Chapter 1:Literature of Colonial America
Most critics hold that American literature per did not begin until the 19th century.
Native American Literature:
three stages:traditional(oral literature),transitional(translations and memoirs) and modern
Literature of Colonial Settlements
The first American literature was neither American nor really literature.
Puritanism:
The first ttlers came to America out of various reasons.They were called “Puritans,” so named after tho who wished to “purify” the religious practice in the church.They soon established their own religious and moral principles known as Amercian Puritanism which became one of the enduring influences in American thought and American literature,American Puritanism stresd predestination,original sin,total depravity and limite
d atonement from God’s grace.With such doctrines in their minds,Puritans left Europe for America in order to prove that they were God’s chon people who would enjoy God’s blessings on earth and in Heaven.They felt that they were exiles under the special grace of God to establish a theocracy in the New World.Over the years in the new homeland they built a way of life that stresd hard work,thrift,piety,and sobriety.
Literature of the New England Settlements is mainly a literary expression of the Puritan idealism.It is bad on the Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden.The pious and lf-disciplined Puritans worked with courage and hope toward building a new Garden of Eden in Amercia.They looked even the worst of ife in the face with a tremendous amount of optimism.The Puritan optimsim has exerted enormous impact on Amercian literature.
Generally speaking ,there are following types of writing that were produced in the colonial ttlements : histories, travel accounts, biographies, diaries, letters, autobiographies, rmons, and poems. Sermon was a very popular form of literature in the 17th century Amercia.
All of the works writtern during this period are utilitarian,polemical,or didactic.Puriatns’ metaphorical mode of perception helped to develop literary symbolism as they saw the physical world a symbol of God.Hence symbolism as a technique was a common practice in writing.The Puritans placed unusual stress upon plainness in writing becau they were unusually interested in influencing the simple-minded people.Bearing the direct influence of the Christian Biblical poetics,the Puriatn writings are flesh,simple,direct,and with a touch of nobility.As it faithfully imitated and transplanted European forms to the new experience,early American literature was as much a product of continuities as an indigenous creation.
Literature of the 18th Century
Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin who shared the eighteenth century between them. (Brooks)
Jonathan Edwards: He was probably the last great voice to re-asrt Calvinism in Amercia.His best-known rmon is entitled “ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”.Th
is is one of the hallmarks of American oratory,one of the most vigorous and powerful speeches ever given in America.
“Great Awakening”的领物
The Freedom od the Will
The Personal Narrative
Benjamin Franklin: (代表着the Enlightment in America)
Poor Richard’s Almanac : (里面有很多maxims)
Richard: a cracker barrel philosopher
后来他把一些maxims 整理在一本书中叫The Way to Wealth.
The esnce of his teaching was thrift,carefulness and independence.
Autobiography (反映了economic individual and social mobility,但未完成作者就去世
了)
Franklin’s style of writing was clear and even plain in his time,but for modern readers,it is a bit hard to read.His style is rather formal ,but the organization of his material is informal.
Thomas Paine(1737-1809)(美国独立革命时期最有影响力的人物之一)
Common Sen (被认为是the greatest of the Revolutionary pamphlets)
Paine’s greatest gift in writing was plainness.
The American Crisis (consists of 16 pamphlets written during the War of Independence.They deal with tyranny,human nature,the individual’s proper relationship to the state,the spirit of liberty,and the future of colonialism.The pamphlets made an important contribution to the Amercian Revolutionary cau and infulenced the yound nation’s political and philosophical ideology.
Thomas Jefferson : The Declaration of Independence
Philip Freneau:
He was the first American-born poet,reprenting the efforts for literary nationalism in America.His poems are truly American and very patriotic.In this respect he reflected the spirit of his age.
In Philadelphia,he was called the “Poet of the Amercian Revolution” and “the plain-dealing Republican bard who had fought the Revolution through newspaper ver.”
He dedicated his ver to Amercian subject matter.
The Wild Honey Suckle ( mortality)
The Indian Burying Ground (imagined afterlife)
He reprented to a certain extend the beginning of Amercian romantism.
He became one of the most outstanding reprentatives of dawning nationalism in Amerc
ian literature.
Chapter 2 Early Romantics
(Although romanticism was not a clearly conceived system,it did have some fairly definite characteristics.)
(1) Romanticism was a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism.It was a movement of conscious rebellion against being too objective.Romantics placed a high premium upon the creative funcion of imagination,and saw art as a formulation of intuitive and imaginative perceptions that tend to speak a nobler truth that that of fact.
(2) For romanticsm the feelings,intuiutions and emotions were more important than reason and common n.Romantics held that one could find truth through one’s feelings.
