弘毅考研样稿.doc

A Concise History of American Literature
What is literature?
Literature is language artistically used to achieve identifiable literary qualities and to convey meaningful messages.
Chapter 1 Colonial Period
Background: Puritanism
features of Puritanism
Predestination: God decided everything before things occurred.
Original sin: Human beings were born to be evil, and this original sin can be passed down from generation to generation.
Total depravity
Limited atonement: Only the “elect” can be saved.
Influence
A group of good qualities – hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety (serious and thoughtful) influenced American literature.
It led to the everlasting myth. All literature is based on a myth – garden of Eden.
Symbolism: the American puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chiefly instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American.
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.
Overview of the literature
types of writing
diaries, histories, journals, letters, travel books, autobiographies/biographies, sermons
writers of colonial period
Anne Bradstreet
Edward Taylor
Roger Williams
John Woolman
Thomas Paine
Philip Freneau
Jonathan Edwards
life
works
The Freedom of the Will
The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended
The Nature of True Virtue
ideas – pioneer of transcendentalism
The spirit of revivalism
Regeneration of man
God’s presence
Puritan idealism
Benjamin Franklin
life
works
Poor Richard’s Almanac
Autobiography
contribution
He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital and the American Philosophical Society.
He was called “the new Prometheus who had stolen fire (electricity in this case) from heaven”.
Everything seems to meet in this one man – “Jack of all trades”. Herman Melville thus described him “master of each and mastered by none”.