美文学电子版.docVIP

The Romantic Period　 　　1.The origin of Romantic American literature 　　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　　2. The American Renaissance or New England Renaissance is a period of the great flowering of American literature, from the i830s roughly until the end of the American Civil War. It came of age as an expression of a national spirit. One of the most important influences in the period was that of the Transcendentalists超验主义者, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau梭罗. The Transcendentalists contributed to the founding of a new national culture based on native elements. Apart from the Transcendentalists, there emerged during this period great imaginative writers Nathaniel Hawthorne霍桑, Herman Melville麦尔维尔, and Walt Whitman惠特曼whose novels and poetry left a permanent imprint on American literature. 　　3.Its social historical and cultural background　　The development of the American society nurtured the literature of a great nation.” America was flourishing into a politically, economically and culturally independent country. Historically, it was the time of westward expansion in America economically; the whole nation was experiencing an industrial transformation. Politically, democracy and equa1ity became the ideal of the new nation, and the two-party system came into being. Worthy of mention is the literary and cultural life of the country. With the founding of the American Independent Government, the nation felt an urge to have its own literary expression, to make known its new experience that other nations did not have: the early Puritan settlement, the confrontation with the Indians, the frontiersmens life, and the Wild West. Besides, the nations literary milieu was ready for the Romantic Movement as we11.