1、美国文学史扩充资料第 1 部分殖民早期与美国文学的起始Part I. Background Reading（阅读要点） :Colonial Beginnings (1600s to 1750)America has always been a land of beginnings. After Europeans “discovered” America in the fifteenth century, the mysterious New World became for many people a genuine hope of a new life, an escape from po
2、verty and persecution, a chance to start again. We can say that, as a nation, America begins with that hope. When, however, does American Literature begin?The story of American literature begins in the early 1600s, long before there were any “Americans”. American literature begins with American expe
3、riences. Long before the first colonists arrived, before Christopher Columbus, before the North men who “Found” America about the year 1000, Native Americans lived here. Each tribes literature was tuphthy women into the fabric of daily life and reflected the unmistakably American experience of livin
4、g with the land. Another kind of experience, one filled with fear and excitement, found its expression in the reports that Columbus and other explores sent home in Spanish, French, and English. In addition, the journals of the people who lived and died in the New England wilderness tell unforgettabl
5、e tales of hard and sometimes heartbreaking experiences of those early years.Experience, then, is the Key to early American literature. The New World provided a great variety of experiences, and these experiences demanded a wide variety of expressions by an even wider variety of early American write
6、rs. The earliest writers were Englishmen describing the English exploration and colonization of the New World (America). These writers included Thomas Hariot, John Smith (1580-1631), William Bradford, John Winthrop (1588-1649), Edward Taylor (1645-1729), Jonathan Edwards (1723-1758), William Byrd (1
7、674-1744), etc. American Indians, explorers, Pilgrims, Puritan ministers, frontier wives, plantations, owners they are all the creators of the first American literature.The PuritansThe ship Mayflower carried about one hundred passengers (their leader called them Pilgrims, or travelers) and test sixt
8、y-six days to beat its way across the Atlantic. In December of 1620, the Mayflower put the Pilgrims ashore at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Before the unrelenting (unmerciful) cold winter was over, half of them were dead. Within the next few years, however, those who survived were joined by more settlers
9、 from England. Only some of these first colonists were Puritans, but it was the puritans, led by their dergy-men, who dominated the government, the religious outlook, and the literature of the communities they established.Who were these extraordinary people? The Puritans were devout Christians who w
10、anted to purify their lives and their church of what they saw as the corruptions of English society and its state religion, the church of England. They called themselves saints or separatists, but they are now generally called puritans a name that became a sign of their separateness.The puritans bel
11、ieved in an all-powerful God who freely granted to his “saints” the gift of grace. Grace was a complicated matter for the Puritans, but it can be described as the spirit that would guarantee salvation eternal happiness with God. In their daily lives the puritans wanted to demonstrate at every moment
12、 that they possessed grace or that they were worthy of it.For the Puritans everything was, ideally, aimed at personal salvation and the building of a new, Godcentered society. They were willing to risk their lives for such a world. It would be a place where they would practice their religion freely
13、and raise their children free from the frivolities (trifle) and temptations of the Old World. As we listen to their language, which refers to the Bible easily and frequently, their passionate desire to establish a New Jerusalem becomes clear. In their dreams they would build the city of God on earth
14、.Life for the average Puritan in the New World was essentially a life of work and prayer, but it was not a fanatically austere life. The Puritans worked long and hard under extremely difficult conditions so that their farms and trading enterprises would prosper. In fact, they believed prosperity was
15、 a sign of election, or Gods special favour. Nevertheless, they did not turn away from eating and drinking, the pleasure of social gatherings, and the joys of a close family life. They simply kept reminding themselves that their souls were the constant battlegrounds of God and Satan and that every a
16、ct and thought had to be judged according to whether or not it truly glorified God.In the pursuit of virtue, the Puritans passed laws against many activities that would distract good souls from their real task. Certain “delights” were forbidden, such as bowling, Maypole dancing, gambling, attending
17、plays, and “unprofitable” hunting (for someone who was a bad shot, it was a sin to waste time and ammunition). Virtue was learned primarily at home, where the father had complete authority. The family was the center of activity; the aged were always cared for; young people were apprenticed to learn
18、trades the community needed.Writing was an important part of Puritan life; it was often an extension of relation. IN fact, the first book published in America was the Bay Psalm Book (1740), a translation of the biblical Psalms. Many Puritans Kept journals to help them carefully examine their spiritu
19、al lives. These journals and diaries, detailed and intense, were usually meant to be purely private writings. Even when they did write for a public, however, the puritans wrote to instruct others or to testify to their experience of divine grace; they wrote spiritual autobiographies.Puritan writing,
20、 in other words, was practical. The writers were not merely providing entertainment; they were deeply involved with their spiritual selves and attempts to improve them. They wrote no fiction, nor did they even approve of reading fiction, and they wrote no plays because they disapproved violently of
21、the theatre. Their writings consisted largely of journals, sermons, hymns, histories, and poems.Just as Puritans sought to purify their lives, so too they sought to purify their language. Everything they wrote avoided ornate style, the convoluted, flowery complicated and decorative style of their Eu
22、ropean contemporaries. They preferred to write in what they called Plain style, even as they strove for plainness in their architecture, clothing, food, and household furnishings. Plain style was meant simply to communicate ideas as clearly as possible. Writing was not a way of showing off clevernes
23、s or learning but a way of serving God and the community. The whole Puritan way of life is summed up in William Bradfords desire to tell the story of Plymouth plantation in “a plain style, with singular regard write to simple truth in all things.”The Southern ColoniesLife in the southern colonies, b
24、egun in 1607 with Jamestown, Virginia, developed quite differently from life in New England. Unlike the Puritans, who lived fairly closely together, much of the southern population lived on farms or plantations that were distant from one another. Often like little colonies of their own, these planta
25、tions were largely self-sufficient.The larger estates were owned and operated by wealthy and well-educated colonists who developed a more social and outgoing way of life than the puritans. Different things became important to them; culturation of nature and of society, sophistication, and public ser
26、vice.Southern colonial literature reflects that experience. For the most part, southern gentlemen and ladies carried on correspondence with friends who often lived at great distances from them, as well as with family and friends back in England. Many of the southern colonists belonged to the Church
27、of England, the Church that the Puritans had attempted to reform, and their ties with the old World were stronger. As a result, they did not have the reasons the puritans had to create a literature of their own. Still, in their letters, journals, and public reports, southern writers recorded the det
28、ails of their way of life. In their writings, the realities of science and politics blend with a New World sense of excitement and discovery. After all, the southern wilderness too had to be explored, mapped, and described.Of course, not all the residents of the southern colonies were the prosperous
29、 owners of plantations. Most were hardworking trades people, artisans, small farmers, indentured (bound by compact) servants, and slaves. Yet the sophisticated gentleman and lady dominate our sense of the early southern colonies as we meet them in literature. We can hear at once, in the voice of a m
30、an like William Byrd, a strong contrast between the more worldly and witty southerners and the intense, self-examining Puritans. This contrast, too, is an important part of the American experveme.Some writers and their writings.As Ive said earlier, the earliest writers were English men describing th
31、e English exploration and colonization of the New World (America). Thomas Harriots Briefe and True Report of the New-Found Land of Virginia (1588) was only the first of many such works. Back in England, people planning to move to Virginia or New England would read the books as travel guides. But thi
32、s was dangerous because such books often mixed facts with fantasy. For example, one writer (William Wood) claimed that he had seen lions in Massachusetts. It is probable that these “true reports” had a second kind of reader. People could certainly read them as tales of adventure and excitement. Like
33、 modern readers of science fiction, they could enjoy imaginary voyages to places they could never visit in reality.The writings of John Smith probably satisfied readers of both kinds. A real adventure, he had fought the Turks in Hungary, where he was wounded and taken prisoner. He was sold as a slav
34、e and escaped by killing his master. In 1607 he helped found Jamestown, the first English colony in America. It was made up of one hundred men and four boys, and the man in charge was the 27 year-old Captain John Smith.It was at Jamestown that Smith may or may not have had the most famous of his adv
35、entures. Scholars are still not sure to what extent he was embroidering the truth when he claimed to have been captured by chief Powhatan pau-tan, pau-ha-tn and rescued from death by the chiefs beautiful daughter, Pocahontas (pk-hnts). The story seemed to grow more romantic and exciting each time Sm
36、ith related it. Although the details are not always correct, his Tue Relation of Virginia (1608) and Description of New England (1616) are fascinating “advertisement” , a kind of 17th-century “commercial, which try to persuade the reader to settle in the New world. The Puritans, for instance, studie
37、d his Description of New England carefully and then decided to settle there in 1620. On the other hand, the book is an effort to raise money for another new expedition and to convince Englishmen to join Smith in establishing a new colony of which he hoped to be governor.Smith was often boastful abou
38、t his own adventures in his books. His General Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624) contains the story of his rescue by beautiful Pocahontas. The story is probably untrue, but it is the first famous tale from American literature. His Elizabethan (of the time of Elizabeth I.
39、 Queen of England 1558-1603) style is not always easy to read, and his punctuation was strange even for the seventeenth century. Still, he can tell good story:Two great stones were brought before Powhatan: then as many as could dragged him (Smith) to them, and thereon (on the stones) laid him head a
40、nd being ready with their clubs, to beat out his brains, Pocahontas, the Kings dearest daughter, got his head in her arms, and Laid down her own head upon his to save him from death: whereat wt (because of that) the King was contented (agreed) he should live.Almost from the beginning, as the English
41、 settled along the Atlantic coast of America, there were important differences between the Southern and the New England colonies. In the South, enormous farms or plantations used the labor of black slaves to grow tobacco. The rich and powerful plantation owners were slow to develop a literature of t
42、heir own. They preferred books imported from England. But in New England, the Puritans had come to the New World in order to form a society based on strict Christian beliefs. Like the puritans in England, they believed that society should be based on the laws of God. Therefore they had a far stronge
43、r sense of unity and of a “shared purpose”. This was one of the reasons why culture and literature developed much faster than in the South. Harvard, the first college in the colonies, was founded near Boston in 1636 in order to train new Puritan ministers. The first printing press in America was sta
44、rted there in 1638, and Americas first newspaper began in Boston in 1704.The most interesting works of New England Puritan Literature were histories. To the Puritans, history developed according to “Gods plan”. In all of their early New England histories, they saw New England as the “Promised land”
45、of the Bible. Of Phymouth Plantation by William Bradford is the most interesting of the Puritan histories. It describes the Puritans difficult relation with the Indians. It also describes their difficulties during the first winter, when half of the small colony died. This is all told in the wonderfu
46、l “plain style” which the Puritans admired. In order to present the “clear light of truth” to uneducated readers, Puritan writers avoided elegant language, seldom using any metaphors or decorative language. The Examples they used were drawn either from the Bible or from the everyday life of farmers
47、and fishermen. Brafords plain language reflects his belief that everything in the Puritan way of life should have the power of simplicity. As one of the great Puritan ministers, John Cotton said “Gods altar needs no polishing.” At the same time, Bradfords history is deeply influenced by the belief t
48、hat God directs everything that happens. Each event he writes about begins with, “If pleased God to ”. Year after Year Bradord always Keeps sight of the signs of Gods judgment and providence. He sees the signs everywhere, so that, for example, the Indian interpreter Squanto becomes “an instrument se
49、nt of God for their good.” For Bradford the Puritans flight from Europe is guided by God in the same way as the Israelites exodus from Egypt. The History of New England by John Winthrop is also in the “plain style”. But it is far less cheerful. Winthrop was the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony and, like most of the Puritan writers, was a minister all his life. His writing style is rather cold. He rarely shows shock or sadness, even when he describes scenes of great unhappiness. Sometimes, the dryness of his “plain style” is very effective.
