American literature is devided into four periods:The Colonial Period,The Romantic Period,The Realistic Period and The Modern Period.

     美国文学分为四个时期：殖民地时期、浪漫主义时期、现实主义时期和现代文学。

   一 、The Colonial Period Types of Writing：

1. diaries
2. letters
3. political document
4. journals
5. travel books
6. autobiography
7. biography  

The representative of The Colonial Period is :

   A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia Since the First Planting of That Colony   《自殖民地第一次在弗吉尼亚垦荒以来发生的各种事件的真实介绍》

   二、The Romantic Period

1. Time：late 18th--outbreak of civil war
2. It started with Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book 《见闻札记》  

   Ended with whiteman’s Leaves of Grass《草叶集》

  3.Washington Irving is one of the first American writers to earn international reputation Father of American short stories.

    4.节选自见闻札记的作品有：The Legend of Sleepy Hollow《睡谷传说》

                                  Rip Van Winkle《瑞普。凡。温克尔》

    5.The characteristic of romanticism：

• Emphasis an imagination feeling emotion and individialism
• Subjectirity
• Back to nature
• The nature world was a source of godness and man's society of corruption

  6.The writers of this period

• Washington Irving 华盛顿.欧文
• Edgar Alian Poe 埃德加.爱伦.坡
• Ralph Waldo Emerson爱默生
• Herry David Thoreau 梭罗
• Nathaniel Hawthorne 霍桑
• Herman Melville麦尔维尔
• Wait Whitman惠特曼    

   The representatives of them:

    <1>Washington Irving:The Sketch Book《见闻札记》

    <2>Edgar Alian Poe：Tale：The Fall of the House of Usher《厄舍古屋的倒塌》

                        Poetry：The Raven《乌鸦》

    <3>Ralph Waldo Emerson：Nature《论自然》

    <4>Herry David Thoreau ：Walden《沃尔登湖》

    <5>Nathaniel Hawthorne:The Scarlet Letter《红字》

    <6>Herman Melville：Moby Dick《白鲸》

      <7>Wait Whitman:Leaves and Grass《草叶集》

 The Transcendentalist：

• Summit of American Romantic Period 

The two writers of Transcendentalist:

   1.Ralph Waldo Emerson:

     <1>.Chief spokensman

     <2>.Philosophical school

     <3>.The recognition in man of the capacity of  knowing truth intuitively

     <4>.Human being is god

   2.Herry David Thoreau  

 

 

Wait Whitman 

1.Literature Status：Father of American  Poetry     

            Forerunner of Modern American Poetry 

            Father of American Free Verset

            Celebrent of American as a poem

2.Life：美国文学史上最有影响的诗歌作家，但刚开始没被认可。

  草叶集创作的主题：

     <1>.Freedom

     <2>.Democracy

     <3>.Equality

三.Realistic Period

• The Age of Realism
• Time:1865-1914
• Great interest in the realities of life
• They touched upon various contempoary social and political issues

The Representatives of this period:

   1.Harriet Beecher Stowe(1811-1896)

   2.Mark Twain(1835-1910)

   3.Emily Dickinson(1830-1886)

The Masterpiece of Harriet Beecher Stowe:

   Uncle Tom's Cabin《汤姆叔叔的小屋》

The statues of Mark Twain

   1.Noverlist

   2.Humtrilist

   3.Lecturer

   4.Journalist

   5.Literary and cultural critic

Works：The Innocents Abroad《傻瓜国外旅行记》

     The Adverntures of Tom Sawyer《汤姆.索亚历险记》

    Adverntures of Hackleberry Finn

      《哈克贝里.费恩历险记》

Emily Bickinson:

  Life:

• her father,a prominent lawyer and politician
• had little formal education but read widely
• she and her sisiter didn't marry
• began writing seriously in her 20s
• a seeluded poetess
• 1775 poems altogether 7 published in her life
• her poems have no titles,the first sentence of poem is taken as its title

  Themes:

•  religion,life,death,immortality,love and nature

  Masterpiece:

• Because I couldn't sleep for death

   《因为我不能停下来等待死亡》

• I heard a fly buzz when I died

    《我死时听到苍蝇的嗡嗡声》

四、Modern period

  Time：the 20th century

  Representatives：

• Robert Frost  弗罗斯特
• F.Scott Fitzgerald  菲兹杰拉德
• Ernest Hemingway 海明威
• William Faulkner 福克纳
• Ezra Pound 庇德

The masterpieces of Ernest Hermingway：

• The Sun Also Rises 《太阳照常升起》（1926）
• A Farewell to Army《别了，武器》（1929）
• For whom the Bell Tolls《丧钟为谁而鸣》（1940）
• The Old Man and the Sea《老人与海》（1952）

The masterpiece of F.Scott Fitzgerald：

• The Great Gatsby《了不起的盖茨比》 

The masterpiece of William Faulkner：

• The Sound and the Fury《喧哗与骚动》 

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