文档介绍：美国文学简史
复****资料
2016年12月23日
目录
殖民时期及十八世纪美国文学
美国浪漫主义早期
新英格兰超验主义
美国浪漫主义后期
美国现实主义文学
美国乡土文学
美国现代诗歌
美国现代小说
美国南方文学
美国现代戏剧
美国黑人文学
美裔文学
殖民时期及十八世纪美国文学
New England：Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, named by Captain John Smith
Puritanism
Doctrines of Puritanism：predestination（命运神定), original sin, total depravity (彻底的堕落), and limited atonement (有限的赎罪)from God’s grace
Puritans left Europe for America in order to prove that they were God’s chosen people who would enjoy God’s blessings on earth and in Heaven. They felt that they were exiles under the special grace of God to establish a theocracy in the New World.
Style of writing：the style is fresh, simple and direct; the rhetoric is plain and honest；a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible
Puritans’ way of Life：hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety.
In Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter there is a good description of the Puritans’ life.
Main writers
William Bradford
Of Plymouth Plantation普利茅斯垦殖记
Thomas Paine
Common Sense 常识；American Crisis美国危机；The Rights of Man人权；The Age of Reason理性时代
Philip Freneau
The Rising Glory of America蒸蒸日上的美洲；The Wild Honeysuckle野金银花
Benjamin Franklin
Autobiography富兰克林自传
Thomas Jefferson
Draft the Declaration of Independence.
美国浪漫主义早期
Romanticism
Background of Romanticism：Economic boom and national optimism ；Favorable literary milieu: increasing number of magazines ；Foreign influences: the Romantic Movement in Europe.
Characteristics of Romanticism：
A rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism.
Feelings, intuitions and emotions were more important for romantics than reason and common sense.
An emphasis on individualism; placing the individual against the group, against authority.
Stress on the close relationship between man and nature.
Fascination with the wild, the irregular, the indefinite, the remote, the mysterious, a