RomanticPeriod-英美文学.pptVIP

Chapter 2 The Romantic Period: Romanticism Time: From the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War From Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book to Whitman’s Leaves of Grass Influences: Independence: devoid of a heavy burden of the inherited past and history Westward Expansion: industrial transformation Uniqueness: Puritan settlement Confrontation with the Indians The frontiersmen’s life The wild west Features An emphasis on the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature A liking for the picturesque, the exotic, the sensuous, the sensational and the supernatural An emphasis on the free expression of emotions and psychic states of the characters The strong tendency to exalt the individual and the common man. Transcendentalism The most clearly defined Romantic literary movement in Romantic Period is New England Transcendentalism. It was started by a group of people who were members of an informal club, The Transcendental Club in New England in the 1830s. The major figures were Emerson and Thoreau. The main issues were generally philosophical, concerning nature, man and the universe. It has been defined as “the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses.” Other ideas are nature is ennobling and the individual is divine and, there for, self-reliant. Major Writers and Works Prose Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) 爱默生: Essays《爱默生文集》 Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) 梭罗: Walden 《瓦尔登湖》 Poetry Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) 朗费罗: Evangeline (1847) The Song of Hiawatha (1855) The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858). Walt Whitman (1819-1892) 惠特曼: Leaves of Grass (1855) 《草叶集》 Fiction (1) Washington Irving 欧文 (1783 –1859) author; essayist; biography; historian Sketch Book 《见闻扎记》 James Fenimore Cooper 库柏 （1789 –1851 ） author; novelist The Last of the Mohicans《最后的莫希干人》 William Cullen Bryant (1794 – 1878 ) poet; editor of New York Evening Post Fiction （2） E