American Literature(15)

•  Sylvia Plath ( 1932 –  1963) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer.

       Plath suffered from depression for much of her adult life, and in 1963 she committed suicide.Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for her two published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel.
       In 1982, she won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for The Collected Poems. She also wrote The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her death.

•  Anne Sexton ( 1928 –  1974) was an American poet, known for her highly personal, confessional verse. 

She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die. Themes of her poetry include her long battle against depression and mania, suicidal tendencies, and various intimate details from her private life.

 On returning home she put on her mother's old fur coat, removed all her rings, poured herself a glass of vodka, locked herself in her garage, and started the engine of her car, committing suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.

• 推薦電影：Sylvia(2004)

American Literature(15)

• THE COLD WAR

(點入連結)

• Containment 

was a United States policy to prevent the spread of communism abroad. A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge communist influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Africa, and Vietnam. It represented a middle-ground position between appeasement and rollback.

The word containment is associated most strongly with the policies of U.S. President Harry Truman (1945–53), including the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense pact. 

• Samuel Langhorne Clemens ( 1835 –  1910)

 better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885),the latter often called "the Great American Novel."


Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which provided the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He died the day following the comet's subsequent return. He was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age," and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature."

•  Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language. Many of Twain's works have been suppressed at times for various reasons. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been repeatedly restricted in American high schools, not least for its frequent use of the word "nigger," which was in common usage in the pre-Civil War period in which the novel was set.

• 英語口語文學

1. 雙重否定文法(I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out.)
2. 拼錯字

• "Moon River"  (music by Henry Mancini, lyrics by Johnny Mercer)

Moon River, wider than a mile,
I'm crossing you in style some day.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you're going I'm going your way.
Two drifters off to see the world.
There's such a lot of world to see.
We're after the same rainbow's end--
waiting 'round the bend,
my huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.

• 推薦電影：Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

• "The Open Boat"

 is a short story by American author Stephen Crane (1871–1900). First published in 1897, it was based on Crane's experience of surviving a shipwreck off the coast of Florida earlier that year while traveling to Cuba to work as a newspaper correspondent.

American Literature(14)

• Henry James(1843–1916)

1. was an American-born British writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He is primarily known for the series of novels in which he portrays the encounter of Americans with Europe and Europeans.James contributed significantly to literary criticism, particularly in his insistence that writers be allowed the greatest possible freedom in presenting their view of the world.
2. James is noted for his "international theme" – that is, the complex relationships between naïve Americans and cosmopolitan Europeans.
3. If the main theme of Twain's work is appearance and reality, James's constant concern is perception. In James, only self-awareness and clear perception of others yields wisdom and self-sacrificing love. As James develops, his novels become more psychological and less concerned with external events. In James's later works, the most important events are all psychological – usually moments of intense illumination that show characters their previous blindness.

Read more:( http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/publication/2008/05/20080512222313eaifas0.993786.html#ixzz2oM58lYkO)

• works

The Portrait of a Lady(1881)

The Wings of the Dove(1902)

Daisy Miller(1878)
Transatlantic Sketches (travel pieces, 1875)

• Stephen Crane (1871 – 1900)

 was an American author. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation.

 Crane's first novel was the 1893 Bowery tale Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, generally considered by critics to be the first work of American literary Naturalism.
 He won international acclaim in 1895 for his Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage, which he wrote without any battle experience.

• realism(literature)

Like Romanticism, naturalism first appeared in Europe. It is usually traced to the works of Honoré? de Balzac (巴爾札克)in the 1840s and seen as a French literary movement associated with Gustave Flaubert(古詩塔夫‧福樓拜),  Émile Zola(埃米爾·左拉), and Guy de Maupassant(居伊·德·莫泊桑). It daringly opened up the seamy underside of society and such topics as divorce, sex, adultery, poverty, and crime.

Naturalism flourished as Americans became urbanized and aware of the importance of large economic and social forces. By 1890, the frontier was declared officially closed. Most Americans resided in towns, and business dominated even remote farmsteads.

"You are all a "génération perdue."   

                                                                            ──  Gertrude Stein

•  "Lost Generation"

The "Lost Generation" was the generation that came of age during World War I.
The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway, who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises.

• Gertrude Stein(點入連結)

American Literature(13)

• Naturalism( Literature)

 was a literary movement or tendency from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character. It was a mainly unorganized Literary movement that sought to depict believable everyday reality, as opposed to such movements as Romanticism or Surrealism, in which subjects may receive highly symbolic, idealistic, or even supernatural treatment. 

 Naturalistic writers were influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. They often believed that one's heredity and social environment largely determine one's character. 

Naturalistic works exposed the dark harshness of life, including poverty, racism, violence, prejudice, disease, corruption, prostitution, and filth. As a result, naturalistic writers were frequently criticized for focusing too much on human vice and misery.

•  Realism ( Literature)

Literary realism is the trend, beginning with mid nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors, toward depictions of contemporary life and society as it was, or is.

 In the spirit of general "realism," realist authors opted for depictions of everyday and banal activities and experiences, instead of a romanticized or similarly stylized presentation.

George Eliot's novel Middlemarch stands as a great milestone in the realist tradition.

• Vernacular

           Mark Twain

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't.

—William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, ll. 203–206

American Literature(12)

• 聖經裡的40

1. 洪水四十晝夜　
2. 摩西在埃及四十年，在曠野牧羊四十年　
3. 以色列人在曠野飄流四十年
4. 神給尼尼微人四十天悔改的機會　
5. 耶穌在曠野禁食四十晝夜
6. 主復活後在地四十天

•  Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851) 

 is the sixth book by American writer Herman Melville. The work is an epic sea-story of Captain Ahab's voyage in pursuit of Moby Dick, a great white whale. It initially received mixed reviews and at Melville's death in 1891 was remembered, if at all, as a children's sea adventure, but now is considered one of the Great American Novels and a leading work of American Romanticism.

•  Herman Melville(1819 –  1891) 

was an American writer of novels, short stories and poetry. His contributions to the Western canon are the whaling novel Moby-Dick (1851); the short work Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853) about a clerk in a Wall Street office; and Billy Budd, Sailor, left unfinished at his death and published in 1924.

When he died in 1891, Melville was almost completely forgotten. It was not until the "Melville Revival" in the early 20th century that his work won recognition, especially Moby-Dick, which was hailed as one of the literary masterpieces of both American and world literature.

• 「Starbucks」這個名字，來自美國作家梅爾‧維爾（Melville Herman）所寫的世界名著《白鯨記》（Moby Dick）裡那艘船上大副的名字史塔巴克（Starbuck）。

American Literature(11)

•  Life of Pi 

 is a fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel published in 2001.

• 推薦電影：Life of Pi (2012) 

• 推薦音樂："Sigh No More, Ladies..."(From "Much Ado about Nothing")
                                         by   William Shakespeare

•  Walter "Walt" Whitman ( 1819 – 1892)
  
  was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.
  
   Whitman's major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money. The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892.

 

•  Song of Myself

 "Song of Myself" is a poem by Walt Whitman that is included in his work Leaves of Grass. It has been credited as "representing the core of Whitman’s poetic vision."

•  詩人自比

      13

 Sing on! sing on, you gray-brown bird!
 Sing from the swamps, the recesses—pour your chant from the bushes;
 Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
 Sing on, dearest brother—warble your reedy song;
 Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
 O liquid, and free, and tender!
 O wild and loose to my soul! O wondrous singer!
 You only I hear......yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart;) 
 Yet the lilac, with mastering odor, holds me.

                                             ───  When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd

 
 The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,  If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

                                                ─── Ode to the West Wind

American Literature(10)

• 報佳音 (Christmas caroling)

•  槲寄生(mistletoe)

According to an old Christmas custom, a man and a woman who meet under a hanging of mistletoe were obliged to kiss.

• Andy Williams - It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

• Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day(Sonnet 18)

                                                                        by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives life to thee

• Three quatrains plus a concluding couple(Sonnet 18)

• types of meter

Types of Meter Poetry   (點入連結)

• End rhyme=rhym scheme尾韻
• alliteration=頭韻

• "God Save the Queen"

(alternatively "God Save the King" during the reign of a male sovereign)
 is an anthem used in a number of Commonwealth realms, their territories, and the British Crown Dependencies.

• "The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States.

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

American Literature (8)

• Edgar Allan Poe

•   "The Fall of the House of Usher"  
• 波的博物館(點入連結)/Poe's unity of effect(點入連結)

 Poe emphasized the unity of effect that one should strive for in any work of art.

 For example, words and phrases that occur and re-occur in Poe's various critical writings include the following: "to affect," "the totality of impression," "the unity of effect," "the novelty of the effect alone," and "the single effect," and these are only selected examples of his repetition of the value of this principle; Poe's writings contain many more examples of this emphasis.

By these statements, Poe meant that the artist should decide what effect he wants to create in the reader's emotional response and then proceed to use all of his creative powers to achieve that particular effect. 

( http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070206213508AAAOS40)

• Percy Bysshe Shelley(1792-1822)

• Ode to the West Wind

                      v

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, 
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

• plot

 Every plot should have an exposition, rising and falling action,climax and resolution.

1. exposition
2. conflict：character v.s.society/nature/character/themselves
3. rising action
4. climax
5. falling action
6. resolution

(http://www.slideshare.net/guest6bbfe8d/elements-of-plot)

•  Vocabulary

American Literature(7)

• Edgar Allan Poe(1809 – 1849)

was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Born in Boston, he was the second child of two actors.

 Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.

•  Selected list of works

1.  "The Fall of the House of Usher"  (Tales)
2.  "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846) – Essay

              Poetry

1.  "Annabel Lee"
2.  "The Raven"
3.  To Helen"

• American Renaissance (literature) 

 In American literature, the American Renaissance was a period during which many of the literary works most widely considered American masterpieces were produced. The period is generally defined as the mid-19th century but especially the years roughly from 1850 to 1855.

Major works from those years include Ralph Waldo Emerson's Representative Men (1850, ), Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850) and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854), and Walt Whitman's first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855).

The notion of an American Renaissance has been criticized for overemphasizing a small number of white male writers and artifacts of high culture.

• Nathaniel Hawthorne ( 1804 – 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer.

1.  The Scarlet Letter (1850)    (Novels)

                              * Dimmesdale/Chillingworth

•   short stories

     1."My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832)

 ....... Robin, a youth, arrives by ferry in Boston seeking his kinsman, Major Molineux, an official in the British Colonial government, who has promised him work. ............

Disillusioned, the youth asks the old gentleman the way back to the ferry. Yet the latter restrains him, saying that it is still possible for him to thrive without his kinsman's protection.

 *initiation journey/*river styx(冥河)/*charon冥衛(ferryman擺渡者)
 

2. "Young Goodman Brown" (1835)

The story takes place in 17th century Puritan New England, a common setting for Hawthorne's works, and addresses the Calvinist/Puritan belief that all of humanity exists in a state of depravity, except those who are born in a state of grace.

Hawthorne frequently attempts to expose the hypocrisy of Puritan culture in his literature. In a symbolic fashion, the story follows Young Goodman Brown's journey into self-scrutiny, which results in his loss of virtue and faith.

*allegorical name/the betrayal of the trust/faith /believe

• Vocabulary

American Literature(6)

• Nathaniel Hawthorne (born Nathaniel Hathorne;  1804 – 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer.

 His ancestors include John Hathorne, the only judge involved in the Salem witch trials who never repented of his actions. Nathaniel later added a "w" to make his name "Hawthorne" in order to hide this relation.

 His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, Dark romanticism. His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity.  

• The Scarlet Letter (1850)

 The Scarlet Letter is an 1850 romantic work of fiction in a historical setting, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is considered to be his magnum opus.

 Set in 17th-century Puritan Salem, Massachusetts during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an adulterous affair and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the book, Hawthorne explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt.

•  Vocabulary

1. metaphor  比喻
2. mansion  邸
3. armor  盔甲
4. vigils   守夜儀式
5. executed  執行
6. acknowledge  認知
7. seamstress  裁縫
8. encounter  遭遇
9. manual  手冊
10. script/describe/description/transcript腳本/說明/描述/成績單
11. illicit  非法的
12. botanical  植物
13. customs offocer   稽查

• American Dream

 The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, a set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work.

• second to none： better than everything else.

This is an excellent car—second to none.
 Her suggestion was second to none, and the manager accepted it eagerly.

• Make Way for Ducklings

 Make Way for Ducklings is a children's picture book written and illustrated by Robert McCloskey.The book tells the story of a pair of mallard ducks who decide to raise their family on an island in the lagoon in Boston Public Garden, a park in the center of Boston, Massachusetts.

The book's popularity led to the construction of a statue by Nancy Schön in the Public Garden of the mother duck and her eight ducklings, which is a popular destination for children and adults alike.

Make Way for Ducklings statue in Boston's Public Garden 

 

• The Omni Parker House

 The Omni Parker House (built 1927) is a hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, currently owned by Omni Hotels.

The hotel was home to the Saturday Club, also referred to as the Saturday Night Club, which consisted of literary dignitaries such as Charles Dickens, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. John Wilkes Booth was also once a guest at the hotel. 

The Parker House invented Massachusetts’ state dessert – Boston cream pie – and the Parker House roll; and coined the term "scrod".

American Literature (5)

• The university motto

 Harvard University ──Veritas(拉丁文─真理)   

 National Hsinchu University of Education──

	博雅弘達

 National Taipei University of Education──

 TO LOVE TO ACT (親愛篤行)

•  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(1807-1882)

1. ''Paul Revere's Ride''
2. ''A Psalm of Life''

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
     And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
     Funeral marches to the grave.

•  Henry David Thoreau ( 1817 – 1862) 

was an American author, poet, philosopher, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, historian, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Resistance to Civil Government (also known as Civil Disobedience), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.

•  Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism was a religious and philosophical movement that was developed during the late 1820s and 1830s in the Eastern region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society.Among the transcendentalists' core beliefs was the inherent goodness of both people and nature.
Transcendentalists believed ：
They had faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. 

•  Walden

1.  I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
2. Thoreau insists on telling us that his Walden project is not a life decision or a commitment to a set of ideals, but an experiment in alternative living that is unambiguously amateurish. It is more like casual play than like solemn ideology. This informality explains why, when he leaves Walden Pond in 1847, Thoreau does not admit failure; rather, he says simply that he has other lives to live. Having learned the lessons that Walden Pond had to offer him, he turned to other scenes and other occupations, thus proving rather than undercutting his philosophy of life.

     Hamlet:
                    —Frailty, thy name is woman!—
                                                        Hamlet Act 1, scene 2, 142–146

• "O Captain! My Captain!" 

"O Captain! My Captain!" is a poem written by Walt Whitman in 1865. The poem is classified as an elegy because it is a mourning poem that was written in the memory of someone. The poem was written to honor Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States. 

• 推薦電影： 2012

• 三大電子書網站： Gutenberg/Barleby.com/University of Virginia Library

• Vocabulary

American literature(4)

South Dakota, Black Hills, USA Mid West

•  Washington Irving(1783－1859)

an American author, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. 

• jonathon edwards

• 推薦電影：Sleepless in Seattle(1993)
•  Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair
•  Rest in peace 「願死者安息」
• 單字
• Long Fellow
• 獨立宣言

American literature(3)

American literature 1820~1865

• Church of England

Pilgrims → separatist (n.)分離教派者

Pilgrims (激進派)


"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," ----that is all we know on earth, and all we need to know. —— John Keats

• Edgar A. Poe.

''Annabel Lee"
"The Raven"
"To Helen"

•  英國浪主義五大詩人

1.  （William Wordsworth，1770～l850） 
2. （Samuel T．Coleridge，1772—1834）
3. （ George G．Byron， 1788—1824） 
4. （Percy B．Shelley，1792—1822） 
5. （John Keats，1795—1821）

• 美國文學男主角的形象

     

• 南北戰爭

• Benjamin Franklin(1706~1790)

 

•  George Eliot(1818~1880)

 Mary Anne Evans , known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist, and translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era.

She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure her works would be taken seriously. Female authors were published under their own names during Eliot's life, but she wanted to escape the stereotype of women only writing lighthearted romances.

American literature(2)

•  羅馬的榮光   ‘’To Helen’’ by Edgar A. Poe.

Helen, thy beauty is to me

   Like those Nicéan barks of yore,

That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,

   The weary, way-worn wanderer bore

   To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,

   Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home

   To the glory that was Greece,      

   And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche

   How statue-like I see thee stand,

The agate lamp within thy hand!

   Ah, Psyche, from the regions which

   Are Holy-Land!

 

• “The Roman Fever “by Edith Wharton（1934）

 The story about the power struggle for those in the upper classes.
The setting of the story takes place in the city of Rome.  The exotic setting illustrates the power and class from which the women hail, but the Old Rome context, such as the Colosseum, insinuates Roman Empire-style intrigue.

• Gilgamesh

 Gilgamesh is the central character in the Epic of Gilgamesh(吉爾伽美什史詩), the greatest surviving work of early Mesopotamian(美索不達米亞) literature. In Mesopotamian mythology, Gilgamesh is a demigod of superhuman strength who built the city walls of Uruk to defend his people from external threats.

• Manifest Destiny

         In the United States in the 19th century, Manifest Destiny was the widely held belief that American settlers were destined to expand across the continent. 

• Presumption of innocence (無罪推定原則) 

           is the principle that one is considered innocent until proven guilty.

• Republican / Democrat

• 美國三大郵報：USA today/New York time/Washington post

• 西洋三大獎：The Academy Award of Merit /Golden Globe Awards /Grammy Award

 

   “Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ ignorant more learned than the ears” – Coriolanus

    William Shakespeare, Coriolanus (c. 1607-08), Act III, scene 2, line 76.

• 推薦電影：Working Girl(1988)、Far and Away(1992)

• 推薦音樂："Let the River Run" - Carly Simon、"Under the Sea" The Little Mermaid

 

• Vocabulary

       Law maker

       Rancor

       Ratified

       Concession

       Success/successful/successive/predecessor

       Electoral College

       Paranoia

       Defend(v.)捍衛

       Wiretapping(adj.)竊聽的