American Literature
美国文学史及选读
外国语学院 王秀银
I Class Requirements
1.One term paper (less than 500 words typed paper
2.Two presentations in class 30%
(including reciting,questions)
3.Close-book test 70%
II Introduction
1.Text BookTaoJie: Selected Readings in American
Literature
2.Video Watching
Four times
3.Reading List
Reading List
*1) Washington Irving:
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
2) E.A.Poe
The Cask of Amontillado
3) Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter
*4) James Fenimore Cooper
The Last of the Mohicans
Reading List (continued)
5) H.W.Longfellow
A Psalm of Life
6)Walt Whitman
Song of Myself
7)Emily Dickinson
Because I could not
stop for Death
Reading List (continued)
8) Mark Twain
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
*9) Jack London
Martin Eden
*10) Theodore Dreiser
Sister Carrie
11) Robert Frost
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Reading List (continued)
*12) T.S.Eliot
13) F.Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
14) Ernest Hemingway
A Clean Well-Lighted Place
A Farewell to Arms
15) William Faulkner
Barn Burning
A Rose for Emily
Why do you study literature?
Literature gives pleasure.
How to analyze literature?
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Literature is language
Literature is aesthetic
Literature is fiction
Literature is true
Literature is
expressive
The Elements of Fiction
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Plot
 Characterization
 Theme
 Setting
 Point of view
 Symbolism
 Protagonist
How to appreciate a poem?
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Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
(by Robert Frost)
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village,though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch the woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
雪夜林边停
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树林属谁我自明，
他家住在那村中；
安能料到我来此，
赏观大雪漫林丛。
小小马儿显疑情，
为何偏在这儿停？
冰湖林间无农舍，
又逢雪夜黑蒙蒙。
Stopping by Woods on a
Snowy Evening
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He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely,dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
雪夜林边停（二）
马儿甩动缰绳铃。欲告主人迷路经。
 只闻轻风蔌蔌语，鹅毛雪片淅淅生。
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夜林深沉尤可爱，信守诺言难久停。
 找店尚早需赶路，投宿之前再远行。
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A Religious Study
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The owner of the woods is God.
 Whose house is in the village, that is, who
has a church in the village.
 The poet is mistaken when he says that
God will not see him, because God can see
everything.
 God sent his message to through the horse.
A Religious Study
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The picture of a snowy
night suggests the
scene of the birth of
Jesus.
 In stanza four,tells of
the man’s love of
God’s creation,and the
awareness of our
responsibilities to
other human beings.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening as a short story
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It can be read as a poem about a man with a death
wish.
 It makes sense to read the poem as a kind of very
short story.
 Conflict:the appeal of the snowy woods versus the
call to return to the human world.
 The world at the beginning of the poem is a world
of property , but the world at the end of the poem
is a world of mysterious responsibilities.
The Literature of Colonial
American
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Time Line
Pre-1400
Hundreds of American Indians tribes
inhabit the America before European explorers
arrive
1492 Christopher Columbus lands in the New
World
1617 Jamestown,Virginia:the first permanent
English settlement
1620
Pilgrims land at Plymouth
The Literature of Colonial
American
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The first writings
 The first American writer:
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Captain John Smith
 Mayflower
 What does “Puritan” mean ?
 Mayflower Compact and William Bradford
 Enlightenment
Mayflower
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The ship “Mayflower” carried about 100
passengers(their leader called them
pilgrims,or travelers) and took 66 days to
beat its way across the Atlantic. In
December of 1620, the Mayflower put the
pilgrims ashore at
Plymouth,Massachusetts.Before the winter
was over, half of them were dead. Only
some of these first colonists were Puritans.
What does “Puritan” mean ?
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Puritanism is the
practices and beliefs of
the Puritans.The
Puritans were
originally members of
a division of the
Protestant Church.As
the word itself
hints,Puritans wanted
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Purify their religious beliefs and practices.They
felt that the church of England was too close to the
church of Rome in doctrine form of worship.The
Puritans wished to restore simplicity to church
services and authority of the Bible to theology.The
Puritans looked upon themselves as a chosen
people, and it followed logically that anyone who
challenged their way of life was opposing God’s
will and was not to be accepted.
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Their lives were disciplined and
hard.Puritans tended to suspect joy and
laughter as symptoms of sin.As a culture
heritage, Puritanism did have a profound
influence on the early American
mind.American Puritanism also had a
enduring influence on American literature.
Mayflower Compact
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It is an agreement they signed before they
left the ship,they decided to form a
government and follow an elected leader.
 William Bradford(1590-1657) was elected
as the second governor and reelected 30
times.