一、时期综述：

1、镀金时代：The Gilded Age, an age of excess and extremes, of decline and progress, of poverty and dazzling wealth, of gloom and buoyant hope. 无节制、走极端，倒退和进步、贫困和富有并存，既令人沮丧又让人有希望的时代。

2、Although Americans continued to read the works of Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne, and Poe, the great age of American romanticism had ended. By the 1870s the New England Renaissance had waned. 新英格兰的文艺复兴已开始接近尾声。

3、现实主义和自然主义作家的人物刻画方法：

19世纪末,the literary naturalists who followed them, rejected the portrayal of idealized characters and events. Instead, they sought to describe the wide range of American experience and to present the subtleties of human personality, to portray characters who were less simply all good or all bed.

反对在作品中描绘理想化了的人物和事件，关注人性中的微妙之处。

4、Realism：（现实主义）appeared in the United States in the literature of local color, an amalgam of romantic plots and realistic descriptions of things was immediately observable. the dialects, customs, sights.现实主义有浓厚的美国本土特色，是浪漫主义故事情节和现实主义描写相结合的产物：美国风味的方言、风俗、各种观点

5、Naturalism：自然主义 a new and harsher realism, 新型的更为冷峻的现实主义，产生悲观的流派 ，产生于the end of the century 十九世纪末，因为Perception of society’s disorders 对社会无序的感知。Presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were dominated by their environment and heredity. 设法尽力客观真实地展现出受环境与出身局限的下层人民和各种经济阶层人物的真正生活。

The naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment, the religious “truths” were illusory, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. 强调世界的非道德性，人们没有意志的自由，宗教上的真理是虚幻的，现实生活是痛苦的。     Deterministic 决定论，宿命的，

代表作家：Stephen Crane 史蒂芬.克莱恩,     Frank Norris 弗朗克.诺里斯,

          Jack London  杰克.伦敦,          Theodore Dreiser 西奥多.德莱塞.

6、Darwinism: 达尔文主义:an evident influence on naturalism, stress the animality of man, to suggest that be was dominated by the irresistible forces of evolution. 对自然主义影响极大，强调人的动物性，意味着人的命运受进化的不可抗力来决定的。

7、William Dean Howells    威廉.迪安.豪厄斯，

   ①The arbiter of 19th century literary realism in America。十九世纪美国现实主义文学泰斗，提拔许多年轻作家

   ②His defined realism: nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.

     不加一分，不减一分，百分之百描写现实。

   ③中央视角：an objective point of view

二、代表作家：

1、Walt Whitman   沃尔特.惠特曼

    ①★free verse (自由诗体) without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. 无固定节奏，无有规律的韵脚

    ②“Leaves of Grass”草叶集 1870   the first genuine epic poem. 美国历史上第一部真正的史诗

        Poem’s 特点：most of the poems in “Leaves of Grass”are about man and nature.

    ③关注点：In his poetry, he combined the ideal of democratic common man and that of the rugged individual

    ④诗人职责：he envisioned the poet as a hero, a savior and a prophet, one who leads the community by his

                expressions of the truth.表达真理的前提下，引导社会发展。

2、Emily Dickinson  爱米丽.狄金森

    ①作品： “I died for Beauty” 我为美而死（诗歌） 

 Beauty / Truth / Goodness are ultimate(终极) the same

            “Because I could not stop for Death”我不能等候死神

Theme：死亡是实现永恒Immortality的途径

    ②特点：her poetry in unique and unconventional in its own way. Her poems have no titles, hence are always quoted by their first lines.

3、Harriet Beecher Stowe 哈丽雅特.比彻.斯托  小说家 only one female prose writer(散文作家) in 19^th century

   代表作：“Uncle Tom’s Cabin”汤姆叔叔的小屋  关注农奴制度  Pay attention to serf's system

4、Mark Twain  马克.吐温

    ①美国现实主义文学的代表作“Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”哈克贝里.费恩历险记(马克最有名的作品)

    ②特点：local colorist 地方特色:a unique variation of American literary realism, it refers to the particular concern about the local character of a region.

    ③contribution贡献：colloquial speech accepted as literary medium口语化被文学界接受

    ④代表作：“The Gilded Age”70-90年代，镀金时代，贫富分化，财富积累。

             “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”用词简单、幽默、使用当地语言编写

             “Life on the Mississippi”

5、O. Henry  欧.亨利   short story 短篇小说

    ①特点：tell about the lives of poor people in New York关注下层人; usually short简单; plots are exceedingly clever and interesting，humor abounds情节极度聪明有趣并富于幽默; the end is always surprising结尾意外; contain a great deal of slang and colloquial expressions使用大量的俚语和口语.

    ②代表作：“The Four Million”《四百万》 小说集 、“The Gift of the Magi”《麦琪的礼物》 单部小说

★6、Henry James  亨利.詹姆斯  novelist小说家；Literature theoretician 文学理论家，从小受欧洲教育

    ①心理现实主义的开创者：the founder of psychological realism. The literary career of him is generally divided into three periods, in the first periods, James took great interest in international theme; exemplify the mature and formidable style of a third literary period, which critics have come to praise as “The Major Phase”.

    ②特点：(1)deeply into the individual psychology of his characters, writing in a rich and intricate style that supported his intense scrutiny of complex human experience.深刻探讨人物人性心理，用深厚、复杂的写作方式对复杂的个人经历进行揣摩

            (2)1st person and 3rd person narration，第一和第三人称的叙述

            (3)omniscient 全视角是不真实的;

    ③家庭背景：father: philosopher哲学家,富有；brother: psychologist, philosopher心理学家,哲学家；

    ④创作原则：The art of Fiction小说的艺术;art vs. life, brings the meaning of life;

    ⑤贡献contribution：in his critical commentaries, he made major contributions to the art of fiction itself, helping to transform the novel from its alliance with journalism and romantic story-telling into an art from of penetrating analysis of individuals confronting society, chronicles of the psychological perceptions that James himself defined as the highest from of experience. 詹姆斯把小说从新闻形式和浪漫故事转变成为了对个人在社会大环境中面对种种冲突，进行深刻剖析的文学形式；对人们心理感受进行反映的一种文学形式，他定义这位感受的最高形式。

    ⑥代表作：“The American”、“Daisy Miller”、“ in the Portrait of a Lady”(早期最好的作品)

             Last full-length novel ==“The Wings of the Dove”、“The Ambassadors”、“The Golden Bowl”

    ⑦The name of the heroine “in the Portrait of a Lady” is Isabel Acher. The novel is representative of the best of James’ mature work. The plot concerns the courtship, marriage, and development of the character of Isabel Archer, a young American girl who has been left penniless by the death of her father. The intricate novel of psychological and moral interrelationships is in one sense another treatment of the Jamesian theme of the American in conflict with European culture and in another sense the most personal of his novels, an intimate picture of a woman’s soul presented with masterly psychological finesse.

7、Jack London 杰克.伦敦

    ①代表作：“The People of the Abyss”、“The Call of the Wild”、“The Sea Wolf”、

             “Martin Eden”(autobiographical novel自传体小说)

    ②while embracing the socialism of Marx, London also believed in the triumph of the strongest individuals. This contradiction is most vividly projected in the patently autobiographical novel.

8、Theodore Dreiser 西奥多.德莱塞

    ①代表作：“Sister Carrie”《嘉莉妹妹》 the first novel, which traces the material rise of Carrie Meeber and the tragic decline of G. W. Hurstwood.

             “The Financier”、“The Titan”、“The Stoic”Trilogy of Desire 欲望三部曲

    ②“An American Tragedy”《美国悲剧》，The identification of potency with money is at the heart of Dreiser’s greatest and most successful novel,德莱塞最恢宏、最成功的小说，表达了金钱万能的主题。