was founded by Benjamin Franklin.
149. Paine‘s Rights of Man not only championed Rousseau‘s doctrines of freedom, but also suggested the overthrow of the British monarchy.
150. Philip Freneau is the most outstanding writer of the post-Revolutionary period. 151. Philip Freneau‘s close observation of nature distinguished his treatment of indigenous wild life and other native American subjects and he developed later a natural, simple, and concrete diction, best illustrated in such nature lyrics as ―The Wild Honey Suckle‖ and ?The Indian Burying Ground‖.
152. The meaning of Bryant‘s ―Thanatopsis‖ means ―view of death‖.
153. ―The most perfect brief poem in the language‖ refers to Bryant‘s ―Thanatopsis‖. 154. Natty Bumppo is the main character in Washington Irving‘s The Sketch Book. 155. Allan Poe‘s ―The Fall of the House of Usher‖ was written in the third person ―he‖ and the narrator of the story is ―he‖.
156. The impulse to self-destruction, the fascination with horrible catastrophes, and the soul-sickness appear in almost all Poe‘s powerful short stories, as ―The Fall of the House of Usher‖, ―The Black Cat‖.
157. Poe‘s poetry expressed the deep hopelessness and rejection of the world as his prose, but usually in a very different way.
158. Allan Poe thought the artist should be concerned neither with truth nor morality but solely with beauty, not the beauty of nature which he values but that of the imagination.
159. The magazine ―The Dial‖ was edited and published by Ralph Waldo Emerson and his followers.
160. The American transcendentalists highlighted spirits, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe, which was an all-pervading power for goodness, omnipresent and omnipotent.
161. A recurrent theme in Hawthorne‘s stories is that of a man who cannot feel close to others, who suffers ―ice in blood‖ —–a detachment that makes him an observer of human life rather than a responsible participant; Many of his tales take this as their central theme.
162. Hawthorne‘s unique gift was for the creation of strongly symbolic stories which touch the deepest roots of man‘s moral nature as exemplified in The Scarlet Letter and ―Young Goodman Brown‖.
163. A marble heart in Hawthorne‘s ―Ethan Brand‖ stands for pride and isolation from one‘s fellow men.
164. ―Young Goodman Brown‖ uses the background of witchcraft to explore uncertainties of beliefs that trouble man‘s heart and mind.
165. In Moby Dick, the universe is taken as basically both good and evil.
166. Melville created Ahab as the very prototype of the utterly intransigent individualist, but he also realized that power in our world means, basically, power over other men. For any one man to succeed in living absolutely as he wishes, many others must be persuaded or forced into supporting his way of life.
167. That conviction itself, Ahab‘s belief that human dignity demands a rejection of the inhumanity of the universe, is, together with the white whale taken as symbol of an amoral universe, the heart of the book Moby Dick.
168. To some extent, Moby Dick expressed Melville‘s brooding, sometimes frightening speculations about man and God and the universe.
169. Generally speaking, the theme of Moby Dick is about the rebellious struggle of Captain Ahab against the overwhelming, mysterious vastness of the universe and its awesome, sometimes merciless forces.
170. Ahab‘s ship, the Pequod, is the symbol of society, like a world in miniature, with characters ranging from the observer and narrator Ishmael to the savage harpooners and the motley crew.
171. Melville‘s Billy Budd, like Moby Dick, uses a ship as symbol of society and searchingly examines the problems of good and evil.
172. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver W. Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and John Greenleaf Whittier were the famous poets in New England during American romantic period, who were called ―The School-room Poets‖.
173. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver W. Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and John Greenleaf Whittier were the famous poets in New England during American romantic period.
174. Realists have some features in common: verisimilitude of detail derived from life and so on to offer an objective rather than an idealized view of human nature and experience.
175. In American realism, Howells called for the treatment of the ―smiling aspects of life‖.
176. The American naturalism comes from Europe.
177. The pessimism and deterministic ideas are often expressed in the works of the American naturalists.
178. American naturalism was shaped by civil war, by the social upheavals that undermined the confronting faith of an earlier age, and by the disturbing teachings of Charles Darwin.
179. ―The Gilded Age‖ refers to the first decade after the War for Independence.
180. In Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman presents the combination of the ideal of the democratic common man and that of the rugged individual.
181. In Leaves of Grass the poet describes only man and nature and does not touch any topics about cities.
182. Whitman envisioned the poet in the poems as a hero, a savior and a prophet, one who leads the community by his expressions of truth.
183. One of the typical features in Dickinson‘s poetic writing is the unique choice of words and the unique arrangement and punctuation.
184. While a simple list of he favorite subjects—death, love, nature, human emotions (or psychology) — would seem similar to those of Whitman her treatment is entirely different in attitude as well as form.
185. In O. Henry‘s The Four Million, his main concern is about the lives of rich people in New York.
186. Most of O. Henry‘s stories have two endings: first an unexpected ending, then another, which is quite a different one and a still better surprise.
187. Most of Henry James‘s novels are about an American‘s confrontation in Europe, in which the heroes and heroines come to Europe to seek for perfection, but end in failure.
188. Many of O. Henry‘s stories contain a great deal of slang and colloquial expressions, which are used to make the stories fit in with the characters and scenes described.
189. In novels and short stories and critical commentaries Henry James made major contribution to the art of fiction itself, helping to transform the novel from its alliances with journalism and romantic storytelling into an art form of penetrating analysis of individuals confronting society, chronicles of the psychological perceptions that James himself defined as the highest form of experience.
190. London embraced the hopeful socialism of Marx on the one hand and the rather darker view of Nietzsche and Darwinism on the other, and this, to some extent, decided his writing attitudes.
191. Wolf Larsen, the ruthless, amoral protagonist in The Call of the Wild, best realizes Jack London‘s ideal of the ―superman‖.
192. The most enduringly popular of London‘s stories involved the primitive (and melodramatic) struggle of strong and weak individuals in the context of irresistible natural forces such as the wild sea or the arctic wastes.
193. London‘s sincere intellectual and personal involvement in the socialist movement is recorded in such novels and polemical works as The People of the Abyss, The Iron Heel, The War of the Classes, and Revolution.
194. London‘s competing, deeply felt commitment to the fundamental reality of the law of survival and the will to power is dramatized in his most popular novels, The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf.
195. The contradiction between London‘s competing beliefs is most vividly projected in the patently autobiographical novel Martin Eden, a central document for the London scholar.
196. In London‘s The Law of Life, the tribal patriarch‘s death is depicted as an illustration of the law that all living things die rather than in terms of the particular psychological state of the individual facing his end.
197. In ―Trilogy of Desire‖, Dreiser shifted from the pathos of helpless protagonists as describe in Sister Carrie and Jannie Gerhardt to the power of those unusual individuals who assume dominant roles in business and society.
198. Theodore Dreiser in his famous novel Main Street denunciated the American
small-town provincialism.
199. The American literature achieved a new diversity and reached its greatest heights in the 1920s in which Emily Dickinson, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner all showed their voices.
200. The expressionism, postimpressionism, futurism, Dadaism, cubism, imagism, surrealism, naturism, etc. all belong to modernism.
201. Modernism refers to various literary schools of various artists: painters, musicians, poets, etc. in the first part of the 20th century whose rebellion against conventions was a striking feature.
202. Experimental American playwrights after the Fist World War, hostile to outworn and timid theatrical convention, created works of tragedy, stark realism, and social protest.
203. The Negro playwrights, poets and novelists of Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s presented new insights into American experience and paved the way for the numerous black writers after mid century.
204. ―Harlem Renaissance‖ is a burst of literary achievement in the 1920s by Negro playwrights, poets, and novelists who presented new insights into American experience and prepared the new way for the emergence of numerous black writers after mid-century.
205. The writers of the 1950s used a prose style modeled on the works of Earnest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, narrative techniques derived from William Faulkner, and psychological insights taken from the writing of Sigmund Freud and his followers.
206. In the 1960s and 1970s writers of American poetry turned increasingly to experimental techniques, to absurd humor, and to mocking examination for the irrational and disordered.
207. Early in the 1920s, the most prominent of the new American playwrights, Eugene O‘Neill, established an international reputation with such plays as The Emperor Jones and The Hairy Ape.
208. Sinclair Lewis in his famous novel Main Street denunciated the American small-town provincialism.
209. In A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway portrayed a real farewell to war.
210. Hemingway‘s indomitable spirit of common people best exemplified in the old fisherman, Santiago, who was triumphant even in defeat.
211. ―The Lost Generation‖ is also called ―The Beat Generation‖, which appeared in America in 1920s.
212. In Of Mice and Man, Faulkner portrayed the friendship of two itinerant workers who yearn for a permanent home they will never find.
213. The Grapes of Wrath showed the migration of the ―Okies‖ from the ―Dust Bowls‖ to California, a migration that ended in broken dreams and misery but at the same time affirmed the ability of the common people to endure and prevail. 214. The subject in T. S. Eliot‘s The Waste Land generally is about the apparent failure of Western civilization.
215. The ―old-fashioned way to be new‖ refers to the writings of the New England
poet, Edwin Arlington Robinson.
216. ―I‘m always saying something that‘s just the edge of something more‖ is Emily Dickinson‘s words to express one of the features of her poetry.
217. Most of Mark Twain‘s stories took place in an imagined area called ―Yoknapatawpha‖.
218. Many of John Steinbeck‘s stories were about the miserable life of factory workers and migrant farmers.
219. Most of O. Henry‘s stories described the sweat drenched lives of factory workers and migrant farmers.
220. Fitzgerald summarized the experiences and attitudes of the first two decades of the 20th century in his short stories and famous novel The Great Gatsby.
221. The phrase ―cathedral of frosted glass‖ was used to describe the latest works of T. S. Eliot.
222. Sandburg avoided regular stanza patterns and traditional blank verse and wrote an utterly free verse, developing Whitman‘s long line but moderating its rhetorical impact and intensity, and composing what are often in effect prose paragraphs. 223. The subject in T. S. Eliot‘s The Waste Land generally is about the apparent failure of Western civilization.
224. William Faulkner is considered by many to be the greatest writer of fiction the U.S. has ever produced because of his experiments in the dislocation of narrative time and his use of stream-of-consciousness techniques. VI. Topic discussions or brief answers.
225. Why is it said that New England from the beginning had a literature of ideas? 226. What are the differences and similarities in the ideas about individualism among Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville?
227. What are the characteristics of Hawthorne‘s writings? Give examples.
228. What symbols does the writer use in the story of The Scarlet Letter and what do they each symbolize, including the names of the main characters?
229. The white whale, Moby Dick, is the most important symbol in Melville‘s novel. What symbolic meaning can you draw from it？
230. What attitudes did Allen Poe have towards ―beauty‖? Give some evidence to support your ideas.
231. Nature is a philosophic work，in which Emerson gives an explicit discussion on his idea of the Oversoul. What is your understanding of Emerson‘s ―Oversoul‖？ 232. The American transcendentalists highlighted spirits, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe, which was an all-pervading power for goodness, omnipresent and omnipotent.
233. Realists have some features in common: verisimilitude of detail derived from life and so on to offer an objective rather than an idealized view of human nature and experience.
234. What is American Romanticism? (Your answer should include such aspects as the time, characteristics, representatives, and influences, etc) 235. What is Transcendentalism? 236. What is American realism?