《英国文学》读后感由刀豆文库小编整理，希望给你工作、学习、生活带来方便，猜你可能喜欢“英国文学作品读后感”。
Puritanism Features: 1.Predestination: God decided everything before things occurred.2.Original sin: Human beings were born to be evil, and this original sin can be paed down from generation to generation.3.Total depravity4.Limited atonement: Only the “elect” can be saved.Influence1.A group of good qualities – hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety(serious and thoughtful)influenced American literature.2.It led to the everlasting myth.All literature is based on a myth – garden of Eden.3.Symbolism: the American puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chiefly instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American.4.With regard to their writing, the style is fresh, simple and direct;the rhetoric is plain and honest, not without a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible.General features of Romanticism
A.Streing emotion rather than reasonB.Streing freedom and individuality
C.Idealism rather than materialismD.Writing about nature, medieval legends and with supernatural elements
Features of American Romanticism
A.Imitative
B.Independent
a.peculiar American experience(landscape, pioneering to the West, Indian civilization, new nation's democracy and dreams)
b.Puritan heritage(more moralizing, edifying more than mere entertainment)(careful about love and sex.example: Scarlet Letter)
“Father of American literature”“Father of the American short story”
The first American writher of imaginative literature to gain international fame.The short story as a genre in American literature began with Irving’s The Sketch Book.The Sketch Book also marked the beginning of American Romanticism.超越主义features:
A.Emphasis on Spirit(Oversoul)(超灵)against “world is made of matter”;against “neglecting of spiritual life in capitalist world”
B.Emphasis on individualsOld Puritan views: self-reliance and self-improvement Through communication with Oversoul, human being can be divine.against “total depravity” in Old Puritan doctrinesagainst dehumanization of capitalist world
C.Taking nature as the symbol of the Spirit(Oversoul)
encouraging people to find goodne and beauty from nature
against materialism in the society and the actions which broke the harmony between human and nature only for profits
D.Brotherhood of man(equal and liberty)interested in social reforms;endeavor to create an ideal society;against “everything for money” in the capitalist world
Significance:A.influenced a large group of writersB.summit of American RomanticismC.marked the independence of American literature
Emerson’s aesthetics brought about a revolution in American literature in general and in American poetry in particular.It marked the birth of true American poetry and true American poets.Robert Frost Features
(1)His poems mostly wrote about nature(influence from Wordsworth and Emerson)and New England landscape.(2)Deceptively simple style(reason for popular)(3)Symbolism(show his poems’ deep meaning)(4)He was likely to choose traditional forms for his poem, but the themes of his poems are mostly modern.(In his poems, traditional elements and modern elements mingle together.)
In Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, Frost uses the kind of familiar New England details that constitute his poetry for more than descriptive purposes.He shapes them into a meditation on the tension we sometimes feel between life’s responsibilities and the “lovely, dark, and deep” attraction that death offers.When the speaker’s horse “gives his harne bells a shake”, we are reminded that we are confronting a universal theme as well as a quiet moment of natural beauty.Emily Dickinson Features
A.Strong influence of Puritanism on her thought(peimism and tragic tone of her poems)
B.Care about death and immortality(1/3 of all her poems talked about these two themes.)
C.exploring human’s inner world(psychology description in her poems)
D.severe economy of expreionE.original imagesF.direct and plain language G.great influence on the Imagist Movement in the 20th century
The poem is discuing death, a very gloomy subject, but it is done with a rather light tone.The tone is light just because the author does not take death as a catastrophe;instead, she treats the angel of death as a very polite gentleman, as a long-miing guest, giving up her work and leisure, putting on her fine silky drees, she accompanies death in the same carriage to eternity.All the beauty of this work lies in the poete’ open-minded attitude towards death.Edgar Allan Poe 诗的特点：father of modern short story，father of detective story
father of psychoanalytic criticisma.Gothic elements(terror and romance)
b.deep analysis of human psychology(He noticed subconscious of human mind nearly one hundred year before Freud.)(He was also the first American author who took neurotic characters as main characters in his stories.)c.precursor of detective stories(e.g.“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”)and science stories
The aim of poem writing is beauty;the most beautiful thing described by a poem is the death of a beautiful woman;the desirable tone of a poem is melancholy;
Whiteman featuresA.He extols the ideals of and and celebrates the B.employing “free verse” as the form of his poems with two characteristics: parallelism;phonetic recurrence(P92-P93)What is the difference between free verse and blank verse?(blank verse has no rhyme, but it should be iambic pentameter)C.frankne of the commonplace and the ugly sides in human lifeD.direct, plain and even vulgar languageE.“untold latencies”(his poetry suggests rather than tell)F.great influence on the 20th century American poets
The Jazz Age
Specifically the 1920s, when young men and women indulge in a whirl of frenetic social excitement or diipation fostered by the collapse of moral standards during and following World War I.The term was established by Fitzgerald in his Tales of the Jazz Age(1922)
The Great Gatsby Symbolism
Gatsby: the country’s historyDaisy: seemingly beautiful American Dream
Tom: commercialization which brought the country only moral depravityNick: hope of the countryMore: The green light on Daisy’s dock, the eyes of Doctor T.J.Ekleburg, the valley of ashes, Gatsby’s parties, East Egg, West Egg.Theme: disillusionment of American Dream in the materialized America
The decline of the American dream, the spirit of the 1920s, the difference between social claes, the role of symbols in the human conception of meaning, the role of the past in the dreams of the future.
