美國文學(xué)-浪漫主義時期

1、Romantic Period (1820-1865) : American Literature Comes of Age,Overview,From the end of 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil War, a rising America was flourishing into a politically, economically and culturally independent country. Historically, it was the time of westward expansion. The w

2、estern boundary had reached to the Pacific by 1860,Economically, the whole nation was experiencing an industrial transformation, which affected the rural as well as the urban life. Politically, democracy and equality became the ideal of the new nation, and the two-party system came into being. Cultu

3、rally and literally, the nation felt an urge to have its own literary expression, to make known its new experience that other nations did not have: the early Puritan settlement, the confrontation with the Indians, the frontiersmens life, and the wild West,Romanticism in America coincided with the pe

4、riod of national expansion and the discovery of a distinctive American voice. The solidification of a national identity and the surging idealism and passion of Romanticism nurtured the masterpieces of the American Renaissance,Romanticism,The Romantic Movement, which originated in Germany but quickly

5、 spread to England, France, and beyond, reached America around the year 1820, some 20 years after William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had revolutionized English poetry by publishing Lyrical Ballads,Romanticism was a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism. For romantics, the feel

6、ings, intuitions and emotions were more important than reason and common sense. They stressed the close relationship between man and nature, emphasized individualism and affirmed the inner life of the self. They cherished strong interest in the past, especially the medieval and were attracted by the

7、 wild, the irregular, the indefinite, the remote, the mysterious, and the strange,The movement appealed to those longing to break free of the strict religious traditions of early settlement. It appealed to those in opposition of Calvinism, which involved the belief that the universe and all the even

8、ts within it are subject to the power of God. The Romantic Movement gave rise to New England Transcendentalism which portrayed a less restrictive relationship between God and Universe. The new religion presented the individual with a more personal relationship with God,As a moral philosophy, transce

9、ndentalism was neither logical nor systemized. Romantic literature was personal, intense, and portrayed more emotion than ever seen in neoclassical literature. Americas preoccupation with freedom became a great source of motivation for Romantic writers as many were delighted in free expression and e

10、motion without so much fear of ridicule and controversy. They also put more effort into the psychological development of their characters,Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and the Transcendentalists represent the first great literary generation pro

11、duced in the United States,Early Romanticists,Before the Revolutionary War, American literature-from Christopher Columbuss travel accounts to Benjamin Franklins autobiography-had been primarily nonfictional narratives, sermons, essays, diaries, and imitations of English verse, most of it written in

12、private or shared in small circles. With the political revolution against England, however, came a cultural revolution, and Americans slowly began to build an independent cultural identity, which included a strong literary component,For the first time, America had a significant number of men and wom

13、en of letters-that is, writers who created works appreciated for their aesthetic value and who made a career or at least a serious avocation of literature. The first of these writers was Washington Irving, whose Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, first published in 1819, was a sensation in England and

14、helped build the United States reputation for creative literature. Some other representative man of letters were James Fenimore Cooper in fiction, William Cullen Bryant, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in poetry,Washington Irving(1783-1859,Washington Irving(1783-1859,Washington Irving was an American

15、 author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He was best known for his short stories The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (1819-1820). Washington Irving has been called the father of the Am

16、erican short story because of his unique contributions to the form. He established an artistic standard and model for subsequent generations of American short story writers,In The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-20), he wove elements of myth and folklore into narratives, such as Rip Van

17、Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, that achieved almost immediate classic status. Although Irving was also renowned in his lifetime for his extensive work in history and biography, it was through his short stories that he most strongly influenced American writing in subsequent generations and i

18、ntroduced a number of now-familiar images and archetypes into the body of the national literature,A transitional figure, Irving somewhat ironically contributed to Americas literary independence while producing work that was distinctively European in content and style. His masterful use of stylized p

19、rose and use of European legend all demonstrate the strong influence of the Old World on his work. This attention to the past, as Irving scholar William P. Kelly has noted, was one reason for Irvings success with his American audience,Kelly points out that Americans, recently severed from their Euro

20、pean heritage, were struggling with an identity crisis at the time they were reading Irvings work, which itself looks both forward and backward. Many critics read Rips twenty-year sleep as a rejection of the capitalistic values of his societyferociously personified by the shrewish Dame Van Winkleand

21、 an embracing of the world of the imagination. Ichabod Crane, too, has been viewed by such critics as Robert Bone as representing the outcast artist-intellectual in American society,Life and Literary Achievements,Washington Irving was born in New York City at the end of the Revolutionary War on Apri

22、l 3, 1783. His parents, Scottish-English immigrants, were great admirers of General George Washington, and named their son after their hero. At age six Irving met his namesake, who was then living in New York after his inauguration as president in 1789. In the years to come Irving would write one of

23、 his greatest works, The Life of George Washington (1855-59,The 1798 outbreak of yellow fever in Manhattan prompted his family to send him to healthier climes upriver. It was in Tarrytown, New York that Irving became familiar with the nearby town of Sleepy Hollow, with its quaint Dutch customs and l

24、ocal ghost stories. Irving made several other trips up the Hudson as a teenager, including an extended visit to Johnstown, New York, where he passed through the Catskill mountain region, the setting for Rip Van Winkle. Of all the scenery of the Hudson, Irving wrote later, the Catskill Mountains had

25、the most witching effect on my boyish imagination,In 1809, Irving completed his first major book, A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker ( the imaginary Dietrich Knickerbocker, who was supposed to be an eccentric Dutch-America

26、n scholar). A History of New-York describes and pokes fun at the lives of the early Dutch settlers of Manhattan and it was one of the earliest fantasies of history,The name Knickerbocker was later used to identify the first American school of writers, the Knickerbocker Group, of which Irving was a l

27、eading figure. The book became part of New York folklore, and eventually the word Knickerbocker was also used to describe any New Yorker who could trace ones family to the original Dutch settlers and it is where the basketball team The New York Knickerbockers (Knicks) got its name,Irvings success co

28、ntinued with The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-20), a collection of essays, sketches and tales, which allowed him to become a full-time writer. Published in 1819 under another pen name, Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, the stories were heavily influenced by the German folktales. The Sketch Book

29、includes the short stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,The fictional Sleepy Hollow is actually the lower Hudson Valley area near Tarrytown, N.Y., and Rip Van Winkle sleeps through the entire Revolutionary War in the Catskill mountains of upstate New York.In the Sketch Book, Irv

30、ing transforms the Catskill Mountains along the Hudson River north of New York City into a fabulous, magical region. American readers gratefully accepted Irvings imagined history of the Catskills, despite the fact that he had adapted his stories from a German source. Irving gave America something it

31、 badly needed in the materialistic early years: an imaginative way of relating to the new land,By the late 1820s, Irving had gained a reputation throughout Europe and America as a great writer and thinker. Because of his popularity, Irving received many important honors. Irving never married or had

32、children. On November 28, 1859, on the eve of the Civil War, Washington Irving died at Sunnyside surrounded by his family. He was buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y,Rip Van Winkle,Plot Summary The story of Rip Van Winkle is set in the years before and

33、after the American Revolutionary War. Rip Van Winkle, a villager of Dutch descent, lives in a nice village at the foot of New Yorks Catskill Mountains. An amiable man whose home and farm suffer from his lazy neglect, he is loved by all but his wife,One autumn day he escapes his nagging wife by wande

34、ring up the mountains. There he encounters strangely dressed men, rumored to be the ghosts of Henry Hudsons crew, who are playing nine-pins. After drinking some of their liquor, he settles down under a shady tree and falls asleep. He wakes and returns to his village, where he finds twenty years have

35、 passed. He finds out that his wife has died and that his close friends have died in a war or gone somewhere else,He immediately gets into trouble when he proclaims himself a loyal subject of King George III, not knowing that the American Revolution has taken place. An old local recognizes him, howe

36、ver, and Rips now grown daughter takes him in. Rip resumes his habitual idleness, and his tale is solemnly believed by the old Dutch settlers, with certain hen-pecked husbands wishing they shared Rips good luck,Setting The story begins about five or six years before the American Revolution and ends

37、twenty years later. The action takes place in a village in eastern New York, near the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains. The river was named after Englishman Henry Hudson, who explored it in 1609. The Catskill Mountains were named after Kaaterskill, the Dutch word for a local stream, Wildcat C

38、reek. The Catskills contain many other streams, as well as lakes, waterfalls, and gorges. Type of Work Rip Van Winkle is a short storyone of Americas most belovedbased on German folk tales,THE FOLLOWING tale was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old gentleman of New York,

39、 who was very curious in the Dutch history of the province. Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Catskill Mountains,Selected Reading,It is a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists, In that same village, and in one of these very hous

40、es, there lived many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle,I have observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor and an obedient, henpecked husband. Indeed, to the latter ci

41、rcumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious (trying hard to please) and conciliating（make sb. less angry or more friendly) abroad who are under the discipline of shrews at home,Their tempers, doubtless, are

42、 rendered pliant（溫順的） and malleable (easily changed and influenced) in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation (great suffering), and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant（專橫的女人） wife may, therefore, in some res

43、pects, be considered a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed,The great error in Rips composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. in a word, Rip was ready to attend to anybodys business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his

44、farm in order, it was impossible. In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; everything about it went wrong, and would go wrong, in spite of him. His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to n

45、obody,Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have whist

46、led life away, in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family,Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of househo

47、ld eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh volley from his wife, so that he was fain to draw off hi

48、s forces, and take to the outside of the housethe only side which, in truth, belongs to a henpecked husband,Rips sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as much henpecked as his master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye,

49、as the cause of his masters so often going astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woodsbut what courage can withstand the ever-during and all-besetting terrors of a womans tongue,The moment Wolf entered the house his

50、 crest fell, his tail drooped to the ground, or curled between his legs; he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broomstick or ladle would fly to the door with yelping precipitation,Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van

51、 Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener by constant use. Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to escape from the labor of the farm and clamor of his wife, was to ta

52、ke gun in hand and stroll away into the woods,As he approached the village, he met a number of people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he wa

53、s accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins,The very village was altered: it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar

54、 haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doorsstrange faces at the windowseverything was strange. His mind now began to misgive him; he doubted whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched,Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up the mountain:

55、 apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name,God knows,” exclaimed he, at his

56、 wits end; “Im not myselfIm somebody elsethats me yondernothats somebody else, got into my shoesI was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and theyve changed my gun, and everythings changed, and Im changed, and I cant tell whats my name, or who I am,How that there had been a revolut

57、ionary warthat the country had thrown off the yoke of old Englandand that, instead of being a subject of his Majesty, George III., he was now a free citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician; the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him; but there was one s

58、pecies of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that waspetticoat government; happily, that was at an end,he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was mentioned, however,

59、 he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes; which might pass either for an expression of resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance,Comments on Rip Van Winkle,Rip Van Winkle has been seen as a symbol of several aspects of America. Rip, like America, is immature, self-ce

60、ntered, 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 emblematic of America-forever rapidly changing. Rips conflicts and dreams are those of the nation-the conflict o