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1. Colonial Period
I. Background – Puritanism
1. Features of Puritanism – preached by John Calvin (1509~1564)
(1) Predestination: God decided everything before things occurred.
(2) Original sin: Human beings were born to be evil, and this original sin can be passed down from generation to generation.
(3) Total depravity (Adam and Eve)
(4) Limited atonement: Only the “elected” can be saved.
2. Influences of Puritanism
(1) A group of good qualities – hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety (serious and thoughtful) influenced American literature.
(2) It led to the everlasting myth. All literature is based on a myth – garden of Eden.
(3) Symbolism: the American puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chiefly instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American.
(4) With regard to their writing, the style is fresh, simple and direct; the rhetoric is plain and honest, not without a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible.
II. The Literary Scene in Colonial America
1. Types of Writing
diaries, histories, journals, letters, travel books, autobiographies/biographies, sermons
Early poetry: The Bay Psalm Book (1640), The Day of Doom (1662), New England Primer (1683)
2. Writers of Colonial Period
[I am talking about them in more details than before, for more familiarity to the writers of this period, to make sure we won’t be afraid of tests of this period – icywarmtea]
(1) Anne Bradstreet (1612~1672) – Puritan poet who wrote “ponderous verses of interminable, inter-locking poems) on the four elements – the constitutions and ages of man, the seasons of the year, the chief empires of the ancient world. Works: “The Tenth Muse”; “Contemplations.”
(2) Edward Taylor (1642~1729) – a meditative poet who was first and last a Puritan poet concerned about how his images speak for God. Work: “Huswifery.”
(3) Roger Williams (1603~1683) – one of the greatest Puritan dissenters in the early days of Puritan theocracy in New England. Works: “Rhode Island Way”; “The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for the Cause of Conscience.”
(4) John Woolman (1720~1772) – who was early convinced that true religion consisted in an inward life in which the heart loved and respected God and learned to exercise true justice and goodness towards men and brutes alike. Works: “Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes”; “A Plea for the Poor.”
(5) Thomas Paine (1737~1809) – one of continual, unswerving fight for the rights of man. He wrote a number of works of such a revolutionary and inflammatory character that it is no exaggeration to state that he helped to spur and inspire two greatest revolutions that his age had witnessed. Works: Common Sense (declaring as it did that “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one,” attacked British monarchy and added fuel to the fire which was soon to bring the colossus of its colonial rule down in flames.); The Rights of Man; The Age of Reason, American Crisis Series
(6) Philip Freneau (1752~1832) – used his poetic talents in the service of a nation struggling for independence, writing verses for the righteous cause of his people and exposing British colonial savageries; a most notable representative of dawning nationalism in American literature. Works: “The Rising Glory of America”; “The Wild Honey Suckle”; “The Indian Burying Ground”; “The Dying Indian: Tomo Chequi.”
III. Jonathan Edwards (1703~1758)
1. Life: the last great voice to reassert Calvinism
2. Works: The Freedom of the Will; The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended; The Nature of True Virtue
3. His Ideas – pioneer of transcendentalism
(1) the spirit of revivalism
(2) the regeneration of man
(3) the sense of God’s overwhelming presence in nature and in the soul
(4) the Puritan idealism
IV. Benjamin Franklin (1706~1790)
1. Life: “Jack of all trades” – “master of each and mastered by none – the type and genius of his land” (Melville)
2. Works: Poor Richard’s Almanac; Autobiography
3. Contribution
(1) He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital and the American Philosophical Society.
(2) He was called “the new Prometheus who had stolen fire (electricity in this case) from heaven”.
(3) Everything seems to meet in this one man – “Jack of all trades”. Herman Melville thus described him “master of each and mastered by none”.
4. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
[I added this part, for I think this work stands for this certain literary era. – icywarmtea]
(1) Features
a. It is, first of all, a Puritan document. It is Puritan because it is a record of self-examination and self-improvement. (thirteen virtues)
b. It is also an eloquent elucidation of the fact that Franklin was spokesman for the new order of eighteenth-century enlightenment, and that he represented in America all its ideas, that man is basically good and free, by nature endowed by God with certain inalienable rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
(2) Style
a. plainness
b. the homeless of imagery
c. the simplicity of diction, syntax and expression
[ 本帖最后由 yl120872063b 于 2010-1-22 15:41 编辑 ] |