美国文学简介，Outline of American Literature.doc

Outline of American Literature Chapters Chapter 1 Early American and Colonial Period to 1776 Chapter 2 Democratic Origins and Revolutionary Writers, 1776-1820 Chapter 3 The Romantic Period, 1820-1860, Essayists and Poets Chapter 4 The Romantic Period, 1820-1860, Fiction Chapter 5 The Rise of Realism: 1860-1914 Chapter 6 Modernism and Experimentation: 1914-1945 Chapter 7 American Poetry, 1945-1990: The Anti-Tradition Chapter 8 American Prose, 1945-1990: Realism and Experimentation Chapter 9 Contemporary American Poetry Chapter 10 Contemporary American Literature Early American and Colonial Period to 1776 From orally transmitted works to printed offerings ? The First Thanksgiving, a painting by J.L.G. Ferris. (Library of Congress) American literature begins with the orally transmitted myths, legends, tales, and lyrics (always songs) of Indian cultures. There was no written literature among the more than 500 different Indian languages and tribal cultures that existed in North America before the first Europeans arrived. As a result, Native American oral literature is quite diverse. Narratives from quasi-nomadic hunting cultures like the Navajo are different from stories of settled agricultural tribes such as the pueblo-dwelling Acoma; the stories of northern lakeside dwellers such as the Ojibwa often differ radically from stories of desert tribes like the Hopi. Tribes maintained their own religions – worshipping gods, animals, plants, or sacred persons. Systems of government ranged from democracies to councils of elders to theocracies. These tribal variations enter into the oral literature as well. Still, it is possible to make a few generalizations. Indian stories, for example, glow with reverence for nature as a spiritual as well as physical mother. Nature is alive and endowed with spiritual forces; main characters may be animals or plants, often totems associated with a tribe, group, or individual. The closest to the Indian sense of holiness in later Ameri