美国文学episode-2-colonial-period-and-Franklin.pptVIP

Age of Realism Walt Whitman Emily Dickinson Harriet Beecher Stowe Mark Twain Historical backdrop The Civil War --The industrialized north VS. the agrarian South The concentration of wealth and power in a few captains? the swelling lust for fortune. The frontier was closing? the reexamination of life: beneath the glittering surface lay suffering and unhappiness. The waning New England Renaissance during the 1870s. realism As a literary movement, started in the latter half of the 19th C. Against the “lie” of romanticism and sentimentalism. Concern for the world of experience, of commonplace, of the familiar and the low. The main objective of the novel is to represent life. –Henry James in “The Art of Fiction” In terms of style, a contrast between the genteel prose, and vernacular diction and frontier humor. (Mark Twain) Walt Whitman (1819-1892) The greatest and most influential American modern poet. Leaves of Grass (1855), the limestone of his literary career in American history, experiences frequent revision and is featured with free verse. Emily Dickinson Born in 1830, she never left her hometown Amherst, Massachusetts. When she was young, she was lively and attractive. She dropped out of her school, due to her rejection against Calvinism. After 1862, her life as a total recluse began, which did not hinder her from being a great poet. Her Works Only 7 of her poems got published during her lifetime, though she wrote over 1,800 poems. The total recluse kept her from the overwhelming Civil War movement, and confined her to the solely mental world. Mainly each poem is dealing with one image or symbol: love, mortality, nature, success, failure, etc. Some of her famous poems The first collection of her poems were published in 1890, which were heavily altered. The first and unedited collection came out in 1955, The Poems of Emily Dickinson.(By Thomas H. Johnson) The Manuscript Book of Emily Dickinson (collection of letter