第一部分：殖民主义时期文学
一、时期综述（关于清教的应该都是重点）
1、清教徒采用的文学体裁：A、narratives 日记 B、journals 游记
★2、清教徒的想法：①Puritans want to make up pure their religious beliefs and practices.净化信仰
和行为方式②wish to restore simplicity to church services and the authority of the Bible to
theology.重建教堂，提供简单服务，建立神圣地位③look upon themselves as a chosen people, and it follow logically that anyone who challenged their way of life is opposing God’s will and is not to be accepted.认为自己是上帝选民，对他们的生活有异议就是反对上帝。④Puritan opposition to pleasure and the arts sometimes has been exaggerated.反对对快乐和艺术的追求到了十分荒唐的地步。⑤religious teaching tended to emphasize the image of a wrathful God.强调上帝严厉的一面，忽视上帝仁慈的一面。 3、典型的清教徒： John Cotton and Roger Williams 4、英国最早移民到美国的诗人：Anne Bradstreet
5、在殖民时期最好的清教徒诗人：the best of Puritan poets is Edward Taylor. 学习指南： 1、Hard work, thrift, piety and sobriety were the Puritan values that dominated much of the earliest American writing. 2、The work of two writers, Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor, rose to the level of real poetry. 3、The earliest settlers included Dutch, Swedes, Germans, French, Spaniards Italian, and Portuguese. 第二部分：理性和革命时期文学 1、Benjamin Franklin 本杰明.弗兰克林
①代表作：“Poor Richard’s Almanac”穷人理查德的年鉴 annual collection of proverbs 流行谚语集 It soon became the most popular book of its kind, largely because of Franklin’s shrewd humor, and first spread his reputation. 机智、幽默、风趣成为最畅销的书籍，弗兰克林的成名作。
② established America’s first circulating library, founded the college — University of
Pennsylvania. 建立了美国第一个可租借的图书馆，还创办了一所大学—就是现在的宾夕法尼亚大学。 As an author he had power of expression, simplicity, a subtle humor, sarcastic. 作为作家具有非凡的才能，表达简洁明了，幽默，讽刺天才。
“Autobiography” 自传 18世纪美国唯一流传至今的自传
2、Thomas Paine 托马斯.佩因 “Great Commoner of Mankind” 最平凡的人
①famous pamphlet “Common Sense” 著名的政治小册子《常识》，it boldly advocated a “Declaration
for Independence”, and brought the separatist agitation to a crisis. 拥护“独立宣言”，使分裂活动发展成最后危机。
②“American Crisis”《美国危机》,signed “Common Sense”.署名为“常识”.（P31，第一段看一下） 3、Thomas Jefferson 托马斯.杰弗逊
①drafted the Declaration of Independence. 起草了独立宣言。
4、Philip Freneau 菲利浦.弗瑞诺 poet and political journalist 诗人和政治方面的新闻记者。
①perhaps the most outstanding writer of the post-Revolutionary period.可能是革命战争后期最杰出的作家。
②has been called the “Father of American Poetry” 美国诗歌之父 学习指南： 1、Theology dominated the Puritan phase of American writing. Politics was the next great subject to command the attention of the best minds. 2、Freneau was neoclassical by training and taste yet romantic in essential spirit. 第三部分：浪漫主义文学 一、文学特征：
1、美国文学特点:pluralistic多元化，manifestations表现形式: Varied多样, Individualistic个人主义,Conflicting矛盾
3、romanticism的特点：frequently shared certain general characteristics; moral enthusiasm, faith in the 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.浪漫主义之间大部分是相通的，都注重道德，强调个人主义价值观和直觉感受，并且认为自然是美的源头，人类社会是腐败之源。 ★4、transcendentalism超验主义：
①as a moral philosophy, transcendentalism was neither logical nor systematized. It exalted
feeling over reason, individual expression over the restraints of law and custom. 不讲逻辑，不讲系统，只强调超越理性的感受，超越法律和世俗束缚的个人表达。 ②they spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society.呼吁文化复
兴，反对美国社会的拜金主义。 ③they believed in the transcendence of “Oversoul,” an all-pervading power for goodness from
which all things come and of which all things are a part.相信精神上的超越，相信无所不能的善的力量，强调善为万物之源。 ⑤代表人物：Emerson爱默生，believed that man was a part of absolute good。人性本善
Thoreau 梭 罗，beheld divinity in the “unspotted innocence” of nature. 自然才是神圣的“洁白无瑕” 5、Literary forms文学形式：Novels, short stories, and poems replaced sermons and manifestos as
America’s principal literary forms.长篇小说、短篇故事和诗歌取代说教类及宣言类作品成为美国主要的文学形式。 6、Imaginative literature想象类文学
7、the wilderness came to function almost as a dramatic character that illustrated moral law.戏剧化特色的野性讽喻了时代的道德准则。
8、The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became a permanent convention of American literature. 逃离社会，回到自然成为了美国文学永恒的创作习惯。
9、At mid-century a cultural reawakening brought a “flowering of New England.” Led by Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau. New England → Transcendentalism, 从新英格兰文学到超验主义。 二、代表作家：
1、Washington Irving华盛顿.欧文 the first great belletrist 第一个纯文学作家，划线部分为三个主要contribution
① the first great prose stylist of American romanticism. 美国第一位浪漫主义散文文体作家
②“Sketch Book”《见闻札记》, the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile
literature.现代文学史上第一部短篇小说和美国第一部伟大的青少年文学读物。 ③Irving restored the waning Gothic romances which Poe soon infused with psychological
subtleties.重振了没落的哥特式浪漫主义小说，随后坡在此基础上，把心理学的一些知识融入了这种体裁。 ④“Legends of the Conquest of Spain”《西班牙征服记》 2、James Fenimore Cooper 詹姆斯.芬尼莫.库珀
①contribution: launched two kinds of immensely popular stories → the sea adventure tale and the frontier saga 开创了两种流传极广的小说体裁，边疆传奇小说和海上传奇小说。 ②“Leatherstocking Tales”《皮袜子故事集》，包括“The Deerslayer”《杀鹿者》、“The Last of
the Mohicans”《最后的莫希干人》、“The Pathfinder”《探路人》、“The Pioneers”《拓荒者》、“The Prairie”《大草原》, regard as “the nearest approach yet to an American epic.” 被认为是迄今为止美国最接近史诗的作品。 ③the central figure in the novels, Natty Bumppo. 小说的中心人物，纳蒂.班波 3、William Cullen Bryant 威廉.卡伦.布莱恩特 poet 诗人
①as Irving had shown that American prose had cone of age, so Bryant demonstrated to European
readers that American poetry was ready to demand serious attention.当欧文预示美国散文时代的到来时，布莱恩特向欧洲读者证实了美国的诗歌达到相当高的水平。 ②He was the first American to gain the stature of a major poet.第一个获得美国主要诗人称号的作家。 ③ “To a Waterfowl”《致水鸟》the most perfect brief poem in the language. 用美国英语写作的最
完美的短诗。 4、Edgar Allan Poe 埃德加.阿伦.坡
①show his true talents as an editor, poet, literary critic. 编辑、诗人、文学评论家。
②“The Fall of the House of Usher”《鄂谢府崩溃记》、“The Raven”《乌鸦》the title poem of
a collection, “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque”《述异集》first collection of short stories. 第一部短篇小说集。 ③ often use grotesque or fantastic events.擅长描写哥特式和幻想类的小说。 5、Ralph Waldo Emersion 拉尔夫.沃尔多.爱默生
①be responsible for bringing Transcendentalism to New England, 是把超验主义引入新英格兰的先驱。 ②Emerson believed above all in individualism个人主义, independence of mind思想独立, and
self-reliance自强. ③作品：“Nature”《论自然》、“Essays”《随笔录》、 “The American Scholar”《美国学者》,
our intellectual Declaration of Independence.我们知识分子的独立宣言。 ④his most important works are “Representative Men ”《代表》and “English Traits”《英国人》、
“Poems”《诗集》 6、Henry David Thoreau 亨利.戴维.梭罗
①Emerson’s truest disciple. Put into practice many of Emerson’s theories 爱默生最忠实的信徒，把
爱默生的许多理论付诸于实践。 ②“In Walden”《沃尔登》成名作。“Civil Disobedience”《平民反抗》essay 随笔。非暴力不合作 ③教义：I would not have anyone adopt my mode of living, each should find out his own way, not
his neighbor’s or his parents. 我不希望人们接受我的生活模式，每一个都应该发现自己的生活方式，不是邻居的，也不是他父母的。 ★7、Nathaniel Hawthorne 纳萨尼尔.霍桑
① “The House of the Seven Gables”七尖角阁房，是霍桑著名神秘小说中的一个房屋名称。
②he reveals the depth of his concern with the dark side of Puritanism, the harshness and the
persecutions.对清教徒阴暗面的深切关注，认为清教徒的戒行过于森严，对不同信仰人的迫害过于残酷。 ④“Mosses from an Old Manse”《古厦青苔》、“The Marble Faun”《玉石神像》
⑤特点⑴unique gift was for the creation of strongly symbolic stories which touch the deepest roots
of man’s moral nature. 独特才能主要表现在他能够通过一些极具象征意义的故事来触摸人类灵魂深处的道德品质。 ⑵his ability to create vivid and symbolic images that embody great moral questions appears
strongly in his short stories. 短篇小说里，通过活生生、极具有象征意义的想象来体现人类社会的一些重大道德问题。 ⑶to make a story exist in its own right but at the same time appear as a moral symbol.杰出之处
在于他能把一个故事安放在自己设置的正义标准之中来讲述，他书中的正义标准成为当时人们的道德参考。 ⑥ “The Scarlet Letter”《红字》
(1)女主角honest, calmly face fault 诚实，坦然的面对罪过。
(2)女主角的自我成长和自我救赎的过程。Ego growth and redeem by her own of process
⑦“The Scarlet Letter”analysis分析：it not a praise of a Hester sinning, but a hymn on the moral
growth of the woman when sinned against. Young Hester borders on being licentious. Her drive is sexual. She does her best to keep her hold on the magic chain humanity. Her life eventually acquires a real significance when she reestablishes a meaningful relationship with her fellowmen Symbolic of her moral development is the gradual imperceptible change with the scarlet letter undergoes in meaning. At first it is a token of shame, “Adultery” but then the genuine sympathy and help Hester offered to her fellow villagers’ changes it to “Able”. Later in the story, the letter A appears in the sky, signifying “Angel”. There is reason to agree with the critical observation that A may represent Adamic, or prehistoric, an archetypal vice
suggestive of “original sin,” Dimmesdale, on the other hand, banishes himself form society. Deeply preoccupied with himself, he lives a stranger among his admirers. The result is that, whereas Hester is able to reconstruct her life and win a moral victory, Dimmesdale undergoes the tragic experience of physical and spiritual disintegration. Between him and Hester they point to a moral as Hawthorne may intend them to do, that the best policy for man is to be true, honest, and ever ready to show one’s worst to the outside world. ★8、Herman Melville 赫尔曼.麦尔维尔
①“Moby Dick”《白鲸》，a tremendous chronicle of whaling voyage in pursuit of a seemingly
supernatural white whale.主要讲述了一个为追捕一只想象中的神秘白鲸的漫长海上故事。②The book is steeped in symbolism. 本书达到了象征主义手法的创作高峰。③主人公：Ishmael，取自圣经。④在书中说：to write a mighty book you must have a mighty theme. 写一部宏大的著作，必须有一个宏大的主题。⑤故事人物：Captain Ahab.船长阿哈比；Queequeg，捕鲸人奎因奎格，was a friendly person；⑥the rebellious struggle of Captain Ahab against the overwhelming, mysterious vastness of the universe and its awesome, sometimes merciless forces. The fitting symbol for his theme was the “gliding great demon of the seas of life.”阿哈比舰长和各种危险之间的激烈斗争，他同那些强大的、神秘的自然展开斗争，他们令人毛骨悚然，有时还冷酷无情。他把那只大白鲸贴切的比喻为“生命海洋中滑行的恶魔”。 ⑦“Moby Dick”：one of the major themes in Melville is alienation, which he sensed existing in the
life of his time on different levels, between man and man, man and society, and man and nature. Captain Ahab seems to be the best illustration of it all. The voyage itself is a metaphor for “search and discovery, the search for the ultimate truth of experience.” He had Ahab topmost in his mind. In a sense Ahab embodies all of the evil he once consigned to Moby Dick. 9、Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 亨利.沃兹沃思.朗费罗 poet 诗人
①it would be hard, also, to overestimate the importance of his anthology “The Poets and Poetry
of Europe”. His own poetry became a means of teaching readers of his day something of the possible range of poetic subject matter and techniques, ancient, medieval, and modern. 《欧洲诗人及诗》不能把这部作品估计过高。他自己的诗歌成为了他教学的材料，在书中他讲述了诗的主题和一些写作技巧。从古代的，中世纪的一直到现代的诗歌，他都一一作了阐述。 ②殊荣：he became the only American to be honored with a bust in the Poet’s corner of Westminster
Abbey.朗费罗被安葬在威斯敏斯特教堂的诗人之角，他也是美国惟一获此殊荣的诗人。
第四部分：现实主义文学
一、时期综述：