英美文學(xué)課件2教案資料

1、英美文學(xué)課件2I. What is RomanticismvSimply speaking, Romanticism is a literary movement flourished as a cultural force throughout the 19th C and it can be divided into the early period and the late period. Also it remains powerful in contemporary literature and art.vRomanticism, a term that is associated

2、with imagination and boundlessness, as contrasted with classicism, which is commonly associated with reason and restriction. A romantic attitude may be detected in literature of any period, but as an historical movement it arose in the 18th and 19th centuries, in reaction to more rational literary,

3、philosophic, artistic, religious, and economic standards. The most clearly defined romantic literary movement in the U. S. was Transcendentalism. vThe representatives of the early period includes Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, and those of the late period contain Ralph Waldo Emerson, H

4、enry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe.vInternal causes: vAmerican burgeoned into a political, economic and cultural independence. Democracy and political equality became the ideals of the new nation. Radical changes came about in the political life o

5、f the country. Parties began to squabble and scramble for power, and new system was in the making. vThe spread of industrialism, the sudden influx of immigration, and the pioneers pushing the frontier further west, all these produced something of an economic boon and, with it, a tremendous sense of

6、optimism and hope among the people. vThe representatives of the early period includes Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, and those of the late period contain Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe.II. The reasons on the

7、 rise of American Romanticism v Ever-increasing magazines played an important role in facilitating literary expansion in the country. v External causes: v Foreign influences added incentive to the growth of romanticism in America. v The influence of Sir Walter Scott was particularly powerful and end

8、uring.III. Characteristics of American Romanticism (b)vSentimentalism, primitivism and the cult of the noble savagevPolitical liberalismvThe celebration of natural beauty and the simple lifevIntrospectionvThe idealization of the common man, uncorrupted by civilizationvInterest in the picturesque pas

9、t and remote placesvAntiquarianismvIndividualismvMorbid melancholyvHistorical romanceIV. The Representatives of the early American romanticismA. Washington Irving (1783-1859 )vWashington Irving was born in New York City on April 3, 1783 as the youngest of 11 children. His parents, Scottish-English i

10、mmigrants, were great admirers of General George Washington, and named their son after their hero.vEarly in his life Irving developed a passion for books. He studied law privately but practiced only briefly. From 1804 to 1806 he travelled widely in Europe. After returning to the United States, Irvin

11、g was admitted to the New York bar in 1806. vHe was a partner with his brothers in the family hardware business and representative of the business in England until it collapsed in 1818. During the war of 1812 Irving was a military aide to New York Governor Tompkins in the U.S. Army.vIrvings career a

12、s a writer started in journals and newspapers. His success in social life and literature was shadowed by a personal tragedy because his engaged love died at the age of seventeen. So he never married or had children.1. About the AuthorvAfter the death of his mother, Irving decided to stay in Europe,

13、where he remained for seventeen years from 1815 to 1832. vIn 1832 Irving returned to New York to an enthusiastic welcome as the first American author to have achieved international fame. Between the years 1842-45 Irving was the U.S. Ambassador to Spain. vIrving spent the last years of his life in Ta

14、rrytown. From 1848 to 1859 he was President of Astor Library, later New York Public Library. Irvings later publications include Mahomet And His Successors (1850), Wolferts Roost (1855), and his five-volume The Life of George Washington(1855-59). Irving died in Tarrytown on November 28, 1859. vHis ea

15、rliest work was a sparkling, satirical History of New York (1809) under the Dutch, ostensibly written by Diedrich Knickbocker (hence the name of Irvings friends and New York writers of the day, the “Knickbocker School”.)vThe Sketch Book (1819-20 as Geoffrey Crayon) - contains Rip Van Winkle and The

16、Legend of Sleepy Hollow vThe Life of George Washington (1855-59, five volumes)2. His Major Works 3. Evaluation to himvAmerican author, short story writer, essayist, poet, travel book writer, biographer, and columnist. Irving has been called the father of the American short story. He is best known fo

17、r The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, in which the schoolmaster Ichabold Crane meets with a headless horseman, and Rip Van Winkle, about a man who falls asleep for 20 years.vThe first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame, so he was regarded as father of American literature.

18、vThe short story as a genre in American literature probably began with Irvings The Sketch Book, A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS, SKETCHES, AND TALES. It also marked the beginning of American Romanticism. B. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) vIn his life Cooper wrote over thirty novels which can be divided in

19、to frontier novels, detective novels and reference novels. He considered The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841) his best works.vThe unifying thread of the five novels collectively known as the Leather-Stocking Tales is the life of Natty Bumppo. Coopers finest achievement, they constitute4 a

20、 vast prose epic with the North American continent as setting. Indian tribes as Characters, and great wars and westward migration as social background. The novels bring to life frontier America from 1740 to 1804.vThe Pioneers(1823): Natty Bumppo first appears as a seasoned scout in advancing years,

21、with the dying Chingachgook, the old Indian chief and his faithful comrade, as the eastern forest frontier begins to disappear and Chingachgook dies.1. His Major WorksvThe Last of the Mohicans(1826): An adventure of the French and Indian Wars in the Lake George county.vThe Prairie(1827): Set in the

22、new frontier where the Leatherstocking dies.vThe Pathfinder(1840): Continuing the same border warfare in the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario county.vThe Deerslayer(1841): Early adventures with the hostile Hurons on Lake Otsego, NY.vThe creation of the famous Leatherstocking saga has cemented his posit

23、ion as our first great national novelist and his influence pervades American literature. In his thirty-two years (1820-1851) of authorship, Cooper produced twenty-nine other long works of fiction and fifteen books - enough to fill forty-eight volumes in the new definitive edition of his Works. Among

24、 his achievements:vThe first successful American historical romance in the vein of Sir Walter Scott (The Spy, 1821). vThe first sea novel (The Pilot, 1824). vThe first attempt at a fully researched historical novel (Lionel Lincoln, 1825). 2. Contributions of Cooperv The first full-scale History of t

25、he Navy of the United States of America (1839). v The first American international novel of manners (Homeward Bound and Home as Found, 1838). v The first trilogy in American fiction (Satanstoe, 1845; The Chainbearer, 1845; and The Redskins, 1846). v The first and only five-volume epic romance to car

26、ry its mythic hero - Natty Bumppo - from youth to old age.vHe is good at making plots.vAll his novels are full of myths.vHe had never been to the frontier and among the Indians and yet could write five huge epic books about them is an eloquent proof of the richness of his imagination. vHe created th

27、e first Indians to appear in American fiction and probably the first group of noble savages. vHe hit upon the native subject of frontier and wilderness, and helped to introduce the “Western” tradition into American literature. 3. His SkillsV.American Renaissance vIt also called New England Renaissan

28、ce period from the 1830s roughly until the end of the American Civil War in which American literature, in the wake of the Romantic movement, came of age as an expression of a national spirit.vThe literary scene of the period was dominated by a group of New England writers, the “Brahmins”. They were

29、aristocrats, steeped in foreign culture, active as professors at Harvard College, and interested in creating a genteel American literature based on foreign models. vOne of the most important influences in the period was that of the Transcendentalists, including Emerson, Thoreau and so on. 1. The ConceptvThe Transcendental