American Literature
牛奶饼Early American Literature: Colonial Period to 1815
1. In Native American oral literature, three main types of stories could be found: origin stories, trickster tales, and historical narratives.
2. Conventionally, we view that Captain John Smith (1580—1631) was the first American writer, who wrote the “First book of American” —A True Relation to Virginia.
3. The American dream for the Puritans, as the Massachutts Puritan governor John Winthop put it, was to build a “city on the hill.”
4. Anne Bradstreet was a woman poet in the colonial period. H经常洗头er “domestic” poems and the Contemplations are today recognized as her best literary achievement. oppo手机开不了机了怎么办
5. In 1692, the biggest witchcraft hunting took place in Salem. One of the eight judges was the great grandfather of Nathaniel Hawthorne. As a notorious historical event, the Sa
lem trials also provided, in the 20th century, the basis and material for Arthur Miller’s drama The Crucible and Mary Conde’s novel I, Tituba.
6. Poor Richard’s Almanac was written by Benjamin Franklin. “Early to bed and early to ri, makes a man healthy wealthy and wi,” proverbs like this showed Franklin’s wisdom. He also wrote The Way to Wealth and Autobiography.
7. The Declaration of Independence was drafted by Thomas Jefferson in June, 1776. It is a national symbol of liberty and a monument to Jefferson as a statesman and author.
American Romanticism: 1815-1865
8. 坚定信仰The Age of American Romanticism generally referred to the fifty-year period from 1815 till 1865.
9. “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” are today two of Washington Irving’s best known stories.
10. James Fenimore Cooper created an enduring American mythic hero in his 胡向真Leather-stocking novels, writing on such subjects as the Revolution, the frontier, and the wilderness.
11. “Thanatoposis (meditation on death),” was a poem written by William Cullen Byrant, a romantic poet in his passion for American wilderness and for a culturally independent America.
12. Transcendentalism, as a way of knowing (or epistemology), believes that individuals can intuitively receive higher truths otherwi unavailable through common methods of knowing, thus transcending the limits of rationalism.
13. Ralph Waldo Emerson工作宣言, the leading spokesman for Transcendentalism, is today regarded as the “Father” of American literature. His famous essays include “Nature”, “The American Scholar”, “Self-reliance”, “The Over-Soul”, etc. “Self-Reliance” epitomizes Emerson’s practical philosophy and is most quoted. The idea of non-conformity—“Trust thylf”—is keeping with Emerson’s Puritan inheritance.
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14. Henry David Thoreau is primarily remembered by two of his works: Walden (1854) and the essay “Civil Disobedience” (1849). They were written as a result of two of his most extreme acts: that he went to live in a hut in the woods by the Walden Pond, and that he once refud to pay tax to protest against the Mexican War and was imprisoned for it.
15. Literary historians believe that The Scarlet Letter was undoubtedly the first great American novel. Hawthorne is not only connected with the Puritan heritages but is ambivalent towards it. His truth is conveyed mainly through allegory and symbol.
16. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick tells the strange story of the possd and implacable Captain risking his life, tho of his crew and his ship on the rough as in arch of a monstrous white whale.
17. Edgar Allan Poe is a critic, poet and short story writer. His “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the Hou of Usher” are two famous Gothic tales. “The Raven” is one of his most famous poems.
18. Walt Whitman first published Leaves of Grass in 1855. In the poems we find a poet who is a fervent advocate for equality and democracy, a poet celebrating the people in villages and cities of America, a poet in love with a Nature embodying the Over-soul, and a poet who express the pleasures of x and the xuality of the body. Technically speaking, Whitman’s poetry is “free ver” in that the lack of meter and rhyme is known as his major technical西葫芦鸡蛋汤 innovation. “Song of Mylf” is the longest and one of the best in Whitman’s canon. “O Captain! My Captain!” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” were occasioned by President Abraham Lincoln’s tragic death and the subquent nation-wide mourning.
19. Emily Dickinson once wrote in a poem: “This is my letter to the World/That never wrote to Me.” In her poems, there is a spiritual and emotional intensity expresd in unique imagery. Most of her poems were published after her death.
American Realism: 1865-1914
20. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Mark Twain’s master work, the one book from
which as Ernest Hemingway noted, “all modern American literature comes.” His other fictional works include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Gilded Age, The Innocents Abroad, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
21. Henry James’ fame rested largely upon his handling of his major fictional theme, “the international theme”, which defines American characters in the European context and contrasts the two societies and cultural forces. The Wings of Dove, The Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl are three of his best novels.
