Transcendentalism refers to a kind of attitude that believes in the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively（直觉地） or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the ns. In a literal n, it means the belief that knowledge and principles of reality can be obtained by studying thought, not necessarily by practical experiences.
Realism It is, in literature, an approach that attempts to describe life without idealization or romantic subjectivity. In part. Realism was a reaction against the Romantic emphasis on the strange, idealistic, and long-ago and far-away.
Local Colorism the writings of local colorists are concerned with the life of a small, well-defined region or province. The characteristic tting is the isolated small town. Local colorists were consciously nostalgic historians of a vanishing way of life, recorders of a prent that faded before their eyes.
1) The Lost Generation
they had cut themlves off from their past in America in order to create new types of writin
g which had never been tried before. Among the writers, the most famous are Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dos Passos.
Chapter Three
American Romanticism * Irving * Cooper
II. Washington Irving (1783-1859)
惠普打印机卡纸 1 Writing Style
顺产注意事项Irving’s style can only be described as beautiful though imitative.
A. Irving avoids moralizing as much as possible: he wrote to amu and entertain.
B. He was good at enveloping his stories in a rich atmosphere, which is often more than compensation for the slimness of plot.
C. His characters are vivid and true so that they tend to linger in the mind of the reader.
D. He was such a humorous writer that it is difficult not to smile and occasionally even chuckle.
E. His language was finished and musical.
2. Literary Status
Father of American literature
The first professional American writer
The first American Romantic writer
对牛弹琴 The first American short story writer
余氯是什么 The first American imaginative writer
to be recognized by the Europeans
3. His Works:
A History of New York (1809)
The Sketch Book (1819-20)
The short story as a genre in American literature probably began with Irving’s The Sketch Book, a collection of essays, sketches, and tales, of which the most famous and frequently anthologized are “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Rip Van Winkle《瑞普*电脑壁纸高清可爱凡*温尔克》It is a fantasy tale about a man who somehow stepped outside the main stream of life. Rip Van Winkle is a simple, good-natured, and hen-pecked man. An amiable man who home and farm suffer from his lazy neglect, he is loved by all but his wife. One autumn day he escapes his nagging wife ， after drinking some of ghosts of Henry Hudson’s crew’s liquor, he falls asleep. He wakes up twenty years later and returns to his village. He finds out that everything changes.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher
关于思念的古诗Columbus (1828)
墙用英语怎么说The Alhambra 《阿尔罕伯拉》(1832)
Life of Goldsmith, Life of Washington
Tales of a Traveler
III. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
1. Literary Status:
The first American Frontier novel
The first American Sea novel
The first American Spy Novel
The first American Historical Novel
His Leatherstocking Tales as the American National Epic
3. His major works:
Precaution (1820)
The Spy (1821)
“The Leatherstocking Tales” includes
The Pioneers (1823)
The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
The Prairie (1827)
The Pathfinder (1840)
The Deerslayer (1841)
The Leatherstocking Tales is a ries of novels by American writer James Fenimore Cooper, each featuring the main hero Natty Bumppo, known by European tt
lers as "Leatherstocking," 'The Pathfinder", and "the trapper" and by the Native Americans as "Deerslayer," "La Longue Carabine" and "Hawkeye". He becomes a type, a reprentation of a nation struggling to be born, progressing from old age to rebirth and youth.
5. Writing Features:
A. Plot construction: Cooper was good at inventing plots. His plots are sometimes quite incredible, but his stories are immenly intriguing.
B. Landscape description: His landscape descriptions are majestic and suggestive of sir Walter Scott, the legendary spirit of who border tales might have been a source of inspiration for him.
C. A rich imagination: He had never been to the frontier and among the Indians and yet could write five huge epic books about them with his rich imagination. Free from injustice, he treated the American Indians as noble savages.
D. Clumsy style: his style is dreadful; his characterization ems wooden and lacking in probability.
6. His Contribution
a. Cooper hit upon the native subject of frontier and wilderness.
b. He contributed to American literature different subgenres of novels: spy novel, a novel, frontier novel, and historical romance.
