美国文学史　全套教案.doc

Part I The Literature of Colonial America殖民时期(17世纪) (1)殖民地时期文学产生的社会及文化背景 (2)新英格兰文学 (3)清教主义思想 (4) Anne Bradstreet Edward Taylor Historical Background: After Christopher Columbus’s exploration of the new continent (1504), in the early sixteenth century, the colonists, English and European explorers arrived in the new vast continental area. The earliest settlers included Dutch, Swedes, Germans, French, Spaniards, Italians and Portuguese. They established respectively their own colonies in the new continent. Dutch settled along the Hudson River, Swedes explored the Delaware, Germans and Scotch-Irish conquered (invaded) in New York and Pennsylvania; Frenchmen settled in the Northern Colonies and along the St. Lawrence River, and the Spanish controlled Florida. At last early in the seventeenth century, the English settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts began the main stream of what we recognize as the American national history. All these settlers contributed to the forming of the American civilization, but the English settlements were most influential. The most part of the English colonies was sustained by English traditions, ruled by English laws, supported by English commerce, and named after English monarchs and English lands: Georgia, Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New York, New Hampshire, New England (the northeastern most region of the U.S.A. comprising the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont, so named by John Smith when he explored it in 1614. New Englander: a native or resident of New England.). The Literature: The first American literature was neither American nor really literature. It was not American because it was the work mainly of immigrants from England. It was not literature as we know it---in the form of poetry, essays, or fiction---but rather an interesting mixture of travel accounts and religious writings. The earliest colonial travel accounts are records of the perils and frustrations that challenge