美国文学框架梳理美文学框架梳理.docVIP

American Romanticism? Time:From the end of the 18th to the outbreak of the Civil War (1865) Marked by:The publication of Irving’s The Sketch Book and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass Position: It is a period of the great flowering of American literature, and it is also called “the American Renaissance” Social Background: 1 Westward Expansion 2. Industrial Transformation 3. Democracy and equality became the ideal of the people. General Characteristics of American Romanticism: 1 Foreign masters exerted influence on American writers. The American writers shared some common features with the English Romanticism: (1) Imaginative and emotional qualities (2) The psychic state of the characters (3) Strong tendency to exalt the individual and the common man (4) Fascination about the past and the exotic 2 In spite of foreign impact, American Romantic writings were typically American (1) Their national experience of “pioneering into the west”. (2) They celebrated America’s landscape and the role of nature (3) The American Puritanism as a cultural heritage exerted great influences over American moral values. (4) American had its own philosophy—Transcendentalism Principles that the American Romanticists follow: 1. Belief in natural goodness of man, that man in a state of nature would behave well but is hindered by civilization. The figure of the Noble Savage is an outgrowth of this idea.? 2. Sincerity, spontaneity, and faith in emotion as markers of truth. 3. Belief that what is special in a man is to be valued over what is representative; delight in self-analysis. 4. Nature as a source of instruction, delight, and nourishment for the soul;? return to nature as a source of inspiration and wisdom; celebration of man’s connection with nature; life in nature often contrasted with the unnatural constraints of society. 5. Affirmation of the values of democracy and the freedom of the individual. 6. High value placed on finding connection with fresh, spontaneous in nature and self.?