美国文学史及选读论文

美国文学史及选读论文（共6篇）

美国文学史及选读论文 篇1

闽 江 学 院

教

案

课 程 名 称:主要英语国家文学史及文学作品选读 2 课 程 代 码: 31020022 授 课 教 师 ： 吴文南 系 别 ： 外语系

2010年3 月2 日 授课专业班级 ： 英语本科, 英语师范, 英语专升本

Introduction Teaching aid tool: a map of early America Teaching aim: the students learn why and how to learn literature course, get the general idea of the colonial America and their literary forms.Key Points: a.learning aim;b.Learning method;c.Colonial American characteristics.I.Introduction of the course 1.Why should we learn the course:

a.One of the main reasons might be that literature offers a bountiful and extremely varied body of written material, which is “important in the sense that it says something about fundamental human issues and which is enduring rather than ephemeral.Its relevance moves with the passing of time, but seldom disappears completely the Shakespeare plays whose ending were rewritten to conform to late 17th century taste and which were later staged to give maximum prominence to their romantic hero figures are now explored for their psychoanalytic import.In this way, though its meaning does not remain static, a literary work can transcend both time and culture to speak directly to a reader in another country or a different period of history.Literature is authentic material.By that we simply mean that most works of literature are not fashioned for the specific purpose of teaching a language.Recent course materials have quite rightly incorporated many authentic samples of language---for example, travel timetable, city plans, forms, pamphlets, cartoons, advertisements, newspaper or magazine articles.Learners are thus exposed to language that is as genuine and undistorted as can be managed in the classroom context.In reading literary texts, students have also to cope with language intended for native speakers and thus we gain additional familiarity with many different linguistic uses, forms and conventions of the written mode with irony, exposition, argument, narration and so on.b.Cultural enrichment: For many language learners, more indirect routes to understand a country must be adopted so that they gain an understanding of the way of life of the country: radio programmers, films and videos, newspapers and last, literary works.It is true of course that the “world” of a novel, play, or short story is a created one, yet it offers a full and vivid context in which characters from many social backgrounds can be depicted.A reader can discover their thoughts, feelings, customs, and possessions: what they buy, believe in, fear, enjoy;how they speak and behave closed doors.Reading the literature of a historical period is one of the ways we have to help us imagine what life was like in that other foreign territory.Literature is perhaps best seen as a complement to other materials used to increase the foreign learner‟s insight into the country whose language is being learnt.c.language enrichment: we have said that reading literary works exposes the student to many function of the written language, but what about other linguistic advantages? Language enrichment is one benefit often sought through literature, while there is little a=doubt that extensive reading increases a learner‟s receptive vocabulary and facilitates transfer to a more active form of knowledge, it is sometimes objected that literature does not give learners the kind of vocabulary they really need.It may be “authentic” in the sense already mentioned, but the language of literary works is not typical of the language of daily life, nor is it like the language used in learners‟ textbooks.We would not wish students to think that Elizabeth Berret Brownning‟s “How Do I love Thee? Is the kind of utterance normally whispered into a lover‟s era nowadays!The objection to literature on the grounds of lexical appropracy has some validity, but it need not be an overriding one if teachers make a judicious choice of the text to be read, considering it as a counterpoise and supplement to other materials.On the positive side, literature provides a rich context in which individual lexical or syntactical items are made more memorable.Reading a substantial and contextual zed body of text, students gain familiarity with many features of the written language---the formation and function of relines, the variety of possible structures, the different ways of connecting ideas---which broaden and enrich their own writing skills.The extensive reading required in tackling a novel or long play develops the student‟s ability to make inferences from linguistic clues, and to deduce meaning from context, both useful tools in reading other sorts of material as well.Literature helps extend the intermediate or advanced learner‟s awareness of the range of language itself.Literary language is not always that of daily communication, as we have mentioned, but it is special in its way.It is heightened: sometimes elaborate, sometimes marvelously simply yet, somehow, absolutely “right”.2.What should we learn? History and Anthology of American literature 3.Some Literary works: Selected Reading in American Literature

扬岂深 Selected Reading in American Literature

陶洁 Selected Reading in American Literature

常耀信

Contemporary American Literature with Collateral Readings 秦小孟 High Lights of American Literature

钱青

An Anthology of 20th Century American Fiction

万培德 A Survey of American Literature

常耀信 20世纪美国文学导论

李公昭 二十世纪美国文学导读

张立新

Part I

The Literature of Colonial America I.II.Teaching Time: 2 teaching hours.Teaching Aim: through introduction, the students should get an idea about the history and development of American nation and how did the American literature came into being and what is the characteristic of its early literature.III.Teaching method: Teacher‟s Presentation.IV.Teaching Tool: multi-medium.V.Key points: the characteristics of early literature.Introduction I.The native Americans and their culture:

Before being explored by European adventurers the American Continent had long been inhabitated by the natives---American Indians.Physical characteristics of the American Indians are mongolocial or a mixture of that with something else.They probably first began coming from Asia to America during the Ice „Age,8000-5999 BC.They crossed Berring Strait by raft.Through hundred and thousands of years these earliest inhabitants developed their own civilizations.They learned agriculture, basketry and pottery.The most striking achievements were in agriculture.Maize---“Indian Corn” was developed from a wild grass.The white potato, the cacao bean, tobacco were all developed by Indians.Indians remained in tribe society.II.The historical background of the Colonial Time: 1.the first England settlement: Christophe Columbus(1451 he believed the world is round, find the route to East by sailing West, he asked the help from Queen of Spain to support him.On Aug.3.1492, three small vessels set sail with 100 crews, after several months of sailing they arrived at Balama Island---San Salvador on Oct.12.1492.He landed and in March 1493 returned.He had 4 voyages in his lifetime.2.English settlement: 1607 Captain Christopher Newport, three ships---Chesapeake Bay Jamestown

Mayflower

1620 Plymouth Puritans

New England area 3.Conflicts with Indians and the founding of 13 colonies.III.The development of Literature:

American literature emerged out of obscurity into history only some four centuries ago.It is the newest of the literatures of great nations, yet it is original in many aspects.It is original because it mirrors the history of America, and epitomizes the development of political and economics, social and psychological institutions.It is original because upon it has played most of those great historical forces and factors that have molded the modern world: immigration, nationalism, individualism, imperialism, religion, science, technology and democracy.In addition to its realistic and vivid reflection of the madding of the distinctly shaped character of American people, it is original in variety and cultural colors;such features of American literature may find expression in its products in the colonial period.John Smith

a British soldier of fortune “A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as hath happened in Virginia”

“New England Trials”

“The General History of Virginia”

Within a few decades a considerable number of learned people, such as Puritan clergymen and governors, produced a considerable body of writing of high literary quality, yet they were not literary people in the professional sense.Their writing included diaries, travel books, collections of letters, journals, histories, poetry, biographies, autobiographies and prose, to which the Puritans contributed much.In addition to being true believers of their religious doctrines, the early puritans generally have college education with a sound knowledge of the literary classics, and learned much about the basic qualities of literature from the ancient and contemporary authors in the old continent.Such responsible for the two essential characteristics of the early American literature: their religious subject and imitation of English literary traditions.(1)William Bradford(1590-1657)Of Plymouth Plantation

(2)John Winthrop

(governor of Massachusetts Bay)Journal

1790 The History of New England(3)Edward Taylor

The New England Quarterly(4)Cotton Mather Magnolia Christi Americana Characteristics:

In spite of the unique features that the colonial men of letters, reflected in their writings, some common characteristic run through almost all the principal works of the major literary figures of the colonial period, which mirrored the nature of colonial American literature and continued to be the subsequent development of American literature and of America itself.Puritanism was central to colonial American literature and its impact could find expression in almost all respects concerning literature.The conviction that all religious progress centered in the individual led colonial writers to make records of his spiritual development in the forms of diary and autobiography: a strenuous self-analysis and ceaseless searching of conscience in the writings of the Puritans was the result of their belief that “election” would show itself in the behavior and in the experiences of the inner life of the individual.In keeping with the belief that American literature should concern itself with spiritual and in the experiences of the inner life of the individual.In keeping with the belief that literature should concern with spiritual values, the sermon became the most highly developed and the most popular of Puritan and compact expression, and its avoidance of rhetorical decoration excellently illustrated Puritan aesthetic and moral theories.In accordance with their way of life, the Puritans preferred a style characterized by homeliness of imagery, simplicity of diction and an emphasis on the values most easily recognized by their readers.It is for the same reason that they disliked the sensuous appeal of certain types of imagery and favored the figures and images drawn from the common experiences of the New England settlers.Questions for discussion: 1.What were the features of colonial America? 2.What were the literary characteristics? 3.What was the Puritanism? Reference Books: 1.《美国文学教程》 第一章2． 《美国文学的周期》

E.Spiller 3.《新编美国文学史》 第二章

刘海平

常曜信

Part II

The Literature of Reason and Revolution I，Teaching time: 2 teaching hours II.Teaching Aim: the students should know the reason and effect of American Revolution, and the characteristics of the literature.Through learning the selected works, the students get to know the writing style of them.III.Teaching Method: a.presentation, b.analysis of the contexts of the works, c.questions and discussion.IV.Key points: writing style of the prose works.Introduction: I.The Historical Background: a)two revolutions {American Revolution

Enlightenment(1)European‟s conflicts in the New Continent;(2)The cause of the Revolution;(3)The procedure of the Revolution;(4)The significance of the Revolution.II.The Development of Literature:(1)prose of Thomas Paine, Franklin and Thomas Jefferson;(2)Poetry of Byrant Questions for Discussion:(1)What do you know about American Revolution?(2)What do you know about Washinton?(3)What is the main trend of literature? III.Authors and their writings in this period:(1)Benjamin Franklin a.his life and works: Benjamin Franklin was a brilliant, industrious and versatile man.Starting as a poor boy in a family of 17 children, he became famous on both sides of the Atlantic as a statesman, scientist and author.Despite his fame, he always remained a man of industry and simple tastes.Franklin‟s writings range from informal sermons on thrift to urbane essays.He wrote gracefully as well as clearly with a wit which often gave an edge to his words.Though the style he formed came from imitating two noted English essayists, Addison and Steele, he made it into his own.His most famous work is his Autobiography.Before his autobiography, his “Poor Richard‟s Almanac(1733-1758)became popular readings which contain many proverbs like: Early to bed, and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.Franklin‟s Autobiography is many things.First of all it is an inspiring account of a poor boy‟s rise to a high position.Franklin tells his story modestly, omitting some of his misdeeds, his errors as being much less than perfect.He is resigned to the fact that his misdeeds will often receive a punishment of one sort or another.Viewing himself with objectivity, Franklin offers his life story as a lesson to others.It is a positive lesson that teaches the reader to live a useful life.In fact the Autobiography is a how-to-do it book, a book on the art of self-improvement.In 1771, while living in England and serving as ambassador for most of the colonies, Franklin began his autobiography as a letter to his son, Willliam.He got as far as the year 1730(including his arrival in Philadelphia)being interrupted by “the affairs of the Revolution”.In 1784, while living at Passy, France, then a suburb of Paris, he extended his Autobiography through 1731.The bulk of the remainder of the work was added in 1788 and the final few pages were written in1790, the year of his death.None of this was published while Franklin lived.Shortly after his death, a French translation of his life to 1731(the first two section that Franklin wrote)was published.Though this was soon translated into English and published in London, the “official text did not appear until 1818, as part of the works of Benjamin Franklin,” edited by his grandson William Temple Franklin.The first “complete” Autobiography---with the pages written in 1790---did not appear until 1868, edited by John Bigelow, who had bought Franklin‟s original manuscript from a Franklin family the previous year.The Autobiography covers Franklin‟s life only until 1757 when he was 51 years old, well before his major accomplishments as a diplomat.The work as a whole was written by a man well beyond the normal age of retirement, yet it is not the less lively for that fact.Franklin‟s mastery of a prose style characterized by clarity, concision, flexibility and order was central to his fame as a great man of letters.Such major features of his style was summarized by himself in a short paragraph:

The words used should be the most expressive that the language affords, provided that they are the most generally understood.Nothing should be expressed in two words that can as well be expressed in one;that is, no synonyms should be used, or rarely, but the whole should be as short as possible, consistent with clearness: the words should be placed as to agreeable to the ear in reading;summarily, it should be smooth, clear, and short for the contrary qualities are displeasing.(2)Analysis of the Selected part: A.3 paragraphs: a.what interest did Franklin have as a child;a.Being an apprentice to his brother, Franklin began writing;b.Improving argumentation.Summary: Franklin was thirty to knowledge and trying to learn the language with practical methods.B

a.the way of learning languages;b.Practice makes perfect;c.Relations to his relatives;d.Learning club.Summary: Franklin was a practical man.In learning languages we know he had a strong endurance and leaver mind.Part III The Literature of Romanticism I.II.Teaching Time : 8 periods.Teaching Aim: the students should know the characteristic of the origin and development of romanticism in American literature.Transcendentalism as a typical American literature trend developed in American land should be mastered.The students should know how to analyze Bryant‟s two poems.III.Key Points: characteristic of American romanticism and their writers.Part One: Historical Introduction:

We are now dealing with one f the most important periods in the history of American literature, the Romantic period, which stretches from the end of the eighteenth century through the outbreak of the Civil War.Here we see a rising America fast burgeoning into a political, economic and cultural independence it had never known before.Democracy and political equality became the ideals of the new nation.Radical changes came about in the political life of the country.Parties began to squabble and scramble for power, and a new system was in the making.The spread of industrialism, the sudden influx of immigration, and the “pioneers” pushing the frontier further west---all these produced something of an economic boom and, with it, a tremendous sense of optimism and hope among the people.A nation bursting into new life for literary expression.The buoyant mood of the nation and the sprit of the times seem in some measure responsible for the spectacular outburst of romantic feeling in the first half of the nineteenth century.The literary milieu proved fertile and conducive to the imagination as well.Among other things, magazines appeared in ever-increasing numbers, of which The North American Review, The New York Mirror, The American Quarterly Review, The New England Magazine, The Southern Review, The Southern Literary Messenger, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper‟s Magazine and Knickerbockers Magazine played an important role in facilitating literary expansion in the country.Foreign influences added incentive to the growth of romanticism in America.The Romantic Movement, which had flourished earlier in the century both in England and Europe, proved to be a decisive influence without which the upsurge of American romanticism would hardly have been possible.Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor Cole ridge, William Wordsworth, Byron, Robert Burns and many other English and European masters of poetry and prose all made a stimulating impact on the different departments of the country‟s literature.The influence of Sir Walter Scott was particularly powerful and enduring.His border tales and Waverley romances inspired many American authors such as James Fennimore Cooper with irresistible creative impulses.Scott‟s Waverley novels were models for American historical romance, and his The Lady of the Lake, together with Byron‟s Oriental romances, helped toward the development of American Indian romance.He was, in a way, responsible for the romantic description of landscape in American literature.The Gothic tradition, and the cult of solitude and of gloom came through interest in the works of writers like Mrs.Radcliff, E.T.A.Hoffman, James Thomson and the “graveyard‟ poets.Robert Burns and Byron both inspired and spurred the American imagination for lyrics of love and passion and despair.The impact of Lyrical Ballads of Wordswoth and Coleridge added, to some extent, to the nation‟s singing strength.Thus American romanticism was in a way derivative: American romantic writing was some of them modeled on English and European works.On the other hand, American romanticism had distinct features of its own.Different from their European counterparts, American romantics tended to moralize, to edify rather than to entertain.They presented an entirely new experience alien to European culture.The exotic landscape, the frontier life, the westward expansion, the myth of a New Garden of Eden in America, and the Puritan heritage were just a few examples of the native material for an indigenous literature.Evidently, it produced a feeling of “newness” which inspired the romantic imagination.Part II.Writers of the period 1.Washington Irving(1783-1859)I.Introduction of his life and works: Washington Irving was the first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame.He became, in the words of the English novelist Thakeray, “ the first Ambassador whom the new World of letters sent to the old.” Irving was born the youngest of seven children of a precious reader and the author of juvenile poems, plays and essays when he was 16;he began the study of the law for which he had little relish.He preferred instead to pass his time in desultory reading and in the society of literary wits of New York.At 19, he began to contribute a serious of sketches or “letters” on society and the theater to the Morning Chronicle, a New York newspaper.When he was 21, Irving went on a grand tour of Europe.Two years later he returned to New York to be admitted to the bar and to begin the leisurely life of a gentleman lawyer;shortly afterward, Irving started work on what was to be his first literary triumph, his “History of New York(1809)by “Derrick Knickerbockers.” It was an irreverent to spoof of historical scholarship, salted with off-color comments.The book satirized the complacent Dutch burghers of early New York and pointed at the political follies of 19th century America.It also marked the beginning of the “Knickerbockers school” of New York literary satirists including Paulding, Fitzgreen Hallack and Joseph Rodman Drake who took their names and humorous tone from Irving‟s knickbocker History and flourished in New York in the first decades of the 19th century.At the end of the war of 1812, Irving was sent to England to supervise the Liverpool Branch of the family firm, but in 1818, as a result of the war and bad management, the firm went bankrupt.Irving was left only with a dislike for the “dirty soul-killing” world of business and a need to find a livelihood.His “History of New York” has earned the magnificent sum of $3000, so he turned to writing and began preparation of “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent(1820).It was the first work by an American to receive wide international acclaim and it made Irving a celebrity, praised alike in America and England.In it was the two tales that brought him his most enduring fame.“Rip Van Winckles” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

With his new literary success, Irving gave up all thought of returning to America and the world of trade or law.He set out to become a professional man of letters.The Sketch Book was soon followed by Bracebridge Hill(1822), a series of sketches on England country life.In 1824, he published “Tales of a Traveller”, his first volume of fiction, filled with years of the supernatural and clanking with the ghostly machinery of romantic Gothicism.In 1826 his literary fame earned him appointment as an American diplomatic attaché in Spain and there he gathered material for a biography of Christopher Columbers(1826).He wrote severy such kind of biographies.Irving then returned to England, where he accepted appointment as an American diplomat in London and three years later when he was nearing 50, he returned to the United States after an absence of 17 years.He bought “Sunnyside” his famous home on the Hudson River at Tarrytown and there, except for four years as United States minister to Spain he lived as a country spire, writing a series of histories and biographies.A study of Irving‟s works would lead to the conclusion that humor was at the root of almost everything that was significant in them.What was more impressive was that his humor was always well meaning, mild and easy to be accepted.Early in the 19th century when most of the American writers were speaking in the authoritative voice of a gentleman who seems to be superior in maturity, knowledge, sense, and good taste, and when the majority of American periodicals depended heavily on a broad, explosive humor and sarcasm that gradually vulgarized the periodical essay tradition, Irving‟s humor did much to cultivate a new literary taste.The style of Irving‟s work is characterized by simplicity, poise and ease flow.Unlike the tightly structured stories of Poe and Hawthorne, the tastes of Irving lie in his literary innovations and transitional role in the development of American literature.III.Analysis of the tale: 1.Plot structure of action: e.Exposition: time, place, persons preliminary condition of affairs;f.Development Conflicts Crane to Brom Bones;Crane to the girl;Crane to farmers;Crane to ghost;g.Summary----pumpkin, Bones marries the girl, some still believe in ghosts, h.Setting-----i.Style

Questions for discussion: 1.What is the plot of the story? 2.How did the conflict develop in the story? 3.What is the function of the setting? 4.What is the style of the story? Homework: Read the story Rip Van Winkle.2.James Fennimore Cooper(1789-1851)(a)Introduction: Cooper never saw the frontier.The advanced line of settlement that moved westward from the Atlantic had passed beyond Cooperstown, New York before his birth and throughout his life;he never traveled farther west than Michigan.Yet his writing helped create a mythical west that transcended the reality of life on the frontier, and in his greatest character---Natty Bumppo, or “Leatherstocking”---Cooper created an archetypal western hero whose many literary descendants range from the cowboys of popular fiction and the movies to the hero of Melville, Twain and Faulkner.James Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey.When he was thirteen months old, he was taken with his family to a small wildness settlement on Lake Otsego, 150 miles north of New York City.The village was named Cooperstown after his father, William Cooper, a rich member of the landed gentry who had acquired vast tracts of land in New York State following the American Revolution.James Cooper was raised in the rural family “Manor House”, and he roamed the edge of a wildness that stretched a thousand miles to the Mississippi.Although he saw the white hunters and the numerous wagon trains of settlers that passed through Cooperstown on their way west, he saw little of the once numerous reedmen of the eastern forests.Later in life he acknowledged, “ I was never among the Indians.All that I know of them is from reading and from hearing my father speak of them.”

When Cooper was fourteen, he entered Yale, but in his junior years after a series of undergraduate brawls and pranks he was expelled and was sent to sea as a common sailor on an Atlantic merchant ship.In 1808, he became a mild shipman in the U.S navy and served on Lawrence.In 1811, after the death of his father left him an inheritance of $50,000, Cooper resigned from the navy.He then married and began the free-spending life of a wealth gentleman.By 1819, his inheritance was gone and he was heavily in debt.To regain his fortunes, he speculated in land, invested in a frontier store and a whaling ship, and in 1820 he began writing the fiction that eventually brought him wealth and worldly fame.According to tradition, he once tossed aside a popular-sentimental novel with the comment that he could do better himself.When his family challenged him to fulfill his boast he wrote a tale that he quickly recognized as a botch and destroyed.His second attempt was Precaution(1820).It was a full-length novel of English life, written in imitation of Jane Austin and filled with the conventional sentimentality of the day‟s best sellers.Precaution was dull, and a financial failure, but it brought Cooper recognition and helped prepare the way for his next work.The Spy(1821), a novel of the American Revolution.The Spy appealed to patriotic American hungry for exciting fiction that dealt with American scenes and events.It soon went through three editions;it was translated into several European languages and turned into a stage play.And it started Cooper on his career as the first eminent American novelist.Two years later Cooper published The Pioneers(1823), a romance of the American frontier that was an immediate best seller.It was the first of the “Leatherstocking Tales,” five novels of the life of Natty Bumppo.They included “The Last of Mohicans”(1826), The Prairie(1927), The Pathfinder(1840), and the Deerslayer(1841).Following his success with The Pioneer, Cooper drew upon his own experiences and wrote The Pilot(1841)the first of eleven novels of the sea that he wrote over a period of three decades.In 1926, with his financial burdens eased by the profits from his writing Cooper left America to live abroad, partly to escape his remaining debts and partly to experience what he saw as the rich context of European society, while living in Paris and London and touring the Continent, he completed seven more novels and he received the adulation of a vast audience that read the numerous European translations of his works.In 1833, now financially independent, he returned to the United States and eventually settled in Coopstown.There he continued his prolific writing of novels(he eventually wrote 32), histories and essays on society.Patriotic, early critics honored Cooper for creating a literature out of nature materials and they railed him as the American Scott---an accurate but patronizing comparison that Cooper came to detest.But his greatest achievement was his portrayed of the age-old theme of Christian innocence struggling in a paradise lost, the majestic them of the irresistible force of civilization that destroyed the American wilderness and all its noble simplicities.It was a theme that Cooper embodies in his archetypal hero, Natty Bumppo, a character whose flights from society and domesti9city mark him as the first of the symbolic rebels in American writing and one of the most memorable characters in all of fiction.(b)Analysis of the selected part:

Questions for understanding: 1.How does Uncas demonstrate his courage? 2.Do you think that the Hurons were afraid of Uncas and Chingachgook? 3.How was Hawkey‟s weapon different from those used by the others? 4.How many Hurons were there? 5.Describe how Cora was saved from being scalped? 6.How does Magua escape from Chingachgook? 7.What observation does Hawkey make on the difference in defeat in battle between a huron and a Mohican? 8.What advice does Hawkey give to David? 9.Do you think it was unmanly for Heyward to cry? 10.Do you think the fight believable?

4.William Cullen Bryant(„1704-1878)I.Introduction of his life and works:

Long famous as the first American lyric poet of distinction, William Cullen Bryant glorified the morning of the American national literature with several volumes of his brilliant poetry, some of which have proved to be timeless to enrich the treasure house of American poetry.Besides his achievement in poetry, Bryant, as one of the great personalities of his age, was central to the American romantic movement, his force, courage and liberalism as critic and editor provided effective leadership in American cultural and political life for half a century, from the age of Jackson throughout the Civil /war and reconstruction period.The son of an enthusiastic naturalist, Bryant was born in Cummington, Massachusetts, whose beautiful natural landscape exerted such an potential influence upon the future poet that he recalled later his experience when reading The Lyrical Ballads at the age of sixteen: “ a thousand springs seemed to gush up at once into my heart and the force of nature, of sudden, to change into a strange freshness.” In addition to the inspiration of nature, Bryant received the best possible education from his childhood, both at a local school at his hometown and at William College, as well as through his reading in his father‟s ample library.His uncle was also responsible in preparing the way for the growth of the future poet by tutoring him in classical language and literature.Bryant was only 9 when he began to write poems.At the age of 14 he published his satire The Enbargo(1808), a poem in reaction against Jefferson‟s trade restriction.In 1811 he had finished the first draft of his best poem “Thanatopsis”, whose publication in 1817 brought him not only his first success but also general attention to his extraordinary genius.His first collection poems appeared in Boston in 1821, which consisted eight of his poems, such as his most famous poems “To a Waterfowl”, “Thantopsis” and “The Yellow violet” and thereafter established his position in the history of American literature.In 1825 he went to New York, the literary capital of the period and served as assistant editor of the Evening Post, a position providing more opportunities for him to display his dynamic force in American cultural and political life.The year 1829 saw that Bryant became editor in chief of the paper, one of the first great national newspaper in America, and from this time onward he grew to be a dominant leader in American literature and public causes.He established close relationship with Cooper, Irving and other major literary figures, with whom he gave an American formulation to the romantic movement and moreover his frequent lectures on poetry brought him popularity as influential critic.From 1832 to 1864 he published six volumes, including The Fountain(1842), The White-Footed Deer(1944)and The Food of Years(1878), with which he remained a popular favorite.His ever increasing achievements and reputation inn literature also made him become a public speaker, who as a liberal democrat, wrote and published continuously in his newspaper articles to strive for various freedoms, such as freedom of religion, of speech, of free trade, of the masses from the intolerable exploitation of debtor as well as banking and currency regulation and the freedom of the slaves.His devotion to public affairs drained him time and energy, but he never stopped his literary creation.His library of Poetry and song(1871-1872), the first great critical anthology, was his last literary effort.Another treasure that Bryant left was his poetic translation of Homer‟s Iliad(1870)and Odyssey(1871).Nature was the chief theme of Bryant‟s poetry and besides religion and concern for humanitarian reforms and national morality were persistent themes.As a poet, Bryant wrote of his own experience in nature and society, opposed to the conventional insipid generalization about nature, and the best of his poems provided an excellent example of truthful experience, precise expression, and disciplined imagination.Varieties of influences on Bryant‟s early activity as a poet included the neoclassical forms of Addison and Poe, the attitude of the “graveyard poets” like Young and Thomson, and the romantic conceptions of Scott, Burns and Wordsworth.His early poetry reflected some features of imitation, but soon learned to absorb them into his independent style.In addition to the alien influence, nature played a crucial role in the awakening of Bryant as a poet and in his poetic creation.To Bryant, nature was the symbol of the Maker, the mighty cause, and the infinite source;and the purpose of nature as the artifact of the Maker was to keep man‟s mind directed to the Supreme Craftsmen.Bryant held that nature should impact moral instruction and that it should elevate man.II.Analysis to the poem:

Thanatopsis Questions for discussion: 1.Look up the word thantopsis in a dictionary and explain its origin and meaning.2.Bryant divides his poem into three parts.Discuss why you think he made these particular divisions.3.What advice does the speaker give to those who shudder tat the thought of death? 4.What does the speaker mean when he says that the person who dies does not retire alone? 5.Interpret the following passage: “each one as before will chase/His favorite phantom…”

6.Explain how the person addressed as thou” gains in stature and importance as the poem progress.7.What is the message of the poet? Comment on the poem This poem is written in blank verse, namely, in unrhymed iambic pentameter, for the advantage to express with more freedom.At the idea of death, the beauty of nature will make a person less pessimistic.At the age of 16, when other kids were indulging in juvenile frivolity, Bryant already began to meditate over the significance of life and death.As a poet of the early 19th century, Bryant develops a view of man‟s final destiny.To the Puritans, death was seen as a preliminary to an afterlife.Bryant, however, treats death as part of nature, as the destiny of us all, and as the great equalizer in this world.In Bryant‟s view, to those “who in the love of nature,” nature offers all the kindness by presenting a smile and eloquence of beauty when one is in “gayer hours”;it shows sympathy and steals away their sharpness when one is in his darker musings.The death of a man means nothing but the returning to the origin, or a returning to nature.With this prospect, the reader may first be shocked, and soon after, he may shudder and grow sick at heart.However, if at that moment one just goes out to listen, a voice confirms that “Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim thy growth, to be resolved to earth again.” Then he would become brother to rocks, clod, birds and to oak trees, he would lie side by side with patriarchs, with the wise, the good and the beauteous.Running around, is the all-beholding sun.In this kingdom, he is not the first, nor ought to be the last.Before the eternity of nature, a human being is rather frail and weak.Once he joins in the “one mighty sepulcher,” he becomes a part of the hill, the vale, the woods, the river and he is tremendously stronger.Without a single exception, human beings will all share his destiny.To a Waterfowl Stanza 1: With the arrival of evening and in the setting sun and falling dew, where will the waterfowl, through the rosy clouds, fly? Stanza 2: In the rosy light of the setting sun, the hunter might see the bird, but it is too distant to be harmed.Thus it is able for the bird to fly easily and delightedly.Stanza 3: The poet is enquiring the destination of the fowl: Is it by the lake, along the river or at the ocean side? Stanza4: The poet believes that a supernatural power is guiding and protecting the bird.Stanza 5: The evening is falling and the bird, though rather exhausted, kept on flying.Stanza6: Soon the weary flight will end and a shelter will be found.Stanza 7: Though the bird has flown out of sight, the lesson it taught will stay in my heart forever.Stanza 8: As God leads the bird;my life should be guided by the same power, too.Comment on the poem

In the first three stanzas, there is no hint of any morals.However, in the fourth stanza, all of a sudden, a new figure as a god appears.The god has a supernatural power which directs the bird‟s flight.Bryant interrupted himself from describing a bird into teaching a lesson.Bryant may think it is not enough for a poem written just for the sake of its own, or just for the beauty of it, it should say something more than beauty, it should carry morals.It rhymes “abab”, while the lengthy of each line is so different that you cannot find a regular foot.However, the two long lines in the middle of each stanza may refer to the balance in the floating of the bird.The first and the fourth lines, which are relatively shorter, look like two wings.The stanzaic form reminds one of a flying bird.Questions for further understanding: 1.List some specific details that tell at what time of day the action of the poem is taking place.2.How would you argue for or against the idea that the time of day suggests or symbolizes death? 3.Name two or three things that the speaker and the bird have in common.4.As specified in the poem, what is the end of the bird‟s journey? 5.What might be the end of the speaker‟s journey? 6.What is the “lesson “ that the speaker learns? 7.Discuss the idea that it is a poem about blind faith.8.Scanning Poetry.5.Edgar Allan Poe(1809-1849)I.Introduction:

Poe was born in Boston, the child of traveling actors.Before he was 3, his father deserted the family, his mother died and he was taken into the home of John Allan, a prosperous merchant of Richmond, Virginia.Allan treated his foster child with leniency and harsh severity.He had Poe baptized with the middle name of Allan but failed to adopt him legally.In 2815 Allan moved to Europe on business, setting his family in England, where Poe was entered in school.Five years later, the Allans returned to Virginia, where Poe‟s school master judged him: not especially studious” but an “excellent classicist” and “the best reader of Latin verse.”

When he was 17, Poe entered the University of Virginia.He distinguished himself in Latin and French and soon gained a reputation as a self-proclaimed “aristocrat”, a poet, a wit, a gambler, and a heavy drinker.The next year, after bitter quarrels with Allan, who refused to pay Poe‟s gambling debts---he had lost $2000 at cards---Poe left the university and ran off to Boston, where he enlisted in the U.S.Army.While stationed in Boston, he arranged the publication of a slim volume of verse, “Tamerlane and other poems”(1827), his first book of poetry.In April.1829, he gained his release from the army and eight month later, his second volume of poems “Al Aaraaf, Tamerlan and Minor Poems” was published in Baltimore.Following the death of his foster-mother, Poe was briefly reconciled with Allan, who helped him secure appointment to West Point.Poe entered the academy as a cadet, when he was 21, but he remained only eight months.Galled by academy regulations and angered by a lack of support from his foster father, he deliberately violated a series of minor regulation, cut his classes, disobeyed orders to attend church, and early in 1831 he was dismissed.Just after he left West Point, his third volume of poetry was published, dedicated to “the U.S Corps of Cadets.” He then moved to Baltimore and devoted himself to earning his way as a writer.In 1832, five of Poe‟s stories were published in the Saturday Courier, a Philadelphia literary weekly.In 1833 he won first prize of $100 in a short story contest run by a Baltimore newspaper.He then returned to Richmond, where he was appointed editor---in which he published a series of stories, poems and acid literary reviews.When he was 27, he married his 13 years old cousin, Virginia Clemn.The remaining years of his life were filled with intense creativity by fits of acute mental depression and drinking bouts.In 1838 he published “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym”, his one full length novel.The next year he became co-editor of Burton‟s Gentleman‟s Magazine, a Philadelphia literary monthly to which he contributed “The Fall of the House of usher”(1839)and his sonnet “Silence”(1840).Later in 1839 his “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” appeared, his first collection of short stories.Then he became an editor of another Philadelphia monthly, Graham‟s Magazine, which printed “The Murder in the Rue Morgue” the ancestor of American detective stories.While living in New York, “The Raven”, his most famous work and an immediate success got published.When his wife died, he felt a great assault, he continued to write, say, “I have a great deal to do;and I have made up my mind not to die till it is done.” On October 3, 1849 he was found unconscious on the streets and four days later, he died.Poe‟s life had been a series of disasters: psychologically crippling childhood deprivations, bitter literary quarrels, overwhelming poverty, failed publishing ventures, even in 1848, an unsuccessful attempt at suicide.American‟s long judged his writing according to the legends.Poe‟s work was sometimes careless and derivative.He was rarely able to break from the need to do profitable hard work.The gothic terror he achieved was often commonplace, little above the popular, overheated romantic fiction of the times.Poe found his inspiration in a romanticism divorced from the actualities of American life, a world of disorder, perversity and romantic emotion.He helped established one of the world‟s most popular literary genres, the detective story.His writing influenced a variety of writers.He was among the first modern literary theorists of America, and his arguments against the didactic motive for literature and for the creation of beauty and intensity of emotion, though they ran counter to the prevailing literary ideals of his time, have had profound effect on the writers and critics who followed him.II.Analysis on his poems and story: To Helen Understanding Questions: 1.Although a real person inspired this poem, whose name was Jane;Poe addressed it to “Helen”.Why might he have done this? 2.In the final stanza, “Helen” is addressed as “Psyche” the Greek word for “breath: or “soul”.How do you reconcile this with the earlier references to Helen of Troy, whose legendary beauty led to the Trojan War? 3.Note that all three stanzas end with a reference to a place.How are these related to each other? To the meaning of the poem as a whole? Stanza 1: The poet first mentioned Helen, the most famous beauty in Greek mythology.Then Poe compared himself to Odysseus, who wandered for ten years over the sea to get home.As Odysseus, Edgar Allan Poe was persistent in his chasing after fine arts with the sincere belief that art or beauty and truth, is the ultimate aim, the home, for the wandering poet;while Helen, the embodiment of ancient beauty, is the guider to that dreamland.Stanza 2;all the art and literature originated from one thing---beauty.Having taken Helen as the embodiment of beauty, the poet was confident that once he saw Helen, he was sure to be led by Helen to the home of beauty---fine art and pure literature.Poe insisted that Greece and Rome are the homes of beauty, the treasure houses of fine art and literature.Stanza 3: The speaker sees Helen standing in the bright niche and holding in her hand an agate lamp.She is quite similar to goddess Psyche from Greek Myth.Through his description of his passion to Helen, Poe expressed his pursuit and sincere devotion to beauty.In this poem, three beauties in ancient Greek mythology---Helen, Naiad and Psyche---are mentioned just to show that beauty is something that existed;it is very holy but it is hard to reach.Comment on the poem This poem is believed to have been written when the poet was only fourteen, inspired, as Poe admitted by the beauty of Mrs.Jane Sitlth Stanard, the young mother of a school fellow who was “the first purely ideal love of my soul.” In this poem, the personal element of the young poet was almost completely sublimated in the idealization of the tradition of supernal beauty in art.The lady died in 1824, but she appeared in this poetic work in the figure of Helen, the well-known ancient beauty, with all the adoration of poet to her.In the first stanza, Helen‟s beauty is compared to the Nicean barks---a suggestion of classical associations;what‟s more, “of yore,” instead of “before” or “long ago”, is applied to add the classical atmosphere to the poem.As the ancient ships had transported the ancient hero---Ulysses—home from Troy, so will the beauty of Helen lead the poet to the home of art? The second stanza starts with “On desperate seas.” Actually, the transferred epithet is used just to show the poet‟s cordiality to the goddess of art.In classic myth, the flower Hyacinth preserved the memory of Apollo‟s love for the dead young Hyacinthus.(Hyacinthus is a very handsome young man of Greek myth and the object of Apollo‟s affections.Unfortunately, he was badly hurt by a discus when Apollo was gaming and dead soon.Very disappointed by that, Apollo changed him into the plant of hyacinth which had been taken as a symbol for affection.)All of these, the hyacinth hair, the face of classic beauty and the expression of Naiad, are charming enough to lead me to the home of art---ancient Greece and ancient Rome.In the third stanza, Helen is directly compared to goddess Psyche from the Holy Land.Through his description of his passion to Helen, Poe expressed his pursuit and sincere devotion to beauty.In the poem, three beauties in ancient Greek mythology are mentioned just to show that beauty is something that existed;it is very holy but it is hard to reach.The Raven Stanza 1: One night, while the poet was tired with reading and pondering, he heard the gentle knocks at his chamber door.Stanza 2: In a cold night when the poet was alone, he was awakened by the tapping and realized that he had failed, by reading a book, to ease his sorrow for the lost Lenore.Stanza 3: The poet felt frightened so he had to calm himself down by persuading that the tapping means a late visitor, and it could not be anything worse than that.Stanza 4: The poet was suddenly excited as to apologize for not hearing the gentle rapping, but when the door is widely opened, he found nothing but darkness outside.Stanza 5.The door was opened but it was all darkness and tranquility outside.The only sound echoing to the poet‟s ear was his murmuring of “Lenore.” He began to wonder who might have done the tapping.But the more he wondered, the more frightened he became.Stanza 6: The poet returned to his chamber but the tapping appeared again and louder.He made up his mind to calm down and find out the truth.Stanza 7: The poet opened the window and finally found that the tapping comes from a Raven perching on a bust of Pallas.Stanza 8: The poet was beguiled into smiling by the black bird and he asked its name and was replied with: “Nevermore,” which becomes the repetitive refrain of several stanzas.Stanza 9: The poet was astonished by the fact of a bird‟s talking, because neither had anybody ever experienced this nor was any bird named “Nevermore” before, despite the widely held belief that crows and ravens can mimic human speech if their tongues are “split” with a sharp tool.Stanza 10: The bird‟s repetition of “Nevermore” accidentally corresponds with the poet‟s self-talk;as if the bird is ensuring him “I will never leave.”

Stanza 11: After his astonishment, the poet realized that the bird was repeating the only word it accidentally picked up from its depressed master and it, as a matter of fact, shared nothing about the poet‟s murmuring about Hope.Stanza 12: The poet came nearer to the bird and began to fancy why the bird repeated that word.Stanza 13: Thinking about that word reminds the poet of his lost Lenore.Stanza 14: The poet felt too much troubled by the memory of Lenore so he wanted some magic drug to release him from thinking about her.Stanza 15: In stanza 14, the poet was inclined to release himself from the memory of Lenore.In the present stanza, he wants to find some magic drug to cure him.Stanza 16: The poet expressed his desire for meeting Lenore, but was boldly denied by a “Nevermore,” and this brings the poem to the climax.Stanza 17: The poet was so irritated by the bird‟s reply in the former stanza that he wanted to drive the bird away from him.However, the bird again responded with a “Nevermore”.Stanza 18: The Raven was rather innocent to the poet‟s reverie about “Lenore”.However, the poet was obsessively in a mood of frustration.Comment on the poem

The Raven was published in the New York Evening Mirror in 1845.Being regarded as the first poem with hazy conception in the West, it is the poem of which Poe himself felt quite proud and had been frequently taken by Poe as an example to illustrate his poetic art.Consisting of 18 stanzas, each with 6 lines, with the first five lines being trochaic octameter and the last line as trochaic tetrameter, this poem corresponds in every aspect with Poe‟s aesthetic standard for poetry: It took the lament over the death of a beautiful woman as its them;with the 108 lines, it is readable at one sitting;it is pervaded with a sense of melancholy.Although this poem was written in traditional feet and regular meters, Poe diverged from tradition with dramatic variation of the tone;mournful at the beginning(vainly I had sought to borrow from my book surcease of sorrow---sorrow for the lost Lenore.);then trepid at some spots;sometimes it showed a touch of humor, sometimes a mood of melancholy.But finally, a very pessimistic illusion.Once upon a dreary midnight, while the poet was pondering weak and weary, with the napping and tapping at the chamber door, the poet was led to a fantasy world of a dialogue between him and a raven.The whole scene might be a real one or just a dream, but the mysterious Raven must be a symbolic character.It may be symbolic in various ways: a.The Raven symbolizes disaster and misfortune.Raven, the large bird like crow with black feathers, in Western countries, as well as it is in China, is conventionally regarded as an ominous fowl, a symbol of misfortune.Thus with the repetition of the “napping and tapping” the poet was filled “with fantastic terrors never felt before.”

b.The raven symbolizes the soul of the radiant maiden, the “lost Lonore”.At the moment when the poet was in the darkness peering, wondering, expecting and whispering Lenore but was just responded with a “nothing more,” the Raven, “with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door.” A conversation was held and the poet was so comforted with it.For twice, the poet felt the bird “beguiling my sad fancy into smiling.”

c.The bird may be taken as a symbol of the sub-consciousness of the poet.In the conversation the poet distinctly expressed his strong passion to Lenore.However, the only response from the Raven was “Nevermore.” It seems what the poet had expressed is simply the view out of the “id”, while the Raven‟s words are rather restrictive and seem out of “ego”.The poet was too affectionate to Lenore to be restrictive, while the Raven was what warned him to be rational and that what had been lost would return “nevermore.”

d.The Raven is the symbol of modern reality.The poet was of the firm belief that in modern society human beings are apathetic creatures.He was deeply resentful at the people‟s indifference towards his mourning to Lenore;therefore, he turned to the Raven for comfort.But quite to his disappointment, he was merely responded with a cold “nevermore.”

As the most melodic poem in American literary history, Poe spent about four years for the creation of this piece of exquisite verse-narrative.In this poem, beside the regular meters and feet, the poet also employed many intricate musical expressions such as alliteration, internal rhyme, slant rhyme, end rhyme, perfect rhyme, imperfect rhyme, refrain and so on, so as to add variation, beauty and melody.Annabel Lee Stanza 1: The pretty young girl Annabel Lee used to live in a kingdom by the seaside.Before her death, the only thing in her hear was to love or to be loved by me.Stanza 2: Our love was so strong and beautiful that angels in heaven, who are with wings and living in heaven and likely to be freer and abler than any human beings, envied us.Seldom did any angels envy anything of the human world.If they did, there must be something spectacular in the object of their admiration.Stanza 3: My Annabel Lee was taken away from me.The faithful lovers were mercilessly separated by a superpower.Poe was indicating that Annabel lee might be an angel from heaven, because she was “brought back to heaven and she had some “highborn kinsmen” up there.Stanza 4: The poet was quite clear about the reason of Annabel Lee‟s is taken away from him.The evil wind came out by night and Annabel Lee was taken away by night, that indicates that somebody may appear as angels in daytime, but as devils during night.Stanza 5: Though the evil wind and the highborn kinsmen are very powerful to take my beautiful Annabel Lee away from me, they are not so powerful as to take her soul away from me.Our love is more powerful than death.After the death of one, our souls are still together.Stanza 6: My Annabel Lee had gone to heaven.She reminds me of her bright face by the moon, so that I can see her in my dream;when I see the stars in the sky, I see her bright eyes, too.We are together and nothing can separate us, neither the human power nor the God of death is possible.Comment on the poem

In Annabel Lee, when Poe was writing about the life and death of his wife, he neither did nor uses her real name, nor did he use the real background.Instead, he provided a false name and an imagined “kingdom by the sea.” On the one hand, Poe wanted to imply to us that such kind of true love could exist nowhere else but in a mythical kingdom of ancient time.Thus poe showed his resentment of reality.In the poem, Poe, instead of feeling sorry for himself, felt lost.The poem is not just a dirge.Much more than that, it is a mourning song for the death of a beautiful woman, which implies the death of beauty.This last poem has always been regarded as the best of Poe‟s poems.It coincides on every side with Poe‟s poetic theories;consisting of 41 lines, it is quite readable at one sitting;it wears a sad and melancholy tone;it tells the story of the death of a beautiful woman;with the repetition of the/ / sound, it was so rhythmically written into a piece of “word music”.Short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” Analysis of the story: When the narrator sees Roderick Usher, he is shocked at the change in his old friend.Never before has he seen a person who looks so much like a corpse with a “cadaverousness of complexion.” Death is in the air;the first meeting prepares us for the untimely and ghastly death of Roderick Usher later in the story.Usher tries to explain the nature of his illness;he suffers from a “morbid acuteness of the senses”.He can eat “only the most insipid food, wear only delicate garments,” and he must avoid the odors of all flowers.His eyes, he says, are “tortured by even a faint light,” and only a few sounds from certain stringed instruments are endurable.As Roderick Usher explains that he has not left the house in many years and that his only companion has been his beloved sister, the lady Madeline, we are startled by Poe‟s unexpectedly introducing her ghostly form far in the distance.Suddenly, while Roderick is speaking, Madeline passes “slowly through a remote portion of the apartment: and disappears without ever having noticed the narrator‟s presence.No doctor has been able to discover the nature of her illness---it is “a settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person” in a “cataleptically” state;that is, Lady Madeline cannot respond to any outside stimuli.The narrator then tells us that nevermore will he see her alive.Of course, then, the question at the end of the story is: Was the Lady Madeline ever alive? Or is the narrator deceiving the reader by this statement? Roderick Usher and the narrator speak no more of the Lady Madeline;they pass the days reading together or painting, and yet Usher continues to be in a gloomy state of mind.We also learn that one of Usher‟s paintings impresses the narrator immensely with its originality and its bizarre depiction: It is a picture of a luminous tunnel or vault with no visible outlet.This visual image is symbolic of what will happen later;it suggests both the vault that Usher will put his sister into and also the maelstrom that will finally destroy the House of Usher.Likewise, the poem “The Haunted palace,” which Poe places almost exactly in the center of the story, is similar to the house of Usher in that some “evil things” are the influencing its occupants in the same way that Roderick Usher, the author of the poem seems to be haunted by some unnamed “evil things.” After he has finished reading the poem, usher offers another of his bizarre views;this time, he muses on the possibility that vegetables and fungi are sentient beings---that is, that they are conscious and capable f having feelings of their own.He feels that the growth around the House of Usher has this peculiar ability to feel and sense matters within the house itself.This otherworldly atmosphere enhances Poe‟s already grimly threatening atmosphere.One day, Roderick Usher announces that the Lady Madeline is “no more”;he says further that he is going to preserve her corpse for two weeks because of the inaccessibility of the family burial ground and also because of the “unusual character of the malady of the deceased.” These enigmatic statements are foreboding;they prepare the reader for the re-emergence of the Lady Madeline as a living corpse.At the request of Usher, the narrator helps carry the “unconfined‟ body to an underground vault where the atmosphere is so oppressive that their torches almost go out.Again Poe is using a highly effective gothic technique by using these deep, dark underground vaults, lighted only by torches, and by having a dead body carried downward to a great depth where everything is dank, dark, and damp.After some days of bitter grief, Usher changes appreciably;now he wanders feverishly and hurries from one chamber to another.Often he stops and stares vacantly into space as though he is listening to some faint sound;his terrified condition brings terror to the narrator.Then we read that on the night of the “seventh or eighth day” after the death of the lady Madeline, the narrator begins to hear “certain low and indefinite sounds” which come from an undetermined source.As we will learn later, these sounds are coming from the buried Lady Madeline, and these are the sounds that Roderick Usher has been hearing for days.Because of his over-sensitiveness and because of the extra-sensory relationship between him and his twin sister, Roderick has been able to hear sounds long before the narrator is able to hear them When Usher appears at the narrator‟s door looking “cadaverously wan” and asking, “Have you not seen it?” the narrator is so ill at ease that he welcomes even the ghostly presence of his friend.Usher does not identify the “it” he speaks of, but he throws open the casement window and reveals a raging storm outside—“a tempestuous…night…singular in its terror and its beauty.” Again, these details are the true and authentic trappings of the gothic tae.Night, a storm raging outside while another storm is raging in Usher‟s heart, and a decaying mansion in which “visible gaseous exhalations…enshrouded the mansion”---all these elements contribute to the eerie gothic effect Poe aimed for.The narrator refuses, however, to allow usher to gaze out into the storm with its weird electrical phenomena, exaggerated by their reflection in the “rank miasma of the tarn.” Protectively, he shuts the window and takes down an antique volume entitled Mad Trist by Sir launce lot Canning and begins reading aloud.When he comes to the section where the hero forces his way into the entrance of the hermit‟s dwelling, the narrator says that it “appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of character…the very cracking and ripping sound” which was described in the antique volume which he is reading to Usher.The narrator continues reading, and when he comes to the description of a dragon being killed and dying with “a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing,” he pauses because at the exact moment, he hears a “low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted and most unusual screaming or grating sound” which seems to be the exact counterpart of the scream in the antique volume.He observes usher, who seems to be rocking from side to side, filled with some unknown terror.Very soon the narrator becomes aware of a distinct sound, “hollow, metallic and clangorous, yet apparently muffled.‟ When he approaches Usher, his friend responds that he has been hearing noises for many days and yet he has not dared to speak about them.The noises, he believes, come from lady Madeline: “we have put her living in the tomb!” He heard the first feeble movements a few days ago while she was in the coffin, then struggling with the vault and, finally, she is now on the stairs and so close that usher can hear “the heavy and horrible beating of her heart.” With a leap upward, he shrieks: “ Madman!I tell you that she now stands without the door!” At this moment, with superhuman strength, the antique doors are thrown open and in the half darkness there is revealed “the lofty and enshrouded figure of the Lady Madeline of Usher.” There is blood upon her white robes and the evidence of a bitter struggle on every portion of her emaciated frame.With the last of her energy, while she is trembling and reeling, she falls heavily upon her brother, and “in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.”

The narrator tells us that he fled from the chamber and from the entire mansion and, at some distance, he turned to look back in the light of the “full, setting and blood-red moon” and saw the entire House of Usher split at the point where there was a zigzag fissure and watched as the entire house sank into the “deep and dank tarn which covered, finally, the “fragments of the house of usher.”

One key to the story is, of course, the name of the main character.An usher is someone who lets one in or leads one in.Thus, the narrator is ushered into the house by a bizarre-looking servant, and he is then ushered into Roderick Usher‟s private apartment and into his private thoughts.Finally, Usher also means doorkeeper, and as they had previously ushered lady Madeline prematurely into her tomb, at the end of the story Lady Madeline stands outside the door waiting to be ushered in;failing that, she ushers herself in and falls upon her brother.In the concept of twins, there is also a reversal of roles.It is Usher himself who seems to represent the weak, the over-sensitive, the over-delicate, and the feminine.In contrast, lady Madeline, as many critics have pointed out, possesses a superhuman will to live.She is the masculine force, which survives being buried alive and is able, by suing almost supernatural strength, to force her way out and escape from her entombment in the vaults, and then despite being drained of strength, as evidence by the blood on her shroud, she is able to find her brother and fall upon him.Another reading of the story involves the possibility that Roderick usher‟s weakness, his inability to function in light, and his necessity to live constantly in the world of semi-darkness and muted and colors is that the Lady Madeline is a vampire who has been sucking blood from him for years.This would account for his paleness and would fit this story in a category with the stories of Count Dracula that were so popular in Europe at the time.In this interpretation, Roderick Usher buries his sister so as to protect himself.Vampires had to be dealt with harshly;thus, this accounts for the difficulty lady Madeline encounters in escaping from her entombment.In this view, the final embrace must be seen in terms of the Lady Madeline, a vampire, falling upon her brother‟s throat and sucking the last drop of blood from him.The final paragraph supports this view in that the actions occur during the “full blood-red moon,” a time during which vampires are able to prey upon fresh victims.At the opposite end of this phantasmal interpretation is the modern-day psychological view that the twins represent two aspects of one personality.The final embrace, in this case, becomes the unifying of two divergent aspects into one whole being at birth.Certainly many Romantics considered birth itself to be a breaking of oneself with that original spirituality.Lady Madeline can then be seen as the incarnation of “otherworldliness,” the pure spirit purged of all earthly cares.She is, one might note, presented in this very image;at one point in the story, she seems to float through the apartment in a cataleptic state.If Usher embodies the incertitude of life---a condition somewhere between waling and sleeping---when Lady Madeline embraces him, this embrace would symbolize the union of a divided soul, indicating a final restoration and purification of that soul in a life to come.They will now live in pure spirituality and everything that is material in the world is symbolized by the collapse of the House of Usher---the dematerialization of all that was earthly in exchange for the pure spirituality of Roderick Usher and the Lady Madeline.Even though Poe maintains that he did not approve of symbols or allegory, this particular story has been, as suggested above, subjected to many and varied types of allegorical or symbolic interpretations.Basically, the story still functions as a great story on the very basic level of the gothic horror story, in which the element of fear is evoked in its highest form.Further Reading: Allan Poe‟s short stories.6.Emerson and Thoreau‟s Transcendentalism Teaching Period: 2 Teaching hours.Teaching aim and requirement: Students should know what is Transcendentalism, Emerson‟s idea on transcendentalism;learn to analyzes his “of Nature” and the main idea of Thoreau‟s Walden.A.Ralph Waldo Emerson(1823-1882)I.Introduction: Emerson was 19th century American most notable prophet and sage.He was apostle of progress and optimism and his dedication to self-reliant individualism inspired his fellow transcendentalists.Emerson was born in Boston, the son of a Unitarian minister and the descendant of a long line of distinguished New England clergyman.He was educated at Boston Latin School and at Harvard.After his graduation from college in 1821 Emerson taught in a Boston school for young ladies.In 1825 he entered the Harvard Divinity School, where absorbed the liberal intellectualized Christianity of Unitarianism.It rejected the Calvinist ideas of predestination and total depravity, substituting instead a faith in the saving grace of divine love and a brief in the eventual brotherhood of man in a kingdom of Heaven on earth.In 1829 Emerson was ordained the Unitarian minister of the second church of Boston.He was a popular and successful preacher, but after 3 years he had come to doubt the validity of the sacrament of the Lord‟s Supper and his growing abjections to even the remnants of Christian dogma surviving in early 19th century Unitarianism led him to conclude that “to be a good minister it was necessary to leave the ministry.”

After preaching his farewell sermon Emerson went on a tour of Europe, where he met Cole ridge, Wordsworth and was strongly influenced by the ideas of European romanticism.Upon returning to America, he began his lifelong career as a public lecturer, which took him to meeting different variety of his people.He bought a house in Concord, Massachusetts and there he associated with Thoreau, Hawthorn, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller and others who belonged to the informal Transcendental Club, organized for the “exchange of thought among those interested in the new views in philosophy, theology and literature.In concord, Emerson became the chief spokesman of transcendentalism in America.His philosophy was a compound of Yankee Puritanism and Unitarianism merged with the teachings of European romanticism.The word “transcendental” had long been used in philosophy to describe truths that were beyond the reach of man‟s limited senses and as a transcendentalist, Emerson argued that God was all-loving and all-pervading;that there was an essential unity in apparent the spirit;that nature was an image in which man could perceive the divine.Emerson‟s beliefs were a balance of skepticism and faith, stirred by moral fervor.To many of his readers they have been seemed neither coherent nor complete.His early writings were rejected as “the latest form of infidelity”.He has been called “St.Ralph, the optimist and charged with having a serene ignorance of the true nature of evil.His exaltation of intuition over reason has been dismissed as a justification of infantile enthusiasms;his celebration of individualism has been judged an argument for mindless self-assertiveness.Emerson was a seer and poet, not a man of cool logic.In his lectures, essays and poems, he sought to inspire a cultural rejuvenation, to transmit to his listens and readers his own worn traditions and in his faith in goodness and inevitable progress.His words both dazzled and puzzled his audience.Like his philosophy, his writing seemed to lack organization, but it abounded with epigrams and memorable passages.The 19th century found him a man who had “something capital to say about everything.” And his ideas influenced American writers from Melville, Thoreau, Whitman and Emily Dickson in the 19th century to Robert Frost, Hart Crane and Stevenson in the 20th century.Emerson‟s perceptions of man and nature as symbols of universal truth encouraged the development of the symbolist movement in American writing.His assertion that even the commonplaces of American life were worthy of the highest art helped to establish a national literature.His repudiation of established traditions and institutions encouraged a literary revolution;his ideas expressed in his own writing and in the works of others, have been taken as an intellectual foundation for movements of social change that have profoundly altered modern America.Emerson was no political revolutionary.He preached harmony in a discordant age, and he recognized the need of human society as incompatible with unrestrained individualism.As he remained a firm advocate of self-reliant idealism and in his writings and in the example of his life, Emerson has endured as a guide for those who would shun all foolish consistencies and escape blind submission to fate.I.Analysis of “Nature”

The whole work “Nature” is a long essay divided into eight parts: the opening, commodity, beauty, language, discipline, Idealism, spirit and prospects.Our selection is taken from the opening.Taken as a whole, “Nature” expresses Emerson‟s philosophy in a more systematic fashion than any other work of his.Questions for understanding: 1.According to Emerson, what is one of the best ways one can really be alone? 2.What distinguishes the “stick of timber of the wood-cutter from the tree of the poet? 3.In what part of nature does Emerson describe the most profound change taking place? 4.Where does Emerson find the source of the power to produce delight? 5.Interpret the following from nature: “The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child.”

6.Try to relate that statement(I am nothing)to Emerson‟s pantheism.7.What does Emerson mean when he says “I am nothing”? 8.Does Nature have the potential to lift man‟s spirits at all times, or only occasionally? Questions for further discussion: 1.What is Transcendentalism? 2.What are the Emersonian Transcendentalist ideas and his view of nature? 3.What is the main idea of Thoreau‟s Walden? 8.Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864)Teaching Time: 4 teaching hours.Teaching aim and requirement: The students should get to know Hawthorne‟s life and his literary career, his novels and short stories.They should understand the selected section of the “Scarlet Letter.”

I.Introduction of his life and works:

For long time Hawthorne has been considered to be the first great American writer of fiction to work in the moralistic tradition which can be traced down through such leading novelists as Henry James and William Faulkner.Different from his contemporary novelists in relation to literary themes, Hawthorne showed a great interest in the problem of guilt and his major novels generally dealt with sensational material, like poisoning, murder, adultery and crime, because he was ambitious to explore the result of sin, the effect on human conscious of guilt, pride, egotism and isolation.His concern with moral or ethical problems and his talent in dealing with them in the form of novel attained him success as a novelist and a momentous position in the history of „American literature.Hawthorne was born into the family of a sea captain, whose father died when he was only four years of age.Living with his mother and sister in Salem, Massachusetts, Hawthorne was taken care by his mother‟s brother, who, a well-to-do man, supported Hawthorne to receive the best schooling of the age.In 1821 he entered Bowdoin College and graduated in 1825 in the class with Longfellow and Franklin Pierce, later president of the United States.The next twelve years were so-called “seclusion”, when he lived in his mother‟s Salem home to read widely and prepare for his literary career.During these years of literary apprenticeship he contributed short stories to various periodicals and did hard work for many publishers, but his literary toil brought him little success.Among his publication of immaturity during this period the only work worth mentioning was his first novel Fanshowe, an abortive chronicle of Bowdoin life, which completely failed to attract popular and critical attention.His next book, Twice-told Tales(1837)was successful and its second edition appeared in 1842.The success of Twice-Told Tales encouraged Hawthorne to explore in literature.From 1839-1849 Hawthorne earned his living in the customhouses in Boston and Salem.In 1841-1842 he took part in the transcendental communistic experiment but he admitted later that his experience in the experiment was distasteful.In 1842 he married and settle at the Old Manse.In 1853 Frank Pierce was elected president and he soon appointed his old friend Counsal at Liverpool, one of the most lucrative positions for four years and then after his retirement he traveled extensively in Europe and continued to write before he returned home in 1860.After 1860 Hawthorne lived in Concord and devoted his remaining years to literature until he died suddenly while on a trip to New Hampshire with his lifelong friend Pierce.Before the publication of the Scarlet Letter in 1850, which made his fame and gave to American literature its first symbolic novel another important work that Hawthorne published was Mosses from an Old Manse(1846), a collection of short stories, which included some of his best like “Young Goodman Brown.” “The Celestial Railroad” and “Rappaccini‟s Daughter”.The appearance of “The Scarlet Letter” marked the maturity of Hawthorne as a novelist and soon he composed three important novels, The House of the Seven Gables, a great novels of family decadence, appeared in 1851, which was followed by The Blithedale Romance(1852), a novel describing the transcendental experiment and The Marble Faun(1860), a novel of moral allegory with Italian setting.When compared with The Scarlet letter, these three novels showed more obviously the defects that ran through almost all Hawthorne‟s novels: indulgence in symbolism and a skeptical attitude toward the affair of life.His other works included The Life of Frankllin pierce(1852)which resulted in his appointment of consul at Liverpool and Our Old Home(1863)a sheaf of essays，The central subject of Hawthorne‟s major works was the human soul.This determined that his works could be singularly free from passionate or erotic elements, His exploration of the soul resulted from his skeptical attitude toward the social reality that was characterized by a rapid change in almost all aspects of social life and from his ambition to probe into the nature of man.It was in his exploration of human soul that Hawthorne revealed his criticism of life.In fact, the primary significance of his major works dwells in the interest and the consistent vitality of his criticism of life.Hawthorne lived in an age when the dynamic influence of Puritanism was gone and the impact of romanticism and transcendentalism was largely felt among the intellectuals and thus he made his efforts to explore the roots of all kinds of social evils which appeared in a social background less religious and more industrialized.His experience of living in a limited social background and his seclusion of thinking led to his exclusive preoccupation with the inner world of man, where he believed was the source of social evils, because he looked down on the impact of man of the social environment that was undergoing a vast change.In many of his best stories and his two great novels The Scarlet Letter and The house of Seven Gables, Hawthorne gave his analysis of the moral problems of his own age through a remarkably vivid picture of the New England past.His excellent sense of the past and historical reconstructions and his fidelity to detail were fully expressed in these works although his major appeal lied beneath the allegorical form.Likewise, Hawthorne‟s true genius appears most clearly when he penetrates beneath costume and manner.His characters and setting are puritan and his skillful use of such materials are witchcraft, the Indian life in other dissenters the theocratic society and the general resentment against the royal authority exhibits his command of the history and traditions of the region.Moreover, their problems and situations are fundamentally universal.II.Analysis on the Selected chapter: Chapter 5 serves the purpose of filling in background information about Hester and Pearl and beginning the development of Hester and the scarlet as two of the major symbols of the romance.By positioning Hester‟s cottage between the town and the wildness, physically isolated from the community, the author confirms and builds the image of her that was portrayed in the first scaffold scene---that of an outcast of society being punished for her sin/crime and as a product of nature, society views her “…as the figure, the body, the reality of sin.”

Despite Hester‟s apparent humility and her refusal to strike back at the community, she resents and inwardly rebels against the viciousness of her Puritan persecutors.She becomes a living symbol of sin to the townspeople, who view her not as an individual but as the embodiment of evil in the world.Twice in this chapter, Hawthorne alludes to the community‟s suing Hester‟s errant behavior as a testament of immorality.For moralists, she represents woman‟s frailty and sinful passion, and when she attends church, she is often the subject of the preacher‟s sermon.Banished by society to live her life forever as an outcast, Hester‟s skill in needlework is nevertheless in great demand.Hawthorne derisively condemns Boston‟s Puritan citizens throughout the novel, but here in chapter 5 his criticism is especially sharp.The very community members most appalled by Hester‟s past conduct favor her sewing skills, but they deem their demand for her work almost as charity, as if they are doing her the favor in having her sew garments for them.Their small-minded and contemptuous attitudes are best exemplified in their refusal to allow Hester to sew garments for weddings, as if she would contaminate the sacredness of marriage were she to do so.The irony between the townspeople‟s condemnation of Hester and her providing garments for them is even greater when we learn that Hester is not overly proud of her work, rejects ornamentation as a sin.We must remember that Hester, no matter how much she inwardly rebels against the hypocrisy of Puritan society, still conforms to the moral strictness associated with Puritanism.The theme of public and private disclosure that so greatly marked Dimondale‟s speech in chapter 3 is again present in this chapter, but this time the scarlet A on Hester‟s clothing is associated with the theme.Whereas publicly the letter inflicts scorn on Hester, it also endow her with a new , private sense of other‟s own sinful thoughts and behavior;she gains a “sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts.” The scarlet letter---what it represents---separates Hester from society, but it enables her to recognize sin in the very same society that banishes her.Hawthorne uses this dichotomy to point out the hypocritical nature of Puritanism: Those who condemn Hester are themselves condemnable according to their own set of values.Similar to Hester‟s becoming a living symbol of immoral behavior, the scarlet A becomes an object with a life seemingly its own: Whenever Hester is in the presence of a person who is masking a personal sin, “the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb.”

In the Custom House preface, Hawthorne describes his penchant for mixing fantasy with fact, and this technique is evident in his treatment of the scarlet A.In physical terms, this emblem is only so much fabric and thread.But Hawthorne‟s use of the symbol at various points in the story adds a dimension of fantasy to factual description.In the Custom House, Hawthorne claims to have “experienced a sensation…as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron.” Similarly, here in chapter 5, he suggests that, at least according to some townspeople, the scarlet A literally sears Hester‟s chest and that, “red-hot with infernal fire,” it glows in the dark at night.These accounts create doubt in the reader‟s mind regarding the true nature and function of the symbol.Hawthornes‟ imbuing throughout the novel---particularly when Chillingworth sees a scarlet A emblazoned on Dimmesdale‟s bare chest and when townspeople see a giant scarlet A in the sky---and is a technique common to the romance genre.Question for discussion:

What are the artistic characteristics of The Scarlet Letter?

The Scarlet Letter, a story of rebellion within an emotionally constricted Puritan society, is an undisputed masterpiece by Hawthorne.The Scarlet letter reveals both Hawthorne‟s superb craftsmanship and the powerful psychological insight with which he probed guilt and anxiety in the human soul.Hawthorne‟s remarkable sense of the Puritan past, his understanding of the colonial history in England, his apparent preoccupation with the moral issues of sin and guilt, and his keen psychological analysis of people are brought to full display in this novel.So his drama is thought, full of mental activities.Thought propels action and grows organically out of the interaction of the characters.With modern psychological insight, Hawthorne probed the secret motivations in human behavior and the guilt and anxiety that he believed resulted from all sins against humanity, especially those of pride.Hawthorne is a master of symbolism.The structure and the form of the novel are carefully worked out to cater for the thematic concern.By using Pearl as a thematic symbol, Hawthorne emphasizes the consequence the sin of adultery has brought to the community and people living in that community.As a key to the whole novel, the latter A takes on different layers of symbolic meanings as the plot develops.This ambiguity is one of the features of the work.Herman Melville(1919-1891)I.Introduction about his life and works: Herman Merville was born in 1819, the son of eight children.His father‟s business failed in 1830 and his father died shortly afterward.For the next seven years the family received support from relatives.He signed on as a “boy” on the British ship and sailed with her across the Atlantic to Liverpool and on the return voyage to America.While life as a sailor was harsh, his thirst for the sea was not quenched.Several years of voyage on different waling ships provided him material for his later writing career.In 1846 his first novel on sea appeared.Typee(1846), Omoo(1847), Redburn(1848)and(White-Jacket(1850)are novels on sea.He finished his masterpiece Moby Dick in 1851.He died quietly on September 28, 1891.For nearly the last thirty years of his life he had tried desperately to remain obscure in New York City, hidden from the world of letters.II.Analysis on Chapter 54:

A.Summary: The watery region around the Cape of Good Hope is a place where you meet more travelers than in any other part of the oceans.Soon after speaking to the Albatross, the Pequod encounters another whaler called the Town-Ho.Ahab relents and there is a regular gam.The ship is manned mainly by Polynesians and the reason is found I this story secretly brought aboard, the Pequod and never told to Captain Ahab.As the Town-Ho was sailing in the Pacific the ship sprung a leak.Forced labor at the pumps as the ship headed for the nearest island created a mutiny which was interrupted by the appearance of Moby Dick.The boats were lowered but the harpooner on the boat nearest him was devoured by the Great White whale.The ship made harbor and most of the crew deserted for fear of encountering Moby Dick.Polynesians agreed to help sail the ship the rest of its voyage.In this long story about Radney and Steelkilt, we see another view of Moby Dick.He seems to represent something like Divine Justice entering into the events of life and correcting an evil.Thus, quite the contrary to the manner in which Ahab sees Moby dick, he is here viewed as an agent of God‟s justice.Thus the second gam shows that moby Dick is not universally considered an evil agent and that this view is

particular to Ahab‟s monomania.This chapter contains two aspects of events.It is gone through the narration of boatman.He told the story happened on a whaling ship.21conflict between lakeman---Stilkilt and his rebels and the mate;2.conflict between the mate and the white whale.In both cases, Lakeman failed in the struggle against the unfair treatment and the mate died in the mouth of a whale.Through the story we got to know the life of boatman in whaling industry and the fieresness of the white whale.III.The novel on the whole can be understood from three levels: 1.It is a novel of journey and whale catching;2.it is a conflict between Captain Ahab and Moby Dick;3.It is a story of Ishmael, his thought about human body‟s ego realization, the relationship between man and nature, man and God, man and man, etc.Moby Dick may be read on several levels.It is a thrilling adventure story, “the world‟s greatest sea novel,” compounded of search, pursuit, conflict and catastrophe.It is the plot of unceasing search for revenge, The “Americanized Gothic” of mystery and terror, crowded with omens and forebodings from the cracked Eligah‟s warnings to the prophecies of Fedalla which are reminiscent of the witch‟s croaking in Mackebeth.Clear throughout is a mastery of suspense and horror of both subtle and broad humor, of exciting narrative in vigorous prose.The numerous chapters on whales and whaling dismay readers for the story‟s sake, but they provide verisimilitude.The chapters on whaling prepare the reader for the unfamiliar events, skillfully retard the swift action, and present an authentic, full way of life.The more import level, of course, is these of characterization and meaning, a galley of unique portraits emerges.In spite of their few, brief appearances, Peter coffin, Captain Bilded and Peleg and the officers of passing vellels are vividly described.Melville most convincingly individualizes Starbuck, Stubb and Flask.Starbuck‟s vary courage and “right-mindedness” is fully developed to make him a foil to Ahab.The three harpooners are also individualized---the American Tashtego;the physical admirable African, Daggoo, so unlike the minstrel-show Negroes in the literature of Melville‟s day;and Queengueg, the Polynessian “heatheric” who must help these

Christians, whose characterization is a masterpiece of understanding.The characterizations of the semi-auto-biographical Ishmael and of Ahab are the most important and they are in extricable tied up with the book‟s meaning.Ishmael‟s name connotes the wanderer and outcast.He shares the illness and restlessness of the romantic hero, but he rises above them.He is no more escapist.Himself inclined to melancholy, he recognizes that Ahab‟s concentration on woe is madness.Midway of the book, Ishmael, the participant and narrator, merges with the omniscient author.At first caught by the fever of the oath on the quarter-deck to hunt Moby-Dick to the kill, he alone has the intelligence and will to recognize and oppose the madness.Repudiating society and those in power, he grows in deep respect for and insight into the secrets of human life.Regarding both believer and infidel with an equal and critical eye, he is a believer in the dignity of man and the need of fellowship.32 And he alone of the Puequod‟s saved.The biblical Ahab worshiped false gods;he was slain in battle and the dogs licked up his blood.On his long prepared for entrance, “reality outran apprehension.” Branded like Milton‟s Satan, sturdy, erect on his bone leg, but “ with a crucification in his face,” Ahab has all the “overbearing dignity of some mighty woe.” His actions are of one piece, for he is driven by a force stronger than himself, though of his own creation---right after Moby Dick has sheared off his leg on a previous voyage, his “torn body and gasked soul bled into one another” and the final mononania secres him.With cunning he does his best to conceal the madness, but from the frenzied oath on the quarter-deck the steps to destruction are sure;a man never known to kneel sweats he would strike the sun if it insulted him;he throws overboard his pipe(symbol of serenity);smashes the quadrant(symbol of scientific aid);defies the lightening, breathing the kindred fire of his spirit back at it, and tempering a forged harpoon in the blood of his pagan harpooners, baptires it, as mentioned earlier, in the name of the devil.Isolation, pride, obsession with revenge, reliance on the unaided self and blasphemy make up his tragic flaw.But as his old friend Peleg says: “Ahab has his humanities.” His scenes with the cabin boy Pip show this.But the “humanities” are short lived.Captain Boomen, who lost an arm, to Moby Dick, wants no more of the monster, and such common sense shocks Ahab as idiocy.Various scholars have interpreted the whale in various ways.To Ahab, the whale represents all evils, visibly personified against which he piled, “all the rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down.” But to Ishmael, Ahab is insane.Less bluntly and plainly, Ishmael states what the whole means to him, he is appalled chiefly by the hideous whiteness, which suggests the demonism in the world.Starbuck, at sea to hunt whales, not his commander‟s vengeance, considers the whale a dumb beast, smiting from blindest instinct.Other seamen believe in the malice behind the tremendous strength, but assume no serf-appointed mission to destroy it.In the last chase Starbuck calls to Ahab that it is not too late, that Moby Dick seeks him not: “ It is thou that madly seekest him.” But Bound by more than oaths on the quarter-deck, Ahab is forever Ahab, the “Fate‟s lieutenant” acting under orders, he has fell impelled to follow.In the final analysis, Moby Dick has a richness which he has had enduring value for generations.Its symbolism is vast, its language graphic and powerful.It is romance of moral inquiry.Each of the main characters struggles with good and evil, with fate, with the conflict they see between God and nature.In his Ahab, he specifically molded a character which used his will to try to defy fate, a character of defiance.In Ishmael, he could stand by and allow reason to speculate on the events.Because he supplied no one formula of interpretation, he left his readers the same freedom he gained for himself---the ability to move back and forth between fate and meaning on the bridge of symbolism.He has mastered the art that Hawthorne experiments had taught him because he had the flucidity of spirit to allow his book finally to write itself.Questions for further discussion;1.Comment on character Ahab.33 2.What is the symbolic meanings of the novel? Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(1807-1882)I.Introduction about his life: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, on February 27, 1807, into a well-do-do family.He was educated at Bowdoin College, where he was a fellow student with Nathaniel Hawthorne and Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the United States(1853-1857).After his graduation in 1825, Longfellow spent three years in Europe studying the culture and languages of Italy, Spain, and Germany.In 1836, Longfellow became professor of French and Spanish at Harvard, where he taught for 18 years and then he resigned in 1854 because he felt it interfered with his writing.Longfellow‟s most productive years were from 1843 to 1860.After 1854, Longfellow devoted himself completely to literary writing.Several long poems and collections of poems were published.But in his late time, he turned to religious and reflective poetry, and to translation.From 1864 to 1867, most of his time was spent in the translating of The Divine Comedy By Dante.His last collection of poems appeared in 1882, the year of his death.As a poet, Longfellow enjoyed the most popular reputation when he was alive, and his poetic works were regarded as the summit of the literary work of the 19th century.However, his tremendous fame decreased rapidly soon after Longfellow‟s death and especially in the 20th century, Longfellow‟s fame as the most important American poet of the previous century had to be vacated to Walt Whitman.Major Works:(1)Voice of the night(1839), his first book of poetry, which contains “Hymn to the Night” and “A Psalm of Life.”

(2)Ballad and Other Poems(1841), containing such favorites as “The village Blacksmith.”(3)Evangeline(1847).(4)“The Song of Hiawatha(1855), a long poem that was based on American Indian legend.(5)Translation of Dante‟s Comedy(1865-1867)II.Features of Longfellow‟s Poetic works: Longfellow was the best-known American poet during the 19th century.(1)Longfellow‟s long stay in Europe led to his mastery of several European languages and a broader knowledge of European literature than most other American literary figures, what‟s more, this enables him to embody in his poetry chief romantic tendencies as humanitarian attitude, love of beauty, love of nature and love for the past;and it enabled him to introduce American themes to Europe;American Indians, anti-slavery ideas and the scenery of the New World.Longfellow was popular because of his high-mindedness, his spiritual aspiration, his refinement of thought, his refinement of manners, and the gentleness, sweetness and purity of his poetry.(2)Longfellow was the first American poet to write narrative poems.“The Song of Hiawatha” is the first American epic in blank verse about the American Indians.(3)Longfellow‟s style and subject were conventional, especially in comparison with those of Whiteman or modern writers.He wrote in traditional regular meters and feet，34 in regular rhyming schemes.Longfellow did not appeal, as most of his contemporary writers did, for the breaking of American literature from European literature.Usually he wrote about American subjects, but always in European styles.(4)Being a highly learned and cultivated man, and a professor of several languages, Longfellow composed all his work with accurately selected words and delicate expressions.The ideas he expressed are generally simple ones but he expressed them musically and powerfully.(5)The child-like simplicity and detachment from the deep and important problems of contemporary life are perhaps the basic elements Longfellow‟s appeal to the common audience;but on the other hand, they led to a fatal weakness in his work---lack of the depth and insight of a great artist such as Whitman.As a poet, Longfellow failed to reflect in his poetry what he felt personally, instead of what he attained from reading.He enriched his poems with second-hand knowledge.However, in the late 19th century, Longfellow was doubtlessly the most popular American poet and a milestone in the development of American poetry.III.Understanding of his poems: a.A Psalm of Life: It was first published in Voice of the Night in the September edition of New York Monthly in 1839.It is very influential in China, because it is said to the first English poem translated into Chinese.The poem was written in 1838 when Longfellow was struck with great dismay;his wife died in 1835, and his courtship of a young woman was unrequired.However, despite all the frustrations, Longfellow tried to encourage himself by writing a piece of optimistic work.The relationship of life and death is a constant theme for poets.Longfellow expresses his pertinent interpretation to that by warning us that though life is hard and everybody must die, time flies and life is short, yet, human beings ought to be bold “to act,” to face the reality straightly so as to make otherwise meaningless life significant.The poem consists of 9 stanzas in trochaic tetrameters.It is rhymed “abab.”

Part IV.Literature of Realism Teaching Time: 8 teaching hours.Teaching aim and requirement: The students should learn the history, cultural background of the 19th century literature.They should know the basic characteristics, ideas and its influence.They should learn the main literary career of the writers in this period and understand the contents and artistic characteristics of the selected works.Teaching methods: presentation and discussion.Teaching tool: Computer.Key points: realistic writers and their main works.I.Introduction of the historical background

In the United States three fundamental issues reached the breaking point in the period of 1865-1900: the conflict between the agrarian ideal of Jefferson and the industrial ideal of Hamilton, the conflict between the plantation gentility of the South and the commercial gentility of the North, and the conflict between a culturally mature East and a raw and expanding West.The political historians would stress the conflict between the North and the South as basic, the economic historians would stress the conflict between agrarianism and industrialism, and the literary and cultural historians would stress the conflict between the West and East which indicated the decline of romanticism and the rise of realism.Realism came as a reaction against “the lie” of romanticism and sentimentalism as Everett Carter put it in Howells and the age of Realism.The battle between “idealists‟ and “realists” provided the major issue of American literary history after the Civil War(1861-1865).Literature began to pay less attention to general ideas and more to the immediate facts of life.This movement took two forms: interest in one‟s own backyard and experimentation with more literal methods of writing.“Realism is, in the broadest sense, simply fidelity to actuality in its representation in literature.Realist literature is based on the accurate, unromanticized observation of human experiences.It insists on precise description, authentic action and dialogue, moral honesty, and a democratic openness in subject matter and style.As a way of writing, realism has been applied in almost every literature throughout history.But as a literary movement, realism is a period concept.It refers to the approach of realist fiction occurred at the latter part of the 19th century.In part, the rise of realism came as a protest against the falseness and sentimentality which the realists thought they saw in romantic literature.The realists were determined to create anew kind of literature that was completely and totally realistic.The realistic movement found its effective origins in France with Balzac, in Russia with Rurgenev, in England with George Eliot, and in America with W.D.Howells and Mark Twain.Major Features:(1).Realism is the theory of writing in which familiar aspects of contemporary life and everyday scenes are represented in a straightforward or matter-of-fact manner.This is the theory that authors try to use and guide them in their writing.It stresses truthful treatment of material.It is anti-romantic, anti-sentimental, and without abstract interest in nature, death, etc.Mark Twain laughed at people who were caught up in the

world of illusions, who were not mature enough to see real situations.This is one example of the truthful treatment of material.(2)In realist fiction characters from all social levels are examined in depth.Before this time characters served some sort of allegorical or symbolic purpose.The realist writers hold on to characters and keep examining how these people relate to each other.They value the individual very highly, stress the function of environment in shaping character, and take characterization as the center of the story.They have a great concern for the effect of action on characters, and a tendency to explore the psychology of the people in the story.This is a major change, and it is one of the examples the truthful treatment of material, because this is how real life is.(3).Open ending is also a good example of the truthful treatment of material.It is something that might be puzzling to the reader, but it has a theoretical purpose.It tells the reader that life is complex and cannot be fully understood.It is impossible to tie up all the loose ends.Besides , open ending leaves much room for the readers to think over the possible conclusion of the story(4).Realism focuses on commonness of the lives of the common people who are customarily ignored by the arts.Realists are interested in the commonplace, the everyday, the average, the trivial, and the representative.These authors are not interested in characters as symbols.They are interested in common characters and the everyday events which show the average life.By the end of the 19th century in America, the reading public was willing to read about average people just like themselves, and the novels during this time by the realist writers were filled with the stories of common people.They were not stories about kings and queens, princes and princesses, or knights in shining armor.They were about average folks.(5)Realism emphasizes objectivity and offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.Simple, clear, direct prose is the desirable vehicle, and objectivity on the part of the writer the proper attitude.The realist writers are detached observers of life.They are like scientists, making an investigation.The narrator in their works stand back, and try not to let their own emotions gain the way of the report which their works will give the reader.This is very different from the writers before the Civil War.Those writers were constantly eager to tell the reader what they thought about this character, whether they thought the character had done the right thing or the wrong thing.It is up to the reader to decide what it means.Much of this is the influence of the spirit of Darwin, of Darwin‟s investigations.(6).Realism presents moral visions.The author does have a purpose for presenting an objective account of realistic life.The moral sense is something that resides in the author‟s purpose.Realists are ethical writers.Interested in the problems of the individual conscience in conflict with social institutions.Many of their works show the Ameridcan businessman in the conflict over whether he should accept a bribe, whether he should give a bribe, whether he should participate in unfair business practices, etc.Generally, these writers show how the individual conscience wins when he opposes social conventions and social practices.This indicates their disbelief in romantic individualism.These writers are always interested in focusing on the

dilemma.Realists are aware of accepted social standards.They have a strong ethical sense that there are right ways to do things and wrong way to do things.So in other words, the world has some kind of unity, some kind of plan, and they examine people who have the dilemma of trying to follow that plan or do it the wrong way.In their works they re-create real life and show the dilemma that the people are having as they try to understand what life means in an ethical way.They are able to probe deeply into these problems of the human conscience.Their method is completely objective and carries with it the whole theoretical meaning of why people choose to be objective.II.Writers and their works

1.Walt Whitman I.Introduction about his life and works: In 1855 after first reading “Leaves of Grass” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote to Walt Whitman, “ I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of “Leaves of Grass”.I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that American has yet contributed … I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start.”

Whitman was thirty-six years old, and nothing in his “long foreground” suggested that he would write the greatest single book of poetry in America‟s literary history.He was born in 1819 in a rural village in Long island, New York.His parents were semiliterate and provided him with little more than a sympathy for political liberalism and a deistic faith shaped by the teachings of Quakerism.He had only five or sic years of formal schooling, but he was a keen reader of 19th century novelists, the English romantic poets, the “classics” of European literature and the New Testment.His teachers characterized him as a “dreamy and impractical youth” and he drifted through a series of jobs as an office boy, a printer, and as a schoolteacher.He had a natural talent of journalism.For a short time he edited a Long Island weekly newspaper and when he was 22 and attacted to the Bohemian life of Manhatten he went to New York city.In new York, Whitman worked as a printer , an editor and as a free-lance journalist contributing essays, short stories and poems to the popular newspapers and magazines of the 1840‟s when he was 27, he became editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, but after only two years he was dismissed because of his radically liberal political views.He next made a brief visit to New Orleans, but he soon returned to New York City, where he opened a printing office and stationery store and began to write his greatest poetry.In 1855 he published the first edition of “Leaves of Grass”.It contained 12 poems which Whitman himself had reportedly set in type and printed at his own expense.Few copies of his slim book of poetry were sold, yet those who read it were rarely indifferent.His apparently formless free-verse departures from convention, his incantations and boasts, his sexuality and his exotic and vulgar language caused critics.They said his work was a “poetry of barbarism”, “noxious weeds”, “a mass of stupid filth.” Only Emerson praised it.From 1857 to 1859 Whitman edited the Brooklyn Times and reworked “Leaves of Grass,” published expanded second and third editions in 1856 and 1860.When the

Civil /war began, he traveled South to Washington D.C, where he obtained an appointment as a government clerk and worked as a volunteer nurse in nearby military hospital, while living in Washington he published Drum-taps(1856), Civil War poems he gathered into the fourth edition of “Leaves of Grass.”

By the appearance of the fifth edition(1871), Whitman‟s poetry had began to receive increasing critical recognition in England and America.He had come to see his work as a single poem to be revised and improved through a lifetime, but in 1872, when he was 54, he suffered a paralytic stroke.He moved from Washington D.C to his brother‟s home in New Jersey and there declining in his poetic abilities and cared for by a group of devoted friends.Whitman spent most of the remaining 19 years of his life, receiving successive editions of Leaves of Grass until the final version was published shortly before his death in 1892.The more than four hundred poems that had appeared in the nine editions of Leaves of Grass printed in Whitman‟s lifetime were unprecedented in American literature.They were a compound of commonplaces, of disorganized, new experience, of sentimentalism, and of true poetic inspiration.They had ecstatic perceptions of man and nature united and divine.Whitman had an expensive oceanic vision, an urgent desire to incorporate to entire American experience into his life and into poetry.He aspired to be a cosmic consciousness, to experience and glorify all humanity and all human qualities, including “sex, womanhood, maturnity, lustry, animations, organs, acts.‟

He had yearned to be the “bard of democracy”, a public poet celebrated by democratic men “en masse” but while he lived, the most of his poetry was read only by literary enthusiasts and intellectuals.In his final years, Whitman‟s devoted followers solemnized him as “The Good Gray poet”, but he became a national figure as a whiskery sage, but the wide popularity he had got escaped him and he was defeated in his influence on modern American poetry than the work of any other writer.Whitman had been an radically new poet, had made his own rhythms, created his own mythic world, and in writing his sprawing epic of American democracy he helped make possible the free-verse unorthodoxies and private literary intensities of a 20‟s century that would one day came to honor him as one of the great poets of the world.II.His selected poems: 1.Song of Myself: it is a poem consisting of 1345 lines.It is the longest poem in Leaves of Grass.The poet takes for granted the self as the most crucial element of the world and thus sets forth two of his principal beliefs: first, a theory of universality;second, all things are equal n value.In Part 1 of the selected sections, the author unfolds the theme of “ a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars” by cordially celebrating himself.Meanwhile, he “extols the ideals of equality and democracy and celebrates the dignity, the self-reliant spirit and the joy of the common man.‟

In part ten he told us his experience in walking the countryside.He went to the mountain, to the sea and to take part in the marriage ceremony of an Indian couple.At last he told us an experience of saving a runway slave, which showed his attitude

toward slavery b.“I Sit and Look Out: it is a short poem of 10 lines, opens with immediate presentation of the speaker‟s stance and frame of view.The stance, sitting, is fixed, and within the frame are placed “all the sorrows of the world.” Following the opening line, 7 lines, containing 11 juxtaposed parralled clauses, present, in sweeping and scanning way, 1 group of auditory images(I hear，,”)and 10 groups of visual and kinesthetic images(I see…”, I mark…I observe…”)these groups of images are typical ones or representatives of the sorrow of the world.The 9th line, abruptly, an end to the view of the sorrows that occur “without end,” and brings the speaker and the reader back to the stance of the view: a sitting-look-out-upon stance.Upon the stance, the speaker continues to see and hear more of these without end.What he chooses to do or can do is to be silent.What more is heard and seen? Why is he silent? And for how long will he be silent? There is a large blank that the reader should fill in with his own sensation and imagination.c.Beat, Beat, Drums: Walt Whitman

Song of Myself

In the Preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, Whitman says: “ The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity.Nothing is better than simplicity.” “Song of Myself” is characterized by simplicity of simplicity, but also by art of art.The simplicity lies in the simple expression—the wording and the sentencing and the natural lining of the poem.The art lies in the varying rhythms of the poem---the ebb and flow of emotion within it., the shift of mood, the alternation between moments of intensity and moments of relaxation.And the Preface says,” The messages of great poets to each man and woman are,…What we enclose you enclose, What we enjoy you may enjoy.” “Song of Myself” is saturated with the the pride of the persona himself and with the vehemence of the audacity of freedom.And the persona, that is, the “I” in the poem, is Walt Whitman, is every American and is every human being.The vehemence of pride and audacity flows not only in words, but also from and in the sounds of the lines, powerful and torrential lines bursting out in succession.The oneness of the persona with every American man and woman and with every human being, agrees to the varying but unifying rhythm, and to the harmonious melody.And in other words, not only the words describe the oneness, but also the melody expresses the oneness.This is the agreement between sound and sense.The “Song of Myself”, is the song of oneness, in terms of the sense and the sound.I Sit and Look Out

It is a poem of lines, and it opens with immediate presentation of the speaker‟s stance and frame of view.The stance, sitting, is fixed and within the frame are placed “all the sorrows of the world.”

Following the opening line, 7 lines, containing 11 juxtaposed parallel clauses，40 present, in a sweeping and scanning way, 1 group of auditory images(“I hear…)and 10 groups of visual and kinesthetic images(“I see…”, “I mark…”, “I observe…”).These groups of images are typical ones or representatives of the sorrows of the world.The 9th line puts, abruptly, an end to the view of the sorrows that occur “without end”, and brings the speaker and the reader back to the stance of the view: a sitting-look-out-open stance.Upon the stance, the speaker continues to see and hear more of these without end.What he chooses to do or can do is to be silent.What more is heard and seen? Why is he silent? And for how long will he be silent? There is a large blank that the reader should fill in with his own sensation and imagination.Free Verse: Free verse, also known as “open form” verse, is the verse without regular meter, line length, rhyme(scheme), or stanza form, depending on natural speech rhythms related to the actual cadence of the poet expressing himself.It is different from the conventional schemed verse in several aspects: 1.Regular meter, or controlled rhythmic pattern, is essential to conventional poetry;but free verse is based on the irregular rhythmic cadence of the recurrenc, with variation, of phrases and syntactical patterns rather than the recurrent metrical patterns.2.Rhyme occurs in most traditional poetry(except blank verse), and often with various schemes.In free verse, however, rhyme may or may not be present;but when it is used with great freedom.3.In conventional verse, the unit is often foot, or the line;but in free verse, the units are much larger, sometimes being paragraphs or strophes.If the free verse unit is the line, as it is in Whitman, the line is usually determined by qualities of actual speech rhythm and thought, rather than feet or syllable count;thus the line may be as short as one word, or as long as a passage.4.In comparison with conventional verse, free verse may be composed with rhythms and melodies more personal and individual, more appropriate to the subject and the theme.In the hands of the gifted poets free verse very often acquires rhythms and melodies of its own.There is in free verse greater flexibility of the form and greater agreement between sound and sense.There are signs of it in medieval alliterative verse and in the translation of the Authorized King James Bible, which attempts to approximate the Hebrew cadences.The Psalms and The Song of Solomon are noted examples of free verse.Milton opposed the tyranny of strict versification.Milton, in order to set off the vexation, hindrance and constraint of traditional verse, experimented with free verse in Lycidas and Samson Agonistes.After Milton, European poets, including Macpherson, Blake, Arnold, Heine, Goethe, Rimbaud, Hugo, and Baudelaire, continued the experiment with free verse.And the French poets of the late 19th century established the vers libre movement, from which the term free verse comes.41 Walt Whitman and Gerald Manley Hopkins did more and better than anyone else to develop it to maturity;and Whitman startled the literary world with Leaves of Grass, by using lines of variable lengths which depended for their rhythmic effect on cadenced units and on repetition, balance, and variation of words, phrases, clauses, and lines, instead of on recurrent metric effect.At the end of the 19th century, free verse was already a popular genre of poetry.Emily Dickinson(1830-1886)I.her life story: Emily Dickinson , born in Amherst, Massachusetts on Dec.!9, 1830, was the best poetess American ever created.She was a daughter of a prominent lawyer and politician.She did not receive much formal education but read widely at home.Actually, during the narrow span of her lifetime, she kept staying at home except for a few short trips to Boston or Philadelphia.Emily Dickinson was a witty woman, sensitive, full of humanity and with a genius for poetry.While she was living in almost total seclusion, she wrote in secret whatever she was able to feel, to see, to hear and whatever she was able to imagine.She wrote whenever and wherever.Although she guarded her poems even from her family, 1775 poems were discovered and published after her death.However, as the only noteworthy woman poet in American literature of the 19th century, she had only seven of her poems published during her lifetime, and it was not until the beginning of the 20th century that her genius was widely recognized.2.Features of Emily Dickinson‟s Poems In subject matter Emily Dickinson was very similar to the great romantic poets of her time.Her poems are short, many of them being based on a single image or symbol.But within her little lyrics she wrote about some of the most important things in life: love, nature, morality and immortality.She wrote about success, which she thought she never achieved;and she wrote about failure, which she considered her constant companion.She wrote of these things so brilliantly that she is now ranked as one of American‟s greatest poets.Poetry is for Dickinson a means to attain pleasure, away to preach her doctrine, and a medium to express her world outlook, an outlet for her despair and a remedy to pacify her soul.Her life experience fostered her belief as an existentialist as well as a great poet.Despite her seclusion of life, Emily Dickinson covered a wide range of subjects in poetry.Her favorite subjects are love, death or natural beauty.In her writing she wrote about life and death, expecting to understand the meaning of life by understanding the meaning of death.Living in the 19th century, c comparatively religious era, she did not belong to any organized religion.However, she wrote of God, man and nature;she probed into the spiritual unrest of man and often doubted about the existence and benevolence of God, because she felt that wild nature was her church and she was able to converse directly with God there.Emily Dickinson was a poet who could express feelings of deepest poignancy in terms of the true and wide saying, often in an aphoristc style.Her gemlike

poems are all very short, but fresh and original, marked by the vigor of her images, the daring of her thought and the beauty of her expression.Emily Dickinson wrote in the conventional metrical form, though she did not always strictly observes the rules of versification.Emily Dickinson defamiliarised conventional poetic form, deliberately overusing capitalization and deahes, to make her poems looking strange.In some way, she is very much similar to the style of John „Donne.II.Selected Poems: I Die for Beauty(449)Stanza 1: I died pursuing the beauty of art and immediately as I became accustomed to the new circumstance of a tomb.I was told that there was another who died for truth and arrived in the next room.Stanza 2: I died for beauty and he died for truth.Since “beauty is truth, and truth beauty” we are as close as brothers, or like twins.Stanza3: The two of us are like kinsmen who met at night, and we talked in separated rooms for a very long time until we have harmoniously united into one and have been completely forgotten by the human world.I Heard a Fly buzz---when I died---(465)Stanza 1: When I was dying, I heard the buzz of a fly which reminded me of the stillness in the air.Stanza 2: Before the absolute power of death, I was helpless, so were my relatives and friends.They could do nothing more than gathering around me, tearless and breathless, and watching the arrival of death to me.Stanza 3: When I was abandoning this material world, a fly comes to me.Comment on the poem

This poem is the description of the moment of death.The poetess made use of a very strange image of a fly to symbolize her last touch with the human world and, moreover, the perspective of a decaying corpse.The fly appeared as something which is able to fly between the two worlds of life and death.Besides, the word “fly” is very cleverly used in the work.On the one hand, it refers to that insect;on the other hand, it may indicate “free flying”.Before death, the “fly” was buzzing around, I hear it;after death, it may lead me to go far and forever, I am flying.The fly is inconsequently, of little importance---implying perhaps that death is the same.Because I Could Not Stop for Death(712)Stanza 1: The angel of death, in the image of a kind person, comes in a carriage for the sake of Immortality and the poet.Stanza 2: To show my politeness to god of death, I gave up my work and my enjoyment of life as well;I give up my life.Stanza 3: The journey of our carriage implied the experience of human life;school implies time of childhood;the fields of gazing grain, for youth and adulthood;while the setting sun, for old age.Stanza 4: Probably we may say the sun sets before we reach the destination---the

night falls, death arrives.I felt a fear and chilly after death, for my shroud is thin and my scarf too light.Despite the description of “death”, the usual gloomy and horrifying atmosphere is lightened by the poetess with the elegantly fluttering clothing she describes.Stanza 5.Several centuries had passed since the arriveal of death upon me.However, I felt it is shorter than a day.On that day I suddenly realized that death is the starting point for eternity, and the carriage is heading towards it.Comment on the poem

The poem is discussing death, a very gloomy subject, but it is done with a rather light tone.The tone is light just because the author does not take death as a catastrophe;instead, she treats the angel of death as a very polite gentleman, as a long-missing guest, giving up her work and leisure, putting on her fine silky dresses, she accompanies death in the same carriage to eternity.All the beauty of this work lies in the poetess‟ open-minded attitude towards death.Mark Twain(1835-1910)

I.Introduction about his life: As one of American‟s first and foremost realists and humorist, Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Langhore Clemens, usually wrote about his own personal experiences and things he knew about from firsthand experience.His life spanned the two Americans, the frontier America that produced so much of the national mythology and the emerging urban industrial giant of the 20th century.At the heart of Twain‟s achievement is his creation of Tom Sawyer and huck finn, who embody that mythic America midway between the wildness and the modern superstate.Twain, the third of five children, was born in the village of Florida, Missouri and grew up in the larger river town of Hannibal, that mixture of idyll and nightmare in and around which Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn live out their adventure-filled summers.Hannibal was dusty and quiet with large forests nearby which Twain knew as a child and which he uses in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn(1884)when Pap kidnaps Huck and hides out in the great forest.The steamboats which passed daily were the fasination of the town and became the subject matter of Twain‟s Life on the Mississippi(1883).The town of Hannibal is immortalized as St.Petersburg in Twain‟s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer(1876).Twain‟s father was ambitious and suspected but only mildly successful country lawyer and storekeeper.He was a highly intelligent man who was a stern disciplinarian.Twain‟s mother, a southern belle in her youth, had a natural sense of humor, who was emotional and known to be particularly fond of animals and unfortunate human beings.Although the family was not wealthy, Twain apparently had a happy childhood.However, Twain‟s father died when he was twelve years old and for the next ten years, Twain was apprentice printer and then a printer both in Hannibal and in New York City, Hoping to find his fortune he conceived a wild scheme of making a fortune in South America.On a riverboat to New Orleans, he met a famous riverboat pilot who promised to teach him the trade for five hundred dollars.44 After completing his training, Twain was a riverboat pilot for four years and, during the time, he became familiar with all of the towns along the Mississippi River which acquainted with every type of character which inhabits his various novels, especially Huck Finn.When the Civil War destroyed the riverboat business, he went to Nevada with his brother , Orion.From there, he went to California, where he looked on a newspaper.In 1865 he became nationally famous with is short story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog.Based upon stories he heard in California mining camps, the story is about an apparently innocent stranger who cheats a famous frog rather racer and beats him.The stranger fills the stomach of the other man‟s frog with tiny metal balls.It is a typical western humor story called a “hoax”.Like the western humorists, Twain‟s work is filled with stories about how ordinary people trick experts or how the weak succeed in “hoaxing” the story.Twain‟s most famous character, Huck Finn is a master at this.As a journalist, he went to the Sandwish Islands in 1866 and to Europe and the Holy Land in 1867.The latter of the two provided him with the experiences which he shaped into his first book, The Innocents Abroad,.Roughing It, his narrative of pioneers striving to establish civilization on the frontier, appeared in 1872, and his first novel-length fiction written with Charles Duddley Warner, The gilded Age:, came in 1873.It was one of the first novels which creates a picture of the entire nation, rather than of just one region.Although it has a number of Twain‟s typically humrous characters, the real theme is America‟s loss of its old idealism.The book describes how a group of young people are morally destroyed by the dream of becoming rich.III.Analysis on his “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”

The boye hero, Tom Sawyer, is Mark Twain himself(although he wrote in his preface that Tom is “a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I know:)Tom‟s leading trait is his faith and delight in the romantic world which adults call made-believe.Tom loves the pomp and valor of Arthurian chivalry;the stout independence and generous fellowship of Robin Hood;the swagger and audasity of pirates and robbers and their assurance that somewhere there are treasures to be seized.He defied the adult nations that counter these: that virtue consists less in pomp and valor than in soberness and submission;that the outlawry of merry men who plunder sheriffs and fat abbots is courageous, and that right conduct is reverence and obedience to rules and officials;that violent enterprise to seize treasures other men hold is wickedness bound to be punished, and that in fact pirates‟ gold is not worth seizing anyhow.Tom‟s adventures are a series of triumphs over the adult world which he defies.As a knight he boasts his rivals and is a gallant champion of his lady.As a humane outlaw he flouts the authorities and tricks the, and rectifies a miscarrage of official justice.As a treasure-hunter, he seizes a glittering gold.Tom‟s companion in these adventures, Huck Finn, belongs neither to Tom‟s world of romantic illusion nor to the social world of convention which Tom resists.He belongs instead to a world of simple nature which detects both the unreality of Tom‟s world and the artificiality of the adult world.Huck, as a pauper and outcast on the frontier of civilization, has had to scramble too hard amongst elemental things to see

anything in life but hard facts incapable of romantic transformation.He has grown up like a weed of gardeners and thinks it on the whole better to acknowledge himself a weed and try to escape the gardener‟s attention than to try to take on the character of a cultivated specimen.Tom and Huck are allies against the adult world of convention and responsibility, but they do not inhabit the same world, and Huck has almost as much difficulty in adjusting his naturalism to Tom‟s romanticism as he has in adjusting it to social conventions.When his literalism comes up against Tom‟s romanticism, and his nature against the village conventions, he has to reject the romantic and the conventional because his literalism and nature are the only things that work for him.He does this, not with bravado as a deliberate choice of the superior thing, but with humanity as a necessary choice of an inferior thing.Tom Sawyer is a story written for boys, full of the horror and joys of childhood flowing on the surface of expressions, generations after generations of young people have held it dear to their hearts.III.Analysis on the selected tow chapters.IV.Questions for discussion:

1.Is the novel only childhood story? 2.Compare your own childhood life with that of Tom‟s.Further Reading: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.O Henry and short story

1.his life: O.Henry is most commonly associated with the short story and masterful ironic “O Henry twist”.William Sidney Porter was born in North Carolina and without much schooling and virtually orphan worked in his uncle‟s drugstore, learning much of human nature.He spent all of his free time reading books, and by the time he was 20, he was still small, weighing less than a hundred pound, gradually retreating into a shy, poverty-stricken world of fantasy escape.He followed several occupations, being a bookkeeper, a drugstore clerk, and a Texas Ranger.During this time, he developed talents for cartooning and singing.In 1887 he met Athol Esta with whom he became enamored, but her family was opposed to the marriage.As a result, the two eloped.In 1894, he founded The Rolling Stone, a comic magazine which soon failed.O.Henry got to know New York and its inhabitants, to know its surface thoroughly by wandering about, by drifting into conversations with strangers on the streets or in the parks, by observing with an accurate eye and ear sights and sounds, of Broadway, Greenwich village, Wall Street.After gathering material on every aspect of New York life, O.Henry became a salaried writer and soon emerged as a central figure in the peak period of the American magazine short story.From that time on he was a wealthy man, living luxuriously and drinking heavily.In 1907 he married his second wife Sara

Lindsay Coleman.He was never a strong man physically and his exciting life eventually wore him out before his time.He died in drunkenness.His work is full of humor, his stories are amusing, flippant, flat, biting and are filled with irony, sentiment, and pathos.Drawing directly from his experience with many odd jobs, he combined realism with a world of his own, reflecting a fatalistic view of life.There is no great concern with unchanging human problems, and he had no firm moral messages.His work is typically American, and he gives us a good idea of various types of people in the United States.The theme of his stories is often based on some self-sacrificing member of a family who is undergoing hardship to help a close relative.He also addresses questions of loneliness, of desolate people, of grotesque underlings.2.his style: O.Henry‟s style is direct, pared of all unnecessary verbiage, except for occasional use of exaggeration or polysyllables.His use of dialect is completely authentic, in classic realist fashion.He uses slang to gain force and humor.Highly skilled in the use of Southen dialect, he was never identified with the local color movement, for he drew from too many sources to be identified with any one.He is the master of surprise, though occasionally he falls into cheapness just as his characters taken to the extreme become caricatures.His first collected work, Cabbage and Kings(1904)is a series of South American tales linked together by a loose plot construction.The characters Americans, revolutionists, patriots and even president of a mythical republic, belong to vaudeville or the comic opera.With The Four Million(1906)O.Henry produced his first book of New York stories, some of which as The gift of the Magi, The Skylight Room, The Cop and the Anthem, Springtime a la Carte and The furnished Room were hardly to be surpassed.Irishman frequents of cafes and of boarding house, white-collar men and women, art students, writers, factory girls, millionaires, cops and crooks jostle each other in these pages whose human comedy and tragedy mingle against the glittering, beautiful ignoble, crowded, lonely city.“The Gift of Magi “contains the most famous of O.Henry‟s trick endings.This Yuletide narrative tells of how a nearby penniless young husband and wife are each determined to buy the other a sactable Christmas present.He sells his watch to buy her a set of combs, she has her beautiful hair cut off and sells the tresses to buy him a watch fob.His characters, lain, simple people and his plots , depending often on the surprising ending, have little diversification, but he was skilled at ringing the changes on a few themes.The gift of Magi and The Furnished Room are among the best known of the tales that illustrate this technique of ironic coincidence and the surprising ending.3.Analysis of The Cop and the Anthem The story adopted one section of wanderer Soapy‟s life to explore the social life

of American society and attack the darkness of its social system.Soapy has no place to sleep and in the winter he had to go to prison for three months.In order to be arrested, he tried to break the shopping window, tease woman, eat without paying and took the other‟s umbrella, but he failed to arise public notice.When he heard the sound from the church and wanted to become good, he was arrested.Through this section of life, the author described the poor destiny of low people.The author adopted a light and humorous tone to tell the story.The humorous style is shown from three aspects.First, the social position and the plot provided the reasonable condition for his humorous sense.In the story Soapy is not a murderer, neither a gentleman, he is a wanderer, no one showed any attention to him.He himself is a thing to be teased.Although he wandered here and there, he didn‟t lose his own dignity.He thought that there were two ways waiting for him, one is to go to the charity, but it is shameful;the other is to go to the prison for three months.Compared with these two, he chose the latter.He designed several tricks which are very common in everyday life.On the other hand, these crimes are not serious to satisfy the condition for three months in prison.He didn‟t have the idea of killing others, or commit serious crime.The tricks suit the case to create the light tone.The other aspect of the humorous character lies in the plot.The sudden change of the plot forms the other element of the humorous.One scene happens that Soapy lies on the bench in the Square.The Square is his home, where he was doing one thing---turn round.Winter is coming and he had to find a place for winter.What should he do? People expect Soapy to find a good place.However, to our unexpectation, he thought of the prison.This is the first turning point, which is unexpected but reasonable.The method is quite familiar for him.Which way he chose had a suspicion and it hinted that it would be uneasy.The story tells 6 scenes to show his effort for being put into prison.The order of the scenes is natural and humorous.As a wanderer, what attracts him most is to eat his full and be sent into prison.This is one stone to kill two birds.But as soon as he entered the restaurant, his broken trousers betrayed him, he was thrown out.And then at the corner of the street, he broke the window of the shop and thought the policeman would catch him, but the police even didn‟t suspect him, because he waited for the cop to arrest him.This is abnormal according to the common thinking.The two different ideas make the scene fantastic and laughable.He went to another restaurant and after easting, the waiters only thrown him out and didn‟t call the police, because they know police would not bother such trival things.The development of the plot is quite different as he planned.The next scenery appeared when he tried to tease a woman but to his surprise he met a prostitute, so he had to escape.But he made efforts to escape.This is particularly funny.The other two cases also failed.The last case happened at the moment when he decided to correct and make a man himself.This time he was sentenced three months in prison.This tells us that the man like soapy did not have the chance to

be corrected.The story was humorous for its language.The whole tone of the story is light, humorous.A dead leaf was called Jack Frost‟s card;his door is North wind, to create the light atmosphere.This made us not feel so heavy and sentimental because the coming of the winter.And then soapy moved uneasily.He decided to solve the problem in “a singular committee of ways and means.” The words made it serious, but he made the decision of going into prison, which is funning.Another is the reverse of speaking.He exaggerates the thing which is not good.Prison is not a place connected with good feeling, to Soapy it is an ideal place that he dreams of for he could have meals and place to spend the long nights.The praise to it shows the poor people‟s living condition and satire towards American reality.Each time soapy failed the author would use the words to show his strong desire for the prison.The sharp contrast used in the story shows the main theme of the story which has the strong force to make our readers feel that we are within the streets of New York to witness the life of the common people.1.Do you like the writing style of the story? Why or why not?

2.Read more of his stories.Naturalism I.Introduction

(1)“Naturalism” is an extraordinarily elastic term;it is applied to many varied writers and is often defined differently by the very novelists who call themselves naturalists.One is tempted to think that it would have been far better for literary criticism had the term never been coined.However it is by now widely used and misused that it seems necessary to examine the often contradictory elements implied in its application and to see why Norris, Crane and London have frequently been classified as naturalists.The term was introduced to the United States by Frank Norris at the end of the 1880‟s.He had spent a year studying art in Paris and had been much impressed by Emile Zola, the French novelist who first formulated and applied the new literary theory.Like many other European writers and artists, Zola had been impressed by Darwin‟s theory of evolution.This explained men‟s origin in the animal world and his development from a higher primate into a Neanderthal man, a caveman and finally a fully human being.Darvin also enphasezed the role played by the struggle for existence in creating or destroying difficult conditions---survival and had descendants, which those poorly adapted to their surroundings died out leaving no one to carry on their kind.This completely contradicted the old idea of man as a being especially created by God who---according to the Christian and many other religions---was made up of two quite separate parts, an immortal spiritual soul and a mortal physical body.In the

religious interpretation of human life, the spirit was in the body somewhat as wine might be contained in a bottle.If the bottle were to be broken, the spirit might be poured into some other container or might continue to exist in heaven when no need for any container as a liquid does when frozen or jelled.But evolution taught that man was simply a part of nature just as a fish or a bird or an ape was.And like any other animal he was governed by his instincts and natural desires for food, warmth and sexual satisfaction.It was therefore foolish to speak of a struggle within man between his higher and lower nature, between conscience and desire.It was also foolish to praise or blame man for what his nature made him to.One may kill a tiger to prevent his eating a sheep, but one cannot blame the tiger for his attempt to do so.One may think a mouse stupid for running into a trap after a piece of cheese but one cannot criticize it for the lack of wisdom.The naturalistic novelist should therefore describe people simply as animals, impelled to act as they did because of the appetites and urges formed by heredity and environment, these were as much a part as their size or strength and more intelligent would win in the struggle for existence while the weaker and slower would be destroyed.Neither was blame worthy or praiseworthy.No one was morally responsible;people did what they had to do and were fortunate or unfortunate.This is all that the philosophy of naturalism actually says.But that philosophy was adapted by Zola and other writers it began to imply a great deal more---and sometimes a great deal that really contra-directed its original meaning.In reaction against the conventional literature which avoided any reference to the “private parts” of the body, or any description of most bodily functions, the naturalists tended to dwell on those things and on sexual desire to emphasize man‟s animal nature.Furthermore, since life could be observed more nakedly in the crowded homes and work places of the poorest people and since the lower depths of society had long been forbidden ground to the novelist, the young naturalist were likely to write about the slums or Negro quarters, or jobs which demanded great physical efforts and hardship.One of the most important of Zola‟s novel “Germinal” deals with life in and around a coal mine where the laborers are forced to work desperately hard in miserable conditions.The heat underground is so intense that women as well as men and children were forced to strip, going on all fours to drag heavy loads through tunnels.Their homes were also unspeakably dirty and crowded with no sanitary facilities.There was no privacy for sexual intercourse or any other bodily functions.As Zola describes mines he shows them becoming as shameless physically as animals defecting and copulating in public.But here we find that Zola himself departs from the original theory---as do most other naturalistic novelists.He is so sorry for the poor mines that he ardently wishes for an uprising to change these conditions and the book becomes a revolutionary book, forcing the reader too to long for a revolution.(2)American Naturalists:

The literary naturalism has an effect on American writing, particularly in the use of subject matter.Under this influence, Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser looked at the life of poverty, the life of crime and the life of ear.50

美国文学史及选读论文 篇2

长春工业大学外国语学院英语专业于2002年开始开设英美文学课。但因为原有的培养计划所定学时偏少，英美文学课程总共才90学时，其中英国文学史及作品选读为45学时，美国文学史及作品选读为45学时。对于源远流长而且佳作频出的英美文学来说，这些学时只能令学生浅尝辄止，无法领会英美文学的精髓所在。如何利用这么少的时间来使学生尽可能多地掌握知识，做到重点突出而不流于形式、泛泛而谈，一直是文学课老师绞尽脑汁要解决的问题。但结果证明，文学课的授课效果并不尽如人意。我校英语专业学生往往不敢报考本专业的研究生，也很少有人能一次考取本专业的研究生。除去其它因素，文学课上学无所得是一个重要原因。

首先，目前英语专业是文理兼招学生的，文理科学生的比例大体上为1:1。2004级、2005级英语专业学生的文理比例更是达到了1:3，理科学生多于文科学生两倍。理科学生的文学基础弱于文科生，这是普遍存在的现象。如何为这样的学生上好文学课，对教师来讲更是一个挑战。

其次，文学课还是一门专业性很强的课程，所涉及的知识领域包括历史、宗教、风俗文化等，对授课对象的要求很高。学生往往是满怀热情地听过几次课后就因为其内容庞杂、头绪过多而失去兴趣。如何使文学课内容更加深入浅出、更加吸引人，这也是一个关键性的问题。

最后，以往英美文学课被安排在大三下学期、大四上学期授课。这阶段往往只有考研的学生认真上课，许多学生缺课去找工作，也使得文学课的授课效果不好。

二、研究方案与结果总结

综上所述，我校英语专业的文学课授课内容及授课模式都亟待改革与完善。2006年，我校外国语学院英语专业修订了原有的培养计划，将英美文学课细分为英国文学史、英国文学选读、美国文学史、美国文学选读等四门课程，并相应地增加了学时，调整了授课时间，此项改革于2006—2007年度第一学期开始施行。我们尤其针对英美文学选读课程进行了探索性的改革，希望通过所采取的系列措施，完善文学选读课程的授课模式，设计合理的授课内容，取得理想的教学效果。

首先，进一步建立合理的课程体系模块、加强课程之间的内在联系，使其具有延续性、一致性。这样不仅可以解决前面提到的文学课上遇到的各种问题，也可以使学生的学习循序渐进，既具有扎实的专业基础，又有宽厚、系统的专业知识。具体来说：

1. 大一阶段

(1) 结合泛读课，为学生介绍简写本的文学名著，规定阅读书目并要求撰写读书报告。这样既锻炼了学生的阅读能力、增加了学生的词汇量，又能令他们初步感受文学名著的艺术魅力，唤起他们对文学的兴趣。

(2) 让学生背诵精读教材每课课后的名言警句。一方面通过背诵可以使他们掌握名人名言，并有机地应用到写作中去，另一方面也可以使他们熟悉一些名家名人，为以后的文学课打基础。

2. 大二阶段

(1) 结合泛读课，介绍学生有选择性地阅读原著，并组织“每月一书”读书报告会、名著改编表演等。通过这种方式，学生既在原有基础上提高了英语阅读水平和理解能力，又通过阅读原著，加深了对英美国家社会文化、风俗习惯、历史宗教等方面的了解，扩展了知识面，为大三阶段英美概况、英美文学等课程的学习奠定良好的基础。

(2) 结合精读课，为学生介绍名篇佳作，使学生有机会领略英语的语言魅力。一方面通过背诵和模仿这些名篇佳作，学生能够提高写作水平，为专业四级考试做好准备，另一方面，学生能继续扩大词汇量，为以后的专业课学习打好基础。

3. 大三阶段

(1) 结合影视课，组织学生观看名著改编的电影，使他们能身临其境地感受电影再现的名著魅力，同时也可以与文学课同步，相得益彰，体现了教学课程设置的系统性。

(2) 结合英美概况课，系统学习和掌握英、美两国的历史、宗教、社会背景等人文方面的知识，为文学课程的学习奠定扎实有益的基础。

通过这些方法，尤其是大一、大二阶段所采取的措施，我们能很好地解决前文提及的具体问题，为英美文学选读课程的讲授提供一个良好的前提条件，同时为学生打下坚实、全面的英语基础，帮助他们进行更高阶段的学习。当然，要实现这一目的，需要各科教师通力协作。这样不仅能使各学科很好地融会贯通，体现课程建设的系统性，更有助于学生发现各学科的内在联系，找到学习规律，做到更有效率的学习。

其次，针对修订后的英美文学选读课设置结构，确定合适的教材。以往我校外国语学院英语专业所选用的英美文学教材多为文学史与作品选读合一的编写模式，并且侧重于文学史的介绍。作品涉及少而且不具有代表性，学生不感兴趣。更值得一提的是，这套教材与其它高校英语专业所用的英美文学教材不一样，为我校英语专业学生考取外校的英语专业研究生设置了人为的障碍。大纲修订后，我校英语专业英国文学史与美国文学史、英国文学选读各为45学时，美国文学选读为40学时。可以说，教师有了比较充分的时间介绍和分析文学作品。这样，选择合适的教材成为一项重要的工作。目前，我校英语专业的文学选读课教材选用王守仁、陶洁编写的英美文学作品选读，文学史教材选用刘炳善、常耀信编写的英美文学史。整套教材内容详实丰富、重点突出、编写规范、观点准确，是一套适合我校英语专业使用的教材。

再次，利用先进的教育技术手段，激发学生的学习兴趣。随着科学技术的突飞猛进，多媒体技术和网络技术犹如雨后春笋般迅速发展，在教学中运用多媒体技术已成为高等教育的发展趋势。英美文学选读课不仅信息量大，而且具有很强的形象性，再加上大量的文学名著已被拍成了电影，录制成了录像带或光碟，这一切都使得文学选读教学中大量采用多媒体教学成为可能。我校一直注重教育技术在教学中的运用，每两年组织一次教育技术课题的立项和评比，这使得教师有机会得到充足的经费制作有效的教学课件并将之运用到教学中。在教学实践中，教师利用网络、多媒体和影像资料等手段进行备课、上课和课后检查辅导，取得了良好的效果。我们的具体做法是教师在课前准确把握和分析教学目标及教学内容，充分准备和设计信息资源，对网络信息进行筛选、整理和提炼，然后利用计算机技术制作好相应的电子课件。在课堂上，教师可以根据需要穿插介绍背景及知识点，放映名著片断，设计问题，让学生思考和讨论，引入名家观点或点评，并留思考题指导学生课后继续通过网络寻找相关信息，以达到深化学习的目的。教师还会把作者的创作背景和相关的理论等资料制作成课件。在教学中，利用课件清晰地呈现作者生平、创作的背景，作者对文学的贡献，然后介绍和分析该作品。在联系分析作品时，教师会设计问题让学生思考讨论。这些问题就会帮助学生随着讨论的展开对理论的理解也逐渐深入。在课后作业这一环节中，教师会设计一些与课堂内容有关的问题，让学生充分利用网上资源，培养学生寻求信息、独立解决问题的能力。这样，学生对于文学作品的学习不再局限于书面上的文本分析，而是引发了多方面的感悟和思考，从而激发了学生对文学和学术研究的兴趣，并培养了主动学习和主动思维的能力。

最后，针对文学课的特点，采用合理的授课模式。以往的英美文学课大多采取教师满堂灌的授课模式，学生被动地接受教师的观点。其实文学课应采取启发式教学：课前教师布置预习作业，就相关历史和名章选段提出问题，令学生课下查找资料，然后在课上通过讨论的方式帮助学生得出结论。课堂上教师讲授的时间不应超过总学时的三分之一。除了对相关的史实做必要的归纳和分析、对作家的写作风格进行必要的介绍和总结、对重要作品进行重点的剖析和鉴赏，教师应把精力放在培养学生对文学作品的阅读和赏析能力上，教给他们分析文学作品所需的理论，使他们能够逐渐运用这些理论和方法独立地进行文学作品的阅读和分析工作，而不是简单地告诉他们某部作品讲了些什么。尤其要注意的是，对文学作品的欣赏不应搞“一刀切”，因为每个人的欣赏角度、理解能力、世界观、价值观，以及生活态度各不相同，对同一部作品的理解也不应强求一致。

英美文学选读课程是我校外国语学院英语专业高年级的必修课。但因为开设时间短、教师缺乏经验，一直以来，授课效果不尽如人意，学生意见较大。对这门课程的授课内容及授课模式进行研究，以找出适合我校外国语学院英语专业的文学选读课授课模式，可以使我校英语专业文学选读课的授课效果得到提升，使学生更好地掌握有关英美文学作品的知识和英美国家社会文化生活方面的知识，从而提高英语专业学生的人文素质和英语的综合运用能力。

参考文献

[1]吴进业, 花清亮.中国当代外语教学法.河南大学出版社, 2001.8.

[2]Chris Kyriacou, Essential Teaching Skills, 2nd ed.Nelson Thornes, 1998.

美国文学史及选读论文 篇3

一、填空题（每小题4分，9选7，计28分）：

1、“自伯之东，首如飞蓬。岂无膏沐，谁适为容？其雨其雨，杲杲日出。愿言思伯，甘心首疾。”

2、“”

3、“青丝为笼系，桂枝为笼钩。头上倭堕髻，耳中明月珠，湘绮为下裙，紫绮为上襦。”

4、“”

5、“势使之然，由来非一朝。”

6、“……葵藿倾太阳，物性固难夺。”

7、“霜雪。未老莫还乡，还乡须断肠。”

8、“如吾两人耳。”

9心荡，冷月无声。念桥边红药，年年知为谁生。

二、翻译题（18分）：

吾尝终日而思矣，不如须臾之所学也；吾尝跂而望矣，不如登高之博见也。登高而招，臂非加长也，而见者远；顺风而呼，声非加疾也，而闻者彰。假舆马者，非利足也，而致千里；假舟楫者，非能水也，而绝江河。君子生非异也，善假于物也。（荀子《劝学》）

参考译文：我曾经整日地思索，却不如学习片刻的收获大；我曾经踮起脚跟眺望，却不如登上高处看得广阔。登高招手，手臂并没有加长，但人们在很远的地方也能看见（招手的人）；顺着风呼喊，声音并没有加快，但听的人会听得清楚；借助车马的人，不是脚走得快，却能到达千里之外；借助船只的人，不是自己能游泳，却能横渡江河。君子的本性同一般人没有差别，只是善于借助外物罢了。

三、简答题（每小题12分，计24分）：

1、简析《逍遥游》的论证方法和艺术特色。

《逍遥游》的论证方法主要有比喻论证和对比论证，作者为了说明顺应自然、忘却自我的绝对自由的逍遥境界，通过鲲鹏与蜩、鸴鸠、斥鴳、朝菌、蟪蛄、宋荣子、列子等一系列的比喻对比，说明人与万物皆有所待而不得逍遥的事实，并从齐物的角度自然证明了真正逍遥的境界。（6分）《逍遥游的》集中体现了庄子散文浪漫主义的特点，其一表现在奇特的构思和及其丰富的想象上，如文中层层推进对比论证的使用和对鲲鹏变化的描述；其二表现在丰富词汇的熟练运用和对事物的自在描绘上。（6分）

2、简析辛弃疾《摸鱼儿》（更能消、几番风雨）一词。

辛弃疾的《摸鱼儿》主要通过传统的比兴手法，含蓄委婉地寄托了词人壮志难申的身世之感和深切的爱国热情，表现了对祖国命运的深切关怀和对投降派的强烈憎恨。（9分）比兴手法的巧妙运用使得全词能以婉媚的儿女情态曲折地体现出“化为绕指柔”的英雄情怀。（3分）

四、论述题（30分）：试评析《李将军列传》（节选）中的李广形象。

李广武艺高超，但在战争中并不恃一夫之勇，而是冷静睿智、根据战场的实情灵活机动，故而能凭借其奇正不一的战争谋略扬威于匈奴；他英勇善战，行廉好义，待部下宽让友爱，故多得士兵之心，但仇杀霸陵尉则体现了他性格中刚愎狭隘的一面。

电大《中国古代文学作品选读》模拟试题二及答案

一、填空题（每小题4分，9选7，计28分）：

1、“”

2、忳郁邑余侘傺兮，吾独穷困乎此时也；宁溘死以流亡兮，余不忍为此态也！鸷鸟之不群兮，自前世而固然；何方圆之能周兮，夫孰异道而相安！

3、“”

4、“秋风萧瑟天气凉，草木摇落露为霜。群燕辞归雁南翔，念君客游思断肠。……明月皎皎照我床，星汉西流夜未央。牵牛织女遥相望，尔独何辜限河梁？”

5、“为在歧路，儿女共沾巾。”

6、“春花秋月何时了，往事知多少？小楼昨夜又东风，故国不堪回首月明中。雕栏玉砌应犹在，只是朱颜改。问君能有几多愁，恰似一江春水向东流。”

7、“新塔，坏壁无由见旧题。往日崎岖还记否？路人长困蹇驴嘶。”

8、“红酥手，黄滕酒，满城春色宫墙柳。东风恶，欢情薄，一怀愁绪，几年离索。错！错！错！

9、“作的卢飞快，弓似霹雳弦惊。了却君王天下事，赢得生前生后名，可怜白发生。”

二、翻译题（18分）：

壬戊之秋，七月既望，苏子与客泛舟游于赤壁之下。清风徐来，水波不兴。举酒属客，诵明月之诗，歌窈窕之章。少焉，月出于东山之上，徘徊于斗牛之间。白露横江，水光接天。纵一苇之所如，凌万倾之茫然。浩浩乎如凭虚御风，而不知其所止；飘飘乎如遗世独立，羽化而登仙。

壬戌年秋天，七月十六日，我和客人荡着船儿，在赤壁下游玩。清风缓缓吹来，水面波浪不兴。举起酒杯，劝客人同饮，朗颂《月出》诗，吟唱“窈窕”一章。一会儿，月亮从东边山上升起，徘徊在斗宿、牛宿之间。白濛濛的雾气笼罩江面，水光一片，与天相连。任凭水船儿自由漂流，浮动在那茫茫无边的江面上。江在旷远啊，船儿象凌空驾风而行，不知道将停留到什么地方；飘飘然，又象脱离尘世，无牵无挂，变成飞升仙果的神仙。

三、简答题（每小题12分，计24分）：

1、简析《自京赴奉先县咏怀五百字》中的杜甫思想。

这首诗结合诗人个人的遭遇、感受和对人民的了解，表白了诗人心忧天下的忧患意识和忧世济民的执著意愿。并通过高度的艺术概括，反映了封建社会贫富悬殊的矛盾，一针见血地指出统治阶级骄奢荒淫的生活正是建立在剥削掠夺劳动人民的基础之上。同时联系他在骊山的所见所感，预示了一触即发的政治危机，倾泻出诗人无比深广的忧愤。诗人对唐代社会的弊病把握准确，诗人是历史的见证人和时代的先驱者，诗歌具有强烈的时代气息，具有十分鲜明的“诗史”性质。

2、简析龚自珍的《病梅馆记》。

《病梅馆记》是龚自珍散文的名篇。文章以“病梅”象征被病态社会扼制和摧残的人才。前半部分写造成“病梅”的原因在于人们病态的审美标准，实际上是借以揭露封建专制统治对人才的思想束缚和精神戕害；后半部分写“疗梅”，作者发誓要拯救那些被扼制和摧残的人才，最后更表明了“穷予生之光阴以疗梅”的志向和决心。此文托物言志，立意深刻，与其说是记叙文，不如说是言简意赅的政论文。文章形象生动，层次分明，语言简洁，感情色彩浓郁，通篇贯穿着一种难以辩驳的逻辑力量。

四、论述题（30分）：试析孟浩然《临洞庭》的思想内容和艺术特色。

此诗大致作于诗人游湘地，张说贬官岳州时。作者写此诗赠张丞相，希望得到他的引荐。诗中生动描绘了秋汛期间洞庭湖的壮阔景象，委婉表达了自己急于求仕的心情。这是一首干谒诗，但诗人巧妙地将写景与抒怀糅合在一起，使人不易看出干谒的痕迹。特别是前半首写景，不仅充分表现了洞庭湖动人气魄的气势和声威，而且借以象征唐王朝开明强盛的现实，为后半首的述志作了铺垫和暗示。此诗是孟浩然雄浑壮逸风格的代表作。

电大《中国古代文学作品选读》模拟试题三及答案

一、填空题（每小题4分，9选7，计28分）：

1(xí)思其反。反是不思，亦已焉哉。

2、迢迢牵牛星，皎皎河汉女。纤纤擢素手，札札弄机杼；终日不成章，涕泣零如雨。

4甸，月照花林皆似霰。空里流霜不觉飞，汀上白沙看不见。

5、十年生死两茫茫，不思量，自难忘。千里孤坟，无处话凄凉。纵使相逢应不识，尘满面，鬓如霜。

6已。

7、执手相看泪眼，竟无语凝噎。念去去千里烟波，暮霭沉沉楚天阔。

8心荡，冷月无声。念桥边红药，年年知为谁生。

二．翻译题（18分）：

《书》曰：“满招损，谦得益。忧劳可以兴国，逸豫可以亡身，自然之理也。故方其盛也，举天下豪杰莫能与之争；及其衰也，数十伶人困之，而身死国灭，为天下笑。夫祸患常积于忽微，而智勇多困于所溺，岂独伶人也哉！

《尚书》上说：“满足会招来损害，谦虚能得到补益。”警惕与勤劳可以振兴国家，安逸和舒适可以丧失性命，这是自然的道理啊。因此当他强盛时，普天下的豪杰，没有一个能与他争雄，到他衰败时，几十个优伶来困扰他，却使他丧命亡国而被天下所讥笑。可见，祸患常常是在细微的小事上积聚起来的，而聪明勇敢又往往在沉湎嗜好中受到祸患吗？

三．简答题（24分）

1、简析《逍遥游》的论证方法和艺术特色。

《逍遥游》的论证方法主要有比喻论证和对比论证，作者为了说明顺应自然、忘却自我的绝对自由的逍遥境界，通过鲲鹏与蜩、鸴鸠、斥鴳、朝菌、蟪蛄、宋荣子、列子等一系列的比喻对比，说明人与万物皆有所待而不得逍遥的事实，并从齐物的角度自然证明了真正逍遥的境界。《逍遥游的》集中体现了庄子散文浪漫主义的特点，其一表现在奇特的构思和及其丰富的想象上，如文中层层推进对比论证的使用和对鲲鹏变化的描述；其二表现在丰富词汇的熟练运用和对事物的自在描绘上。

2、简析辛弃疾《摸鱼儿》（更能消、几番风雨）一词。

辛弃疾的《摸鱼儿》主要通过传统的比兴手法，含蓄委婉地寄托了词人壮志难申的身世之感和深切的爱国热情，表现了对祖国命运的深切关怀和对投降派的强烈憎恨。比兴手法的巧妙运用使得全词能以婉媚的儿女情态曲折地体现出“化为绕指柔”的英雄情怀。

四、论述题（30分）：试评析《李将军列传》（节选）中的李广形象。

李广武艺高超，但在战争中并不恃一夫之勇，而是冷静睿智、根据战场的实情灵活机动，故而能凭借其奇正不一的战争谋略扬威于匈奴；他英勇善战，行廉好义，待部下宽让友爱，故多得士兵之心，但仇杀霸陵尉则体现了他性格中刚愎狭隘的一面。

电大《中国古代文学作品选读》模拟试题四及答案

一、填空题（每小题4分，9选7，计28分）：

3、葡萄美酒夜光杯，欲饮琵琶马上催。醉卧沙场君莫笑，古来征战几人回。

5、人人尽说江南好，游人只合江南老。春水碧于天，画船听得眠。

6、多情自古伤离别，78、“红酥手，黄滕酒，满城春色宫墙柳。东风恶，欢情薄，一怀愁绪，几年离索。错！错！错！

9、“作的卢飞快，弓似霹雳弦惊。了却君王天下事，赢得生前生后名，可怜白发生。”

二、翻译题（18分）：

春冬之時，则素湍绿潭，回清倒影。絕巘多生怪柏，悬泉瀑布，飞漱其间。清荣峻茂，良多趣味。每至晴初霜旦，林寒涧肃，常有高猿长啸，属引凄异，空谷传响，哀转久绝。

春冬季节，白色的急流，回旋着清波；碧绿的深潭，倒映着两岸山色。极为陡峭的山峰上，生长着许多姿态奇特的柏树，大小瀑布，在那里飞射冲刷，江水清澈，树木繁盛，群山峻峭，绿草丰茂，确实很有趣味。每逢雨后初晴或霜天清晨，树林山涧冷落而萧索，常有猿猴在高处长声鸣叫，声音连续不断，异常凄厉。回响在空旷的山谷中，很长时间才消失。

三、简答题（每小题12分，计24分）：

1、试评析《李将军列传》（节选）中的李广形象。

李广武艺高超，但在战争中并不恃一夫之勇，而是冷静睿智、根据战场的实情灵活机动，故而能凭借其奇正不一的战争谋略扬威于匈奴；他英勇善战，行廉好义，待部下宽让友爱，故多得士兵之心，但仇杀霸陵尉则体现了他性格中刚愎狭隘的一面。

2、请赏析姜夔《扬州慢》（纵豆蔻词工……冷月无声）

这首词为词人东下游淮扬时作。当时金兵屡次南侵，致使扬州荒凉残破。作者目睹萧条的扬州，悲叹今日的荒凉，追忆昔日的繁华，歌咏此诗，寄托了对扬州昔日繁华的怀念和对今日山河残破的哀思。上片写他的所见实景及实际感受，着重写经历战乱后扬州的萧条、空阔、冷清和荒芜的面貌；下片深化，主要在形象、感受和意境的扩大，作者用杜牧重新来到扬州的假想，追怀丧乱，感慨今昔，感情悲凉。这首词景中含情，化景物为情思。词人运用今昔对比的反衬手法来写景抒情，写昔日之繁华，正是为了表现今日之萧条。

四、论述题（30分）：请分析《史记·项羽本纪》中刘邦和项羽的人物形象

刘邦：虚伪、奸猾的小人的形象，他岁有善用能臣的一面，但粗鄙、多疑，在整个事件中他始终是胆战心惊的，惟恐丧命。

现当代文学选读 篇4

推荐书目

鲁迅：《呐喊》《彷徨》《朝花夕拾》

郁达夫：《沉沦》《春风沉醉的晚上》

废名：《竹林的故事》

茅盾：《幻灭》《动摇》《追求》《子夜》

老舍：《离婚》《茶馆》《骆驼祥子》

巴金：《家》《寒夜》

萧红：《呼兰河传》

沈从文：《边城》《湘行散记》《从文自传》

张爱玲：《倾城之恋》《金锁记》《流言》

钱钟书：《围城》

赵树理：《小二黑结婚》

丁玲：《莎菲女士的日记》

孙犁：《荷花淀》

郭沫若：《女神》

周作人：《苦雨》《喝茶》

朱自清：《桨声灯影里的秦淮河》

冯志：《昨日之歌》《十四行诗集》

曹禺：《雷雨》《日出》《原野》

第一个十年的新诗 1917—1927重点：《女神》、闻一多 Ⅰ、20年代新诗发展轮廓

白话新诗—自由诗—小诗—格律诗（含十四行诗）—象征诗（以节奏到旋律）—政治抒情诗

Ⅱ、第一节初期白话诗

1、胡适 《尝试集》

代表作：《老鸦》《鸽子》《权威》《乐观》

2、月夜

3、相隔一层纸刘半农（1917）

4、初期白话新诗一览

胡适《尝试集》

刘半农：“白描派”，对新诗形式颇为关注

周作人《小河》

沈尹默：“象征派”

俞平伯、康白情、刘大白、朱自清

5、初期白话诗总体特点

散文化：基本不用韵及平仄；虚词较多，采用白话散文的句式章法

注意向民间歌谣传统的吸取和借鉴：1920年成立北京文学歌谣研究会

以个性解放，关注民生为主要内容

第二节自有体诗

1、概述

2、郭沫若与《女神》

㈠ 《女神》概述

㈡艺术成就

五四时代精神与诗人创作个性的高度融合形式上的“绝端自由，绝端自主”

浓厚的浪漫主义色彩：强调自我表现，个性解放，理性追求；抒发感情时常采用托物言志的手法

㈢内容

㈣ 《星空》《瓶》《前茅》

㈤历史剧

第三节 小诗

第四节 格律诗

茅盾及其《子夜》

Ⅰ、生平与简介

㈠1927年以前，从事文学理论

1927年以后，从事文学创作，全面反映中国社会现实

1949年以后，以领导工作为主，中国作协主席，文化部部长，全国政协委员常委副主席 ㈡沈得鸿 字雁冰

主张：为人生的写实主义文学

提倡：现实主义

认为：文学是表现人生的东西，不论他是客观的描写事物，或是主观的描写思想，总须以人生为对象

Ⅱ、创作历程

三大革命失败《烛》（《幻灭》《动摇》《追求》）

个帝国主义侵略时期（鼎盛时期）《子夜》民族工业破产《林家铺子》商业经济的破产《农

村三部曲》农村经济破产

阶新中国成立后以文学评论为主，创作逐渐衰落

段

《子夜》

Ⅰ 内容

《子夜》反映了1930年左右中国社会的整体面貌。

Ⅱ 人物形象

吴荪甫：一个悲剧的英雄，一个二十世纪机械工业时代的英雄骑士和王子。

他出生于封建家庭，同时接受了西方文明的熏陶，他既具备经营实业的本领，也养成了发展资本主义的志向。性格特点中首要的是果敢，自信，敢作敢为，刚愎自用，有发展实业的热

忱，同时又又凶残，残酷的一面，色厉内荏，脆弱胆怯，空虚惶恐，害怕帝国主义的经济侵略。

他的性格充分体现了民族资产阶级的两重性：一方面对帝国主义买办资产阶级的不满；另一方面对工农运动充满恐惧心理；一方面对统治阶级与军阀混战局面的不满，另一方面又镇压工人农民运动，这也是名族资产阶级固有的两面性。

吴本人的意义生动而深刻的反映了30年代初期中华民族资产阶级的艰难处境和必然破产的历史命运，比嗷嗷漏了他们两重性的经济特征，揭示了中国两半社会的社会性质，驳斥了托派谬论。

Ⅲ评价

《子夜》创造了中国现代文学史的几个第一

1、科学的世界观指导中国社会剖析小说

2、正面描写民资的形象

3、“史诗般”的全面展示20世纪30年代社会的经济生活

4、规模宏大和结构复杂的长篇小说

老舍创作经历

㈠20年代中后期（1924-1929）在英国创作长篇小说《老张的哲学》《赵子曰》《二马》三部作品以文笔轻松畅快，富有北京地方色彩，善于刻画市民生活和心里，引起读者注意。㈡30年代初至抗战爆发，代表作品：长篇《猫城记》《离婚》《牛天赐转》《骆驼祥子》 中篇《月牙儿》

㈢抗战爆发至新中国成立长篇《四世同堂》中篇《我这一辈子》

㈣建国后话剧《龙须沟》《茶馆》《正红旗下》

巴金与《家》

Ⅰ 生平及创作综述

前期创造中，爱情三部曲《雾》《雨》《电》

抗战开始后，创作日益成熟严谨，中小说《憩园》《第四病室》长小说《寒夜》

文革后，迎来第二个创作高峰，1978-1986《随想家》

成就最高者《家》

Ⅱ创作的三个阶段

⒈ 30年代发表的长篇小说：爱情三部曲《雾》《雨》《电》激流三部曲《家》《春》《秋》 ⒉ 对现实有了更深层的认识，开始关注小人物的生存悲剧，发表了《憩园》《寒夜》等感情更蕴藉思想更深刻的作品

⒊ 文革后，拷问自我和现代中国知识分子灵魂的《随笔录》

Ⅲ《家》

⒈ 觉慧寄予作者的激情与理想的人物

一个幼稚而大胆的叛逆者，是巴金人格和性格的象征

两面性：一个准求个人的反抗，追求人权平等，人道主义，基本思想，在这种思想的指导下，敢爱敢恨敢追求自己的幸福，敢于走向放抗家庭的道路，另一方面，又无法摆脱环境影响，有时反抗显得软弱。在情感上对祖父既反抗又有点依赖，在爱情上犹豫不决。⒉ 觉新

是一个充满了矛盾，具有双重性格的人。觉新在新旧交替时期，接受了新思想，他又是旧制度培养出来的人。他作为长子，在封建家长制的压抑下，使他变得性格懦弱，不敢反抗，心理压抑，学会妥协和和忍受。他在即担任了封建大家庭的责任，又在思想深处接受进步思想矛盾中，封建家庭占了上风。所以，一方面听祖父的，维系家庭，一方面理解觉民，觉慧，结果不仅使他自己成为封建家长制的帮凶，而且自己也付出惨痛代价。

⒊ 高老太爷

专横，顽固，虚伪，腐朽的封建家长，他极力维护封建礼教，仁义道德，荒淫腐朽。⒋ 女性群体

被凌辱被损害的人。

⒌ 《家》的艺术特色

⑴、具有鲜明的现实主义特色

⑵、塑造了一系列富有个性特色的人物形象

⑶、情节结构具有鲜明的民族特色

第十二章四十年文学

Ⅰ 国统区的讽刺和追忆小说

⒈ 暴露和讽刺小说

张天翼《华威先生》沙汀《在其香居茶馆里》

⒉ 体验和追忆小说

路？与七月派作家原京派作家萧红《呼兰河传》

Ⅱ 沦陷区的文学创作

⒈ 张爱玲

2、苏青《结婚十年》

3、钱钟书

Ⅲ 解放区的文学创作

1、《在延安文艺座谈会上的讲话》与解放区文学创作

（1）时间：1942年5月

（2）地点：延安

（3）内容：5月2日第一次会议，毛泽东发表“引言”

5月23日第三次会议，毛泽东作了“结论总结”

1949年，毛泽东在《解放日报》上发表，合题《在延安文艺座谈会上的讲话》

内容：作为政治家，毛泽东从政治策略角度论述文艺问题。讲话涉及文艺与生活、政治的关系，内容与形式，普及与提高，世界观与创作方法，批评标准，文化继承，统一战线等多种问题。

赵树理

1、文艺观

（1）问题小说意识和工具论的文艺观

“文摊文学家”“老百姓喜欢看，政治上起作用”

（2）注意小说的讽劝教育功能

俗话说“说书唱戏是劝人呢”这话是对的（3）紧密反映现实，但不盲从现实，对现实有独立的思考

（4）拒绝五四新文学传统和外国文化传统，重视民间文化传统

2、塑造历史变革中的农民形象

表现中国农民在政治，经济翻身过程中实现的思想上的翻身，并在这个变化过程中，显示了农民改造的长期性和艰巨性

3、其小说的名族化、群众化特点

（1）小说情节结构多数运用传统的手法，注意故事性，情节连贯，环环相扣，有头

有尾，大团圆结局

（2）人物塑造多采用中国古典小说的白描手法，通过人物的语言，行动来刻画人物

性格

（3）语言大众化，通俗化，形象化，个性化，擅长运用农民口语，通俗易懂简洁生

动

孙犁

创造特点：

典型形象的塑造

不以情节取胜，而采用散文式的抒情结构，采用情景交融的诗的手法

新颖，明净的语言风格

乡土小说

丁玲《太阳照在桑干河上》周立波《暴风骤雨》

白毛女

根据流传在晋察冀边上的“白毛仙姑”传说改编。延安鲁迅艺术文学院师生集体创作，贺敬之，丁毅执笔

四十年代的诗歌

艾青《我爱着土地》

左联

中国左翼作家联盟（左联）：联合更多作家对抗国民党的文化围剿

形成“剧联”“影联”“社联”“记联”等左翼团体，有中共中央通过“文化总同盟”统一领导，与国民党对文化的领导形成鲜明对比

时间：1930年3月2日——1936年自动解散

地点：上海

美国文学史及选读论文 篇5

Old English poetry: the religious group and the secular oneChaucer introduced from France the rhymed stanzas of various types to English poetry to replace the Old English alliterative verse. The father of English poetryEnglish Homer In the medieval period ：use narrative verse of prose to tell stories of knightly adventures or other heroic deeds.第一章 文艺复兴时期

the Renaissance Period th 14th and mid-17Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance.Golden Age It started in Italy

Henry VIIIDefender of the Faith Bible in Englishancient Roman and Greekcultureclass strugglePetrarch

Christopher Marlowe ,William Shakespeare and 3威廉 莎士比亚William Shakespeare 1564-1616

Playwrights, dramatist,poets

1591-1611was in the prime of his dramatic career.38plays 戏剧154sonnets 十四行诗2 long poems叙事诗 Stratford-on-Avon

”“an upstart crow”

:meditationeternal beautyorigin:Italy

“to be,or not to be-that is the question”

against Christians /Jews.Two narrative poems

Juliet>

Six comedies: like it>

Romantic tragicomedies:<[eroc;es> Juliet> tragedy but optimistic 乐观spirit.a play in the playborrow plots from other stories such sa Roman,Greekand ancient myth.several threads running through the playcombination of tragic and comic elements.Writing style: 1 trimendous vocabulary(16,000words,invent words)2literary devices(alliterateion头韵，simile明喻，metaphor暗喻)3 use poetry in his play The theme of the sonnet:express love and praise to a young manimmortalize beauty through verses 3friendship or betrayal of friendship

6约翰 弥尔顿John Milton 1608-1674

family天主教Latin blind.失乐园 masterpiece.a story taken from “the old Testament” ,a long epic divided into 12 books ,taken from the Bible.the theme is “fall of man”

The main idea:to beg for mercy and worship his power were more shamefull and disgracefull than this downfall.the most powerfull dramatic poem on the Greek model.Three group:Athe early poetic worksBthe middle prose pamphlets

Cthe last great poems

The freedom of the will is the keystone of Milton‟s creed.

第二章 新古典主义时期

the Neoclassical Period

1660-1798(18th century)

人社会动物industrial revolution 工业革命the RestorationGothic Novel:content: magic, supernaturall elements, ghosts, monsters.2setting: old castle, graveyard, dard forest

3atomsphere:horrible

The enlightenment movement（the age of reason）：启蒙运动

It was a progressive intellectuall 进步知道份子movement which flourished nd swept western Europe at the time.Its enlighten the whole world with the light of modern 哲学和艺术思想The enlighteners celebrated reason or rationality, equality and science,理性平等科学 and they also advocated universal 民普及教育

1约翰 班杨John Bunyan 1628-1688 18年坐牢，Christianity基督教

”the vanity fair”is the most successful religious allegory 宗教寓言in the English language.search for spiritual salvation

Style: Moded after the Bible, language:e asy to read,colloquial, concrete and conciseform: allegorian form,reallystic,true to life.3丹尼尔 笛福Daniel defoe 1660-1731

butcher‟s family 卖肉家庭English middle –class

masterpiece, Robinson is the empire builder,the pioneer colonist.The theme:

A man‟s strugglees against nature

B glorifyication of the bourgeois men who has the courage and will to face hardship and determineation to improve his livelihood.C glorifyication of labor(Robinson lives on his own hands)

笛福的创作特点：Defoe was a very good story-teller.he had a gift for organizing minute details in such a vivid way that his stories could be both credible可信 and fascinating神奇.his sentences are sometimes short,crisp 短小干脆and plain,and sometimes long and rambling,which leave on the reader an impression of casual narration.his language is smooth,easy,colloquial口语 and mostly vernacular方言.there is nothing artificeial in his language: it is common English at its best.4乔纳森 斯威夫特Jonathan Swift 1667-1745

the greatest satiric work

a greatest and bitterest satire.Lilliputyahoosbitter satire

5亨利 菲尔丁Henry Fielding 1707-1754

Born of an old aristocratic family.老贵族家庭“father of the English

“the third-person narration”第三人称叙述

“prose homer”散文荷马”

comic epic in prose”散文体喜剧史诗: 1 the descryiption in a grand style of classic epic.”classic epic”has:

A a great heroBcalls on MusesC give a list of names of godsD

compare small fights to great wars.2 use verifyied language to narrate a small fightdifferent figure of speech.esp,irony讽刺,hyperbole夸张

费尔丁的语言特色：Fielding‟s language is easy, unlaboured and familiar,自然流畅通俗易懂but extremely vivid and vigorous.His sentences are always distinguished by logic逻辑性 and rhythm,韵律性and his structure carefully planed towards an inevitable ending.His works are also noted for lively,dramatic dialogues 戏剧性对话and other theatrical devices such as suspendse,悬念coincidence巧合 and unexpectedness.出人意料

第三章 浪漫主义时期the

Romantic Period is an age of poetry.1798-1832

人的孤单状态

Passive , old and conservative :

“lake poets”William Words worthRobert Southey Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Active ,young and revolutionary: ByronShellyKeats

1威廉 布莱克William Blake 1757-1827

候看见过天使，他父亲死后他弟弟也死了，神秘主义。An engraver 雕刻家

“fearful symmetry”可怕的匀称suggest the harmony of the two opposite aspects of God’s creation.Childhood is central to Blake‟s concern in and The chimney sweeper.《天堂与地狱的结合》marks his entry into maturity.成熟

2威廉 华兹华斯William Wordsworth1770-1850 Poet Laureate“桂冠诗人”，lake poets湖畔诗人，“大自然的膜拜者”Poet Laureate特点：孤独 自由 自然 His short poems „Subject:poems about nature 自然and poems about human life.人类生活

<我如行云独自游> simile明喻“inward eye”means human soul

The poet expresses his love for the daffodils.水仙花

<威斯敏斯特桥上有感>

<她住在人迹罕至的小路间》 <孤单的收割者>

5波 比 雪莱Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822

与拜伦相比更进步一点，政治，经济的不公平，重视集体力量。自由。

西风颂

Shelly eulogyized the powerful west wing and expressed his eagerness to enjoy the boundless freedom from the reality.

four-act poetic

7简 奥斯汀Jane Austen1775-1817 匿名发表anonymously

The major theme:Love and marriageconcern about human their personal relationships.个人生活及人从她往下是写小说的，上面的是写诗的处女作《理智与情感》

傲慢与偏见 =第一印象 ：Elizabeth 伊丽莎白

Darcy 达西Mrs.Bennet is a beautiful but empty-headed,snobbish势

力 and vulgar粗俗 woman whose only goal in life is to marry her five daughters to rich,handsome young men.伊莉莎白的性格： A：Elizabeth is clever , alert, observant.She is more observant and less charitable than Jane in recognizeing the characters of Bingley‟s sisters.She recognizes Mr.Collins‟character in his letter and after meeting him turns down firmly and with dignity his patronizing proposal.She is able to match wits with Darcy several times and with Colonel Fitzwilliam,earning their respect and admiration.B:Fearless and frank ,not rattled by the attack of Lady Catherine de Bourgh ,she wins a notable victory, sending her Ladyship away completely routed.She is independent but not infallible in her judgment—taken in by the charm of the worthless Wickham.She cannot be blamed for misjudgeing Darcy.C: She shows flexibility, discernment,and honesty of mind when she reads Darcy‟s defense in his letter and admits the justice of much of what h says.Thus beginning to lose her prejudice against him.《爱玛》

第四章 维多利亚时期the

Victorian Period 1836-1901现实主义realistic 工业革命

Chartist movement(1836-1848)宪章运动

“art for art‟s sake‟

Victorian literaturediversity.文学多样化

Darwin‟s

1查尔斯 狄更斯Charles Dickens 批判现实主义作家he is one of the greatest critical realist writers of the Victorian Age.作品特点：he is a master withhis characterized by a mingling of humor and p吸引读者，悲情大师，幽默与哀伤交汇

Child characters :oliver twist奥利弗，特维斯物,little nell小奈尔,david copperfield大卫科波菲尔,little dorrit小多利特.雾都孤儿

“let it not be supposed by the enemies of „the system‟ that during the period of his solitary incarcerateon.Oliver was denied the benefit of exercise, the pleasure of society, or the adventages of religious consolation.”

A:The sentence is a typical,example of irony.反语 What Dickens intends to say is just the opposite of the sentence‟s literal meaning.B:for the “benefit” of exercise, Oliver was whipped鞭打 every morning in a stone yard, for the “pleasure"of society, he was carried every other day into the dining hall and flogged 鞭打as a public warning and example to the boys;and as for the “adventages”of religious consolation安慰, he was kicked into the same apartment every evening at prayer time and listened to the boy‟s prayer to be guarded against his sins and vices.罪恶行为

C:the ironic statement is ,in fact, a bitter denunciation 谴责and fierce attack at the brutal,inhuman treatment of the poor orphan孤儿by the workhouse济贫院 authority.权力

《老古玩店》 《皮克威克外传》 <>《大卫科波菲尔》

《董贝父子》 《双城记》 《荒凉山庄》 《小多利特》 《艰难时世》

《远大前程》 《我们共同的朋友》

2布朗蒂姐妹the Bronte sisters Charlotte bronte 1816-1855

《简爱》家庭教师governess heroine，represents middle-class working women.Mr.Rochester

简爱的性格特点：Jane Eyre is quick will,honesty, frankness,and shi has the spirit of independence and self-dignity. 《教授 》

Emilybronte:poet,193poems.呼啸山庄

Catherine凯瑟琳,Hindley辛德利,Edgar,Isabella,Heathcliff希斯克利夫 protagonist:Prufrock is neurotic神经

质,self-important,自以为是illogical不讲逻辑 and incapable of action.优柔寡断 The setting”polite society”彬的社会anti-romantic反浪漫主义

《荒原》433行5部分,spiritual breakup

《星期三的烟灰》 《四个四重奏》 Dramatists Prose writer:

“stream-of-consciousness’

5戴维 伯特 劳伦斯 David Herbert Lawrence 1885-1930

普通矿工家庭，作品被禁读，小说家，美国独立战争，Civil War 内战 鼓点

涉水的骑兵，a scene of the American civil war,美国内战景象the picture are frozen凝固,they come out of the watcher’s imagination.出于观察者的想像。自我之歌 =”poem of walt Whitman,an American”=”walt Whitman”

Two beliefs:the theory of universality普遍性信仰and the belief in the singularity and equality of all beings in value.个别性和平等性

Language characteristic:

use oral English口语,vocabulary is amazing词汇惊人,rarely-use words罕见词, foreign origin words外国第一个按国际标准考虑自己职业的美国作家。

1915年入英国籍，羡慕欧洲文明。Henry james concerned with the”inner world”of man.He is also concerned with the International terms 国际方面

His language is simple and colloquial.口语

三个时期：

1早期in the first period 1865-1882international theme

《美国人》 《黛西 米勒》中篇 the free spirit of the new world美国精神的代表。温特伯恩说“黛西是我所见到的最漂亮最和蔼„„最天真的姑娘”

Anne Bronte

6托马斯 哈代Thomas hardy

“Wessex”sympatheticnostalgic怀旧fatepessimistsDarwin’s “survival of the fittestconflict with the environment

第五章 现代时期the

modern period19世纪末—20世纪初

Modernism rose out of skepticism怀疑论 and disillusion of capitalism.French symbolsm ,appearing in the late 19 century healed modernism.The major themes of the modernist literature are the distorted,and ill relationships between man and nature,man and society,man and man,and man and himself.Modernism is,in many aspects,a reaction against realism.The 1930s witnessesd great economic depressions,mass unemployment,and was known as “the red thirtyes”

The first “angry young man”:愤怒青年Osborne奥斯伯恩

The most original playwright of the Theater of Absurd is SamuelBeckett,his first play

He is considered to be the best-known English dramatist since Shakespeare.没有受过高等教育的人反对资本主义剥削，相信共产主义。

He is considered to be the best-known english since Shakespeare.的plays 问题剧only one passion: indignation唯一愤怒的情感 卡歇尔 拜伦的职业

《鳏夫的房产》slum贫民窟 landlordism租房制度 the oppression/exploitation剥削压迫 of women.萧伯纳的作品人物塑造特点：

A:One feature of shaw‟s characterizehe makes the trick of showing up展示 one character vividly at the expense of 贬低损害another.B:another feature is that Shaw‟s characters are the和角色发生倒转错位is also used in character portrayal to achieve comic effects.4TS埃略特Thomas Stearns Eliot1888-1965

出生美国，后1927成为英国公民

《JA布鲁富劳克的情歌》

长诗 it presents the meditateion 沉思of an aging young man 上了年纪over the businesss of proposing marriage求婚问题.dramatic monologue, 戏剧独白the

母亲是上流社会 psychological exploration心理透析 Proficient poet 多产诗人

劳伦斯三部曲：”the lawrence trilogy”

1矿工的周五夜晚

2儿媳

3守寡的霍尔罗伊德夫人

儿子与情人autobiographyical novel Mrs.Morel

白孔雀 过客

虹is a story about the three generations of the Brangwen family on the Marsh farm.恋爱中的女人to be a better-structured/more profoundly ordered novel.Chatterley’s lover>查泰莱夫人的情人

劳伦斯的诗分三类：

1satirial and comic poems

3poems about nature

mechanical civilizationis responsible for the development of human personalities,the perversion of love and the failure of human fulfillment in marital relationships 劳伦斯艺术特色：

A：Lawrence‟s artistic tendency is mainly realism,which combines dramatic scenes with an authoritative可靠权威 commentary评论

B:his language is simplicity 简单and directness直接

C:Lawrence makes use of poetic imagination and symbolism in his writing.第二部份 美国文学

第一章 浪漫主义时期 the

romantic period18世纪末到内战爆发前before the American civil war(美国的文艺复兴)

New England Transcendentalism 超验主义

3纳撒尼尔 霍桑Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804-1864

怀疑心理，矛盾心理ambivalent writer，双重,不讲犯罪过程puritan family

Hawthorne‟s intellectuals 知识份子rae usually villains.恶棍

红字heroine:Hester allegorist讽喻家symbolism象征 小伙子布朗 尽人皆知的故事 古屋青苔 雪的形象

有七个尖角阁的房子

玉石雕像

4华尔特 惠特曼walt Whitman 1819-1892

有个向前走的孩子

草叶集 monumental work,歌颂整个美国和自我。American democratic ideals美国民主思想 the Revolutionary War

词 ,wrong words错词,free-flowing ,simple and crude质朴野味,without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.没有固定的节奏和韵律

“free verse”自由体诗，Mark by theUse of poetic”I”诗用第一人称，家常随意不讲究死规矩sexual love topic,性爱作品。

5赫尔曼 麦尔维尔Herman Melville学霍桑 怀疑主义

is regarded as first American prose epic.美国第一部散文体史诗

Moby dick symbolize: 1 mystery of the universe 2power of the great nature 3evil of the world

泰比 奥穆 玛地

雷得本 白外衣

皮埃尔

探索信仰的矛盾

“bartleby,the scrivener”is a short story.短篇

“benito cereno”is a novella.中篇

第二章 现实主义时期the

realistic period 1865-1914

Darwin达尔文 influence on literary naturalism.自然主义

1马克 吐温Mark Twain 笔名 1835-1910

原名：samuel Langhorne Clemens 萨缪尔 朗荷恩 克莱门斯

小说家 儿童 humor诙谐 幽默American folk humor

从乐观主义向悲观主义转变 “damned human race”可恨的人类，language is simple,direct, lucid,and faithful to “vernacular方言土语”local color 乡土气息

H．L Mencken said he is “the true father of our national literature”门肯说他是“我们真正的民族文学之父” 《加拉维拉斯县有名的跳蛙第一部幽默小说

《傻瓜出国记》 《含辛如苦》

密西西比河上的生活

《汤姆 索亚历险记》

《哈克贝里。芬》”all modern American literature comes”所有现代美国文学之源

《镀金时代》

《亚瑟王宫庭中的美国佬》 《败坏哈德莱堡的人》 《神秘的陌生人》

2亨利 詹姆斯 Henry jame 1843-1916

The forerunner of the 20th ”els and the, the founder of

《欧洲人》

画像》

different themes and forms in his middle period不同的主题和形式

《波士顿人》 《卡撒玛西玛公主》

《私生活》短篇小说 《狮之死》 《中年》

《螺丝在拧紧》

《丛林猛兽》后期in his last and major period

《梅西所知道的》中短篇

《鸽翼》 《专使》 《金碗》

Literary criticism文学批评：注重形式又注重价值concern with form and devoted to human values.《小说的艺术》：to aim to present life小说的目的是现实生活

Henry james‟ fiction is characterized by:highly refined 高雅language.James is not so easy to understand.heis often highly refined and insightfull.with a large vocabulary,he is always accurate in toexpression for his literary imagination.他的语言不易读懂，高雅而富有见解，词语丰富，措辞准

He also advocates the freedom of the artist to write about anything that concerns him, even the disagreeable异端,the ugly 丑的and the 普通

3艾米利 狄金森Emily Dickinson1830-1886

1755首诗，500多首关于自然的。诗无题 首名引用，用词简洁，直率，平易，拟人的手法

破折号：韵律节奏 大写：强调

tylove andnature 宗教死亡不朽爱情和自然

这是我给世界的信

死亡的：

如果郎君秋日来

盛夏有一日

不得与君同住

我是妻，那时已做完

4西奥多 德莱塞Theodore Dreiser1871-1945

Naturalist自然主义代表，no money no friendin power,no formal education worthy of mention,on family tradition in letters.只是在创作上更具讽刺意味，更加悲观pessimists Prolific writer多产作家

嘉莉妹妹Hurstwood赫斯伍德物质 性 金钱查尔斯 德鲁埃

“trilogy of Desire‟《欲望》三部曲：

<.the financeier>《金融家》 《巨头》 《斯多葛》

《天才》一个被“误解的艺术家”的故事

《美国悲剧》the greatest work克莱德Clyde‟s tragedy is a tragedy that depends upon the Ameican sociall system which encouraged people to pursue the”dream of success”at all costs.Naturalism emphasized heredity andas important forces shaping individualized characters who were presented in special and detailed circumstances.强调遗传和环境人物在特定条件下的决定性力量。

A welter of inscrutable forces“一团高深莫测的各种力量的纠缠”

To him, life is “so sad,so strange ,so mysterious and so inexplicable”人类是各种力量交织在一起的受害者，这些力量人类是无法控制的。

Darwinist idea of “survival of the fittest”达尔文“适者生存”的思想影响

“kill or to be kill”“要么杀人，要么被杀”

For lack of concision,readers are sometimes burdened with massive detailed descriptions of characters and events,though the time sequence is clear and the plot straightforward,he has been always accused of being awkward in sentence structure,inept and occasionally flatly tion and meaning, and mixed and disorganized in voice and means of communication rather than 繁的描写之累，时间顺序清楚，情节简单，但句子结构不自然，用词不准确，在语态和语气上组织不严密。对他来说，语言只是传达思想，而非艺术形式。

第三章 现代主义时期

1914-1918第一次世界大战

美国现代主义的特点是反传统，求创新。

2罗伯特 弗洛斯特Robert Lee Frost1874-1963

获奖最多，诗歌最好，象征暗喻Pulitzer prize普利策文学奖，4次。serious poet 严肃诗人New England life 新英格兰

对人类生活的爱和地劳动后详和宁静的赞美，创作风格平易自然，但很优雅，诗的语言口语化，节奏上如谈家常，不紧不慢。半自由体或半传统诗体。

一个男孩的愿望，第一本书

波士顿以北人的一本书

新罕普什尔

理性假面具 怜惘假面具

摘苹果后 indifference不在乎在关心 to what he once desired

《未选择的路》meditateive poem 沉思the road symbolize life’s journey

第一次普利策奖雪夜林边停，第二次诗集西流之溪

第三次《更远的境界》 第四次《证人树》收入《直率的礼物》约翰肯它迪总统就职吟诵

4司各特 菲兹杰拉德Scott Fitzgerald1896-1940

金钱的堕落，早期爵士时代 the Jazz Age，the upper-class young people.of paradese>第一篇小说《人间天堂》获zelda sayre大奖 美国梦的破裂the bankruptcy of the amerian dream.gatsby is the last of the romantic heros.gatesby‟s failure magnifyies the end of the American dream.the detailed descryiptions of big parties to show emptiness of life.Fitagerald‟s fictional world is the best embodiment of the spirit of the jazz age,especially the upper-class young people.He is a great stylist in literature,he follows the Jamesian tradition in using the scenic method in his chapters, each one of which consists of one or more dramatic scenes,leaving the tedious processs of transition to the readers‟ imagination.Moths are used metaphorically to refer to those people who are drawn to the party simply for its glamour,for the wealth of Galsby.Describe Gatsby „s extravagance.浪费

5欧内斯特 海明威Ernest(Miller)Hemingway1899-1961

Nobel Prize 1954年诺贝尔文学奖,出生医生家庭

简洁terseness口语colloquialism 乡土气息简短short清晰明了clearness以少胜多”less is more” “grace under pressure”在生活的重压下保持自尊is actually an attitude towards life that Hemingway had works.he depicts characters as brave and unjielded heroes.The Style of colloquyialism口语体,full of acents and mannerisms and the use of short ,simple and conventional words and sentences has an effect of clearness.“则

“the dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.”冰山运动的尊严在于只有八分之一露出水面。Without any authorial comments,without conventionally emotive language,and with a bare minimum of adjectives and adverbs.What are the characteristics of the Hemingway code hero?

A they have seen the cold world and for one cause or another,the boldly and courageously face the reality;whatever the result is, they are ready to live with grace under pressure.B almost all his heroes are”soldiers”either in a narrow or broad sense.they are out there to fight against nature or the world,or even themselves.but no matter where the battleground is and how tragic the ending is, they will never be defeated.C Hemingway himself is one of those Code heroes;some critics say his protagonists are autobiographyical,for they share something that is Hemingway.D the code with the honesty, the discipleine,and the restraint.在我们的时代

《印地安营地》Nick Adams尼克亚当斯 , the wound is a symbol.受伤是一种象征Nick’s initiation into the pain and violence of birth and death.接触生和死的痛苦和粗暴it is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spirituall disgrace.受伤是精神世界推动尊严的外部表现。

太阳照样升起 永别了，武器 丧钟为谁敲响

老人与海 masterpiece

没有女人的男人

被击败的人 杀人者

五十个大人物

午后的死亡 美国的青山 开利吉普车扎若之雪

拥有与缺乏

6威廉 福克纳William Faulkner 1897-1962

Set in the American south, his emphasis on the southern subjects 以美国南方为背景，强调南方主题和南方意识。Nortern Mississippi Yoknapatawpha county.第一卷诗集 第一部小说 四部小说;

喧嚣与骚动 八月之光

摩西，走下去 《押沙龙，押沙龙》

我弥留之际 疯狂的手掌 小屋 寓言 小镇 大夏

给爱米丽的玫瑰 spinster 老处女is a symbol of the old south.旧南方的象征。Rose as a symbol of love.and also stand for the pity,sympathy.“an dyesore among eyesores” is means the most unpleasant thing to look at.1she refuses to accept the passage of time

2she is a prisoner of the past 3she is a symbol of the old south

爱米丽是一个不愿意接受由于时间变迁而一切都改变的古怪的人，她是为过去所束缚的旧南方的象征。文体特点：his prose,marked by long and embedded sentences, complex syntax,and vague reference pronouns on the one hand and a variety of”Registers”of the English language on the other,is very difficult to read,it is not surpriseing to find in Faulkner’s writings his syntaxctical structures and verbals paralleled,negatives balanced against positives,compounded adjectives swelling his sentences,complex modifying elements placed after the nouns.In contrast,Faulkner could sound very casual or informal sometimes ,he captured the dialects of the Mississippi characters,includeing Negroes and the redneck,as well as more refined and educated narrators like Quentin.As to the symbols and imageries,they are most of them drawn from nature.句子长，用复合句子，指称模糊，用各种语体，读起来难懂，词语排比，肯定否定并用，复合式形容词，长串修饰，方言土语（密西西比河地区）象征源于自然。

William Shakespeare

A summer’s day:here it may refer to a period or the season of summer.Date:the period of a lease.Untrimmed:striped of gay apparel Ow’st:ownest

Lines:such as the lines of this poem and other sonnets

Answer:have dealings with Qualify:limit Loose:abandon Enow:enough

Of force:of necessity

Offence:condition of being hurt in one’s feelings,displeasure Fretten:disturbed

Abject:wretched miserable Tainted wether:sick sheep Fleet:pass by quickly Ravenous:greedy

Cureless:unableto be cured Hard by:nearby

Difference:focus of the dispute Seasons:moderates Tenour:terms

On you charge:you are responsible for the expenses

What of that:it is not important Use:habit

A love:a bosom friend By:here ,present Scale:balance

At thy peril:at your own risk Rehears’d:referred to Recant:cancel withdraw Meet:appropriate

Slings and arrows:attacks Perchance:maybe

Give us pause:make us hesitate Contumely:contempt Fardels:burdens Grunt:groan Bourn:boundary

Conscience:consciousnesss Pith:significance,importantce

John Milton

Study:pursuit

Doubted his empire:was afraid for his sovereignty

Empyreal:heavenly,sublime

Compeer:companyion,equal,peer Of force:perforce,necessaryily Suffice:satisly

In the gloomy deep:in Chaos Afflicted powers:stricken armies

Daniel defoe House-side:wall

Nothing near:in on way,not in the least

Optics:mechanicsms for seeing

In its place:in its proper place,that is,in the following account

Jonathan swift Desire liberty:beg leave or permission

Cut a caper:jump about in a joyfull manner

Summerset:somersault Courser:a swift horse Took:jump over Intelligence:news

The foot:the foot soldier,infantry Man-mountain:Gulliver

Express order:clearly-stated order Allowance:something provided regularly,provision

Henry fielding<>tom jones Occasioned:aroused Repaired to:went to

Missile weapons:things that can be thrown to hit people

Hinder head:back of the head Stour:a river

William blake

from songs of experience

Heath:uncultivated land covered with shrubs

Clothes of death:clothes in dark color

Aspire:have ambition for something Sinews:muscles

Lamb:symbol of peace and purity.William wordsworth

A crowd/a host,of:a large number of Vacant:empty,thoughtless

Steep:means to bathe or shine on

Dove:the name of a river

Highland:refers to the northern part of Scotland

A melancholy strain:a sad tune Chaunt:chant

lay:a short lyrical poem meant to be sung

Percy bysshe shelley

Clarion:a high,shrill trumpet

美国文学史及选读论文 篇6

一、英美文学和语言的关系

语言交流体现出智力的复杂沟通过程, 在互动的环节中需要语言使用者搭建新的资源平台, 并借助于自身所具备的综合语言知识和素养, 进行语言的沟通。在语言学习中, 要不断的进行语言观察、揣摩和分析, 并应用于实践才能取得具体的效果。文学语言成为英语语言材料的重要构成, 它提供很多具有开拓性的内容。通过文学语言的运用, 可以将人物内心世界和现实生活紧密的联系起来。纵观分析英美文学, 其中涵盖着丰富的语言成就, 这也是可以借鉴为英语语言学习的环节中。在具体的学习过程中, 需要将英美文学的内容归纳为课堂教学领域中, 在学生们选读文学作品时揣摩其中运用的语言技巧和风俗习惯, 并要解英美文学语言中涵盖着精妙词汇以及复杂语法。在学习过程中要能达到精度掌的程度, 这也成为英美文学学习的重点内容。

我国著名翻译家朱光潜在其文章《谈翻译》中强调外国文学作品翻译中最难的内容是对语素展开丰富的联想。语言翻译中要达到信、达、雅的境界。但换一个层面进行分析, 在准确反映作品原意的过程中, 如何达到文学的欣赏性, 这就是翻译工作者需要考量的重要事宜。现在探讨的联想一方面忠实于原作品, 另一方面也不要完全局限于字面内容的束缚, 要在翻译时能够融入语言环境民族的文化以及交流信息。所以, 这就需要我们更加深入的了解英美世界, 并对英美文学进行深入性的学习。对此, 美国语言研究者塞林格认为在学习非母语语言时, 由于在学习母语产生先入为主的原因, 所以在学习中会产生出介语石化现象。根据介语石化理论研究表明, 要采用“积极效率战略”的方法才可以在某种程度上有效的规避相关的问题。所以, 在进行英美语言学习时, 教师要要求学生们不断的深化英美文学作品的理解, 并要不断的进行语言的深化学习和研究, 提升第二语言学习的效率质量。

二、英美文学选读对英语语言学习的促进作用

(一) 有助于对所学词汇进行分类

现在各个高校在开展语言教学过程中, 均增设英美文学宣读课程, 它的教学目标是要短时间内有效强化学生外语的阅读能力。当学生们能够精准的掌握文学作品的阅读能力, 这会显著的提升学生们外国文学作品的欣赏水平, 也是可以促进学生们张文龙英语语言语义和用词的选。学习者在进行英美文学作品选读时, 能在原有语言学习的基础上, 更佳的扩大自身的外语词汇量。在学习中很多学生能够提升自己的阅读语境、语感能力, 可以融入到英美文学所营造的英美文化氛围中, 为后续的语言学习打下更加坚实的基础。上述所讲明的这些作用, 均是在具体学习中可以有效的显现出来。当然, 在英美文学选读课程开展的过程中, 这是需要关注相应的注意事项。譬如安德鲁·马维尔在其作品《致他娇羞的女友》中采用的是四音步抑扬格式, 通过此种方式能够改变原有诗歌中存在的枯燥感, 可以促其变得更加的舒展和明快。在作品中的第25行到第30行中这段内容里引入死亡主题, 并融合大量多恩式玄理派诗的意象手法, 显著的改变奔本诗的意境, 使其氛围逐渐的变得阴暗庄重。

Thy beauty shall no more be found,

再无处寻觅你的玉容花貌,

Nor, in the marble vault, shall sound

在你的大理石家中也不会听到

My echoing song;

我回荡的歌声;

then worms shall tm

蛆虫将会搅动

That long-preserved' dvirginity,

由你长期保持的处女的童贞,

And your quaint honor turn to dust

你的美誉芳名将化为尘埃,

And into ashes all my lust.

我的欲望也将变成一堆烟灰

在上一段的文章中, 诗人使用很多的词汇用语烘托出生命死亡后的世界景象, 譬如marble vault (大理石墓家) 、dust (尘埃) 、ashes (灰烬) 、worms (蛆虫) 等, 这一系列词汇有的是死亡时存在的状态, 有的是死亡时有的景象。通过此种丰富意象的方法, 既能够深化诗歌所描绘出的意境, 同时也能够强化诗歌含具的深意。客观上也会烘托出作者构思中的思想理念, 使得本诗更加具备说服力。在此基础上作者在全诗中设立出几个中心意象内容, 分别是时间、空间、死亡、爱情等要素, 通过超凡且独特的想象力, 可以完善作品中所要描绘的内容。学习者借助于作品的结构, 有效的帮助学生对相关外语词汇进行分类分析, 并促进学习语言词汇的效率和进度。

(二) 辅助学习英美文化, 完成英语语感的培养

从语言学的角度分析, 英语和汉语有着很大的差异化。汉语是属于汉文化文明, 英语是属于拉丁语系, 前者是有象形字和音近字构成, 后者是字母类型文字。无论是发音、用法、习惯均有着文化的差异性, 同时这种状态也是具备着双向性特征。学生们在国内是无法接触到外国的文化氛围和生活环境, 所以很多学生在学习语言的过程中很难领略到英美人士日常的生活习惯、文化习俗以及思维方式。为了提升英语语言学习的效果, 在学校可以广泛组织英语角等学习活动, 但是英语角也是在汉文化环境中, 英语角的大多成员的母语是汉语, 难以在英语角的沟通和学习环境中, 了解外语语言学习的环境, 这是有着现实性因素的作用。故此, 如果学生们想要进一步提升自己的英语学习能力, 并掌握更加深入的英美文化, 一个重要的环节正是体现在需要学习英美文化, 这样才能够了解他们的语言运用方式, 语言使用习惯以及语言思维方式。实际上从上面的描述也是可以深刻的了解到, 英美文学作品的阅读成为了解英美文化的重要方式和学习捷径。现在分析一下原因, 首先, 英美文学作品中很多事反应英美人日常生活习惯, 作者在创作的过程中也是借助于英美文化思维。其次, 被选编的英美文化作品均是英美文学原创精品, 使学生们直接可以了解最正宗、最地道的英美文化。最后是由于作品取材的广泛性, 能够开拓学生们的学习视野, 并将其不断的深化完善, 尤其是体现在作品中的口语对白内容。这也就意味着英美文学作品成为了解英美文化的一个窗口, 学生们要想更好的了解作品中的内容, 则先是需要知道作品的文化背景。在平时, 我们所需要阅读的英文文学作品主要包括以下几个内容, 譬如美国作家玛格丽特·米切尔创作的《飘》, 威廉·福克纳创作的《喧哗与骚动》等, 英国作家狄更斯创作的《雾都孤儿》和《双城记》, 简·奥斯汀创作的《傲慢与偏见》, 柯南道尔创作的《福尔摩斯探案集》等。

通过上面的分析可以了解得到, 语言的发展离不开民族文化的演变, 不同的语言已经成为各自民族文化的重要组成部分, 语言也是生活交流的重要工具和媒介。所以, 语言不能脱离文化环境而单独生存和发展。不同的历史时期, 语言均是能够将其阶段性特有的民族文化吸纳进取, 并通过语言的使用反映出民族的文化底蕴和丰富习惯。根据这一思想, 学生在学习英语语言的过程中, 可以借助于英美文学选读课程的开展, 培养学生具有良好的英美文化素养, 以促进学生们的英语语言的学习和深造。

(三) 有利于学习语法, 避免某些习语偏误

探讨世界文学史发展时, 其中英语类作品所占据的比例最大。一方面是使用它作为母语或者官方语言的国家或地区最多, 另一方面也是由于历史的因素使得英语的流行广度最高。在分析英美文学作品时主要接触的文学类型是以小说为主体, 现代西方小说风格的发展非常快速, 也孕育出很多的创作手法以及不同的文学体裁。所以, 在大学生选读英美文学作品时, 不仅要关注文学作品本身的内容, 也要改变现有的传统语言翻译方式, 其中涵盖着语法的改变, 词汇意思的变迁以及在文学作品中出现的新词汇等因素。要求学生们在阅读时, 务必要根据作品中的内容, 结合时代背景和文化要素, 要尽可能的规避可能因为上述问题而导致在翻译过程中出现愿意缺失的问题。在课堂教学中, 教师要引导学生学会英语语法的变通理解, 尤其是由英式英语转化的美式英语, 了解这两大英语体系的共同点, 并有效区分其中存在的差异化现象。除此之外, 在学习英美语言时, 要了解习语的特性以及和汉语之间的语言类比, 掌握其同质性的修辞方式, 包括一些常用的文字创作技法, 通过对比的方式, 可以强化学习的内容。譬如在汉语中有一句俗语为小菜一碟, 在英语中对应的语句是a piece of cake, 这也就意味着二者的物化描述方式非常类似, 也是体现出其有趣的内容。学生们在平时学习《简·爱》、《雾都孤儿》、《呼啸山庄》等时便可发现其中有着类似的内容, 可以学习分析。

三、结语

文学对提升个人的文化素养起到积极的促进作用, 这也是语言运用的更高层次, 同时也是体现出学习语言的实际应用。现代高校英语专业教学中, 非常重视英语语言学习中的文化内容的教授, 最具代表性的教学内容则体现在英美文学选读课程中。学生们在学习英美文学选读时, 在开展日常性英语语言学习进程中, 更是需要了解相关课程中所含具的文化内涵、民族风情、地域特征以及语言发展规律等, 同时也是需要了解具有倾向性的作品内容, 深入分析英汉两种文学的语义以及文化的共同点以及差异性, 培养学生们英语语言学习的素养, 促进学生们提升自身的英语阅读能力。

参考文献

[1]董晓燕.论英语语言学习的僵化现象及其对策建议[J].科技资讯.2010 (18)

[2]李恺.论英美文学对大学英语学习的重要性[J].大众科技.2011 (07)