An Introduction to American Liter

ature

Instructor: Monica

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Public E-mail box: monic@zjnu.cn Password: MONIC1234 Private E-mail box: monicalhh@yahoo.com monicalhh@sina.com

An Outline of American Literature

I. The American Literature in Colonial and Revolutionary Period

II. The Literature of Romanticism III. The Literature of Realism IV. Twentieth Century Literature

Modernism and Experimentation V. American Literature since 1945

Part I. The American Literature in Colonial and Revolutionary Period

Historical background American Puritanism The Influence of American Puritanism on American

thought and Literature The characteristics of American literature in this period The Major Representatives in the Early American

Literature Thomas Paine; Thomas Jefferson; Benjamin Franklin;

Philip Freneau

Part II The Literature of Romanticism

Chapter One: The Literature of the Early Romanticism

Historical Background The Characteristics of the Literature in this Period The Major Representative writers: Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleeping Hollo

w; James Fenimore Cooper: The Leather of Stocking Tales; William Cullen Bryant: Thanatopsis; To a Waterfowl

Part II The Literature of Romanticism Chapter Two: American Transcendentalism The meaning of Transcendentalism and its Influence The Major Representatives Writers Emerson: Nature, Self-reliance Thoreau: The Walden Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter Melville: Moby Dick Poe: To Helen; The Fall of the House of Usher Longfellow: A Psalm of Life Whitman and Dickinson

Part III The Literature of Realism(1860—1914)

Chapter One The Literature of Realism (1860—1890)

The Principle of Realism The Local Color Movement: Mark Twain The Psychoanalytical Realism: Henry James

Chapter Two The Literature of American Naturalism (1890—1914)

The Rise of American Naturalism: Stephen Crane, and Frank Norris

The Tenets of Naturalism Jack London: The Sea Wolf Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie

Part IV Twentieth Century LiteratureModernism and Experimentation (1914—1945 )

Chapter One American Poetry between the Two Wars

Modernism Imagism in poetry Ezra Pound; T S Eliot; Robert Frost; Carl Sandburg

Part IV Twentieth Century LiteratureModernism and Experimentation (1914—

1945 )

Chapter Two American Fiction between the Two Wars

F. Scott Fitzgerald Ernst Hemingway John Steinbeck William Faulkner

Reference Books An outline of American literature /High, Peter B. /Lond

on :Longman,1986 美国文学史 =The history of American literature/ 常耀

信著 / 天津 : 南开大学出版社 ,1998 The Cambridge handbook of American literature / Cam

bridge [Cambridgeshire] ;Cambridge University Press,1986.

A Brief Introduction to Modern American Literature/B. BOOZ/ 上海 : 上海外语教育出版社

Reference Books 美国文学大纲 / 吴定柏编著 / 上海 : 上海外语教育

出版社 ,1998. 美国文学背景概观 / 史志康 / 上海 : 上海外语教育出

版社 ,1998. The Discourse of American Literature./Bruce A. Ronda/

上海 : 上海外语教育出版社 ,1991 The Oxford Companion to American Literature /Hart, J

ames D. /New York: Oxford University Press1965