超验主义：一种文学和哲学运动，与拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生和玛格丽
特·富勒有关，宣称存在一种理想的精神实体，超越于经验和科学之处， 通过直觉得以把握 Features: 1. The placed emphasis on spirit. 2. They stress the individual. 3. They offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God.
Washington Irving Rip Van Winkle
Washington Irving: American short story writer, essayist, historian, biographer, journalist, and editor.Irving is considered both the first American man of letters and the creator of the American short story. Though best known for such tales of rural Americana as “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Irving later became a prolific and accomplished biographer as well as a distinguished statesman. Rip Van Winkle: RIP VAN WINKLE is a famous tale written by Washington Irving, telling about a story in which an old man named Rip drank some beverage and fell into asleep for 20 years. After that, he returned to the village where he came from, and found everything changed. People talked about revolution and election, and he has no idea of what that meant. There have been many comments on this tale saying that it shows Irving's attitude against the American revolution, and his approving of the past. On reading it the second time, it occurred to me that Irving only showed his bewilderment: coming out of the oppressed life, people were at a loss about what they should do. Irving was not cherishing the past and opposing the present. First, Rip was not happy long before revolution, and he hated to do labor work on his own business, and that was constantly under the criticism of Dame Van Winkle. Surely Dame was superior to Rip in his family, so the life of Rip could not at all be labeled as happy. Secondly, Irving showed no opposition against the new America. After he had settled down in the village, he even made friends with the rising generation, enjoying the idle life he had long been dreamed of. Transcendentalism: Eclectic and cosmopolitan in its sources and part of
American Romanticism(1815— 1865) Background and features; Transcendentalism
A literary and philosophical movement, associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the empirical and scientific and is knowable through intuition.
scientist, and diplomat. One of the foremost of the Founding Fathers, Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence and was one of its signers, represented the United States in France during the American Revolution, and was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He made important contributions to science, especially in the understanding of electricity, and is remembered for the wit, wisdom, and elegance of his writing.
Survey of the history of American literature
Benjamin Franklin Autobiography (excerpt)
Early American lit Literature of the New Land/ Colonial American:1620-1763 Literature of the American Revolution:1764-1815 The Romantic Period:1815-1865 The Realistic Period: 1865-1914 The Modernist Period: 1914-1945 The contemporary Literature: 1945-21st century Benjamin Franklin: American printer and publisher, author, inventor and
Ralph Waldo Emerson from “Nature” (chapter 1)
Background: developed in the 1830s and 1840s as a protest against the general state of culture and society Ralph Waldo Emerson published Nature in 1836 which represented a new way of intellectual thinking in America. The essay consists of the introduction part and eight chapters. They are Nature, Commodity, Beauty, Language, Discipline, Idealism, Spirit and Prospects respectively.
Henry David Thoreau Walden ( Excerpt)(chapter 2)
Thoreau：1817-1862. He said he was born "in the nick of time" in Concord, Massachusetts, during the flowering of America when the transcendental movement was taking root and when the anti-slavery movement was rapidly gaining momentum. Over the years, Thoreau's reputation has been strong, although he is often cast into roles -- the hermit in the wilderness, the prophet of passive resistance (so dear to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King) -- that he would have surely seen as somewhat alien. His work is so rich, and so full of the complex contradictions that he explored, that his readers keep reshaping his image to fit their own needs. Perhaps he would have appreciated that, for he seems to have wanted most to use words to force his readers to rethink their own lives creatively, different though they may be, even as he spent his life rethinking his, always asking questions, always looking to nature for greater intensity and meaning for his life. Summary and Analysis The narrator tells us that for many years he thought of buying a farm in the Concord countryside. He considered many sites and even exercised his Yankee shrewdness by haggling over the price with several farmers. But he followed his own advice, as expressed in "Economy," and avoided purchasing a farm because it would inevitably tie him down financially and complicate his life. Besides, he reasoned, why did he need to own a farm? All that is of real value to the individual in living on a farm — close, personal contact with the spiritually invigorating influences of nature — can be had for nothing There he found himself free from the trivialities of village life, free from the economic rat race, and free to be inspired by nature. He relates the spiritual ecstasy that came to him immediately after moving to Walden. He was so content, so totally happy while enjoying the ripeness of summer and the songs of various birds that he came to see his new residence as no longer a simple hut but as a "new and unprofaned part of the universe." To some, it might have seemed a poor excuse for a house, but to the inspired narrator it had a divine character.