本书广泛比较了国内外现有同类教材,吸收了近几年国内外美国文学研究的*成果,按照选取适合学生阅读又具代表性的常见作品为原则,并结合编者自己多年的教学和研究体会,以美国文学发展的历史为顺序,编选了主要作者的代表作品。本书以时间为线索,分六章介绍了美国不同历史时期的文学作品,包括殖民时期、革命时期、浪漫时期、现实主义时期、现代主义时期,以及二战后时期的代表作家及其代表作,是一本经典的美国文学入门教程。

Chapter 1The Literature of the Colonial Period(1) 1.1An Introduction(1) 1.2Anne Bradstreet (3) 1.3Edward Taylor (5) Chapter 2The Literature of the Revolutionary Period (8) 2.1An Introduction (8) 2.2Benjamin Franklin (11) 2.3Patrick Henry (15) 2.4Thomas Jefferson (19) Chapter 3The Literature of the Romantic Period (25) 3.1An Introduction (25) 3.2Washington Irving (27) 3.3Edgar Allan Poe (35) 3.4Ralph Waldo Emerson(38) 3.5Henry David Thoreau (43) 3.6Nathaniel Hawthorne (49) 3.7Herman Melville (57) 3.8Abraham Lincoln(64) 3.9Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (67) 3.10Walt Whitman (71) 3.11Emily Dickinson (77) Chapter 4The Literature of the Realistic Period (82) 4.1An Introduction (82) 4.2Mark Twain (84) 4.3O. Henry (90) 4.4Henry James (97) 4.5Theodore Dreiser (104) 4.6Robert Frost (114) 4.7Willa Cather(120) 4.8Sherwood Anderson(145) 4.9Katherine Anne Porter(155) Chapter 5The Literature of the Modernist Period (165) 5.1An Introduction (165) 5.2Ezra Pound (168) 5.3William Carlos Williams (171) 5.4Langston Hughes (174) 5.5E. E. Cummings (176) 5.6Ernest Hemingway (178) 5.7F. Scott Fitzgerald (183) 5.8William Faulkner (195) 5.9Eugene O’Neill (204) Chapter 6The Literature since World War Ⅱ (214) 6.1An Introduction (214) 6.2Saul Bellow (216) 6.3Arthur Miller (230) 6.4J. D. Salinger (235) 6.5Elizabeth Bishop(243) 6.6Robert Lowell(246) 6.7Theodore Roethke(250) 6.8Allen Ginsberg (251) 6.9Sylvia Plath (257) 6.10Robert Hayden(259) Appendix ⅠSample Test Paper(262) Appendix ⅡAcknowledgments(269)