Name/CN Name

Writer's Features

Writings / CN Writings

Writing's Features

English Literature

The Renaissance Period

1. age: 1500-1660

2. background: stimulated by the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek classic; England's Golden Age, especially in literature; the Church of England broke away from the Catholic Church

3. features:

(1)New poetical forms introduced, e.g. blank verse and sonnet;

(2) the English drama based itself on the models of Roman and Greek classics and the precedents from Italy and Spain

(3)the universal tend of humanism in emphasizing man's dignity and his worldly happiness

Edmund Spenser

甁紈籜.吹猾辽

1. The poet's poet; 2. Perfect melody; a rare sense of beauty;  a splendid imagination; a lofty moral purity and seriousness; a dedicated idealism

The Faerie Queen



(The Shepheades Calenderら记;Epithalamion穝盉尺簈)

An allegory; "a historical poem" to present the example of a perfect gentleman; a hero represent one of the 12 virtues; fierce warres and faithful loves

Christopher Marlowe

ń吹伸ひ.皑

Blank verse

University wit

1. perfected blank verse and turned it into the principal medium of English drama

2. created a series of images of the Renaissance hero for English drama

Dr Fauctus

疊紈痴

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love薄ο璓薄

1. symbolic of a humanist in the Renaissance; based on the German legend of a magician aspiring for knowledge and finally meeting his tragic end as a result of selling his soul to the Devil

William Shakespeare

稧.诧ゑㄈ

The greatest playwright and the most popular sonnet writer; a creation of characters; skillful plot construction; irony; a good use of a language; skilled in various poetic forms; of three quatrains and a couplet(节︽诗节案); national unity under a mighty and just sovereign is a necessity¨The Kingˇs government must be carried on〃 (个强璣统獀国產统琌獶盽ゲ璶)

 

(Each hero has his weekness of nature: Hamlet, the melancholic scholar-prince, faces the dilemma between action and mind; Othelloˇs inner weakness is made use of by the outside evil force; the old king Lear who is unwilling to totally give up his power makes himself suffer from treachery and infidelity; and Macbethˇs lust for power stirs up his ambition and leads him to incessant crimes.)

 

literature should be a combination of beauty, kindness and truth, and should reflect nature and reality

Sonnets

︽钢

The Merchant of Venice

ェ吹坝

Hamlet

﹊筽疭

(Venus and Adonis维纳吹㎝东ェ吹; The Rape of Lucrece鲁丽吹癲记;romantic tragicomedies憨磀尺剧;Romeo and Juliet;

Shakespeare's greatest tragedies are : Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth)

1. 154 poems; English form

2. The traditional theme of the play is to praise the friendship between Antonio and Bassanio, to idealize Portia as a heroine of great beauty, wit and loyalty, and to expose the insatiable greed and brutality of the Jew. Many people today tend to regard the play as a satire of the Christians' hypocrisy and their false standards of friendship and love, their cunning ways of pursuing worldliness and their unreasoning prejudice against Jews (Shylock).

3. A man of contemplation rather than action; has the qualities of a ¨blood-and-thunder〃 thriller and a philosophical exploration of life and death

Francis Bacon

ケ孽﹁吹.蚌

a well known philosopher scientist and essayist; lays the foundation of modern science; his "Essays" is an important landmark in the development of English prose

brevity\compactness\powerfulness

Of Studies

论学习

It analyzes what studies chiefly serve for, the different ways adopted by different people to pursue studies, and how studies exert influence over human charater

John Donne

揩.綡

the leading figure() of the "metaphysical school(ト学); his poems can be divided into two groups: the secular and the religious; sermons; The songs and Sonnets

a seemingly unfocused diversity of experiences and attitudes and a free range of feelings and moods; dynamic rather than static

The Sun Rising

び阳ど癬

Death, Be Not Proud

馋骄横Holy Sonnets

1. dramatizing and illustrating the state of being in love

2. a bold challenge to the proud Death

John Milton

揩.辣焊箉

A versatile writer; fight for freedom in all aspects as a Christian humanist

Paradise Lost

ア贾堕

Satan, after being defeated in his rebel against God, tempts Adam and Eve to eat the apples from the Forbidden Tree, and causes the Fall of Man

The Neoclassical Period 

1. age: 1660-1798

2. background: The English society of the neoclassical period was a turbulent one. Fast development of England as a nation; the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason

3. features:

(1)a furtherance of the Renaissance  the Enlightenment Movement, advocated universal education

(2)reason, "eternal truth", "eternal justice", "eternal equality" was what human society should seek for; advocated universal education

(3)reviving the interest in old classical works (neoclassicism)

(4)keep to order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy

(5)had specific rules for almost every genre of literature

John Bunyan

揩.痁法

As a stout Puritan, he had made a conscientious study of the Bible and firmly believed in salvation through spiritual struggle

Concrete and living language\carefully observed and vividly presented detail

The Pilgrimˇs Progress

ぱ隔历祘

(Symbolizes human world, for "All the cometh is vanity"; everything and anything in this world is "vanity", have no value and no meaning; but this town "lay" in the way to the Celestial City, meaning pilgrims had to resist the temptations there when they made their way through)

Is the most successful religious allegory in the English language; its purpose is to urge people to abide by Christian doctrines and seek salvation through constant struggles with their own weakness and all kinds of social evils

Alexander Pope

ㄈ菌.籞

Strongly advocated neoclassicism, emphasizing that literary works should be judged by classical rules of order, reason, logic, restrained emotion, good taste and decorum

Satiric\concise\smooth\graceful\well-balanced style

On Criticism

阶у蝶

a comprehensive study of the theories of literary criticism; a typical didactic one; written in the form of heroic couplets, it's plain in style and it is easy to read.

Daniel Defoe

うェ焊.裁ケ

A very good story-teller; his sentences are sometimes short, crisp and plain, and sometimes long and rambling, which leave on the reader an impression of casual narration

Smooth\easy\colloquial\mostly vernacular

Robinson Crusoe

鲁宾逊簘瑈记

Adventure on a deserted island; depicts a hero grows from an inexperienced youth onto a shrewd and hardened man; a song of courage, wisdom, struggle against the hostile natural environment

Jonathan Swift

踌此.吹疭

Is almost unsurpassed in the writing of simple, direct, precise prose; ¨proper words in proper places〃

Clear\simple\concrete diction\uncomplicated sentence structure\economy and conciseness of language

Gulliverˇs Travels

︱笴癘

Four places: Lilliput, Brobdingnag, the flying island; Houyhnhnm

Henry Fielding

﹄.滇焊

First of all the 18th century English novelist to write the "comic epic in prose"; the first to give the modern novel its structure and style; use the third-person narration; ¨Father of the English Novel 〃; ¨the just copies of human manners〃

Easy\unlaboured\familiar\extremely vivid and vigorous\ logic and rhythm

Tom Jones

傣﹊.琼吹

 

Samuel Johnson

辽羀焊.揩还

Very much concerned with the theme of the vanity of human wishes; no matter how complex his sentences are, the thought is always clearly expressed

To the Right Honorable the Earl of Chesterfield

璓穛滇尔里书

A strong indignation at the Earl's fame-fishing; implying writers independence in economy and writing; open a new era in the development of literature

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

瞶琩紈.ゑ.谅ミう

The only important English dramatist of the eighteenth century; in his plays, morality is the constant theme

The School of Scandal

硑谣学

A story about two brothers

Thomas Gray

伸皑吹.筽

The leader of the sentimental poetry of the day, especially ¨the Graveyard School〃

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard褂园簈

Reflects on death, the sorrow of life, and the mysteries of human life with a touch of his personal melancholy

The Romantic Period 

1. age: 1798-1870

2. background: coming along with the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution

3. features:

(1)contrary with the neoclassicism: emphasize that man have in common, focuses on the special qualities of individual mind

(2)tend to probe into the inner world of the human spirit rather narrate daily happenings of the human world

(3)employ rural scenery, legendary and mythological, stories of ancient times, figures from country and Orientals

(4)produce a number of great poets, the Romantic period is an age of poetry

(5)the focus of the everyday life of human beings in the Age brought about the flourishing of familiar essays

William Blake

稧.ガ弟

The first important Romantic poet; the spokesman of vevolt; took ¨This World〃 as ¨a World of Imagination and Vision〃, declaring that ¨The Nature of my work is visionary and imaginative〃

Plain\direct\lyric beauty\symbolism

The Chimney Sweeper/Songs of Innocence

扫烟囱/ぱ痷ぇ簈

The Chimney Sweeper/Songs of Experience

扫烟囱/竒喷ぇ簈

The Tygerρ

1. indicates the conditions of the exploitation of child labor, which make religion a consolation;

2. reveals the true nature of religion which helps bring misery to the poor children

William Wordsworth

稧.地地吹

A ¨worshipper of nature〃; a poet in memory of the past, to him, life is a cyclical journey, its beginning finally turns out to be its end; Advocate the writing of the common people in ordinary language; the joys and sorrows of the common people are his themes; natural scenery with its beauty and mystery acts also as one of his favorite themes, the poor in rural places; reveal the inner workings of individualˇs mind; the seeming simplicity of the poet both in diction and description is immersed in a profound and sympathetic longing for a better world; poetry originates from ¨emotion recollected in tranquillity〃

Lyrical Ballads

х薄簈亮栋

Tintern Abbey

祅

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloudи﹖独簘獃犹疊お

Composed upon Westminster Bridge﹁庇桥

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways﹡迹╱よ

The Solitary Reaper﹖独澄麦

 

 

 

 

 

 

A vivid picture of a beautiful morning I n London; Italian form

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

峨羀焊.疭扒.扒獀

Can be divided into two groups: the demonic and conversational;

Kubla Khan

┛ゲ疨簙

Describes the pleasure dome of the Khan;

George Gordon Byron

踌獀.む祅.

G.G.Byronˇs chief contribution: ¨Byronic hero〃: Such a hero is a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin. Passionate and powerful, he is right all the wrongs in a corrupt society, and he would fight single  handedly against all the misdoings, political, religious and moral. Thus his figure is a rebellious individual against outworn social systems and conventions.

Song for the Luddites

为卢眔簈佰

Don Juan The Isles of Greece

縓玸跭

 

 

 

Percy Bysshe Shelley

筦.ゑ.撤弟

Greatest achievement is his four-act poetic drama, Prometheus Unbound

A Song : Men of England

璣国チぇ簈

Ode to the West Wind

﹁箌

1. a war cry calling upon all working people of England to rise up against their political oppressors and an address to point out to them the intolerable injustice of economic exploitation

2. The autumn wind, burying the dead year, preparing for a new Spring; ¨If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?〃

expressed eagerness to enjoy the boundless freedom from the reality

John Keats

揩.蕾稯

Sensuous, colorful and rich in imagery; exact and closely knit construction, sensual description

Ode to an Grecian Urn

跭县箌

Show the contrast between the permanence of art and the transience of human passion

Jane Austen

虏.而吹ヅ

Main literary concern is about human beings in their personal relationships; her characteristic theme is that maturity is achieved through the loss of illusions

Delightful and profound

Pride and Prejudice

镀篊籔熬ǎ

Wave vivid pictures of everyday life of simple country society

The Victorian Period

1. age:1836-1901
2. background:

(1)early years: rapid economic development as well as serious social problems
(2)the next twenty years: prosperity and relative stability. a national spirit of earnestness, respectability, modesty domesticity
(3)the last three decades: the decline of the British empire and the decay of the Victorian values
3. idea:

(1)Darwinˇs The Origin of Species; The Descent of Man shook the theoretical basis of the traditional faith
(2)Utilitarianism: whether it could promote the material happiness
(3)socially conscious writers criticized(2)ˉs depreciation of cultural values, cold indifference towards human feeling
(4)literature: magnitude and diversity, romantically and realistically
4.critical realist writers: criticized the society, concerned about the fate of common people

Charles Dickens

琩尔吹.╢吹

1. theme: critical realist writers, criticize: poverty, injustice, hypocrisy, corruptness
2. characteristics:

(1)he is skillful in the dialect and have a large vocabulary
(2)character portrayal
(3)characters are mostly innocent ,helpless, persecuted child characters
(4)a mixture of humor and sympathism (pathos)
(5)bizarre figure, horrible

Oliver Twist雾常﹖ㄠ

(The Pickwick Paper; David Copperfield; Domeby and Son; A Tale of Two Cities; Bleak House; Little Dorrit; Hard Times; Great Expectations)

the cruelty and hypocrisy of the workhouse system and the dark criminal underworld life

The Bronte Sisters

甃獀疭.ガ

1.scene: vast, rough, untouched moorland wilderness

2. Charlotteˇs works are all about the struggle of an individual consciousness towards self-realization, about some lonely and neglected young women with a fierce longing for love, understanding and a full, happylife. In her mind, manˇs life is composed of perpetual battle between sin and virtue, good and evil

 

Jane Eyre /Charlotte Bronte

虏稲

Wuthering Heights/Emily Bronte

㊣糞缠

1.Mr.Rochester and Jane Eyre.
Rochester: a grim-looking, energetic, quick-tempered, but an understanding middle-aged man; has a burning spirit and a longing to love and be loved; struggles for recognition of her basic rights and equality as a woman. Itˉs an individual conscious struggle towards self-realization. She gets joy through the sacrifice of herself or her weakness overcome

3. (uses flashbacks)
Nelly: Catherineˇs old nurse, narrator, told Mr. Lockwood, a temporary tenant the story

Alfred Tennyson

焊ケ筽紈.ェネ

Poet Laureate(Wordsworth, Southey)

a powerful expression of the poetˉs philosophical and religious thoughts, his doubts about life, soul; has the natural power of linking visual pictures with musical expression, and these two with the feelings

Break Break Break

冲縀冲縀冲縀

Crossing The Bar筁‵瑆

Ulyssesぷ﹁吹

1. the feeling of sadness are contrasted with the carefree, innocent joys of the children and the unfeeling movement of the ship and sea waves; abcb

2. means leaving this world and entering the next world

3. express Tennysonˇs own determination and courage to brave the struggle of life but also reflects the restlessness and aspiration of the age

Robert Browning

霉疭.ガ郞圭

perfects "dramatic monologue", keeps readers alert, thoughtful and enlightened

My Last Duchess

и硊そ里ひ

Meeting at Night穦

Parting at Morning贬

1. in heroic couplets, dramatic monologue

sounds like blank verse

 

George Eliot

踌獀.︺菠疭

Pseudonym: Mary Ann Evans

founder of "stream of consciousness", focus on inner struggle. hereditary influences govern human action. concern for the destiny of woman. the tragedy of women lies in their very birth(hereditary influences)
naturalistic and psychological novel

Middlemarch A Study of Provincial Life

μ紈焊皑ネ╯

a full view of life in a small Englishtown

Thomas Hardy

伸皑吹.

1. evaluation: naturalist (D.H.Lawrance; Theodore Dreiser; George Eliot),also critical realist writer(Dickens)
2. features: nostalgic(Washington Irving; F.Scott Fitzergerald; William Faulkner),also pessimistic

intellectually advanced and emotionally traditional

tells very good stories about very interesting people but seldom stops to ask why
3. naturalism: Darwinˇs idea of "survival of the fittest"
(1)man is born with tragic, inevitably bound by his own hereditary traits
(2)man proves powerless before fate however he tries, he seldom escapes his doomed destiny

Tess of The DˇUrbervilles

紈產璦丝

(Wessex: The Return of the Nature; The Mayor of Casterbridge; Jude the Obscure)

criticize the society, hypocricy of the society
naturalism, the misery, poverty Tess suffers

¨Not guessing the cause, there was nothing to remind him that experience is as to intensity, and not as to duration. Tessˇs passing corporeal blight had been her mental harvest〃

The Modern Period 

1.background: 1914-1945
(1)natural and social sciences enormously advanced
(2)capitalism came into its monopoly stage
(3)the gap between the rich and the poor was further deepened
(4)World War 1 2 broke
2.what ideas influence this period: all kinds of philosophical ideas
(1)Karl Marx: scientific socialism
(2)Darwinˇs theory of evolution, "survival of the fittest"
(3)Freudˇs analytical psychology
(4)The irrationalist philosophers give immense influence
3.ideas:

(1)Modernism originated from skepticism and disillusion of capitalism
(2)The French symbolism announced modernism
(3)takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base. The major themes are the distorted, alienated and ill relationships
4.difference between Modernism and Realism
Modernism is a reaction against realism in many aspects
(1)Modernism rejects rationalism, which is the theoretical base of Realism
(2)Modernism reflects the source of Realism, i.e. the external, objective, material world
(3)Modernism rejects almost all the traditional elements in literature
5.D.H.Lawenceˇs worksˇ features:

(1)he interests in exploring the psychological development, he thinks life impulse is manˉs instinct. any conscious oppression will cause distortion of the individualˉs personality
(2)make a psychological exploration of human relationships, especially those between men and women
(3)he emphasizes that itˉs capitalist industrialization that turn man into inhuman machines. And the desires for power and money cause the alienation of human relationships

6.John Osborne: "Look back in Anger" "the Angry Young Man", the working-class drama and the Theater of Absurd

George Bernard Shaw

拷

1.idea:against "art for artˉs sake", art should serve social purposes by reflecting human life, revealing social contradictions and educating common people
2.works features: problem plays, only one passion: indignation
(1)showing oneˇs character by the expense of anotherˇs
(2)inversion, Shawˇs characters are the representatives of ideas, points of view, that shift and alter during the play

the forward motion consists not in the unrolling of plot but in the operation of the spirit of discourse

Mrs. Warrenˇs Profession

华伦ひ职业

(St. Joan(historical play); The Apple Cart(political play); The Doctorˉs Dilemma(political play))

a play about the economic oppression of woman

John Galsworthy

揩.蔼焊吹地风

A conventional writer, having inherited the fine traditions of the great Victorian novelists of the critical realism; focusing on plot development and character portrayal; impartial presentation of the social life in a documentary precision; satire, humor, clear, unpretentious; a clear and straightforward language

The Man of PropertyΤ产(trilogy: The Man of Property; In Chancery; To Let)

Soames(husband),Irene(wife),Bosinney(wifeˇs lover)
the predominant possessive instinct of the Forsytes Soames represents the principle that the accumulation of wealth in the aim of life, for he considers everything in terms of oneˉs property, he never pays any attention to his wifeˉs thoughts and feelings, he takes her merely as part of his own property.
theme: human relationships of the contemporary English Society are merely an extension of property relationships

William Butler Yeats

稧.疭扒.叶

Combination of his appreciation of beauty and a sense of tragedy life, gave a significance to the ordinary events of life in his poetry; his style is both simple and rich, colloquial and formal, with a quality of metaphysical wit and symbolic vision;

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

ェ吹ケ畄

Down By The Salley Gardens

阔叶琱园边

1. sight to escape into an ideal ¨fairyland〃 where he could live calmly as a hermit and enjoy the beauty nature

2. an old song from an old peasant woman

T.S. Eliot

T.S.︺菠疭

此文章来自www.absee.net英语自考网

(1)presents physical disorder and spiritual decadence in the modern western society
(2)reflects disillusion and despair of a whole post war generation. anguish, menace, sterility had been afflicting all sensitive members of the postwar generation
(3)concerns with the spiritual breakup of a modern civilization in which human life has lost its meaning
(4)reflects the 20th century peopleˉs disillusion and frustration in a meaningless and boring world

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

炊緗ケ薄簈

 

The Waste Land

1. dramatic monologue in ironic tone
content:the meditation of an aging young man over the proposing marriage

theme:the speakerˉs incapability of facing up to love and to life in a sterile upper-class world
2. a landmark and a model of the 20^th-century English poetry (Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth)

D.H.Lawrence

拦蝴.划疭.骋吹

Express a strong reaction against the mechanical civilization; one of the first novelists to introduce themes of psychology into his work; believe that the healthy way of the individualˇs psychological development lay in the primacy of the life impulse, or in another term, the sexual impulse; make a deliberate use of the ¨four-letter〃 words in his novels; declare that any repression of the sexual impulse based social, religious, or moral values of the civilized world would cause severe damages to the harmony of human relationships and psychic health of the individualˇs personality

Sons and Lovers蒓薄(The Rainbow; Women in Love; Lady Chatterleyˉs Lover)

contents:ignorant,drunken and brutish father(Mr.Morel),the weary,frustrated mother(Mrs.Morel),the intelligent and ambitious woman,tries to find emotional fulfillment in her sons(Paul).she hopes her sons should never became miners,they will be educated to realize her ideals of success,happiness and social respect.Paul is incapable of escaping the overpowering emotional bond imposed by her mothers love.(distorted relationship)

James Joyce

糕﹊吹.踌レ吹

1. scene: the same setting: Ireland, especially Dublin, the same subject: the Irish people and their life
2. stream of conscienceness: presents unspoken materials directly from the psyche of the characters, or make the characters tell their own inner thoughts in monologues
a literary form presenting psychological aspects of characters

3. style: straightforward\lucid\logical\leisurely\concentrating on revealing in his novels the psychic being of the characters

DublinersAraby

常琭狶┰节

The Portrait of The Artist As a Young Man獵美砃產╲钩

Ulyssesぷ﹁吹

1. a tale of the frustrated quest for beauty
theme: the child lives not with his parents but with an uncle and aunt, a symbol of that isolation and lack of proper relation between parents and children

(Ulysses: an account of manˉs life during one day . The events seem to be trivial ,insignificant, but below the surface of them, the natural flow of mental reflections, the shifting moods and impulses in the characters inner world are richly presented in an frank and penetrating way.)

American Literature

The Romantic Period:

stretches from the end of 18^th century to the outbreak of the civil war. ¨the American Renaissance〃

Writings in the period emphasize upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature.

The most clearly defined Romantic literary movement in this period is New England Transcendentalism.

Washington Irving

华脖顿.欧ゅ

Earn an international reputation; Father of the American short stories; perfect the best classic style that American Literature ever produced

The American Gold Smith

Musicality\dreaming\Gothic\supernatural\exotic place

Rip Van Winkle

ń炊..温尔

Well know for Ripˇs 20-year sleep

A model of perfect English in American literature and in the English language as well

Ralph Waldo Emerson

┰尔ひ.ニ尔.爱纐ネ

The chief spokesman of New England Transcendentalism (American Puritanism\European Romanticism); is generally known as an essayist; his last reputation began only with the publication of Essays; the American Scholar(1837)

self-reliance\American scholar\the over-soul\intuitive\short\declarative\

Nature

论礛

The unofficial manifesto for the Transcendental Club; transparent eyeballs: one is merged into nature, while retaining a unique perception of the experience

Nathaniel Hawthorne

蓟ェ尔.繬

Published Twice-Told Tales / The Scarlet letter; black vision of life and human beings; sin and evil; the wrong doing of one generation lives into the successive ones; the Puritan concept of life is condemned; a master of symbolism keen psychological analysis\ambiguity Young Goodman Brown

轻ル紈耙.ガ

Everyone possesses some evil secret

Walt Whitman

║尔疭.磃疭耙

Poetry could play a vital part in the process of creating a new nation; a strong sense of mission; use the poetic ¨I〃, speaking in the voice of ¨I〃; the triangular relationship: "I" the poet, the subject in the poem, and "you" the reader; free verse; different thins would mean a different wave of feeling

Openness\freedom\individualism\conversational and casual\simple even crude

There Was a Child Went Forth

从玡Τ个门

Cavalry Crossing a Ford

疉过猠骑队

Song of Myself

иぇ簈

The growth of a child /a young growing American

Reminds its readers of a photo of the American Civil War

Universality, singularity and equality

Herman Melville

划尔耙.宾尔维尔

A master of allegory and symbolism

Moby Dick

フ鲸

The first American prose epic;a symbolic voyage of the mind in quest of truth and knowledge of the universe, a spiritual exploration into man's deep reality and psychology; Moby Dick symbolizes nature; Ahab -- a tragic hero, becoming evil himself in his thirst to destroy evil.

The Realistic Period  1865-1914
1. background: the Civil War affected both the social and the value system
(1)transformed from an agricultural one to an industrialized and commercialized one (2)stimulated technological development
(3)stepped up urbanization
(4)people became dubious about the human nature and the charity of God
The Gilded Age
2. American Realistic Period and English Realistic Period(Victorian Period) common ground
(1)a great interest in the realities of life, aim at the interpretation of the actualities of any aspect of life
(2)what was brutal or filthy, the open portrayal of class struggle
(3)common people mostly depicted
differences(America)
(1)native trends in the realistic portrayal of the landscape and social surfaces
(2)perfect the dialect style
(3)concern about "local colorism", a unique variation of American literary realism 3. American Naturalism: influenced by Darwin's evolutionary theory
(1)accept the more negative implications of it and use it to explain the behavior of those characters in literary works
(2)inherited qualities, and habits confined by social forces are depicted
(3)theme: human "bestiality", especially the sexual desire
(4)unpolished language
(5)philosophically, the truth is always partially hidden from the eyes of the individual, or beyond his control
(6)material source from the lower ranks of society portray misery and poverty

(7)naturalism is evolved from realism. Author's tone in writing is less serious and sympathetic, more ironic and pessimistic

Mark Twain

马.温

1. "The true father of our national literature"; "damned human race"

2. features:

(1)paid more attention to the "life" of the Americans
(2)preferred to have his own region and people in his stories, i.e. "local colorism"
(3)concerned with the life of a small, well-defined region and the lower-class people
(4)nostalgic in a vanishing way of life and recorders of a present that faded before their eyes

(5)skillfully used the colloquialism, the language is simple, direct ,faithful. protagnists spoke in vernacular, both realistically and symbolically
(6)his humor is remarkable, his humor is not only funny elements making people laugh, but a kind of artistic style to criticize the social injustice and satirize the decayed romanticism

The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn

贝.费历险记

(The Adventure of Tom Sawyar)

with the eventual victory of his moral conscience over his social awareness, Huck grows

(Life on the Mississippi; The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County; Innocents Abroad; The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg)

From which "all modern American literature comes"; the milestone in American literature; the books are noted for their unpretentious, colloquial yet poetic style, their wide-ranging humor, and their universally shared dream of perfect innocence and freedom

The climax is Huckˉs inner struggle on the Mississippi,between his affection for Jim and the laws,finally he follows his own good-hearted morality rather than the conventional village one
Huckleberry Finn: a typical American boy with "a sound heart and a deformed conscience", innocent and rebel

Henry James

﹄.糕﹊吹

1. The first American writer to conceive his career in international terms 2. evaluation: influenced by Freud, pioneer of "stream-of-consciousness", founder of psychological realism; laid a greater emphasis on the ¨inner world〃 of man; 3. The Portrait of A Lady is generally considered to be his masterpiece; 4. highly refined and insightful

Daisy Miller

璦锋.μ扒

Daisy Miller  the American Girl in Europe, embody the spirit of the New World

narrator:Frederick Winterbourne
Daisy Miller:Freedom an individuality,innocent,a pretty American Flirt

Emily Dickinson

︺μ丽.╢此

1. works features:

(1)she uses a particular rhyme pattern,uses dashes and captical letters as a means of emphasis
(2)simplicity and plainness
(3)focus on a single image or symbol
(4)poems are personal and meditative
(5)personification
2. idea: skeptical about the relationship between man and nature, concerns religion, death, immortality, love, nature

3. She called this stream of tiny, aphoristic poems a continuous fragmented ¨letter to the world,〃 a way to bridge her private world with the public

4. her poetry despite its ostensible formal simplicity, is remarkable for its variety, subtlety and richness

This is my letter to the World

这琌и给写獺

I heard a Fly buzz  When I diedи时苍蝇朵朵声

I like to see it lap the Miles

и尺欢见ウ╃击许璣ń

Because I could not stop for Death为иぃ氨来单

Anxiety about communication with the outside world;

A description of the moment of death;

Animalizing train as part of nature;

 

Personifies death and immorality, three stages of life: youth, mature period, end of life

Theodore Dreiser

﹁奥.紈莱峨

1. idea: naturalist
(1)heredity and environment are the forces determining manˉs destiny, under what life was ironic, even tragic
(2)human beings' life was trapped intoˉa welter of inscrutable forcesˉ
(3)Darwin's idea of  "survival of the fittest" is embodied as "kill or to be killed" in Dreiserˉs works

(4)explain the insignificance of life and attack the conventional moral standards

(5)materialism is the core. man has a meaningless, endless search for satisfaction of his desires, desires for money
(6)sex is another human desire sexual beauty symbolizes the social status

2. features:

lack of concision, more inclusive and less selective

Sister Carrie

古产ゝゝ

(trilogy: The Financier; The Titan; The Stoic

 greatest work:An American Tragedy)

Project the American value  materialistic;

The Modern Period:

1.age: second half of the 19th century to early decades of the 20th century
2.background:

(1)the U.S. has become the most powerful country
(2)technological revolution
(3)a decline in moral standard, a spiritual wasteland, feelings of fear, loss, disorientation and disillusionment
3. influencing ideas:

(1)the same as English Modern period: Karl Marx, Darwin, Freud

(2)stream of consciousness:
4."The Lost Generation" by Gertrud the second American Renaissance  the expatriate movement
5. John Steinbeck: "The Grapes of Wrath"
Allen Ginsberg: "Howl", the manifesto of Beat Movement
Salinger: "The Catcher in the Rye"
6. modernism's features:
literature: convey a vision of social breakdown and moral decay
writer: develop techniques that could represent a break with the past. modernistic works are discontinuity and fragmentation
7.The differences between Modernism America and England
(1)American writers emphasize the concrete sensory images or details as the direct conveyor of experience
(2)modern fiction employ the first narration or confine the reader to the "central consciousness" or one characterˉs point of view
common ground: directness, compression, vividness, sparing of words

Ezra Pound

甁兹┰.庞紈

a leading spokesman of the "Imagist movement:

(1)direct treatment of poetic subjects
(2)eliminate ornamental words
(3)rhythmical composition in the sequence of the musical phrase rather than in the sequence of a metronome

In a Station of The Metro 铁

The River-Merchantˇs Wife: A Letter

差坝ヾ獺

A pact(free verse)



1. One-image poem; a modern adoption of the Japanese haiku

2. an adaption from the Chinese of Li Po named Rihaku in Japaness

 

3. Some agreement between "Whitmanesque" free verse

Robert Lee Frost

罗疭..ケ罗吹疭

The Pulitzer Prize winner on four occasions; a serious poet

idea: a momentary stay against confusion, like Wordsworth
profound ideas are delivered under the disguise of the plain language and the simple form; combined traditional verse forms with a clear American local speech rhythm; semi-free or semi-conventional

After Apple-Picking

篕衜狦ぇ

The Road Not Taken

没Τǐ隔

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

撤狶边硆痙

1. a man's best efforts ever satisfy God?

2. uncertainty of the speakerˉs choice between safety and unknown(meditative)

took the one less travelled by and that has made all the difference

Eugene OˇNeill

ぷ.奥ェ尔

Is unquestionably American's greatest playwright; won the Pulitzer Prize four times; the only dramatist ever to win a Nobel Prize; founder of the American drama

Characters seek meaning and purpose in their lives through love or religion or revenge. The result is disappointment or despair. Use Expressionism; Dialect, spell words indicate a particular accent or manner of speech

を丰

The Hairy Ape

concerns the problem of modern manˉs position. Yankˉs sense of belonging nowhere is a typical of the mood of isolation and alienation in the early twentieth century in the US and the whole world as well.

F.Scott Fitzgerald

滇狽┰紈

both an insider and outsider of the Jazz Age; a great stylist; using the scenic method; accurate detail

ぃ癬盖ゑ

The Great Gatsby

narrator: Nick Carraway

symbolic of an obscenely futile world

Ernest Hamingway

欧内吹疭.

A Nobel Prize winner for literature

1. Hemingway hero

"grace under pressure"
he is with the honesty, the discipline, and the restraint. man always fights a losing battle of life,but never lose dignity. man can be physically destroyed, but never defeated spiritually
2. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water
3.colloquialism (Mark Twain)(short ,simple, conventional words)

Indian Camp(In Our Times)

材营闺

(The Sun Also Rises-The Lost Generation)

(A Farewell to Arms-Frederick Henry)

(For Whom the Bell Tolls-Robert Jordan)

(The Old Man and the Sea-Santiago)

(The Undefeated)

(1)a wounded hero confronts all the difficulties of the situation with his dignity and courage.

(2)a group of wandering, amusing and aimless people caught in the war.

(3)man suffers both physically and mentally, and is doomed to suffer, refute Godˉs kindness to man.

(4)proves life's worth and there are causes worth dying for.

(5)show great respect for the struggle of mankind against unconquerable natural forces,though only a partial victoy is possible.

(6)man of courage,and masculinity and inflexible heroism.

William Faulkner

稧.褐纳

1. ground: American South, Northern Mississippi, Yoknapatawpha County
2. theme: almost all his heroes are tragic
(1)they are prisoners of the past or of the society,or of some social and moral taboos, or of their own personalities
(2)society conditions man with its laws and institutions and eliminates manˉs chance of responding naturally to the experiences of his existence
(3)man tries to explain the incomprehensible by turning away from reality, but becomes weak, cowardly and confused(Emily-coward)
3. nostalgic in The Sound and The Fury
4. worksˇ features: (1)use of narrative techniques is remarkable, let the characters explain themselves, the reader experiences the work of art directly (interior monologue)
(2)breaks up chronology, juxtaposes the past with the present
(3)stream of consciousness
(4)inner musings of the narrator
(5)good at presenting multiple points of view

纪├︺μ丽Ψ豪

A Rose For Emily

(The Sound and The Fury; Light in August; Absalom,Absalom!; Go Down,Moses; The Marble Faun; Soldiersˉ Pay; As I Lay Dying; Wild Palms; The Hamlet; Intruder in the Dust(Nobel Prize); The Bear; Requiem for a Nun; The Fable; The Town; The Mansion)

(Gothic devices)
Emily: the symbols of the Old South, the prisoners of the past. An  eccentric spinster. She refuses the inevitable changes and loss with the pass of time

 

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