American literature

material surroundings that will improve their thoughts, the kind of environment which will allow people to have great thoughts. 4. It has confidence in the individual, and holds that individual freedom breaks down the rules and barriers of society so that the individual can express himself and act on his own principles. 5. It stresses the escape from the power of time. All people can receive an illumination that goes beyond time, that catches them up in eternal truth and people can escape from temporal life into the life of eternity. 6. There is the possibility for and importance of change in one?s spiritual life which is in harmony with nature. People can decide how they want to live, how they want to order their life. 4> the style: 1. Prophetic voice. 2. Direct forceful sentence. 3. Conversational in tone. 4. Humor. 5. Proverbial expressions. This is part of the colloquial style, the folk style. He used a minimum of words to put a maximum of meaning. 6. Brief tales, Fables and Allegories. 7. Metaphor. His prose is much like poetry.

Edgar Allan Poe: Father of American detective story. The feature of his novel: 1> at

one sitting. 2> a single effect-melancholy. 3> first sentence should bring out the single effect. 4> no word should be used which does not contribute to the theme –melancholy effect. 5> last

sentence should make readers have a sense of finality. 6> the most beautiful: melancholy-the most: the death of a beautiful woman.

The theme of his novel: explore mental and moral disease, which opened up for literature a new order of experience, deep abyss of the unconscious and subconscious mental activity of the people, the subterranean recesses of the mind. (Psychological fiction). Character: mostly neurotics. Every mind is half mad or capable of sleeping into insanity/ they have no sense of identity, no name, even no place nor parentage: dislocated from society, alienate The analysis of To Helen: in the first stanza, Helen?s beauty is soothing, it provides security and safety. Throughout the poem, Poe uses allusions to classical names and places, as well as certain kinds of images to create the impression of a far-off idealized, unreal woman, like a Greek statue. Helen stands, not like a real woman, but like a saint in a “window niche”. She becomes a symbol both of beauty and of frustration, a romantically idealized, yet inaccessible image of the heart?s desire.

The analysis of Raven: trochee, octameter(八音部，抑扬格，二，四，五，六行押韵) a sense of melancholy over the death of a beloved beautiful young woman pervades the whole poem, the portrayal of a young man grieving for his lost Lenore, his grief turned to madness under the steady one word repetition of the talking bird.

The analysis of The Fall of the House of Usher: 在这个短篇里，作者同样选择了一位年轻女子的死亡与复活作为主题，故事发生的地点同样也是一座古老而破败的建筑物，故事发生的时间同样是深更半夜，再加上狂风暴雨。本篇最为突出的特点就是作者将外部世界与故事中男主人公的内心世界巧妙地结合了起来，也就是将古厦的外观及其室内的布置与罗德里克的神经系统及情绪统一了起来。整篇小说自始至终给人以凄凉，恐怖，大祸临头的感觉。 古厦的倒塌不仅象征着古老家族的没落，而在更深刻的意义上象征的整个南方蓄奴制社会的崩溃。

Nathaniel Hawthorne: the style of him: 1> psychology. There is not much action, or

physical movement, and use psychological description to reveal the character?s states of mind. 2>ambiguity. He used ambiguity to keep the reader in a world of uncertainty. He gave many ways to interpret the story and then he stopped without telling the reader which one he wanted the

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reader to choose. 3> symbolism. He uses symbols and setting to reveal the psychology of the characters. 4> the use of the supernature. He mingled the supernatural with the actual and developed analytic, psychological romanticism.

The analysis of The Scarlet Letter: the way in which Hawthorne wrote it suggests that American Romanticism adapted itself to American Puritan moralism. It is not a story of love but a story of sin. What he was predominantly concerned with was the moral, emotional and psychological effect of the sin on the people in general and those complicated in it in particular. In the strong character of Hester Prynne we see the tension between society and solitude which lies near the center of all Hawthorne?s art. The Scarlet Letter is not a praise of a Hester Prynne sinning, but a hymn on the moral growth of the woman when sinned against. Hawthorne?s female characters tend to fall into two broad categories, the blond and effete, and the dark-haired and sensual

Oriental type. To the latter belongs Hester Prynne, who was attractive and appealing. She borders on being licentious. To the self-righteous community which outlaws her she manages to move ever closer She does her best to keep her hold on the magic chain of humanity. She is able to

reconstruct her life and win a moral victory. Symbolic of her moral development is the gradual, imperceptible change which the scarlet letter undergoes in meaning. At first it is a token of shame, “Adultery”, but then the genuine sympathy and help Hester offered to her fellow villagers changes it to “Able”. Later in the story, the letter A appears in the sky, signifying “Angel. Dimmesdale, on the other hand, banishes himself from society. Deeply preoccupied with himself, he lives a stranger among his admirers. He undergoes the tragic experience of physical and spiritual disintegration. Hawthorne?s idea: the best policy for man is to be true, honest, and ever ready to show one?s worst to the outside world. The real villain of the story is Roger Chillingworth, the scholar, the embodiment of pure intellect, who commits unpardonable sin- the violation of the human heart. He keeps preying on Dimmesdale?s conscience until the poor wretch is tormented to death. The Scarlet Letter are closely knitted together by means of the scaffold sense which appear three times, almost symmetrically, in the beginning, the middle, and the end of the book, each time bringing the four major characters (Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and Pearl) together.

Herman Melville: the style of his works: 1> his writing is consciously literary. There

are many allusions to classical myths. The literary quality style makes him extremely difficult to understand. On the one hand, much of the talk in the novel is sailor talk; on the other hand, he wrote in an old style. 2> there is a threefold quality in his writing: the style of fact, the style of oratory celebrating the fact, and the style of meditation. 3> his style is highly symbolic and metaphorical. The ship on the ocean is a symbol of the whole world with people of every land sailing s across the waters of life in quest of its mystery. The voyage is a metaphor for search and discovery. Ship is one of American soul. The ship is also a microcosm of American society. It contains representatives of most social and ethnic groups, and their various reactions to the chase. Moby-Dick itself represents the mystery of the universe. 4> this book has many non-narrative chapters, and this is how Melville changed an adventure story into a philosophical novel. 5> he used the technique of multiple views to achieve the effect of ambiguity. 6> the use of supernature. The theme of Moby-Dick: the rebellious struggle of Captain Ahab against the overwhelming, mysterious vastness of the universe and its awesome sometimes merciless force. It is a tremendous chronicle of a whaling voyage in pursuit of a seemingly supernatural white whale that bit off Ahab?s leg. Ishmael is the narrator of the novel, the captain, Ahab, is a monomaniac man whose

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single purpose is to revenge the fierce, cunning white whale. The voyage symbolized the search for ultimate truth. The giant white whale is symbolic of mystery of the universe, the power of the great nature, and the evil of the world.

The symbolic meaning of Moby-Dick: its symbolic meaning is a voyage of the mind in quest of the truth and knowledge of the universe, a spiritual exploration into man?s deep reality and psychology. It means the religion on an intuitive belief in an ultimate unity.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: the analysis of A psalm of Life: it is

Longfellow?s most famous poem that encourages people to persevere despite tragedy, to affirm life, to pick up courage form losses and to push ahead for all momentary defeats. The poem is filled with optimism. The beginning lines are “Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal!”.

The analysis of My Lost Youth: 1> Longfellow is more concerned with the emotions aroused in his mind than with what his town was like. Few details about Portland are included: the city is “beautiful”, it is “by the sea”, and it has tree-lined “pleasant streets”, wharves, a nearby fort. Hills and woods. Because nothing is vividly specified, it could be any seaside town. These vague details lead to the emotional theme of private boyhood dreams. It is that time in youth when flights of imagination are most prevalent. 2> the two-line refrain from the Lapland song, about a boy?s will similar to the wind?s will, captures both the nostalgia and the idea of errant youth. 3> in the structure of this poem, the seventh line in each stanza contains a key word, usually a verb, which sums up the feeling established in the stanza. For example, in the first stanza, “haunting” sums up the feeling that was begun earlier with “Often in thought” and “comes back to me”.

Walt Whitman: the feature of his poetry: 1> his poetic style is marked by the use of the

poetic “I”. 2> what he prefers for his new subject and new poetic feelings is “free verse”, that is , poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. 3> his poetry is relatively simple and oral language and even crude. 4> most of the pictures he painted with words are honest, undistorted images of different aspects of America of the day. 5> parallelism. 6> cataloguing listing (编目式历数) 7> symbolism 8> cadence: Chant-like. 8> transcendentalism

The analysis of Song of Myself: 1> theme: equalitarianism: the prostitute draggling her shawl, the president holding a cabinet council, the stately and friendly matrons on the piazza walk… Eternity and the symbolism of leaves: the smallest sprout shows there is really no death, and all goes onward and outward, nothing collapses. Destiny to transcend: the poem ends in an extremely transcendental note: I am large and I contain multitudes. 2> he extols the ideals of equality and democracy and celebrates the dignity, the self-reliant spirit and the joy of the common man. “Song of Myself” reveals a world of equality, without rank and hierarchy.

Emily Dickinson: the theme of her poetry: 1> death and immortality.2> death leads to

immortality. 3> skeptical of the possibility of achieving immortality. 4> love. 5> agony. The artistic feature of her poetry: (original /experimentalist) 1> form: free verse: short. And economy of expressions(用词节俭)and informal: dash / capitalization (more random than meaningful) grammar. 2> image: vivid picture and obscure / unconventional metaphors (metaphysical poets) 3> her poetry is noted for directness, plainest words and brevity, and profundity in meaning. 4> symbolism

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The analysis of Because I could not stop for Death: the poem is a dramatic representation of the passage from this world of the living to the afterlife. The event is expressed in a metaphorical use of an activity familiar enough to men and woman of the nineteenth century-a formal but friendly drive in a carriage in the country of a gentleman and his intended lady. The gentleman in question, however, is Death himself; and the lady is an imagined persona of the poet. She is looking back upon how life had been before she came, and her memories are infused with the subtle tensions of one not completely at rest. In the first stanza the persona is too busy and too contented as she lives her life to both to stop for the gentleman?s call; but though his kindness and consideration, she is compelled at last to go with him. In the second stanza, he is such an artful charmer that she needs neither labor nor leisure, for in his “Civility” he has taken care of everything. In the third stanza, it includes the three states of youth, maturity, and age, the cycle of day from morning to evening, and even a suggestion of seasonal progression from spring through ripening to decline. In the fourth stanza. The lady is getting closer to death. But the lady is still holding onto life by offering a rational explanation about her chill. In the fifth stanza, they have arrived at a country cemetery. The house is the house of death, a fresh grave sketched only with a few details. The lady is alone now; her gentleman friend has vanished unexplained. In the sixth stanza, she began to realize where she was heading. The poem reflects a basic ambiguity about death and immortality. In the poem, “the school” symbolizes youth; “the fields of gazing grain” is a symbol of mature period; “the setting sun” stands for end of life. “ house” and “ a swelling of the ground” refer to grave. The analysis of This is my letter to the World: expresses the poetess? anxiety about her communication with the outside world. In her eyes, nature was friendlier than the human world, which was a merciless emblem to man. She could not communicate with the world, but with nature quite easily. Nature usually reveals the truth of life.

The analysis of The Soul Selects Her Own Society: the soul selects whom it will admit inside. That is after admitting this “divine Majority”, it closes the door through which one joins the group. To those out side present no more candidates for admission. The Majority refers to number. In some cases, the majority can be a majority of one. Dickinson?s use of the word emphasized a kind of arrogance in her exclusiveness. “Divine” suggests consecration and religious respect. Once the Soul has made her wise and unalterable choice, no new additions will be accepted. This “Soul” is compared, in the first two stanzas to a woman of high noble rank. Images in stanza 3 limit “society” , or the selection made by the soul, to “one” that “ one” may be the poetry on which the poet concentrates as a lifetime undertaking. Or, the last two lines may suggest remoteness, coldness, rigid self-control. The speaker has made a choice of her own society and has become steadfast in her refusal to accept any other choice.

Part Two

American Realism and Naturalism

1. Literary terms:

American realism: in American literature, the Civil War brought the romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came into existence. Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived. It expresses the concern for common place and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human

nature and human experience. Realist finds the drama and the tension beneath the ordinary surface

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