美国文学美国文学文字教案模块九：美国浪漫主义文学1

Part Two American Romanticism Irving, Cooper, Thoreau, Emersn, Hawthorn, Melville, Poe, Whitman Chapter One Introduction, Irving, Cooper I. Teaching Contents 1. Introduction to Romanticism 2.Account of Irving’s and Cooper’s life stories and their achievement. 3. Analysis of “Rip Van Winkle” II. The Important Points: 1) Romanticism 2) Irving, Cooper III. Difficulties: 1) Romanticism 2) The writing skills of Irving and Cooper IV. Teaching Methods Questioning Discussing CAI Teaching Steps: Background information 1. Political background and economic development The development of the American society nurtured “the literature of a great nation.” Politically, democracy and equality became the ideal of the new nation, and the two-party system came into being. Economically, the whole nation was experiencing an industrial transformation, which affected the rural as well as the urban life. Historically, it was the time of westward expansion. Thus, with a strong sense of optimism and the mood of “feeling good” of the whole nation, a spectacular outburst of romantic feeling was brought about in the first half of the 19th century. 背景资料 The Treaty of Paris in 1783 put an end to the American Revolution; the victory of the American people gained for them​selves the right to establish an independent nation and brought the history of America into a new age. On April 30, 1789, George Washington stood on the balcony of Federal Hall in Wall Street to take the oath of office as the first president of the United States. Washington's government consisted of such outstanding politicians as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Edmund Randolph, the purpose for which Washington organized such a government was none other than a deliberate effort to unite the two politically conflicting parties, since Jefferson and Randolph were understood to be of Antifederalist views, while Hamilton of Federalist bent. Washington had done a great work in establish​ing the government and making it strong. The outbreak of the French Revolution considered by many as a continuation of the the American Revolution gave the Americans more confidence in establishing an independent, democratic nation of their own, but on the other hand it also challenged the unity of the government, since its top leaders' attitudes toward the French Revolution var​ied. The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed a develop​ment, more rapid and vast than ever seen before, of government, trade, transportation, manufactures, agriculture, and an expand​ing system of roads and waterways. Along with such a wide​spread development, cultural and religious institutions also got developed and expanded, which were expressed either in the appearance of such brilliant men of letters as Bryant, Cooper, Irving, Poe, and Emerson, or in transcendentalism prevailing be​cause of the influence of Emerson and Thoreau. Inevitably atten​dant upon the unprecedented expansion in territory population, and industrial activity, the United States began to experience such social disorders as economic crises, and moreover, the entrenchment of slavery, monopoly, and privilege became an intolerable threat against the enterprise of free men. In the face of this unexampled situation, the best of the American writers of the period responded with a swelling tide of the newly growing national literature devoted to humanitarian re​form movements. They advocated respect for the common man, human and civil rights, supported or participated abolition and other reforms. New reform movements and organizations flour​ished, among which transcendentalism was of principal impor​tance. The rapid development of the American politics, economy, and culture in the first few decades of the nineteenth century led to the struggle between the North and the South, the central point of the struggle being over slavery. Beginning about 1830, abolitionist and above all free-soil feeling grew more powerful in the Northern states, many anti-slavery groups were es​tablished, and the people, who supported the free-soil policy and insisted that slavery must not expand one inch farther, were greatly increased in number. Meanwhile, in the southern states their leaders and big plantation owners declared slavery a posi​tive good, and "the cornerstone of our republican edifice." The American Federation of Labor was founded and the working class had become a major force in city. The workers realized they could not fend their rights and interests unless they were whole. As good and evil always stand as a pair, the material civilization in American social pied with various kinds of corruption. Such authors as Whitman attacked the social evils bitterly. The impact of the spirit swept over American society, and there was no exception to really speaking, the literature of this period was different from that of the preceding age. 2.Foreign influences Foreign influences added incentive to the growth of romanticism in America. The Romantic movement, which had flourished earlier in the century both in England and Europe, proved to be a decisive influence to American romanticism. Many English and European masters of poetry and prose all made a stimulating impact on the different departments of the country's literature. Sir Walter Scott’s border tales and Waverley romances(威佛利传奇) inspired many American authors such as James Fenimore Cooper with creative impulses. Scott's Waverley novels were models for American historical romances, and his The Lady of the Lake, together with Byron's Oriental romances, helped toward the development of American Indian romance. Robert Burns and Byron both inspired and spurred the American imagination for lyrics of love and passion and despair. The impact of Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge added to the nation's singing strength. Thus American Romanticism was in a way derivative: American romantic writing was some of them modeled on English and European works. 3. Leterature Features of American Romantism （1）American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new experience and contained “an alien quality” for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place” was radically new and alien. For instance, the American national experience of "pioneering" into the west proved to be a rich fund of material for American writers to draw upon. The wilderness with its virgin forests, the sound of the axe cutting its way westward, the exotic landscape with its different sights, smells, and sounds, and the quaint, picturesque civilization of a primitive race--all these constituted an incomparably superior source of inspiration for native authors. The new American sensibility began to make itself felt. (2) There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider. American romantic authors tended more to moralize. Many American romantic writings intended to edify（引导，启发） more than they entertained. (3) The “newness” of Americans as a nation is in connection with American Romanticism. Americans were somewhat different from the Europeans. Their ideals of individualism and political equality, and their dream that America was to be a new Garden of Eden for man were distinctly American. The existence of ideals in any form in the minds of the people did probably produce a feeling of "newness," a feeling strong enough to inspire the romantic imagination and channel it into a different vein of writing. (4) As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American romanticism was both imitative and independent. Writers like Irving and especially the group of New England poets such as William Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell tried to model their works upon English and European masters. These people cast a nostalgic glance across the Atlantic, and took their cue often from the English neoclassical authors like John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, Oliver Goldsmith, Robert Burns, Byron and Wordsworth, Their favorite themes included "home, family and children, nature, and idealized love". In technique they loved traditional meters and stanza forms; in language their English was usually British. Their metaphors were sometimes stereotyped and their symbolism tended to be explicit and superficial. Writers like Emerson and Whitman thought and wrote differently. Their works were peculiarly American. They create a literature distinct from and better than importations(模仿). (c.f. English Romanticism, as a historical phase of literature, is generally said to have begun in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads and to have ended in 1832 with Sir Walter Scott’s death and the passage of the first Reform Bill in the Parliament.) Washington Irving 1. several names attached to Irving (1) first American writer (2) the messenger sent from the new world to the old world (3) father of American literature 2. life 3. works (1) A History of New York «纽约外史» (2)The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. «见闻札记» He won a measure of international recognition with the publication of this. It was published first in installment in America, then in full version in England. Two stories: “Rip Van Winkle”“瑞普凡温可尔” , “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” “睡谷的传说” (3) The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus «哥伦布的生平和航行史» (4) A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada «攻克格拉纳达» (5) The Alhambra «阿尔罕伯拉» He gathered material for these three books in Spain, so they are also known as the Spanish Sketch Book (6) Life of Oliver Goldsmith «哥德斯密斯传» (7) Life of Washington «华盛顿传» 4. Irving's contribution to American literature His contribution is unique in more ways than one. He did a number of things that have been regarded as the first of their kind in America. (1) He was the first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame. To say that he was father of American literature is not much exaggeration. (2)The short story as a genre in American literature began with Irving's The Sketch Book. The book touched the American imagination and foreshadowed the coming of Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe, in whose hands the short story attained a degree of perfection as a literary tradition. It also marked the beginning of American Romanticism. 5. Literary career: two parts (1) 1809~1832 a. Subjects are either English or European b. Conservative love for the antique (2) 1832~1859: back to US “American” subject, but secondary importance 6. Style –Irving's style can only be described as beautiful, "The style is the man," applies to no one else so well (1) gentility, urbanity, pleasantness (2) avoiding moralizing – amusing and entertaining (3) enveloping stories in an atmosphere (4) vivid and true characters (5) humour – smiling while reading (6) musical language 7. The theme of “Rip Van Winkle” (1) it reveals conservative attitude of Irving. (2) it might be an illustration of Irving’s argument that revolution upset the natural order of things. The story is a tale remembered mostly for Rip's 20-year s1eep, set against the background of the inevitably changing America. Rip went to sleep before the War of Independence and woke up after it. The change that had occurred in the 20 years he slept was to him not always for the better. The revolution upset the natural order of things. In the story Irving ski1lfu1ly presents to us paralleled juxtapositions of two totally different worlds before and after Rip's 20 years' s1eep. By moving Rip back and forth from a noisy world with his wife on the farm to a wild but peaceful natural world in the mountains, and from a pre-Revolution village to a George Washington era, lrving describes Rip's response and reaction in a dramatic way, so that we see clearly both the narrator and Irving agree on the preferabi1ity of the past to the present, and the preferability of a dream-like world to the real one. Irving never seemed to accept a modern democratic America. James Fenimore Cooper 1. life “father of American novelists” the first person to take writing as a way to earn a living 2. works (1) Precaution 《戒备》 (1820, his first novel, imitating Austen’s Pride and Prejudice) (2) The Spy «间谍» (his second novel and great success) (3) Leatherstocking Tales 《皮袜子故事集》 (his masterpiece, a series of five novels) The Deerslayer《杀鹿者》, The Last of the Mohicans《最后的莫西干人》, The Pathfinder《探路人》, The Pioneers or The Sources of the Susquehanna《拓荒者》( the first of the Leatherstocking Tales. It is a romantic story of life in upstate New York ten years after the Revolution it was probably the first true romance of the frontier in American literature), The Prairie《大草原》 His novels are evenly divided among the three subjects: the revolution with The Spy as its representative, the frontier with The Pioneer as its representative, and the sea with The Pilot as its representative. 3.point of view the theme of wilderness vs. civilization, freedom vs. law, order vs. change, aristocrat vs. democrat, natural rights vs. legal rights The basic conflict of the story is one between Leatherstocking who insists on man's old forest freedom and Judge Temple, standing at the head of the squire-archy on the frontier, to whom man remains savage without law and order. Judge Temple makes some deer laws forbidding shooting out of season, but Leatherstocking breaks them somehow. It is evident that two forces were at work on the western frontier. On the one hand, Natty Bumppo embodies the idea of brotherhood of man and of nature and freedom and represents the ideal American, living a free life in God's world. To him, and to Cooper, the wilderness is good, pure, perfect, where there is freedom not tainted and fettered by any forms of human institutions. Natty Bumppo is a veritable embodiment of human virtues like innocence, simplicity, honesty, and generosity, a man born with an immaculate sense of good and evil and right and wrong. He finds "civilization" both corrupt and corrupting. On the other hand, Judge Temple symbolizes law and civilization. In his enactment of the law, he may have come into conflict with people like Leatherstocking, and in his effort to transplant "civilization" on a virgin land, he may have ruthlessly dispossessed the American Indians. Temple's appearance is very impressive, with "a fine manly face, and particularly a pair of expressive, large blue eyes, that promised extraordinary intellect, covert humour, and great benevolence." And manly and benevolent he is in his dealings both with Leatherstocking. He is a man of honor and integrity, and we will probably come to the conclusion that he is as much a frontiersman as Natty Bumppo. Judge is as good a pioneer as his "rebellious" fellow-villagers. It is, between them that they built the wilderness into anything like a civilized place. Hence the plural in the title of the book, The Pioneers. 4. style (1) highly imaginative When Natty Bumppo first appears, we see a real frontiersman in his crude cabin, a man of flesh and blood in the virgin forests of North America. But as he moves out of The Pioneers into the world of The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer, he does so gathering more and more of a halo of a legendary and mythic nature around him. He becomes a type, a representation of a nation struggling to be born, progressing from old age to rebirth and youth. (2) good at inventing tales He can complicate one quickly and well. His plots are sometimes quite incredible, it is true, but his stories are immensely intriguing. The fact that he had never been to the frontier and among the Indians and yet could write five huge epic books about them is an eloquent proof of the richness of his imagination. (3) good at landscape des cription (4) powerful but clumsy writer: characterization wooden and lacking in probability; language and use of dialect not authentic 5. literary achievements (1) He created a myth about the formative period of the American nation. If the history of the United States is, in a sense, the process of the American settlers exploring and pushing the American frontier forever westward, then Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales effectively approximates the American national experience of adventure into the West. (2) He turned the west and frontier as a useable past and he helped to introduce western tradition to American literature. Chapter Two Transcendentalism Emerson Thoreau I. Teaching Contents 1. Introduction to Transcendentalism 2. Account of Irving’s and Cooper’s their achievement II. The Important Points: 1. Transcendentalism 2. Emmerson and Thoreau III. Difficulties: 1. Transcendentalism 2. Irving’s and Cooper’s point of view IV. Teaching Methods 1. Questioning 2. Discussing 3. CAI Summit of Romanticism – American Transcendentalism Nature's voice pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New England Transcendentalism, the summit of American Romanticism. I. What is Transcendentalism Emerson declares in his essay, "What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us is idealism; idealism as appears in 1842." Transcendentalism is the summit of the Romantic Movement in the history of American literature in the 19th century. Transcendentalism has been defined philosophically as “the recognition（认知） in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively（直觉地）”. Transcendentalists place emphasis on the importance of the Over-soul, the individual and Nature. The most important representatives are Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Some New Englanders, not quite happy about the materialistic-oriented life of their time, formed themselves into an informal club, the Transcendentalist Club, and met to discuss matters of interest to the life of the nation as a whole. They expressed their views, published their journal, the Dial(日晷), and made their voice heard. II. Background: four sources 1. Unitarianism Its principles: Fatherhood of God, Brotherhood of men, Leadership of Jesus (which ignores Jesus’ divinity), Salvation by haracter (perfection of one’s character), Continued progress of mankind It is an improvement on Calvinism: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, God's irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints 2. Romantic Idealism Transcendentalism has begun with the introduction of idealistic philosophy from Germany and France. Schelling’s and Fichte’ idealistic concepts, Kantin(康德学派), Platonic doctrine, French eclecticism(折中主义) 3. Oriental mysticism --Center of the world is “oversoul” Transcendentalists were indebted to Oriental mysticism: the doctrine and philosophy of the Chinese Confucius and Mencius 4. Puritanism American Transcendentalism was indebted to the dual heritage of American Puritanism. The Edwardian notion of inward communication of the soul with God and divine symbolism of nature all find adequate expression in Emersonian Transcendentalism. the Transcendentalists' emphasis on the individual was directly traceable to the Puritan principle of self-culture and self-improvement as best exemplified by the success story of America's first self-made man, Benjamin Franklin. There exists a conspicuous resemblance, between Emerson's "the infinitude of the private individual" and Franklin's belief that "the least of men can rise" and "a man of tolerable abilities can work great changes and accomplish great affairs among mankind." III. Features 1. The Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit/oversoul Spirit or the Oversoul is the most important thing in the universe. The Oversoul was an all-pervading power for goodness, omnipresent (present everywhere) and omnipotent (able to do anything). It existed in nature and man alike and constituted the chief element of the universe. This, represented a new way of looking at the world. It was a reaction to the 18th-century Newtonian concept of the universe: the world was made up of matter. It was also a reaction against the direction that a mechanized, capitalist America was taking, against the popular tendency to get ahead in world affairs to the neglect of spiritual welfare. 2. The Transcendentalists stressed the importance of individualism To them the individual was the most important element of society. The regeneration of society could only come about through the regeneration of the individual. The individual’s perfection, self-culture and self-improvement should become the first concern of his life. The ideal type of man was the self-reliant individual. The Transcendentalists were telling people to depend upon themselves for spiritual perfection if they cared to make the effort because the individual soul communed with the Oversoul and was therefore divine. This new notion of the individual and his importance represented a new way of looking at man. It was a reaction against the Calvinist concept that man is totally depraved. It was also a reaction against the process of dehumanization that came in the wake of developing capitalism. The industrialization of New England was turning men into nonhumans. People were losing their individuality and were becoming uniform. The Transcendentalists saw the process in progress and, by trying to reassert the importance of the individual, emphasized the significance of men regaining their lost personality. 宣扬人的本性，人的智慧和创造力，人的个人意志和绝对自由。每个人的心灵(soul)就是整个世界的灵魂，也就是说，人人具有内在的神性，而人实现其潜在的神性可以在一种神秘的状态 3. The Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception: nature was the symbolic of the Spirit or God and the garment of the Oversoul Nature was, to them, alive, filled with God's overwhelming presence. Therefore it could exercise a healthy and restorative influence on the human mind. What the Transcendentalists seemed to be saying was, "Go back to nature, sink yourself back into its influence, and you'll become spiritually whole again." The natural implication of all this was that things in nature tended to become symbolic, and the physical world was a symbol of the spiritual. This in turn added to the tradition of literary symbolism in American literature. 4. Focus in intuition (irrationalism and subconsciousness) IV. Influence 1. It served as an ethical guide to life for a young nation and brought about the idea that human can be perfected by nature. It stressed religious tolerance, called to throw off shackles of customs and traditions and go forward to the development of a new and distinctly American culture. 2. It advocated idealism that was great needed in a rapidly expanded economy where opportunity often became opportunism, and the desire to “get on” obscured the moral necessity for rising to spiritual height. 3. It helped to create the first American renaissance – one of the most prolific period in American literature. Ralph Waldo Emerson 1. His contributions (1) He was the most eloquent spokesman of New England Transcendentalism (2) He helped to found and edit the Transcendentalist journal, the Dial, to explain their ideas. (3) He was the most influential writer among his contemporaries. (4) He was the prophet of his age, he was likened to a cow from which all had milk though not all liked the taste. Thoreau, Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and many others were indebted to him in varying degrees; Hawthorne and Melville, reacting to his doctrine of optimism, benefited in their ways from Emersonianism. His influence extended beyond his own century. Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens were among the authors of the present century responsive to his philosophy. 2. works (1) Nature (2) Two essays: The American Scholar, The Poet 3. point of view (1) One major element of his philosophy is his firm belief in the transcendence of the “oversoul”. (2) He regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man, and advocated a direct intuition of a spiritual and immanent God in nature. (3) If man depends upon himself, cultivates himself and brings out the divine in himself, he can hope to become better and even perfect. This is what Emerson means by “the infinitude of man”. (4) Everyone should understand that he makes himself by making his world, and that he makes the world by making himself. 4. aesthetic ideas (1) He is a complete man, an eternal man. (2) True poetry and true art should ennoble. (3) The poet should express his thought in symbols. (4) As to theme, Emerson called upon American authors to celebrate America which was to him a lone poem in itself. 5. his influence (1) His call for an independent culture in both Nature and "The American Scholar" played a very important part in the intellectual history of the nation. Emerson was trying to say that the Americans should write about here and now instead of imitating and importing from other lands. He called on American writers to write about America in a way peculiarly American. Everything here, common and low as they may be, is worth writing about, for we are great in our own way ?that seems to be the sum total of what Emerson was trying to get across to his countrymen. Emerson's importance in the intellectual history of America lies in the fact that he embodied a new nation's desire and struggle to assert its own identity in its formative period. 6. An excerpt from Nature Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME, that ism both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, NATURE. Henry David Thoreau 1. life He had few or no readers at his age. He became one of the three great American authors of the nineteenth century who had no contemporary readers and yet became great in the twentieth century, the other two being Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson. And his became a major voice for nineteenth-century America, now better heard perhaps than Emerson's. His influence goes beyond America. His statue was placed in the Hall of Fame in New York in 1969 alongside those of other great Americans. 2. works (1) A Week on the Concord and Merrimack River (2) Walden Thoreau's masterpiece, is a great Transcendentalist work. It is a book about man, what he is, and what he should be and must be. Furthermore, the book is full of ideas expressed to jostle his neighbors out of their smug complacency. He recorded how he tried to minimize his own needs on Walden Pond. (3) A Plea for John Brown (an essay) 3. point of view (1) He did not like the way a materialistic America was developing and was vehemently outspoken on the point. (2) He hated the human injustice as represented by the slavery system. (3) Thoreau saw nature as a genuine restorative, healthy influence on man’s spiritual well-being. (4) He has faith in the inner virtue and inward, spiritual grace of man. (5) He was very critical of modern civilization. It was, in his opinion, degrading and enslaving man. He felt that man should seek truth directly by himself and not through imitation of others. And the best way to find truth is by leaving the life of hurry and bustle to get ahead in worldly affairs and sinking oneself in the wholesome atmosphere of nature. As he saw it, modern civilized life has dehumanized man and placed him in a spiritual quandary: by trying to amass material possessions, man is not really living; he is digging his own grave. Thoreau despised and pitied his fellow villagers and wished to be a chanticleer to wake them up from their spiritual slumbers and help make them into a new generation of men. (6) He was sorely disgusted with “the inundations of the dirty institutions of men’s odd-fellow society”. He was impatient with his fellowmen who took such an enormous amount of interest in the developments of the outside world, yet did not want to spend so little as a single moment on the improvement of his own person. (7) He has calm trust in the future and his ardent belief in a new generation of men. Chapter Three Hawthorne and Melville I. Teaching Contents: 1. Nathaniel Hawthorne 1) His life story 2) His point of view 3) His writing stly 2. The Analysis of his The Scarlet Letter 3. Melvill 1) His life story 2) His point of view, writing style 3) The Analysis of Moby Dick II. The Important Points: Features of Hawthorne and Melvill Comments on Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick III. Difficulties: The Analysis of the Representative Works Comments on Hawthorne and Melvill IV. Teaching Methods Questioning Discussing 3. CAI Nathaniel Hawthorne 1. life Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804 in Massachusetts, the descendent of a long line of Puritan ancestors, including John Hawthorne, a presiding magistrate in the Salem witch trials. After his father was lost at sea when he was only four, his mother became overly protective and pushed him toward more isolated pursuits. Nathaniel and his two sisters were raised by their mother, who practiced, after being widowed, a life of almost complete solitude. Nathaniel was slightly lame as a young child, and subsequently spent a great deal of his time reading the great literary masters. Hawthorne's childhood left him overly shy and bookish, and molded his life as a writer. Hawthorne turned to writing after his graduation from Bowdoin College. His first novel, Fanshawe, was unsuccessful and Hawthorne himself disavowed it as amateurish. However, he wrote several successful short stories, including "My Kinsman, Major Molyneaux," "Roger Malvin's Burial" and "Young Goodman Brown." However, insufficient earnings as a writer forced Hawthorne to enter a career as a Boston Custom House measurer in 1839. After three years Hawthorne was dismissed from his job with the Salem Custom House. By 1842, his writing amassed Hawthorne a sufficient income for him to marry Sophia Peabody and move to The Manse in Concord, which was at that time the center of the Transcendental movement. Hawthorne returned to Salem in 1845, where he was appointed surveyor of the Boston Custom House by President James Polk, but was dismissed from this post when Zachary Taylor became president. Hawthorne then devoted himself to his most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter. He zealously worked on the novel with a determination he had not known before. His intense suffering infused the novel with imaginative energy, leading him to describe it as the "hell-fired story." On February 3, 1850, Hawthorne read the final pages to his wife. He wrote, "It broke her heart and sent her to bed with a grievous headache, which I look upon as a triumphant success." Hawthorne passed away on May 19, 1864 after a long period of illness in which he suffered severe bouts of dementia.. Emerson described his life with the words "painful solitude." His works remain notable for their treatment of guilt and the complexities of moral choices. 2. works (1) Two collections of short stories: Twice-told Tales, Mosses from and Old Manse (2) The Scarlet Letter (an immediate success and allowed Hawthorne to devote himself to his writing) (3) The House of the Seven Gables (4) The Blithedale Romance (5) The Marble Faun Short stories: Young Goodman Brown 《小伙子古德曼·布朗》 The Minister’s Black Veil 《教长的黑面纱》 The Birthmark 《胎记》 3. point of view Imbued with an inquiring imagination, an intensely meditative mind, and unceasing interest in the “interior of the heart” of man’s being, Hawthorne remains one of the most interesting, yet most ambivalent writers in the American literary history. Hawthorne is influenced by Puritanism deeply. He was not a Puritan himself, but he had Puritan ancestors who played an important role in his life and works. Melville : “霍桑描写黑暗的巨大力量，是由于受到加尔文派交易关于与生俱来的堕落与原罪思想的影响。没有一位思想深邃的人能完全摆脱这种思想所发生的各种形式的影响。” Hawthorne ‘s comments on Melville: “他既不肯信教，又对自己的不信感到惶恐不安。” 对霍桑同样适用。 (1) Evil is at the core of human life, “that blackness in Hawthorne” Hawthorne is haunted by his sense of sin and evil in life and had a “black” vision of life and human beings. According to Hawthorne, “There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity.” So, he takes that evil exists in the human heart, human heart is the source of evil. This also explains why he rejects the Transcendentalist optimism but looks more deeply and more honestly into life, finding much suffering & conflict in it. So in almost every book he wrote, Hawthorne discusses sin and evil. For example, in “Young Goodman Brown”, he sets out to rove that everyone possesses some evil secret. “The Birthmark” drives Hawthorne’s point that evil is man’s birthmark, something he is born with. Hawthorne’s literary world turns out to be a most disturbed, tormented and problematical one possible to imagine. (2) Whenever there is sin, there is punishment. Sin or evil can be passed from generation to generation (causality). The House of the Seven Gables is an appalling fictional version of Hawthorne's belief that "the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones," and that evil will come out of evil though it may take many generations to happen. Colonel Pyncheon takes by force the land of Matthew Maule, and condemns him as a wizard. He builds a house on the land while Matthew Maule is sent to the scaffold. Before he dies, the "wizard" curses the colonel, saying "God will give him blood to drink." Retribution does come. The house seems to be haunted. The scion of the colonel wither and die out, and eventually it is the descendant of the persecuted wizard who gets the upper hand. 霍桑在探讨罪恶时，不是宣扬加尔文教义，而是抨击了它对人性的摧残，是要使人正视罪的存在，并把人从泯灭人性的罪恶感中解脱出来。 (3) He is of the opinion that evil educates. Achievement is “under the impact of and by engagement with evil”经历过犯罪,受到其影响，人们才能有所成就 Man is better for the crime which brings about the fall.人在犯罪后才能更好的完善自己 (4) He has disgust in science and congsiders that one source of evil is overweening (too proud of oneself) intellect. His intellectual characters are villains, dreadful and cold-blooded. Hollingsworth in The Blithedale Romance, Chillingworth in The Scarlet Letter, and Dr. Rappaccini in "Rappaccini's Daughter" are specimens of Hawthorne's chilling, cold-blooded human animals. Take Dr. Rappaccini for example. In order to prove a scientific hypothesis, he does not hesitate to sacrifice the happiness of his own daughter in an experiment. He succeeds but he has to pay dearly: his daughter dies. 4. aesthetic ideas (1) He took a great interest in history and antiquity. To him these furnish the soil on which his mind grows to fruition. Trying “to connect a bygone time with the very Present”, he creats “a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy-land (介乎现实和虚幻的中间地带)where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other（真实和想象可以相遇并彼此影响” and makes the dream strange things look like truth. (2) He was convinced that romance was the best form to descrine American society. To tell the truth and satirize and yet not to offend: That was what Hawthorne had in mind to achieve. 5. He was a style – typical romantic writer. As a man of literary craftsmanship, Hawthorne is extraordinary. (1) the use of symbols Hawthorne is a master of symbolism. The symbol serves as a weapon to attack reality. It can be found everywhere in his writing. Most of his metaphors and similes are stirringly fresh and effective. He makes skillful use of colors as a means for conveying mood. Black, red, and grey predominate. Hawthorne uses concrete objects as well as characters to serve as his symbols. (2) revelation of characters’ psychology With his special interest in the psychological aspect of human beings, there isn’t much action, or physical movement going on in his works and he is good at exploring the complexity of human psychology (3) the use of supernatural mixed with the actual the ambiguity is one of the most important characteristics of Hawthorne’s art. (4) his stories are parable (parable inform) – to teach a lesson (5) an impressive sense of form The structure and the form of his writings are always carefully worked out to cater for the thematic concern (6) the ambiguity It is one of the most important characteristics of Hawthorne’s art. People come up with different interpretations and they do not know which one is definite. (7) Howthorne’s vocabulary was wide and well controled. He chose his words with a sharp sense of precise meaning and a keen ear for pleasant sound. 6. The Scarlet Letter (always regarded as the best of his works, tells a simple but very moving story in which four people living in a Puritan community are involved in and affected by the sin of adultery in different ways) (1) the story The story begins with a young woman named Hester Prynne who comes from prison with her illegal baby, Pearl, in her arms. Charged with adultery , she must first stand exposed on the public scaffold for three hours, and then wear the scarlet “A” on her breast as a lifelong sign of her sin. Her husband is an elderly English scholar who two years earlier had sent her to establish their home in Boston, but had failed to follow her at the appointed time. Hester did not know at all that he had been captured by Indians, and that he finds his wife in the pillory(使某人受公众嘲笑、侮辱). Hester refuses to reveal the identity of her lover. Ironically, the guilty man is one of that community’s most respected figures, the young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, who escapes outward condemnation (blame), but is inwardly tormented by his sin. Years passed and Hester settles into her new life. She proves to be a strong-minded and able woman and gradually finds a place in Boston society by helping other unfortunate, homeless, and friendless people. Her daughter, Pearl, has developed into a mischievous child who reminds Hester of her guilt by asking rather acute questions about the minister and the letter. Meanwhile, Hester’s husband has taken the name Roger Chillingworth and has settled in Boston as a doctor. He makes Hester swear to keep his identity secret, and tries hard to find the identity of her lover. One midnight he happens to hear the conversation among Hester, Pearl and Dimmesdale, and he discovers that Dimmesdale is the father of Hester’s child. Chillingworth pretends to help him medically, while torturing him spiritually with veiled allusions(暗指，引喻，（间接）提到) to his crime. When Hester discovers what he is doing she asks him earnestly to stop, but he is so proud of getting Dimmesdale under control that he puts aside everything but his continuing revenge. Hester stops Arthur one day on a walk through the forest and begs him to escape with her to Europe. He would not like to do so, and begs Hester and Pearl to join him on the pillory, where at last he makes a public confessionof his sin. As Dimmesdale dies in his lover’s arms, Chillingworth cries out in agonyat having lost the sole object of his vicious life. Hester and Pearl leave Boston and decides voluntarily to resume (restart) wearing the scarlet letter. While Pearl settles in Europe, Hester continues her life of penance (self-punishment苦行，苦修), a model of endurance, goodness, and victory over sin. (2)The analysis of the major characters A. Hester ： Hester is portrayed attractive, appealing, intelligent and capable. She equals both her husband and her lover in her intelligence and thoughtfulness. Hester is passionate and impetuous. The fact that she has an affair also suggests that she once had a passionate nature. Hester is strong and stoic. She endures years of shame and scorn. Hester’s tribulations(sufferings) lead her to be stoic. She is able to suffer pain and trouble without complaining. Hester is contemplative. Shamed and alienated from the rest of the community, Hester becomes contemplative. She speculates on human nature, social organization, and larger moral questions. Her alienation puts her in the position to make acute observations about her community, particularly about its treatment of women. Hester also becomes a kind of compassionate maternal figure as a result of her experiences. Hester moderates her tendency to be rash, for she knows that such behavior could cause her to lose her daughter, Pearl. Hester is also maternal with respect to society: she cares for the poor and brings them food and clothing. By the novel’s end, Hester has become a protofeminist mother figure to the women of the community. The shame attached to her scarlet letter is long gone. Women recognize that her punishment stemmed in part from the town fathers’ sexism, and they come to Hester seeking shelter from the sexist forces under which they themselves suffer. It is the extraordinary circumstances shaping her that make her such an important figure. Discussion 1: Why does she repeatedly refuse to stop wearing the letter? The scarlet letter functions as “her passport into regions where other women dared not tread,” After Hester is publicly shamed and forced by the people of Boston to wear a badge of humiliation, her unwillingness to leave the town may seem puzzling. She is not physically imprisoned, and leaving the Massachusetts Bay Colony would allow her to remove the scarlet letter and resume a normal life. Hester’s behavior is premised (based) on her desire to determine her own identity rather than to allow others to determine it for her. To her, running away or removing the letter would be an acknowledgment of society’s power over her: she would be admitting that the letter is a mark of shame and something from which she desires to escape. Hester chooses to continue to wear the letter because she is determined to transform its meaning through her actions and her own self-perception—she wants to be the one who controls its meaning. Instead, Hester stays, refiguring the scarlet letter as a symbol of her own experiences and character. The letter symbolizes her own past deed and her own past decisions, and she is the one who will determine the meaning of those events. Her past sin is a part of who she is; to pretend that it never happened would mean denying a part of herself. Thus, Hester very determinedly integrates her sin into her life. Her past is an important part of her identity; it is not something that should be erased or denied because someone else has decided it is shameful. Hester has gained control over both her personal and her public identities. She has made herself into a symbol of feminine repression and charitable ideals. She is not the example of sin that she was once intended to be. Rather, she is an example of redemption and self-empowerment. Arthur Dimmesdale, like Hester Prynne, is an individual whose identity owes more to external circumstances than to his innate nature. The reader is told that Dimmesdale was a scholar of some renown at Oxford University. His past suggests that he is probably somewhat aloof, the kind of man who would not have much natural sympathy for ordinary men and women. Discussion 2: What make Dimmesdale’s mental anguish? The fact that Hester takes all of the blame for their shared sin goads his conscience, and his resultant mental anguish and physical weakness open up his mind and allow him to empathize with others. Ironically, the townspeople do not believe Dimmesdale’s protestations of sinfulness. This drives Dimmesdale to further internalize his guilt and self-punishment and leads to still more deterioration in his physical and spiritual condition. B. Chillingworth Chillingworth represents true evil. As his name suggests, Roger Chillingworth is a man deficient in human warmth. His twisted, stooped, deformed shoulders mirror his distorted soul. From what the reader is told of his early years with Hester, he was a difficult husband. He ignored his wife for much of the time, yet expected her to nourish his soul with affection when he did condescend to spend time with her. Chillingworth’s decision to assume the identity of a “leech,” or doctor, is fitting. Unable to engage in equitable relationships with those around him, he feeds on the vitality of others as a way of energizing his own projects. Chillingworth’s death is a result of the nature of his character. He is interested in revenge, not justice, and he seeks the deliberate destruction of others rather than a redress of wrongs. After Dimmesdale dies, Chillingworth no longer has a victim. Having lost the objects of his revenge, the leech has no choice but to die. His desire to hurt others stands in contrast to Hester and Dimmesdale’s sin, which had love, not hate, as its intent. (3) theme: Hawthorne assumes the universality of guilty and explores the complexities and ambiguilties of man’s choices. In this novel , Hawthorne does not intend to tell a love story nor a story of sin, but focuses his attention on the moral, emotional, and psychological effects or consequences of the sin on the people in general and those main charaters in particular, so as to show us the tension between society and individuals. Everybody is potentially a sinner, and great moral courage is therefore indispensable for the improvement of human nature. The Scarlet Letter is not a praise of a Hester Prynne sinning, but a hymn on the moral growth of the woman when sinned against. Hester Prynne is attractive, appealing, and mildly aggressive She represents sexual guilt as love with her is fatal, but she is really pure and innocent, and dies to go to Heaven. Her drive is sexual. But she lives a rigorous life; only once does she let loose her lovely dark hair. She manages to move ever close to the self-righteous community which outlaws her. She does her best to keep her hold on the magic chain of humanity ("The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling her inmost soul, but would never be broken"). Her life eventually acquires a real significance when she reestablishes a meaningful relationship with her fellowmen. Hester is able to reconstruct her life and win a moral victory. Dimmesdale, on the other hand, banishes himself from society. Deeply preoccupied with himself, he lives a stranger among his admirers. He undergoes the tragic experience of physical and spiritual disintegration. He dies an honest man. Hawthorne tells us the best policy for man is to be true, honest, and ever ready to show one's worst to the outside world. Hester does it all her life; Dimmesdale does it finally. Chillingworth, the scholar, the embodiment of pure intellect, is morally degraded by his pursuit of revenge, by his violation of the human heart. He keeps preying on Dimmesdale's conscience until the poor wretch is tormented to death. The end of Chillingworth is also tragic enough. (4) writing characteristic a. It is a cultural allegory, and structurally compact. The twenty-four chapters of The Scarlet Letter are closely knitted together by means of the scaffold scenes which appear three times, almost symmetrically, in the beginning, the middle, and the end of the book, each time bringing the four major characters (Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and Pearl) together. Chapters I andII, XII, and XVIII serve as the props holding up the frame of the novel. All the major figures have complex psychologies; there is a semblance of interior monologues which reveal their states of mind. Hawthorne's ambiguity In the "Conclusion" people are heard to offer different views concerning the sign of the letter A on the dead minister's chest. The author's refusal to commit himself gives his work a richness which would otherwise have been impossible to achieve. c. a strong fairy-tale element It reads like a kind of romance, with two lovers coming together, finally united in death. Little Pearl acts like the forsaken child asking for recognition, and kissing her father (toward the end of the book) seems to break a spell. d. his use of the supernatural The response of Pearl to the symbol of sin on her mother's breast is adumbrated so that a mystic influence is apparently felt. The appearance of the symbol A in the sky is another good example. He pushes him into a twilight atmosphere in which all things, natural or otherwise, may become probable. The use of the supernatural can be seen as a hallmark of Hawthorne's art. d. symbols ⅰthe scarlet letter “A” : the central symbol of the novel, with which Hawthorne proves himself to be one of the best symbolists. As a key to the whole novel, “A” takes on different layers of symbolic meanings as the plot develops. At first it is a token of shame, "Adultery," but then the genuine sympathy and help Hester offers to her fellow villagers changes it to "Able." Later in the story, the letter A appears in the sky, signifying "Angel." For Puritan society, it just means punishment. For Hester, it means unjust humiliation. For Dimmesdale, it’s a reminder of his own sin that he is too cowardly to confess. For Chillingworth, it’s a request for revenge, for finding the wrong doer, For Pearl, it’s nothing but a beautiful cloth. It is a guide for Hester to go to heaven, and Dimmesdale hell. It is gradually changed to mean “Angel” and “able”,etc. ⅱPearl: Hawthorne emphasizes the consequence the sin of adultery has brought to the community and people living in that community. Herman Melville 1. life Melville was not appriecited by his contempary readers because of his loyaty to his soul. He pesist in his own belief and was unwilling to sacrifice his insights and artistic standard to cater the popular feeling and demand. Hawthorn has said: “he has a very high and noble nature”. But he wea painful. Through years of pain and suffering, he accepted the fact that one must live by the rules of the world and conciled himself with fate. He did not receive recognition until the 1920s. Three important things in his life: (1) going out to sea As a whaler, he saw life from the bottom. His experiences and adventures on the sea, however, stood him in rich stead. They furnished him with abundant material for fiction. (2) his marriage Melville married Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of a wealthy judge. To support her and their growing family, he had to write for money, which was difficult for any American about that time, and especially so for a devoted literary artist like him. (3) his friendship with Hawthorne They became good friends. They exchanged visits and wrote to one another often. A significant change came about in the original design of Moby Dick, about one third of which he had completed when the two men met. The book, which would otherwise have been another of Melville's exotic whaling tales, was now rewritten into the world classic that we read today. It was dedicated to Hawthorne. 2. works 1) Typee «泰皮» 2) Omoo «欧穆» drew from his adventures among the people of the South Pacific islands 3) Mardi «玛地» 4) Redburn «雷得本» (an account of his voyage to England) 5) White Jacket «白外衣» ( relates his life on a United States man-of-war) 6) Moby-Dick «白鲸»，«莫比•狄克» 7) Pierre «皮埃尔» (8) Billy Budd 《比利•巴德》(a sign that he had resolved his quarrel with God) (9) Clarel 《克拉莱尔》( a poem) 3. The Analysis of Moby Dick (1) the story Ishmael, feeling depressed, seeks escape by going out to sea on the whaling ship, Pequod. The captain is Ahab, the man with one leg. Moby Dick, the white whale, had sheared off his leg on a previous voyage, and Ahab resolves to hunt him to the kill. He hangs a doubloon on the mast as a reward for anyone who sights the whale first. The Pequod makes a good catch of whales but Ahab refuses to turn back until he has killed his enemy. Eventually the white whale appears, and the Pequod begins its doomed fight with it. On the first day the whale overturns a boat; on the second it swamps another. When the third day comes, Ahab and his crew manage to plunge a harpoon into it, but the whale carries the Pequod along with it to its doom. All on board the whaler get drowned, except one, Ishmael, who survives to tell the tale. (2) comment It’s one of the world's greatest masterpieces. But it got cool response after it was published. It is an encyclopedia of everything, history, philosophy, religion, in addition to a detailed account of the operations of the whaling industry. To get to know the nineteenth-century American mind and America itself, one has to read this book. But it is first a Shakespearean tragedy of man fighting against overwhelming fates in an indifferent and even hostile universe. (3) theme a. It represents the sum total of Melville's bleak view (negative attitude): the sense of futility and meaninglessness of the world. He never seems able to say an affirmative yes to life: His is the attitude of “Everlasting Nay”. Man in this universe lives a meaningless and futile life, meaningless because futile. Man cannot influence and overcome nature at its source. He must place himself at the mercy of nature. Once he attempts to seek power over it he is doomed. For example, the adventure of killing Moby Dick is meaningless. Moby Dick is the embodiment of nature. Ahab tyies to control it, which leads to his doom. The loss of faith and the sense of futility and meaninglessness which characterize modern life of the West were expressed in Melville's work so well that the twentieth century has found it both fascinating and great. b. One of the major themes of his is alienation (far away from each other). Alienation exists between man and man, man and society, and man and nature. For example: Ahab cuts himself off from his family, stays away from his crew, hates Moby Dick and becomes a devil rushing to his doom. Most of sailors on the ship suffer from alienation. c. loneliness and suicidal individualism (individualism causing disaster and death) The whole of Moby Dick is a negative reflection upon Transcendentalism. For Example； Ahab is too much of a self-reliant individual to be a good human being. He stands alone on his own one leg among the millions of the peopled earth. For him the only law is his own will. To him the world exists for his sake. Ahab is a victim of solipsism and extreme individualism, selfish will. The price of self-reliance is death. Moby Dick thus reveals the basic pattern of nineteenth-century American life: loneliness and suicidal individualism in a self-styled democracy. d. rejection and quest(拒绝和探索) For example：Ishmeal, in Bible it means wnader. He starts out feeling bad, hoping to find a place where he can live a happy and ideal life. Up to the time he goes on board the Pequod and midway through the book, he is an escapist. However, gradually he comes to see the folly of Ahab seeking to conquer nature, and begins to feel the significance of love and companionship. He learned to accept, an attitude which alone ensures his and humanity's survival. Voyaging for Ishmael has become a journey in quest of knowledge and values. (4) style a. His works are symbolic and metaphorical. Voyage—a metaphor for "search and discovery, the search for the ultimate truth of experience." The Pequod —the ship of the American soul the endeavor of its crew —"the maniacal fanaticism of our white mental consciousness." Moby Dick—The white whale is capable of many interpretations. It is a symbol of evil to some, one of goodness to others, and of both to still others. its whiteness— paradoxical color, signifying as it does death and corruption as well as purity, innocence, and youth. b. Melville manages to achieve the effect of ambiguity through employing the technique of multiple view of his narratives. For example: when all the men gather to see Captain Ahab nailing the award of a doubloon to the mast for the man who sights Moby Dick first. There are quite a few people standing around, commenting on the features of the whale that the captain is dying to kill. Moby Dick is thus portrayed for the reader from different angles. The author is unwillingness to commit himself, And the reader is thrown upon himself for judgment. c. He tends to write periodic chapters. (掉尾章的手法) : the last paragraph of chapter one pulling all things into one sentence is a good illustration in point. d. His rich rhythmical prose and his poetic power have been profusely commented upon and praised. Chapter Four Edgar Allen Poe I. Teaching Contents: Introduction to Poe life stories and his works Analysis of his theory and themes in his works Introduction to his achievement II. The Important Points: 1. Poe’s Writing Style 2. Comments on Poe’s Representative Works III. Difficulties: 1. Poe’s Aesthetic Theory 2. The Analysis of Poe’s Themes IV. Teaching Methods 1. Questioning 2. Discussing 3. CAI 1. Life Poe's childhood was a miserable one. He lost both of his parents when still very small, and was taken care of by John Allan, a wealthy merchant of Virginia. The Allans failed to offer the orphan a normal home as father and son enjoyed nothing but an unhappy relationship together. At 17 Poe entered the University of Virginia but did not finish. He went to West Point as a cadet but was dismissed because of misbehavior. He was poor all his life. At 27 he married his thirteen-year-old cousin, whose death in 1847 left him inconsolable and bitterer with life than ever. Her death in 1847 left him inconsolable and bitterer with life. He died, in mysterious circumstances, in October, 1849. A man of literary genius, Poe wrote and worked as editor most of his short life. For a long time American literary criticism was reluctant to come to terms with Poe and failed to do full justice to his genius. His literary executor(经纪人), Rufus Griswold painted him as a Bohemian, depraved, and demonic, a villain with no virtue at all. Griswold's and many others considered that his was an evil genius. Emerson dismissed him in three words, "the jingle man." Mark Twain declared his prose to be unreadable. Henry James made the ruthless statement that "an enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive state of development." And Whitman, had mixed feelings about him: he did admit Poe's genius, but it was "its narrow range and unhealthy, lurid quality" that most impressed him. In the present century, T. S. Eliot proclaimed him a critic of the first rank, but charged him with "slipshod writing." Ironically, it was in Europe that Poe enjoyed respect and welcome. Shaw's evaluation of Poe's achievement in the three areas of work as a critic, poet and short story writer proved to be one of the most comprehensive and insightful: Poe was "the greatest journalistic critic of his time"; his poetry is "exquisitely refined"; and his tales are "complete works of art." Poe's reputation was first made in France. Charles Baudelaire, determined that "Edgar Poe, who isn't much in America, must become a great man in France," spent the best part of his mature life translating Poe. It was he who elevated Poe to the status of a literary deity. Naturally enough, the first most exhaustive critical studies of Poe's work were written in France. Poe's influence was considerable in Spain and Spanish America, in Italy, in Germany and in Russia. Needless to say, the majority of critics today, in America as well as in the world, have recognized the real, unique importance of Poe as a great writer of fiction, a poet of the first rank, and a critic of acumen and insight. His works are read the world over with appreciation and understanding. 2. Works 1) poems (1) “The Raven” 《乌鸦》 (2) “Annable Lee” 《安娜贝尔·李》 (3) “The Sleeper” 《睡梦人》 (4) “A Dream Within a Dream” 《梦中梦》 (5) “Sonnet—To Science” 《十四行诗—致科学》 (6) “To Helen” 《致海伦》 (7) “The City in the Sea” 《海中的城市》earlier entitled The Doomed City 《衰败的城市》 2) short stories ratiocinative stories (1) Ms Found in a Bottle (2) “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” 《莫格街谋杀案》 (3) “The Gold Bug”《金甲虫》 (4) “The Purloined Letter”《被窃的信件》 (5)“The Mystery of Marie Roget” 《玛丽罗杰谜案》 Revenge, death and rebirth The Fall of the House of Usher Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque «述异集» “The Black Cat” 《黑猫》 “The Cask of Amontillado”（红色死亡假面舞会） “Ligeia”《莉盖亚》 “The Masque of the Red Death” (3) Literary theory a) The Philosophy of Composition 《创作原理》 b)The Poetic Principle《诗歌原则》 c) Review of Hawthorne’s Twice-told Tales 3. Themes 1. death – predominant theme in Poe’s writing “Poe is not interested in anything alive. Everything in Poe’s writings is dead.” 2. disintegration (separation) of life 3. horror 4. negative thoughts of science 4. Aesthetic ideas 1) Poe’s theory for poetry The poem should be short, readable at one sitting (or as long as "The Raven"). Its chief aim is beauty, namely, to produce a feeling of beauty in the reader. Beauty aims at "an elevating excitement of the soul," and "beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Thus melancholy is the most legitimate of all the poetic tones." And he concludes that "the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world." Poe is opposed to "the heresy of the didactic" and calls for "pure" poetry. Art does not lie in its message; poetry does not have to inculcate a moral; it has only to be; the artistry of the poem lies not in what is being said as in the way it says it. He stresses rhythm, defines true poetry as "the rhythmical creation of beauty," and declares that "music is the perfection of the soul, or idea, of poetry." Poe insists on an even metrical flow in versification. Poe rarely allows himself twenty-five percent of irregular feet." For the sake of regularity in rhythm, Poe disapproves of the use of archaisms, contractions, inversions, and similar devices. A good specimen of a poem which does not say very much is his "The Bells", Its poetry exists in its ingenious creation of sounds. All sounds, vowels and diphthongs for example, and all poetic devices such as alliteration, assonance, and consonance are brought into full play for the "rhythmical creation of beauty." Poe was and has been regarded as one of the first aesthetes in literary history. 2) Poe’s theory for short stories The short stories should be of brevity, totality, single effect, compression and finality. The very first sentence ought to help to bring out the "single effect" of the story. No word should be used which does not contribute to the "pre-established" design of the work (compression). The last sentence should leave a sense of finality with the reader. 5. Style – traditional, but not easy to read 6. His influences 1) His influence is world-wide in modern literature. His aesthetics and conscious craftsmanship and his call for "the rhythmical creation of beauty" have influenced French symbolists and the devotees of "art for art's sake." 2) Poe was father of psychoanalytic criticismand the detective story. Exercises: 1. Comment on Poe’s writing theory and style. 2. Comment on Poe. Chapter Five Whitman and Dickinson I. Teaching Contents 1. Whitman’s life story and their achievement 2. Dickinson’s life story and their achievement 3. The Analysis Whitman’s and Dickson’s writing stlye II. The Important Points: 1) To make students know sth about Romanticism 2) To make students get to know Irving, Cooper III. Difficulties: 1. The analysis of Whitman’s poems 2. The Comparison of Whitman and Dickinson IV. Teaching Methods 1. Questioning 2. Discussing 3. CAI A. Comparison: Whitman vs. Dickinson 1. Similarities: Both Walt Whitman and Emily Dickson were American poets in theme and technique. They are pioneers in American poetry (1) Thematically, they both extolled, in their different ways, an emergent America, its expansion, its individualism and its Americanness, their poetry being part of “American Renaissance”. (2) Technically, they both added to the literary independence of the new nation by breaking free of the convention of the iambic pentameter and exhibiting a freedom in form unknown before: they were pioneers in American poetry. 2. Dissimilarities: (1) Whitman seems to keep his eye on society at large; Dickinson explores the inner life of the individual. (2) Whereas Whitman is “national” in his outlook, Dickinson is “regional”( “Because I see New-Englandly” 《因为我用新英格兰眼光看》). (3) In formal terms, Whitman’s endless, all-inclusive catalogs contrast with the concise, direct and simple diction and syntax which characterize Dickson’s poetry. (4) Technically speaking, Whitman’s poetry is “free verse” in that the lack of meter and rhyme is known as his major technical innovation. Up till Whitman, American poets observed carefully the “iamb” with its regualr rising and falling patterns. B. Emily Dickenson (keeper of the private soul) 1.Life Dickson is now recognized not only as a great poet on her own right but as a poet of considerable influence upon American poetry of the present century. Dickson’s poetry writing began in the early 1850s. Altogether, she wrote1775 poems, of which only 7 had appeared during her lifetime. Her poems are usually based on her own experiences, her sorrows and joys. But within her little lyrics Dickson addressed those issues that concern the whole human beings, which include religion, death, immortality, love, and nature. More than 500 poems Dickson wrote are about nature, in which her general skepticism about the relationship between man and nature is well-expressed. 2.Themes in her works “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass”《草中的小家伙》 (1) Poems about inviolability(神圣不可侵犯) of the self: “The Soul selects her own Society” 《灵魂选择自己的社交圈》 (2) Her religious poems: she wrote about her doubt and be1ief about religious subjects. While she desired salvation and immortality, she denied the orthodox view of paradise. Although she believed in God, she sometimes doubted His benevolence. (3)Her poems concerning death and immortality: themes which lie at the center of Dickinson's world. About one third of her poems dwell on them. These poems are ranging over the physical as well as the psychological and emotional aspects of death. For her, death leads to immortality; death marks the begging of a higher life. However, she showed her ambiguous attitude towards death and immortality. She looked at death from the point of view of both the living and the dying. She even imagined her own death, the loss of her own body, and the journey of her soul to the unknown. Perhaps her greatest rendering of the moment of death is to be found in "I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died --", 《我死时听到了苍蝇的嗡嗡声》a poem universally considered one of her masterpieces. The themes can be also found in “My Life Closed Twice before Its Close” 《我的生命已结束过两次》“As Imperceptibly As Grief” 《向悲哀那么微妙》“Because I Can’t Stop for Death” 《因为我不能等待死神》 (4)Her love poems: Love is another subject Dickinson dwelt on. One group of her love poems treats the suffering and frustration love can cause. These poems are clear1y the reflection of her own unhappy experience, closely re1ated to her deepest and most private feelings. Many of them are striking and original depictions of the longing for shared moments, the pain of separation, and the futility of finding happiness. The other group of 1ove poems focuses on the physical aspect of desire, in which Dickinson dealt with, allegorically, the influence of the male authorities over the female, emphasizing the power of physica1 attraction and expressing a mixture of fear and fascination for the mysterious magnetism between sexes. However, it is those poems dealing with marriage that have aroused critical attention first and showed Dickinson's confusion and doubt about the role of women in the 19th century America. “Mine – by the Right of the White Election” 《我的丈夫---选择如意情人的权利》 “Wild Nights – Wild Nights” 《暴风雨夜》 (5)Her nature poems: More than 500 of her poems are about nature, in which her general skepticism about the relationship between man and nature is well-expressed. On the one hand, she shared with her romantic and transcendental predecessors who believed that a mythical bond between man and nature existed, that nature revealed to man things about mankind and universe. On the other hand, she felt strongly about nature's inscrutability and indifference to the life and interests of human beings. However, Dickinson managed to write about nature in the affirmation of the sheer joy and the appreciation, unaffected by philosophical speculations. Her acute observations, her concern for precise details and her interest in nature are pervasive, from sketches of flowers, insects, birds, to the sunset, the fully detailed summer storms, the change of seasons; from keen perception to witty ana1ysis. “I’ll tell you how the sun rose” 《我会告诉你太阳是如何升起的》 “New Feet within My Garden Go” 《我花园里的新脚步》 “These are the days when birds come back” 《鸟回来的那些日子》 “A Route of Evanescence”《瞬息之间》 “Apparently with no surprise”《毫不惊奇》 “Arcturus”《大角星》 (6) Her poems on the ethical level: Dickinson emphasizes free will and human responsibility. “To fight aloud”《勇敢的战斗》 “A triumph may be”《或许就是胜利》 “Death Is a Dialogue Between” 死亡是一种对话 (7) Her poems on the psychological tension: She convinces that the soul is absolute. She attacks over-emphasis on materialism and commercialism. “Thebrain Is Wilder Than the Sky”《心灵比天空更宽广》 “I know that he exists”《我知道他的存在》 “I like to See It Lap the Miles”《我喜欢看见它奔驰远去》 “Springfield Republican”《斯普林菲尔德共和党》 (8) other themes: Her sympathy for the poor and the weak appears in poems such as “The beggarlad Dies Early”《乞丐少年的早逝》and “If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking”《如果我能阻止一颗心的破碎》 A few poignant war elegies : “When I was small a woman died”《我的小时候，一个女人死了》 She discusses beauty and truth, she concludes that the two are one in “I Died for beauty-but was scare”《我渴望那罕见的死》and “I Reckon when I Count at all”《我以为我都算上了》 3. Artistic features: Her poetry is unique and unconventional in its own way. (1) Her poems have no titles, hence are always quoted by their first lines. (2) In her poetry there is a particular stress pattern, in which dashes are used as a musica1 device to create cadence and capital letters as a means of emphasis. Most of her poems borrow the repeated four-line, rhymed stanzas of traditional Christian hymns, with two lines of four-beat meter alternating with two lines of three-beat meter. (3) A master of imagery that makes the spiritual materialize in surprising ways, Dickinson managed manifold variations within her simple form: She used imperfect rhymes, subtle breaks of rhythm, and idiosyncratic syntax and punctuation to create fascinating word puzzles, which have produced greatly divergent interpretations over the years. Dickinson’s irregular or sometimes inverted sentence structure also confuses readers. (4)Her poetic idiom is noted for its laconic brevity, directness and plainness. (5) Her poems are usually short, rarely more than twenty lines, and many of them are centered on a single image or symbo1 and focused on one subject matter. (6) She frequently uses personae to render the tone more familiar to the reader, and personification to vivify some abstract ideas. Dickinson's poetry, despite its ostensible formal simplicity, is remarkable for its variety, subtlety and richness; and her limited private world has never confined the limitless power of her creativity and imagination. Walt Whitman (father of modern poetry, singer of the Great Public) 1.life Whitman was born in 1819 into a working-class family and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Whitman was a daring experimentalist. His early poems are in conventional rhyme and meter, but apparently he found the restrictions disappointing. He began to experiment about 1847 which led to a complete break with traditional poetics. He broke free from the traditional iambic pentameter and wrote “free verse”. His long “catalogs” of lines gave free rein to his imagination in his life-long attempt to celebrate life in the new world. What he prefers for his new subject and new poetic feelings is “free verse”, that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. By means of “free verse”, Whitman believed, he has turned the poem into an open field, and area of vital possibility where the reader can allow his own imagination to play. Contrary to the rhetoric of traditional poetry, Whitman’s is relatively simple and even rather crude. Most of the pictures he painted with words are honest, undistorted images of different aspects of America of the day. Another characteristic in Whitman’s language is his strong tendency to use oral English. Whitman has been compared to a mountain in American literary history. You may go around him if you like, but you cannot pretend that he is not there. For his innovations in diction and versification, his frankness about sex, his inclusion of the commonplace and the ugly and his censure of the weaknesses of the American democratic practice—these have paved his way to a share of immortality in American literature. Walt Whitman has proved a great figure in the literary history of the United States because he embodies a new ideal, a new world and a new life-style, and his influence over the following generations is significant and incredible. 2. The themes in Whitman's poetry: “Catalogue of American and European thought” He had been influenced by many American and European thoughts: enlightenment, idealism, transcendentalism, science, evolution ideas, western frontier spirits, Jefferson’s individualism, Civil War Unionism, Orientalism. He was more indebted to Emerson than any other nineteenth-century American author. He drew most heavily from Emerson. "I was simmering, simmering, simmering," "Emerson brought me to a boil.” Echoing Emerson's "America is a poem in our eyes," Whitman declares "The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem." Both Whitman and Emerson wrote on the organic principle. To them, art should be based organically on nature; the poet's work grows out of nature and derives its form from within. His poetry is filled with optimistic expectation and enthusiasm about new things and new epoch. Major themes in his poems (almost everything): 1) he extols the ideal of equality of things and beings, democracy, nature, labor and creation, openness, freedom 2) He celebrates man’s dignity, the self-reliance spirit, advocates the realization of the individual value and brightest　future　of mankind Most of the poems in Leaves of Grass sing of the "en-masse" and the self as well. 3) He praises the expansion of America 4) He emphasis on brotherhood and social solidarity (unity of nations in the world) 5) Pursuit of love and happiness is approved of repeatedly and affectionately in his lines. Sexual 1ove, a rather taboo topic of the time, is displayed candidly as something adorable. The individual person and his desires must be respected.Expresses his pursuit of love and happiness, his ideas about death, beauty of death 6) He attacks the slavery system and racial discrimination 7) He shows concern for the whole hard-working people and the burgeoning life of cities. To Whitman, the fast growth of industry and wealth in cities indicated a lively future of the nation, despite the crowded, noisy, and squalid conditions and the slackness in morality. 3. Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman is a poet with a strong sense of mission, having devoted all his life to the creation of the "single" poem, Leaves of Grass 《草叶集》. The work has 9 editions (1855, 1856, 1867, 1871, 1876 (2 volumns: Two Leaves of Grass，Rivulets 《两条小河》, 1881, 1889, 1891-1892 (or the “Deathbed Edition” 《临终版本》). The first edition contained 12 poems and didn’t sell well, but it made a stir on the American literary scene. But it received a warm welcome from Emerson. 1）The most well-known poems are: (1) “Song of Myself” 《自我之歌》 (2) “There Was a Child Went Forth” 《有个小孩走过来》 (3) “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” 《过布鲁克林渡口》 (4) “Democratic Vistas” 《民主的前景》 (5) “Passage to India” 《向印度行进》 (6) “Prouf Music of the Storm” 《骄傲的风暴之音乐》 (7) “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”《走出永不休止地摇动着的摇篮》it is a reminiscence of a childhood experience (8) “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”《当紫丁香上次在庭院开放的时候》It was written in memory of Lincoln 2）The title : It is significant that Whitman entitled his book Leaves of Grass . He said that where there is earth, where there is water, there is grass. Grass, the most common thing with the greatest vitality, is an image of the poet himself, a symbol of the then rising American nation and an embodiment of his ideals about democracy and freedom. 3）Theme and the poet's essentia1 purpose (a) theme: 　　This giant work is a powerful epic of the self in free verse. Most of the poems are about man and nature.In it, openness, freedom, and above all, individua1ism (the belief that the rights and freedom of individual people are most important) are all that concerned him.Whitman brings the hard-working farmers and laborers into American literature, attack the slavery system and racial discrimination. In this book he also extols nature,democracy, labor and creation ,and sings of man's dignity and equality, and of the brightest　future　of mankind . (b) the poet's essentia1 purpose 　　His aim was nothing less than to express some new poetica1 feelings and to initiate a poetic tradition in which difference shou1d be recognized. The genuine participation of a poet in a common cultural effort was, according to Whitman, to behave as a supreme individualist; however, the poet's essentia1 purpose was to identify his ego with the world, and more specifically with the democratic "en-masse" of America, which is established in the opening lines of "Song of Myself". 4. Whitman's poetic style and language To dramatize the nature of these new poetical fee1ings, Whitman employed brand-new means in his poetry, which would first be discerned in his style and language. 1) style 　　(1) Whitman's poetic style is marked, first of a1l, by the use of the poetic "I." Whitman becomes all those people in his poems and yet still remains "Walt Whitman", hence a discovery of the self in the other with such an identification. In such a manner, Whitman invites his readers to participate in the process of sympathetic identification. (2) Whitman is also radically innovative in terms of the form of his poetry. He adopted "free verse," that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. A looser and more open-ended syntactical structure is frequently favored. Lines and sentences of different lengths are left lying side by side just as things are, undisturbed and separate. There are few compound sentences to draw objects and experiences into a system of hierarchy. Whitman was the first American to use free verse extensively. By means of "free verse," Whitman turned the poem into an open field, an area of vital possibility where the reader can allow his own imagination to play. (3) One of the major principles of Whitman's technique is parallelism or a rhythm of thought in which, as Bliss Perry observes, the line is the rhythmical unit, as in the poetry of the English Bible. Another main principle of Whitman's versification is phonetic recurrence, i.e., the systematic repetition of words and phrases at the beginning of the line, in the middle or at the end. These two principles coordinate with and reinforce each other. So, there is a strong sense of the poems being rhythmical. The reader can feel the rhythm of Whitman's thought and cadences of his feeling.. (4) the habit of using snapshots (5) use of conventional image 2）Whitman's language 　　Contrary to the rhetoric of traditional poetry, Whitman's is relatively simple and even rather crude. 　　(1) Most of the pictures he painted with words are honest, undistorted images of different aspects of America of the day. The particularity about these images is that they are unconventional in the way they break down the social division based on religion, gender, class, and race. One of the most often-used methods in Whitman's poems is to make colors and images fleet past the mind's eye of the reader. 　　(2) Another characteristic in Whitman's language is his strong tendency to use oral English. 　　(3) Whitman's vocabulary is amazing. He would use powerfu1, colorful, as well as rarely-used words, words of foreign origin and sometimes even wrong words. Walt Whitman has proved a great figure in the literary history of the United States because he embodies a new ideal, a new world and a new life-style, and his influence over the following generations is significant and incredible. 5. Influence (1) His best work has become part of the common property of Western culture. (2) He is recognized as a father figure who led the break from the past. (3) He has been compared to a mountain in American literary history. (4) Contemporary American poetry bears witness to his great influence. Exercises: 1. Remember the representative works of the Romantic writers. 2. Try to write an essay on Ivring, Hawthorne, Whitman. 3. Comment on Moby Dick and Scarlett Letter. Part Two American Romanticism 36 37