美国文学教案1（通用6篇）
篇1：美国文学教案1
Chapter 1 Colonial Period I.Background: Puritanism 1.features of Puritanism(1)Predestination: God decided everything before things occurred.(2)Original sin: Human beings were born to be evil, and this original sin can be passed down from generation to generation.(3)Total depravity(4)Limited atonement: Only the “elect” can be saved.2.Influence(1)A group of good qualities – hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety(serious and thoughtful)influenced American literature.(2)It led to the everlasting myth.All literature is based on a myth – garden of Eden.(3)Symbolism: the American puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chiefly instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American.(4)With regard to their writing, the style is fresh, simple and direct;the rhetoric is plain and honest, not without a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible.II.Overview of the literature 1.types of writing diaries, histories, journals, letters, travel books, autobiographies/biographies, sermons 2.writers of colonial period(1)Anne Bradstreet(2)Edward Taylor(3)Roger Williams(4)John Woolman(5)Thomas Paine(6)Philip Freneau IV.Benjamin Franklin 1.life 2.works(1)Poor Richard’s Almanac(2)Autobiography 3.contribution(1)He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital and the American Philosophical Society.(2)He was called “the new Prometheus who had stolen fire(electricity in this case)from heaven”.(3)Everything seems to meet in this one man – “Jack of all trades”.Herman Melville thus described him “master of each and mastered by none”.Chapter 2 American Romanticism Section 1 Early Romantic Period What is Romanticism? An approach from ancient Greek: Plato A literary trend: 18c in Britain(1798~1832)Schlegel Bros.I.Preview: Characteristics of romanticism 1.subjectivity(1)feeling and emotions, finding truth(2)emphasis on imagination(3)emphasis on individualism – personal freedom, no hero worship, natural goodness of human beings 2.back to medieval, esp medieval folk literature(1)unrestrained by classical rules(2)full of imagination(3)colloquial language(4)freedom of imagination(5)genuine in feelings: answer their call for classics 3.back to nature nature is “breathing living thing”(Rousseau)II.American Romanticism 1.Background(1)Political background and economic development(2)Romantic movement in European countries Derivative – foreign influence 2.features(1)American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new experience and contained “an alien quality” for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place” was radically new and alien.(2)There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider.American romantic authors tended more to moralize.Many American romantic writings intended to edify more than they entertained.(3)The “newness” of Americans as a nation is in connection with American Romanticism.(4)As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American romanticism was both imitative and independent.III.Washington Irving 1.several names attached to Irving(1)first American writer(2)the messenger sent from the new world to the old world(3)father of American literature 2.life 3.works(1)A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty(2)The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.(He won a measure of international recognition with the publication of this.)(3)The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus(4)A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada(5)The Alhambra 4.Literary career: two parts(1)1809~1832 a.Subjects are either English or European b.Conservative love for the antique(2)1832~1859: back to US 5.style – beautiful(1)gentility, urbanity, pleasantness(2)avoiding moralizing – amusing and entertaining(3)enveloping stories in an atmosphere(4)vivid and true characters(5)humour – smiling while reading(6)musical language IV.James Fenimore Cooper 1.life 2.works(1)Precaution(1820, his first novel, imitating Austen’s Pride and Prejudice)(2)The Spy(his second novel and great success)(3)Leatherstocking Tales(his masterpiece, a series of five novels)The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneer, The Prairie 3.point of view the theme of wilderness vs.civilization, freedom vs.law, order vs.change, aristocrat vs.democrat, natural rights vs.legal rights 4.style(1)highly imaginative(2)good at inventing tales(3)good at landscape description(4)conservative(5)characterization wooden and lacking in probability(6)language and use of dialect not authentic 5.literary achievements He created a myth about the formative period of the American nation.If the history of the United States is, in a sense, the process of the American settlers exploring and pushing the American frontier forever westward, then Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales effectively approximates the American national experience of adventure into the West.He turned the west and frontier as a useable past and he helped to introduce western tradition to American literature.Romantic Poets I.WaltWhitman 1.life 2.work: Leaves of Grass(9 editions)(1)Song of Myself(2)There Was a Child Went Forth(3)Crossing Brooklyn Ferry(4)Democratic Vistas(5)Passage to India(6)Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking 3.themes – “Catalogue of American and European thought”
He had been influenced by many American and European thoughts: enlightenment, idealism, transcendentalism, science, evolution ideas, western frontier spirits, Jefferson’s individualism, Civil War Unionism, Orientalism.Major themes in his poems(almost everything): equality of things and beings divinity of everything immanence of God democracy evolution of cosmos multiplicity of nature self-reliant spirit death, beauty of death expansion of America brotherhood and social solidarity(unity of nations in the world)pursuit of love and happiness 4.style: “free verse”
(1)no fixed rhyme or scheme(2)parallelism, a rhythm of thought(3)phonetic recurrence(4)the habit of using snapshots(5)the use of a certain pronoun “I”
(6)a looser and more open-ended syntactic structure(7)use of conventional image(8)strong tendency to use oral English(9)vocabulary – powerful, colourful, rarely used words of foreign origins, some even wrong(10)sentences – catalogue technique: long list of names, long poem lines 5.influence(1)His best work has become part of the common property of Western culture.(2)He took over Whitman’s vision of the poet-prophet and poet-teacher and recast it in a more sophisticated and Europeanized mood.(3)He has been compared to a mountain in American literary history.(4)Contemporary American poetry, whatever school or form, bears witness to his great influence.II.Emily Dickenson 1.life 2.works(1)My Life Closed Twice before Its Close(2)Because I Can’t Stop for Death(3)I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I died(4)Mine – by the Right of the White Election(5)Wild Nights – Wild Nights 3.themes: based on her own experiences/joys/sorrows(1)religion – doubt and belief about religious subjects(2)death and immortality(3)love – suffering and frustration caused by love(4)physical aspect of desire(5)nature – kind and cruel(6)free will and human responsibility 4.style(1)poems without titles(2)severe economy of expression(3)directness, brevity(4)musical device to create cadence(rhythm)(5)capital letters – emphasis(6)short poems, mainly two stanzas(7)rhetoric techniques: personification – make some of abstract ideas vivid III.Comparison:Whitman vs.Dickinson 1.Similarities:(1)Thematically, they both extolled, in their different ways, an emergent America, its expansion, its individualism and its Americanness, their poetry being part of “American Renaissance”.(2)Technically, they both added to the literary independence of the new nation by breaking free of the convention of the iambic pentameter and exhibiting a freedom in form unknown before: they were pioneers in American poetry.2.differences:(1)Whitman seems to keep his eye on society at large;Dickinson explores the inner life of the individual.(2)Whereas Whitman is “national” in his outlook, Dickinson is “regional”.(3)Dickinson has the “catalogue technique”(direct, simple style)which Whitman doesn’t have.Edgar Allen Poe I.Life II.Works 1.short stories(1)ratiocinative stories a.Ms Found in a Bottle b.The Murders in the Rue Morgue c.The Purloined Letter(2)Revenge, death and rebirth a.The Fall of the House of Usher b.Ligeia c.The Masque of the Red Death(3)Literary theory a.The Philosophy of Composition b.The Poetic Principle c.Review of Hawthorne’s Twice-told Tales III.Themes 1.death – predominant theme in Poe’s writing
“Poe is not interested in anything alive.Everything in Poe’s writings is dead.” 2.disintegration(separation)of life 3.horror 4.negative thoughts of science IV.Aesthetic ideas 1.The short stories should be of brevity, totality, single effect, compression and finality.2.The poems should be short, and the aim should be beauty, the tone melancholy.Poems should not be of moralizing.He calls for pure poetry and stresses rhythm.V.Style – traditional, but not easy to read VI.Reputation: “the jingle man”(Emerson)
篇2：美国文学教案1
(Chapter1-2 with answers)
I.Each of the statements below is followed by four alternative answers.Choose the one that would best complete the statement and put the letter in the brackets.1.____, whose unfinished Autobiography has become a classic of world literature.A.IrvingB.Franklin
C.CooperD.Bryant
2.The Declaration of Independence was drafted by ___.A.PaineB.Washington
C.FranklinD.Jefferson
3.The American literature is aboutyears old.A.200B.300
C.400D.500
4.Diaries, histories, journals, letters, commonplace book, travel books occupy a major position in the literature of the ____ period.A.classicalB.romantic
C.realisticD.colonial
5.To what rights does the Declaration of Independence say all men are entitled?
A.Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness
B.Freedom of Speech and press
C.Freedom of Thought and education
D.Abolishing all evil forms
6.____ was the only American to sign the four documents that created the United States
A.FranklinB.Jefferson
C.EmersonD.Washington
7.The Pilgrims, a small religious group which left their mother country on the ship “Mayflower”, A.1492B.1628
C.1620D.1603
8.Which does not belong to the official documents that created the United States?
A.A.the Declaration of Independence
B.the Constitution
C.the Crisis
D.the treaty of alliance with France
9.As an explorer and leader,was been known as a national hero in America.A.Christopher ColumbusB.Captain John Smith
C.William BradfordD.Edward Taylor
10.Amid the tumult of the American Revolution, the political philosopher Thomas Paine, whose ____ awakened American enthusiasm for independence?
A.Common SenseB.Autobiography
C.WaldenD.History of the Dividing Line
11.“Government is a necessary evil, but its purpose was the benefit of the individual, not his exploitation.” is ____ point of view.A.Paine’sB.Jefferson’s
C.Cooper’sD.Emerson’s
12.The American Puritanism had been a healthy legacy to the Americans.The rhetoric is plain, with a touch of nobility traceable to the direct influence of ____
A.the ConstitutionB.the Bible
C.French symbolismD.Shakespeare
13.The secular ideals of the American Enlightenment were exemplified in the life and career of ____.A.FranklinB.Emerson
C.JeffersonD.Hawthorne
14.Whose writing style is fresh, simple and direct while the rhetoric is plain and honest?.A.RomanticistsB.Transcendentalists
C.American PuritansD.British settlers
15.“Nothing can settle our affairs so expeditiously as an open and ditermined Declaration for Independence” is from ____.A.JeffersonB.Paine
C.CooperD.Emerson
16.Of the Puritan values, which one of the following is not included?A.hard workB.thrift
C.pietyD.predestination
17.____ is the only good American author before the Revolutionary War.A.FranklinB.Jefferson
C.EmersonD.John Smith
18.The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America was passed on July 4, ___
A.1775B.1777
C.1778D.1776
19.____was a Puritan and he was also one of the pilgriims who were on the Mayflower and signed the “Mayflower Conpact”.A.William FradfordB.Captain John Smith
C.John CalvinD.Edward Taylor
20.Which line is from Jefferson?
A.He has refused his Assent to Laws the most wholesome and necessary
for the public good.B.To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness
in it.Then there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him.C.There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the
conviction the envy is ignorance.D.Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient
and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom.II.Read the following statements and decide whether they are true or false.Write a “T” for true and “F” for false.1.Franklin was already a successful businessman when Washington, Jefferson, and other founders of the nation were born.()
2.American Puritanism was one of the most enduring shaping influences in American thought and American literature.()
3.The book “Of Plymouth Plantation” by William Bradford was not the earliest and most reliable record of the hardships and triumphs of the Pilgrims.()
4.Franklin helped establish a tradition in American writing of complex, utilitarian style.()
5.Captain John Smith’s writings helped set the form of the exploration and travel narratives that inspired men to move westward to America and across the continent.()
6.The American Puritans, like their brothers back in England, were not idealists.()
7.Jefferson thought that natural rights of man must be secured by law and government is not necessary.()
8.Franklin hoped that some form of reconciliation with Great Britain could be worked out.Pain, on the other hand, welcomed the idea of separation.()
9.The Way to Wealth shows how a child discovers through purchase of a toy that one may pay more for something than it is worth.()
10.In the formal, largely factual presentation of the Declaration there was no place for the metahpors and allusions upon which Paine relied so frequently.()
11.Thomas Paine’s attitude toward separation from Englanddiffer from the attitude of most Americans including Franklin.()
12.William Bradford was an adventurer, while Captain John Smith was a Puritan.()
III.For each of the quotations listed below please give the name of the author and the title of the literary works from which it is taken.1.When in the Course of human events, if becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, …
2.And if a string do slip, by chance, they soon
Do screw it up again: whereby
They set it in a more melodious tune
And a diviner harmony.For in Christ’s coach they sweetly sing.As they to glory ride therein.3.Six or seven weeks those barbarians kept him prisoner, many strange triumphs and conjurations they made of him, yet he so demeaned himself amongst them, and he not only diverted them from surprising the fort, but
procured his own liberty, and got himself and his company such estimation amongst them, that those savages admired him more than their own Quiyouckosucks.The manner how they used and delivered him is as follows.4.After these things he returned to his place called Sowans, some 40 miles from this place, but Squanto continued with them, and was their interpreter, and was a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation, he directed them how to set their corn, where to take fish, and to procure other commodities, and was also their pilot to bring them to unknown places for their profit, and never left them till he died.5.From a Child I was fond of Reading, and all the little Money that came into my Hands was ever laid out in Books.Pleas’d with a Pilgrim’s Progress, my first Collection was of John Bunyan’s Works, in separate little Volumes.Key to Chapter 1-2 练习答案
I.Each of the statements below is followed by four alternative answers.Choose the one that would best complete the statement and put the letter in the brackets.1.B2.D3.C4.D5.A
6.A7.C8.C9.B10.A
11.B12.B13.A14.C15.B
16.D17.A18.D19.A20.A
II.Read the following statements and decide whether they are true or false.Write a “T” for true and “F” for false.1.T2.T3.F4.F5.T6.F7.F8.T9.F10.T
11.T12.F
III.For each of the quotations listed below please give the name of the author and the title of the literary works from which it is taken.1.Jefferson’s the Declaration of Independence
2.Edward Taylor’s The Joy of Church Fellowship Rightly Attended
3.Captain John Smith’s The Generall Historie
4.William Bradford’s The Pilgrims Meet the Indians
篇3：美国文学中幻灭的美国梦
研究美国文学, 首先接触到的是美国梦---美国文学的主题问题。“美国梦”可从广义和狭义两个方面来理解, 从广义的方面来讲, “美国梦”指的是作为“民主、平等、自由”的国家理想;从狭义的方面来讲, 它指的是个人通过自我奋斗而获得成功的梦想。“美国梦”的产生有其特定的历史背景, 从17世纪第一批移民登上美洲大陆之日起, 赤贫的欧洲农民到这里后无须奋斗便可拥有一块自己的土地。南北战争后, 机会一个个接踵而至, 掀起全国性的疯狂, 美国成了一个‘牛奶加蜜糖’的国度, 大批做着‘美国梦’的移民蜂拥而至。得天独厚的自然条件是美国梦形成的自然基础, 《独立宣言》的颁布使美国梦有了思想基础。《独立宣言》规定人人生而平等, 造物者赋予他们不可剥夺的权利, 包括生命权、自由权和追求幸福的权利。在‘美国梦’的驱使下, 美国迅速发展, 特别是1848年加州的“淘金热”, 引发了大规模的“西进运动”, “美国梦”得以进一步发展。正因为如此, 在美国文学中, “美国梦”也就成了一个永恒的主题。
二、美国梦的幻灭
斯格特·菲茨杰拉德 (F·ScottFitzgcrald, 1895～1940) 和西奥多·德莱塞 (TheodoreDreiser, 1871～1945) 都是伟大的美国作家。他们出生于美国不同的时期, 身世背景截然不同, 但是他们的代表作品都表现了一个相同的悲剧主题---“美国梦”的腐朽和破灭。
菲兹杰拉德的《了不起的盖茨比》是20世纪20年代“美国梦”幻灭的代表作。小说写了主人公盖茨比与苔西的爱情悲剧, 深刻地揭示了美国20世纪20年代“美国梦”的幻灭。贫家子弟盖茨比在服役期间爱上了豪门之女苔西, 苔西却不愿下嫁一无所有的盖茨比。战后盖茨比对苔西难忘旧情, 通过非法买卖发了横财后与苔西重温旧情, 而苔西却仍无勇气放弃她已拥有的财富和地位。在一次车祸后, 为保护苔西, 盖茨比主动承担责任, 而苔西的丈夫汤姆借死者丈夫之手谋杀了盖茨比, 然后与苔西一走了之。盖茨比以毕生心血构筑的美好梦想, 就这样在严酷的现实面前破灭了。盖茨比的遭遇深刻地揭示了“美国梦”的幻灭。菲兹杰拉德借故事叙述人尼克之口, 把盖茨比的梦和美国早期移民的梦联系在一起, 追溯了美国梦的渊源。美国的早期移民憧憬依靠个人奋斗创造财富, 盖茨比把苔西视为自己的梦想的化身, 也曾想以自己的努力重新赢得她。但社会的现实迫使他采用不正当的手段来实现自己的理想, 盖茨比的发财之路说明了美国精神的腐败。
西奥多·德莱塞是美国20世纪前期最有成就的现实主义作家, 他的创作代表了美国现代文学的进步和光明。德莱塞的长篇小说《美国悲剧》对美国贫富对立的社会作了深刻的剖析。小说主人公克莱特出生在一个贫寒之家, 他不甘心忍受困苦, 离家自谋出路。资本主义社会污秽腐蚀, 使他发生了巨大的变化, 他吃喝玩乐, 对贫穷的母亲置之不理, 为了和大资本家的女儿结婚, 挤入上层社会, 竟溺死了自己的情人洛蓓达。作品通过克莱特从追求、挣扎到堕落、毁灭的一生, 指出了这一悲剧的根源所在, 即以金钱为中心的美国现代生活对克莱特世界观的形成和生活道路的选择产生的决定性影响。而且, 只要这种环境和这个制度不改变, 克莱特的悲剧, 同时也是美国社会的悲剧就将一代一代重复地继续下去。
三、破灭的“美国梦”的主题意蕴
这两部作品写作年代不同, 写作风格迥异, 但是主题却是惊人的相似, 那就是“美国梦”的悲剧表现。
菲兹杰拉德的《了不起的盖茨比》讲述了一个青年人的追求和幻灭。在西方文学史上, 这是一个经常重复的主题但作者融入了自己对美国生活的深刻而冷静的体验, 将它写成一部蕴意隽永的“美国梦”破灭的悲剧。盖茨比的追求也是很多美国人的企盼, 小说最终为盖茨比送终, 也是为他们的“美国梦”画上句号。西奥多·德莱塞的代表作《美国悲剧》是根据1906年切斯特·吉莱特谋杀格蕾丝·布朗的真实案件改编的。德莱塞进行提炼加工, 把一个微不足道的小悲剧变成了一个国家的悲剧。他所涉及的既是一个悲剧人物, 又是一种悲剧文明。德莱塞把克莱特作为由环境所造就, 受环境逼迫, 并为环境所毁灭的人物来进行塑造。他怀着怜悯的心情去探索一个心地善良的孩子在实现自己的梦想, 追求财富和地位的过程中, 扭曲了自己的人性, 而堕落成一个残忍的杀人凶手的经历。《美国悲剧》采用了纯自然主义的创作手法, 以尽量客观化的叙述和朴实的语言揭示了个人人生毁灭的悲剧, 使作品成为一个完善的社会文本。它塑造了一个对金钱和地位充满向往的下层青年自我毁灭的悲剧, 这不仅是一个人的悲剧, 更是一个国家、一种文明的悲剧。
四、结语
纵观以上两部小说, 虽然内容不尽相同, 但是“美国梦”的主题却是不断发展的。盖茨比无论多么富有, 依然不能被所谓的上流社会所接纳;而克莱特的个人悲剧已经不是一个人的悲剧, 而是整个美国的悲剧。所以, 如果仅仅把追求财富和名利作为自己的人生目标, 并且到达了非人病态的程度, 这也深刻反映了资本主义社会里“人的异化”的梦想早晚都要破灭, 两位主人公悲剧性的结局也是不可避免的。除了菲茨杰拉德和德莱塞这两位作家, 很多知名作家的创作也深受“美国梦”这个主题的影响, 例如海明威和福克纳在作品中把人们对“美国梦”的失望引申为对美国这个国度的失望。“美国梦”再也不能给人们带来美好的憧憬和奋斗的力量, 它的美丽光环早已消失殆尽。“美国梦”破灭的主题具有深刻的批判意义和审美价值。无论是两位作家本人还是作品中的主人公, 他们一生都在孜孜以求虚无缥缈的“美国梦”, 一生都在追逐着能够体现自我身份和价值的财富、金钱和权力。残酷的现实促使他们清醒地认识到物质奋斗和享乐主义的毁灭作用, 表现出了带有悲剧性的时代幻灭感。
摘要：“美国梦”是美国文学中一个永恒不变的主题。尤其是两次世界大战和第一次资本主义危机之后, 大量文学作品紧扣文学作品中对“美国梦”这一主题开展全面的反省和批判。本文通过对《了不起的盖茨比》和《美国悲剧》的文本细读, 从不同的历史时期和角度揭示了“美国梦”的腐朽和破灭。
关键词：美国梦,美国悲剧,幻灭
参考文献
[1]刘保瑞等译, 《美国作家论文学》 (M) , 北京:生活, 读, 新知三联书店出版, 1984;
[2]董衡巽等编, 《美国现代小说家论》 (M) , 北京:中国社会科学出版社, 1987。
[3]F.S.Fitzgerald.The Great Gats by.ForeignLanguage, Teaching and ResearchPress, 1992.
篇4：美国文学中有“美国梦”
为什么呢？因为国内外形势的发展需要这么做。我们的高校需要培养具有国际视野的新型人才。比如财经方面的CEO、高级管理人才等等。随着对外交往日益频繁，外事和经贸来往、文化交流、经贸合作逐渐加多。了解世界，熟识世界成了高校大学生和研究生的重要而迫切的任务。了解世界特别是了解美国的历史和文化显得尤为重要。
新世纪以来，随着世界经济一体化的迅速发展，中美两国之间的经济合作和文化交流达到了新水平。美国是最发达的资本主义大国，中国是最大的发展中国家。美国是世界第一大经济体，中国是第二大经济体。两国去年的贸易额达5000多亿美元。在一系列共同关心的全球、地区和双边问题上既有合作，又有挑战。我国多次建议与美国建立新型的大国关系，共同维护亚洲地区和世界的和平和稳定。我国提出的“一带一路”的倡议得到许多国家和地区的热烈回应。它为各国的发展提供了前所未有的新机遇。我国国际地位日益提高，话语权与日俱增。它成了维护世界和平、促进经济合作、扩大文化交流的中坚力量。
因此，培养具有国际视野的高级人才成了高校一项重要任务。学习和掌握美国文学和文化知识成为非英语专业教学计划的重要组成部分。本书正是为满足这方面的需求而写的。
针对主要读者对象，本书的体例和内容上有别于其它版本的美国文学史，具有下列特色：
第一，点面结合，文史相融，突出重点。本书在“绪论”中介绍了美国文学史七个历史时期的特点、主要流派、作家和作品，重点评述了殖民地时期美国文学的三个方面：印第安人口头文学和民间故事、欧洲探险者到达美洲的航海记录和探险日记以及早期抵达北美殖民地的英国官员和牧师的散文和游记，使读者了解早期美国文学的雏形。但在正文中这个部分没有展开。全书主要包括六个部分，从富兰克林这第一位美国作家开始。海内外许多普及版的《美国文学史》也是这么做的。
全书注意将时代背景与作者和作品联系起来。每个部分都有个“时代浏览”，列出重大的历史事件，帮助读者更好地了解产生文学作品的历史条件和社会意义，避免见木不见林，不了解历史的缺陷。各个时期分别评介了最重要的小说家、戏剧家、诗人和散文家。有些重要作家未列专节评析，只在“绪论”中简介。至于文学批评理论，现在已发展成美国文学史的一部分，考虑它对初学者来说比较深奥，英文原著难以读懂，只好暂时割爱，未列入专章讨论，只在“绪论”中简单评介；
第二，每个美国作家选择一部代表作加以评析，并分别从“故事和人物盘点”、“风格和语言聚焦”和“意义和影响总揽”三个方面来解读代表作，帮助读者深入理解代表作的主题思想、艺术风格和社会意义，为阅读该作家的其他作品打下基础。这样安排，有助于改变以前罗列了一个作家的好多作品，面面俱到却难以抓住重点的缺陷，让读者集中精力，围绕重点搞深搞透，掌握一个作家的特点，收效好些；
第三，每部代表作都有个“名段点击”，选录作品原著的精彩片段。它仅选取与作品主题思想、语言风格和人物性格密切相关的二至三个小段，不像一般《美国文学选读》选用的一章半章或完整的一节。这么做的好处是：可帮助读者学习原著的英文，体察不同作家的语言风格，吸取优美的英文表达方法，提高自己的英文写作能力，也可以加深对原著主题和风格的理解，提高鉴赏和评析能力。不过，小说的名段好选，剧本的选段就不容易。长诗的选段难度也比较大，只做些赏试，供读者参阅；
第四，每个作家都增设了“其他重要作品链接”和“著作获奖信息”，为读者提供更多信息，便于他们进一步扩大阅读范围，丰富美国文学知识。每部重要作品附有中英文书名对照和出版时间。书后有中英文索引，方便读者们及时查阅。
以上是本书的一些特色，供读者们参考。
美国文学史不长，发展比较快。今天它在国际上影响深远。要了解美国的现在，必须熟悉它的过去。为此，美国文学史非读不可。比如美国梦的形成和变化以及美国人的价值观，从美国文学上便可获得清晰的答案。美国当今的社会生活与它的文化息息相关。学点美国文学，有助于扩展我们的国际视野，在学习和工作中发挥更大的作用。
篇5：美国文学史及选读教案
教
案
课 程 名 称:主要英语国家文学史及文学作品选读 2 课 程 代 码: 31020022 授 课 教 师 ： 吴文南 系 别 ： 外语系
2010年3 月2 日 授课专业班级 ： 英语本科, 英语师范, 英语专升本
Introduction Teaching aid tool: a map of early America Teaching aim: the students learn why and how to learn literature course, get the general idea of the colonial America and their literary forms.Key Points: a.learning aim;b.Learning method;c.Colonial American characteristics.I.Introduction of the course 1.Why should we learn the course:
a.One of the main reasons might be that literature offers a bountiful and extremely varied body of written material, which is “important in the sense that it says something about fundamental human issues and which is enduring rather than ephemeral.Its relevance moves with the passing of time, but seldom disappears completely the Shakespeare plays whose ending were rewritten to conform to late 17th century taste and which were later staged to give maximum prominence to their romantic hero figures are now explored for their psychoanalytic import.In this way, though its meaning does not remain static, a literary work can transcend both time and culture to speak directly to a reader in another country or a different period of history.Literature is authentic material.By that we simply mean that most works of literature are not fashioned for the specific purpose of teaching a language.Recent course materials have quite rightly incorporated many authentic samples of language---for example, travel timetable, city plans, forms, pamphlets, cartoons, advertisements, newspaper or magazine articles.Learners are thus exposed to language that is as genuine and undistorted as can be managed in the classroom context.In reading literary texts, students have also to cope with language intended for native speakers and thus we gain additional familiarity with many different linguistic uses, forms and conventions of the written mode with irony, exposition, argument, narration and so on.b.Cultural enrichment: For many language learners, more indirect routes to understand a country must be adopted so that they gain an understanding of the way of life of the country: radio programmers, films and videos, newspapers and last, literary works.It is true of course that the “world” of a novel, play, or short story is a created one, yet it offers a full and vivid context in which characters from many social backgrounds can be depicted.A reader can discover their thoughts, feelings, customs, and possessions: what they buy, believe in, fear, enjoy;how they speak and behave closed doors.Reading the literature of a historical period is one of the ways we have to help us imagine what life was like in that other foreign territory.Literature is perhaps best seen as a complement to other materials used to increase the foreign learner‟s insight into the country whose language is being learnt.c.language enrichment: we have said that reading literary works exposes the student to many function of the written language, but what about other linguistic advantages? Language enrichment is one benefit often sought through literature, while there is little a=doubt that extensive reading increases a learner‟s receptive vocabulary and facilitates transfer to a more active form of knowledge, it is sometimes objected that literature does not give learners the kind of vocabulary they really need.It may be “authentic” in the sense already mentioned, but the language of literary works is not typical of the language of daily life, nor is it like the language used in learners‟ textbooks.We would not wish students to think that Elizabeth Berret Brownning‟s “How Do I love Thee? Is the kind of utterance normally whispered into a lover‟s era nowadays!The objection to literature on the grounds of lexical appropracy has some validity, but it need not be an overriding one if teachers make a judicious choice of the text to be read, considering it as a counterpoise and supplement to other materials.On the positive side, literature provides a rich context in which individual lexical or syntactical items are made more memorable.Reading a substantial and contextual zed body of text, students gain familiarity with many features of the written language---the formation and function of relines, the variety of possible structures, the different ways of connecting ideas---which broaden and enrich their own writing skills.The extensive reading required in tackling a novel or long play develops the student‟s ability to make inferences from linguistic clues, and to deduce meaning from context, both useful tools in reading other sorts of material as well.Literature helps extend the intermediate or advanced learner‟s awareness of the range of language itself.Literary language is not always that of daily communication, as we have mentioned, but it is special in its way.It is heightened: sometimes elaborate, sometimes marvelously simply yet, somehow, absolutely “right”.2.What should we learn? History and Anthology of American literature 3.Some Literary works: Selected Reading in American Literature
扬岂深 Selected Reading in American Literature
陶洁 Selected Reading in American Literature
常耀信
Contemporary American Literature with Collateral Readings 秦小孟 High Lights of American Literature
钱青
An Anthology of 20th Century American Fiction
万培德 A Survey of American Literature
常耀信 20世纪美国文学导论
李公昭 二十世纪美国文学导读
张立新
Part I
The Literature of Colonial America I.II.Teaching Time: 2 teaching hours.Teaching Aim: through introduction, the students should get an idea about the history and development of American nation and how did the American literature came into being and what is the characteristic of its early literature.III.Teaching method: Teacher‟s Presentation.IV.Teaching Tool: multi-medium.V.Key points: the characteristics of early literature.Introduction I.The native Americans and their culture:
Before being explored by European adventurers the American Continent had long been inhabitated by the natives---American Indians.Physical characteristics of the American Indians are mongolocial or a mixture of that with something else.They probably first began coming from Asia to America during the Ice „Age,8000-5999 BC.They crossed Berring Strait by raft.Through hundred and thousands of years these earliest inhabitants developed their own civilizations.They learned agriculture, basketry and pottery.The most striking achievements were in agriculture.Maize---“Indian Corn” was developed from a wild grass.The white potato, the cacao bean, tobacco were all developed by Indians.Indians remained in tribe society.II.The historical background of the Colonial Time: 1.the first England settlement: Christophe Columbus(1451 he believed the world is round, find the route to East by sailing West, he asked the help from Queen of Spain to support him.On Aug.3.1492, three small vessels set sail with 100 crews, after several months of sailing they arrived at Balama Island---San Salvador on Oct.12.1492.He landed and in March 1493 returned.He had 4 voyages in his lifetime.2.English settlement: 1607 Captain Christopher Newport, three ships---Chesapeake Bay Jamestown
Mayflower
1620 Plymouth Puritans
New England area 3.Conflicts with Indians and the founding of 13 colonies.III.The development of Literature:
American literature emerged out of obscurity into history only some four centuries ago.It is the newest of the literatures of great nations, yet it is original in many aspects.It is original because it mirrors the history of America, and epitomizes the development of political and economics, social and psychological institutions.It is original because upon it has played most of those great historical forces and factors that have molded the modern world: immigration, nationalism, individualism, imperialism, religion, science, technology and democracy.In addition to its realistic and vivid reflection of the madding of the distinctly shaped character of American people, it is original in variety and cultural colors;such features of American literature may find expression in its products in the colonial period.John Smith
a British soldier of fortune “A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as hath happened in Virginia”
“New England Trials”
“The General History of Virginia”
Within a few decades a considerable number of learned people, such as Puritan clergymen and governors, produced a considerable body of writing of high literary quality, yet they were not literary people in the professional sense.Their writing included diaries, travel books, collections of letters, journals, histories, poetry, biographies, autobiographies and prose, to which the Puritans contributed much.In addition to being true believers of their religious doctrines, the early puritans generally have college education with a sound knowledge of the literary classics, and learned much about the basic qualities of literature from the ancient and contemporary authors in the old continent.Such responsible for the two essential characteristics of the early American literature: their religious subject and imitation of English literary traditions.(1)William Bradford(1590-1657)Of Plymouth Plantation
(2)John Winthrop
(governor of Massachusetts Bay)Journal
1790 The History of New England(3)Edward Taylor
The New England Quarterly(4)Cotton Mather Magnolia Christi Americana Characteristics:
In spite of the unique features that the colonial men of letters, reflected in their writings, some common characteristic run through almost all the principal works of the major literary figures of the colonial period, which mirrored the nature of colonial American literature and continued to be the subsequent development of American literature and of America itself.Puritanism was central to colonial American literature and its impact could find expression in almost all respects concerning literature.The conviction that all religious progress centered in the individual led colonial writers to make records of his spiritual development in the forms of diary and autobiography: a strenuous self-analysis and ceaseless searching of conscience in the writings of the Puritans was the result of their belief that “election” would show itself in the behavior and in the experiences of the inner life of the individual.In keeping with the belief that American literature should concern itself with spiritual and in the experiences of the inner life of the individual.In keeping with the belief that literature should concern with spiritual values, the sermon became the most highly developed and the most popular of Puritan and compact expression, and its avoidance of rhetorical decoration excellently illustrated Puritan aesthetic and moral theories.In accordance with their way of life, the Puritans preferred a style characterized by homeliness of imagery, simplicity of diction and an emphasis on the values most easily recognized by their readers.It is for the same reason that they disliked the sensuous appeal of certain types of imagery and favored the figures and images drawn from the common experiences of the New England settlers.Questions for discussion: 1.What were the features of colonial America? 2.What were the literary characteristics? 3.What was the Puritanism? Reference Books: 1.《美国文学教程》 第一章2． 《美国文学的周期》
E.Spiller 3.《新编美国文学史》 第二章
刘海平
常曜信
Part II
The Literature of Reason and Revolution I，Teaching time: 2 teaching hours II.Teaching Aim: the students should know the reason and effect of American Revolution, and the characteristics of the literature.Through learning the selected works, the students get to know the writing style of them.III.Teaching Method: a.presentation, b.analysis of the contexts of the works, c.questions and discussion.IV.Key points: writing style of the prose works.Introduction: I.The Historical Background: a)two revolutions {American Revolution
Enlightenment(1)European‟s conflicts in the New Continent;(2)The cause of the Revolution;(3)The procedure of the Revolution;(4)The significance of the Revolution.II.The Development of Literature:(1)prose of Thomas Paine, Franklin and Thomas Jefferson;(2)Poetry of Byrant Questions for Discussion:(1)What do you know about American Revolution?(2)What do you know about Washinton?(3)What is the main trend of literature? III.Authors and their writings in this period:(1)Benjamin Franklin a.his life and works: Benjamin Franklin was a brilliant, industrious and versatile man.Starting as a poor boy in a family of 17 children, he became famous on both sides of the Atlantic as a statesman, scientist and author.Despite his fame, he always remained a man of industry and simple tastes.Franklin‟s writings range from informal sermons on thrift to urbane essays.He wrote gracefully as well as clearly with a wit which often gave an edge to his words.Though the style he formed came from imitating two noted English essayists, Addison and Steele, he made it into his own.His most famous work is his Autobiography.Before his autobiography, his “Poor Richard‟s Almanac(1733-1758)became popular readings which contain many proverbs like: Early to bed, and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.Franklin‟s Autobiography is many things.First of all it is an inspiring account of a poor boy‟s rise to a high position.Franklin tells his story modestly, omitting some of his misdeeds, his errors as being much less than perfect.He is resigned to the fact that his misdeeds will often receive a punishment of one sort or another.Viewing himself with objectivity, Franklin offers his life story as a lesson to others.It is a positive lesson that teaches the reader to live a useful life.In fact the Autobiography is a how-to-do it book, a book on the art of self-improvement.In 1771, while living in England and serving as ambassador for most of the colonies, Franklin began his autobiography as a letter to his son, Willliam.He got as far as the year 1730(including his arrival in Philadelphia)being interrupted by “the affairs of the Revolution”.In 1784, while living at Passy, France, then a suburb of Paris, he extended his Autobiography through 1731.The bulk of the remainder of the work was added in 1788 and the final few pages were written in1790, the year of his death.None of this was published while Franklin lived.Shortly after his death, a French translation of his life to 1731(the first two section that Franklin wrote)was published.Though this was soon translated into English and published in London, the “official text did not appear until 1818, as part of the works of Benjamin Franklin,” edited by his grandson William Temple Franklin.The first “complete” Autobiography---with the pages written in 1790---did not appear until 1868, edited by John Bigelow, who had bought Franklin‟s original manuscript from a Franklin family the previous year.The Autobiography covers Franklin‟s life only until 1757 when he was 51 years old, well before his major accomplishments as a diplomat.The work as a whole was written by a man well beyond the normal age of retirement, yet it is not the less lively for that fact.Franklin‟s mastery of a prose style characterized by clarity, concision, flexibility and order was central to his fame as a great man of letters.Such major features of his style was summarized by himself in a short paragraph:
The words used should be the most expressive that the language affords, provided that they are the most generally understood.Nothing should be expressed in two words that can as well be expressed in one;that is, no synonyms should be used, or rarely, but the whole should be as short as possible, consistent with clearness: the words should be placed as to agreeable to the ear in reading;summarily, it should be smooth, clear, and short for the contrary qualities are displeasing.(2)Analysis of the Selected part: A.3 paragraphs: a.what interest did Franklin have as a child;a.Being an apprentice to his brother, Franklin began writing;b.Improving argumentation.Summary: Franklin was thirty to knowledge and trying to learn the language with practical methods.B
a.the way of learning languages;b.Practice makes perfect;c.Relations to his relatives;d.Learning club.Summary: Franklin was a practical man.In learning languages we know he had a strong endurance and leaver mind.Part III The Literature of Romanticism I.II.Teaching Time : 8 periods.Teaching Aim: the students should know the characteristic of the origin and development of romanticism in American literature.Transcendentalism as a typical American literature trend developed in American land should be mastered.The students should know how to analyze Bryant‟s two poems.III.Key Points: characteristic of American romanticism and their writers.Part One: Historical Introduction:
We are now dealing with one f the most important periods in the history of American literature, the Romantic period, which stretches from the end of the eighteenth century through the outbreak of the Civil War.Here we see a rising America fast burgeoning into a political, economic and cultural independence it had never known before.Democracy and political equality became the ideals of the new nation.Radical changes came about in the political life of the country.Parties began to squabble and scramble for power, and a new system was in the making.The spread of industrialism, the sudden influx of immigration, and the “pioneers” pushing the frontier further west---all these produced something of an economic boom and, with it, a tremendous sense of optimism and hope among the people.A nation bursting into new life for literary expression.The buoyant mood of the nation and the sprit of the times seem in some measure responsible for the spectacular outburst of romantic feeling in the first half of the nineteenth century.The literary milieu proved fertile and conducive to the imagination as well.Among other things, magazines appeared in ever-increasing numbers, of which The North American Review, The New York Mirror, The American Quarterly Review, The New England Magazine, The Southern Review, The Southern Literary Messenger, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper‟s Magazine and Knickerbockers Magazine played an important role in facilitating literary expansion in the country.Foreign influences added incentive to the growth of romanticism in America.The Romantic Movement, which had flourished earlier in the century both in England and Europe, proved to be a decisive influence without which the upsurge of American romanticism would hardly have been possible.Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor Cole ridge, William Wordsworth, Byron, Robert Burns and many other English and European masters of poetry and prose all made a stimulating impact on the different departments of the country‟s literature.The influence of Sir Walter Scott was particularly powerful and enduring.His border tales and Waverley romances inspired many American authors such as James Fennimore Cooper with irresistible creative impulses.Scott‟s Waverley novels were models for American historical romance, and his The Lady of the Lake, together with Byron‟s Oriental romances, helped toward the development of American Indian romance.He was, in a way, responsible for the romantic description of landscape in American literature.The Gothic tradition, and the cult of solitude and of gloom came through interest in the works of writers like Mrs.Radcliff, E.T.A.Hoffman, James Thomson and the “graveyard‟ poets.Robert Burns and Byron both inspired and spurred the American imagination for lyrics of love and passion and despair.The impact of Lyrical Ballads of Wordswoth and Coleridge added, to some extent, to the nation‟s singing strength.Thus American romanticism was in a way derivative: American romantic writing was some of them modeled on English and European works.On the other hand, American romanticism had distinct features of its own.Different from their European counterparts, American romantics tended to moralize, to edify rather than to entertain.They presented an entirely new experience alien to European culture.The exotic landscape, the frontier life, the westward expansion, the myth of a New Garden of Eden in America, and the Puritan heritage were just a few examples of the native material for an indigenous literature.Evidently, it produced a feeling of “newness” which inspired the romantic imagination.Part II.Writers of the period 1.Washington Irving(1783-1859)I.Introduction of his life and works: Washington Irving was the first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame.He became, in the words of the English novelist Thakeray, “ the first Ambassador whom the new World of letters sent to the old.” Irving was born the youngest of seven children of a precious reader and the author of juvenile poems, plays and essays when he was 16;he began the study of the law for which he had little relish.He preferred instead to pass his time in desultory reading and in the society of literary wits of New York.At 19, he began to contribute a serious of sketches or “letters” on society and the theater to the Morning Chronicle, a New York newspaper.When he was 21, Irving went on a grand tour of Europe.Two years later he returned to New York to be admitted to the bar and to begin the leisurely life of a gentleman lawyer;shortly afterward, Irving started work on what was to be his first literary triumph, his “History of New York(1809)by “Derrick Knickerbockers.” It was an irreverent to spoof of historical scholarship, salted with off-color comments.The book satirized the complacent Dutch burghers of early New York and pointed at the political follies of 19th century America.It also marked the beginning of the “Knickerbockers school” of New York literary satirists including Paulding, Fitzgreen Hallack and Joseph Rodman Drake who took their names and humorous tone from Irving‟s knickbocker History and flourished in New York in the first decades of the 19th century.At the end of the war of 1812, Irving was sent to England to supervise the Liverpool Branch of the family firm, but in 1818, as a result of the war and bad management, the firm went bankrupt.Irving was left only with a dislike for the “dirty soul-killing” world of business and a need to find a livelihood.His “History of New York” has earned the magnificent sum of $3000, so he turned to writing and began preparation of “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent(1820).It was the first work by an American to receive wide international acclaim and it made Irving a celebrity, praised alike in America and England.In it was the two tales that brought him his most enduring fame.“Rip Van Winckles” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
With his new literary success, Irving gave up all thought of returning to America and the world of trade or law.He set out to become a professional man of letters.The Sketch Book was soon followed by Bracebridge Hill(1822), a series of sketches on England country life.In 1824, he published “Tales of a Traveller”, his first volume of fiction, filled with years of the supernatural and clanking with the ghostly machinery of romantic Gothicism.In 1826 his literary fame earned him appointment as an American diplomatic attaché in Spain and there he gathered material for a biography of Christopher Columbers(1826).He wrote severy such kind of biographies.Irving then returned to England, where he accepted appointment as an American diplomat in London and three years later when he was nearing 50, he returned to the United States after an absence of 17 years.He bought “Sunnyside” his famous home on the Hudson River at Tarrytown and there, except for four years as United States minister to Spain he lived as a country spire, writing a series of histories and biographies.A study of Irving‟s works would lead to the conclusion that humor was at the root of almost everything that was significant in them.What was more impressive was that his humor was always well meaning, mild and easy to be accepted.Early in the 19th century when most of the American writers were speaking in the authoritative voice of a gentleman who seems to be superior in maturity, knowledge, sense, and good taste, and when the majority of American periodicals depended heavily on a broad, explosive humor and sarcasm that gradually vulgarized the periodical essay tradition, Irving‟s humor did much to cultivate a new literary taste.The style of Irving‟s work is characterized by simplicity, poise and ease flow.Unlike the tightly structured stories of Poe and Hawthorne, the tastes of Irving lie in his literary innovations and transitional role in the development of American literature.III.Analysis of the tale: 1.Plot structure of action: e.Exposition: time, place, persons preliminary condition of affairs;f.Development Conflicts Crane to Brom Bones;Crane to the girl;Crane to farmers;Crane to ghost;g.Summary----pumpkin, Bones marries the girl, some still believe in ghosts, h.Setting-----i.Style
Questions for discussion: 1.What is the plot of the story? 2.How did the conflict develop in the story? 3.What is the function of the setting? 4.What is the style of the story? Homework: Read the story Rip Van Winkle.2.James Fennimore Cooper(1789-1851)(a)Introduction: Cooper never saw the frontier.The advanced line of settlement that moved westward from the Atlantic had passed beyond Cooperstown, New York before his birth and throughout his life;he never traveled farther west than Michigan.Yet his writing helped create a mythical west that transcended the reality of life on the frontier, and in his greatest character---Natty Bumppo, or “Leatherstocking”---Cooper created an archetypal western hero whose many literary descendants range from the cowboys of popular fiction and the movies to the hero of Melville, Twain and Faulkner.James Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey.When he was thirteen months old, he was taken with his family to a small wildness settlement on Lake Otsego, 150 miles north of New York City.The village was named Cooperstown after his father, William Cooper, a rich member of the landed gentry who had acquired vast tracts of land in New York State following the American Revolution.James Cooper was raised in the rural family “Manor House”, and he roamed the edge of a wildness that stretched a thousand miles to the Mississippi.Although he saw the white hunters and the numerous wagon trains of settlers that passed through Cooperstown on their way west, he saw little of the once numerous reedmen of the eastern forests.Later in life he acknowledged, “ I was never among the Indians.All that I know of them is from reading and from hearing my father speak of them.”
When Cooper was fourteen, he entered Yale, but in his junior years after a series of undergraduate brawls and pranks he was expelled and was sent to sea as a common sailor on an Atlantic merchant ship.In 1808, he became a mild shipman in the U.S navy and served on Lawrence.In 1811, after the death of his father left him an inheritance of $50,000, Cooper resigned from the navy.He then married and began the free-spending life of a wealth gentleman.By 1819, his inheritance was gone and he was heavily in debt.To regain his fortunes, he speculated in land, invested in a frontier store and a whaling ship, and in 1820 he began writing the fiction that eventually brought him wealth and worldly fame.According to tradition, he once tossed aside a popular-sentimental novel with the comment that he could do better himself.When his family challenged him to fulfill his boast he wrote a tale that he quickly recognized as a botch and destroyed.His second attempt was Precaution(1820).It was a full-length novel of English life, written in imitation of Jane Austin and filled with the conventional sentimentality of the day‟s best sellers.Precaution was dull, and a financial failure, but it brought Cooper recognition and helped prepare the way for his next work.The Spy(1821), a novel of the American Revolution.The Spy appealed to patriotic American hungry for exciting fiction that dealt with American scenes and events.It soon went through three editions;it was translated into several European languages and turned into a stage play.And it started Cooper on his career as the first eminent American novelist.Two years later Cooper published The Pioneers(1823), a romance of the American frontier that was an immediate best seller.It was the first of the “Leatherstocking Tales,” five novels of the life of Natty Bumppo.They included “The Last of Mohicans”(1826), The Prairie(1927), The Pathfinder(1840), and the Deerslayer(1841).Following his success with The Pioneer, Cooper drew upon his own experiences and wrote The Pilot(1841)the first of eleven novels of the sea that he wrote over a period of three decades.In 1926, with his financial burdens eased by the profits from his writing Cooper left America to live abroad, partly to escape his remaining debts and partly to experience what he saw as the rich context of European society, while living in Paris and London and touring the Continent, he completed seven more novels and he received the adulation of a vast audience that read the numerous European translations of his works.In 1833, now financially independent, he returned to the United States and eventually settled in Coopstown.There he continued his prolific writing of novels(he eventually wrote 32), histories and essays on society.Patriotic, early critics honored Cooper for creating a literature out of nature materials and they railed him as the American Scott---an accurate but patronizing comparison that Cooper came to detest.But his greatest achievement was his portrayed of the age-old theme of Christian innocence struggling in a paradise lost, the majestic them of the irresistible force of civilization that destroyed the American wilderness and all its noble simplicities.It was a theme that Cooper embodies in his archetypal hero, Natty Bumppo, a character whose flights from society and domesti9city mark him as the first of the symbolic rebels in American writing and one of the most memorable characters in all of fiction.(b)Analysis of the selected part:
Questions for understanding: 1.How does Uncas demonstrate his courage? 2.Do you think that the Hurons were afraid of Uncas and Chingachgook? 3.How was Hawkey‟s weapon different from those used by the others? 4.How many Hurons were there? 5.Describe how Cora was saved from being scalped? 6.How does Magua escape from Chingachgook? 7.What observation does Hawkey make on the difference in defeat in battle between a huron and a Mohican? 8.What advice does Hawkey give to David? 9.Do you think it was unmanly for Heyward to cry? 10.Do you think the fight believable?
4.William Cullen Bryant(„1704-1878)I.Introduction of his life and works:
Long famous as the first American lyric poet of distinction, William Cullen Bryant glorified the morning of the American national literature with several volumes of his brilliant poetry, some of which have proved to be timeless to enrich the treasure house of American poetry.Besides his achievement in poetry, Bryant, as one of the great personalities of his age, was central to the American romantic movement, his force, courage and liberalism as critic and editor provided effective leadership in American cultural and political life for half a century, from the age of Jackson throughout the Civil /war and reconstruction period.The son of an enthusiastic naturalist, Bryant was born in Cummington, Massachusetts, whose beautiful natural landscape exerted such an potential influence upon the future poet that he recalled later his experience when reading The Lyrical Ballads at the age of sixteen: “ a thousand springs seemed to gush up at once into my heart and the force of nature, of sudden, to change into a strange freshness.” In addition to the inspiration of nature, Bryant received the best possible education from his childhood, both at a local school at his hometown and at William College, as well as through his reading in his father‟s ample library.His uncle was also responsible in preparing the way for the growth of the future poet by tutoring him in classical language and literature.Bryant was only 9 when he began to write poems.At the age of 14 he published his satire The Enbargo(1808), a poem in reaction against Jefferson‟s trade restriction.In 1811 he had finished the first draft of his best poem “Thanatopsis”, whose publication in 1817 brought him not only his first success but also general attention to his extraordinary genius.His first collection poems appeared in Boston in 1821, which consisted eight of his poems, such as his most famous poems “To a Waterfowl”, “Thantopsis” and “The Yellow violet” and thereafter established his position in the history of American literature.In 1825 he went to New York, the literary capital of the period and served as assistant editor of the Evening Post, a position providing more opportunities for him to display his dynamic force in American cultural and political life.The year 1829 saw that Bryant became editor in chief of the paper, one of the first great national newspaper in America, and from this time onward he grew to be a dominant leader in American literature and public causes.He established close relationship with Cooper, Irving and other major literary figures, with whom he gave an American formulation to the romantic movement and moreover his frequent lectures on poetry brought him popularity as influential critic.From 1832 to 1864 he published six volumes, including The Fountain(1842), The White-Footed Deer(1944)and The Food of Years(1878), with which he remained a popular favorite.His ever increasing achievements and reputation inn literature also made him become a public speaker, who as a liberal democrat, wrote and published continuously in his newspaper articles to strive for various freedoms, such as freedom of religion, of speech, of free trade, of the masses from the intolerable exploitation of debtor as well as banking and currency regulation and the freedom of the slaves.His devotion to public affairs drained him time and energy, but he never stopped his literary creation.His library of Poetry and song(1871-1872), the first great critical anthology, was his last literary effort.Another treasure that Bryant left was his poetic translation of Homer‟s Iliad(1870)and Odyssey(1871).Nature was the chief theme of Bryant‟s poetry and besides religion and concern for humanitarian reforms and national morality were persistent themes.As a poet, Bryant wrote of his own experience in nature and society, opposed to the conventional insipid generalization about nature, and the best of his poems provided an excellent example of truthful experience, precise expression, and disciplined imagination.Varieties of influences on Bryant‟s early activity as a poet included the neoclassical forms of Addison and Poe, the attitude of the “graveyard poets” like Young and Thomson, and the romantic conceptions of Scott, Burns and Wordsworth.His early poetry reflected some features of imitation, but soon learned to absorb them into his independent style.In addition to the alien influence, nature played a crucial role in the awakening of Bryant as a poet and in his poetic creation.To Bryant, nature was the symbol of the Maker, the mighty cause, and the infinite source;and the purpose of nature as the artifact of the Maker was to keep man‟s mind directed to the Supreme Craftsmen.Bryant held that nature should impact moral instruction and that it should elevate man.II.Analysis to the poem:
Thanatopsis Questions for discussion: 1.Look up the word thantopsis in a dictionary and explain its origin and meaning.2.Bryant divides his poem into three parts.Discuss why you think he made these particular divisions.3.What advice does the speaker give to those who shudder tat the thought of death? 4.What does the speaker mean when he says that the person who dies does not retire alone? 5.Interpret the following passage: “each one as before will chase/His favorite phantom…”
6.Explain how the person addressed as thou” gains in stature and importance as the poem progress.7.What is the message of the poet? Comment on the poem This poem is written in blank verse, namely, in unrhymed iambic pentameter, for the advantage to express with more freedom.At the idea of death, the beauty of nature will make a person less pessimistic.At the age of 16, when other kids were indulging in juvenile frivolity, Bryant already began to meditate over the significance of life and death.As a poet of the early 19th century, Bryant develops a view of man‟s final destiny.To the Puritans, death was seen as a preliminary to an afterlife.Bryant, however, treats death as part of nature, as the destiny of us all, and as the great equalizer in this world.In Bryant‟s view, to those “who in the love of nature,” nature offers all the kindness by presenting a smile and eloquence of beauty when one is in “gayer hours”;it shows sympathy and steals away their sharpness when one is in his darker musings.The death of a man means nothing but the returning to the origin, or a returning to nature.With this prospect, the reader may first be shocked, and soon after, he may shudder and grow sick at heart.However, if at that moment one just goes out to listen, a voice confirms that “Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim thy growth, to be resolved to earth again.” Then he would become brother to rocks, clod, birds and to oak trees, he would lie side by side with patriarchs, with the wise, the good and the beauteous.Running around, is the all-beholding sun.In this kingdom, he is not the first, nor ought to be the last.Before the eternity of nature, a human being is rather frail and weak.Once he joins in the “one mighty sepulcher,” he becomes a part of the hill, the vale, the woods, the river and he is tremendously stronger.Without a single exception, human beings will all share his destiny.To a Waterfowl Stanza 1: With the arrival of evening and in the setting sun and falling dew, where will the waterfowl, through the rosy clouds, fly? Stanza 2: In the rosy light of the setting sun, the hunter might see the bird, but it is too distant to be harmed.Thus it is able for the bird to fly easily and delightedly.Stanza 3: The poet is enquiring the destination of the fowl: Is it by the lake, along the river or at the ocean side? Stanza4: The poet believes that a supernatural power is guiding and protecting the bird.Stanza 5: The evening is falling and the bird, though rather exhausted, kept on flying.Stanza6: Soon the weary flight will end and a shelter will be found.Stanza 7: Though the bird has flown out of sight, the lesson it taught will stay in my heart forever.Stanza 8: As God leads the bird;my life should be guided by the same power, too.Comment on the poem
In the first three stanzas, there is no hint of any morals.However, in the fourth stanza, all of a sudden, a new figure as a god appears.The god has a supernatural power which directs the bird‟s flight.Bryant interrupted himself from describing a bird into teaching a lesson.Bryant may think it is not enough for a poem written just for the sake of its own, or just for the beauty of it, it should say something more than beauty, it should carry morals.It rhymes “abab”, while the lengthy of each line is so different that you cannot find a regular foot.However, the two long lines in the middle of each stanza may refer to the balance in the floating of the bird.The first and the fourth lines, which are relatively shorter, look like two wings.The stanzaic form reminds one of a flying bird.Questions for further understanding: 1.List some specific details that tell at what time of day the action of the poem is taking place.2.How would you argue for or against the idea that the time of day suggests or symbolizes death? 3.Name two or three things that the speaker and the bird have in common.4.As specified in the poem, what is the end of the bird‟s journey? 5.What might be the end of the speaker‟s journey? 6.What is the “lesson “ that the speaker learns? 7.Discuss the idea that it is a poem about blind faith.8.Scanning Poetry.5.Edgar Allan Poe(1809-1849)I.Introduction:
Poe was born in Boston, the child of traveling actors.Before he was 3, his father deserted the family, his mother died and he was taken into the home of John Allan, a prosperous merchant of Richmond, Virginia.Allan treated his foster child with leniency and harsh severity.He had Poe baptized with the middle name of Allan but failed to adopt him legally.In 2815 Allan moved to Europe on business, setting his family in England, where Poe was entered in school.Five years later, the Allans returned to Virginia, where Poe‟s school master judged him: not especially studious” but an “excellent classicist” and “the best reader of Latin verse.”
When he was 17, Poe entered the University of Virginia.He distinguished himself in Latin and French and soon gained a reputation as a self-proclaimed “aristocrat”, a poet, a wit, a gambler, and a heavy drinker.The next year, after bitter quarrels with Allan, who refused to pay Poe‟s gambling debts---he had lost $2000 at cards---Poe left the university and ran off to Boston, where he enlisted in the U.S.Army.While stationed in Boston, he arranged the publication of a slim volume of verse, “Tamerlane and other poems”(1827), his first book of poetry.In April.1829, he gained his release from the army and eight month later, his second volume of poems “Al Aaraaf, Tamerlan and Minor Poems” was published in Baltimore.Following the death of his foster-mother, Poe was briefly reconciled with Allan, who helped him secure appointment to West Point.Poe entered the academy as a cadet, when he was 21, but he remained only eight months.Galled by academy regulations and angered by a lack of support from his foster father, he deliberately violated a series of minor regulation, cut his classes, disobeyed orders to attend church, and early in 1831 he was dismissed.Just after he left West Point, his third volume of poetry was published, dedicated to “the U.S Corps of Cadets.” He then moved to Baltimore and devoted himself to earning his way as a writer.In 1832, five of Poe‟s stories were published in the Saturday Courier, a Philadelphia literary weekly.In 1833 he won first prize of $100 in a short story contest run by a Baltimore newspaper.He then returned to Richmond, where he was appointed editor---in which he published a series of stories, poems and acid literary reviews.When he was 27, he married his 13 years old cousin, Virginia Clemn.The remaining years of his life were filled with intense creativity by fits of acute mental depression and drinking bouts.In 1838 he published “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym”, his one full length novel.The next year he became co-editor of Burton‟s Gentleman‟s Magazine, a Philadelphia literary monthly to which he contributed “The Fall of the House of usher”(1839)and his sonnet “Silence”(1840).Later in 1839 his “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” appeared, his first collection of short stories.Then he became an editor of another Philadelphia monthly, Graham‟s Magazine, which printed “The Murder in the Rue Morgue” the ancestor of American detective stories.While living in New York, “The Raven”, his most famous work and an immediate success got published.When his wife died, he felt a great assault, he continued to write, say, “I have a great deal to do;and I have made up my mind not to die till it is done.” On October 3, 1849 he was found unconscious on the streets and four days later, he died.Poe‟s life had been a series of disasters: psychologically crippling childhood deprivations, bitter literary quarrels, overwhelming poverty, failed publishing ventures, even in 1848, an unsuccessful attempt at suicide.American‟s long judged his writing according to the legends.Poe‟s work was sometimes careless and derivative.He was rarely able to break from the need to do profitable hard work.The gothic terror he achieved was often commonplace, little above the popular, overheated romantic fiction of the times.Poe found his inspiration in a romanticism divorced from the actualities of American life, a world of disorder, perversity and romantic emotion.He helped established one of the world‟s most popular literary genres, the detective story.His writing influenced a variety of writers.He was among the first modern literary theorists of America, and his arguments against the didactic motive for literature and for the creation of beauty and intensity of emotion, though they ran counter to the prevailing literary ideals of his time, have had profound effect on the writers and critics who followed him.II.Analysis on his poems and story: To Helen Understanding Questions: 1.Although a real person inspired this poem, whose name was Jane;Poe addressed it to “Helen”.Why might he have done this? 2.In the final stanza, “Helen” is addressed as “Psyche” the Greek word for “breath: or “soul”.How do you reconcile this with the earlier references to Helen of Troy, whose legendary beauty led to the Trojan War? 3.Note that all three stanzas end with a reference to a place.How are these related to each other? To the meaning of the poem as a whole? Stanza 1: The poet first mentioned Helen, the most famous beauty in Greek mythology.Then Poe compared himself to Odysseus, who wandered for ten years over the sea to get home.As Odysseus, Edgar Allan Poe was persistent in his chasing after fine arts with the sincere belief that art or beauty and truth, is the ultimate aim, the home, for the wandering poet;while Helen, the embodiment of ancient beauty, is the guider to that dreamland.Stanza 2;all the art and literature originated from one thing---beauty.Having taken Helen as the embodiment of beauty, the poet was confident that once he saw Helen, he was sure to be led by Helen to the home of beauty---fine art and pure literature.Poe insisted that Greece and Rome are the homes of beauty, the treasure houses of fine art and literature.Stanza 3: The speaker sees Helen standing in the bright niche and holding in her hand an agate lamp.She is quite similar to goddess Psyche from Greek Myth.Through his description of his passion to Helen, Poe expressed his pursuit and sincere devotion to beauty.In this poem, three beauties in ancient Greek mythology---Helen, Naiad and Psyche---are mentioned just to show that beauty is something that existed;it is very holy but it is hard to reach.Comment on the poem This poem is believed to have been written when the poet was only fourteen, inspired, as Poe admitted by the beauty of Mrs.Jane Sitlth Stanard, the young mother of a school fellow who was “the first purely ideal love of my soul.” In this poem, the personal element of the young poet was almost completely sublimated in the idealization of the tradition of supernal beauty in art.The lady died in 1824, but she appeared in this poetic work in the figure of Helen, the well-known ancient beauty, with all the adoration of poet to her.In the first stanza, Helen‟s beauty is compared to the Nicean barks---a suggestion of classical associations;what‟s more, “of yore,” instead of “before” or “long ago”, is applied to add the classical atmosphere to the poem.As the ancient ships had transported the ancient hero---Ulysses—home from Troy, so will the beauty of Helen lead the poet to the home of art? The second stanza starts with “On desperate seas.” Actually, the transferred epithet is used just to show the poet‟s cordiality to the goddess of art.In classic myth, the flower Hyacinth preserved the memory of Apollo‟s love for the dead young Hyacinthus.(Hyacinthus is a very handsome young man of Greek myth and the object of Apollo‟s affections.Unfortunately, he was badly hurt by a discus when Apollo was gaming and dead soon.Very disappointed by that, Apollo changed him into the plant of hyacinth which had been taken as a symbol for affection.)All of these, the hyacinth hair, the face of classic beauty and the expression of Naiad, are charming enough to lead me to the home of art---ancient Greece and ancient Rome.In the third stanza, Helen is directly compared to goddess Psyche from the Holy Land.Through his description of his passion to Helen, Poe expressed his pursuit and sincere devotion to beauty.In the poem, three beauties in ancient Greek mythology are mentioned just to show that beauty is something that existed;it is very holy but it is hard to reach.The Raven Stanza 1: One night, while the poet was tired with reading and pondering, he heard the gentle knocks at his chamber door.Stanza 2: In a cold night when the poet was alone, he was awakened by the tapping and realized that he had failed, by reading a book, to ease his sorrow for the lost Lenore.Stanza 3: The poet felt frightened so he had to calm himself down by persuading that the tapping means a late visitor, and it could not be anything worse than that.Stanza 4: The poet was suddenly excited as to apologize for not hearing the gentle rapping, but when the door is widely opened, he found nothing but darkness outside.Stanza 5.The door was opened but it was all darkness and tranquility outside.The only sound echoing to the poet‟s ear was his murmuring of “Lenore.” He began to wonder who might have done the tapping.But the more he wondered, the more frightened he became.Stanza 6: The poet returned to his chamber but the tapping appeared again and louder.He made up his mind to calm down and find out the truth.Stanza 7: The poet opened the window and finally found that the tapping comes from a Raven perching on a bust of Pallas.Stanza 8: The poet was beguiled into smiling by the black bird and he asked its name and was replied with: “Nevermore,” which becomes the repetitive refrain of several stanzas.Stanza 9: The poet was astonished by the fact of a bird‟s talking, because neither had anybody ever experienced this nor was any bird named “Nevermore” before, despite the widely held belief that crows and ravens can mimic human speech if their tongues are “split” with a sharp tool.Stanza 10: The bird‟s repetition of “Nevermore” accidentally corresponds with the poet‟s self-talk;as if the bird is ensuring him “I will never leave.”
Stanza 11: After his astonishment, the poet realized that the bird was repeating the only word it accidentally picked up from its depressed master and it, as a matter of fact, shared nothing about the poet‟s murmuring about Hope.Stanza 12: The poet came nearer to the bird and began to fancy why the bird repeated that word.Stanza 13: Thinking about that word reminds the poet of his lost Lenore.Stanza 14: The poet felt too much troubled by the memory of Lenore so he wanted some magic drug to release him from thinking about her.Stanza 15: In stanza 14, the poet was inclined to release himself from the memory of Lenore.In the present stanza, he wants to find some magic drug to cure him.Stanza 16: The poet expressed his desire for meeting Lenore, but was boldly denied by a “Nevermore,” and this brings the poem to the climax.Stanza 17: The poet was so irritated by the bird‟s reply in the former stanza that he wanted to drive the bird away from him.However, the bird again responded with a “Nevermore”.Stanza 18: The Raven was rather innocent to the poet‟s reverie about “Lenore”.However, the poet was obsessively in a mood of frustration.Comment on the poem
The Raven was published in the New York Evening Mirror in 1845.Being regarded as the first poem with hazy conception in the West, it is the poem of which Poe himself felt quite proud and had been frequently taken by Poe as an example to illustrate his poetic art.Consisting of 18 stanzas, each with 6 lines, with the first five lines being trochaic octameter and the last line as trochaic tetrameter, this poem corresponds in every aspect with Poe‟s aesthetic standard for poetry: It took the lament over the death of a beautiful woman as its them;with the 108 lines, it is readable at one sitting;it is pervaded with a sense of melancholy.Although this poem was written in traditional feet and regular meters, Poe diverged from tradition with dramatic variation of the tone;mournful at the beginning(vainly I had sought to borrow from my book surcease of sorrow---sorrow for the lost Lenore.);then trepid at some spots;sometimes it showed a touch of humor, sometimes a mood of melancholy.But finally, a very pessimistic illusion.Once upon a dreary midnight, while the poet was pondering weak and weary, with the napping and tapping at the chamber door, the poet was led to a fantasy world of a dialogue between him and a raven.The whole scene might be a real one or just a dream, but the mysterious Raven must be a symbolic character.It may be symbolic in various ways: a.The Raven symbolizes disaster and misfortune.Raven, the large bird like crow with black feathers, in Western countries, as well as it is in China, is conventionally regarded as an ominous fowl, a symbol of misfortune.Thus with the repetition of the “napping and tapping” the poet was filled “with fantastic terrors never felt before.”
b.The raven symbolizes the soul of the radiant maiden, the “lost Lonore”.At the moment when the poet was in the darkness peering, wondering, expecting and whispering Lenore but was just responded with a “nothing more,” the Raven, “with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door.” A conversation was held and the poet was so comforted with it.For twice, the poet felt the bird “beguiling my sad fancy into smiling.”
c.The bird may be taken as a symbol of the sub-consciousness of the poet.In the conversation the poet distinctly expressed his strong passion to Lenore.However, the only response from the Raven was “Nevermore.” It seems what the poet had expressed is simply the view out of the “id”, while the Raven‟s words are rather restrictive and seem out of “ego”.The poet was too affectionate to Lenore to be restrictive, while the Raven was what warned him to be rational and that what had been lost would return “nevermore.”
d.The Raven is the symbol of modern reality.The poet was of the firm belief that in modern society human beings are apathetic creatures.He was deeply resentful at the people‟s indifference towards his mourning to Lenore;therefore, he turned to the Raven for comfort.But quite to his disappointment, he was merely responded with a cold “nevermore.”
As the most melodic poem in American literary history, Poe spent about four years for the creation of this piece of exquisite verse-narrative.In this poem, beside the regular meters and feet, the poet also employed many intricate musical expressions such as alliteration, internal rhyme, slant rhyme, end rhyme, perfect rhyme, imperfect rhyme, refrain and so on, so as to add variation, beauty and melody.Annabel Lee Stanza 1: The pretty young girl Annabel Lee used to live in a kingdom by the seaside.Before her death, the only thing in her hear was to love or to be loved by me.Stanza 2: Our love was so strong and beautiful that angels in heaven, who are with wings and living in heaven and likely to be freer and abler than any human beings, envied us.Seldom did any angels envy anything of the human world.If they did, there must be something spectacular in the object of their admiration.Stanza 3: My Annabel Lee was taken away from me.The faithful lovers were mercilessly separated by a superpower.Poe was indicating that Annabel lee might be an angel from heaven, because she was “brought back to heaven and she had some “highborn kinsmen” up there.Stanza 4: The poet was quite clear about the reason of Annabel Lee‟s is taken away from him.The evil wind came out by night and Annabel Lee was taken away by night, that indicates that somebody may appear as angels in daytime, but as devils during night.Stanza 5: Though the evil wind and the highborn kinsmen are very powerful to take my beautiful Annabel Lee away from me, they are not so powerful as to take her soul away from me.Our love is more powerful than death.After the death of one, our souls are still together.Stanza 6: My Annabel Lee had gone to heaven.She reminds me of her bright face by the moon, so that I can see her in my dream;when I see the stars in the sky, I see her bright eyes, too.We are together and nothing can separate us, neither the human power nor the God of death is possible.Comment on the poem
In Annabel Lee, when Poe was writing about the life and death of his wife, he neither did nor uses her real name, nor did he use the real background.Instead, he provided a false name and an imagined “kingdom by the sea.” On the one hand, Poe wanted to imply to us that such kind of true love could exist nowhere else but in a mythical kingdom of ancient time.Thus poe showed his resentment of reality.In the poem, Poe, instead of feeling sorry for himself, felt lost.The poem is not just a dirge.Much more than that, it is a mourning song for the death of a beautiful woman, which implies the death of beauty.This last poem has always been regarded as the best of Poe‟s poems.It coincides on every side with Poe‟s poetic theories;consisting of 41 lines, it is quite readable at one sitting;it wears a sad and melancholy tone;it tells the story of the death of a beautiful woman;with the repetition of the/ / sound, it was so rhythmically written into a piece of “word music”.Short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” Analysis of the story: When the narrator sees Roderick Usher, he is shocked at the change in his old friend.Never before has he seen a person who looks so much like a corpse with a “cadaverousness of complexion.” Death is in the air;the first meeting prepares us for the untimely and ghastly death of Roderick Usher later in the story.Usher tries to explain the nature of his illness;he suffers from a “morbid acuteness of the senses”.He can eat “only the most insipid food, wear only delicate garments,” and he must avoid the odors of all flowers.His eyes, he says, are “tortured by even a faint light,” and only a few sounds from certain stringed instruments are endurable.As Roderick Usher explains that he has not left the house in many years and that his only companion has been his beloved sister, the lady Madeline, we are startled by Poe‟s unexpectedly introducing her ghostly form far in the distance.Suddenly, while Roderick is speaking, Madeline passes “slowly through a remote portion of the apartment: and disappears without ever having noticed the narrator‟s presence.No doctor has been able to discover the nature of her illness---it is “a settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person” in a “cataleptically” state;that is, Lady Madeline cannot respond to any outside stimuli.The narrator then tells us that nevermore will he see her alive.Of course, then, the question at the end of the story is: Was the Lady Madeline ever alive? Or is the narrator deceiving the reader by this statement? Roderick Usher and the narrator speak no more of the Lady Madeline;they pass the days reading together or painting, and yet Usher continues to be in a gloomy state of mind.We also learn that one of Usher‟s paintings impresses the narrator immensely with its originality and its bizarre depiction: It is a picture of a luminous tunnel or vault with no visible outlet.This visual image is symbolic of what will happen later;it suggests both the vault that Usher will put his sister into and also the maelstrom that will finally destroy the House of Usher.Likewise, the poem “The Haunted palace,” which Poe places almost exactly in the center of the story, is similar to the house of Usher in that some “evil things” are the influencing its occupants in the same way that Roderick Usher, the author of the poem seems to be haunted by some unnamed “evil things.” After he has finished reading the poem, usher offers another of his bizarre views;this time, he muses on the possibility that vegetables and fungi are sentient beings---that is, that they are conscious and capable f having feelings of their own.He feels that the growth around the House of Usher has this peculiar ability to feel and sense matters within the house itself.This otherworldly atmosphere enhances Poe‟s already grimly threatening atmosphere.One day, Roderick Usher announces that the Lady Madeline is “no more”;he says further that he is going to preserve her corpse for two weeks because of the inaccessibility of the family burial ground and also because of the “unusual character of the malady of the deceased.” These enigmatic statements are foreboding;they prepare the reader for the re-emergence of the Lady Madeline as a living corpse.At the request of Usher, the narrator helps carry the “unconfined‟ body to an underground vault where the atmosphere is so oppressive that their torches almost go out.Again Poe is using a highly effective gothic technique by using these deep, dark underground vaults, lighted only by torches, and by having a dead body carried downward to a great depth where everything is dank, dark, and damp.After some days of bitter grief, Usher changes appreciably;now he wanders feverishly and hurries from one chamber to another.Often he stops and stares vacantly into space as though he is listening to some faint sound;his terrified condition brings terror to the narrator.Then we read that on the night of the “seventh or eighth day” after the death of the lady Madeline, the narrator begins to hear “certain low and indefinite sounds” which come from an undetermined source.As we will learn later, these sounds are coming from the buried Lady Madeline, and these are the sounds that Roderick Usher has been hearing for days.Because of his over-sensitiveness and because of the extra-sensory relationship between him and his twin sister, Roderick has been able to hear sounds long before the narrator is able to hear them When Usher appears at the narrator‟s door looking “cadaverously wan” and asking, “Have you not seen it?” the narrator is so ill at ease that he welcomes even the ghostly presence of his friend.Usher does not identify the “it” he speaks of, but he throws open the casement window and reveals a raging storm outside—“a tempestuous…night…singular in its terror and its beauty.” Again, these details are the true and authentic trappings of the gothic tae.Night, a storm raging outside while another storm is raging in Usher‟s heart, and a decaying mansion in which “visible gaseous exhalations…enshrouded the mansion”---all these elements contribute to the eerie gothic effect Poe aimed for.The narrator refuses, however, to allow usher to gaze out into the storm with its weird electrical phenomena, exaggerated by their reflection in the “rank miasma of the tarn.” Protectively, he shuts the window and takes down an antique volume entitled Mad Trist by Sir launce lot Canning and begins reading aloud.When he comes to the section where the hero forces his way into the entrance of the hermit‟s dwelling, the narrator says that it “appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of character…the very cracking and ripping sound” which was described in the antique volume which he is reading to Usher.The narrator continues reading, and when he comes to the description of a dragon being killed and dying with “a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing,” he pauses because at the exact moment, he hears a “low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted and most unusual screaming or grating sound” which seems to be the exact counterpart of the scream in the antique volume.He observes usher, who seems to be rocking from side to side, filled with some unknown terror.Very soon the narrator becomes aware of a distinct sound, “hollow, metallic and clangorous, yet apparently muffled.‟ When he approaches Usher, his friend responds that he has been hearing noises for many days and yet he has not dared to speak about them.The noises, he believes, come from lady Madeline: “we have put her living in the tomb!” He heard the first feeble movements a few days ago while she was in the coffin, then struggling with the vault and, finally, she is now on the stairs and so close that usher can hear “the heavy and horrible beating of her heart.” With a leap upward, he shrieks: “ Madman!I tell you that she now stands without the door!” At this moment, with superhuman strength, the antique doors are thrown open and in the half darkness there is revealed “the lofty and enshrouded figure of the Lady Madeline of Usher.” There is blood upon her white robes and the evidence of a bitter struggle on every portion of her emaciated frame.With the last of her energy, while she is trembling and reeling, she falls heavily upon her brother, and “in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.”
The narrator tells us that he fled from the chamber and from the entire mansion and, at some distance, he turned to look back in the light of the “full, setting and blood-red moon” and saw the entire House of Usher split at the point where there was a zigzag fissure and watched as the entire house sank into the “deep and dank tarn which covered, finally, the “fragments of the house of usher.”
One key to the story is, of course, the name of the main character.An usher is someone who lets one in or leads one in.Thus, the narrator is ushered into the house by a bizarre-looking servant, and he is then ushered into Roderick Usher‟s private apartment and into his private thoughts.Finally, Usher also means doorkeeper, and as they had previously ushered lady Madeline prematurely into her tomb, at the end of the story Lady Madeline stands outside the door waiting to be ushered in;failing that, she ushers herself in and falls upon her brother.In the concept of twins, there is also a reversal of roles.It is Usher himself who seems to represent the weak, the over-sensitive, the over-delicate, and the feminine.In contrast, lady Madeline, as many critics have pointed out, possesses a superhuman will to live.She is the masculine force, which survives being buried alive and is able, by suing almost supernatural strength, to force her way out and escape from her entombment in the vaults, and then despite being drained of strength, as evidence by the blood on her shroud, she is able to find her brother and fall upon him.Another reading of the story involves the possibility that Roderick usher‟s weakness, his inability to function in light, and his necessity to live constantly in the world of semi-darkness and muted and colors is that the Lady Madeline is a vampire who has been sucking blood from him for years.This would account for his paleness and would fit this story in a category with the stories of Count Dracula that were so popular in Europe at the time.In this interpretation, Roderick Usher buries his sister so as to protect himself.Vampires had to be dealt with harshly;thus, this accounts for the difficulty lady Madeline encounters in escaping from her entombment.In this view, the final embrace must be seen in terms of the Lady Madeline, a vampire, falling upon her brother‟s throat and sucking the last drop of blood from him.The final paragraph supports this view in that the actions occur during the “full blood-red moon,” a time during which vampires are able to prey upon fresh victims.At the opposite end of this phantasmal interpretation is the modern-day psychological view that the twins represent two aspects of one personality.The final embrace, in this case, becomes the unifying of two divergent aspects into one whole being at birth.Certainly many Romantics considered birth itself to be a breaking of oneself with that original spirituality.Lady Madeline can then be seen as the incarnation of “otherworldliness,” the pure spirit purged of all earthly cares.She is, one might note, presented in this very image;at one point in the story, she seems to float through the apartment in a cataleptic state.If Usher embodies the incertitude of life---a condition somewhere between waling and sleeping---when Lady Madeline embraces him, this embrace would symbolize the union of a divided soul, indicating a final restoration and purification of that soul in a life to come.They will now live in pure spirituality and everything that is material in the world is symbolized by the collapse of the House of Usher---the dematerialization of all that was earthly in exchange for the pure spirituality of Roderick Usher and the Lady Madeline.Even though Poe maintains that he did not approve of symbols or allegory, this particular story has been, as suggested above, subjected to many and varied types of allegorical or symbolic interpretations.Basically, the story still functions as a great story on the very basic level of the gothic horror story, in which the element of fear is evoked in its highest form.Further Reading: Allan Poe‟s short stories.6.Emerson and Thoreau‟s Transcendentalism Teaching Period: 2 Teaching hours.Teaching aim and requirement: Students should know what is Transcendentalism, Emerson‟s idea on transcendentalism;learn to analyzes his “of Nature” and the main idea of Thoreau‟s Walden.A.Ralph Waldo Emerson(1823-1882)I.Introduction: Emerson was 19th century American most notable prophet and sage.He was apostle of progress and optimism and his dedication to self-reliant individualism inspired his fellow transcendentalists.Emerson was born in Boston, the son of a Unitarian minister and the descendant of a long line of distinguished New England clergyman.He was educated at Boston Latin School and at Harvard.After his graduation from college in 1821 Emerson taught in a Boston school for young ladies.In 1825 he entered the Harvard Divinity School, where absorbed the liberal intellectualized Christianity of Unitarianism.It rejected the Calvinist ideas of predestination and total depravity, substituting instead a faith in the saving grace of divine love and a brief in the eventual brotherhood of man in a kingdom of Heaven on earth.In 1829 Emerson was ordained the Unitarian minister of the second church of Boston.He was a popular and successful preacher, but after 3 years he had come to doubt the validity of the sacrament of the Lord‟s Supper and his growing abjections to even the remnants of Christian dogma surviving in early 19th century Unitarianism led him to conclude that “to be a good minister it was necessary to leave the ministry.”
After preaching his farewell sermon Emerson went on a tour of Europe, where he met Cole ridge, Wordsworth and was strongly influenced by the ideas of European romanticism.Upon returning to America, he began his lifelong career as a public lecturer, which took him to meeting different variety of his people.He bought a house in Concord, Massachusetts and there he associated with Thoreau, Hawthorn, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller and others who belonged to the informal Transcendental Club, organized for the “exchange of thought among those interested in the new views in philosophy, theology and literature.In concord, Emerson became the chief spokesman of transcendentalism in America.His philosophy was a compound of Yankee Puritanism and Unitarianism merged with the teachings of European romanticism.The word “transcendental” had long been used in philosophy to describe truths that were beyond the reach of man‟s limited senses and as a transcendentalist, Emerson argued that God was all-loving and all-pervading;that there was an essential unity in apparent the spirit;that nature was an image in which man could perceive the divine.Emerson‟s beliefs were a balance of skepticism and faith, stirred by moral fervor.To many of his readers they have been seemed neither coherent nor complete.His early writings were rejected as “the latest form of infidelity”.He has been called “St.Ralph, the optimist and charged with having a serene ignorance of the true nature of evil.His exaltation of intuition over reason has been dismissed as a justification of infantile enthusiasms;his celebration of individualism has been judged an argument for mindless self-assertiveness.Emerson was a seer and poet, not a man of cool logic.In his lectures, essays and poems, he sought to inspire a cultural rejuvenation, to transmit to his listens and readers his own worn traditions and in his faith in goodness and inevitable progress.His words both dazzled and puzzled his audience.Like his philosophy, his writing seemed to lack organization, but it abounded with epigrams and memorable passages.The 19th century found him a man who had “something capital to say about everything.” And his ideas influenced American writers from Melville, Thoreau, Whitman and Emily Dickson in the 19th century to Robert Frost, Hart Crane and Stevenson in the 20th century.Emerson‟s perceptions of man and nature as symbols of universal truth encouraged the development of the symbolist movement in American writing.His assertion that even the commonplaces of American life were worthy of the highest art helped to establish a national literature.His repudiation of established traditions and institutions encouraged a literary revolution;his ideas expressed in his own writing and in the works of others, have been taken as an intellectual foundation for movements of social change that have profoundly altered modern America.Emerson was no political revolutionary.He preached harmony in a discordant age, and he recognized the need of human society as incompatible with unrestrained individualism.As he remained a firm advocate of self-reliant idealism and in his writings and in the example of his life, Emerson has endured as a guide for those who would shun all foolish consistencies and escape blind submission to fate.I.Analysis of “Nature”
The whole work “Nature” is a long essay divided into eight parts: the opening, commodity, beauty, language, discipline, Idealism, spirit and prospects.Our selection is taken from the opening.Taken as a whole, “Nature” expresses Emerson‟s philosophy in a more systematic fashion than any other work of his.Questions for understanding: 1.According to Emerson, what is one of the best ways one can really be alone? 2.What distinguishes the “stick of timber of the wood-cutter from the tree of the poet? 3.In what part of nature does Emerson describe the most profound change taking place? 4.Where does Emerson find the source of the power to produce delight? 5.Interpret the following from nature: “The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child.”
6.Try to relate that statement(I am nothing)to Emerson‟s pantheism.7.What does Emerson mean when he says “I am nothing”? 8.Does Nature have the potential to lift man‟s spirits at all times, or only occasionally? Questions for further discussion: 1.What is Transcendentalism? 2.What are the Emersonian Transcendentalist ideas and his view of nature? 3.What is the main idea of Thoreau‟s Walden? 8.Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864)Teaching Time: 4 teaching hours.Teaching aim and requirement: The students should get to know Hawthorne‟s life and his literary career, his novels and short stories.They should understand the selected section of the “Scarlet Letter.”
I.Introduction of his life and works:
For long time Hawthorne has been considered to be the first great American writer of fiction to work in the moralistic tradition which can be traced down through such leading novelists as Henry James and William Faulkner.Different from his contemporary novelists in relation to literary themes, Hawthorne showed a great interest in the problem of guilt and his major novels generally dealt with sensational material, like poisoning, murder, adultery and crime, because he was ambitious to explore the result of sin, the effect on human conscious of guilt, pride, egotism and isolation.His concern with moral or ethical problems and his talent in dealing with them in the form of novel attained him success as a novelist and a momentous position in the history of „American literature.Hawthorne was born into the family of a sea captain, whose father died when he was only four years of age.Living with his mother and sister in Salem, Massachusetts, Hawthorne was taken care by his mother‟s brother, who, a well-to-do man, supported Hawthorne to receive the best schooling of the age.In 1821 he entered Bowdoin College and graduated in 1825 in the class with Longfellow and Franklin Pierce, later president of the United States.The next twelve years were so-called “seclusion”, when he lived in his mother‟s Salem home to read widely and prepare for his literary career.During these years of literary apprenticeship he contributed short stories to various periodicals and did hard work for many publishers, but his literary toil brought him little success.Among his publication of immaturity during this period the only work worth mentioning was his first novel Fanshowe, an abortive chronicle of Bowdoin life, which completely failed to attract popular and critical attention.His next book, Twice-told Tales(1837)was successful and its second edition appeared in 1842.The success of Twice-Told Tales encouraged Hawthorne to explore in literature.From 1839-1849 Hawthorne earned his living in the customhouses in Boston and Salem.In 1841-1842 he took part in the transcendental communistic experiment but he admitted later that his experience in the experiment was distasteful.In 1842 he married and settle at the Old Manse.In 1853 Frank Pierce was elected president and he soon appointed his old friend Counsal at Liverpool, one of the most lucrative positions for four years and then after his retirement he traveled extensively in Europe and continued to write before he returned home in 1860.After 1860 Hawthorne lived in Concord and devoted his remaining years to literature until he died suddenly while on a trip to New Hampshire with his lifelong friend Pierce.Before the publication of the Scarlet Letter in 1850, which made his fame and gave to American literature its first symbolic novel another important work that Hawthorne published was Mosses from an Old Manse(1846), a collection of short stories, which included some of his best like “Young Goodman Brown.” “The Celestial Railroad” and “Rappaccini‟s Daughter”.The appearance of “The Scarlet Letter” marked the maturity of Hawthorne as a novelist and soon he composed three important novels, The House of the Seven Gables, a great novels of family decadence, appeared in 1851, which was followed by The Blithedale Romance(1852), a novel describing the transcendental experiment and The Marble Faun(1860), a novel of moral allegory with Italian setting.When compared with The Scarlet letter, these three novels showed more obviously the defects that ran through almost all Hawthorne‟s novels: indulgence in symbolism and a skeptical attitude toward the affair of life.His other works included The Life of Frankllin pierce(1852)which resulted in his appointment of consul at Liverpool and Our Old Home(1863)a sheaf of essays，The central subject of Hawthorne‟s major works was the human soul.This determined that his works could be singularly free from passionate or erotic elements, His exploration of the soul resulted from his skeptical attitude toward the social reality that was characterized by a rapid change in almost all aspects of social life and from his ambition to probe into the nature of man.It was in his exploration of human soul that Hawthorne revealed his criticism of life.In fact, the primary significance of his major works dwells in the interest and the consistent vitality of his criticism of life.Hawthorne lived in an age when the dynamic influence of Puritanism was gone and the impact of romanticism and transcendentalism was largely felt among the intellectuals and thus he made his efforts to explore the roots of all kinds of social evils which appeared in a social background less religious and more industrialized.His experience of living in a limited social background and his seclusion of thinking led to his exclusive preoccupation with the inner world of man, where he believed was the source of social evils, because he looked down on the impact of man of the social environment that was undergoing a vast change.In many of his best stories and his two great novels The Scarlet Letter and The house of Seven Gables, Hawthorne gave his analysis of the moral problems of his own age through a remarkably vivid picture of the New England past.His excellent sense of the past and historical reconstructions and his fidelity to detail were fully expressed in these works although his major appeal lied beneath the allegorical form.Likewise, Hawthorne‟s true genius appears most clearly when he penetrates beneath costume and manner.His characters and setting are puritan and his skillful use of such materials are witchcraft, the Indian life in other dissenters the theocratic society and the general resentment against the royal authority exhibits his command of the history and traditions of the region.Moreover, their problems and situations are fundamentally universal.II.Analysis on the Selected chapter: Chapter 5 serves the purpose of filling in background information about Hester and Pearl and beginning the development of Hester and the scarlet as two of the major symbols of the romance.By positioning Hester‟s cottage between the town and the wildness, physically isolated from the community, the author confirms and builds the image of her that was portrayed in the first scaffold scene---that of an outcast of society being punished for her sin/crime and as a product of nature, society views her “…as the figure, the body, the reality of sin.”
Despite Hester‟s apparent humility and her refusal to strike back at the community, she resents and inwardly rebels against the viciousness of her Puritan persecutors.She becomes a living symbol of sin to the townspeople, who view her not as an individual but as the embodiment of evil in the world.Twice in this chapter, Hawthorne alludes to the community‟s suing Hester‟s errant behavior as a testament of immorality.For moralists, she represents woman‟s frailty and sinful passion, and when she attends church, she is often the subject of the preacher‟s sermon.Banished by society to live her life forever as an outcast, Hester‟s skill in needlework is nevertheless in great demand.Hawthorne derisively condemns Boston‟s Puritan citizens throughout the novel, but here in chapter 5 his criticism is especially sharp.The very community members most appalled by Hester‟s past conduct favor her sewing skills, but they deem their demand for her work almost as charity, as if they are doing her the favor in having her sew garments for them.Their small-minded and contemptuous attitudes are best exemplified in their refusal to allow Hester to sew garments for weddings, as if she would contaminate the sacredness of marriage were she to do so.The irony between the townspeople‟s condemnation of Hester and her providing garments for them is even greater when we learn that Hester is not overly proud of her work, rejects ornamentation as a sin.We must remember that Hester, no matter how much she inwardly rebels against the hypocrisy of Puritan society, still conforms to the moral strictness associated with Puritanism.The theme of public and private disclosure that so greatly marked Dimondale‟s speech in chapter 3 is again present in this chapter, but this time the scarlet A on Hester‟s clothing is associated with the theme.Whereas publicly the letter inflicts scorn on Hester, it also endow her with a new , private sense of other‟s own sinful thoughts and behavior;she gains a “sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts.” The scarlet letter---what it represents---separates Hester from society, but it enables her to recognize sin in the very same society that banishes her.Hawthorne uses this dichotomy to point out the hypocritical nature of Puritanism: Those who condemn Hester are themselves condemnable according to their own set of values.Similar to Hester‟s becoming a living symbol of immoral behavior, the scarlet A becomes an object with a life seemingly its own: Whenever Hester is in the presence of a person who is masking a personal sin, “the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb.”
In the Custom House preface, Hawthorne describes his penchant for mixing fantasy with fact, and this technique is evident in his treatment of the scarlet A.In physical terms, this emblem is only so much fabric and thread.But Hawthorne‟s use of the symbol at various points in the story adds a dimension of fantasy to factual description.In the Custom House, Hawthorne claims to have “experienced a sensation…as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron.” Similarly, here in chapter 5, he suggests that, at least according to some townspeople, the scarlet A literally sears Hester‟s chest and that, “red-hot with infernal fire,” it glows in the dark at night.These accounts create doubt in the reader‟s mind regarding the true nature and function of the symbol.Hawthornes‟ imbuing throughout the novel---particularly when Chillingworth sees a scarlet A emblazoned on Dimmesdale‟s bare chest and when townspeople see a giant scarlet A in the sky---and is a technique common to the romance genre.Question for discussion:
What are the artistic characteristics of The Scarlet Letter?
The Scarlet Letter, a story of rebellion within an emotionally constricted Puritan society, is an undisputed masterpiece by Hawthorne.The Scarlet letter reveals both Hawthorne‟s superb craftsmanship and the powerful psychological insight with which he probed guilt and anxiety in the human soul.Hawthorne‟s remarkable sense of the Puritan past, his understanding of the colonial history in England, his apparent preoccupation with the moral issues of sin and guilt, and his keen psychological analysis of people are brought to full display in this novel.So his drama is thought, full of mental activities.Thought propels action and grows organically out of the interaction of the characters.With modern psychological insight, Hawthorne probed the secret motivations in human behavior and the guilt and anxiety that he believed resulted from all sins against humanity, especially those of pride.Hawthorne is a master of symbolism.The structure and the form of the novel are carefully worked out to cater for the thematic concern.By using Pearl as a thematic symbol, Hawthorne emphasizes the consequence the sin of adultery has brought to the community and people living in that community.As a key to the whole novel, the latter A takes on different layers of symbolic meanings as the plot develops.This ambiguity is one of the features of the work.Herman Melville(1919-1891)I.Introduction about his life and works: Herman Merville was born in 1819, the son of eight children.His father‟s business failed in 1830 and his father died shortly afterward.For the next seven years the family received support from relatives.He signed on as a “boy” on the British ship and sailed with her across the Atlantic to Liverpool and on the return voyage to America.While life as a sailor was harsh, his thirst for the sea was not quenched.Several years of voyage on different waling ships provided him material for his later writing career.In 1846 his first novel on sea appeared.Typee(1846), Omoo(1847), Redburn(1848)and(White-Jacket(1850)are novels on sea.He finished his masterpiece Moby Dick in 1851.He died quietly on September 28, 1891.For nearly the last thirty years of his life he had tried desperately to remain obscure in New York City, hidden from the world of letters.II.Analysis on Chapter 54:
A.Summary: The watery region around the Cape of Good Hope is a place where you meet more travelers than in any other part of the oceans.Soon after speaking to the Albatross, the Pequod encounters another whaler called the Town-Ho.Ahab relents and there is a regular gam.The ship is manned mainly by Polynesians and the reason is found I this story secretly brought aboard, the Pequod and never told to Captain Ahab.As the Town-Ho was sailing in the Pacific the ship sprung a leak.Forced labor at the pumps as the ship headed for the nearest island created a mutiny which was interrupted by the appearance of Moby Dick.The boats were lowered but the harpooner on the boat nearest him was devoured by the Great White whale.The ship made harbor and most of the crew deserted for fear of encountering Moby Dick.Polynesians agreed to help sail the ship the rest of its voyage.In this long story about Radney and Steelkilt, we see another view of Moby Dick.He seems to represent something like Divine Justice entering into the events of life and correcting an evil.Thus, quite the contrary to the manner in which Ahab sees Moby dick, he is here viewed as an agent of God‟s justice.Thus the second gam shows that moby Dick is not universally considered an evil agent and that this view is
particular to Ahab‟s monomania.This chapter contains two aspects of events.It is gone through the narration of boatman.He told the story happened on a whaling ship.21conflict between lakeman---Stilkilt and his rebels and the mate;2.conflict between the mate and the white whale.In both cases, Lakeman failed in the struggle against the unfair treatment and the mate died in the mouth of a whale.Through the story we got to know the life of boatman in whaling industry and the fieresness of the white whale.III.The novel on the whole can be understood from three levels: 1.It is a novel of journey and whale catching;2.it is a conflict between Captain Ahab and Moby Dick;3.It is a story of Ishmael, his thought about human body‟s ego realization, the relationship between man and nature, man and God, man and man, etc.Moby Dick may be read on several levels.It is a thrilling adventure story, “the world‟s greatest sea novel,” compounded of search, pursuit, conflict and catastrophe.It is the plot of unceasing search for revenge, The “Americanized Gothic” of mystery and terror, crowded with omens and forebodings from the cracked Eligah‟s warnings to the prophecies of Fedalla which are reminiscent of the witch‟s croaking in Mackebeth.Clear throughout is a mastery of suspense and horror of both subtle and broad humor, of exciting narrative in vigorous prose.The numerous chapters on whales and whaling dismay readers for the story‟s sake, but they provide verisimilitude.The chapters on whaling prepare the reader for the unfamiliar events, skillfully retard the swift action, and present an authentic, full way of life.The more import level, of course, is these of characterization and meaning, a galley of unique portraits emerges.In spite of their few, brief appearances, Peter coffin, Captain Bilded and Peleg and the officers of passing vellels are vividly described.Melville most convincingly individualizes Starbuck, Stubb and Flask.Starbuck‟s vary courage and “right-mindedness” is fully developed to make him a foil to Ahab.The three harpooners are also individualized---the American Tashtego;the physical admirable African, Daggoo, so unlike the minstrel-show Negroes in the literature of Melville‟s day;and Queengueg, the Polynessian “heatheric” who must help these
Christians, whose characterization is a masterpiece of understanding.The characterizations of the semi-auto-biographical Ishmael and of Ahab are the most important and they are in extricable tied up with the book‟s meaning.Ishmael‟s name connotes the wanderer and outcast.He shares the illness and restlessness of the romantic hero, but he rises above them.He is no more escapist.Himself inclined to melancholy, he recognizes that Ahab‟s concentration on woe is madness.Midway of the book, Ishmael, the participant and narrator, merges with the omniscient author.At first caught by the fever of the oath on the quarter-deck to hunt Moby-Dick to the kill, he alone has the intelligence and will to recognize and oppose the madness.Repudiating society and those in power, he grows in deep respect for and insight into the secrets of human life.Regarding both believer and infidel with an equal and critical eye, he is a believer in the dignity of man and the need of fellowship.32 And he alone of the Puequod‟s saved.The biblical Ahab worshiped false gods;he was slain in battle and the dogs licked up his blood.On his long prepared for entrance, “reality outran apprehension.” Branded like Milton‟s Satan, sturdy, erect on his bone leg, but “ with a crucification in his face,” Ahab has all the “overbearing dignity of some mighty woe.” His actions are of one piece, for he is driven by a force stronger than himself, though of his own creation---right after Moby Dick has sheared off his leg on a previous voyage, his “torn body and gasked soul bled into one another” and the final mononania secres him.With cunning he does his best to conceal the madness, but from the frenzied oath on the quarter-deck the steps to destruction are sure;a man never known to kneel sweats he would strike the sun if it insulted him;he throws overboard his pipe(symbol of serenity);smashes the quadrant(symbol of scientific aid);defies the lightening, breathing the kindred fire of his spirit back at it, and tempering a forged harpoon in the blood of his pagan harpooners, baptires it, as mentioned earlier, in the name of the devil.Isolation, pride, obsession with revenge, reliance on the unaided self and blasphemy make up his tragic flaw.But as his old friend Peleg says: “Ahab has his humanities.” His scenes with the cabin boy Pip show this.But the “humanities” are short lived.Captain Boomen, who lost an arm, to Moby Dick, wants no more of the monster, and such common sense shocks Ahab as idiocy.Various scholars have interpreted the whale in various ways.To Ahab, the whale represents all evils, visibly personified against which he piled, “all the rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down.” But to Ishmael, Ahab is insane.Less bluntly and plainly, Ishmael states what the whole means to him, he is appalled chiefly by the hideous whiteness, which suggests the demonism in the world.Starbuck, at sea to hunt whales, not his commander‟s vengeance, considers the whale a dumb beast, smiting from blindest instinct.Other seamen believe in the malice behind the tremendous strength, but assume no serf-appointed mission to destroy it.In the last chase Starbuck calls to Ahab that it is not too late, that Moby Dick seeks him not: “ It is thou that madly seekest him.” But Bound by more than oaths on the quarter-deck, Ahab is forever Ahab, the “Fate‟s lieutenant” acting under orders, he has fell impelled to follow.In the final analysis, Moby Dick has a richness which he has had enduring value for generations.Its symbolism is vast, its language graphic and powerful.It is romance of moral inquiry.Each of the main characters struggles with good and evil, with fate, with the conflict they see between God and nature.In his Ahab, he specifically molded a character which used his will to try to defy fate, a character of defiance.In Ishmael, he could stand by and allow reason to speculate on the events.Because he supplied no one formula of interpretation, he left his readers the same freedom he gained for himself---the ability to move back and forth between fate and meaning on the bridge of symbolism.He has mastered the art that Hawthorne experiments had taught him because he had the flucidity of spirit to allow his book finally to write itself.Questions for further discussion;1.Comment on character Ahab.33 2.What is the symbolic meanings of the novel? Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(1807-1882)I.Introduction about his life: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, on February 27, 1807, into a well-do-do family.He was educated at Bowdoin College, where he was a fellow student with Nathaniel Hawthorne and Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the United States(1853-1857).After his graduation in 1825, Longfellow spent three years in Europe studying the culture and languages of Italy, Spain, and Germany.In 1836, Longfellow became professor of French and Spanish at Harvard, where he taught for 18 years and then he resigned in 1854 because he felt it interfered with his writing.Longfellow‟s most productive years were from 1843 to 1860.After 1854, Longfellow devoted himself completely to literary writing.Several long poems and collections of poems were published.But in his late time, he turned to religious and reflective poetry, and to translation.From 1864 to 1867, most of his time was spent in the translating of The Divine Comedy By Dante.His last collection of poems appeared in 1882, the year of his death.As a poet, Longfellow enjoyed the most popular reputation when he was alive, and his poetic works were regarded as the summit of the literary work of the 19th century.However, his tremendous fame decreased rapidly soon after Longfellow‟s death and especially in the 20th century, Longfellow‟s fame as the most important American poet of the previous century had to be vacated to Walt Whitman.Major Works:(1)Voice of the night(1839), his first book of poetry, which contains “Hymn to the Night” and “A Psalm of Life.”
(2)Ballad and Other Poems(1841), containing such favorites as “The village Blacksmith.”(3)Evangeline(1847).(4)“The Song of Hiawatha(1855), a long poem that was based on American Indian legend.(5)Translation of Dante‟s Comedy(1865-1867)II.Features of Longfellow‟s Poetic works: Longfellow was the best-known American poet during the 19th century.(1)Longfellow‟s long stay in Europe led to his mastery of several European languages and a broader knowledge of European literature than most other American literary figures, what‟s more, this enables him to embody in his poetry chief romantic tendencies as humanitarian attitude, love of beauty, love of nature and love for the past;and it enabled him to introduce American themes to Europe;American Indians, anti-slavery ideas and the scenery of the New World.Longfellow was popular because of his high-mindedness, his spiritual aspiration, his refinement of thought, his refinement of manners, and the gentleness, sweetness and purity of his poetry.(2)Longfellow was the first American poet to write narrative poems.“The Song of Hiawatha” is the first American epic in blank verse about the American Indians.(3)Longfellow‟s style and subject were conventional, especially in comparison with those of Whiteman or modern writers.He wrote in traditional regular meters and feet，34 in regular rhyming schemes.Longfellow did not appeal, as most of his contemporary writers did, for the breaking of American literature from European literature.Usually he wrote about American subjects, but always in European styles.(4)Being a highly learned and cultivated man, and a professor of several languages, Longfellow composed all his work with accurately selected words and delicate expressions.The ideas he expressed are generally simple ones but he expressed them musically and powerfully.(5)The child-like simplicity and detachment from the deep and important problems of contemporary life are perhaps the basic elements Longfellow‟s appeal to the common audience;but on the other hand, they led to a fatal weakness in his work---lack of the depth and insight of a great artist such as Whitman.As a poet, Longfellow failed to reflect in his poetry what he felt personally, instead of what he attained from reading.He enriched his poems with second-hand knowledge.However, in the late 19th century, Longfellow was doubtlessly the most popular American poet and a milestone in the development of American poetry.III.Understanding of his poems: a.A Psalm of Life: It was first published in Voice of the Night in the September edition of New York Monthly in 1839.It is very influential in China, because it is said to the first English poem translated into Chinese.The poem was written in 1838 when Longfellow was struck with great dismay;his wife died in 1835, and his courtship of a young woman was unrequired.However, despite all the frustrations, Longfellow tried to encourage himself by writing a piece of optimistic work.The relationship of life and death is a constant theme for poets.Longfellow expresses his pertinent interpretation to that by warning us that though life is hard and everybody must die, time flies and life is short, yet, human beings ought to be bold “to act,” to face the reality straightly so as to make otherwise meaningless life significant.The poem consists of 9 stanzas in trochaic tetrameters.It is rhymed “abab.”
Part IV.Literature of Realism Teaching Time: 8 teaching hours.Teaching aim and requirement: The students should learn the history, cultural background of the 19th century literature.They should know the basic characteristics, ideas and its influence.They should learn the main literary career of the writers in this period and understand the contents and artistic characteristics of the selected works.Teaching methods: presentation and discussion.Teaching tool: Computer.Key points: realistic writers and their main works.I.Introduction of the historical background
In the United States three fundamental issues reached the breaking point in the period of 1865-1900: the conflict between the agrarian ideal of Jefferson and the industrial ideal of Hamilton, the conflict between the plantation gentility of the South and the commercial gentility of the North, and the conflict between a culturally mature East and a raw and expanding West.The political historians would stress the conflict between the North and the South as basic, the economic historians would stress the conflict between agrarianism and industrialism, and the literary and cultural historians would stress the conflict between the West and East which indicated the decline of romanticism and the rise of realism.Realism came as a reaction against “the lie” of romanticism and sentimentalism as Everett Carter put it in Howells and the age of Realism.The battle between “idealists‟ and “realists” provided the major issue of American literary history after the Civil War(1861-1865).Literature began to pay less attention to general ideas and more to the immediate facts of life.This movement took two forms: interest in one‟s own backyard and experimentation with more literal methods of writing.“Realism is, in the broadest sense, simply fidelity to actuality in its representation in literature.Realist literature is based on the accurate, unromanticized observation of human experiences.It insists on precise description, authentic action and dialogue, moral honesty, and a democratic openness in subject matter and style.As a way of writing, realism has been applied in almost every literature throughout history.But as a literary movement, realism is a period concept.It refers to the approach of realist fiction occurred at the latter part of the 19th century.In part, the rise of realism came as a protest against the falseness and sentimentality which the realists thought they saw in romantic literature.The realists were determined to create anew kind of literature that was completely and totally realistic.The realistic movement found its effective origins in France with Balzac, in Russia with Rurgenev, in England with George Eliot, and in America with W.D.Howells and Mark Twain.Major Features:(1).Realism is the theory of writing in which familiar aspects of contemporary life and everyday scenes are represented in a straightforward or matter-of-fact manner.This is the theory that authors try to use and guide them in their writing.It stresses truthful treatment of material.It is anti-romantic, anti-sentimental, and without abstract interest in nature, death, etc.Mark Twain laughed at people who were caught up in the
world of illusions, who were not mature enough to see real situations.This is one example of the truthful treatment of material.(2)In realist fiction characters from all social levels are examined in depth.Before this time characters served some sort of allegorical or symbolic purpose.The realist writers hold on to characters and keep examining how these people relate to each other.They value the individual very highly, stress the function of environment in shaping character, and take characterization as the center of the story.They have a great concern for the effect of action on characters, and a tendency to explore the psychology of the people in the story.This is a major change, and it is one of the examples the truthful treatment of material, because this is how real life is.(3).Open ending is also a good example of the truthful treatment of material.It is something that might be puzzling to the reader, but it has a theoretical purpose.It tells the reader that life is complex and cannot be fully understood.It is impossible to tie up all the loose ends.Besides , open ending leaves much room for the readers to think over the possible conclusion of the story(4).Realism focuses on commonness of the lives of the common people who are customarily ignored by the arts.Realists are interested in the commonplace, the everyday, the average, the trivial, and the representative.These authors are not interested in characters as symbols.They are interested in common characters and the everyday events which show the average life.By the end of the 19th century in America, the reading public was willing to read about average people just like themselves, and the novels during this time by the realist writers were filled with the stories of common people.They were not stories about kings and queens, princes and princesses, or knights in shining armor.They were about average folks.(5)Realism emphasizes objectivity and offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.Simple, clear, direct prose is the desirable vehicle, and objectivity on the part of the writer the proper attitude.The realist writers are detached observers of life.They are like scientists, making an investigation.The narrator in their works stand back, and try not to let their own emotions gain the way of the report which their works will give the reader.This is very different from the writers before the Civil War.Those writers were constantly eager to tell the reader what they thought about this character, whether they thought the character had done the right thing or the wrong thing.It is up to the reader to decide what it means.Much of this is the influence of the spirit of Darwin, of Darwin‟s investigations.(6).Realism presents moral visions.The author does have a purpose for presenting an objective account of realistic life.The moral sense is something that resides in the author‟s purpose.Realists are ethical writers.Interested in the problems of the individual conscience in conflict with social institutions.Many of their works show the Ameridcan businessman in the conflict over whether he should accept a bribe, whether he should give a bribe, whether he should participate in unfair business practices, etc.Generally, these writers show how the individual conscience wins when he opposes social conventions and social practices.This indicates their disbelief in romantic individualism.These writers are always interested in focusing on the
dilemma.Realists are aware of accepted social standards.They have a strong ethical sense that there are right ways to do things and wrong way to do things.So in other words, the world has some kind of unity, some kind of plan, and they examine people who have the dilemma of trying to follow that plan or do it the wrong way.In their works they re-create real life and show the dilemma that the people are having as they try to understand what life means in an ethical way.They are able to probe deeply into these problems of the human conscience.Their method is completely objective and carries with it the whole theoretical meaning of why people choose to be objective.II.Writers and their works
1.Walt Whitman I.Introduction about his life and works: In 1855 after first reading “Leaves of Grass” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote to Walt Whitman, “ I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of “Leaves of Grass”.I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that American has yet contributed … I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start.”
Whitman was thirty-six years old, and nothing in his “long foreground” suggested that he would write the greatest single book of poetry in America‟s literary history.He was born in 1819 in a rural village in Long island, New York.His parents were semiliterate and provided him with little more than a sympathy for political liberalism and a deistic faith shaped by the teachings of Quakerism.He had only five or sic years of formal schooling, but he was a keen reader of 19th century novelists, the English romantic poets, the “classics” of European literature and the New Testment.His teachers characterized him as a “dreamy and impractical youth” and he drifted through a series of jobs as an office boy, a printer, and as a schoolteacher.He had a natural talent of journalism.For a short time he edited a Long Island weekly newspaper and when he was 22 and attacted to the Bohemian life of Manhatten he went to New York city.In new York, Whitman worked as a printer , an editor and as a free-lance journalist contributing essays, short stories and poems to the popular newspapers and magazines of the 1840‟s when he was 27, he became editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, but after only two years he was dismissed because of his radically liberal political views.He next made a brief visit to New Orleans, but he soon returned to New York City, where he opened a printing office and stationery store and began to write his greatest poetry.In 1855 he published the first edition of “Leaves of Grass”.It contained 12 poems which Whitman himself had reportedly set in type and printed at his own expense.Few copies of his slim book of poetry were sold, yet those who read it were rarely indifferent.His apparently formless free-verse departures from convention, his incantations and boasts, his sexuality and his exotic and vulgar language caused critics.They said his work was a “poetry of barbarism”, “noxious weeds”, “a mass of stupid filth.” Only Emerson praised it.From 1857 to 1859 Whitman edited the Brooklyn Times and reworked “Leaves of Grass,” published expanded second and third editions in 1856 and 1860.When the
Civil /war began, he traveled South to Washington D.C, where he obtained an appointment as a government clerk and worked as a volunteer nurse in nearby military hospital, while living in Washington he published Drum-taps(1856), Civil War poems he gathered into the fourth edition of “Leaves of Grass.”
By the appearance of the fifth edition(1871), Whitman‟s poetry had began to receive increasing critical recognition in England and America.He had come to see his work as a single poem to be revised and improved through a lifetime, but in 1872, when he was 54, he suffered a paralytic stroke.He moved from Washington D.C to his brother‟s home in New Jersey and there declining in his poetic abilities and cared for by a group of devoted friends.Whitman spent most of the remaining 19 years of his life, receiving successive editions of Leaves of Grass until the final version was published shortly before his death in 1892.The more than four hundred poems that had appeared in the nine editions of Leaves of Grass printed in Whitman‟s lifetime were unprecedented in American literature.They were a compound of commonplaces, of disorganized, new experience, of sentimentalism, and of true poetic inspiration.They had ecstatic perceptions of man and nature united and divine.Whitman had an expensive oceanic vision, an urgent desire to incorporate to entire American experience into his life and into poetry.He aspired to be a cosmic consciousness, to experience and glorify all humanity and all human qualities, including “sex, womanhood, maturnity, lustry, animations, organs, acts.‟
He had yearned to be the “bard of democracy”, a public poet celebrated by democratic men “en masse” but while he lived, the most of his poetry was read only by literary enthusiasts and intellectuals.In his final years, Whitman‟s devoted followers solemnized him as “The Good Gray poet”, but he became a national figure as a whiskery sage, but the wide popularity he had got escaped him and he was defeated in his influence on modern American poetry than the work of any other writer.Whitman had been an radically new poet, had made his own rhythms, created his own mythic world, and in writing his sprawing epic of American democracy he helped make possible the free-verse unorthodoxies and private literary intensities of a 20‟s century that would one day came to honor him as one of the great poets of the world.II.His selected poems: 1.Song of Myself: it is a poem consisting of 1345 lines.It is the longest poem in Leaves of Grass.The poet takes for granted the self as the most crucial element of the world and thus sets forth two of his principal beliefs: first, a theory of universality;second, all things are equal n value.In Part 1 of the selected sections, the author unfolds the theme of “ a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars” by cordially celebrating himself.Meanwhile, he “extols the ideals of equality and democracy and celebrates the dignity, the self-reliant spirit and the joy of the common man.‟
In part ten he told us his experience in walking the countryside.He went to the mountain, to the sea and to take part in the marriage ceremony of an Indian couple.At last he told us an experience of saving a runway slave, which showed his attitude
toward slavery b.“I Sit and Look Out: it is a short poem of 10 lines, opens with immediate presentation of the speaker‟s stance and frame of view.The stance, sitting, is fixed, and within the frame are placed “all the sorrows of the world.” Following the opening line, 7 lines, containing 11 juxtaposed parralled clauses, present, in sweeping and scanning way, 1 group of auditory images(I hear，,”)and 10 groups of visual and kinesthetic images(I see…”, I mark…I observe…”)these groups of images are typical ones or representatives of the sorrow of the world.The 9th line, abruptly, an end to the view of the sorrows that occur “without end,” and brings the speaker and the reader back to the stance of the view: a sitting-look-out-upon stance.Upon the stance, the speaker continues to see and hear more of these without end.What he chooses to do or can do is to be silent.What more is heard and seen? Why is he silent? And for how long will he be silent? There is a large blank that the reader should fill in with his own sensation and imagination.c.Beat, Beat, Drums: Walt Whitman
Song of Myself
In the Preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, Whitman says: “ The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity.Nothing is better than simplicity.” “Song of Myself” is characterized by simplicity of simplicity, but also by art of art.The simplicity lies in the simple expression—the wording and the sentencing and the natural lining of the poem.The art lies in the varying rhythms of the poem---the ebb and flow of emotion within it., the shift of mood, the alternation between moments of intensity and moments of relaxation.And the Preface says,” The messages of great poets to each man and woman are,…What we enclose you enclose, What we enjoy you may enjoy.” “Song of Myself” is saturated with the the pride of the persona himself and with the vehemence of the audacity of freedom.And the persona, that is, the “I” in the poem, is Walt Whitman, is every American and is every human being.The vehemence of pride and audacity flows not only in words, but also from and in the sounds of the lines, powerful and torrential lines bursting out in succession.The oneness of the persona with every American man and woman and with every human being, agrees to the varying but unifying rhythm, and to the harmonious melody.And in other words, not only the words describe the oneness, but also the melody expresses the oneness.This is the agreement between sound and sense.The “Song of Myself”, is the song of oneness, in terms of the sense and the sound.I Sit and Look Out
It is a poem of lines, and it opens with immediate presentation of the speaker‟s stance and frame of view.The stance, sitting, is fixed and within the frame are placed “all the sorrows of the world.”
Following the opening line, 7 lines, containing 11 juxtaposed parallel clauses，40 present, in a sweeping and scanning way, 1 group of auditory images(“I hear…)and 10 groups of visual and kinesthetic images(“I see…”, “I mark…”, “I observe…”).These groups of images are typical ones or representatives of the sorrows of the world.The 9th line puts, abruptly, an end to the view of the sorrows that occur “without end”, and brings the speaker and the reader back to the stance of the view: a sitting-look-out-open stance.Upon the stance, the speaker continues to see and hear more of these without end.What he chooses to do or can do is to be silent.What more is heard and seen? Why is he silent? And for how long will he be silent? There is a large blank that the reader should fill in with his own sensation and imagination.Free Verse: Free verse, also known as “open form” verse, is the verse without regular meter, line length, rhyme(scheme), or stanza form, depending on natural speech rhythms related to the actual cadence of the poet expressing himself.It is different from the conventional schemed verse in several aspects: 1.Regular meter, or controlled rhythmic pattern, is essential to conventional poetry;but free verse is based on the irregular rhythmic cadence of the recurrenc, with variation, of phrases and syntactical patterns rather than the recurrent metrical patterns.2.Rhyme occurs in most traditional poetry(except blank verse), and often with various schemes.In free verse, however, rhyme may or may not be present;but when it is used with great freedom.3.In conventional verse, the unit is often foot, or the line;but in free verse, the units are much larger, sometimes being paragraphs or strophes.If the free verse unit is the line, as it is in Whitman, the line is usually determined by qualities of actual speech rhythm and thought, rather than feet or syllable count;thus the line may be as short as one word, or as long as a passage.4.In comparison with conventional verse, free verse may be composed with rhythms and melodies more personal and individual, more appropriate to the subject and the theme.In the hands of the gifted poets free verse very often acquires rhythms and melodies of its own.There is in free verse greater flexibility of the form and greater agreement between sound and sense.There are signs of it in medieval alliterative verse and in the translation of the Authorized King James Bible, which attempts to approximate the Hebrew cadences.The Psalms and The Song of Solomon are noted examples of free verse.Milton opposed the tyranny of strict versification.Milton, in order to set off the vexation, hindrance and constraint of traditional verse, experimented with free verse in Lycidas and Samson Agonistes.After Milton, European poets, including Macpherson, Blake, Arnold, Heine, Goethe, Rimbaud, Hugo, and Baudelaire, continued the experiment with free verse.And the French poets of the late 19th century established the vers libre movement, from which the term free verse comes.41 Walt Whitman and Gerald Manley Hopkins did more and better than anyone else to develop it to maturity;and Whitman startled the literary world with Leaves of Grass, by using lines of variable lengths which depended for their rhythmic effect on cadenced units and on repetition, balance, and variation of words, phrases, clauses, and lines, instead of on recurrent metric effect.At the end of the 19th century, free verse was already a popular genre of poetry.Emily Dickinson(1830-1886)I.her life story: Emily Dickinson , born in Amherst, Massachusetts on Dec.!9, 1830, was the best poetess American ever created.She was a daughter of a prominent lawyer and politician.She did not receive much formal education but read widely at home.Actually, during the narrow span of her lifetime, she kept staying at home except for a few short trips to Boston or Philadelphia.Emily Dickinson was a witty woman, sensitive, full of humanity and with a genius for poetry.While she was living in almost total seclusion, she wrote in secret whatever she was able to feel, to see, to hear and whatever she was able to imagine.She wrote whenever and wherever.Although she guarded her poems even from her family, 1775 poems were discovered and published after her death.However, as the only noteworthy woman poet in American literature of the 19th century, she had only seven of her poems published during her lifetime, and it was not until the beginning of the 20th century that her genius was widely recognized.2.Features of Emily Dickinson‟s Poems In subject matter Emily Dickinson was very similar to the great romantic poets of her time.Her poems are short, many of them being based on a single image or symbol.But within her little lyrics she wrote about some of the most important things in life: love, nature, morality and immortality.She wrote about success, which she thought she never achieved;and she wrote about failure, which she considered her constant companion.She wrote of these things so brilliantly that she is now ranked as one of American‟s greatest poets.Poetry is for Dickinson a means to attain pleasure, away to preach her doctrine, and a medium to express her world outlook, an outlet for her despair and a remedy to pacify her soul.Her life experience fostered her belief as an existentialist as well as a great poet.Despite her seclusion of life, Emily Dickinson covered a wide range of subjects in poetry.Her favorite subjects are love, death or natural beauty.In her writing she wrote about life and death, expecting to understand the meaning of life by understanding the meaning of death.Living in the 19th century, c comparatively religious era, she did not belong to any organized religion.However, she wrote of God, man and nature;she probed into the spiritual unrest of man and often doubted about the existence and benevolence of God, because she felt that wild nature was her church and she was able to converse directly with God there.Emily Dickinson was a poet who could express feelings of deepest poignancy in terms of the true and wide saying, often in an aphoristc style.Her gemlike
poems are all very short, but fresh and original, marked by the vigor of her images, the daring of her thought and the beauty of her expression.Emily Dickinson wrote in the conventional metrical form, though she did not always strictly observes the rules of versification.Emily Dickinson defamiliarised conventional poetic form, deliberately overusing capitalization and deahes, to make her poems looking strange.In some way, she is very much similar to the style of John „Donne.II.Selected Poems: I Die for Beauty(449)Stanza 1: I died pursuing the beauty of art and immediately as I became accustomed to the new circumstance of a tomb.I was told that there was another who died for truth and arrived in the next room.Stanza 2: I died for beauty and he died for truth.Since “beauty is truth, and truth beauty” we are as close as brothers, or like twins.Stanza3: The two of us are like kinsmen who met at night, and we talked in separated rooms for a very long time until we have harmoniously united into one and have been completely forgotten by the human world.I Heard a Fly buzz---when I died---(465)Stanza 1: When I was dying, I heard the buzz of a fly which reminded me of the stillness in the air.Stanza 2: Before the absolute power of death, I was helpless, so were my relatives and friends.They could do nothing more than gathering around me, tearless and breathless, and watching the arrival of death to me.Stanza 3: When I was abandoning this material world, a fly comes to me.Comment on the poem
This poem is the description of the moment of death.The poetess made use of a very strange image of a fly to symbolize her last touch with the human world and, moreover, the perspective of a decaying corpse.The fly appeared as something which is able to fly between the two worlds of life and death.Besides, the word “fly” is very cleverly used in the work.On the one hand, it refers to that insect;on the other hand, it may indicate “free flying”.Before death, the “fly” was buzzing around, I hear it;after death, it may lead me to go far and forever, I am flying.The fly is inconsequently, of little importance---implying perhaps that death is the same.Because I Could Not Stop for Death(712)Stanza 1: The angel of death, in the image of a kind person, comes in a carriage for the sake of Immortality and the poet.Stanza 2: To show my politeness to god of death, I gave up my work and my enjoyment of life as well;I give up my life.Stanza 3: The journey of our carriage implied the experience of human life;school implies time of childhood;the fields of gazing grain, for youth and adulthood;while the setting sun, for old age.Stanza 4: Probably we may say the sun sets before we reach the destination---the
night falls, death arrives.I felt a fear and chilly after death, for my shroud is thin and my scarf too light.Despite the description of “death”, the usual gloomy and horrifying atmosphere is lightened by the poetess with the elegantly fluttering clothing she describes.Stanza 5.Several centuries had passed since the arriveal of death upon me.However, I felt it is shorter than a day.On that day I suddenly realized that death is the starting point for eternity, and the carriage is heading towards it.Comment on the poem
The poem is discussing death, a very gloomy subject, but it is done with a rather light tone.The tone is light just because the author does not take death as a catastrophe;instead, she treats the angel of death as a very polite gentleman, as a long-missing guest, giving up her work and leisure, putting on her fine silky dresses, she accompanies death in the same carriage to eternity.All the beauty of this work lies in the poetess‟ open-minded attitude towards death.Mark Twain(1835-1910)
I.Introduction about his life: As one of American‟s first and foremost realists and humorist, Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Langhore Clemens, usually wrote about his own personal experiences and things he knew about from firsthand experience.His life spanned the two Americans, the frontier America that produced so much of the national mythology and the emerging urban industrial giant of the 20th century.At the heart of Twain‟s achievement is his creation of Tom Sawyer and huck finn, who embody that mythic America midway between the wildness and the modern superstate.Twain, the third of five children, was born in the village of Florida, Missouri and grew up in the larger river town of Hannibal, that mixture of idyll and nightmare in and around which Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn live out their adventure-filled summers.Hannibal was dusty and quiet with large forests nearby which Twain knew as a child and which he uses in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn(1884)when Pap kidnaps Huck and hides out in the great forest.The steamboats which passed daily were the fasination of the town and became the subject matter of Twain‟s Life on the Mississippi(1883).The town of Hannibal is immortalized as St.Petersburg in Twain‟s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer(1876).Twain‟s father was ambitious and suspected but only mildly successful country lawyer and storekeeper.He was a highly intelligent man who was a stern disciplinarian.Twain‟s mother, a southern belle in her youth, had a natural sense of humor, who was emotional and known to be particularly fond of animals and unfortunate human beings.Although the family was not wealthy, Twain apparently had a happy childhood.However, Twain‟s father died when he was twelve years old and for the next ten years, Twain was apprentice printer and then a printer both in Hannibal and in New York City, Hoping to find his fortune he conceived a wild scheme of making a fortune in South America.On a riverboat to New Orleans, he met a famous riverboat pilot who promised to teach him the trade for five hundred dollars.44 After completing his training, Twain was a riverboat pilot for four years and, during the time, he became familiar with all of the towns along the Mississippi River which acquainted with every type of character which inhabits his various novels, especially Huck Finn.When the Civil War destroyed the riverboat business, he went to Nevada with his brother , Orion.From there, he went to California, where he looked on a newspaper.In 1865 he became nationally famous with is short story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog.Based upon stories he heard in California mining camps, the story is about an apparently innocent stranger who cheats a famous frog rather racer and beats him.The stranger fills the stomach of the other man‟s frog with tiny metal balls.It is a typical western humor story called a “hoax”.Like the western humorists, Twain‟s work is filled with stories about how ordinary people trick experts or how the weak succeed in “hoaxing” the story.Twain‟s most famous character, Huck Finn is a master at this.As a journalist, he went to the Sandwish Islands in 1866 and to Europe and the Holy Land in 1867.The latter of the two provided him with the experiences which he shaped into his first book, The Innocents Abroad,.Roughing It, his narrative of pioneers striving to establish civilization on the frontier, appeared in 1872, and his first novel-length fiction written with Charles Duddley Warner, The gilded Age:, came in 1873.It was one of the first novels which creates a picture of the entire nation, rather than of just one region.Although it has a number of Twain‟s typically humrous characters, the real theme is America‟s loss of its old idealism.The book describes how a group of young people are morally destroyed by the dream of becoming rich.III.Analysis on his “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”
The boye hero, Tom Sawyer, is Mark Twain himself(although he wrote in his preface that Tom is “a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I know:)Tom‟s leading trait is his faith and delight in the romantic world which adults call made-believe.Tom loves the pomp and valor of Arthurian chivalry;the stout independence and generous fellowship of Robin Hood;the swagger and audasity of pirates and robbers and their assurance that somewhere there are treasures to be seized.He defied the adult nations that counter these: that virtue consists less in pomp and valor than in soberness and submission;that the outlawry of merry men who plunder sheriffs and fat abbots is courageous, and that right conduct is reverence and obedience to rules and officials;that violent enterprise to seize treasures other men hold is wickedness bound to be punished, and that in fact pirates‟ gold is not worth seizing anyhow.Tom‟s adventures are a series of triumphs over the adult world which he defies.As a knight he boasts his rivals and is a gallant champion of his lady.As a humane outlaw he flouts the authorities and tricks the, and rectifies a miscarrage of official justice.As a treasure-hunter, he seizes a glittering gold.Tom‟s companion in these adventures, Huck Finn, belongs neither to Tom‟s world of romantic illusion nor to the social world of convention which Tom resists.He belongs instead to a world of simple nature which detects both the unreality of Tom‟s world and the artificiality of the adult world.Huck, as a pauper and outcast on the frontier of civilization, has had to scramble too hard amongst elemental things to see
anything in life but hard facts incapable of romantic transformation.He has grown up like a weed of gardeners and thinks it on the whole better to acknowledge himself a weed and try to escape the gardener‟s attention than to try to take on the character of a cultivated specimen.Tom and Huck are allies against the adult world of convention and responsibility, but they do not inhabit the same world, and Huck has almost as much difficulty in adjusting his naturalism to Tom‟s romanticism as he has in adjusting it to social conventions.When his literalism comes up against Tom‟s romanticism, and his nature against the village conventions, he has to reject the romantic and the conventional because his literalism and nature are the only things that work for him.He does this, not with bravado as a deliberate choice of the superior thing, but with humanity as a necessary choice of an inferior thing.Tom Sawyer is a story written for boys, full of the horror and joys of childhood flowing on the surface of expressions, generations after generations of young people have held it dear to their hearts.III.Analysis on the selected tow chapters.IV.Questions for discussion:
1.Is the novel only childhood story? 2.Compare your own childhood life with that of Tom‟s.Further Reading: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.O Henry and short story
1.his life: O.Henry is most commonly associated with the short story and masterful ironic “O Henry twist”.William Sidney Porter was born in North Carolina and without much schooling and virtually orphan worked in his uncle‟s drugstore, learning much of human nature.He spent all of his free time reading books, and by the time he was 20, he was still small, weighing less than a hundred pound, gradually retreating into a shy, poverty-stricken world of fantasy escape.He followed several occupations, being a bookkeeper, a drugstore clerk, and a Texas Ranger.During this time, he developed talents for cartooning and singing.In 1887 he met Athol Esta with whom he became enamored, but her family was opposed to the marriage.As a result, the two eloped.In 1894, he founded The Rolling Stone, a comic magazine which soon failed.O.Henry got to know New York and its inhabitants, to know its surface thoroughly by wandering about, by drifting into conversations with strangers on the streets or in the parks, by observing with an accurate eye and ear sights and sounds, of Broadway, Greenwich village, Wall Street.After gathering material on every aspect of New York life, O.Henry became a salaried writer and soon emerged as a central figure in the peak period of the American magazine short story.From that time on he was a wealthy man, living luxuriously and drinking heavily.In 1907 he married his second wife Sara
Lindsay Coleman.He was never a strong man physically and his exciting life eventually wore him out before his time.He died in drunkenness.His work is full of humor, his stories are amusing, flippant, flat, biting and are filled with irony, sentiment, and pathos.Drawing directly from his experience with many odd jobs, he combined realism with a world of his own, reflecting a fatalistic view of life.There is no great concern with unchanging human problems, and he had no firm moral messages.His work is typically American, and he gives us a good idea of various types of people in the United States.The theme of his stories is often based on some self-sacrificing member of a family who is undergoing hardship to help a close relative.He also addresses questions of loneliness, of desolate people, of grotesque underlings.2.his style: O.Henry‟s style is direct, pared of all unnecessary verbiage, except for occasional use of exaggeration or polysyllables.His use of dialect is completely authentic, in classic realist fashion.He uses slang to gain force and humor.Highly skilled in the use of Southen dialect, he was never identified with the local color movement, for he drew from too many sources to be identified with any one.He is the master of surprise, though occasionally he falls into cheapness just as his characters taken to the extreme become caricatures.His first collected work, Cabbage and Kings(1904)is a series of South American tales linked together by a loose plot construction.The characters Americans, revolutionists, patriots and even president of a mythical republic, belong to vaudeville or the comic opera.With The Four Million(1906)O.Henry produced his first book of New York stories, some of which as The gift of the Magi, The Skylight Room, The Cop and the Anthem, Springtime a la Carte and The furnished Room were hardly to be surpassed.Irishman frequents of cafes and of boarding house, white-collar men and women, art students, writers, factory girls, millionaires, cops and crooks jostle each other in these pages whose human comedy and tragedy mingle against the glittering, beautiful ignoble, crowded, lonely city.“The Gift of Magi “contains the most famous of O.Henry‟s trick endings.This Yuletide narrative tells of how a nearby penniless young husband and wife are each determined to buy the other a sactable Christmas present.He sells his watch to buy her a set of combs, she has her beautiful hair cut off and sells the tresses to buy him a watch fob.His characters, lain, simple people and his plots , depending often on the surprising ending, have little diversification, but he was skilled at ringing the changes on a few themes.The gift of Magi and The Furnished Room are among the best known of the tales that illustrate this technique of ironic coincidence and the surprising ending.3.Analysis of The Cop and the Anthem The story adopted one section of wanderer Soapy‟s life to explore the social life
of American society and attack the darkness of its social system.Soapy has no place to sleep and in the winter he had to go to prison for three months.In order to be arrested, he tried to break the shopping window, tease woman, eat without paying and took the other‟s umbrella, but he failed to arise public notice.When he heard the sound from the church and wanted to become good, he was arrested.Through this section of life, the author described the poor destiny of low people.The author adopted a light and humorous tone to tell the story.The humorous style is shown from three aspects.First, the social position and the plot provided the reasonable condition for his humorous sense.In the story Soapy is not a murderer, neither a gentleman, he is a wanderer, no one showed any attention to him.He himself is a thing to be teased.Although he wandered here and there, he didn‟t lose his own dignity.He thought that there were two ways waiting for him, one is to go to the charity, but it is shameful;the other is to go to the prison for three months.Compared with these two, he chose the latter.He designed several tricks which are very common in everyday life.On the other hand, these crimes are not serious to satisfy the condition for three months in prison.He didn‟t have the idea of killing others, or commit serious crime.The tricks suit the case to create the light tone.The other aspect of the humorous character lies in the plot.The sudden change of the plot forms the other element of the humorous.One scene happens that Soapy lies on the bench in the Square.The Square is his home, where he was doing one thing---turn round.Winter is coming and he had to find a place for winter.What should he do? People expect Soapy to find a good place.However, to our unexpectation, he thought of the prison.This is the first turning point, which is unexpected but reasonable.The method is quite familiar for him.Which way he chose had a suspicion and it hinted that it would be uneasy.The story tells 6 scenes to show his effort for being put into prison.The order of the scenes is natural and humorous.As a wanderer, what attracts him most is to eat his full and be sent into prison.This is one stone to kill two birds.But as soon as he entered the restaurant, his broken trousers betrayed him, he was thrown out.And then at the corner of the street, he broke the window of the shop and thought the policeman would catch him, but the police even didn‟t suspect him, because he waited for the cop to arrest him.This is abnormal according to the common thinking.The two different ideas make the scene fantastic and laughable.He went to another restaurant and after easting, the waiters only thrown him out and didn‟t call the police, because they know police would not bother such trival things.The development of the plot is quite different as he planned.The next scenery appeared when he tried to tease a woman but to his surprise he met a prostitute, so he had to escape.But he made efforts to escape.This is particularly funny.The other two cases also failed.The last case happened at the moment when he decided to correct and make a man himself.This time he was sentenced three months in prison.This tells us that the man like soapy did not have the chance to
be corrected.The story was humorous for its language.The whole tone of the story is light, humorous.A dead leaf was called Jack Frost‟s card;his door is North wind, to create the light atmosphere.This made us not feel so heavy and sentimental because the coming of the winter.And then soapy moved uneasily.He decided to solve the problem in “a singular committee of ways and means.” The words made it serious, but he made the decision of going into prison, which is funning.Another is the reverse of speaking.He exaggerates the thing which is not good.Prison is not a place connected with good feeling, to Soapy it is an ideal place that he dreams of for he could have meals and place to spend the long nights.The praise to it shows the poor people‟s living condition and satire towards American reality.Each time soapy failed the author would use the words to show his strong desire for the prison.The sharp contrast used in the story shows the main theme of the story which has the strong force to make our readers feel that we are within the streets of New York to witness the life of the common people.1.Do you like the writing style of the story? Why or why not?
2.Read more of his stories.Naturalism I.Introduction
(1)“Naturalism” is an extraordinarily elastic term;it is applied to many varied writers and is often defined differently by the very novelists who call themselves naturalists.One is tempted to think that it would have been far better for literary criticism had the term never been coined.However it is by now widely used and misused that it seems necessary to examine the often contradictory elements implied in its application and to see why Norris, Crane and London have frequently been classified as naturalists.The term was introduced to the United States by Frank Norris at the end of the 1880‟s.He had spent a year studying art in Paris and had been much impressed by Emile Zola, the French novelist who first formulated and applied the new literary theory.Like many other European writers and artists, Zola had been impressed by Darwin‟s theory of evolution.This explained men‟s origin in the animal world and his development from a higher primate into a Neanderthal man, a caveman and finally a fully human being.Darvin also enphasezed the role played by the struggle for existence in creating or destroying difficult conditions---survival and had descendants, which those poorly adapted to their surroundings died out leaving no one to carry on their kind.This completely contradicted the old idea of man as a being especially created by God who---according to the Christian and many other religions---was made up of two quite separate parts, an immortal spiritual soul and a mortal physical body.In the
religious interpretation of human life, the spirit was in the body somewhat as wine might be contained in a bottle.If the bottle were to be broken, the spirit might be poured into some other container or might continue to exist in heaven when no need for any container as a liquid does when frozen or jelled.But evolution taught that man was simply a part of nature just as a fish or a bird or an ape was.And like any other animal he was governed by his instincts and natural desires for food, warmth and sexual satisfaction.It was therefore foolish to speak of a struggle within man between his higher and lower nature, between conscience and desire.It was also foolish to praise or blame man for what his nature made him to.One may kill a tiger to prevent his eating a sheep, but one cannot blame the tiger for his attempt to do so.One may think a mouse stupid for running into a trap after a piece of cheese but one cannot criticize it for the lack of wisdom.The naturalistic novelist should therefore describe people simply as animals, impelled to act as they did because of the appetites and urges formed by heredity and environment, these were as much a part as their size or strength and more intelligent would win in the struggle for existence while the weaker and slower would be destroyed.Neither was blame worthy or praiseworthy.No one was morally responsible;people did what they had to do and were fortunate or unfortunate.This is all that the philosophy of naturalism actually says.But that philosophy was adapted by Zola and other writers it began to imply a great deal more---and sometimes a great deal that really contra-directed its original meaning.In reaction against the conventional literature which avoided any reference to the “private parts” of the body, or any description of most bodily functions, the naturalists tended to dwell on those things and on sexual desire to emphasize man‟s animal nature.Furthermore, since life could be observed more nakedly in the crowded homes and work places of the poorest people and since the lower depths of society had long been forbidden ground to the novelist, the young naturalist were likely to write about the slums or Negro quarters, or jobs which demanded great physical efforts and hardship.One of the most important of Zola‟s novel “Germinal” deals with life in and around a coal mine where the laborers are forced to work desperately hard in miserable conditions.The heat underground is so intense that women as well as men and children were forced to strip, going on all fours to drag heavy loads through tunnels.Their homes were also unspeakably dirty and crowded with no sanitary facilities.There was no privacy for sexual intercourse or any other bodily functions.As Zola describes mines he shows them becoming as shameless physically as animals defecting and copulating in public.But here we find that Zola himself departs from the original theory---as do most other naturalistic novelists.He is so sorry for the poor mines that he ardently wishes for an uprising to change these conditions and the book becomes a revolutionary book, forcing the reader too to long for a revolution.(2)American Naturalists:
篇6：《美国的利益集团》教案1
美国的利益集团（2006.3.17./505）
一、【课程标准】：
二、【新课教学】：
（一）、名目繁多的利益集团
课堂探究：镜头一：“美国商会”在美国社会上有很大势力。它代表着近二十万家公司，成员包括几千个地区商会及一千个行业商会。镜头二：“全国步枪协会”宣称，公民持枪权不受限制是其奋斗目标。尽管美国也存在许多反持枪权的利益集团，但它们从来敌不过“全国步枪协会”及其在国会的“盟军”，因为“全国步枪协会”的经济政治实力是前者望尘莫及的。据称，该协会拥有四百万名会员，美国民间共有枪支两亿支，持枪人数约六千五百万。
“美国商会”、“全国步枪协会”等都是颇有影响的利益集团，它们分别代表哪些人的 利益? 利益集团对美国的政治生活有什么影响?
1、利益集团在美国政治生活中的地位及其产生和影响：（1）、地位：利益集团是美国政治的三大支柱之一：
在美国的政治万花筒中，利益集团的活动特别引人注目。它们无处不在，已经深深地渗入美国行政机构、国会和司法系统之中，甚至与政党、政府共同成为美国政治的三大支柱。（2）、产生：利益集团是美国政治制度的产物、是为维护资本主义制度的有效形式
利益集团是美国政治制度的产物，实际影响较大的往往是企业集团或行业性组织，而其领导阶层大多来自所谓中上层社会。作为维护资本主义制度的有效形式，它受到政府的鼓励。（3）、影响：
少数人利益凌驾于多数人利益之上的各种政策出台，常常同利益集团的游说活动直接相关。可以说，利益集团是透视美国政治结构的一扇窗户。围绕着“谁掌管美国”的话题，美国人有这样几种观点。
课堂探究：围绕“谁掌握美国”的话题，美国人有这样几种观点 观点一：人民权力论
过选举参与国家政治，人民拥有国家权力，可以指导、控制政府。政府代表人民的利益，按人民的意志办事。观点二：精英权贵论
一群为数不多的精英权贵控制着政府、工业、贸易和劳工组织，支配着美国的政治体制。政府各部门仅是他们的代理人和利益传输工具。观点三：利益集团论
美国社会会被有组织的、势力强大的集团支 配着，政府基本上成了它们当中的掮客或裁判，有时它自己还作为一个利益集团参与政治。每一个利益集团为自己集团的利益而工作，政府则从中协调，促使各集团妥协。
你是否赞同上述某个观点?说说你的理由。
2、利益集团：（1）、产生的原因——形成集团，影响政府决策，维护自身利益。
在美国，相对于国家决策体系而言，一个人、一家公司的力量太弱小，没有足够的能量影响政府。于是，利益相同、思想接近的人组织起来，形成一个个集团，影响政府决策，维护自身利益。（2）、政治利益集团——利益集团中的一种利益集团是拥有共同利益的人或组织组成的团体，如果向政府机构提出要求，就变成了政治利益集团。（3）、类型：美国的利益集团名目繁多，规模不一，目前有数万个。三分之二的美国人，至少参加了一个利益集团。见课本P58
①按性质分：完全私营、公共性和公私兼有
②按目的分：以经济为目的、以政治为目的和以社会公益为目的。
（二）、利益集团的活动方式
1、利益集团用以影响美国政治的主要因素：金钱、人数和知识。
在美国政治舞台上，任何一个利益集团要发挥其影响，都离不开金钱、人数和知识。财力雄厚的利益集团主要依靠金钱干预政治。那些没有经济实力的利益集团，如果能够通过其成员拉到大量选票，政治家们也不敢轻视它们。此外，能够向政府官员及时提供所需的知识也很重要，许多法案的起草和修订工作是由利益集团完成的。
课堂探究：镜头一：全国有色人种协会在美国人权运动中曾发挥过重要作用。从20世纪30年代开始，全国有色人种协会不断向法院提起诉讼，控告一些州的种族隔离法违宪，1954年终于取得决定性胜利。当年，最高法院在布朗案中，裁决种族隔离法违反宪法。镜头二：2000年5月14日“母亲节”这天，在一个名为“百万母亲”团体的民权运动的领袖们挽臂并肩举行游行组织下，美国成千上万的母亲及其支持者参加了在首都华盛顿和其他六十多个城市举行的“百万母亲大游行”活动，呼吁美国国会尽快通过更加严格的控制枪支法案，以遏制猖獗的枪支犯罪，还孩子们一个安全和平的社区环境和学习环境。
镜头三：金钱永远是利益集团影响政治人物的重要手段。在1990年大选中，约四千六百个利益集团搞过政治捐款。
镜头四：美国的思想库大多是由大公司赞助的，它们的人员到国会作证，向议员提供专业知识，也发表研究成果，影响公众观点。传统基金会，就是美国一家保守的思想库。
联系上述材料，说说利益集团是通过什么方式影响政府决策的。
2、利益集团影响政府的手段：——直接游说、间接游说、游行示威、影响选举和承担法庭诉讼等。
利益集团影响政府的手段无所不有，就其合法手段而言，主要有直接游说、间接游说、游行示威、影响选举和承担法庭诉讼等。其中，直接游说是指利益集团直接对国会议员、政府官员表达其观点，以图影响政策；间接游说是指通过影响选民来影响决策者。
（三）、利益集团的政治作用
1、积极作用：（1）、充当公民与政府间桥梁的作用；（2）、分享国家权力，相互制衡，有助于维护美国资本主义制度。
利益集团是随着美国政治体制的建立而产生的，与国会、总统一样古老。利益集团在美国政治中起着充当公民与政府间桥梁的作用。资产阶级各派及其代理人通过利益集团竞争和分享国家权力，相互制衡，有助于维护美国资本主义制度。
2、消极作用：利益集团的虚伪性及其在美国政治中的消极作用，也是不容忽视的。（1）、只有少数利益集团对国家决策产生决定性作用——从利益集团对国家决策的影响看；
在众多利益集团中，工商企业利益集团、农场主利益集团分别由大企业家和大农场主组成，财力雄厚，与政府决策者关系密切，因而具有比其他利益集团更大的影响。而代表劳动人民的众多利益集团影响力却很小。
（2）、利益集团作为公众参与政治的“中间人”，垄断了公众接近政府权力的途径——从利益集团与公民的关系看； 在利益集团多如牛毛的美国，普通公民只能通过利益集团提出政治诉求，公民个人直接参与政治的权利反而被削弱了。（3）、各种利益集团内部很少有什么民主机制，大都为少数人所控制——从利益集团内部的管理机制看；
广大群众常常对某些组织寄予期望，投人力量，但是他们的利益却往往得不到关注。（4）、利益集团为政府腐败提供了肥沃的土壤。利益集团的活动方式，在很大程度上是用金钱购买政治影响力，是一种滋养腐败的行为——从利益集团对政府的负面影响看。
实际上，在国会议员、政府官员与利益集团之间，已经形成一种相互依赖的共生关系。课堂探究：根据课本P60的图示，说说下面两种观点争论的焦点。你认为哪种观点更有道理?试对它们加以剖析。观点一：利益集团把政府的情况转达给公民，又把集团及选民的意向转达给政府。利益集团作为公民参政的渠道，使普通公民对美国政府决策起着日益重要的作用。
观点二：利益集团之间的竞争最终导致少数人说了算。政府不能保护人民生存、自由和追求幸福的权利，而只会维护某些强大利益集团的权利。
3、利益集团机制的隐蔽性、欺骗性及其实质：
美国政坛中的利益集团机制，是资产阶级控制国家机器的一种特殊形式，具有相当强的隐蔽性和欺骗性。表面上看，利益集团是所谓的“民意代表”，向政府反映各阶层、群体的观点和利益，实质上是资产阶级在“民意”的幌子下控制权力。
专题活动建议：结合对美国的两党制、选举制的分析，以普通公众能否通过这些制度真正享有民主权和为题，举办一场讨论会。
针对美国国内近年来发生的某一重大事件，以剖析美国“三权分立”的实质为主题，撰写一篇小论文。
◇本框题小结：
◇4个消极作用：即美国利益集团的4个消极作用
◇3个因素：即利益集团用以影响美国政府的3个主要因素 ◇2个特点：即利益集团机制具有相当强的隐蔽性和欺骗性。
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