美国文学简述ppt.ppt

Walt Whitman 1819-1892 Walt Whitman One of the great innovators in American literature. An author during the transition between Transcendentalism and Realism. His masterpiece is Leaves of Grass (1855), which he spent his entire life writing. Whitman’s Life Born in 1819 on Long Island, New York Poor semiliterate parents, only 5-6 years of formal education, self-educated; Worked as office boy, printing worker, school teacher, and free-lance writer. Supported the abolition of slavery, dismissed from his job; Worked at carpentry other odd jobs; Served as a correspondent for the New York Times and as a volunteer nurse during the Civil War. Died in 1892, unmarried all his life Transcendentalism: A Major Influence on Whitman Whitman read many of Emerson’s poems and essays. Though he was not a transcendentalist, he was influenced by Emerson. Transcendentalists believed that man has the ability to transcend his life beyond the earth onto a higher plane of thinking. God is in this world, and because of this indwelling divinity, everything in this world contains within itself all the laws and meaning of existence. The soul of each individual is identical with the soul of the world. Man may fulfill his divine potentialities through coming into contact with truth, beauty and goodness embodied in nature and originating in the Over-Soul. Through belief in the divine authority of the soul’s intuition and impulses, there developed the doctrine of self-reliance, individualism and the disregard of external authority. Whitman believed that God is in the human body so the human body is divine. Emerson didn’t talk much about the body, but Whitman stressed the body impulses. Because of these major influences on Whitman’s ideology, the overriding thought in Whitman’s poetry is the divinity, dignity and equality of the common man. He believes that God is in this world, and life is a cycle and everything comes from the universal soul, the Divine Ground of Being, to