American Literature.ppt

1、The United States of America,英语国家概况,英语国家概况,Chapter 13 Literature,The United States of America,英语国家概况,Early Fiction,Writers of the post-Revolutionary period had been embarrassed that America did no have much of a history. Washington Irving solved this problem James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstockin

2、g Tales,Washington Irving,First Short Story “Rip Van Winkle” First American Writer Respected Abroad,Lazy Rip,He is constantly being nagged by his wife to stop being worthless and help around the house.,The Fateful Day,One day, to get away from the constant nagging, Rip decides to go hunting in the m

3、ountains with his equally lazy dog, Wolf.,All of a sudden, he sees a dwarf with a big barrel. This is odd. The dwarf motions for help and Rip agrees to lug this large barrel.,While on the way up,While lugging the huge barrel with the strange dwarf, he hears thundering that seems to be getting louder

4、, LOUDER, and LOUDER. What could it be?.,More dwarves playing ninepins!,The dwarves have a drink from the barrel and resume their game. Rip cant resist and takes a sip himself. And anotherand anotherand another,When he wakes up.,He finds his dog gone and his gun rusted. No one recognizes him. Old ho

5、uses have vanished and so have some of his old friends.,Transcendentalists,Transcendentalism was a philosophical and literary movement that flourished in New England during the middle 19th Century (1836 1860). Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature Henry David Thoreau: Walden,Power of Imagination,While Transce

6、ndentalists put emphasis on intellect, some writers were concentrating upon human imagination and emotion Edgar Allan Poe Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter Herman Melville: Moby Dick,Edgar Allan Poe,Contribution,A great poet: The Raven Annabel Lee To Helen A major romantic writer and a pioneer

7、 in Detective story Gothic story The Fall of the House of Usher 厄舍古屋的倒塌,Nathaniel Hawthorne,Boston (setting of The Scarlet Letter),Plymouth (where Mayflower landed in 1620),Puritan “Crime and Punishment”,Because Puritan Boston was still a theocratic society, a crime against church was the equivalent

8、 of a crime against the law. If someone committed any crimes in a Puritan village, he would be put in the pillory or stocks(手足枷).,Puritan “Crime and Punishment”,Stocks were built on a scaffold in the center of the village, where townspeople could mock the offender, and throw rotten vegetables or sto

9、nes. Aside from the offenders hands being immobilized, his ears would frequently be nailed to the board behind his head.,The Stocks,The letter “A” what the novels main character is made to wear on her clothing as punishment for her crime.,Major characters relationship,Hester Prynne,Arthur Dimmesdale

10、,Roger Chillingworth,daughter,lover,husband,Pearl,Story,After the adultery is revealed, Hester is made to stand on the scaffold of the pillory and condemned to wear the scarlet letter A on her gown, but she refuses to reveal the identity of her lover Hesters long lost husband comes to the village an

11、d seeks revenge on her lover,Unable to endure the spiritual pain, Dimmesdale admits his guilty to the public and finds peace through confession. Chillingworth dies a year after Dimmesdales death Hester and Pearl finally escape the community where they have been outcasts for so many years and return

12、to England,Hester Dimmesdale Chillingworth,confesses her guilt, faces the future optimistically，helps others,is able to construct her life, wins a moral success,hides his guilt first,undergoes the physical and spiritual torments,moral growth(道德提升),morally degrades by his pursuit of revenge,die,angel

13、,Sinners attitudes toward sinning,Everybody is potentially a sinner, and great moral courage is indispensable for the improvement of human nature.,Hawthorne,Writing characteristic,the scarlet letter “A”,the central symbol,Adultery,Able,Angel,a token of shame,“A” appears in the sky,His use of symbols

14、,New Visions of America,Walt Whitman,One of the great innovators in American literature He gave America its first genuine epic poem: Leaves of Grass,Comments on Leaves of Grass,Where there is earth, where there is water, there is grass. Grass, is an image of the poet himself, a symbol of the rising

15、American nation, and an embodiment of his ideals about democracy and freedom.,Reform and Liberation (p.104),Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Toms Cabin This is the little lady who made this big war. -Abraham Lincoln,Regionalism (p.104),Writers focus on the differences between the various regions of the

16、United States Mark Twain Emily Dickinson,Innocents Abroad (1869) Roughing it (1872) The Gilded Age (1873) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) Life on the Mississippi (1883) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884),His Works,All modern American literature comes from one book” - Hemingway,My words ar

17、e like water. The words of the great masters are like fine wine. But everyone drinks water. - Mark Twain,A New Wave,Writers concentrated increasingly upon the grimmer aspects of reality and a deterministic view of life. Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie,The Modernists,One important literary movement o

18、f the time was “Imagism”, whose poets focused on strong, concrete images. Ezra Pound,In a Station of the Metro,The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. What is the one dominant image in this poem? What do “petals” and “bough” stand for?,The poem retells a moment in a

19、 Paris metro station when the poet was struck by the sight of the faces of some pretty women and innocent children in a crowd. The poem expresses the joyous and exhilarating emotions of the poet.,枯藤老树昏鸦， 小桥流水人家， 古道西风瘦马。 夕阳西下，断肠人在天涯。,天净沙.秋思 马致远,Lost Generation,The Lost Generation is used to refer to

20、a group of young American expatriates, who were writing chiefly in the 1920s. When the First World War broke out, many young men volunteered to take part in the war to end wars only to find that modern warfare was not glorious or heroic as they thought it to be. When they came back home after the wa

21、r, they were only disillusioned and disgusted by the greedy, and heedless way of life in America. So they left America again and formed a community of writers and artists in Paris, engaged themselves in writing.,Lost Generation,F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby William Faulkner: The Sound and th

22、e Fury喧哗与骚动 Light in August八月之光 Ernest Hemingway,Ernest Hemingway （18991961）,His Works,The Sun Also Rises, 1926 A Farewell to Arms, 1929 For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940 The Old Man and the Sea, 1952,Literary Awards,Hemingways book The Old Man and the Sea, published in 1952, won him a Pulitzer and Nobe

23、l Prize,Hemingway receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature,Spirit of Hemingway,“A man can be destroyed but not defeated”.,Harlem Renaissance,A burst of literary achievement in the 1920s by Negro playwrights, poets and novelists who presented new insights into the American experience and prepared the

24、 way for the emergence of numerous black writers after mid-century.,New Drama,Eugene ONeil: He won a Nobel Prize in 1936 for literature. Desire Under the Elms The Iceman Cometh Long Days Journey into Night,Depression, Realism and Escapism,Under the attack of the economic crisis, all contradictions inherent in the capitalist system intensified and writers focused on social forces. John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath Margaret Mitchell: Gone with the Wind Joseph Heller: Catch 22,Postwar Voices and Beat Generation,Richard Wright: Native Son Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man Arthur Miller: Death o