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Lecture I, American Literature (1) Autumn 2007. What is literature?. Coming of the Word The word "Literature" came into English from the 14th century in the sense of polite learning through reading. Thus a man of literature, or a man of letters, meant what we would now describe as a man of wi
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1. American Literature (1)
Lecturer: Ruan Beiyi
Semester: Autumn 2007
2. Lecture I, American Literature (1) Autumn 2007 What is literature? Coming of the Word
The word "Literature" came into English from the 14th century in the sense of polite learning through reading. Thus a man of literature, or a man of letters, meant what we would now describe as a man of wide reading. So, this word corresponds mainly to the modern meaning of the word "literacy". From the mid-18th century, literature referred to the practice and profession of writing. This appears to be closely connected with the heightened self-consciousness of the profession of authorship. Since the 19th century, literature has been the high skills of writing in the special context of high imagination.
3. Lecture I, American Literature (1) Autumn 2007 What is literature? Origin of Literature
Whence comes literature? Literature comes from human interest in telling a story, in arranging words in artistic forms, in describing in words some aspects of our human experiences. This human activity embodies human desire to express and share experiences. At the beginning, the literary impulse exists only in one's mind. It is the writer who turns this impulse into literature:a story, a poem, a play, or an essay, with the medium of language. It is a writer's "performance in words" as Robert Frost (American poet) once said. In this way it can be appreciated by others. Therefore, we can define literature as language artistically used to achieve identifiable literary qualities and to convey meaningful messages.
4. Lecture I, American Literature (1) Autumn 2007 Characteristics of Literature Literature is characterized by beauty of expression and form and by universality of intellectual and emotional appeal. Literature as an art is the creation of individuals and it is experienced by individuals. Yet, creative artistic literature presents one of the essential sources for studying the relation between humanity and society. Great works of literature enables us to study the way in which people live out their social roles. Literature shows not only the socialized behavior of individuals, but also the process of their socialization as well; it speaks not only of individual experience, but also of the meaning of that experience. Therefore, a writer is a specialized thinker about the individual.
Literature shows us not only what a society is like in a certain age, but also what individuals feel about it, what they hope from it, and how they think they can change it or escape from it. The fictional characters see and record not only the reality around them, but their hopes, wishes, dreams, and fantacies as well. The social meanings of this inner life of the individual are related to the central problems of social change.
Literature is important in human life because the writer of literature is not bound to fact in quite the same way as the historian, the economist or the scientist, whose studies are absolutely based on what has actually happened, or on what actually does happen, in the world of reality. The writer of literature, being less bound to fact, has more hope to comment on the fact, to arrange it in unusual ways, and to speculate not only what is, but on what ought to be, or what might be (for better or for worse).
5. Lecture I, American Literature (1) Autumn 2007 Who are the writers? Writers are people with visionary or prophetic insight into human life. They help all of us who read literature broaden and deepen our knowledge of human affairs, whether in the individual, the social, the racial, or the international sphere; they enable us to understand the possibility of human life, both for good and evil.
As readers of their works, we are made to understand how we came to live at a particular time and place, with all its pleasures and vexations and problems;we are also facilitated to be aware of the ways onwards which are open to us, and that we shall perhaps be able to make right rather than wrong choices.
6. Lecture I, American Literature (1) Autumn 2007 Why do people read literature? Reading for Pleasure
Howells (American novelist, playwright and literary critic) observed that the study of literature should begin and end in pleasure. Apart from its role of protest, education, cognition and aesthetic appreciation, literature is primarily to give pleasure, to entertain those who voluntarily attend to it. There are, of course, many different ways of giving pleasure or entertainment, ranging from the most trivial and sensational to the most philosophical and profound. We discover that literature which entertain us best does not keep us for long in the other world of fantasy or unreality. The greatest pleasure and satisfaction to be found in literature occurs when (as it often does) it brings us back to the realities of human situations, problems, feelings, and relationships. This is because literature is more than a copy of what is apparent to every eye. It is imaginative and interpretative. It reflects a special view of reality.
Human interest in reading literature is universal, but different people may read different literature and for different purposes because of their different tastes, experience, and educational background. Individuals may change their reading tastes depending on the current moods, on certain occasions, and on the different stages of their lives. Books which are good to read in one's childhood may loose attraction in one's adulthood. Student may read Ernest Hemingway in the classroom by day and turn to a cloak-and-sword novel at home in the evening. There is nothing strange about it, for one may have many purposes in reading.
7. Lecture I, American Literature (1) Autumn 2007 Why do people read literature? Reading for Relaxation
Generally speaking, literature offers the reader an exciting narrative. It leads the way for readers to an exciting world of experience that is different from their own. Thus, literature succeeds in temporarily getting readers away from their own time and place and sending them to some imaginary world that they otherwise would never know. When readers are indulged in reading, they will put aside their problems and obligations of everyday life for the time being. Modern life is full of pressure. It is people's common desire to seek temporary relaxation from the stress in life. Reading serves the purpose well and conveniently. Literature flourishes, in part at least, because of such pleasant relaxation it affords the reader.
Reading to Acquire Knowledge
Literature gives readers not only pleasure but also knowledge and insight into the nature of reality. The readers' interest in reading lies partly in the fact that in the process of reading they acquire a good deal of information. Literature gives readers an insight into the tradition, custom, beliefs, attitudes, folklore, values of the age in which it is written. Whether it is in the form of a story, a poem, a play, or an essay, literature always offers readers some new piece of information that broadens their knowledge of the world. Certain other fundamental skills and capacities are also developed through the reading of literature. They are important to readers not only in their private pleasure or their personal philosophy, but also in the day-to-day exercise of the responsibilities which come to them in the modern world as a result of the educational qualifications they obtain. These skills include the capacities for discrimination, judgment, and decision.
8. Lecture I, American Literature (1) Autumn 2007 Why do people read literature? Reading to Confront Experience
Doris Lessing (contemporary British novelist) states:"Literature maps the world for us, fleshing out what we get from newspaper articles and television reports, giving us a parallel landscape infinitely rich and various where we may stroll any time we like, tourists in imaginary world that mirror real ones." Literature is appealing mainly because of its relationship to human experience. It sheds light on the complexity and ambiguity of human experiences and thus broadens readers' awareness of the possibilities of experiences. Readers get immediate access to a wide range of human experiences they otherwise might never know. As a reader, he or she observes the characters' private as well as public lives, their head thinking and heart feeling. An awareness of how other people feel is, after all, a way of expanding and enriching one's own personality. Literature not only gives readers a chance to participate in the experience of others', but also tries to influence their attitudes and expectations. For many, it is the only outlet to a large experience. For others, it is an indirect satisfaction of some need for a philosophical or moral guidance, not set out in rules, but work out, experimentally, in conduct.
9. Lecture I, American Literature (1) Autumn 2007 Why do people read literature? Reading for Artistic Appreciation
Under perfect discipline, literature can be studied for artistic appreciation. The well-structured language manifests good craftsmanship, and the beauty of expression and form enjoys immortality. A story, a poem, a play or an essay is a self-contained piece of art, with its unique structure and texture. It can be analyzed according to literary theories and criteria. When we approach literature in this way, we began to move in the direction of literary criticism. Literary criticism is by no means negative or fault finding. It is an attempt to clarify, explain and evaluate literature from an aesthetic point of view. In fact, the more we learn about how to analyze a story, a poem, a play, or an essay from an artistic point of view, the greater our understanding and appreciation of a literary work can be acquired , and greater still the pleasure and enjoyment we can draw from it.
10. Lecture I, American Literature (1) Autumn 2007 How to improve reading skills? Reading literature is different from reading texts of an average reading course. You will have to spend less time on actual reading and language development so that you can devote more time to gain a good understanding of literature. Therefore, it is important to improve the skills of reading literature. Here are a few tips for you:
1. You should form the habit of intelligent guessing at the meaning of new words with the clues provided by the context. But for the key words in the sentence, students need not check each new word in the dictionary. You should gradually increase your reading speed in this way.
2. You should learn to notice details, to get the main idea, and to skim to locate the most meaningful passages in a literary work.
3. You should cherish a strong desire to extract greater meaning from a literary work by relating ideas found in your reading with your own experience.
Of course, there are many other ways to improve the reading skills which you yourself will discover in the process of your study. For example, you would be very attentive while reading and form a habit of note-taking to jot down your response to the literary text. You should better preview the text and have a revision of what you have read. Besides, it helps a lot sometimes if you compare notes or exchange ideas with someone else.
11. Lesson Plan American Literature:
Literary Eras and Authors
12. Lecture I, American Literature (1) Autumn 2007 The First Semester Section A Introduction: National Beginnings
1. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
– Selected Readings: Autobiography, Poor Richard’s Almanac
2. Washington Irving (1783-1859) – Selected Readings: Rip Van Winkle
3. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) – Selected Readings: The Last of Mohicans
4. Philip Freneau (1752-1832) – Selected Readings: The Wild Honey Suckle
5. William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) – Selected Readings: To a Waterfrowl
6. Edgar Allan Poe (1809- 1849)
– Selected Readings: Annabel Lee, The Tell-Tale Heart
7. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) – Selected Readings: The Scarlet Letter
Section B Introduction: Romanticism and Reason
8. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) – Selected Readings: Nature, Self-Reliance
9. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) – Selected Readings: Walden
10. Herman Melville (1819-1891) – Selected Readings: Moby Dick
11. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) – Selected Readings: A Psalm of Life
12. Walt Whitman (1819-1892) – Selected Readings: Song of Myself
13. Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) – Selected Readings: Selected poems
14. Mark Twain (1835-1910)
– Selected Readings: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
15. Stephen Crane (1871 -1900) – Selected Readings: The Red Badge of Courage
16. Henry James (1843-1916) – Selected Readings: Daisy Miller
13. Lecture I, American Literature (1) Autumn 2007 The Second Semester Section C Introduction: Realism and Reaction
17. Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
18. Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)
19. Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
20. Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
21. Henry L. Mencken (1880-1956)
22. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1886-1940)
23. John Steinback (1902-1968)
Section D Introduction: Modern Voices in Prose and Poetry
24. Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961)
25. William Faulkner (1897-1962)
26. Robert Frost (1874-1963)
27. Archibald MacLeish (1892-), William Carlos Williams (1884-1963),
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
28. Katherine Ann Porter (1890-1980)
29. Saul Bellow (1915-2005)
30. Ralph Ellison (1914-1994)
31. Robert Lowell (1917-1977), Theodore Roethke (1908-1963),
Randall Jarrell (1914-1965), James Wright (1927-1980)
14. Lecture I, American Literature (1) Autumn 2007 Why is there literature? Wherever there are people there will be a literature.
A literature is the record of human experience, and people have always been impelled to write down their impressions of life.
They do so in diaries and letters, in pamphlets and books, and in essays, poems, plays, and stories.
In this respect American literature is like any other.
15. Introduction American Literature:
Literary Eras and Authors
16. Lecture I, American Literature (1) Autumn 2007 Readings Textbook:
Historical Introduction P.1-3
The First American Writer P.3-4
Early New England Literature P.4-5
Puritan Thoughts P.7-9
Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor P.12-13
Benjamin Franklin – Biographical Introduction P.18-20
Benjamin Franklin – Autobiography P.20-27
Websites:
Benjamin Franklin - An Enlightened American
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin: Glimpses of the Man
