（精选）美国文学题--1

第一部分 殖民地时期的美国文学What are the characteristics of Colonial America? All of the works written during this period are utilitarian , polemical , or didactic .The purpose of literature for these Puritans was first of all usefulness . It should teach some kond of lesson . In content , the literature of the colonial settlement served either God or colonial expansion or both . The literary style of the earliest American writers , in fact seems to have been determined by a practical consideration of the sort of impression each writer wanted to make upon a selected group of readers . Puritansmetaphorical mode of perception helped to develop literary symbolism as they saw the physical world a symbol of God . Hence symbolism as a technique was a common practice in writing . The Piritans placed unusual stress upon plainness in writing because they were unusually interested in influencing the simp;e-minded people . Bearing the direct influence fo the Christian Biblical poetics , the Puritan writings are fresh , simp;e ,direct , and with a touch of nobility . As it faithfully imitated and transplanted European forms to the new experience , early American literature was as much a product of continuities as an indigenous creation.第二部分 理性文学和革命文学1 As we have seen , theology dominated the Puritan phase of American writing . Politics was the next great subject to command the attention of the best minds.2 From 1732 to 1758 , Franklin wrote and published his famous Poor Richards Almanac , an annual collection of proverbs . 3 Enlightement The eighteenth century England is also , and better , known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age fo Reason . The Enlightenment was a progressive intellectual movement going on throughout Europe at the time , with France in the vanguard . The Enlightenment celebrated reason (rationality) , equality , science and human beings ability to perfect themselves and their society . The movement was based on the basic theories provided by the philosophers of the age , which ranged from John Lockes materialism , Lord Shaftsburys deism , and George Berkeleys immaterialism to David Humes skepticism . Whatever philosophical beliefs they might have , they held the eommom faith in human rationality and the possibility of human perfection through education . They believed that when reason served as the yardstick for the measurement of all human activities and social relations , superstition , injustice , privilege and oppression were to yield place to “eternal truth” ,”eternal justice” , and “natural equality” or inalienable rights of men . Everything was put under scrutiny , to be measured by reason . No authorities , political or religious or otherwise , were acepted unchallenged while almost all the old societies and governments and all the traditional concepts , including Christianity , were examined and criticized . The belief provided theory for the French Revolution in 1789 and the American War of Independence in 1776 . Alexander Pope (16881744) , Joseph Addison (16721719) , Richard Steele (16721792) , Jonathan Swift (16671745) , Daniel Defoe (16601731) , Henry Fielding (17071754) , Richard B. Sheridan (17511816) , Oliver Goldsmith (17301774) , Edward Gibbon (17371794) , and Samuel Johnson (17091784) were among the famous enlighteners in England . As England had already gone through its bourgeois revolution , what the English enlighteners were lege to do was to strive the bring the revolution to and end by clearing away the feudal remnants and rep;ace them with bourgeois ideology .第三部分 美国的浪漫主义文学1 In 1828 the election of the frontier hero Andrew Jackson as the seventh President of the United States had brought an effective end to the “Virginia Dynasty” of American Presidents .2 Wsahington Irvings Skwtch Book bacame the first work by an American writer to win financial success on both sides of the Atlantic .3 Washington Irving was the first great prose stylist of American romanticism , and his familiar style was destined to outlive the formal prose of such eontemporaries as Acott and Cooper ,and to provide a model for the prevailing prose narrative fo the future . 4 What are the unique features of American Romanticism? Although foreign influnences wre strong,American romanticism exhibited from the very outset distinct features of its own.It was different from its English and European counterpart because it originated from an amalgam of factors which were altogether American rather than anything else.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 alen.Foe instance ,the American national experience of “pioneering “ into the west proved to be a rich fund of material for Ameican 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