what is American literature 什么是美国文学.ppt

American Literature The history of literature Polite learning through reading (14th century) The practice and profession of writing (18th century) The high skill of writing in the special context of high imagination (19th century) When comes literature Performance in words (Robert Frost) The desire to express and share experience An art, a creation Oral (songs, prayers, spells, charms, omens or riddles) and written (a story, a poem, a play, or an essay) What is literature Language artistically used to achieve identifiable literacy qualities and to convey meaningful messages Literature is characterized by beauty of expression and form and by universality of intellectual and emotional appeal Literature is language Oral written denotation (scientist) instead of conotation (writer: emotional, irrational, subjective): writers of literature use language connotatively to bring into play all the emotional associations words may have. Denotation of “mother” is “female parent” while the connotation includes such qualities as protection, warmth, love, tenderness, devotion, mercy, intercession, home, childhood, the happy past Literature is language Defamiliarization: (The Russian Formalists 1920’s): “The technique of art is to make objects “unfamiliar“ to make forms difficult , to increase the difficulty and length of perception, because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged”---Viktor Shklovsky Diction and syntax, sounds and repetition, archaisms of diction and syntax are significant Literature is fictional Fiction: the prose that tell a story (fairy tells, short stories, and novels) that set them apart from the context of life Invented material: imaginative e.g. Harry Porter Stylized material: artistic control: through the play of language, selection of details, inclusion of metaphor, irony and imagery: compare: how does a newspaper report and a poet would describe the same event? Literature is true Factual accuracy: the presentati