宁波大学答题纸
（20 11 —20 12 学年第 一 学期）
课号： 064TS1AGX 课程名称： 美国文化导论 改卷教师： 学号： 106110079 姓 名： 厉沛沛 得 分：
American culture of literature
【Abstract】 America has rich and colorful culture, especially the culture of literature. There are four periods in American history of literature，they are the literature of American Romanticism, New England Transcendentalism, American Realism and American Modernism. And each period has its characteristics and background.
【Key Word】 American literature; American Romanticism; New England Transcendentalism; American Realism; American Modernism
We all know that American literature plays an important role in the history of literature all over the world. It has rich cultural connotation and a long history. American history of literature began with the swarming in of immigrants with different cultures and background. After that, American literature had been greatly influenced by the European culture for a long period. It was not until American independence did American realize that they need national literature strongly, and American literature began to develop. The Civil War was a turning point in the history, after that the American literature entered a period of full blooming. Romantics, who emphasized intuition and individualism, and New England Transcendentalism represented by Emerson, came out into being. This was an exciting period in the history of American literature. Like the flowers of spring, there were suddenly many different kinds of writing at the same time. They have given depth and strength to American literature, and accelerated the forming of High Romantics. But due to the influence of Civil War, the American society was in a turbulent situation. The works about local life, critical realism and unveiling the dark side of the society were increasing. After The First World War, Americans were at a loss postwar, and the literature of American Modernism began.
To conclude, the history of American literature is made up of four periods. They
are the literature of American Romanticism, New England Transcendentalism, American Realism and American Modernism.
The romantic period of American literature stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War. It was an age of westward expansion, of the increasing gravity of the slavery question. Romantic Period is one of the most important periods in the history of American literature. When Americans were constructing their country, they also began to realize their differences from the European counterparts. They began to hope to create an entirely different literature model. Great writers of that period captured on their pages, including the enthusiasm and the optimism of that dream.
Although greatly influenced by the European counterparts, the American romantic writers revealed unique characteristics of their own in their works and they grew on the native land. For example, the American national experience of \to draw upon. They celebrated American landscape with its virgin forests, meadows, groves, endless prairies, streams, and vast oceans. The wilderness came to function almost as a dramatic character that symbolized moral 1aw. The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became a permanent convention of American literature. Such a desire is particularly evident in Cooper’s Leather Stocking Tales, in Thoreau's Walden and, later, in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. With the growth of American national consciousness, American character types speaking local dialects appeared in poetry and fiction with increasing frequency. Then the American Puritanism as a cultural heritage exerted great influences over American moral values and American Romanticism. One of the manifestations is the fact that American romantic writers tended more to moralize than their English and European counterparts.
Later，American literature came into Transcendentalism Period which emphasized individualism, self-reliance, and rejection of tradition authority. It was actually greatly influenced by romanticism. The Transcendentalist movement, embodied by essayists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, was a reaction against 18th century Rationalism, and closely linked to the Romantic Movement.
In general, Transcendentalism was a liberal philosophy favoring nature over formal religious structure, individual insight over dogma, and humane instinct over social convention. American Transcendental Romantics pushed radical individualism
to the extreme. American writers, then or later, often saw themselves as lonely explorers outside society and convention. The American hero like Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab, or Mark Twain’s Huck Finn,typically faced risk, or even certain destruction, in the pursuit of metaphysical self-discovery. For the Romantic American writer, nothing was given. Literary and social conventions, far from being helpful, were dangerous. There was tremendous pressure to discover an authentic literary form, content, and voice.
However, the country’s confidence was waved by the Civil War. After the war, Americans got lost. At about 1900s, American literature came into another entirely different age—the age of Realism. Realists searched for the social and human nature more directly. In part, Realism was a reaction against the Romantic emphasis on the strange, idealistic, and long-ago and far-away. It has been chiefly concerned with the commonplaces of everyday life among the middle and lower classes where character is a product of social factors and environment is the integral element in the dramatic complications.
The American authors lumped together as “realists” seem to have some features in common: “verisimilitude of detail derived from observation,” the effort to approach the norm of experience--a reliance on the representative in plot, setting, and character, and to offer an objective rather than an idealized view of human nature . Local colorize as a trend first made its presence felt in the late 1860s and early 70s. The tended to idealize and glorify, but they never forgot to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life.
Naturalism is a more deliberate kind of realism, usually involves a view of human beings as a passive victims of natural forces and social environment. The most significant work of naturalism in English is Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900).
The period between 1910 and 1930 is referred to as the era of Modernism. During that period, a large number of artists and literary movements are totally different from those of the 19th-century’s, in style, form and content. Modern psychology has a profound impact on the early 20th-century’s literature.
The large cultural wave of Modernism, which emerged in Europe, and then spread to the United States in the early years of the 20th century, expressed a sense of modern life through art as a sharp break from the past. As modern machinery had changed the pace, atmosphere, and appearance of daily life in the early 20th century, so many artists and writers, with varying degrees of success, reinvented traditional artistic forms and tried to find radically new ones—an aesthetic echo of what people
had come to call “the machine age.”
Romantic period stretches from the end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil War. Later American literature came to Transcendentalism Period which emphasized individualism, self-reliance, and rejection of tradition authority. The Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came into existence, which was against “the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism”. The period between 1910 and 1930 is referred to as the era of Modernism. During that period, a large number of artists and literary movements are totally different from those of the 19th-century’s, in style, form and content.
Bibliography
1. Cunliffe, Marcus. The Literature of the United States [M]. Beijing: Translation Publishing House of China, 1985. 372-386.
2.Wu Weiren. Ed. History and Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1&2. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000.
3. 常耀信. 美国文学简史 [M]. 天津：南开大学出版社，1997.