美国文学史及作品选读Lecture 1.pptVIP

Lecture 1 The Literature of the Colonial America and of Reason and Revolution Teaching Objectives and Requirements 1.1 Historical Background In 1492, Christopher Columbus found the new continent called America. Spanish (the first town on the new continent) Dutch (New York city) French (French: lots of people’s mother tongue in North America); English (first settled in Jamestown of Virginia in 1607) In1620, the famous “May Flower” shipped 102 Puritans to Plymouth. 1.2 Puritan Thought Puritanism: the practices and beliefs of the Puritans ◆ Puritans: Calvinists. ◆ Puritans wanted to “purify the church” to its original state. ◆ To be a Puritan: religion—the most important thing; living for glorifying God; believing predestination, original sin, total depravity, limited atonement ◆ Life style of Puritans: pious austere of taste diligent thrift rigid sense of morality self-reliant American Puritanism: the practices and beliefs of the American Puritans ◆ American Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church, who came into existence in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I. ◆ They were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles. They wanted to purify their religious beliefs and practices. They came to America out of various reasons. ◆ They were idealists, believing the church should be restored to complete “purity” and dreaming that they would build the new land to an Eden on earth. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin, total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God. But in the grim struggle for survival after their arrival in America, they became more and more practical. ◆ American Puritans’ lives were extremely disciplined and hard. They drove out of their settlements all those opinions that seemed dangerous to them. ◆ As a culture herita