1、A Survey of American Literature,Books: A Survey of American Literature (good and authoritative book) by Chang Yaoxin and Selected Readings in American Literature by Chang Yaoxin are course books. References: 1.常耀信.漫话英美文学(南开大学出版社，2004), 2.吴伟仁. 美国文学史及选读 (外语教学与研究出版社，1990), 3.杨岂深，龙文佩.美国文学选读(译文出版社，1985),
2、 4.左金梅.美国文学(青岛海洋出版社, 2000), 5.李公昭.20世纪美国文学导论(西安交通大学出版社，2000).,Requirement: Grade of this course includes the grade of daily performance (10%) ,grade of tests (50%)and the grade of final examination (40%).,Part I. Introduction,Introduction,What is literature? Writings that are valued as works of art,
3、 esp. fiction, drama and poetry. Language artistically used to achieve identifiable literary qualities and to convey meaningful messages. Literature is characterized by beauty of expression and form and by universality of intellectual and emotional appeal.Forms (genres) of literature? Poetry, novel
4、(fiction), drama, prose, essay, epic, elegy, short story, journalism, sermon, (auto) biography, travel accounts, novelette, etc. It contains fiction & non-fiction. Fiction: (4 genres) Poetry novel drama short story,Non-fiction : Essay (4 categories) description narration exposition argumentation,Ana
5、lytical Approach Be familiar with the elements of a literary work, eg: plot, character, setting, point of view, etc; answer some basic questions about the text itself. Thematic Approach “What is the story, the poem, the play or the essay about?” Historical Approach Aims at illustrating the historica
6、l development of literature.,How to study American literature,Basic Qualities of American Writers,Independent Individualistic Critical Innovative Humorous,Part II. The periods of American literature,The Literature of the Colonial America and of Reason and Revolution American Romanticism and New Engl
7、and Literature The Age of Realism and Naturalism The Age of Modernism: Literature in the 1920s The Age of Modernism: Literature in the 1930s American Drama: Eugene ONeill and Arthur Miller Multiethnic Literature: Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison and Saul Bellow,The colonial period (about 1607 - 1765) Th
8、e main features Puritanism The period of Enlightenment and the Independence War (1765 -1800) Benjamin Franklin 3. The romantic period (1800 - 1865) The early romanticism,Washington Irving,“New England Transcendentalism” or “American Renaissance (1836 - 1855)”,Whitman Dickinson,Hawthorne Melville All
9、an Poe,“New England Poets”,Longfellow,The realistic period (1865 - 1914) Midwestern Realism,William Dean Howells,Cosmopolitan Novelist,Henry James,Local Colorism,Naturalism,Stephen Crane,Jack London,Theodore Dreiser,Mark Twain,The “Chicago School” of Poetry,Sandburg,Robinson,The Rise of Black Americ
10、an Literature,The period of modernism (1914 - 1945) Modern poetry: experiments in form (Imagism),Ezra Pound,T.S.Eliot,Robert Frost,Carlos Williams,Prose Writing: modern realism (the Lost Generation),F.Scott Fitzgerald,Ernest Hemingway,William Faulkner,Novels of Social Awareness,Sinclair Lewis,Dos Passos,John Steinbeck,Richard Wright,The Harlem Renaissance,Langston Hughes,Zora Neals Hurston,5)The 20th Century American Drama,Eugene O Neil,The Contemporary Literature (1945 - 2000) American Poetry Since 1945: the Anti-tradition American Prose Since 1945: Realism and Experimentation.,
