英美文赏析

英美文赏析

埃德加·爱伦·坡（Edgar Allan Poe)，作品The Cast of the Amontillado Poor for all his life, miserable， most works morose, gloomy, pessimistic characters: Fortunato: arrogant, self-centered, reckless Montresor: seemingly 'humble''considerate', but actually brutal, calm and smart The theme of this story is generally thought as: Revenge is the main theme of the story and the force that drives Montresor to commit the horrible murder of Fortunato. His first words in the story speak of it:

拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生 （Ralph Waldo Emerson）.The leader and spokesman of 'Transcendentalism' Self-Reliance Emerson writing style was a Transcendentalist.they believed that the natural world held spiritual truths, and an optimistic view of the human spirit.

纳撒尼尔·霍桑（Nathaniel Hawthorne） Writer of Contradiction and Duality 作品 The Scarlet Letter 《红字》character :Hester 女 丁梅斯代尔（Dimmesdale）he committed the unpardonable sin-the violation of human heart. On the one hand, Hawthorne advocates Puritan life-style and creates characters punished by the society.and their own hearts to warn people against breaching the Puritan principles. original sin Sin and knowledge are linked in the Judeo-Christian tradition. in results in expulsion and suffering. Hester and Dimmesdale contemplate their own sinfulness on a daily basis and try to reconcile it with their lived experiences. The Puritan elders, on the other hand, insist on seeing earthly experience as merely an obstacle on the path to heaven. Thus, they view sin as a threat to the community that should be punished and suppressed. The scarlet letter is meant to be a symbol of shame, but instead it becomes a powerful symbol of identity to Hester. The letter’s meaning shifts as time passes. Originally intended to mark Hester as an adulterer, the “A” eventually comes to stand for “Able.” Finally, it becomes indeterminate: the Native Americans who come to watch the Election Day pageant think it marks her as a person of importance and status.

马克·吐温（Mark Twain）《卡城名蛙》The Celebrated Frog of Calaveras County miley, he says, was

him one. In Smiley's absence, the stranger pried open Dan'l Webster's mouth and filled it with quail-shot. he sketch has its stylistic roots in the classical Southwestern frame story, there are touches in the tale that are purely Twain's, and which mark his later writing. When Smiley brought the new frog to challenge Dan'l, it hopped off, but Dan'l couldn't budge. The stranger took his $40 in winnings and remarked again that he really could not see any special points about Smiley's frog. When Smiley examined his frog and realized what had happened, he took off after the stranger, but never caught him Twain overturns the traditional use of these themes as they are found in conventional Southwestern burlesques. Wheeler's innocence and self-absorbed frankness is a departure from the bragging style of the typical frontiersman. The genteel narrator's tale is not told at the expense of the yokel whose story he recounts, as is typical, but rather the joke is on himself, since his quest for the elusive Leonidas W. Smiley is in vain.

赫尔曼·麦尔维尔（Herman Melville)《白鲸》 Moby Dick Themes: Alienation: Ahab; In a sense, all the crew on Pequod suffered from alienation on varying levels. Rejection and quest: quest as a desire born out of rejection symbols :The voyage itself a metaphor for search and discovery, the search for ultimate truth of experience The white whale symbol of evil; paradoxical color!“the final mystery of the universe; characters :Ishmael: 'the wanderer'; The escapist He saw the folly in Ahab trying to conquer nature and began to realize the importance of love and companionship. The sailing for him is a journey gaining knowledge and values. A major assumption that runs through Moby Dick is that Ahab's quest against the great whale is a blasphemous activity, even apart from the consequences that it has upon its crew.

亨利·大卫·梭罗（Thoreau,H.D.）《瓦尔登湖》 Walden Lake self-reliance is economic and social in Walden Pond: it is the principle that in matters of financial and interpersonal relations, independence is more valuable than neediness. Thus Thoreau dwells on the contentment of his solitude, on his finding entertainment in the laugh of the loon and the march of the ants rather than in balls, marketplaces, or salons. As Emerson’s essay details, self-reliance can be spiritual as well as economic, and Thoreau follows Emerson in exploring the higher dimensions of individualism. In Transcendentalist thought the self is the absolute center of reality; everything external is an emanation of the self that takes its reality from our inner selves. Self-reliance thus refers not just to paying one’s own bills, but also more philosophically to the way the natural world and humankind rely on the self to exist.

沃尔特·惠特曼（Walt Whitman）Iambic pentameter Free verse One of the major principles of Whitman technique is parallelism or a rhythm of thought; phonetic recurrence 艾米莉·狄金森(Emily Dickinson) A recluse Explores the inner life of a person, regional outlook, direct and simple diction and syntax. The largest poetry of Dickinson Concerns death and immortality Death leads to immortality: Death

comes as imperceptibly as Grief and marks the beginning of a higher life.

舍伍德.安德森（Sherwood Anderson)鸡蛋的胜利》（The Triumph of Egg and Other Stories)Sherwood Anderson uses eggs as the thread throughout the story as a symbol for unfulfilled hopes and promises. whole story centers on

the inarticulate.

the deprived，and