About Washington Irving
1. Irving regularly addressed darker and more complex themes of historical transformation and personal dislocation. His innovative travel sketched blurred the line between the personal essay and fiction, and he is considered one of the => "inventors" of the modern short story.
=> 因為中產階級地位提升、女性讀者增加、雜誌的興起早成了short story 的流行
2. His canny understanding of the literary marketplace helped him to become the first American who was able to support himself solely through his writing.
=> 第一個專業文人
3. He met Sir Walter Scott, an admirer of the Knickerbocker History, who directed him to the wealth of unused literary material in German folktales. There, as scholars have shown, Irving found the source for "Rip Van Winkle," some passage of which are close paraphrases of the original J.C.C.N. Otmar's "Peter Klaus".
4. But among The Sketch Book's graceful tributes to English scenes and characters were two immensely popular tales set in rural New York, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleep Hollow."
5. Cooper, Hawthorne, and many other American writers were inspired by the success of The Sketch Book.
6. From the beginning , many readers identified with Rip as a counterhero, an anti-Franklinian who made a success of failure; and subsquent generations have responded profoundly to Irving's pervasive theme of mutability, especially as localized in his portrayal of the bewildering rapidly of change in American life.
About The Scarlet Letter
1. The Scarlet Letter is an 1850 romantic work of fiction in a historical setting, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and is considered to be his magnum opus.Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston.
1. Important quotation explained
But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed, from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness. . . . The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
These are the narrator’s reflections at the beginning of Chapter 18, “A Flood of Sunshine.” The quotation concerns the theme of sin and knowledge that is so central to The Scarlet Letter.
2. key facts
FULL TITLE · The Scarlet Letter
AUTHOR · Nathaniel Hawthorne
TYPE OF WORK · Novel
GENRE · Symbolic; semi-allegorical; historical fiction; romance (in the sense that it rejects realism in favor of symbols and ideas)
LANGUAGE · English
3. Study question, Essay topic
Study question
his novel makes extensive use of symbols. Discuss the difference between the Puritans’ use of symbols (the meteor, for example) and the way that the narrator makes use of symbols. Do both have religious implications? Do symbols foreshadow events or simply comment on them after the fact? How do they help the characters understand their lives, and how do they help the reader understand Hawthorne’s book?
The Puritans in this book are constantly seeking out natural symbols, which they claim are messages from God. Yet these characters are not willing to accept any revelation at face value. They interpret the symbols only in ways that confirm their own preformulated ideas or opinions.
Essay topic
Discuss the function of physical setting in The Scarlet Letter. What is the relationship between the book’s events and the locations in which these events take place? Do things happen in the forest that could not happen in the town? What about time of day? Does night bring with it a set of rules that differs from those of the daytime?
About Nathaniel Hawthorne
1. He was an American novelist and short story writer. He was born in 1804 in Salem.
2. 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.
3. He worked at a Custom House(海關) and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord.
4. 代罪羔羊 Escape goat -> witch craft
5. inherit guilt, original sin
6. work: House of Seven Gables
New Orleans <---> Orelans (French)
1. Jazz
2. french corter
3. Bourbon street => 波旁王朝 （路易王朝）
Boston
1. Paul's Revere Ride
Jamestown:The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas.
Virginia
1. eight presidents
2. Civil War 1881-1885
Virginia in the American Civil War
3. Fort sumter
St. Augustine Florida (北美第一座永久城市）
1.St. Augustine (Spanish: San Agustín) is a city in Northeast Florida and the oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement and port in the continental United States.
2. San Agustín was founded in September of 1565 by Spanish admiral and Florida's first governor, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. It served as the capital of Spanish Florida for over 200 years.
3. Jimmy Carter：He is an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. He was awarded the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.
4. James Madison: was an American statesman, political theorist and the fourth President of the United States (1809–1817). He is hailed as the "Father of the Constitution" for being instrumental in the drafting of the United States Constitution and as the key champion and author of the United States Bill of Rights.
5. Thomas Wolfe(望鄉天使）：
was a major American novelist of the early 20th century.Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels, plus many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing.
1. Boone Hall Plantation：The Boone Hall Plantation and Gardens is an antebellum plantation located in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina and listed on the National Register of Historic Places
About Rip Van Winkle
1. setting: time, place
2. Van : 荷蘭姓氏
3. "rays of the setting sun..." (p472) => 呼應英國的消長
4. obedient, henpeked, husband
5. amible sex, profitabl labor (p473) -> shrugged shoulder, shook head, cast up eyes, said nothing
6. escape, solitude 兩大議題 因為剛脫離英國-> free => Hawthorne, Thoreau
7. a keg of liquor-> 清教徒禁酒 ＝> 與禁酒令有關
8. "change" "strange"
9. 酒： liqupr, boot, flagon => bootlegger 販賣私酒
9. 交代時間： King George~General Washington
10. climax: p480 新興國家的恐荒
11. Rip Van Winkle is like a legendary tale
About James Fenimore Cooper
1. He was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. His historical romances of frontier and Indian life in the early American days created a unique form of American literature.
2. works: The Pioneers
About The Pioneers
1. It is a historical novel by American writer James Fenimore Cooper. It was the first of five novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales.
2. Published in 1823, the period it covers makes The Pioneers the fourth chronologically in terms of the novels' plots.
ati-belle => bel- : war
ter-: three
example: tercentenary
de-: away from
example: decendant
matri-: mother
example: matrimony
patri-: father
下一則： 10/15 美國文學 week 6: Review Colonial period to Romantic period
