美国文学复习资料

American Literature Texts Introduction: 1.I think therefore I am. Descartes 2.Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. Confucius 3.It's exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful. Adrienne Rich 4.That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. Doris Lessing 5.To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark. Victor Hugo 6.I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way. Mark Twain 7.An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven’t been done before. Mark Twain Definition: USAn Literature is literature produced in American English by citizens of the United States of America. Basic Qualities of USAn Literature:Individualistic、Critical、Innovative、Humorous Chronological Development: I. The Puritan Background, 1635-1735 II. The Age of Reason and Enlightenment, 1735-1835 III. Romanticism: Transcendentalism, 1835-1865 IV. Realism and Naturalism, 1865-1910 V. Modernism, 1910-1945 VI. Post-war Literature, 1945- It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature. Henry James From the Old to the New World: Blend of ethnicity; blend of culture Blend of Purposes: religious freedom、Pilgrim、escape from the past、fortune-hunting、dream-fulfilling、adventure-taking、sight-seeing The New World:The New Promised Land; New Jerusalem; Zion “[A]n unimaginable empire, between the Isthmus of Panama and the Arctic, of nearly eight million square miles, more than half of it covered by ancient forests of fabulous density.”(The American Tradition in Literature, V1,3) Protestant Traits:The majority of them, and predominantly those who came to rest in New England and the Middle colonies, were products, in some sort, of the Protestant Reformation, a fact which continues to influence the life and thought of the United States. (The American Tradition in Literature, V 1,4) Idea of Martin Luther(1483-1546) “priesthood of believers”、“Neither Pope or Bishop nor any other man has a right to impose a single syllable of law upon a Christian man without his consent.” John Calvin(1509-64):Predestination and Grace “In Adam’s fall we sinned all.” Puritan:“He was a visionary who never forgets two plus two equals four; he was a soldier of Jehovah who never came out on the losing side of a bargain. He was a practical idealist…. He came to the New World to found the perfect society and the Kingdom of the elect and never expected it to be perfect, but only the best that fallible men could make. His creed was the revealed word of God and his life was the rule of moderation; his beliefs were handed down on high and his conduct was regulated by expediency….He was a doctrinaire and an opportunist.”—Perry Miller Puritanism:the Dissidence of Dissent, the Protestantism of Protestant Religion 1607— Jamestown, a trading post, commercial venture, Virginia 1620— Plymouth, Massachusetts, May Flower, humble country folk coming for religious reason (Dec.11; 102 pilgrims, out of whom 50 died within the year; 300 in 1630) 1630— Massachusetts Bay Company, prosperous, worldly, Governor John Winthrop 1636--- Harvard 1638--- Cambridge printing press 1693--- William and Mary College The early colonists wanted to prove that they were God’s chosen people who would enjoy God’s blessings on earth and in Heaven. They were exiles under special grace of God to establish a theocracy in the New World. Lofty idealism, militant self-assertiveness, Self-cultivation, self-improvement Key Concepts: 1. God’s Mysteries 2.Predestination 3. Total Depravity Great Men/Women and Their Works: William Bradford(1590-1657) Of Plymouth Plantation John Winthrop(1588-1649) 12 times chosen governor of MA Bay, A Model of Christian Charity Anne Bradstreet(1612?-1672) Mary Rowlandson(1636?-1678?) Jonathan Edwards(1703-1758) Freedom of the Will The Age of Reason and Enlightenment: Humanism: Concern with this World and the People in it; Belief in the possibilities of human progress and the comforts of material success. Rejection of Medieval Authoritarianism: The universe was not a mystery revolving around the whim of an inscrutable God, but a mechanism operating by a rational formula that could be understood by any intelligent man. Catch Words of the Time: 1. Order 2. Reason 3. Progress People tended to believe in a Deistic God who appeared to have designed the universe according to scientific laws and then withdrew from direct intervention of human affairs. Great Thinkers : Descartes (1596-1650) “I think therefore I am”, Newton (1642-1728) Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy John Locke (1632-1704) Treatises of Civil Government (1690) Literary Style: Clarity, restraint, balance and simplicity. Clear sense and mathematical plainness as opposed to the ornate, the extravagant, and the bombast. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) : “If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead &rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.” Optimistic faith in the perfectibility of man, as demonstrated in his worldly prosperity Brief Introduction: Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He is often thought of as the revolutionary figure who led protests against the Stamp Act, helped draft the Declaration of Independence, coordinated the peace treaty ending the American Revolution, and co-wrote and signed the U.S. Constitution. Poor Richard’s Almanac A word to the wise is enough. God helps them that help themselves. Used key is always bright. The sleeping fox catches no poultry. There’ll be sleeping enough in the grave. Constant dropping wears away stone. Little strokes fell great oaks. A fat kitchen makes a lean will. A small leak sinks a great ship. Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. They that won’t be counseled cannot be helped. Fish & Visitors stink in three days. Lovers, Travellers, and Poets, will give money to be heard. Love, Cough, & a Smoke, can’t well be hid. To whom thy secret thou dost sell, To him thy freedom thou dost sell. The noblest question in the world is What Good may I do in it? Who has deceiv’d thee so oft as thy self? Let thy vices die before thee. excerpts from Autobiography: It was about this time that I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wished to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong. I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task more difficult than I had imagined. While I was employed in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct. I included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurred to me as necessary or desirable, and annexed to each a short precept, which fully expressed the extent I gave to its meaning. 1. Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. 2. Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 3. Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. 4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. 5. Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e. waste nothing. 6. Industry. Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions. 7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly. 8. Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty. 9. Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve. 10. Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloth, or habitation. 11. Tranquility. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable. 12. Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or re putation. 13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.… Franklin's Autobiography is also a reflection of 18th century idealism. Often called the Age of Reason, the 18th century was the age of men such as John Locke and Isaac Newton. Intellectualism flourished along with scientific inventions and advances in political thought. Many people held to the optimistic belief that man could be perfected through scientific and political progress. Franklin ascribes to these beliefs partially, and Part Two of the Autobiography shows him trying to live them out. Perhaps the Autobiography has most endured because, despite its muddled nature, it is the preeminent work that mythologizes a hero of the American Revolution. Franklin is often introduced to elementary school children as a Renaissance man, someone who seemed to master all fields of knowledge--he was, among other things, scientist, inventor, statesman and writer. The Autobiography is the only enduring token that enshrines all the facets of his diverse nature; it presents Americans today with a great hero from the past who helped establish the tradition of the American Dream. Numerous critics have often called Franklin the "first American"; his autobiography provides a good example of why. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and The Declaration of American Independence: Epitaph: Author of the Declaration of the American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws o f nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.… That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. 我们认为下面这些真理是不言而喻的:人人生而平等。造物主赋予他们若干不可剥夺的权利,其中包括生命权、自由权和追求幸福的权利。为了保障这些权利,人类才在他们之间建立政府,而政府之正当权力,是经被治理者的同意而产生的。当任何形式的政府对这些目标具破坏作用时,人民便有权力改变或废除它,以建立一个新的政府;其赖以奠基的原则,其组织权力的方式,务使人民认为惟有这样才最可能获得他们的安全和幸福。" 逸事: 1812年开始,在本杰明.拉什的劝说下,两位素有嫌隙的开国元老开始通信.生性暴躁的亚当斯和沉静明智的杰弗逊分别代表了北方和南方的最高文化. 1826年7月4日,适逢《独立宣言》签字50周年之日,约翰.亚当斯在他的农庄逝世.在弥留之际他说: “托马斯.杰斐逊还活在人间.”他不知道对方在同一天比他先走了一步. 随着这些博大的胸怀相继谢世,美国革命的古典时代在美国人的心目中便似乎突然失去了光芒而且遥不可及了…《华盛顿.欧文的世界》 Romanticism: As an approach in literary creation, romanticism is ever present, but as a literary trend or movement, it occurred and developed in Europe and America at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries under the historical background of the industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. It was a reaction against the prevailing neoclassical spirit and rationalism that esteemed objectivity, harmony, rationality, dignity, proportion and moderation. Romantics stressed individual and creative function of imagination. It placed individual at the very centre of all life and all experience and at the centre of art. It began in earnest with the publication of Lyrical Ballads (1798) by Wordsworth and Coleridge. Chief Characteristics: 1. subjectivity versus objectivity 2. emotion versus reason 3. nature versus civilization 4. individual versus group 5.the far versus the near, the past versus the present, the strange versus the commonplace American Romanticism (1800-1861) Historical Backgrounds: a. Westward Expansion b. Population Growth c. Technological Progress d. Development of Democracy Other Aspects of Social Progress Distinct Features: a. Puritan Heritage b. New Experiences Phases of Growth: 1.Early Romantics: Irving, Cooper, Bryant 2.Transcendentalists:Emerson,Thoreau 3.High Romantics: Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Hawthorne, Melville Washington Irving (1783-1859) (“Father of American Literature”) He was born into a New York business family. Throughout his life he was on diplomatic missions in Europe for 20 years. He never married because his sweetheart died early. His most important work was The Sketch Book (1819-1820), of which “Rip V an Winkle”and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”remained classics in English. He wrote about the American scene in a style palatable to the British taste. Significant Features: 1. He wrote to amuse and entertain. The humor has become part of his writing. 2. He was good at developing his stories in an atmosphere. 3. He described his characters from the outside and they are vivid and true. 4. His writing is characteristic of finished and musical language. Theme: He had a special theme of change, of mutability. This is a sorrow he had when he saw great changes going on in the country as he believed that changes upset the natural order of things. Literary Achievement: He was the first American professional writer, and the first prose stylist of American Romanticism. The short story as a genre in American literature began with his Sketch Book. He was the first American writer to win international recognition. “Rip van Winkle” Setting:an old Dutch village at the foot of the Kaatskill Mountains, a branch of the Appalachian family, to the west of the Hudson River, in the period when the country was yet a province of Great Britain. Character: Rip, a descendant of a prestigious family, inherited little of the martial character of his ancestors. He is a simple good-natured man, a kind neighbor and an obedient hen-pecked husband. Yet he was lazy and this kept him in constant trouble with his wife. Plot: On one of these trips he met a strange dwarf of a man who invited him to join him and some other strange companions in a drinking party and a game something like bowling—in a remote valley. Rip drank too much and fell asleep. When he woke up, he noticed that his joints were stiff and that his beard has grown a foot long. Returning to his village, he felt it has changed beyond recognition. Then it was revealed to him that he had slept for 20 years. He was reunited to a married daughter, who took him to live with her. Rip adjusted to his altered world where, “instead of being subject of his majesty George the Third, he was now a free citizen of the United States”. He now happily assumed the role of the village patriarch. Themes in the story: 1. the story of man who grows old but not up; 2. the contradictory attitudes to work in America—the Puritan work-ethics as opposed to the desire for leisure; 3.escape from one’s responsibilities and even one’s history; 4. the loss of identity Commentary: ―Rip Van Winkle‖ has been seen as a symbol of several aspects of America. Rip, like America, is immature, self-centered, careless, anti-intellectual, imaginative, and jolly as the overgrown child. The Dame is another symbol—of puritanical discipline and the work ethic of Franklin. The town itself is emblemic of America—forever and rapidly changing. Washington Irving has Rip sleep through the so-called birth throes of America, and return to the ―busy, bustling, disputations‖ of the self-consciously adult America. His conflicts and dreams are those of the nation—the conflict on innocence and experience, work and leisure, the old and the new, and the head and the heart. Transcendentalism: Transcendentalism in its literal meaning is the recognition in man of the capacity of acquiring knowledge transcending the reach of the five senses, of knowing truth intuitively or reaching the divine without the need of an intercessor. It was in essence romantic idealism on Puritan soil. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American poet, philosopher and center of the American Transcendental movement. Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Most of his ancestors were clergymen as was his father. He was educated in Boston and Harvard, like his father, and graduated in 1821. Major Works: Nature; ―The American Scholar‖;Essays; Conduct of Life; Society and Solitude Intuition: It stressed the power of intuitions, believing that people could learn things both from the outside world by means of five senses and from the inner world by intuition. The things learned from within were truer than the things learned from without. Over-soul: All-pervading power of Goodness. As romantic idealism, it placed spirit first and matter second. Spirit transcended matter; the permanent reality was the spiritual one. Nature: God’s enlightenment towards human beings; it could exercise a healthy, restorative and ennobling influence on human mind. The infinitude of the individual : the individual was the most important element in society; the ideal kind of individual is self-reliant and unselfish. Man is part or particle of God, hence the innate goodness of humanity. The individual could reach God without the help of churches or clergy. God: over-soul, universal being, the fountain of spiritual power Nature: the externalization or the reflection of man’s divine nature Man: a mini-God or God-let Quotations : There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion…. 1.Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. 2.After thirty years’teaching, I had not a single disciple. Since my aim is to bring men, not to me, but to themselves. And the sincerest compliment a student paid me is rejection. 3.Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist. No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good or bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. Everyman is wanted, no man is wanted much. To be great is to be misunderstood. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titular and ephemeral but he. (The man must be so much that he must make all circumstances indifferent. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Always do what you are afraid to do. The boy is a Greek; the youth, romantic; the adult , reflective. The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature…in yourself slumbers the whole reason; it is for you to know all; it is for you to dare all. The chief disgrace in the world is not to be a unit, not to be reckoned one character; not to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong. Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled….Masses! The calamity is the masses. I do not wish any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only, and no shovel-handed, narrow-brained, gin-drinking stockingers at all. Excerpts from Nature: To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, he is my creature, and despite all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a state of mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of credible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at whatsoever period of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, no disgrace, no calamity, which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing, I see all; the currents of the Universal being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, master or servant, is a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature. Transcendentalism and Traditional Chinese Philosophy: Similarities: 1. the innate goodness of man 2. harmony instead of Sameness 3. want of ritual or ceremony 4. emphasis on spirituality Differences: 1. the ordinance of God 2. the purpose of man 3. the use of nature Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Life: born Massachusetts; Harvard(17 ys old); acquainted with Emerson; solitary life on Walden Pond, Concord; Work: Walden, or Life in the Woods, The Maine Woods, Slavery in Massachusetts, ―On Civil Disobedience‖Significance: advocator of simple, innocent life, against slavery& materialistic-oriented society; transcendentalistic Quotes: Civilized man is the slave of matter. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep…The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? from Walden: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hast ily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to ―glorify God and enjoy him forever.‖ Significance of Transcendentalism: Essentially, transcendentalism was an ethical guide to life for a young nation. It appealed to the best side of human nature, confident in the divine spark in all men, and it was a call to throw off the shackles of custom and tradition, to go forward to the development of a new and distinctly American culture. In its insistence on the essential worth and dignity of the individual, it was a powerful force for democracy. It preached and practiced an idealism that was greatly needed in a rapidly expanding economy where opportunity too often became opportunism and the desire to get on obscured the moral necessity for rising to spiritual heights. Weaknesses: Extreme individualism led to isolation, to loneliness, a rejection of love, of companionship, and mutual helpfulness, the warmth of humanity. The denial of the reality of evil led to unqualified acceptance and life and its resulting optimism seems to be shallow and unfounded. This tends to make moral indignation an irrelevant emotion and also make it impossible to understand pain and suffering Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) The first major novelist in English to wed morality to art, to combine high moral seriousness with earnest dedication to art. He was born at Salem, Mass., on July 4th, 1804, son of a sea captain. He led there a shy and rather over protected life; yet not wholly uncongenial to his artistic development. Hawthorne turned to writing after his graduation from Bowdoin College. He wrote several successful short stories which were collected in Twice-Told Tales (1837). Insufficient earnings as a writer forced Hawthorne to take a job in the Salem Custom House. By 1842, he was able to earn enough to marry Sophia Peabody and move to Concord, which was then the center of the Transcendental movement. Hawthorne returned to Salem in 1845 and in 1850, his most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter was published. His next novel was The House of the Seven Gables(1851) He also wrote two classic works for children A Wonder Book (1852) and Tanglewood Tales (1853) He wrote another novel The Marble Faun in 1860 and an account of a journey to England Our Old Home in 1863. Nathaniel Hawthorne died at Plymouth, New Hampshire, on May 18th, 1864. Life: Hawthorne was born to a family with a long Puritan tradition in Salem, Massachusetts. Some of his ancestors were notorious for the persecution of the Quakers and for the Salem witchcraft Trial in 1692. The family fortune declined gradually. So had the commerce of the town. This partly led to Hawthorne’s belief that “the wrongdoing of one generation lives into the successive ones”and his life-long preoccupation of sin and its effects. His sea-captain father died of yellow fever when he was 4. The mother took the children to her brother’s home in Maine where she spent almost all the rest of her life in seclusion ( For five year she never ate a meal with the family). For this Hawthorne throughout his life felt and expressed a painful solitude, a certain separateness from his community and a profound pessimism. Major Works:The Scarlett Letter 1850 The House of Seven Gables 1851 The Blithedale Romance 1852 The Marble Faun 1860 ―Young Goodman Brown‖ ―The Minister’s Black Veil‖ ―Dr Rappaccini’s Daughter‖ Themes: a. guilt, suppressed sensuousness, the heroism of emotional living b. the conflict between head and heart, the intellectual power in scientists and artists, the challenge to accepted ideas of ways of living Styles of Language: a. a wide and well-controlled vocabulary, words of precise meaning and pleasant sound b. long-sentence and over punctuation c. frequent use of images, among which black and gray predominates d. symbols and setting that help to reach the psychology of the character e. In the process of story-telling, the narrator sometimes stops to address the reader directly with some comment on the story, some piece of background information or a brief moral essay. Romance: Hawthorne’s favorite genre, by which he means an imaginative fictional picture of moral life. A kind of cultural allegory, it provides a meeting place of the actual and the imaginary where Hawthorne draws on the long-past Puritan life in American history and resorts to supernatural forces to create the truth of the human heart, because, for him, psychological truth is far more important than actual truth. Hawthorne’s romance is one of ambiguity and ambivalence. He keeps the reader in a world of uncertainty and leaves it to the reader to decide what is literally true. The Scarlet Letter It is concerned with the effect of sin on three characters: Hester of enforced penance, Dimmsdale of hypocrisy and Chillingworth of revenge and hatred. Hawthorne is skeptical of Transcendentalism that stressed the innate goodness of man and seems to be closer to the view of original sin and total depravity. Hester: Hawthorne appealed for the freedom of will to choose good over evil, to restrain the impulse toward evil. One has to work and strive against temptation in order to win salvation; there could be no magic carriage which could enable one to reach heaven without toil or trouble. Besides, he appealed to a sense of community, for compassion to embrace humanity at large. Just because of her banishment from the world, Hester realized the world’s law was not longer law for her mind. Thus she assumed a freedom of speculation, an independent way of thinking. Dimmstale: Since sin is at the core of human heart, the best policy is to look it in the face, to live down the penance inflicted on one’s conscience, to be frank and honest with oneself and society. Chillingworth: Hatred is all-consuming, and intellect without the nourishment of heart is evil, as is the case with Chillingworth. Dimmsdale put it this way: “May God forgive us both. We are not the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest! That man’s revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated in cold blood the sanctity of a human heart!” Commentary: The Scarlet Letter can be considered a depiction of the Puritan confrontation between an outcast and a harsh society, or the 19th century conflict of ideas including female emancipation, the nature of adultery, the personal character of religion, and the trauma of psychological independence. Romantic Poetry: Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) Life: orphan of traveling actors Subject: beauty, death Tone: sad, wistful Style: weird, other-worldly Best known for his poems and short fiction, Edgar Allan Poe, born in Boston, Jan. 19, 1809, died Oct. 7, 1849 in Baltimore, deserves more credit than any other writer for the transformation of the short story from anecdote to art. He virtually created the detective story and perfected the psychological thriller. He also produced some of the most influential literary criticism of his time -- important theoretical statements on poetry and the short story -- and has had a worldwide influence on literature. Poe's parents, David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins, were touring actors; both died before he was 3 years old, and he was taken into the home of John Allan, a prosperous merchant in Richmond, V a., and baptized Edgar Allan Poe. His childhood was uneventful, although he studied (1815-20) for 5 years in England. In 1826 he entered the University of Virginia but stayed for only a year. Although a good student, he ran up large gambling debts that Allan refused to pay. Allan prevented his return to the university and broke off Poe's engagement to Sarah Elmira Royster, his Richmond sweetheart. Lacking any means of support, Poe enlisted in the army. He had, however, already written and printed (at his own expense) his first book,Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), verses written in the manner of Byron. Temporarily reconciled, Allan secured Poe's release from the army and his appointment to West Point but refused to provide financial support. After 6 months Poe apparently contrived to be dismissed from West Point for disobedience of orders. His fellow cadets, however, contributed the funds for the publication of Poems by Edgar A. Poe ... Second Edition (1831), actually a third edition -- after Tamerlane and Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829). This volume contained the famous To Helen and Israfel, poems that show the restraint and the calculated musical effects of language that were to characterize his poetry. Editorial Career: Poe next took up residence in Baltimore with his widowed aunt, Maria Clemm, and her daughter, Virginia, and turned to fiction as a way to support himself. In 1832 the Philadelphia Saturday Courier published five of his stories -- all comic or satiric -- and in 1833, MS. Found in a Bottle won a $50 prize given by the Baltimore Saturday Visitor. Poe, his aunt, and Virginia moved to Richmond in 1835, and he became editor of the Southern Literary Messenger and married Virginia, who was not yet 14 years old. Poe published fiction, notably his most horrifying tale, Berenice in the Messenger, but most of his contributions were serious, analytical, and critical reviews that earned him respect as a critic. He praised the young Dickens and a few other contemporaries but devoted most of his attention to devastating reviews of popular contemporary authors. His contributions undoubtedly increased the magazine's circulation, but they offended its owner, who also took exception to Poe's drinking. The January 1837 issue of the Messenger announced Poe's withdrawal as editor but also included the first installment of his long prose tale, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, five of his reviews, and two of his poems. This was to be the paradoxical pattern for Poe's career: success as an artist and editor but failure to satisfy his employers and to secure a livelihood. First in New York City (1837), then in Philadelphia (1838-44), and again in New York (1844-49), Poe sought to establish himself as a force in literary journalism, but with only moderate success. He did succeed, however, in formulating influential literary theories and in demonstrating mastery of the forms he favored -- highly musical poems and short prose narratives. Both forms, he argued, should aim at "a certain unique or single effect." His theory of short fiction is best exemplified in Ligeia (1838), the tale Poe considered his finest, and The Fall Of The House Of Usher (1839), which was to become one of his most famous stories. The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) is sometimes considered the first detective story. Exemplary among his musical, mellifluous verses are The Raven (1845) and The Bells (1849). Virginia's death in January 1847 was a heavy blow, but Poe continued to write and lecture. In the summer of 1849 he revisited Richmond, lectured, and was accepted anew by the fiancee he had lost in 1826. After his return north he was found unconscious on a Baltimore street. In a brief obituary the Baltimore Clipper reported that Poe had died of "congestion of the brain." To Helen (1831) Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome. Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand! Ah, Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land! Analysis of “To Helen”: Helen’s Beauty: A: Powerful, irresistible: Was this face that launched a thousand ships? B: Soothing, Hypnotic, Security, Safety A romantically idealized, yet inaccessible image of the heart’s desire Annabel Lee (1849) It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of ANNABEL LEE;-- And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. She was a child and I was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love-- I and my Annabel Lee-- With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud by night Chilling my Annabel Lee; So that her high-born kinsman came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in Heaven, Went envying her and me:-- Yes! that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of a cloud, chilling And killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we-- Of many far wiser than we- And neither the angels in Heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:-- For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea-- In her tomb by the side of the sea. The Raven Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. `'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door - Only this, and nothing more.' Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore - For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore - Nameless here for evermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating `'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door - Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; - This it is, and nothing more,' Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, `Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; - Darkness there, and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!' This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!' Merely this and nothing more. Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. `Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore - Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; - 'Tis the wind and nothing more!' Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door - Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door - Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, `Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven. Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore - Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!' Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.' Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door - Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as `Nevermore.' But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only, That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered - Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before - On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.' Then the bird said, `Nevermore.' Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, `Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore - Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore Of "Never-nevermore."' But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore - What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking `Nevermore.' This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er, But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er, She shall press, ah, nevermore! Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. `Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!' Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.' `Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! - Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted - On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore - Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!' Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.' `Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore - Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore - Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?' Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.' `Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting - `Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!' Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.' And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted - nevermore! Walt Whitman (1819-1892) Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) Common Features 1.Thematically, both extolled an emergent America, its expansion, its individualism 2.Technically, both broke free of the conventions of the iambic pentameter and exhibited a freedom in form unknown before. Differences: 1. Life and Experience Whitman: poor Quakerian family, little formal education, working in various trades, moving from place to place, never married. Dickinson: prominent Calvinist family, college education (unfinished), confined to her own house, avoiding society as much as possible, never married 2. Subjects: Whitman: the American life at large, city & country, man & woman, love & nature, life & death, all-embracing, all-including Dickinson: the inward life of individual, the “landscape”of her own soul 3. Tone: Whitman: passionate, bold, airy, forward-looking, optimistic Dickinson: dispassionate, self-contained, introspective, tragic, ironic 4. Style: Whitman: simple diction, sprawling sentences, loose structure, vague expression, uninhibited imagination Dickinson: simple diction, short sentence, brevity, accuracy, absolute truth, utmost economy 5. Function of Poetry: Whitman: a sense of mission, considering himself the bard of an ideal America, the singer of the race of races, the nation of nations. In his eagerness to reach the reader, he adopts a speaking voice throughout his poem and he seems to be making a statement in each poetic unit. He worked very hard to get himself heard/published. Dickinson: Writing poems is a personal and private affair. She in her poem is exploring her own soul, uttering her own repressed wish, her agony. Whitman is the Emersonian hero-poet, a savior, a prophet, and one who leads the community by his expression of truth. Like Emerson, Whitman saw a unity pervading the universe; like Emerson, he was accused of unabashed egoism and denial of the reality of evil. Emerson warmly greeted the publication of Leaves of Grass, praising it as “the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed”(July 22, 1855). Whitman’s acknowledgement to Emerson runs like this: “I was simmering, simmering, simmering, and Emerson brought me to the boil.” Walt Whitman (1819-1892) “I am the poet of the Body; And I am the poet of the Soul. The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me.” Song of Myself I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume For every atom belonging to me as good belonging to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death. Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy. Houses and rooms are full of perfumes—the shelves are crowded with perfumes; I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it; The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the distillation—it is odorless; It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it; I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked; I am mad for it to be in contact with me. The smoke of my own breath, Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, My aspiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-colo r’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn, The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind, A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms, The play of shines and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag, The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides, The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun. Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? Have y ou practis’d so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems; You shall possess the good of the earth and sun—(there are millions of suns left;) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books; You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me: You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself. Analysis: The poet moves from himself to “you”, to others, to all humanity, to love and death, to the future and to the eternity. Through his senses, through his uninhibited imagination and his ecstatic joy in life and urge to create, the experiences of American life are poured. Form and Structure: Assonance, consonance, alliteration, and repetition. Whitman organized his poem according to thoughts rather than meters and rhymes. (Reviewers said that he was a criminal monster, just as unacquainted with art as a hog is with mathematics, and demanded that he be publicly flogged.) 自我之歌: 我赞美自己歌唱自己 我所承载的一切你也要承载 因为属于我的每一个原子也同样属于你 我邀请灵魂一道遨游 我逍遥自在俯视着夏日里的一叶青草 我的舌头我血液中的每个原子都源自这些土地这些空气 我在这里降生我的父母他们的父母他们父母的父母也同样如此 三十七岁的我壮硕无比开始起步 但愿永不停息一直到死 O Captain My Captain O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done; The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won; The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring: But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, -- Fallen cold and dead O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up --for you the flag is flung --for you the bugle trills; For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths --for you the shores a-crowding; For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head; It is some dream that on the deck, You've fallen cold and dead. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still; My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will; The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done; From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! But I, with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. A Woman Waits for Me A WOMAN waits for me—she contains all, nothing is lacking, Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were lacking. Sex contains all, Bodies, Souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations, Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk; All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, All the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth, All the governments, judges, gods, follow’d persons of the earth, These are contain’d in sex, as parts of itself, and justifications of itself Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex, Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers. Now I will dismiss myself from impassive women, I will go stay with her who waits for me, and with those women that are warm-blooded and sufficient for me; I see that they understand me, and do not deny me; I see that they are worthy of me—I will be the robust husband of those women. They are not one jot less than I am, They are tann’d in the face by shining suns and blowing winds, Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength, They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike, retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves, They are ultimate in their own right—they are calm, clear, well-possess’d of themselves. I draw you close to me, you women! I cannot let you go, I would do you good, I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for others’ sakes; Envelop’d in you sleep greater heroes and bards, They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me. It is I, you women—I make my way, I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable—but I love you, I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you, I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for These States— I press with slow rude muscle, I brace myself effectually— I listen to no entreaties, I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated within me. Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself, In you I wrap a thousand onward years, On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America, The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls, new artists, musicians, and singers, The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn, I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings, I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you interpenetrate now, I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now, I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death, immortality, I plant so lovingly now. Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) “My hair is bold like the chestnut burr; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves.” I Died for Beauty, and Was Scarce I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? "For beauty," I replied. "And I for truth, -the two are one; We brethren are," he said. And so, as kinsmen met a night, We talked between the rooms, Until the moss had reached our lips, And covered up our names. Success. Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need. Not one of all the purple host Who took the flag to-day Can tell the definition, So clear, of victory, As he, defeated, dying, On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Break, agonized and clear! If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain. Dawn When night is almost done, And sunrise grows so near That we can touch the spaces, It 's time to smooth the hair And get the dimples ready, And wonder we could care For that old faded midnight That frightened but an hour. Because I Could Not Stop for Death Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality. We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility – We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess – in the Ring – We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – We passed the Setting Sun – Or rather – He passed us – The Dews drew quivering and chill – For only Gossamer, my Gown – My Tippet – only Tulle – We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground – The Roof was scarcely visible – The Cornice – in the Ground – Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity – Analysis: Dramatic Situation: The poem is a dramatic representation of the passage from this world of life to the afterlife.The event is metaphorically presented as a familiar social activity—a formal but friendly drive in a carriage in the country of a gentleman (Death) and his intended lady (imagined persona of the poet herself). The lady is looking back upon how life had been before she came underground, and her memories are infused with the subtle tensions of one not completely at rest (for she feels that she has been tricked, seduced and abandoned). Form & Structure: Four beats / three beats / Four beats / three beats, four-line stanza Irregular rhythm, irregular rhyme scheme Alliteration, repetition, parallelism Image: visual, tactile Figures of Speech: personification, metaphor (bold, unconventional) Tone: dispassionate, chilling, and ironic Themes: 1. The complex character of death: a courtly suitor/ a fraudulent seducer; a release from a lifetime of toil and suffering, the gateway to everlasting peace in Paradise, or a cold, mindless annihilation? 2. the poet’s ambivalent attitude toward death: Hers is a life of solitude, of intense pain. She craves for death as madly as for love. She yearns to abandon herself, yet she is afraid that the afterlife might be even more terrible than life in this world / in her own hand. Two Butterflies Went Out at Noon Two butterflies went out at noon And waltzed above a stream, Then stepped straight through the firmament And rested on a beam; And then together bore away Upon a shining sea —Though never yet, in any port, Their coming mentioned be. If spoken by the distant bird, If met in ether sea By frigate or by merchantman, Report was not to me. To Make a Prairie To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, —One clover, and a bee, And reverie. The reverie alone will do If bees are few. Hope is the Thing with Feathers Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me. I’m Nobody! Who Are You? I'm Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there's a pair of us? Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know! How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one's name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog! Wild Nights! Wild Nights! Wild Nights – Wild Nights! Were I with thee Wild Nights should be Our luxury! Futile – the winds – To a heart in port – Done with the compass – Done with the chart! Rowing in Eden – Ah, the sea! Might I moor – Tonight – In thee! The Rise of Realism (1865-1900) Social Background: Economically, the conflict was between agrarianism and industrialism. Politically, the conflict was between the North and the South. Culturally, the conflict was between a culturally mature East and a raw, expanding West. 1.Development of railroad: 1865, 35000 miles of track; 1884, transcontinental lines reached the Pacific coast; 1900, 200000 miles. 2.Industrial growth: mining of iron, coal and oil; improved machinery; cheap labor through immigration; 1875, the Bessermer Stove; 1876, the telephone; 1893, the dynamo Agricultural revolution:new machines (reaper, binder and thrasher); new scientific devices (fertilizer, insecticide, improved strain); subsistence farming supplanted by cash crop Growth of cities: fed by immigrants from abroad, and farm and village folk from American countryside; in 1860, 1/6 of the population was urban; in 1900, the percentage rose to 1/3. The population of Chicago grew from 500,000 in 1880 to 1,500,000 in 1900.City life gained prestige while country life suffered. Thousands of young Americans supposed that a better life could be lived in the city, that the bigger the city, the better life. Problems: severe labor-management disputes (1877, railroad strike; 1886, the American Federation of Labor; 1892, Labor Day set on September 5 to honor “the great industrial spirit”); bossism (powerful and ruthless moneyed man commonly worshipped) As a literary movement, realism refers to the approach of realist fiction appearing at the latter part of the 19th century. Writers strove/strive for “the faithful representation of reality”or a detailed, factual description of the contemporary people and life. It was a reaction against the “lies”of Romanticism and sentimentalism. Realists paid/pay more attention to the immediate facts of life than to the general or abstract ideas (the mysteries of life, death, faith and love). Major Features 1.The theory of writing is that familiar aspects of contemporary life and everyday scenes should be represented in a straightforward or matter-of-fact manner. 2. Characters of all social levels are examined in depth. They no longer serve some sort of allegorical or symbolic purpose; they are secular beings related to each other and shaped by particular environment. 3. Open-ending: life is complex and cannot be fully understood. It is for the reader to think over the possible conclusions of the story. 4. Realists are interested in the commonplace, the everyday, the average, the trivial, and the now and here. It is a direct opposition to concerns of the unusual, the basis of Romanticism. Realism provides an objective rather than idealized view of human nature and human existence. Its philosophical origin is materialism which maintains that the objective world exists independent of human being. The writers become detached observers of life, and they just present what the characters do. (Romantic writers were constantly eager to tell the reader what they thought about their character). Realists are ethical writers, interested in the problems of the individual conscience in conflict with social institutions. They are able to probe deeply into the problems of the human conscience. Modernism in American Literature Modernization: an economic process with social and cultural implications Modernity: a philosophical category performatively designating the temporality of post-traditional world Modernism: an adversary aesthetic culture ----John Frow, “What Was Postmodernism” Modernism: more on technique than on subject matter; experimentalism in writing and conservatism in aesthetics; the despised highbrows who had captured the young, achieve the difficult of making life worse than it is, attention to everywhere except the places where things actually happen, the yearning after lost faith and impossible civilizations, a too Olympian attitude, a too great readiness to wash their hands of the immediate practical problem. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) “Grace under pressure” “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” Major Works: The Sun Also Rises (1926) A Farewell to Arms (1929) For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) The Old Man and the Sea (1952) 1954 Nobel Prize winner He was born in a prosperous suburb of Chicago, Illinois. His sportsman father taught to handle fishing lines and short gun when he was not yet four. His mother, a singer who had cherished ambition for this precocious child, once forced him to stay out of school for a whole year for concentrated study of the cello. After graduation from high school he worked as a newspaper reporter before he enlisted with the American Red Cross to drive ambulance in Italy where he was seriously wounded and hurt. He returned shortly after the war and became an out loud spokesman of the so-called lost generation. He married four times before he committed suicide by putting a bullet through his head in 1961 (after his father’s fashion). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954 for “his powerful style-forming mastering of the art of modern narration…Hemingway’s earlier writings displayed brutal, cynical and callous signs which will be considered at variance with the Nobel Prize requirements for a work of ideal tendencies. But on the other hand he also possesses a heroic pathos that forms the basic element of his awareness of life, a manly love for danger and adventure, and a natural admiration of every individual who fights the good fight in a world of reality overshadowed by violence and death. ”Themes: sterility, death, failure, and above all “grace under pressure”(A man can be destroyed but not defeated; man is beaten in every way but not down) “I like a look of agony / Because I know it’s true / Men do not sham convulsion / Nor imitate a throe. Subjects: hunting, boxing, fishing, bullfight The Pledge of Allegiance I Pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Characters: tough guy or code hero (big game hunter, deep sea fisherman, bullfight afficinado, roistering drinker) Style of Language: disciplined and objective art, method of economy in apparent casualness and irrelevance—all contributing to the feeling of suspense and control, and a high intensity of effect. (The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water) Criticisms: 1.The hero is defeated in everything except the spirit that will not accept defeat—a romantic disillusion, a moment of gallantry in heartbreak, all overdone, neurotic and drunken, a deliberate self-drugging. 2. Antagonism to women: The women characters in his fiction form a dichotomy—angel type and bitch type. It expresses the adolescent abnormal fear on the part of the author. The girl, abjectly devoting, lives only to serve her lord and to merge her identity with his; the love affair, lacking completely the kind of give and take that goes on between real men and women, has the all-too-perfect felicity of a youthful erotic dream. In Another Country When: action/telling Where: action/telling Who: character/narrator What: character/narrator Elements of Fiction: 1. Setting: physical background or the element of place 2. Atmosphere: general effect or pervasive feeling aroused by all that is presented 3. Tone: author’s attitude toward what is being presented 4. Pace: the rate of speed with which the various parts of a story are made 5. Coherence: the hanging together—interconnectedness —of the parts of a story 6. Plot: the structure of action as presented 7. Conflict: character’s struggle with himself, other characters, or with environment at large 8. Climax: the highest point in an ascending series 9. Denouement: the final resolution or the untying of the plot 10.Theme: the point or meaning of a story Langston Hughes (1902-1967) I, Too, Can Sing America I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes. Nobody'll dare Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen," Then. Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed– I, too, am America. The Negro Speaks of Rivers I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. Nikki Giovanni:Ego Tripping I was born in the congo I walked to the fertile crescent and built the sphinx I designed a pyramid so tough that a star that only glows every one hundred years falls into the center giving divine perfect light I am bad I sat on the throne drinking nectar with allah I got hot and sent an ice age to europe to cool my thirst My oldest daughter is nefertiti the tears from my birth pains created the nile I am a beautiful woman For a birthday present when he was three I gave my son hannibal an elephant He gave me rome for mother's day My strength flows ever on My son noah built new/ark and I stood proudly at the helm as we sailed on a soft summer day I turned myself into myself and was jesus men intone my loving name All praises All praises I am the one who would save I sowed diamonds in my back yard My bowels deliver uranium the filings from my fingernails are semi-precious jewels On a trip north I caught a cold and blew My nose giving oil to the arab world I am so hip even my errors are correct I sailed west to reach east and had to round off the earth as I went The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid across three continents I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal I cannot be comprehended except by my permission I mean...I...can fly like a bird in the sky... Literature of, by, and for the African Americans It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature. Henry James I celebrate myself, and sing myself. And what I assume you shall assume For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. Walt Whitman I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. Langston Hughes Condoleezza Rice, Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Barrack Obama, Morgan Freeman, Beyonce Knowles, Denzel Washington, Will Smith, Louis Armstrong, Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson Those Who Enabled and Enable Their Presence Visible and Voices Heard: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes To Name Only A Few: Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Nikki Giovanni Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) A book that "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War" Will Kaufman “So this is the little lady who started this great war.”Abraham Lincoln “Song of Myself”(1855) Walt Whitman The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside, I heard his motions crackling (噼啪声)the twigs (树枝)of the woodpile, Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy (弯曲的)and weak, And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured (安抚)him, And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d (瘀伤)feet, And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some coarse (粗糙的)clean clothes, And remember perfectly well his revolving (转动的)eyes and his awkwardness (笨拙,拘谨), And remember putting plasters (膏药)on the galls(怨愤)of his neck and ankles; He staid with me a week before he was recuperated (痊愈)and pass'd north, I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean'd in the corner. Voices, Colored? I Hear America singing, the varied carols I hear; …… Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs. Walt Whitman, “I Hear America Singing”