美国文学备课笔记.doc

demand of the course:1) preview of the lesson (2)following the class carefully(listening carefully; taking an active part in the class discussion; taking down class room notes carefully) (3) doing exercises carefully Demand of the exercise: (1) 1 paper( topics will be given by the teacher, and students do the writing after class) (2) 2 summaries based on the sections of the academic book (3) 1 question answering in the book (4) class room discussion Evaluation of your performance: (1) attendance (2) scores of your exercises (3) scores of your final examination ` The Literature of Colonial America Background When Christopher Columbus reached the continent of North America in 1492, there were more than 2000 independent tribes of about one million natives. They were Asian in origin, living there for about 2000 years already. As Columbus mistook them for Indians, they have been called American Indians since then. They spoke five hundred different languages from 50 different language groups. They were, and still are, cultural differences among them. Because no Indian tribe had a written language until Sequoyah invented a syllabary（音节表） for the Cherokees in 1821, it is widely assumed that the Indians had no literature. In fact, virtually all Indian tribes had a rich store of oral literature in the forms of songs, prayers, spells（符咒）, charms（咒文）, omens（预兆）, riddles（谜语） and stories. 2. The traditional literature was originally transmitted almost entirely by word of mouth, and therefore belongs to the category of oral literature. It was composed in an Indian language for an Indian audience at a time when the tribal cultures were intact and contact with whites had been minimal. It consists of sacred stories, folktales, and songs as part of the rituals（仪式） of annual festivals, tribal traditions, and narrative accounts of gods and heroes. For a long time, Indians saw literature as functional. In oral traditions, stories were told not merely to entertain or to instruct, they