美国文学简史笔记
篇一：美国文学史 学习指南中文翻译 Herman Melvill
《白鲸》赫尔曼·梅尔维尔
美国文学简史
有些十九世纪伟大作家的创作生涯在他谈论起了是相当有趣的。梭罗和迪金森在当时没有读者，坡和惠特曼被人误解，麦尔维尔由于忠于自己的风格，当时也没有受到重视。他不像梭罗和迪金森那样对此满不在乎，而是常常因此痛苦万分，与惠特曼相比，他有生之年甚至完全没有得到人们的肯定。
赫尔曼·梅尔维尔的童年是快乐的，但在他11岁时，父亲去世，留下了一大笔债。麦尔维尔很早就开始工作了，没有受过什么教育。他做过银行职员、商人、老师，还在叔叔的农场帮过忙。这些日子都没有让他过上好日子。在20岁左右的时候他做了海员。麦尔维尔的人生中有三件事应当引起我们的特别注意，出海就是其中一件事，另外两件事分别是他的婚姻和与霍桑的友谊。但是普通的水手是工人阶级的最底层，而麦尔维尔不过是个捕鲸手，而捕鲸手有事水手里地位最低的。但和马克·吐温一样，麦尔维尔由此了解到最底层人民的生活。麦尔维尔去过英国的利物浦和南太平洋，他的青年时光所经历的事情对普通人来说是相当严酷，但是他在海上的经历却使他受益匪浅，为他的小说提供了丰富的素材。
麦尔维尔的婚姻生活与马克·吐温稍有不同，倒是与菲茨杰拉德更为相似。这是三位作家区的太太的地位都比自己高，但只有马克·吐温一人获得了太太的理解与支持。麦尔维尔和菲茨杰拉德都为了挣钱满足太太奢华的生活而写了很多粗罗德文学作品。麦尔维尔区的市一位有钱的法官的女儿，伊丽莎白·肖。为了供养太太和人数不断增多的家庭，麦尔维尔不得不靠写作为生，在当时的情况下，靠写作谋生是极其不易的，更何况麦尔维尔又是一位醉心文学的艺术家。麦尔维尔曾经经济上非常窘迫，直到年迈塔菜不为这个问题操心。
1850年的夏天，麦尔维尔与霍桑相识了。当时麦尔维尔住在马萨诸塞州的皮茨菲尔德，霍桑住在勒诺克斯。他们成为了好朋友，相互拜访至少九次以上，并且经常通信，尽管后来霍桑这边的消息中断了。麦尔维尔看过霍桑的书并深有感悟。他对霍桑十分认同。他的文章《霍桑和他的青苔》就讲述了《古屋青苔》对自己的世界观和生活态度的影响。尽管当时流行的而是新英格兰超验主义者对人类与世界的乐观主义，而麦尔维尔还是从霍桑的作品里认识到美国的罪恶。麦尔维尔对霍桑的罪恶的理解以及黑暗场面的描写十分着迷。当两人相遇的时候，《白
鲸》已经完成了差不多三分之一，但在遇到霍桑之后，麦尔维尔就《白鲸》的原来的构想做了重要的改变。这个故事很有可能成为麦尔维尔又一部奇异的捕鲸传奇，而现在变成了我们今天人在阅读的世界名著，这都得益于霍桑。麦尔维尔写给霍桑的一封信里谈到了他与这位老作家相处时那么富有“激情”的秘密：他继续有人能够理解和欣赏自己的文学作品，因为他的家庭并没有理解和支持他。尽管后来两个人的友谊慢慢淡去，但两个人的哲学观去始终相似。他们代表了当时的悲剧式人文主义。霍桑于1851年秋天搬走，他们此次没有再见过面，直到1856年他们最后一次相见。据说自那以后的二十年，麦尔维尔就再也没有写过小说而转写诗歌。《克拉莱尔》就是他最著名的诗歌作品。
麦尔维尔非常喜欢阅读。爱默生、霍桑、克莱尔、雪莱、托马斯布朗、莱尔德地理学和莎士比亚都在他的书单之列。麦尔维尔读书态度十分严肃，他在做阅读时总是做批注和评论。阅读莎士比亚是他的人生有了深度，克莱尔和霍桑的象征主义也唐塔着迷。对爱默生，麦尔维尔则是既尊敬又排斥。从海上回来的八年时间，麦尔维尔写了很多作品，出版的书如潮涌一般充斥着市场。1846年《泰比》最先出版，紧接着陆续出版了《奥莫》（1847）、《马迪》（1849）、《雷德伯恩》（1849）、《白夹克衫》（1850）《白鲸》（1851）《皮埃尔》（1852）。前三本书是麦尔维尔根据自己在南太平洋岛屿的历险改编而成，《雷德伯恩》是依据他去英格兰的经历写的。《白夹克衫》则是根据在美国的一艘军舰上的生活改编的。因此麦尔维尔一度被认为是著名的传奇故事作家。但是，出来《泰比》和《奥莫》比较畅销之外，其他的作品既没有使他名声大噪，也没有给他带来所需要的丰厚收入。《白鲸》出版后读者的冷淡度几乎使麦尔维尔从40岁末开始放弃了小说创作。后来他留下了《自信的人》和《比利巴德》的手稿，另外还有几篇长篇故事，如《书记员巴特勒比》和《贝尼托赛莱诺》。从这些作品看来，麦尔维尔似乎还是黑白分明，不像还是那样已经向现实妥协。直到创作《比利巴德》，麦尔维尔似乎才平静下来。结束了多年以来的痛苦和挣扎，内心获得了平静，并试图接受这样一个事实，即人必须依据世界的规则而生存。世界的确是一个陷阱，上帝所制定的标准人类无论如何都达不到。在麦尔维尔看来，世界史谜图，人类无法解开这个谜团；麦尔维尔决定放弃这个探索，向命运妥协。所以在《比利巴德》里年轻的水手没有异议的接受了审判，平静的死去了：“比利面向船尾站着，
在最后的时刻，他的话，唯一的话，被清楚地传达——‘上帝保佑威尔船长！’谁都没有想到脖子上绕着不光彩的绳索的他会说出这样的话——一个罪人向着船尾表达出对荣誉的祝福，谁都没有想过用树上飞走的鸟儿歌唱的旋律说出的话的含义；经过如此痛苦的经历而磨练出来的罕有的人格魅力使他的话具有这样强烈的效果。”死去的比利闪耀着“上帝的羔羊的神圣的使命”之荣光，他升起的身体“被黎明的光笼罩着”。这里的描写是对麦尔维尔生活的一个概括，也是对自己将来历史上和子孙眼中的地位的预测。因此《比利巴德》被认为是作者的遗嘱。麦尔维尔接受了命运，停止了与上帝的争辩。
在生命的最后20年，麦尔维尔在纽约的海关工作，每天早出晚晚归。甚至当他还在世的时候，大家却已经我忘了他还是个作家。麦尔维尔为读者写作。他们却对此并不欣赏，双方都失望透顶。麦尔维尔的问题在于他不愿意牺牲自己对艺术的标准去迎合读者的感觉和要求。他的故事往往以“一碟面包和一杯牛奶开头，然后是花一般的语言，最后却是一个莎士比亚式的悲剧结局，所以他慢慢被人们遗忘。当麦尔维尔72岁逝世时，居然有一个评论家奇怪他居然活到了那个时候。霍桑比任何人都清楚他的两男的境地。他们最后一次碰面后，霍桑在他的《英语笔记》里写道：”只有他拥有一个确却的信念，他才会安息。很奇怪他居然这样坚持......没有得到这样的信念，他会继续怀疑，也不安心；他是如此的勇敢和诚实，不会随便迁就......他有着高尚的品格。”
麦尔维尔最著名的作品是《白鲸》。评论家一(来自:www.zaidian.cOm 书 业网:美国文学简史笔记)致认为这是世界上最伟大的巨著之一，想要了解十九世纪的美国及美国历史，就必须阅读这本书。这是一本百科全书，包括历史、哲学、宗教，还有对捕鲸产业的详细描述，但是首先这是一本莎士比亚式的悲剧，是人类在漠然甚至是充满敌意的宇宙里向命运抗争的故事。在《马迪》里，麦尔维尔暗示我们应该知道生活中的罪恶，人类的灵魂应该帮助人们生活的更好。就像他所说的：“通往天堂的道路是地狱。”
麦尔维尔把他认为对自己观点有用的东西全部放进了《白鲸》这部作品里。故事的情节大致是这样的：伊斯梅尔心情沮丧，希望通过登上捕鲸船皮廓德号出海来逃避现实。船长亚哈只有一条腿，因为上次出海时白鲸莫比迪克咬断了他的一条腿。亚哈发誓要杀掉白鲸，他在桅杆上悬上金币，奖励最先看到白鲸的人。皮廓德号捕到了很多鲸鱼，但是亚哈执意要捕到白鲸，才能返航。
篇二：美国文学复习资料1
篇三：美国文学
1.English Settlements:
First permanent English settlement: 1607.
Leader: Captain
Purpose: commercial venture
Religious reasons: New England
The Plymouth colony
Flagship
Leader- William Bradford
Settlers known as Historical Introduction
? Spiritual life of the colonies—Enlightenment.
? Advocated reason or rationality, the scientific method, equality and human beings’ability
to perfect themselves and their society.
? Opposed intolerance, restraint, spiritual authority and revealed religion
5.Romanticism vs Classicism
? Romanticism: imagination and boundlessness
? : reason and restriction
6. Washington Irving (1783--1859)
? “Father of American Literature”
? The first “Pure Writer” in American
? “Father of the American short story”
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent《见闻札记》 ”《瑞普·凡·温克尔》
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” 《睡谷的传说》marked the beginning of American Romanticism!
Characters:Rip Van Winkle: “a simple, good-natured man…a kind neighbor and an obedient hen-pecked husband.” Dame Van Winkle: Rip’s nagging wife.
Wolf: Rip’s dog.
7. James Fenimore Cooper(1789-1851)novelist
Father of American sea novels
Father of American frontier novels.
Works:Leatherstocking Tales
– The Pioneers 1823 …………………… 4
– The Last of the Mohicans1826 …….2
– The Prairie1827………………………5
– The Pathfinder1840…………………3
– The Deerslayer1841 ……………........1
8. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Father of detective story
Father of horror fiction
Poe’s artistic theories:
? Poe argued for the creation of beauty and intensity of emotion, against the didactic
motive for literature.
? Poe felt that literature should have no social function or responsibility but should be an
expression of the isolated artist.
9. Hey David Thoreau (1817-1862)
(1) American writer, philosopher, and naturalist
(2) American essayist and poet
(3) Leader of American Transcendentalism
10. Hey Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
? He was the first American poet to write the narrative poems.
? He was also the first American poet to be honored by having his bust placed in the Poets’
Corner of Westminster Abbey.
11. Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Moby Dick possesses various symbolic meanings for various individuals.
1) Symbol of nature for human beings,because it is mysterious, powerful, unknown.
2) Symbol of evil for the Captain Ahab.
3) Symbol of good and purity because of its whiteness.
12. Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864)
“I do not want to be a doctor and live by men’s diseases, nor a minister to live by their sins, nor a lawyer to live by their quarrels. So, I don’t see that there is anything left for me but to be an author.”
The Scarlet Letter
? Hester (sin)
? Dimmesdale (sin)
? Pearl
? Chillingworth (evil)
《红字》中字母A的意义：AdulteryAbility Angel
13. American Realism (1865-1914)
Background：The Civil War
Growing working population of industrial workers and farmers.
New subject matter - factory life, slums, corruption, politics, hardships, poverty
Dreams of people did not match the realities of their lives.
Darwin’s “Law of the Jungle”
People uncertain of their place in society. They were fearful they were caught up
in large, impersonal forces beyond their control.
Definition of Realism：A literary and intellectual movement that led poets and novelists not to imagine life as it could be, but to examine life as it was actually lived and to record what they saw around them as honestly as they could.
14. Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
A Little Lady has stated a Big War.
---Lincoln
Theme：the evil and immorality of slavery!
15. Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
? One of the great innovators in American literature
? He gave America its first genuine epic poem: Leaves of Grass
Poetic Features：Technique
1)The poetic style he devised is now called —that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.
2)Whitman thought that the voice of democracy should not be haltered by traditional forms of verse.
17. Samuel Langhorne Clemens: 1)better known as Mark Twain,
2)American author, a humorist, and social observer.
His Major works:1.The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865) (卡拉弗拉斯县的著名跳蛙)
2.Innocents Abroad (1869) （成功傻子出国记）
3.Roughing It (1872) （艰苦岁月）
4.The Gilded Age (with Charles Dudley waenner,1873) （镀金时代）
5.The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)（汤姆 索耶历险记）
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
? a masterpiece of realism, has been called the first (and sometimes the best) modern
American novel.
? “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry
Finn. ... all American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”
--- Ernest Hemingway
18. Hey James(1843-1916)：novelist, literary critic, playwright and essayist
International Theme:Conflicts between New and Old world, traditional, innocent, honest American and complex, sophisticated, snobbish, arrogant, vain Europeans, American freshness of impulse, moral integrity, candor of heart, complexity deviousness of the European mentality.
? James’ contribution to literary criticism is immense.
? In his whole writing career James was concerned with “point of view” which is at the
center of his aesthetic of the novel. The author should avoid artificial omniscience as much as possible.
19. American Naturalism: In literature, it refers to the theory that literary composition should aim at a detached scientific objectivity in the treatment of natural man. It is a more advanced stage of realism toward the close of the 19th century.
?
? The American naturalists accepted more negative implications of Darwin’s theory and used it to account for the behavior of those characters in literary works. One of the most familiar themes in American Naturalism is the theme of human “bestiality”(兽性),
especially as an explanation of sexual desire.
They believed that man’s instinct, the environment and other social and economic forces play an overwhelming role and man’s fate is "determined" by such forces beyond his control.
20. Theodore Dreiser(1871-1945): 1)American author, 2)outstanding representative of naturalism
名词解释：
1）Transcendentalism：There is an which 2）Naturalism：In literature, it refers to the theory that literary composition should aim at a detached scientific objectivity in the treatment of natural man. It is a more advanced stage of realism toward the close of the 19th century.
3）Local Colorism ：: “such quality of texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place or by anyone else than a native.” (Hamlin Garland)
texture: elements which characterize a local culture, such as speech, customs and other peculiarities.
Background: physical setting and those distinctive qualities of Landscape which condition human thought and behavior.
4）Puritan：one division of English Protestant, who in the 16th and 17th centuries advocated strict religious discipline along with simplification of the rituals of the Church of England.
5）Jazz Age：Coined the term “Jazz Age”
– “It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was
an age of satire.”
? from Echoes of the Jazz Age.
作家作品配对：
1. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)：The Autobiography《自传》
Poor Richard’s Almanack 《格言历书》
2. Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Moby Dick(1850)
White Jacket: 1850
Billy Budd: 1891
Bedburn: 1849
Omoo: 1847
Typee: 1846
Philosophical novel Mardi (1849) and Pierre (1852)
The confidence man
3.Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
He gave America its first genuine epic poem: Leaves of Grass
4.Ezra Pound
Homage to Sextus Propertius
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse
The Waste Land
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
5.Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
a) Twice-Told Tales 1837 《故事重述》
b) Mosses from an Old Manse 1843《古宅青苔》
c) The Scarlet Letter 1850《红字》
d) The House of the Seven Gables 1851《七个尖角阁的房子》
e) The Blithedale Romance 1852《福谷传奇》
f) The Marble Faun 1860《大理石雕像》
g) “Young Goodman Brown” (Mosses from an Old Manse) 《好小伙儿布朗》
h) “The Minister’s Black Veil” （Twice-Told Tales ）《教长的黑面纱》
i) “Dr. Rappacini’s Daughter” (Mosses from an Old Manse)《拉普齐尼博士的女儿》
6.Hey Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
? My Lost Youth 《逝去的青春》
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? The Song of Hiawatha 《海华沙之歌》 A Psalm of Life 《人生礼赞》 The Slave’s Dream 《奴隶的梦》 The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls 《潮起潮落》 The Courtship of Miles Standish 《迈尔斯 斯坦迪什的求婚》 Voices of the Night 《夜吟》 Ballads and Other Poems 《民谣及其他》 1900 1911 1925 1912 1914 7.Theodore Dreiser(1871-1945) Sister CarrieJennie GerhardtAn American TragedyThe Financier The TitanThe StoicThe Genius Trilogy of Desire(欲望三部曲) (posthumously) 1915 (autobiographically) 1928 Dreiser Looks at Russia Daisy Miller 1879 The American1877 8.Hey James (1843-1916) The Portrait of a Lady 1881 1865-1881 international novel/theme The Bostonians 1886 The Princess Casamassima 1886 (1882-1895 tales of inter-personal relationships. ) “What Maisie Knew” 1897 The Wings of the Dove1902 The Ambassadors1903 The Golden Bowl1904 1895-1916 novellas and tales dealing with childhood and adolescence; international novel “The Art of Fiction” Literary criticism
This Side of Paradise (1920)
Flappers and Philosophers (1920)
The Beautiful and Damned (1920)
Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
The Great Gatsby (1925)
Tender Is the Night (1934)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (short story) 9.F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
10.Hey David Thoreau (1817-1862)
(1). Walden, or Life in the Woods1854
(2). Civil Disobedience 1849
选择题
1.Know about Benjamin Franklin