本书是高等院校英语专业高年级必修课之一。本课程的目的在于帮助学生了解美国文学发生、发展及嬗变的历史过程,培养他们阅读、欣赏和理解英语文学原著的能力,掌握文学批评的基本知识和方法。经典文学作品演绎着百态人生,书写着世界各族人民的生活变迁。它们可以引导学生了解各国人民对世界的诠释,在扩大学生视野、提高学生文化品位的同时,使他们学会独立思考社会和人生,*终获得完整的人格和较强的社会适应能力。 本教材正确处理文学史、经典作家、作品和文学理论之间的关系。通过美国历史和文学史,使学生了解美国文学的发展历程,建立整体的结构框架,把握文学流派、文学理论沿革的清晰脉络,认识到文学发展与社会发展的密切联系。通过介绍和分析具体作家和作品,使学生在欣赏、学习优美文学语言的同时,通过文本阅读了解人生、感悟生活。通过对文学理论深入浅出的讲解,使学生掌握文学阅读、文学批评的基本专业能力,使知识传授、能力培养和素质教育融为一体。

Chapter One General Introduction
Ⅰ Background to English Literature
Ⅱ A General Survey of American Literature
Chapter Two Colonial and Revolutionary Periods
Ⅰ The Literature of Colonial America
Anne Bradstreet
Ⅱ The Literature of the Revolutionary Period
Benjamin Franklin
Chapter Three American Romanticism
Ⅰ The Rise of American Romanticism
Ⅱ Early Romanticism
Washington Irving
James Fenimore Cooper
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
William CuUen Bryant
Ⅲ Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
IV High Romanticism
Nathanie Hawthorne
Herman Melville
Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson
Edgar Allan Poe
Chapter Four American Realism
Ⅰ The Rise of Realism
William Dean HoweUs
Ⅱ Local Colorism
Mark Twain
Ⅲ Psychological Realism
Henry James
1V American Naturalism
Frank Norris
Stephen Crane
Theodore Dreiser
Chapter Five American Modernism
Ⅰ American Modernism
Ⅱ Imagism1
Ezra Pound
T.S.Eliot
William Carlos Willams
Robert Frost
ⅢThe“Lost Generation”
F.Scott Fitzgerald
Ernest Hemingway
1V Sherwood Anderson&John Steinbeck
Sherwood Anderson
John Steinbeck
V Southern Literature
Willam Faulkner
Flannery O’Connor
Ⅵ African American Literature
Langston Hughes
Ralph Ellison
Chapter Six Postmodernism
Ⅰ Postmodernism
Ⅱ Post—War Realism
Jerome David Salinger
Ⅲ Black Humor
Joseph Heller
1V Jewish Literature
Saul Bellow
V Black Women Writers
Alice Walker
Tony Morrison
Chapter Seven American Drama
Ⅰ A Brief History of American Drama
Ⅱ Modern American Playwright
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
Tennessee Willams
Arthur Miller
Ⅲ Absurd Theater
Edward Albee
Bibliography