課程計畫：Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher"
Impotant Term Explanation:
#American Renaissance:
American Renaissance the name sometimes is given to a flourishing of distinctively American literature in the period before the Civil War. This renaissance is represented by the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, H.D. Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman. Its major works are Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), Melville’s Moby-Dick(1851), and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass(1855). The American Renaissance may be regarded as a delayed manifestation（显示） of Romanticism, especially in Emerson’s philosophy of Transcendentalism.
#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, and in particular, the state of intellectualism(理智) at Harvard University and the doctrine（学说） of the Unitarian（集权制） church taught at Harvard Divinity School. Among the transcendentalists' core beliefs was the inherent goodness of both people and nature.
Transcendentalists believed that society and its institutions（机构）—particularly organized religion and political parties—ultimately（最终） corrupted（已损坏） the purity of the individual. They had faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community could be formed.
#American Dream:
The American Dream is a national ethos(民族精神) of the United States, a set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity（繁荣） and success, and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work.In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.
The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that "all men are created equal" and that they are "endowed（赋予） by their Creator with certain inalienable（不可剥夺的） Rights" including "Life, Liberty（自由） and the pursuit of Happiness."
#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. Historians have for the most part agreed that there are three basic themes to Manifest Destiny:
1. The special virtues of the American people and their institutions;
2. America's mission to redeem and remake the world in the image of America;
3. A divine destiny under God's direction to accomplish this wonderful task
#“Inferiority Complex”:
An inferiority complex is a lack of self-worth, a doubt and uncertainty, and feeling of not measuring up to society's standards. It is often subconscious, and is thought to drive affected individuals to overcompensate, resulting either in spectacular achievement or extreme antisocial behavior.The term was coined to indicate a lack of covert self esteem.For many, it is developed through a combination of genetic personality characteristics and personal experiences.
Charon
In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon (/ˈkɛərɒn/ or /ˈkɛərən/; Greek Χάρων) is the ferryman（擺渡者） of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually an obolus(大丸藥) or danake, was sometimes placed in or on the mouth of a dead person. Some authors say that those who could not pay the fee, or those whose bodies were left unburied, had to wander the shores for one hundred years. In the catabasis mytheme, heroes – such as Heracles, Orpheus, Aeneas, Dante, Dionysus and Psyche – journey to the underworld and return, still alive, conveyed by the boat of Charon.
#Journey to the underworld and return, still alive:
Heracles、Orpheus、Aeneas、Dante、Dionysus、Psyche
epiphany 靈光乍現的一刻
An epiphany is an experience of sudden and striking realization. Generally the term is used to describe scientific breakthrough, religious or philosophical discoveries, but it can apply in any situation in which an enlightening realization allows a problem or situation to be understood from a new and deeper perspective. Epiphanies are studied by psychologists and other scholars, particularly those attempting to study the process of innovation.
Andrew Jackson
(March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh President of the United States (1829–1837). Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814), and the British at the Battle of New Orleans (1815). A polarizing figure who dominated the Second Party System in the 1820s and 1830s, as president he dismantled the Second Bank of the United States and initiated forced relocation and resettlement of Native American tribes from the Southeast to west of the Mississippi River. His enthusiastic followers created the modern Democratic Party. The 1830–1850 period later became known as the era of Jacksonian democracy.ckson
Elected president in 1828, Jackson supported a small and limited federal government. He strengthened the power of the presidency, which he saw as spokesman for the entire population, as opposed to Congressmen from a specific small district. He was supportive of states' rights, but during the Nullification Crisis（注销危机）, declared that states do not have the right to nullify federal laws. Strongly against the national bank, he vetoed the renewal of its charter and ensured its collapse. Whigs and moralists denounced his aggressive enforcement of the Indian Removal Act, which resulted in the forced relocation of thousands of Native Americans to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Historians acknowledge his protection of popular democracy and individual liberty for American citizens, but criticize his support for slavery and his role in Indian removal.
