The Literature of Romanticism

The Literature of Romanticism
from the end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the civil war 2018/11/27

Class Focuses: Characteristics of Romanticism
General Features of the Writings of American Romanticism Washington Irving 2018/11/27

American Romanticism 2018/11/27

General Introduction The romantic period covers the first half of the 19th century. It started with the publication of Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book and ended with Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. It is a period of the great flowering of American literature and it is also called “American Renaissance”. general characteristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in value of individualism, and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a source of goodness and man’s societies a source of corruption. 2018/11/27

New England Literary Renaissance or American Renaissance
It refers to the romantic period from the 1830s roughly until the end of the American Civil War in which U.S. literature came of age as an expression of a national spirit. The literary scene was dominated by Schoolroom poets, notably Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell. Also influential were the Transcendentalists, including Emerson and Thoreau, as well as the great imaginative writers Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, and Whitman. 2018/11/27

I. Characteristics of Romanticism
Romanticism is a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism. Romanticists affirm the inner life of the self, and want each person to be free to develop and express his own inner thoughts. They believe that the feelings, intuitions and emotions are more important than reason and common sense and that one could find truth through one’s feelings. 2018/11/27

2. Romanticists think that the world is not a ticking watch made by God but a living, breathing being. They view nature as a source of vivid physical beauty and as a manifestation of spirit in the universe. They stress the close relationship between man and nature. 2018/11/27

3. They emphasize individualism, placing the individual against the group, against authority.
They see the individual at the very center of life and art. They emphasize personal freedom and freedom from formalism(形式主义), tradition, and conformity. 2018/11/27

4. They cherish strong interest in the past, (esp
4. They cherish strong interest in the past, (esp. the medieval), the wild, irregular, the indefinite, the remote, the mysterious, and the strange. They look at Indians as innocent and close to nature and therefore close in touch with God. 2018/11/27

5. They are interested in variety.
Typical literary forms of romanticism include ballad, lyric, sentimental comedy, problem novel, historical novel, gothic romance, metrical romance, sonnet and critical essay. 2018/11/27

Note sentimental comedy, a kind of comedy that achieved some popularity with respectable middle‐class audiences in the 18th century. In contrast with the aristocratic cynicism of English Restoration comedy, it showed virtue rewarded by domestic bliss; its plots, usually involving unbelievably good middle‐class couples, emphasized pathos rather than humour. Pioneered by Richard Steele in The Funeral (1701) and more fully in The Conscious Lovers (1722), it flourished in mid‐century with the French comédie larmoyante (‘tearful comedy’) and in such plays as Hugh Kelly's False Delicacy (1768). The pious moralizing of this tradition, which survived into 19th‐century melodrama, was opposed in the 1770s by Sheridan and Goldsmith, who attempted a partial return to the comedy of manners. 2018/11/27

American Romanticism Time: from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War (2)Reasons (Why Romanticism emerged?) A. Fast development of the new nation (flood of immigrants; pioneers pushing the frontier further west; industrialization; economic boom; a promising new land with prevailed optimistic moods) B. Development of journalism (Some influential periodicals appeared, such as The Atlantic Monthly. They need more literary productions.) C. Foreign influence (Review history of English literature.)(from the 18th century classicism to sentimentalism to Pre-Romanticism to Romanticism which can be divided into passive group and active group)(most influential British writers to American Romanticists-Walter Scott) 2018/11/27

American Romanticism General features of Romanticism
A. Stressing emotion rather than reason B. Stressing freedom and individuality C. Idealism rather than materialism D. Writing about nature, medieval legends and with supernatural elements 2018/11/27

More Features of Romanticism
emotions subjective original youth supernatural into nature innocent pure of purpose heavy figurative language imaginative American heroes possibly: arabesque grotesque past subject matter 2018/11/27

American Romanticism Features of American Romanticism A. Imitative
B. Independent a. peculiar American experience (landscape, pioneering to the West, Indian civilization, new nation\'s democracy and dreams) b. Puritan heritage (more moralizing, edifying more than mere entertainment) (careful about love and sex. example: Scarlet Letter) 2018/11/27

III. General Features of the Writings of American Romanticism:
As a logic result of the foreign and native factors at work, American Romanticism was both imitative and independent. 2018/11/27

imitative / foreign influences
Foreign influences add incentive to the growth of Romanticism in America. Many English and European masters of poetry and prose all make a stimulating impact on the different departments of the country’s literature, e.g. Sir Walter Scott The Gothic tradition graveyard Robert Burns and Byron 2018/11/27

Independent / distinct features
American Romanticism exhibit from the very beginning distinct features of its own. 1. It originated from an amalgam of factors that were altogether American rather than anything else. American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new experience” and “an alien quality,” e.g., American “pioneering” into the west romances and sketches about frontier life and Indians 2018/11/27

2. Puritan influence over American Romanticism is conspicuously noticeable.
(American moral values are essentially Puritan. Public opinions are overwhelmingly Puritan; the Puritan atmosphere of the nation predominantly conditioned social life and cultural taste.) American Romantic authors tend more to moralize than their English and European brothers. American romantic writers intended to edify(教育、启迪) more than they entertained. 2018/11/27

The “newness” of Americans as a nation
Their ideals of individualism and political equality, and their dream that America is to be a new Garden of Eden for man are distinctly American. ( And their existence in any form in the minds of the people do probably produce a feeling of “newness”, a feeling strong enough to inspire the romantic imagination and channel it into a different vein of writing. Hence romanticists undertook to represent their people with the sense of mission in the new world.) 2018/11/27

Features in theme and technique
In theme, American romanticists’ favorite themes include “home, family and children, nature, and idealized love”, but they exhibit an apparent apathy to the major problems of American life like the westward expansion and democracy and equality. In technique they love traditional meters and stanza forms. In language their English is usually British. Their metaphors are sometimes stereotyped and their symbolism tends to be explicit and superficial. 2018/11/27

英国是最早出现浪漫主义文学的国家之一。英国的浪漫主义作家不满于资本主义城市文明的发展，具有愤世嫉俗、归隐自然的倾向。18世纪中后期的诗人罗伯特·彭斯（1759年－1796年）和威廉·布莱克（1757年－1827年7）是浪漫主义文学的先驱，他们在英语诗歌文体和语言上做出了很多可贵的尝试。彭斯从苏格兰民歌中吸取养料，其《苏格兰方言诗集》擅长抒情和讽刺，语言通俗；布莱克的《天真之歌》、《经验之歌》则具有象征意义和神秘色彩，在20世纪大放异彩，影响了整个现代英诗。然而，英国浪漫主义第一批真正的大师则是被称为“湖畔派”的三位诗人。威廉·华兹华斯（1770年－1850年）是湖畔派诗人中成就最高者，他与“湖畔派”另一诗人萨缪尔·柯勒律治（1772年－1834年）共同出版《抒情歌谣集》，成为英国浪漫主义文学的奠基之作。诗集中收录的诗歌大部分为华兹华斯所做，而柯勒律治的名诗《古舟子咏》和《忽必烈汉》亦收入其中，充满幻觉和奇谲的意象。然而华兹华斯这一时期最重要的作品则是长诗《序曲》。骚塞的诗歌极富古之幽情，与世俗格格不入。湖畔派三位诗人均蛰居于英国西北湖区，缅怀中世纪和宗法式的乡村生活，是浪漫主义文学中温婉清丽的代表。乔治·拜伦（1788年－1824年）和雪莱（1792年－1822年）两位诗人将英国的浪漫主义文学推向高峰。他们和湖畔派诗人的不同之处在于其作品更具战斗意识和政治倾向。雪莱的代表作《解放了的普罗米修斯》通过神话描写被压迫的人民的苦难和暴君的必然下场，预言革命一定会到来。他的短诗《西风颂》、《致云雀》等音韵铿锵，更有“冬天如果来了，春天还会远吗？”等名句传世。拜伦是19世纪上半期最为著名的浪漫主义诗人，他一生游历各地，其诗作充满异域情调。代表作《唐璜》是对资本主义制度的一场深入骨髓的检阅，发人深省。在欧洲，拜伦成为一种文化现象。人们把孤独、悲壮、崇尚个人式反抗的浪漫主义者形象称为“拜伦式英雄”。拜伦晚年投身于希腊的民族解放运动，并最终因伤寒而死于希腊战场。英国浪漫主义文学的代表人物还包括约翰·济慈（1795年－1821年）。他的创作生涯只有5年，却写出了著名的抒情诗《夜莺颂》和《希腊古瓮颂》，沉醉于古代世界田园牧歌的美景之中。瓦尔特·司各特（1771年－1823年）以创作小说为主，《艾凡赫》以12世纪的英国为背景，塑造绿林英雄罗宾汉的形象，他是欧洲历史小说的创始人。 2018/11/27

由于美国和欧洲在历史、文化上的种种不同，以欧洲通行的文学流派的概念来衡量美国文学的发展实际上并不十分准确。但由于美国文学也是整个西方文学的一个部分，因此通常人们也将美国文学史放入整个西方文学史的框架内来研究。美国的浪漫主义文学深受西欧浪漫主义文学的影响。19世纪上半叶，美国资本主义迅速发展，民族意识和爱国热情高涨，摆脱英国文学的束缚、重视人的精神创造和追求自由的超验主义蔚为大观，至此美国浪漫主义文学开始蓬勃发展。爱默生 (Ralph Waldo Emerson)（1803年－1882年）和梭罗（1817年－1862年）是超验主义理论家，最先提出浪漫主义的主张。他们强调人的精神作用和直觉的意义，认为自然界充满灵性，人应该回归自然。梭罗的《瓦尔登湖》是美国浪漫主义文学的奠基之作。美国前期浪漫主义作家的代表人物包括华盛顿·欧文（1783年－1859年）、詹姆斯·库柏（1789年－1851年）和爱伦·坡。欧文被称为美国文学之父，在他的小说中，“美国文学”这一概念第一次浮出水面，不再深受英国文学的拘束。库柏是美国民族文学的奠基人之一，他开创了以《皮袜子故事集》为代表的边疆传奇小说，最重要的一部是《最后一个莫希干人》。爱伦·坡主张艺术要使读者获得刺激而达到灵魂的升华，他的小说大部分以死亡、凶杀、复仇为题材，揭示人的幻觉状态和变态心理，他和法国诗人波德莱尔共同被尊为象征主义文学的先驱。美国后期的浪漫主义文学以纳撒尼尔·霍桑（1804年－1864年）、沃尔特·惠特曼（1819年－1892年）和赫尔曼·麦尔维尔（1819年－1891年）为代表。霍桑在作品中对“隐秘的恶”进行挖掘，《红字》反映清教徒殖民统治的黑暗以及教会的虚伪和不公，象征手法运用纯熟。惠特曼的耗一生的经历编纂、扩充诗集《草叶集》，歌颂美利坚民族意识的觉醒，成为美国现代文学的鼻祖。麦尔维尔是美国浪漫主义小说家中成就最高者，擅长描写航海奇遇和异域风情，代表作《白鲸》是美国文学史上最杰出的小说之一，小说中的“白鲸”已经成为一种超然的、对人类怀有敌意而又难以征服的神秘物的图腾。 2018/11/27

V. Washington Irving (1783-1859) Father of American Literature
the first American author to achieve international renown, who created the fictional characters Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane. The enduring popularity of Irving’s tales involving these characters proved the effectiveness of the short story as an American literary form. 2018/11/27

Life Irving was born into a wealthy New York merchant family. From a very early age, he began to read widely and write juvenile poems, essays and plays. Later, he studied law. His first book A History of New York, written under the name of Diedrich Knickerbocker, was a great success and won him wide popularity. In 1815, he went to England to take care of his family business ther, and when it failed, had to write to support himself. 2018/11/27

Life With the publication of The Sketch Book, he won a measure of international recognition. In 1826, as an American diplomatic attaché, he was sent to Spain, where he gathered material for his writing. From 1829 to 1832, he was secretary of the U.S Legation in London. Then when he was fifty, he returned to America and bought “Sunnyside”, his famous home. There he spent the rest of his life, living a life of leisure and comfort, except for a period of four years ( ), when he was Minister to Spain. 2018/11/27

Significance “Father of American literature”
“Father of the American short story” The first American writher of imaginative literature to gain international fame. The short story as a genre in American literature began with Irving’s The Sketch Book. The Sketch Book also marked the beginning of American Romanticism. 2018/11/27

Works A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty by Diedrich Knickerbocker 《纽约外史》 The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent 《见闻札记》 “Rip Van Winkle” “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” 《睡谷的传说》 Bracebridge Hall 《布雷斯布里奇庄园》 Oliver Goldsmith 《哥尔德斯密斯》 Life of George Washington 《华盛顿传》 2018/11/27

Literary significance
The first American author of imaginative literature to achieve international renown The first great belletrist (纯文学作家) The first modern short stories appearing in his Sketch Book (marked the beginning of romanticism) Among the first to write good history and biography for literary entertainment Introducing familiar essay (随笔杂谈) to America 2018/11/27

Major Works A History of New York (1809) 《纽约外史》
The Sketch Book (of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.) ( ) 《见闻札记》 Rip Van Winkle 《瑞普·凡·温克尔》 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow 《睡谷的传说》 2018/11/27

Characteristics: He writes to amuse and entertain;
He has a keen sense of humor; He has an unusual power of investing his subjects with the proper atmosphere;. His prose is clear, simple, smooth; his language is musical; His characters are vivid and true so that they tend to linger in the readers’ mind. 2018/11/27

3. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Describe Sleepy Hollow. 2018/11/27

2) Who is the central character of the story?
2018/11/27

3) What “crossed his path” and “caused more perplexity” to Ichabod than ghosts?
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4) What happens on a fine autumnal day?
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5) What happens to him on his way back after the banquet?
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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Setting: Sleepy Hollow Characters: Ichabod, Katrina, Brom Bones Analysis of the protagonist: Ichabod: superstitious, shrewd, speculative, scary, scholarly --- a city slicker Brom Bones: rough, vigorous, boisterous but inwardly good --- a country bumpkin 2018/11/27

The rivalry in love between Ichabod and Brom assumes the dimensions of two ethical groups in a historic context. Ichabod is somewhat a destructive force in village life, or an interloper who comes along to swindle the villagers. At last he is driven away from where he does not belong, so that the serene village remains permanently good and happy. 2018/11/27

Themes: Satire on superstition Urban vs. rural life
Mock at so-called intellectuals and provincial villagers 2018/11/27

James Fenimore Cooper (1789 -1851):
James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851) was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, which many consider to be his masterpiece. 2018/11/27

Contributions Finding "the West" and "the frontier life" as materials for literary works Introducing Western tradition into American literature 2018/11/27

Masterpiece: The Leatherstocking Tales.
The Pioneers (1823), The Last of Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), The Deerslayer (1841) The Leatherstocking Tales, (German edition) 2018/11/27

Analysis of Leatherstocking Tales
llustrate the importance of the frontier and the wilderness for the first time in the history of American literature. With the central figure Natty Bumppo, these novels unfold an epic account about his adventures from initiation into the backwoods until his final death in old age out on the prairies in the middle of America. D. H. Lawrence called Natty Bumppo the essential American soul. In the novels, Cooper implies his discourse and social ideology into the speech of the characters. Moreover, he uses story plot and structure to indicate class hierarchy. Cooper’s conflict between “morally right” and “practically inevitable”: he was devoted to the principles of social order and at the same time responsive to the idea of nature and freedom in the wilderness. 2018/11/27

Analysis of Natty Bumppo:
Hawk-Eye; Pathfinder Deerslayer; Leatherstocking As a pioneer, his stories approximate the American national experience of adventure into the West. Presented as an ideal American, not realistically but romantically, living a virtuous and free life in God’s world. To him the wilderness is good, pure, perfect, where there is freedom not tainted by human institutions. An embodiment of human virtues like innocence, simplicity, honesty, and generosity, a man born with an immaculate sense of good and evil and right and wrong. 2018/11/27

Writing style: powerful but clumsy
Good at inventing plots. Plots are incredible sometimes but stories are intriguing. Landscape descriptions are majestic and suggestive of Walter Scott (being called “the American Scott”). Quite conscious of associations of different locales Rich imagination: never been to the frontier and among the Indians His style is dreadful, characterization wooden and lacking in probability, and his language, his use of dialect, is not authentic. 2018/11/27

Class focuses Transcendentalism Emerson Thoreau 2018/11/27

New England Transcendentalism (1836-1855)
It was the first American intellectual movement which exerted a tremendous influence on the consciousness of American people. Transcendental club became the movement’s center with its magazine The Dial(日晷). The two representatives are Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. 2018/11/27

The term Transcendentalism is derived from the Latin verb transcendere, meaning to rise above, or to pass beyond the limits. Transcendentalism has been defined as the recognition in man of the capacity of acquiring knowledge transcending the reach of the five senses, or of knowing truth intuitively, or of reaching the divine without the need of an intercessor. 2018/11/27

The following are the major concepts:
(1) As romantic idealism (唯心主义), it put spirit first and matter second. (2) It stressed the power of intuition. (3) It advocated an intuitive belief based upon an ultimate unity - “Oversoul,” a spiritual essence or vital force in the universe in which all souls participate and that therefore transcends individual consciousness. (4)It emphasized the significance of the individual and self-reliance. (5) It took nature as symbol of spirit or God. (6) commerce is degrading and that a life spent in business is a wasted one. 2018/11/27

Major Principles: 1. The transcendentalists place emphasis on spirit, or the over-soul, as the most important thing in the universe. As romantic idealism, it puts spirit first and matter second. Both spirit and matter are real, but spirit transcended matter and the permanent reality was the spiritual one. 2018/11/27

But things learned by intuition are truer than from the outside.
2. It stressed the power of intuition, believing that people could learn things both from the outside world by means of the five senses and from the inner world by intuition. But things learned by intuition are truer than from the outside. 2018/11/27

3. Emerson envisions religion as an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal “oversoul”. The oversoul as called by Emerson was an all-pervading unitary spiritual power of goodness, omnipresent and omnipotent, from which all things came and of which everyone was a part. It existed in nature and in man alike and constituted the chief element of the universe. Generally, the oversoul referred to spirit or God as the most important things in the universe. Since the oversoul was a single essence, and since all the people derived their beings from the same source, the seeming diversity and clash of human interests was only superficial, and all the people ere in reality striving toward the same ends by different but converging paths. 2018/11/27

4. It emphasizes the significance of the individual and believes that the individual is the most important element in society and that the ideal kind of individual is self-reliant and unselfish. The individual soul could reach God without the help of churches or clergy. The transcendentalist had an uncompromising concern for individual’s moral development rather than for social progress. 2018/11/27

5. It takes nature as symbolic of spirit or God.
Everything in the universe was viewed as an expression of the divine spirit. Behind physical objects was a universal soul. Because nature was God’s enlightenment towards human beings, it could exercise healthy influence on human beings. Nature’s beauty was the beauty of human mind, and humanity and nature should join. 2018/11/27

6. It holds that commerce is degrading and that a life spent in business is a wasted one.
Humanity could be much better off if people paid less attention to the material world in which they lived. 2018/11/27

Significance 1Transcendental ideas inspire young people to cast off their enslavement to the past, to follow God within and to live every moment of life with strenuousness, and to regard nature as the great object lesson proving God’s presence everywhere in His creation. 2018/11/27

2 It becomes an ethical guide to life for a young nation of America.
It preaches positive life and appeals to the best side of human nature. It stresses religious tolerance and the free control of its own affairs by each congregation. It stresses the essential worth and dignity as a powerful force for democracy. 2018/11/27

3 Emerson and Thoreau’s writings have great impact on the country and a new group of writers of the period under the influence began to apply transcendental ideas in their works, e.g. Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, and Whitman. 2018/11/27

4. advocated individualism summit of American Romanticism
marked independence of American literature 2018/11/27

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
leading New England Transcendentalist 2018/11/27

Emersonian Transcendentalism:
It is actually a philosophical school which absorbed some ideological concerns of American Puritanism and European Romanticism, with its focus on the intuitive knowledge of human beings to grasp the absolute in the universe and the divinity of man. Emerson rejected both the formal religion of the churches and the Deistic philosophy; instead he based his religion on the “oversoul” (intuitive belief in an ultimate unity). By employing nature as a big symbol of the spirit, or God, or the oversoul, Emerson has brought the Puritan legacy of symbolism to its perfection. 2018/11/27

I. Points of View 1 Oversoul: the soul has completely transcended the limits of individuality and become part of the oversoul. Emerson sees spirit pervading everywhere, not only in the soul of man, but behind nature, throughout nature. 2018/11/27

2. Nature Nature is to him emblematic of God. To him, nature is a wholesome moral influence on man and his character. The spiritual and immanent God is operative in the soul of man and man is divine. The divinity of man became a favorite subject in his lectures and essays. 2018/11/27

3. Individual The individual is the most important of all. If man depends on himself, cultivates himself, and brings out the divine in himself, he can hope to become better and even perfect. Men should and could be self-reliant. Each man should feel the world as his and the world exists for him alone. He should determine his own existence. He is in the main optimistic about human perfectibility. 2018/11/27

4. Aesthetic ideas: To him, a poet should be able to see into the deeps of infinite time, comprehend the path of things and the divine unity of the universe by intuition, and communicate the feelings of contact with nature to his fellowmen. True poetry and true art should ennoble. It should serve as a moral purification and a passage toward organic unity and higher reality. He places emphasis on ideas, symbols and imaginative words. For him, symbolism is a universal thing. 2018/11/27

5. Optimism He firmly believes that there is a force always at work to make the best better and the worst good, as if he knew from the first the victory of good over evil and the angel must always be stronger than the demon. 2018/11/27

II. Major Works: Nature the Bible of New England Transcendentalism
Introduction Commodity Beauty Language Discipline Idealism Spirit Prospects 2018/11/27

Subjects Discussed in Nature
To discuss the love of nature, the uses of nature, the idealist philosophy in relation to nature, evidences of spirit in the material universe, and the potential expansion of human souls and works that will result from a general return to direct, immediate contact with the natural environment. 2018/11/27

Famous selections "The sensual man conforms thoughts to things; the poet conforms things to his thoughts.“ In Nature, Emerson sets forth his idealistic philosophy. "Idealism sees the world in God" is with him an axiom. This philosophy seems to him to free human beings from the tyranny of materialism, to enable them to use matter as a mere symbol in the solution of the soul's problems, and to make the world conformable to thought. 2018/11/27

“Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe
“Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? ... There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.” “Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul.” 2018/11/27

“a transparent eyeball” From Nature, Chapter I
Emerson’s remarkable image of “a transparent eyeball” marks a paradoxical state of being, in which one is merged into nature, the oversoul, while at the same time retaining a unique perception of the experience. 2018/11/27

Sample of the essays: Self-reliance
Main idea: “with the exercise of self-trust, new powers will appear; that a man should not postpone his life, but live now; that a man is weak if he expects aid from others; that discontent is want of self-reliance.” 2018/11/27

The American Scholar America’s Declaration of Intellectual Independence
He denounced the "timid, imitative, tame spirit“, emphasized the new importance given to the single person, and made his famous declaration to Americans, "We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds." 2018/11/27

Essays, First Series His Essays, First Series is composed of 12 short essays on such subjects as History, Self-Reliance, Compensation, Spiritual Laws, Love, Friendship, Prudence, Heroism, The Over-Soul, Circles, Intellect, and Art. 2018/11/27

Style Emerson’s essays often have a casual style, for most of them were derived from his journals or lectures. They are usually characterized by a series of short, declarative sentences. He usually uses comparison, metaphors, symbols and images to make the general idea clearly expressed. 2018/11/27

Contribution of Emerson:
1. He exerted a great influence on the development of American cultural independence. 2. His perception of humanity and nature as symbols of universal truth encouraged the development of the symbolist movement in American art and literature. 3. His repudiation of established tradition and institutions encouraged a literary revolution. 2018/11/27

4. Emerson’s aesthetics brought about a revolution in American literature in general and in American poetry such as Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. 5. Emerson’s importance in the intellectual history of America lies in the fact that he embodied a new nation’s desire and struggle to assert its own identity in its formative period. 6. His transcendentalism, with its emphasis on democratic individualism, may have provided its ideal explanation for the conduct and activities of an expanding capitalist society. 2018/11/27

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
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Viewpoints 1. Thoreau was an active Transcendentalist. He helped Emerson to edit the Transcendentalist Journal, The Dial. He was an “escapist” or a recluse. He did not like the way a materialistic America was developing and was vehemently outspoken on the point. He hated the human injustice as represented by the slavery system and was known to have helped at least one African American slave to get free. 2018/11/27

2. Thoreau took a more than usual interest in the natural world
2. Thoreau took a more than usual interest in the natural world. He saw nature as a genuine restorative, healthy influence on man’s spiritual well-being, and regarded it as a symbol of the spirit. He tried to seek a way to unlock the secrets of the spirit. It was his firm belief that “natural objects and phenomena are the original symbols or types which express our thoughts and feelings.” 2018/11/27

3. Thoreau has faith in the inner virtue and inward, spiritual grace of man.
He holds that the most important thing for men to do with their lives is to be self-sufficient and strive to achieve personal spiritual perfection. He has been regarded as a prophet of individualism in American literature. 2018/11/27

4. Thoreau was very critical of modern civilization
4. Thoreau was very critical of modern civilization. In his opinion, it was degrading and enslaving man. Spiritual richness is real wealth. He felt that man should seek truth directly by himself and the best way to find truth is by leaving the life of hurry and bustle to get ahead in worldly affairs and sinking oneself in the wholesome atmosphere of nature. 2018/11/27

5. Thoreau was sorely disgusted with “the inundations (泛滥) of the dirty institutions of men’s society” with “life without principle”. He was impatient with his fellowmen who took an enormous amount of interest in the developments of the outside world. 2018/11/27

Walden (New England's Utopia),
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General introduction It is the record of Thoreau's experiment in endeavoring to live an ideal life in the forest. This book differs from most of its kind in presenting actual life, in not being mainly evolved from the inner consciousness on the basis of a very little experience. Concise and humorous 2018/11/27

Symbols in Walden Thoreau used his life at Walden as a symbol, a symbol of what could happen to every person. He made his life a spiritual inspiration. He made the water in Walden Pond another symbol of spiritual knowledge of washing away evil, being reborn, being refreshed with the water of pure, innocent nature. 2018/11/27

Subjects Discussed in Walden:
It is concerned with the essence of life, living rather than getting a living. It is a condemnation of making social improvement and comfort all important. It stresses the importance of thought over material circumstances. People should choose the proper material surroundings that will improve their thoughts, the kind of environment which helps people to have great thoughts. It has confidence in the individual, and holds that individual freedom breaks down the rules and barriers of society so that the individual can express himself and act on his own principles. It stresses the escape from the power of time. There is the possibility for and importance of change in one’s spiritual life which is in harmony with nature. 2018/11/27

Comments It is a great transcendentalist work that came out of the period under discussion. It is a faithful record of his reflections when he was in solitary communion with nature, an eloquent indication that he not only embraced Emerson’s Transcendentalist philosophy but went even further to illustrate the pantheistic quality of nature. It is a book on self-culture and human perfectibility. He has faith in the inner virtue and inward spiritual grace of man. 2018/11/27

The regeneration became a major thematic concern of “Walden”.
The book is full of people waking up. He despised and pitied his fellow villagers and wished to wake them up from their spiritual slumbers and help make them into a new generation of men. It exhibits Thoreau’s calm trust in the future and his ardent belief in a new generation of men. The regeneration became a major thematic concern of “Walden”. 2018/11/27

Style of Walden a. Prophetic voice. b. Conversational in tone.
c. Humor (puns, satire, irony, and sarcasm). d. Proverbial expressions. e. Brief tales, fables, and allegories. f. Metaphors. (actual physical world - the spiritual reality). g. Direct forceful sentence. 2018/11/27

Influence His first influence is nonviolent struggle as expressed in his “Civil Disobedience”. Mohatma Gandi, Martin Luther King and others followed his principle successfully in their struggle for independence and human rights. His second major influence is his call of back to nature. In the 1960s a whole generation turned his back on materialism and selectively went to live in the woods. His celebration of nature and his call to simplify have stirred people the artificiality of a society that is glutted with machines and ruins nature in the name of social progress. 2018/11/27

Class focuses Schoolroom Poets William Cullen Bryant
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 2018/11/27

(Fireside poets/Household Poets)
Schoolroom Poets (Fireside poets/Household Poets) The group is typically thought to comprise Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., who were the first American poets whose popularity rivaled that of British poets, both at home and abroad. The poets' primary subjects were the domestic life, mythology, and politics of America. The name "Fireside Poets" is derived from that popularity: The Fireside Poets' conventional style—standard forms, regular meter, and rhymed stanzas—made their works particularly suitable for memorization and recitation in school and also at home, where it was a source of entertainment for families gathered around the fire. 2018/11/27

Schoolroom Poets They belong to the New England poets who represent the elite educated society in New England. They are conventional, wealthy, highly cultured, interested in the European art forms in literature and they have strong sense of morality. They are called Schoolroom or Fireside poets because during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century these were the most popular poets for teachers to talk about in class with their grade school and high school students. Their pictures were often placed on the walls in the classrooms of the schools. They represent the ideals of the genteel 19th century culture, and their poems represent the morality which the culture admires. They write about what is unique to America, America’s legends, past and contemporary events in American life. But they are conservative and imitative, using European literary forms and polite literary language to talk about what is natively American. They insist on traditional meters, stanza forms, stereotyped metaphors and superficial symbolism. They try to make their poetry sound like the poetry of England. They do not look at social and political struggles that go on in America but only pretty, picturesque, and nice things. 2018/11/27

William Cullen Bryant 2018/11/27

Brief introduction “The first-ranking American poet” --Whitman 1. One of America’s earliest nature poets. Sometimes called “American Wordsworth,” in that he took nature and the American landscape as evidence of the divine and source of his poetic inspiration. 2. His poetic works, either by theme or by style, with an austere and carefully controlled melancholy, suggested a strong resemblance to the works of the “Graveyard School.” 2018/11/27

“Graveyard School” 18th-century school of English poets who wrote primarily about human mortality. Often set in a graveyard, their poems mused on the vicissitudes of life, the solitude of death and the grave, and the anguish of bereavement. Their air of pensive gloom predicted the melancholy of the romantic movement. e.g. Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” 2018/11/27

3. He contributed greatly to the development of American newspaper
3. He contributed greatly to the development of American newspaper. （New York Evening Post） 4. He has been remembered as the first American translator of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. 2018/11/27

His literary views A poet should use nature as a means of bodying forth ideas; He should put literary emphasis on ethical beauty; He should select diction to attain suggestiveness and elevation; He should be flexible with metrics; He should appeal to feeling, imagination and understanding. 2018/11/27

Subjects matter The beauty and harmony of nature as a source of solace, joy and escape; The power and beneficence of God; The dignity of humanity; The sacredness of human freedom. 2018/11/27

Writing style Technically, his theme and subject were rather conventional. Most of his poems were written in blank verse(无韵诗). Bryant's verse, chiefly reflective and descriptive, is characterized by elevation, simplicity, and moral earnestness. Unlike Irving and Cooper, his object is not entertainment. There usually is a stoical and moral undertone in his poems. 2018/11/27

Major poems : “Thanatopsis” (死亡随想); “To a Waterfowl” （致水鸟）
(“most perfect brief poem in the language” --Matthew Arnold) 2018/11/27

Genesis of writing “To a waterfowl”
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To a waterfowl Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? 2018/11/27

Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. 2018/11/27

Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean-side? 2018/11/27

There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast—The desert and illimitable air— Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near. 2018/11/27

And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 2018/11/27

In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright.
Thou 'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart. He, who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright. 2018/11/27

Question: How and why does the poet write about the Power in this poem?
Bryant interrupted himself from describing a bird into teaching a lesson. In the first three stanzas, there is no hint of any morals. However, in the fourth stanza, all of a sudden, a new figure as a god appears. The god has a supernatural power which directs the bird’s flight. He may think it is not enough for a poem written just for the sake of its beauty, or just for the beauty of it, it should say something more than beauty; it should carry morals. Theme: a divine power guiding and protecting everything in nature 2018/11/27

Form of the poem It rhymes “abab”, while the length of each line is so different that you cannot find a regular foot. However, the two long lines in the middle of each stanza may refer to the balance in the floating of the bird. The first and fourth lines, which are relatively shorter, look like two wings. The stanzaic form reminds one of a flying bird. 2018/11/27

致水鸟一整天你扑打双翼在那浩淼的天际，穿越冰冷稀薄的空气疲倦了，也从不俯身飞向热情的大地，尽管黑夜即将来临。
你辛劳的旅程即将告终你将找到夏日的家园，在那里你将在同伴中休憩鸣唱，芦苇将俯身遮掩你隐蔽的窝巢。你袅袅而去，深邃的天空吞噬了你的身影；然而，我心中却深深地镌刻你留下的教益，它将永存心底。他，人间无处不在，在无垠的天空指引着你的飞行，在我孤独跋涉的漫长路上，也将为我正确地导航。你要去往何方？露珠正在坠落，天穹闪耀着白昼最后的脚步，远远地，穿过玫瑰色的深处，你求索着孤独的道路。捕鸟者恶意的目光只能徒然看着到你在远处飞翔因为，绛红色的天幕上，你飘一样的飞过。你在寻找潮湿葳蕤的湖畔还是宽阔河流的岸边抑或，是在寻找那波浪起伏惊涛拍岸的海滩? 有一个神明关怀着你，为你在没有路的岸边指路，—— 寂寥无际的万里长空，—— 你孑然一身却从不迷途。 2018/11/27

致水鸟白露茫茫。向晚天际燃霞光，远在玫瑰色深处，孤飞何往？猎手凝望，空见你高空翱翔，猩红天幕浮暗影，无法能伤。
寻觅何方，水声潺潺芦苇荡，海畔惊涛落复涨，大河之旁。必有力量，指引你孤身远航，长空大漠无道路，不迷航向。双翼张扬，大气稀薄寒且旷，倦气终日不着陆，暗夜无妨。辛苦得偿；行将觅得栖息地，芦荡温馨多伴侣，唱和鸣响。踪影消亡，长空吞没你形象，教益深刻铭心上，久久难忘。地阔天长，谁引你飞渡莽苍，亦将引我上征途，独行孤闯。 2018/11/27

Assignment: (choose either one)
Compare the image of the waterfowl in this poem with the image of the skylark in Shelly’s “To a Skylark.” Make a comparison or contrast between Bryant’s “To a Waterfowl” and Wurong’s “waterfowl” 水鸟【唐】吴融烟为行止水为家，两两三三睡暖沙。为谢离鸾兼别鹄，如何禁得向天涯。 2018/11/27

Thanatopsis (view of death) 2018/11/27

Thanatopsis, probably written in 1811, was first published in 1817 in The North American Review. In middle age the poet wrote the following to answer a question in regard to the time of the composition of Thanatopsis: "It was written when I was seventeen or eighteen years old … and I believe it was composed in my solitary rambles in the woods. As it was first committed to paper, it began with the half line--'Yet a few days, and thee'--and ended with the beginning of another line with the words--'And make their bed with thee.' The rest of the poem--the introduction and the close--was added some years afterward, in 1821." 2018/11/27

Metrical form: blank verse
The poem is written in blank verse so as to express with more freedom. Thems: 1. Nature: To Bryant, nature is the symbol of the Maker. It should impart moral instruction, and elevate man. At the idea of death, the beauty of nature will make a person less pessimistic. 2018/11/27

2. Death: To the Puritans, death was seen as a preliminary to an afterlife. Bryant, however, treats death as part of nature, as the destiny of us all, and as the great equalizer in the world. The death of a man means nothing but the returning to nature. In the realm of death, he is not the first, nor ought he be the last. Before the eternity of nature, a human being is rather frail and weak. . 2018/11/27

挽歌陶潜亲戚或余悲，他人亦已歌。死去何足道，托体同山阿。 2018/11/27

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The best-known American poet during the 19th century. The representative of the Schoolroom Poets 2018/11/27

1.Literary significance
Brief introduction 1.Literary significance Longfellow has probably taught more people to love poetry than any other 19th century poet, English or American. He was the first American poet to write narrative poems. He is America's best and most widely read story-teller in verse.The Song of Hiawatha is the first American epic in blank verse about the American Indians. 2018/11/27

2. American themes in European style
His long stay in Europe led to his mastery of European literature, which enabled him to embody in his poetry romantic tendencies as humanitarian attitude, love of beauty, love of nature and love for the past, and to introduce American themes to Europe (American Indians, anti-slavery ideas and scenery of the New World.) He wrote in traditional regular meters and feet, in regular rhyming schemes. He did not appeal for the breaking of American literature from European literature. Usually he wrote about American subjects, but always in European style. 2018/11/27

3. Simple ideas (both appeal and weakness)
The ideas he expressed are generally simple ones but he expressed them musically and powerfully. The child-like simplicity and detachment from the deep and important problems of contemporary life are perhaps the basic elements of Longfellow’s appeal to the common audience; but on the other hand, they led to a fatal weakness in his work, that is, lack of the depth and insight of a great artist such as Whitman. 2018/11/27

4. Disparity between his views and his poems
Longfellow emphasized the mysteries of birth, death and love in his poems. He had a melancholy vision of life, but his poems have a manly, affirmative note. In other words, there is a disparity between the poets feelings and what he wrote in the poems. 2018/11/27

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls; Along the sea-lands damp and brown The traveler hastens toward the town, And the tide rises, the tide falls. Curlew: 白腰杓鹬；杓鹬一种，杓鹬属淡棕色长腿滨鸟，生有长而细的、向下弯曲的喙。 2018/11/27

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls; The little waves, with their soft, white hands, Efface the footprints in the sands, And the tide rises, the tide falls. The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls; The day returns, but never more Returns the traveler to the shore, The tide rises, the tide falls. 2018/11/27

The poem has only 3 stanzas in iambic tetrameter with a repeating refrain with rhyme scheme “aabba.”
In this poem, the simple language reveals a very profound philosophical theme: time and tide wait for no man. Time and tide are eternal but human life is limited. Time fades, tide effaces, but people are powerless before nature. The repetition of “the tide rises, the tide falls” for five times suggests the cyclic movement of nature and reflects the uncertainty of human life, appealing to people to cherish life. 2018/11/27

Refrain（副句）: one or more words repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza.
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A Psalm of Life The poem consists of 9 stanzas in trochaic tetrameter (四步扬抑格) with rhyme scheme “abab”. The relationship of life and death is a constant theme for poets. Longfellow expresses his pertinent interpretation to that by warning us that though life is hard and everybody must die, time flies and life is short, yet, human beings ought to be bold to act, to face the reality straightly so as to make meaningless life significant. 2018/11/27

My Lost Youth My Lost Youth” was written in 1855 following a day spent recalling his boyhood in Portland, Maine. It is a tribute both to his native city and to the boy who climbed its hilly streets and gazed out over its harbor dreaming faraway dreams. The last two lines of each stanza being the famous refrain “A boy’s will is the wind’s will,/ And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts,” is translated from a Lapland song((拉普兰: 挪威、瑞典、芬兰及苏联北部拉普人居住的地区) The refrain about a boy’s will similar to the wind’s will, captures both the nostalgia and the idea of errant youth. The wind is varied and farranging. Similarly, the boy’s desires and thoughts shift about in an uncontrolled way. 2018/11/27

A Slave’s Dream The poet described vividly the miserable life of a slave who finally died in the field while dreaming about his happy and free life in his previous tribe. This poem is a song of freedom which, on one hand, discloses the evils of the slavery, on the other hand, makes us cherish our own freedom more than before. 2018/11/27

The Song of Hiawatha The Song of Hiawatha is is the first American epic about the American Indians. The meter derives from the Finnish national epic Kalevala and resembles it in spirit. It tells about how Hiawatha behaves as a defender, civilizer and prophet of his people. Kalevala:《英雄的国土》(芬兰史诗名, 由Elias Lonnrot 根据民间传说编写, 1835年初版) 2018/11/27

EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) Short story writer, Poet, Literary critic
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REPUTATION a brilliantly talented man, but not recognized in his own day. It is the French symbolist poets such as Baudelaire (波德莱尔), and Mallarme (马拉美) who shaped Poe’s literary reputation. They admired him for his poetic vocabulary and called his words pure poetry. It was not until the 20th century when Americans started to learn from the French that Poe became popular in America. His aesthetics and conscious craftsmanship, his attack on “the heresy of the didactic” and his call for “the rhythmical creation of beauty” have influenced French symbolists and the devotees of “art for art’s sake”. 2018/11/27

Poe is father of psychoanalytic criticism and detective story.
His relationship to Chinese literature is not insignificant. Modern Chinese masters like Luxun and Guo Moruo were influenced by him. Psychoanalytic criticism：精神分析一种弗洛伊德发展的人格理论，其中心点是压抑和无意识的力量，还包括婴儿期性欲，抵抗，移情等概念这种理论把自我意识分成本我，自我和超我三个部分 2018/11/27

POETIC THEORY A poem should be short. Each poem should cause only one definite emotional impression, and that a long poem would lack the necessary unity. His poetic aim was solely "the creation of beauty." --The Philosophy of Composition The function of the poetry is not to summarize and interpret earthly experience, but to create a mood in which the soul soars towards “supernatural beauty.” The elevation of the excitement of the soul should be “the poetic principle.” 2018/11/27

3. The tone of its highest manifestation is one of sadness
3. The tone of its highest manifestation is one of sadness. “Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.” 4. Death is the most melancholy subject available for a poet, and that the death of a beautiful woman is “unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.” 2018/11/27

5. Music is essential because it is associated with indefinite sensations.
Poe defines poetry as “the rhythmical creation of beauty,” indicating that only in music can a man comes closest to attaining what he calls “supernatual beauty.” 6. Poe made good use of a number of poetic devices to create a mood appropriate to the theme of his poems. The result is often a poem of almost haunting melody done with extreme artistry of alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme and repetition. 2018/11/27

NOTE Assonance 半韵, 半谐音(元音相同而辅音不同的韵, 如late与make
Consonance 辅音韵辅音或辅音模式的重复，尤指位于词尾的，如 blank和 think或 strong和 string 2018/11/27

Major poems “The Raven” “To Helen” “Annabel Lee” “Israfel” 2018/11/27

POE’S THEORIES FOR THE SHORT STORY father of modern short story
The short story must be of such length as to be read at one sitting, so as to ensure the totality of impression. A skillful literary artist should conceive, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, and then invents and combines such incidents as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. 2018/11/27

NOTE 爱伦·坡曾这样阐述自己的创作原则:“聪明的艺术家不是将自己的思想纳入他的情节,而是事先精心策划,想出某种独特的、与众不同的效果,然后再杜撰出这样一些情节———他把这些情节联结起来,而他所做的一切都将最大限度地有利于实现预先构思的效果”,使“每一事件,每一描写细节,甚至一字一句都收到一定的统一效果,一个预想效果,印象主义的效果” 。 2018/11/27

3. The merit of a work of art should be judged by its psychological effect upon the reader.
4. “Melancholy” is to be the tone of the story, and that tone is set from the very outset by few carefully chosen words on the first page. 5. Although beauty is the aim of poems, truth is the aim of tales. A tale should reveal some logical truth with the “fullest satisfaction”, and should end with the last sentence, leaving a sense of finality with the reader. 6. Tales can deal with terror, passion, horror, humor, sarcasm, wit, and ratiocination (逻辑推理). 2018/11/27

Themes in his story: 1. Love and Hate
Poe explores the similarity of love and hate in many stories. Poe portrays the psychological complexity of these two supposedly opposite emotions, emphasizing the ways they enigmatically blend into each other. 2. Self vs. Alter Ego In many of Poe’s Gothic tales, characters wage internal conflicts by creating imaginary alter egos or assuming alternate and opposite personalities. 3. The Power of the Dead over the Living Poe often gives memory the power to keep the dead alive. Poe distorts this otherwise commonplace literary theme by bringing the dead literally back to life, employing memory as the trigger that reawakens the dead, who are usually women. 2018/11/27

The features of stories
In theme, though not in form, Poe anticipates 20th century literature in his treatment of the disintegration of the self in a world of T. S. Eliot’s “nothingness” and Hemingway’s “nada”. Poe was sensitive enough to feel the pressure of a world where science and reason reign supreme. 2. Poe’s most enduring tales are those of horror, the horror coming from the workings of an irrational or criminal mind, driven to evil or insanity by a perverse, irrational force which, to him, is an elementary impulse in man. 2018/11/27

3. A number of Poe’s tales treat a number of different people who are all along aware that they are going mad, thus exhibiting the believable stages of mental disintegration. 4. On the one hand, he was much given to the world of imagination and fancy, and on the other hand, he was also a full rational human being, logical excessively, with an intuitive faculty and a sixth sense impossible to define. In other words, he was immensely interested in deduction and induction. 2018/11/27

Major stories analysis or ratiocination, like The Gold Bug and that wonderful analytical detective story, the first of its kind, The Murders in the Rue Morgue,The Purloined Letter Of conscience, like William Wilson, of pseudo-science, like A Descent into the Maelstrom,(卷入大旋涡) of supernatural, like The Fall of the House of Usher,The Masque of the Red Death, Of natural beauty, like The Domain of Arnheim. (阿恩海姆乐园) Collection of short stories: Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque (荒诞奇异故事集) 2018/11/27

The Raven 2018/11/27

Stanza 11 Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, `Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore - Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore Of "Never-nevermore."' 2018/11/27

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Summary and analysis: A weary man is visited in his room, one stormy midnight, by a raven who can speak the single word “Nevermore.” Tortured by grief over the loss of his beloved, the man questions the bird concerning the possibility of meeting her in another world. He is driven to wilder demands by the repetition of the fatal word, until the raven becomes an irremovable symbol of his dark doubts and frustrated longing. The poet expressed his greatest sorrow over the death of his beloved literally and his sadness over the life comprehensively. Raven as an ominous symbol is consciously used to convey his bitterness, distress and desperation. 2018/11/27

Metrical form: Maybe his most famous narrative poem, consists of 18 six-line stanzas, the first five lines of each being roughly in trochaic octameter (八步扬抑格), and the sixth line trochaic tetrameter. The rhyme pattern is abcbbb, in which the b rhymes are based on the constant refrain, “nevermore”, a word that merged Poe’s favorite theme of grief occasioned by the death of a beautiful woman (in this case “Lenore”), and the distinctive theme of despair at the denial of personal immortality. 2018/11/27

Tone: This poem is characterized by its dramatic variation of tone, which starts from mournfulness, and then progresses to trepidation and jocularity, and eventually to despair by way of hysterical self-torture. Figures of speech: Alliteration, internal rhyme (rhyme that occurs within a line of verse), personification, refrain 2018/11/27

The symbolic meanings of raven
1. The raven symbolizes disaster and misfortune. Raven is conventionally regarded as an ominous fowl, a symbol of misfortune. Thus with the repetition of the “napping and tapping” the poet was with “fantastic terrors never felt before.” 2. The bird may symbolize the soul of the radiant maiden, the “lost Lenore”. 3. The raven is the symbol of modern reality. The poet was of the firm belief that in modern society human beings are apathetic creatures. He was deeply resentful at the people’s indifference towards his mourning to Lenore. Therefore, he turned to the raven for comfort. But quite to his disappointment, he was merely responded with a cold “Nevermore”. 2018/11/27

4. The bird may be taken as a symbol of the sub-consciousness of the poet. In the conversation, the poet distinctly expressed his passion to Lenore, however, the only response from the Raven was “Nevermore”. It seems what the poet had expressed is simply the view out of the “id”(本我), while the raven’s words are rather restrictive and seem out of “ego”(自我). The poet was too affectionate to Lenore to be restrictive, while the Raven was what warned him to be rational and that what had been lost would return “nevermore”. 2018/11/27

Annabel Lee 2018/11/27

Note Most critics believe that this poem refers to Poe’s wife, Virginia Clemm Poe. The couple were first cousins and married when Virginia Clemm was 13 and Poe was 27. Other critics argue that the poem is about Elmira Shelton, a sweetheart of Poe’s youth whose family had broken their early love affair. Poe was engaged to her again just before his death in 1849. Virginia Clemm Poe 2018/11/27

To Helen 【按】爱伦·坡写过两首《致海伦》。前一首发表于1831年，诗中的海伦是坡少年时暗恋过的简·斯坦纳德（Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard）。斯坦纳德夫人是坡的同学罗伯特·斯坦纳德的母亲，她端庄美丽，成了少年坡心中美的偶像。1824年4月, 31岁的斯坦纳德夫人病故，坡为此非常伤心，其后很长一段时间神思恍惚，常做恶梦，而且多次在夜里到斯坦纳德夫人坟头哭泣。这种“失美之痛”使他写出了第一首《致海伦》。后一首《致海伦》发表于1848年，诗中的海伦指女诗人萨拉·海伦·惠特曼（Sarah Helen Whitman），坡曾于当年向她求过婚。 2018/11/27

To Helen Notes: It is about the ideal woman that can only exist by imagination. Poe originally wrote it about his friend's mother, Mrs. Jane Stanard. Poe uses an allusion to refer to Helen. Helen can refer to the Greek goddess of light or Helen of Troy who is considered to be the most beautiful woman ever alive. Helen: the beautiful queen of the Menelaus (墨涅拉俄斯), king of Sparta, who were taken away by Paris (帕里斯), The prince of Troy, and this caused the Trojan war. 2018/11/27

Nicean: the word may derive from Nike, Greek goddess of victory; or it may be an echo of the “Nyseian isle” in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, an Edenic place; or it may be an error for “Phaeacian”, the sort of bark which last carried Odysseus home from Troy. some say that they are more important for their musicality and vaguely classical suggestiveness than for their vaguely Mediterranean reference. Phaeacian: [希神]费阿刻斯人(荷马史诗 Odysseus 中居住在 Scheria 岛的一个民族,以航海为生) 2018/11/27

4. Hyacinth: a bulbous Mediterranean plant (风信子)
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5. Naiad: the Naiads of classic myth were nymphs who were associated with fresh water.
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6. Window-niche: A recess in a wall, as for holding a statue or an urn.
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7. Psyche: according to the Greek mythology, she was a young woman who loved and was loved by Eros ( God of Love) and was united with him after Aphrodite's (mother of Eros) jealousy was overcome. She subsequently became the personification of the soul. 普绪客: 一个爱上爱神厄洛斯或为他所爱的年轻女子，在阿芙洛蒂特的嫉妒心消除之后，他们俩结为夫妇她后来成了灵魂的化身 2018/11/27

致海伦（1831）海伦，你的美丽对于我，瞧！在那明亮的壁龛窗里，就像昔日尼斯安的小船，我看你玉立多像尊雕塑，
　就像昔日尼斯安的小船，在芳菲的大海轻轻颠簸，　载着精疲力竭的流浪汉　驶向他故乡的岸边。早已习惯漂泊在汹涌的海上，　你堇色的秀发，典雅的容颜和仙女般的风姿已令我知详何谓希腊的华美壮观，何谓罗马的宏伟辉煌。瞧！在那明亮的壁龛窗里，　我看你玉立多像尊雕塑，　那镶嵌玛瑙的明灯在手！啊，普叙赫*，你来自圣地，　那片天国净土！　　 2018/11/27

致海伦海伦，你的美在我的眼里，有如往日尼西亚的三桅船船行在飘香的海上，悠悠地把已倦于漂泊的困乏船员送回他故乡的海岸。
海伦，你的美在我的眼里，有如往日尼西亚的三桅船船行在飘香的海上，悠悠地把已倦于漂泊的困乏船员送回他故乡的海岸。早已习惯于在怒海上飘荡，你典雅的脸庞，你的鬈发，你水神般的风姿带我返航，返回那往时的希腊和罗马，返回那往时的壮丽和辉煌。看哪！壁龛似的明亮窗户里，我看见你站着，多像尊雕像，一盏玛瑙的灯你拿在手上！塞姬女神哪，神圣的土地才是你家乡！ 2018/11/27

The Fall of the House of Usher
"The Fall of the House of Usher“ is a short story of Gothic horror written in first-person point of view. It was first published in September 1839 in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine. In 1840 and 1845, Poe published it with other stories in Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque(荒诞奇异故事集). 2018/11/27

Setting The story begins at dusk on an autumn day in an earlier time, probably the 19th Century. The place is a forbidding mansion in a forlorn countryside. The mansion, covered by a fungus, is encircled by a small lake, called a tarn, that resembles a moat. A bridge across the tarn provides access to the mansion. 2018/11/27

Summary An unnamed protagonist (the Narrator) is summoned to the remote mansion of his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher. Filled with a sense of dread by the sight of the house itself, the Narrator reunites with his old companion, who is suffering from a strange mental illness and whose sister Madeline is near death due to a mysterious disease. The Narrator provides company to Usher while he paints and plays guitar, spending all his days inside, avoiding the sunlight and obsessing over the sentience of the non-living. When Madeline dies, Usher decides to bury her temporarily in one of his house's large vaults. A few days later, however, she emerges from her provisional tomb, dies in her brother’s embrace, frightening her brother to death too, while the Narrator flees for his life. The House of Usher splits apart and collapses, wiping away the last remnants of the ancient family. 2018/11/27

Main Theme The central theme of "The Fall of the House of Usher" is terror that arises from the complexity and multiplicity of forces that shape human destiny. Dreadful, horrifying events result not from a single, uncomplicated circumstance but from a collision and intermingling of manifold, complex circumstances. 2018/11/27

Character list The Narrator: No background, no name, he was Roderick Usher’s childhood friend . He arrives on horseback at the house with the intention of helping Usher. Though he details precisely the nature of Usher's madness, it is suggested through the course of the narrative that he too may be losing his sanity. Indeed, given his terrified description of the ghastly house in the opening passages of the tale, the reader must wonder whether he was sane from the start. 2018/11/27

Roderick Usher: The last living descendant, along with his ailing sister Madeline, of the Ushers, a time-worn family of wealth and prestige, known as patrons of the arts and givers of charity, but also stricken with a peculiar temperament that seems to run through their blood. Never having crossed lines with other families, the Usher name lies entirely "in the direct line of descent"--so that, after Madeline dies, Roderick is his family's sole living exponent. At the beginning of the story he already suffers from a severe mental illness, which steadily grows worse as the tale progresses. After his sister's death, he seems to retreat completely into madness. A man of culture and erudition, Roderick Usher spends his days inside his dark and cavernous mansion, avoiding sunlight or the smells of flowers, and obsessing over "the sentience of all vegetable things." 2018/11/27

Madeline: She suffers from a mysterious illness, cataleptic ([医]全身僵硬症的) in nature. Roderick loves her and he seems unable to bear the thought of her death. The fact that the two of them live together without spouses in the great family mansion suggests the possibility of an incestuous relationship. Catalepsy: 强直性昏厥以缺乏对外界刺激的反应和肌肉僵硬为特征的一种状态，在此状态下，四肢保持任何一种它们所被放置的姿势。它被认为由多种身体或生理紊乱如癫痫和精神分裂症而引起，也可由催眠术导致 2018/11/27

Symbolism The Fungus-Ridden Mansion: Decline of the Usher family.
The Collapsing Mansion: Fall of the Usher family. The “Vacant eye-like” Windows of the Mansion: (1) Hollow, cadaverous eyes of Roderick Usher; (2) Madeline Usher’s cataleptic gaze; (3) the vacuity of life in the Usher mansion. 2018/11/27

The Storm: The turbulent emotions experienced by the characters.
The Tarn: (1) Madeline as the twin of Roderick, reflecting his image and personality; (2) the image of reality which Roderick and the narrator perceive; though the water of the tarn reflects details exactly, the image is upside down, leaving open the possibility that Roderick and the narrator see a false reality; (3) the desire of the Ushers to isolate themselves from the outside world. The Bridge Over the Tarn: The narrator as Roderick Usher’s only link to the outside world. The name Usher: An usher is a doorkeeper. In this sense, Roderick Usher opens the door to a frightening world for the narrator. The Storm: The turbulent emotions experienced by the characters. 2018/11/27

Some analysis of this short story
1. “Effect” theory His most famous piece of criticism-so far as the short story is concerned--is the following:-- "A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents,--he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design."

In The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe carefully makes every word, every phrase, every sentence in the story contribute to the overall effect, horror, accompanied by oppressing morbidity and anxious anticipation of terrifying events. For example, During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.

His initial sentence thus indicates the atmosphere of the story and the black and lurid tarn, Roderick Usher with his mental disorder, his sister Madeline, subject to trances, buried prematurely in a vault directly underneath the guest's room, the midnight winds blowing from every direction toward the House of Usher, the chance reading of a sentence from an old and musty volume, telling of a mysterious noise, the hearing of a muffled sound and the terrible suggestion of its cause,--all tend to indicate and heighten the gloom of the final catastrophe. 2018/11/27

爱伦·坡曾这样阐述自己的创作原则:“聪明的艺术家不是将自己的思想纳入他的情节,而是事先精心策划,想出某种独特的、与众不同的效果,然后再杜撰出这样一些情节———他把这些情节联结起来,而他所做的一切都将最大限度地有利于实现预先构思的效果”,使“每一事件,每一描写细节,甚至一字一句都收到一定的统一效果,一个预想效果,印象主义的效果” 。坡强调作品对读者所能唤起的情绪和产生的效果,认为故事的首要目的是要在情感上扣住读者心弦,产生最激动人心的效果。为达到预想效果,更好地揭示主题,坡坚决排除对主要效果不起作用的东西,要求作品必须有精美的艺术形式。坡字斟句酌,精心雕琢,其作品“绝大部分都是深思熟虑的有意尝试和小心翼翼的苦心经营之结果” 。在《厄舍府的倒塌》中,爱伦·坡精心选择故事的主角和叙事者,巧妙安排故事发生的时间和地点,充分调动绘画、诗歌、音乐、建筑等多种艺术形式,运用声、光和色彩来刺激读者的感官,将外部世界、古屋的外观及室内的布置与男主角罗德里克·厄舍的内心世界、神经系统及心灵感应统一起来;他精心雕琢,层层渲染, 丝丝入扣,环环相接,每一个精选的字眼都为这个“恐怖”效果而服务,而绝无多余的描述,最终成功表现了其永恒主题:“心灵式的恐怖”。 2018/11/27

2. A psychoanalytic approach
The Id, Super-ego and Ego are Freud's three basic psychological structures. Id is the division of the psyche that is totally unconscious and serves as the source of instinctual impulses and demands for immediate satisfaction of primitive needs. Superego stands in direct opposition to id, which is formed through the internalization of moral standards of parents and society, and censors and restrains the ego. the ego mediates among the id, the super-ego and the external world. Its task is to find a balance between primitive drives, morals, and reality while satisfying the id and superego. 2018/11/27

When the ego is personified, it is like a slave to three harsh masters: the id, the super-ego and the external world. It has to do its best to suit all three, thus is constantly feeling hemmed by the danger of causing discontent on two other sides. It is said however, that the ego seems to be more loyal to the id, preferring to gloss over the finer details of reality to minimize conflicts with the pretending to have a regard for reality. But the super-ego is constantly watching every one of the egos’ moves and punishes it with feelings of guilt, anxiety, and inferiority. 2018/11/27

To overcome this, this ego employs methods of defense mechanism
To overcome this, this ego employs methods of defense mechanism. Denial, displacement, intellectualization, fantasy, compensation, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, repression and sublimation were the defense mechanisms Freud identified. However, his daughter Anna Freud clarified and identified the concepts of: undoing, suppression, dissociation, idealization, identification, introjection, inversion, somatization, splitting and substitution. 2018/11/27

小说《厄舍古屋的倒塌》中主人公罗德里克·厄舍的三重人格皆偏离了健康发展的轨道,这是造成他精神毁灭的内因。
罗德里克·厄舍长期和孪生妹妹马德琳朝夕相处于远离人群的古屋里,其本能的要求尤其是他的性本能无法通过正常的渠道得以宣泄。于是在一种变态的精神力量的支配下, 厄舍的本我完全抛弃了人类社会正常的道德准则,单纯遵循着快乐原则,寻找直接的肉体欢愉。此刻,它的力量大大强于自我和超我,代表“理性和审慎”的自我压抑不住它,代表“限制禁止的势力”的超我也被它抛之脑后,欲望的本我占据了上风,它要克服一切困难阻碍达到目的。他和妹妹马德琳的乱伦行为最终把这种失衡推到了极点。随着短暂的快感的消失,随之而来的是一种心理上自我反省的超负荷的罪责和磨难。与此同时,罗德里克·厄舍的自我又受到超我的道德限制或良心的压力,超我监视、指导并威胁着自我。超我规定了行为的常规模式,若自我不按照此常规模式行事,超我就要严厉地责备、惩罚自我。罪恶感、恐惧感和焦虑感把罗德里克·厄舍折磨得生不如死。自我再也无法忍受现状,它力求改变,要毁灭这罪恶的根源,他要逃离这无底深渊,他活埋了马德琳。但这一行为同样是冒犯了超我,超我对自我施行了致命的惩罚:厄舍被从棺材中爬出的妹妹惊吓而死,完成了从灵魂到肉体的最终毁灭过程。就罗德里克·厄舍这个人物本身来说,他的存在就是一个悲剧。他既无法抵御内心的扭曲,也无力抗拒外界的干扰,只能以死亡结束一切。 2018/11/27

3. Its modernistic features
重主观世界的表现，重非理性心理的挖掘在《厄歇尔府的倒塌》中,爱伦·坡将人类神经过分紧张、恐怖感、身心交瘁,对丧失生命和理智的恐惧等精神现象集中起来,描绘这些恐怖的精神悲剧性地纠缠着罗德里克-厄歇尔,并且将其和古屋的倒塌相互隐喻。这个描写本身表明了爱伦·坡对人类这些精神现象很在意。从爱伦·坡的个人经历可以推测出,在朦胧中他似乎意识到,人类精神存在着一种最恐怖的极端状态,就像厄歇尔古屋那样会轰然倒塌。这种终极状态,被人类中的敏感者如爱伦·坡这样的人先期体验到了,然后通过假设的语辞结构传达出来。爱伦·坡也就“得天独厚”地成为这个人类痛苦领域的探险者. 2018/11/27

常耀信先生指出:“坡的最伟大之处在于他是第一个开人类意识最深处幽暗领域的人。” 爱伦·坡首先把心理引进文学创作,直截了当地称其“文学命题”为“心理学命”。他把笔触深入人的潜意识的昏暗里层进行探查,“找了挖掘人类灵魂黑暗深处的办法”。坡的《黑猫》、《泄密心》、《威廉·威尔逊》等小说,以叙述人的意识流动为线索谋局布篇,揭示出人们内心深处最隐秘的东西,开现代心描写小说之先河。小说中的主人公,大都具有强烈的梦意识,他们怀着巨大的罪衍感和自责感,浑浑噩噩地活在实与理性的世界之外。由于天生的“乖僻”,他们不由自地违背自己的愿望去作恶,渴望犯罪。在一种“反常心”———“只为作恶而作恶的欲望”驱使下,《黑猫》的主人公上了杀猫乃至杀妻之路,《泄密的心》的主人公则仅仅因看不惯那“兀鹰般的眼睛”而杀死他爱的那个老人,《反常魔》的主人公也因此而完成自己的谋杀计划……在展示类潜意识中的恶的同时,爱伦·坡也描绘了这种恶与善的争,本能与理性的交战,尽管往往是恶战胜善,本能压制性。表现在作品中的人物身上,即是严重扭曲变态的双人格。坡的主人公,多是神经过敏的病态人,人格严重扭分裂:一方面,他们在“反常心态”驱使下,不由自主地去罪作恶;另一方面,他们又充满罪愆感和自责感,在良心痛苦折磨中自暴罪行,不可避免地走向毁灭,接受报应。 2018/11/27

Nathaniel Hawthorne With the publication of The Scarlet Letter, he became famous as the greatest writer living then in U.S. and his reputation as a major American author has been on increase ever since. 2018/11/27

His Life Born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804.
Descended from the earliest settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. John Hathorne, one of the judges at the 1692 Salem witch trials. William Hathorne persecuted the Quakers. Both fascinated and disturbed by his kinship with John Hathorne. Raised by a widowed mother, attended Bowdoin College in Maine, met two people Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the United States. 2018/11/27

Hawthorne also held positions as an editor and as a customs surveyor.
He participated in the utopian experiment at Brook Farm, a commune designed to promote economic self-sufficiency and transcendentalist principles. He married fellow transcendentalist Sophia Peabody in 1842 and left Brook Farm and moved into the Old Manse. 2018/11/27

His ancestor’s wrong-doings – his sense of guilt -- “the blackness in Hawthorne” and themes of moral
His works are deeply concerned with the ethical problems of sin, punishment, and atonement. Hawthorne's exploration of these themes was related to the sense of guilt he felt about the roles of his ancestors in the 17th-century persecution of Quakers and in the 1692 witchcraft trials of Salem, Massachusetts. 2018/11/27

Notes: 1. Quakers: The Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers, was founded in England in the 17th century as a Christian religious denomination by people who were dissatisfied with the existing denominations and sects of Christianity.. 2. Persecution of Quakers: In and around Salem, Massachusetts the Quakers are harassed, beaten, deported, and sometimes even hanged for what they believe. 2018/11/27

3. 1692 witchcraft trails: (May – October 1692) American colonial persecutions for witchcraft.
In the town of Salem, Massachusetts Bay Colony, several young girls, stimulated by supernatural tales told by a West Indian slave, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused three women of witchcraft. Under pressure, the accused women named others in false confessions. Encouraged by the clergy, a special civil court was convened with three judges to conduct the trials. They resulted in the conviction and hanging of 19 "witches" and the imprisonment of nearly 150 others. As public zeal abated, the trials were stopped and then condemned. The colonial legislature later annulled the convictions. 2018/11/27

附： 1962年美国马赛诸塞州的塞勒姆城（Salem），一群小女孩突然出现了怪异行为，他们哭泣，说感到难受并且四肢着地爬行。其中一人称她受到了女巫的威胁。还有一位是基督教牧师的女儿。在讯问她们时，女孩子们并没有告诉人们明确的答案，但是大多数人都怀疑一位名叫巴巴多斯的一个黑人女奴，还有一个丑陋的老妇女和一个妓女施用妖术和“魔术”诱惑了女孩。村民们迅速接受了这种说法，并提供了一些他们认为也是巫婆作祟的现象：他们的牛奶和奶酪无缘无故地坏了。有一个女人来看过一家的牲口以后，牲口就生下了一个怪胎，等等。这一切，对于村民们来说，似乎毫无疑问巫婆作怪的结果。这件事发生后不久，便刮起了审判、绞刑和火刑的旋风，高峰时，被逮捕者达到了200人之多，最后19名无辜者被处绞刑，4人死于监狱中。面对“女巫”指控，当时的法官接受“幽灵似的证据”，也就是说“提出证词的证人并没有真正看见被告，而是看见很像被告的鬼魂在干一些活动，如烧房子、沉船等等”，凭这样的证词就可以定罪。当时人人自危，就连殖民当局的上层都处于危险之中。 2018/11/27

被指控为“女巫”而被关押起来的人发现，她们陷进了一个怎么也说不清的境地，弄不好就会给莫名其妙地吊死。为了避免这个厄运，她们不得不承认自己是巫婆，并且揭发别的恶魔和别的巫婆，用实际行动来证明她们弃暗投明，弃恶从善，甚至夫妻互相揭发，女儿检举父母。有人被揭发为巫婆的时候，家人纷纷表示“划清界线”，赞同惩罚以表明自己的清白。这一令人难以置信的“追捕女巫”事件，被传统地看成是集体狂热的事例。那时的舆论和当局不知道如何从自然方面对这种现象进行解释，而只能寻求做出当时社会能够接受的解释，也就是超自然现象的解释。塞勒姆事件的真正原因究竟是什么呢？这个问题最终在二十世纪七十年代，美国马里兰大学历史学家玛丽马托西安所著《往日的毒害》一书中得到了阐明。书中指出：造成这种怪异行为的罪魁祸首是一种“紫红色麦角菌”的食物中毒。“紫红色麦角菌”是寄生在黑麦上的一种微型毒蕈，毒性很大。来自黑麦的产品是塞勒姆地区居民有限食谱中的主要食品，当时人们食用的粗制黑麦粉被这种细菌感染，中毒主要表现是指甲脱落，指头和关节脱落，或者是痉挛。它使神经功能紊乱，使人产生错觉，幻觉，另外还有颤抖、抽搐和间接性的高烧。有40%的中毒者最终难以逃脱死亡。 2018/11/27

Hawthorne says that this ancestor “made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him. ...I, the present writer, as their representative, hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by them … may be now and henceforth removed.” 2018/11/27

Major works Collection of Tales
Twice-Told Tales （故事新编）(1837) was probably suggested by the line from Shakespeare's King John: “Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man; And bitter shame hath spoil'd the sweet world's taste, That it yields nought but shame and bitterness.” The second volume, Mosses from an Old Manse （古厦青苔） (1846). They include “Rappaccini's Daughter,” and “Young Goodman Brown,” tales in which Hawthorne's preoccupation with the effects of pride, guilt, sin, and secrecy are combined with a continued emphasis on symbolism and allegory. His last collection is called The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales (1851) （雪像和其他故事新编） 2018/11/27

GREAT ROMANCES The Scarlet Letter (1850), the scene of which is laid in Boston in Governor Winthrop's time, The House of the Seven Gables (七尖角阁的房子) (1851), with the scene laid in Salem, The Marble Faun （玉石神像）(1860), in Rome, and The Blithedale Romance （福谷浪漫史）(1852), in an ideal community similar to Brook Farm. 2018/11/27

Points of view & Features of the writings:
A. Black vision of human nature: He was obsessed by the Calvinistic concept of the original sin. For him, human beings are evil-natured and sinful this sin and evil is ever present in human heart and will pass on from one generation to another One source of evil is overweening intellect because devoid of fellow feeling He symbolizes moral or spiritual disease by the disease of the body and accordingly when a person commits any sin, it might appear in some form on the body. 2018/11/27

Hawthorne vs. Emersonian Transcendentalism
For Emerson, the result of a quest from reality is always positive, a joyous revelation or rather a confirmation. For Hawthorne, it is always a revelation of evil, of death in life, of the mystery and ambiguity which surrounds human beings. 2018/11/27

B. Theory of Romance Hawthorne was convinced that romance was the predestined form of American narrative. His theory of Romance is an ideal combination of facts and fancy, realistic details and fanciful things, or reality and imagination. Thus his narratives become a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and the fairyland, where the actual and the imaginary may meet, and each imbues itself with the nature of the other. 2018/11/27

C. Psychological conflict
Hawthorn’s approach to the theme and characters is generally psychological. Take The Scarlet Letter for example. He analyzes the inward tensions or internal conflicts of his characters. Dimmesdale is filled with remorse as he keeps reviewing agonizingly in his mind his guilt. Chillingworth turns himself into a fiend as he pursues his psychological revenge on Dimmesdale. Hester, though physically constrained by the Puritan society, speculates hard on the possibilities of human condition, especially that of the women in her time. 2018/11/27

D. Allegory Allegory in Hawthorne’s works is an outcome of the Puritan inheritance of God’s will in everything and the 19th century Romantic idea that the natural world is endowed fully with meaning. Moreover, it contains an underlying form that is symbolic, used to illustrate some important religious or moral principles. The abstract meaning is compressed into one concrete image, loaded with much more than its surface meaning, and should be read in the light of the whole story. 2018/11/27

Hawthorne is a master of symbolism.
E. Symbolism Hawthorne is a master of symbolism. For example, in The Scarlet Letter, the prison door at the beginning may well symbolize the restrictive laws and forces that are typical of the puritan society, as well as a reminder of the presence of evil or sin. The wild rosebush, on the other hand, will surely associate themselves with the freedom of natural spirit or sympathy of nature for the human beings. Forest is usually used to refer to moral wilderness where witches wander about and human beings tend to get morally lost. The letter “A” symbolizes the act of adultery of Hester, but Able or Angel to the other people in the community. 2018/11/27

F. Art of ambiguity Hawthorne’s ambiguity embodies his deepest insights. He used ambiguity to keep the reader in a world of uncertainty. Important questions are never fully resolved. The simple word “or” enjoys high frequency in his stories. He gave the readers many ways to interpret the story and then stopped without telling the reader which one he wanted the reader to choose. To create ambiguity, he often employed the technique of multiple views. 2018/11/27

The House of the Seven Gables
Theme: The wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones. Colonel Pyncheon Matthew Maule “God will give him blood to drink.” 2018/11/27

Summary Colonel Pyncheon takes by force the land of Matthew Maule, and condemns him as a wizard. He builds a house on the land while Matthew is sent to the scaffold. Before he dies, he curses the colonel, saying “God will give him blood to drink.” Retribution seems to come. The house seems to be haunted. The scion of the colonel wither and die out and eventually it is the descendant of the persecuted wizard who gets the upper hand. The curse does, in time, materialize. The book concludes on a happy note, and that good triumphs over evil, and love and reconciliation end an enmity, but one feels somehow that the tragic part of the story impresses more. 2018/11/27

Young Goodman Brown A tale of a puritan who attended a witches’ Sabbath in the woods and when back home, became skeptical about goodness or piety. 2018/11/27

The Scarlet Letter Regarded as his masterpiece and as one of the classics of American literature, The Scarlet Letter reveals both Hawthorne's superb craftsmanship and the powerful psychological insight with which he probed guilt and anxiety in the human soul. 2018/11/27

Major characters and plot: Hester Prynne Arthur Dimmesdale
Roger Chillingworth Pearl The story is not a praise of Hester Prynne’s sinning, but a hymn on the moral growth of the woman when sinned against. 2018/11/27

Theme The moral, emotional and psychological effect of sin on the people in general, and those complicated in it in particular. Hester: finds salvation by willingly acknowledging her guilt and reestablishing a meaningful relationship with her fellowman. (Adultery – Able –Angel) Dimmesdale: not ready to show his worst to others at first and banishes himself from the society, thus undergoes the tragic experience of physical and spiritual disintegration. Chillingworth, in revenge, commits “the Unpardonable Sin,” i.e. violation of the human heart. 2018/11/27

Analysis of Major Characters
Throughout The Scarlet Letter Hester Prynne is portrayed as an intelligent, capable, but not necessarily extraordinary woman. It is the extraordinary circumstances shaping her that make her such an important figure. She married Chillingworth although she did not love him. Before her marriage, she was a strong-willed, passionate and impetuous young. Her parents had to frequently restrain her incautious behavior. Shamed and alienated from the rest of the community, Hester becomes contemplative. She speculates on human nature, social organization, and larger moral questions. Hester’s sufferings also lead her to be stoic and a freethinker. Although the narrator pretends to disapprove of Hester’s independent philosophizing, his tone indicates that he secretly admires her independence and her ideas. 2018/11/27

Hester also becomes a kind of compassionate maternal figure as a result of her experiences. Hester moderates her tendency to be rash, for she knows that such behavior could cause her to lose her daughter, Pearl. Hester is also maternal with respect to society: she cares for the poor and brings them food and clothing. By the novel’s end, Hester has become a protofeminist mother figure to the women of the community. The shame attached to her scarlet letter is long gone. Women recognize that her punishment stemmed in part from the town fathers’ sexism, and they come to Hester seeking shelter from the sexist forces under which they themselves suffer. 2018/11/27

Roger Chillingworth Roger Chillingworth is a man deficient in human warmth. His twisted, stooped, deformed shoulders mirror his distorted soul. His early years with Hester proves that he was a difficult husband. He ignored his wife for much of the time, yet expected her to nourish his soul with affection when he did condescend to spend time with her. Chillingworth’s decision to assume the identity of a “leech,” or doctor, is fitting. Unable to engage in equitable relationships with those around him, he feeds on the vitality of others as a way of energizing his own projects. Chillingworth’s death is a result of the nature of his character. After Dimmesdale dies, Chillingworth no longer has a victim. Similarly, Dimmesdale’s revelation that he is Pearl’s father removes Hester from the old man’s clutches. Having lost the objects of his revenge, the leech has no choice but to die. 2018/11/27

Ultimately, Chillingworth represents true evil
Ultimately, Chillingworth represents true evil. He is associated with secular and sometimes illicit forms of knowledge, as his chemical experiments and medical practices occasionally verge on witchcraft and murder. He is interested in revenge, not justice, and he seeks the deliberate destruction of others rather than a redress of wrongs. His desire to hurt others stands in contrast to Hester and Dimmesdale’s sin, which had love, not hate, as its intent. Any harm that may have come from the young lovers’ deed was unanticipated and inadvertent, whereas Chillingworth reaps deliberate harm. 2018/11/27

Arthur Dimmesdale Arthur Dimmesdale’s identity owes more to external circumstances than to his innate nature. Dimmesdale was a scholar of some renown at Oxford University. His past suggests that he is probably somewhat aloof, the kind of man who would not have much natural sympathy for ordinary men and women. However, Dimmesdale has an unusually active conscience. The fact that Hester takes all of the blame for their shared sin goads his conscience, and his resultant mental anguish and physical weakness open up his mind and allow him to empathize with others. Consequently, he becomes an eloquent and emotionally powerful speaker and a compassionate leader, and his congregation is able to receive meaningful spiritual guidance from him. 2018/11/27

Pearl Pearl functions primarily as a symbol. She is quite young during most of the events of this novel—when Dimmesdale dies she is only seven years old—and her real importance lies in her ability to provoke the adult characters in the book. She asks them pointed questions and draws their attention, and the reader’s, to the denied or overlooked truths of the adult world. In general, children in The Scarlet Letter are portrayed as more perceptive and more honest than adults, and Pearl is the most perceptive of them all. Pearl makes us constantly aware of her mother’s scarlet letter and of the society that produced it. From an early age, she fixates on the emblem. Pearl’s innocent, or perhaps intuitive, comments about the letter raise crucial questions about its meaning. 2018/11/27

Similarly, she inquires about the relationships between those around her—most important, the relationship between Hester and Dimmesdale—and offers perceptive critiques of them. Pearl provides the text’s harshest, and most penetrating, judgment of Dimmesdale’s failure to admit to his adultery. Once her father’s identity is revealed, Pearl is no longer needed in this symbolic capacity; at Dimmesdale’s death she becomes fully “human,” leaving behind her otherworldliness and her preternatural vision. 2018/11/27

Questions: 1. Discuss the relationship between the scarlet letter and Hester’s identity. Why does she repeatedly refuse to stop wearing the letter? What is the difference between the identity she creates for herself and the identity society assigns to her? 2018/11/27

For Hester, to remove the scarlet letter would be to acknowledge the power it has in determining who she is. The letter would prove to have successfully restricted her if she were to become a different person in its absence. Hester chooses to continue to wear the letter because she is determined to transform its meaning through her actions and her own self-perception—she wants to be the one who controls its meaning. Society tries to reclaim the letter’s symbolism by deciding that the “A” stands for “Able,” but Hester resists this interpretation. The letter symbolizes her own past deed and her own past decisions, and she is the one who will determine the meaning of those events. Upon her return from Europe at the novel’s end, Hester has gained control over both her personal and her public identities. She has made herself into a symbol of feminine repression and charitable ideals, and she stands as a self-appointed reminder of the evils society can commit. 2018/11/27

2. In what ways could The Scarlet Letter be read as a commentary on the era of American history it describes? How does Hawthorne’s portrayal of Europe enter into this commentary? Could the book also be seen as embodying some of the aspects it attributes to the nation in which it was written? 2018/11/27

Typically, America is conceptualized as a place of freedom, where a person’s opportunities are limited only by his or her ambition and ability—and not by his or her social status, race, gender, or other circumstances of birth. In the Puritan society portrayed in the novel, however, this is not the case. In fact, it is Europe, not America which the book presents as a place of potential. There, anonymity can protect an individual and allow him or her to assume a new identity. This unexpected inversion leads the characters and the reader to question the principles of freedom and opportunity usually identified with America. Hester’s experiences suggest that this country is founded on the ideals of repression and confinement. Additionally, the narrator’s own experiences, coming approximately two hundred years after Hester’s, confirm those of his protagonist. His fellow customs officers owe their jobs to patronage and family connections, not to merit, and he has acquired his own position through political allies. Thus, the customhouse is portrayed as an institution that embodies many of the principles that America supposedly opposes. 2018/11/27

Much of the social hypocrisy presented in the book stems from America’s newness. Insecure in its social order, the new society is trying to distance itself from its Anglican origins yet, at the same time, reassure itself of its legitimacy and dignity. It is a difficult task to “define” oneself as a land of self-defining individuals. But it is this project of defining America that Hawthorne himself partially undertakes in his novel. He aims to write a text that both embodies and describes “Americanness.” 2018/11/27

3. This novel makes extensive use of symbols
3. This novel makes extensive use of symbols. Discuss the difference between the Puritans’ use of symbols (the meteor, for example) and the way that the narrator makes use of symbols. Do both have religious implications? Do symbols foreshadow events or simply comment on them after the fact? How do they help the characters understand their lives, and how do they help the reader understand Hawthorne’s book? 2018/11/27

The Puritans in this book are constantly seeking out natural symbols, which they claim are messages from God. Yet these characters are not willing to accept any revelation at face value. They interpret the symbols only in ways that confirm their own preformulated ideas or opinions. The meteor that streaks the sky as Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold in Chapter XII is a good example of this phenomenon. To Dimmesdale and to the townspeople, the “A” represents whatever notion already preoccupies them. To the minister, the meteor exposes his sin, while to the townspeople it confirms that the colony’s former governor, who has just died, has gone to heaven and been made an angel. 2018/11/27

For the narrator, symbols function to complicate reality rather than to confirm one’s perception of it. The governor’s garden, which Hester and Pearl see in Chapter VII, illustrates his tactic quite well. The narrator does not describe the garden in a way that reinforces the image of luxury and power that is present in his description of the rest of the governor’s house. Rather, he writes that the garden, which was originally planted to look like an ornamental garden in the English style, is now full of weeds, thorns, and vegetables. The garden seems to contradict much of what the reader has been told about the governor’s power and importance, and it suggests to us that the governor is an unfit caretaker, for people as well as for flowers. The absence of any flowers other than the thorny roses also hints that ideals are often accompanied by evil and pain. Confronted by the ambiguous symbol of the garden, we begin to look for other inconsistencies and for other examples of decay and disrepair in Puritan society. 2018/11/27

Ironically, the townspeople do not believe Dimmesdale’s protestations of sinfulness. Given his background and his penchant for rhetorical speech, Dimmesdale’s congregation generally interprets his sermons allegorically rather than as expressions of any personal guilt. This drives Dimmesdale to further internalize his guilt and self-punishment and leads to still more deterioration in his physical and spiritual condition. The town’s idolization of him reaches new heights after his Election Day sermon, which is his last. In his death, Dimmesdale becomes even more of an icon than he was in life. Many believe his confession was a symbolic act, while others believe Dimmesdale’s fate was an example of divine judgment. 2018/11/27

4. What is the relationship between the preface and the main story of the book?
In “The Custom House,” the author tells us how he found the material for his masterpiece…This fact proved fertilizing to Hawthorne’s imagination and his way of introducing the fact in “the Custom House” is of great artistic interest. Although he declared that the original document was still in his possession and would be freely to exhibited to others, the whole story is in fact a clever artistic fabrication in Hawthorne’s attempt to give his tale a sense of historical reality and an air of authenticity. That “The Custom House” is an integral part of the book is quiet evitable. The “autobiographical impulse” on which Hawthorne talks so much about his ancestry, his views of life and art and the politics of his day, all serve well to prepare the reader for the story follows. 2018/11/27

这一v字型结构既内在地规定着作者对人物命运的把握，又外化为小说的主体框架，形成两个文本之间的同构关系。
“海关” 与《红字》的同构关系序言的讲述者“我”和小说正文的主人公都经历了基本一致的内心旅程，这成为海关与红字之间同构关系的基础。这一内心旅程主要包括“原罪-彻底堕落”和“彻底堕落-称圣”两个阶段，呈现v型结构。霍桑创作红字，意欲在向当年受到自己祖先迫害的基督徒忏悔，替祖先赎罪。女主人公海丝特在犯罪后运用自由意志表现出基督之爱，走完了v字型心里旅程。丁梅斯代尔牧师则在经历一段越走越黑的旅程后，完成了短暂的上升阶段。这一v字型结构既内在地规定着作者对人物命运的把握，又外化为小说的主体框架，形成两个文本之间的同构关系。刘林. 外国文学研究. Vol. 30(1):61-69. 2018/11/27

Herman Melville A major literary figure whose exploration of psychological and metaphysical themes foreshadowed 20th-century literary concerns. His works remained in obscurity until the 1920s, when his genius was finally recognized. 2018/11/27

Major Works Typee Omoo Mardi Redburn White Jacket Pierre
The Confidence-man Moby Dick Billy Budd Bartleby the Scrivener 2018/11/27

Moby-Dick Moby-Dick remained largely ignored until the 1920s, when it was rediscovered and promoted by literary historians interested in constructing an American literary tradition. To these critics, Moby-Dick was both a seminal work elaborating on classic American themes, such as religion, fate, and economic expansion, and a radically experimental anachronism that anticipated Modernism in its outsized scope and pastiche of forms. It stands alongside James Joyce’s Ulysses and Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (项迪传) as a novel that appears bizarre to the point of being unreadable but proves to be infinitely open to interpretation and discovery. 2018/11/27

Plot Ishmael, feeling depressed, seeks escape by going out to sea on the whaling ship, Pequod. The captain is Ahab, the man with one leg. Moby Dick, the white whale, had sheared off his leg on a previous voyage, and Ahab resolved to hunt him to the kill. He hangs a doubloon on the mast as a reward for anyone who sights the whale first. The Pequod makes a good catch of whales but Ahab refuses to turn back until he kills his enemy. At last the whale appears, and the ship begins its doomed fight with it. On the first day, the whale overturns a boat; on the second, it swamps another. On the last day, Ahab and his crew manage to plunge a harpoon into it, but the whale carries the Pequod along with it to its doom. All on board the whaler get drowned, except one, Ishmael, who survives to tell the tale. 2018/11/27

Comments Themes The symbol of Moby Dick Style 2018/11/27

Comments Moby Dick represents the sum total of Melville’s bleak vision of the world. It is at once Godless and purposeless. Man in this universe lives a meaningless and futile life. Man can observe and even manipulate in a prudent way, but he cannot influence and overcome nature as its source. He must, ultimately, place himself at the mercy of nature. Once he attempts to seek power over it he is doomed (also an ecocritic approach). The idea that man can make the world for himself is nothing but a Transcendentalist folly. (The reason for the resurrection of Melville in the 20th century: the loss of faith and the sense of futility and meaninglessness which characterize modern life of the West were expressed in his works so well that the 20th century has found it both fascinating and great. ) 2018/11/27

Themes Alienation: which the author sensed existing in the life of his time on different levels, between man and man, man and society, and man and nature. Captain Ahab is the best illustration of it all. He is a typical Melvillean “isolato.” (off from his family / away from his crew / hates Moby Dick, embodiment of nature / hold God responsible for the presence of evil / hears no objection /egocentric obsession – loses sanity and humanity-a devilish creature toward his doom.) 2018/11/27

Attack on Transcendentalism:
Ahab is Melville’s portrait of an Emersonian self-reliant individual. He is a victim of solipsism (唯我论), his tragedy stemming in the main from extreme individulism, selfish will, a spirit too much withdrawn to itself to warrant salvation. 2018/11/27

Ishmael: (a wanderer in the Bible)
Rejection and quest: Ishmael: (a wanderer in the Bible) Feeling bad –hoping to find an ideal place -an escapist- begins to feel the significance of love and companionship-learns to accept-ensures his and humanity’s survival. Voyage for Ishmael is a journey in quest of knowledge and values. 2018/11/27

Other themes A. The Limits of Knowledge
The multiplicity of approaches that Ishmael takes, coupled with his compulsive need to assert his authority as a narrator and the frequent references to the limits of observation (men cannot see the depths of the ocean, for example), suggest that human knowledge is always limited and insufficient. When it comes to Moby Dick himself, this limitation takes on allegorical significance. The ways of Moby Dick, like those of the Christian God, are unknowable to man, and thus trying to interpret them, as Ahab does, is inevitably futile and often fatal. 2018/11/27

B. The Deceptiveness of Fate
Ishmael’s narrative contains many references to fate, creating the impression that the Pequod’s doom is inevitable. Many of the sailors believe in prophecies, and some even claim the ability to foretell the future. A number of things suggest, however, that characters are actually deluding themselves when they think that they see the work of fate and that fate either doesn’t exist or is one of the many forces about which human beings can have no distinct knowledge. Ahab, for example, clearly exploits the sailors’ belief in fate to manipulate them into thinking that the quest for Moby Dick is their common destiny. 2018/11/27

C. The Exploitative Nature of Whaling
At first glance, the Pequod seems like an island of equality and fellowship in the midst of a racist, hierarchically structured world. The ship’s crew includes men from all corners of the globe and all races who seem to get along harmoniously. Additionally, the conditions of work aboard the Pequod promote a certain kind of egalitarianism, since men are promoted and paid according to their skill. However, the work of whaling parallels the other exploitative activities—buffalo hunting, gold mining, unfair trade with native peoples—that characterize American and European territorial expansion. Each of the Pequod’s mates, who are white, is entirely dependent on a nonwhite harpooner, and nonwhites perform most of the dirty or dangerous jobs aboard the ship. For example, Ahab is depicted as walking over the black youth Pip, who listens to Ahab’s pacing from below deck, and is thus reminded that his value as a slave is less than the value of a whale. 2018/11/27

The symbol of Moby Dick Moby Dick: capable of many interpretations / A symbol of evil or a symbol of goodness, or of both. “Paradoxically benign and malevolent, nourishing and destructive.” “Massive, brutal, monolithic, but at the same time protean, erotically beautiful, infinitely variable.” The white color: death and corruption as well as purity, innocence, and youth. It represents the final mystery of the universe which man will do well to desist from pursuing. 2018/11/27

Style A. Allusions to former authors and the Bible.
B. His language is old-fashioned manifesting Elizabethan influence and much of the talk is sailor talk. C. Three-fold quality in his writing: the style of fact, the style of oratory celebrating the fact and the style of meditation Highly symbolic and metaphorical Non-narrative chapters The technique of multiple views to achieve the effect of ambiguity 2018/11/27

Study Questions: 1. Moby-Dick features several characters who seem insane. How does insanity relate to this story? How do these characters contrast with one another? 2018/11/27

Ishmael describes Ahab as mad in his narration, and it does indeed seem mad to try to fight the forces of nature or God. However, some of the other characters in the novel whom Ishmael labels insane—notably Pip and Gabriel—might be viewed as wise rather than crazy, thus calling into question the possibility of making a clear distinction between sanity and insanity. Gabriel, the prophet figure aboard the Jeroboam, behaves irrationally and makes a number of ridiculous-sounding predictions. If viewed in a certain light, however, his prophecies sound not like silly attempts to foresee the future but like cleverly phrased efforts to effect change aboard his ship. Gabriel’s prophecies are aimed at gaining the crew just treatment from the ship’s officers and at avoiding the danger that will come from trying to hunt Moby Dick. Like Ahab, he manipulates the crew’s superstitions and religious beliefs in order to gather support. But whereas Ahab’s obsession is monomaniacal and selfish, Gabriel’s “madness” is a response to irrational and unjust behavior on the part of those who control his ship. 2018/11/27

2. Ishmael frequently refers to the relationships between men in terms normally used to describe heterosexual romantic relationships. What is the literal and symbolic importance of homoeroticism in Moby-Dick? 2018/11/27

Ishmael and Queequeg are depicted in bed together several times and are frequently described as “married” or “wedded” to each other. When they wake in the Spouter-Inn, Queequeg has his arms around Ishmael in a seemingly conjugal embrace. Melville uses the vocabulary of love and marriage to suggest the strength and closeness of the bonds between men at sea. Marriage is one of the institutions upon which society on land is organized, but there are no women aboard the Pequod. Instead, the crew develops a bond based on mutual dependence: they need each other to stay alive and are thus literally “wedded” to one another. In the absence of other relationships, they become everything to one another—metaphorical parents, siblings, best friends, and lovers. The replacement of heterosexual relationships, so central to conventional society, with homoerotic ones also signals a rejection of other aspects of life on land, such as racism, economic stratification, and limited opportunities for social mobility. Queequeg, for example, is taken aboard the Pequod for his expert marksmanship, despite his nonwhite skin. 2018/11/27

The Literature of Romanticism

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The Literature of Romanticism

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