《英美文学选读》美国文学The Romantic Period.docVIP

PART TWO：AMERICAN LITERATUREChapter 1 The Romantic Period 　　概　述　　（一）标志　　The Romantic period, one of the most important periods in the history of American literature, stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War. It started with the publication of Washington Irvings The Sketch Book《见闻札记》 and ended with Whitmans Leaves of Grass《草叶集》. It is also called the American Renaissance.　　（二）社会文化背景　　1.Historically, it was the time of westward expansion.　　2.Economically, the whole nation was experiencing an industrial transformation, which affected the rural as well as the urban life.　　3.Politically, democracy and equality became the ideal of the new nation, and the two-party system came into being.　　4.文学方面　　The nations literary milieu(环境) was ready for the movement characterized with imagination as well. 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.　　（三）美国作家及其特点　　1.起源　　The English counterparts exerted a stimulating impact on the writers of the new world. The American writers shared some common features with the English Romanticists.　　2.代表作家　　Irving, Cooper, Poe, Freneau and Bryant revolted against the literary forms and ideals of the period of classicism by developing some relatively new forms of fiction or poetry.　　3.特点　　1）There was a new emphasis upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature, which included a liking for the picturesque, the exotic, the sensuous, the sensational, and the supernatural. 　　2）The Americans also placed an increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions and displayed an increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters.　　4.作家介绍　　The strong tendency to exalt the individual and the common man was almost a national religion in America.　　（1）The literary use of the more colorful aspects of the past was also to be found in Freneaus us