19th century American poets

1. 19th century American poets Hao Guilian, Ph,D. Yunnan Normal University Sept, 2009

2. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Longfellow predominantly wrote lyric poems which are known for their musicality and which often presented stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and also had success overseas. He has been criticized, however, for imitating European styles and writing specifically for the masses.

3. Longfellow in 1868 by Julia Margaret Cameron

4. Popularity and significance • There are two reasons for the popularity and significance of Longfellow's poetry. First, he had the gift of easy rhyme. He wrote poetry as a bird sings, with natural grace and melody. Read or heard once or twice, his rhyme and meters cling to the mind long after the sense may be forgotten.

5. Second, Longfellow wrote on obvious themes which appeal to all kinds of people. His poems are easily understood; they sing their way into the consciousness of those who read them. Above all, there is a joyousness in them, a spirit of optimism and faith in the goodness of life which evokes immediate response in the emotions of his readers.

6. Americans owe a great debt to Longfellow because he was among the first of American writers to use native themes. He wrote about the American scene and landscape, the American Indian (Song of Hiawatha), and American history and tradition (The Courtship of Miles Standish, Evangeline).

7. He lived when giants walked the New England earth, giants of intellect and feeling who established the New Land as a source of greatness. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and William Prescott were a few of the great minds and spirits among whom Longfellow took his place as a singer and as a representative of America.

8. 《人生礼赞》 —青年人的心对歌者说的话 不要在伤感的诗句里对我说， 人生不过是一场梦！—— 昏睡的灵魂等于是死亡， 事物的真相和外表不同。 人生是真切的！人生是实在的！ 它的归宿不是荒坟； “你本是尘土，仍要归于尘土”， 这话说的并不是灵魂。

9. 不是享乐，也不是受苦， 我们命定的目标和道路 而是行动；在每个明天， 都要比今天前进一步。 艺术永恒，时光飞逝， 我们的心，虽然勇敢、坚决， 仍然像闷声的鼓，它正在 伴奏向坟墓送葬的哀乐。

10. 在这世界的辽阔战场上， 在这人生的营帐中， 莫学那听人驱策的哑畜， 要做一个战斗中的英雄！ 别只靠将来，不管它多迷人！ 让已逝的过去永久埋葬！ 行动吧，——趁着现在的时光！ 良知在心中，上帝在头上！

11. 伟大的生平昭示我们： 我们能让生活更辉煌！ 而当告别人世的时候， 留下脚印在时间的沙上； 也许我们有一个弟兄， 航行在庄严的人生大海； 船只沉没了，绝望的时候， 会看到这脚印而振作起来。

12. 那么，让我们起来干吧， 对任何命运抱英雄气概； 不断地进取，不断的追求， 要学会劳动，学会等待。

13. Main poems: Annabel Lee To Helen The Raven The Sleeper Sonnet—To Science Edgar Allan Poe

14. One of the greatest and unhappiest of American poets, a master of the horror tale, and the patron saint of the detective story. First gained critical acclaim in France and England. His reputation in America was relatively slight until the French-influenced writers and the Lovecraft school created interest in his work. Poe married his 13-year old cousin, Virginia Clemm. Edgar Allan Poe

15. Wasthisthefacethat launchedathousand ships? ------Marlowe To Helen

16. To Helen In the first stanza, Helen’s beauty is soothing (减轻痛苦的). It provides security and safety to Helen's beauty, for her beauty is as hypnotic(催眠的) for the speaker as the ships that transported another wanderer-Ulysses-home from Troy.

17. To Helen • Poe uses allusions to classical names and places, as well as certain kinds of images to create the impression of a far-off idealized, unreal woman, like a Greek statue. words that support the image of an ideal woman are "hyacinth“ and "classic” "Naiad airs“ and "statue-like”. Helen stands, not like a real woman, but like a saint in a "windows-niche.” She becomes a symbol both of beauty and of frustration, a romantically idealized, yet inaccessible image of the heart's desire.

18. 致海伦 • 海伦，你惊世之美浮现在我眼里 • 　　犹如那昔时尼西恩的三桅船 • 那样优雅地徐徐驶过芬芳之海 • 　　风尘仆仆、疲惫不堪的流浪者们 • 　　争先恐后地登上自己家乡的港岸 • 早已习惯在绝望的大海上久久徘徊 • 　　你风信子般的秀发，你绝美的脸庞 • 你水中女神似的抒情调终于带我回家 • 　　光荣属于西腊 • 崇高属于罗马 • 瞧！在那辉煌的窗口里 • 　　我看见你静静伫立如同塑像 • 　　手持玛瑙制作的灯 • 啊，心灵之女神 • 　　来自耶鲁撒冷圣城　

19. Poe’s theory for poetry short but achieve maximum effect poems produce a feeling of beauty in the reader "pure“, not to moralize 真实能够满足人的理智,感情能够满足人的心灵, 而美则能激动人的灵魂 He stresses rhythm insists on an even(规则的) metrical flow

20. Two Transitional Writers • Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are considered sometimes as Romantic poets by many critics. • Yet they could also be placed comfortably in the post-Civil War era of American Realism. • This is because they were both involved in making the transition between Romanticism and Realism.

21. Walt Whitman was born May 31, 1819 on South Huntington, Long Island, New York. He was almost entirely self-educated, especially admiring the work of Dante, Shakespeare, and Homer. His mother described him as “very good, but very strange”. His brother described him as being “stubborner [sic] than a load of bricks.” Walt Whitman

22. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (first edition). Brooklyn: 1855

23. Career • Apprenticed to a printer. • Taught school at 17. • Editor of The Brooklyn Eagle, a respected newspaper, but was fired for his outspoken opposition to slavery. • Civil War nurse.

24. Whitman’s Poetry Whitman declared that his poetry would have: • Long lines that capture the rhythms of natural speech • Free verse • Vocabulary drawn from everyday speech • A base in reality, not morality

25. Leaves of Grass • The first version of his masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, appeared in 1855. • Emerson praised Whitman’s poetry as “the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet to contribute”. • Whitman used these words, written by Emerson in a letter to Whitman, in a later introduction to Leaves of Grass. Emerson was not amused. • John Greenleaf Whittier threw his copy of the book into the fireplace. • Another critic dismissed it as “just a barbaric yawp.” • Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell were equally unimpressed. • Even Thoreau was appalled by Whitman’s poetry, and he was certainly no conformist!

26. What’s his deal? • Why were so many writers shocked by Whitman? • His lack of regular rhyme and meter (free verse) and nontraditional poetic style and subject matter shocked more traditional writers. • He also wrote poetry with unabashedly sexual imagery and themes, some of them homoerotic. Examples include the Calamus poems and “I Sing the Body Electric”.

27. O Captain! My Captain! • Whitman wrote poetry in praise of Abraham Lincoln • “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (an elegy written after Lincoln’s assassination). • “O Captain! My Captain!” memorializes Lincoln’s passing as the death of a great man and the death of the era he dominated.

28. 啊，船长，我的船长哟！ • 啊，船长，我的船长哟！我们可怕的航程已经终了，我们的船渡过了每一个难关，我们追求的锦标已经得到，港口就在前面，我已经听见钟声，听见了人们的欢呼，千万双眼睛在望着我们的船，它坚定，威严而且勇敢；    只是，啊！心哟！心哟！心哟！      啊，鲜红的血滴，        就在那甲板上，我的船长躺下了，          他已浑身冰凉，停止了呼吸。

29. 啊，船长，我的船长哟！起来听听这钟声，起来吧，——旌旗正为你招展，——号角为你长鸣，为你，人们准备了无数的花束和花环，——为你，人群挤满了海岸，为你，这晃动着的群众在欢呼，转动着他们殷切的脸面；这里，船长，亲爱的父亲哟！让你的头枕着我的手臂吧！在甲板上，这真是一场梦——你已浑身冰凉，停止了呼吸。啊，船长，我的船长哟！起来听听这钟声，起来吧，——旌旗正为你招展，——号角为你长鸣，为你，人们准备了无数的花束和花环，——为你，人群挤满了海岸，为你，这晃动着的群众在欢呼，转动着他们殷切的脸面；这里，船长，亲爱的父亲哟！让你的头枕着我的手臂吧！在甲板上，这真是一场梦——你已浑身冰凉，停止了呼吸。

30. 我的船长不回答我的话，他的嘴唇惨白而僵硬，我的父亲，感觉不到我的手臂，他已没有脉搏，也没有了生命，我们的船已经安全地下锚了，它的航程已经终了，从可怕的旅程归来，这胜利的船，目的已经达到；啊，欢呼吧，海岸，鸣响吧，钟声！只是我以悲痛的步履，漫步在甲板上，那里我的船长躺着，他已浑身冰凉，停止了呼吸。我的船长不回答我的话，他的嘴唇惨白而僵硬，我的父亲，感觉不到我的手臂，他已没有脉搏，也没有了生命，我们的船已经安全地下锚了，它的航程已经终了，从可怕的旅程归来，这胜利的船，目的已经达到；啊，欢呼吧，海岸，鸣响吧，钟声！只是我以悲痛的步履，漫步在甲板上，那里我的船长躺着，他已浑身冰凉，停止了呼吸。

31. Emily Dickinson: “The Poet of the Inner-Soul” • Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 and was destined to become one of the greatest poets of all time. • Like many authors, Dickinson was not known until after her death in 1886. • She was, in fact, a very reclusive and quiet woman who hardly ever left her home town. • The picture you see here is one of two known photos of Emily.

32. Emily’s Home in Amherst, Massachusetts ; and her grave

33. Higginson’s Comments on Dickinson • "A recluse by temperament and habit, literally spending years without setting her foot beyond the doorstep, and many more years during which her walks were strictly limited to her father's grounds, she habitually concealed her mind, like her person, from all but a very few friends; and it was with great difficulty that she was persuaded to print, during her lifetime, three or four poems. Yet she wrote verses in great abundance; and though curiously indifferent to all conventional rules, had yet a rigorous literary standard of her own, and often altered a word many times to suit an ear which had its own tenacious fastidiousness." 

34. Features of Dickinson’s poetry: • --telling images, striking, suggestive and connotative sometimes incomprehensible • --a severe economy of expression • --direct and plain words, simple syntax • --faulty grammar • --no regular rhyme • --unusual capitalization • --unusual use of punctuation marks

35. I ’M nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell! They ’d banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog! 我是无名之辈， 你又是谁？ 你也不是政要显贵？ 那我们就是天生一对！ 别吱声，不要张嘴， 免得他们来乱发淫威！ 当要人多么乏味， 招摇过市，唾沫横飞， 象青蛙呼应泥潭的赞美， 把自己的名字成天鼓吹！ “I’M nobody! Who are you?”

36. “Dickinson used precise language and unique poetic forms to simultaneously reveal and conceal her private thoughts and feelings” (Elements of Literature 345). • Dickinson is known for using poetry as private observation. • Her poems are carefully crafted in rhyme and meter.

37. Thank you! And… • Work HARD on your assignment!