美国文学史及选读2复习笔记

History And Anthology of American Literature (VolumeⅡ)

美国文学史及选读2

PartⅣ The Literature Of Realism现实主义文学

1. 美国国内战争Civil War 1861-1865.美国现实主义文学：他们寻找描写美国人真实生活的方法，他们声称平凡

的、就近的事件同重大的、遥运的事件一样都是艺术创作的源泉they sought to portray American life as it really was,, insisting that the ordinary and local were as suitable for artistic portrayal as the magnificent and the remote. 2. 现实主义一词来源于法语realisme, 她是一种文学原则，她强调描写平凡的生活，强调其“真实性和现实性”。

Realism had originated in France as realisme, a literary doctrine that called for “reality and truth” in the depiction of ordinary life. “现实主义要求创作素材绝对真实，即不能夸张，也不能缩小”,William Dean Howells(豪厄斯) defined realism as “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material”.他反对那些表现失意和绝望类苍白无力的小说，他强调现实主义作品要发掘出生活中微笑的一方面，因为美国人都坚信自己的国家是一个充满希望，什么奇迹都有可能发生的一个国家，作为文学也应该把这些特征表现出来he spoke out against the writing of a bleak fiction of failure and despair. He called for the treatment of the “Smiling aspects of life” as being the more “American”, insisting that American was truly a land of hope and of possibility that should be reflected in its literature.

3. 美国现实主义文学总体说来对生活的表面现象进行了乐观的处理，这是其局限，然而最伟大的现实伟大的现

实主义大师亨利·詹姆斯、马克·吐温则摆脱了对十九世纪美国进行肤浅描写的局限，詹姆斯对他作品中的人物个性心理进行了深度探讨，他运用深厚的和复杂的写作方式对复杂的个人经历进行了揣摩。马克·吐温打破了乡土小说的狭窄局限，前所未有地描述了广阔的美国生活the bulk of America’s literary realism was limited to optimistic treatment of the surface of life. Yet the greatest of America’s realists, Henry James and Mark Twain, moved well beyond a superficial portrayal of nineteenth-century America. James probed deeply into the individual psychology of his characters, writing in a rich and intricate style that supported his intense scrutiny of complex human experience. Mark Twain, breaking out of the narrow limits of local color fiction, described the breadth of American experience as no one had ever done before, or since.

4. 美国新的现实主义即自然主义大师们不再崇尚过去粉饰太平的写作方法，他们设法尽力客观，真实地展现出

受环境与出身局限的下层人民和各种经济阶层人物的真正生活，他们强调世界的非道德性，他们认为，人们并没有意志的自由，他们的生活状况往往受到了生活的环境与自己的出身所局限；他们还认宗教上的“真理”是虚幻的，人类世俗的现实生活是痛苦的，死亡以后，一切又烟消云散了naturalism, a new and harsher realism. America’s literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classed who were dominated by their environment and heredity, the naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment, that religious “truths” were illusory, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. 一、Walt Whitman沃尔特·惠特曼1819-1892

1. 美国文学史上极其重要的、具有创新精神的作家之一，他的《草叶集》中系列诗歌是美国文学史上第一部真

正的史诗one of the great innovators in American literature. In the cluster of poems he called “Leaves of Grass” he gave America its first genuine epic poem.他所创造的这种诗体叫做自由诗，在这种诗歌中，没有固定的节拍，也没有有规律的韵脚，惠特曼认为传统的格律诗不适合表达民主之声the poetic style he devised is now called free verse-that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. Whitman thought that the voice of democracy should not be haltered by traditional forms of verse.

2. 1855年出版《草叶集》第一部，其中的大部分作品表达的主题是人类与大自然。有一部分诗歌描写的是令作

者痴迷的纽约，少量诗歌还对内战进行了描写，在诗歌中，惠特曼把各种具有平民思想的普通人，社会下层的不同个体的理念有机地结合了起来most of the poems in “Leaves of Grass” are about man and nature. However, a small number of very good poems deal with New York, the city that fascinated Whitman, and with the Civil War. In his poetry, Whitman combined the ideal of the democratic common man and that of the rugged individual. 他给诗人重新进行了定义，他认为诗人是一个英雄，是一个救世主，还是先知，诗人通过对真理的表达来引导大众in his poetry, Whiman combined the ideal of the democratic common man and that of the rugged individual. He envisioned the poet as a hero, a savior and a prophet, one who leads the community by his expressions of the truth.

3. 教材作品：《自己之歌》：”Song of Myself”

《我坐在这儿眺望着》：”I sit and Look Out”

《敲呀！敲呀！鼓啊！》：”Drum-Taps Beat! Beat! Drums”

二、Emily Dickinson爱米丽·狄金森1830-1886

1. 她的诗歌古怪、简洁，她对做任何大众或流行诗人的概念保持惊人冷漠，她往往是通过一件具体的家庭小事，

和一种闲适的生活来阐明事理，并把这些描写成为令人痴迷的诗歌she wrote her whimsical, darting verse with sublime indifference to any notion of being a democratic or popular poet. Her work illustrated the fact that one could take a single household and an inactive life, and make enchanting poetry out of it.

2. 她同姐姐终身未嫁一直住在一起，1862年以后，她过上了完全与世隔绝的生活，从此再也没有离开过自己的

家乡，也没有同朋友聚会，狄金森与世隔绝可能是受到一桩不满爱情的影响，但主要可能还是源于她自己独特的个性，源于她自己要同世人隔绝的愿望，她诗歌并没有受到生活局限，相反她诗歌却极富创造性和想象力she and her sister remained at home and did not marry. After 1862 she became a total recluse, not leaving her house nor seeing even close friends. Her later retirement from the world, though perhaps affected by an unhappy love affair, seems mainly to have resulted from her own personality, from …… 此处隐藏：6537字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……