A brief summary of American literature.docx

1、A brief summary of American literatureA brief summary of American literature CONTEHT1. Abstract 2. Brief introduction3. American Romanticism 3.1 background of American Romanticism 3.2 major characteristic of the Romanticism 3.3 representative writers and works4. American Realism 4.1 background of Re

2、alism 4.2 major characteristic of Realism 4.3 representative writers of Realism5. American Naturalism 5.1 background of Naturalism 5.2 major characteristic of Naturalism 5.3 representative writers of Naturalism6. American Modernism 6.1 background of Modernism 6.2 major characteristic of Modernism 6.

3、3 representative writers of Modernism7. Conclusions8. Biographies1. Abstract In this paper, I am going to make a brief summary of American Literature; mainly well catch a glimpse of American Literature of the period from American Romanticism to Modernism. And I will divided it into four parts, inclu

4、ding Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism and modernism, and introduce them one by one. To achieve this goal, I will mainly deal with the aspects of the back ground: the major characteristic, the most representative writers and their major achievements. And finally I will make a conclusion on American L

5、iterature on its development and main features and the similarities and differences between American and European Literature, especially British Literature.Key words: American Romanticism; American Realism; American Naturalism; American Modernism;在这篇论文中我将主要从美国的浪漫主义到现代主义这个文学发展阶段出发，对美国文学的发展史做一个简要的介绍和总

6、结。按照不同阶段的不同特点，这个文学时期由主要分文四个文学阶段：浪漫主义，现实主义，自然主义，现代主义。这里我将主要从三个方面对没一个时期的文学现象进行总结分析- 历史背景、主要的特征和思想以及代表作家以及代表作。最后还将对美国文学的发展和特征进行整体的分析总结，并简要的对比美国文学和欧洲文学特别是英国文学的异同点.关键字：美国浪漫主义；美国现实主义；美国自然主义；美国现代主义2. Introduction The United States is a very young country and its literature has a history of only some 400 ye

7、ars. Despite its short history, American literature, like the nation, has rapidly developed like mushrooms and soon reaches very high level. Generally, we divide American literature into several ages, such as Early American Literature, including literature of the Colonial Period and literature of En

8、lightenment and Revolution, Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism and so on. Here I mainly talk about the literature of the Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism and Modernism. It is well acknowledged that American Literature reached very high standard in the 19s and early 20s, which covers the ages of Romant

9、icism, Realism, Naturalism and modernism. The American Romantic Period stretched from the end of 18th century to the break of the Civil War in 1865; the age of Realism covered the years between 1865 and 1914; the period between the two world wars saw the domination of American Modernism.Those period

10、s have witnessed the blooming of American Literature and crowd of masters and handful splendid works.3. American Romanticism3.1 backgrounds There are plenty of factors that contributed to the prosperity of American Literature. America won its independence and free from the control of Britain at the

11、end of 18th century. After the 1812 war against England, the United States was finally free. The severance of political tied with the Empire left some important legacies which worked as solid foundation to promote the U.S. as a future world leading nation. The United States promoted itself a beacon

12、of morality, and its strive for liberty and prosperity and its richness in natural resource provided the new born country with a bright future. The industrial revolution had a resounding effect on American economy and urbanization. The rising materialism and focus on business at the cost of the mind

13、 and the spirit was igniting reform movements all over the nation. Government made laws to protect writers rights, and readers, especially women, were eager to expend their minds. After the found of the United States, immigrants flooded into the promising land and the population of the nation was in

14、credibly expanded, from only 5,308,483 inhabitants in 1800 to 76,000,000 just in a few decades. Mass immigrants from different continent made American a society full of diversity and this also contributed greatly to the prosperity of its literature. 3.2 CharacteristicsRomanticism is a term that is a

15、ssociated with imagination and boundlessness and in critical usage is in contract with classicism, which is commonly associated with reason and restriction. A romantic attitude may be detected in literature in the 18th and 19th centuries in reaction to more rational literary, philosophic, artistic,

16、religious and economic standards. The most profound and comprehensive idea of romanticism is the version of a greater personal freedom of individual The romanticism emphasizes expressiveness, imagination, simplicity and the worship of nature. Romanticists held that writers should not express their e

17、motions, feelings, impressions, instincts, intuition, or their belief in their works instead of the imitation of the classical writers. American Romanticism shares many characteristics with British Romanticism. It was greatly inspired by British romanticists such as Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats e

18、tc. while American Romanticism displays feature of its own: it was essence the expression of ”a new experience and a new country” and contains an alien quality. Also, the experience of pioneering to the west and the national identity shows through in their works such as the imagination of frontiersm

19、an and the prototype of cowboy. American Romanticism advocated spiritual intuition or self-individualism and socially searched for fairness, equality and freedom and was politically aggressive. The “self” in the consciousness of the individual emerged as the core of the American Romantic writers.3.3

20、 Major writers and worksThere are many famous writers at that time and among them are novelists as Washington Irving, James Fennimore cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, non-fiction prose writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and poets as Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman a

21、nd Emily Dickenson. The American novels of this period were inclined to express what Hawthorne called the “Romance “. Here I am going to introduce some of them to you. Washington Irving was born on April 30, 1783, in New York and was the first U.S. author to achieve international renown. He was also

22、 considered “The Father of American Literature” or “The Father of American Letters,” as well as one of the inventors of modern short essay and fiction. He is best known for his collected works Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gen,（1802-1803） Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleep Hollow collected in th

23、e Sketch Book (1820). Washington Irving won bountiful glories in the hall of literature.Nathaniel Hawthorne ranks among the best 19th century American novelists. He was born in 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts. His famous works includes Mosses from an Old Manse and The Scarlet Letter. Most of his works

24、 were set on New England. He was the first major novelists in English to combine morality with art.Henry David Thoreau was an American poet, essayist, philosopher, naturalist and environmental scientist. He was born to a French descent family in concord, Massachusetts in 1817. Thoreau has been regar

25、ded as a prophet of individualism in American literature. His masterpiece Walden is now been talked everywhere.Edgar Allan Poe, born in Boston, on January 19, 1809, was an American poets, critic and short story writer. The poems “Annabel Lee” and “To Helen” are the most famous ones.4. American Reali

26、sm4.1 backgroundsAt the year 1865, American Civil War ended with the north winning the war. After the civil war, Americans economy developed rapidly and society became more and more complex. And the once flourished idealistic romanticism could no longer fully reflect the complex reality and the fast

27、 changing society. The civil war had been, at least in part, a straggle between the concept of agrarian democracy and that of industrial and capitalistic democracy, and the result of the northern victory was the triumphant emergence of individualism and the promotion of the “rag to rich” concept. Th

28、is industrialism was to bring great mechanical and material advances for the nation but it was also to bring great difficulties in the form of severe labor disputes, economic depression, and strikes that erupted in violence. America drew far away from its original dream. The unfairness of the distri

29、bution of wealth made the contract of the society sharper. As Carnegie wrote: The contract between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us today measures the change that has come with civilization. This change, however, is not to be deplored, but welcome as highly benefi

30、cial.And after the American Civil War, issues concerning regions became more and more serious, and American regionalism became more popular after the Civil War.4.2 characteristics Realistic fiction is thought to be written to give the effect that it represents life and the social world as it seems t

31、o be to the common reader, evoking the sense that its characters might in fact exist, and that such things might happen in real life. Realism, as a literary movement, arose in reaction against “the lie” of the romanticism and sentimentalism.Generally, those realistic writers writing concerned with t

32、he life of a small town. Realism seeks to portray American life as it really is, insisting that the ordinary, the local, and even the vulgar and the coarse are suitable for artistic portray as the magnificent as the and the remote. Apart from the truthfulness of detail, typical character in the typical environment is an essential quality of realism. 4.3 Major writers and works.The great authorial triumvirates of American realism were Williams Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and Henry James. They moved well beyond a superficial portray of 19th century