11.American Literature 美国文学.ppt

American Literature
American literature has recoded the story of a quest. At different times the quest has taken different forms: for wealth ,for religion, or they were simply restless. It has always been a “pursuit of happiness”. American literature is the continuous narrative of that pursuit.
Question:Which part of American literature impressed you deeply?
Three periods of American literature
Romantic period: the end of 18th C---the end of Civil War(1861-1865)
Realistic period: the end of civil War –WWI(1914-1918)
Modern period: WWI-WWII(1939-1945)
Romantic Period: emotion, psychic states, it exalted(歌颂) the individual mon man
Realistic period: reality of life, local colorism, American naturalism
Modern period: discontinuity, fragmentation, omission, hard to understand
Romantic period
Washington Irving: the father of American literature. He writes the immortal Rip Van Winkle which symbolizes the beginning of Romanticism
He invented American history by his History of New York ——His work furnished America with its first myth hero, Father Knickerbocker-[ ‘nikəbɔkə ] ——(最初到美国纽约的)荷兰移民的后代,荷兰籍纽约人,纽约人
Rip Van Winkle, a good-natured and hen-pecked man who has motherly wife and a little son.
He lives in a village surrounding by many mystical mountains. He does everything except take care of his own farm and family.
His wife is a shrew, a virago when he helps others do something, which made her so angry that plained to him, and he always put down his head and had no words. In fact, he is so upset about this that he just wanted to run away.
In Rip Van Winkle, there is a pursuit ideal in it. From Irving’s fiction, we can see that he keeps a conservative attitude toward life; he escapes from the chaotic world, to seek serenity in the soul, to look for peace in eternal spirits of nature. He escapes to the mountains to fort and quiet, but on the other hand, he escapes the reality and responsibility.
It’s an interesting story in Washington’s humorous, easy, clear sty