第三部分　浪漫主义文学

第9章　华盛顿·欧文

9.1　复习笔记

I. Historical Introduction (历史背景)

(1) America witnessed a population growth, westward movement and ceased voting restrictions in this period. The egalitarian belief that all white men were literally equal prevailed.

(2) Before 1860 the United States had begun to change into an industrial and urban society due to technological advancement. New York became America’s largest city, supplanting Boston and Philadelphia as the economic and cultural capital of the nation.

(3) However, the nation became a land of contrasting riches and poverty. Transcendentalists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists all offered converts a new path to God. Social activities seeking for reform, freedom and equity increased, including abolitionist and feminist movements.

(4) By the 1850s the level of education and literacy had risen significantly. As the century progressed, native American writers won increasing national and international reputation.

(1) 在这一时期内，美国经历了人口增长、西进运动以及选举投票限制的废止。白人生而平等的理念盛行。

(2) 1860年之前，由于技术进步，美国就已开始了工业化和城镇化进程。纽约取代波士顿和费城，成为了美国的经济文化中心，也发展成美国最大的城市。

(3) 然而美国人民贫富差距扩大。超验主义者、浸礼会教徒、长老会教徒、循道宗信徒都向教徒们提供了信仰上帝的新道路。各种寻求改革、自由和公平的社会运动兴起，包括废奴运动和女性主义运动。

(4) 到19世纪50年代，教育和识字水平大幅度提高。随后，美国本土作家逐渐享誉国内外。

II. Literary Characteristics (文学特征)

(1) Romanticism: revolts against traditional art forms and rationalism, suited the nation’s revolutionary heritage and its frontier egalitarianism. The attitudes of American writers were shaped by their New World environment and an array of ideas inherited from the romantic traditions of Europe. Romantics frequently shared certain general characteristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a source of goodness and man’s societies a source of corruption.

(2) Transcendentalism (1830s—the Civil War): exalted feeling over reason, individual expression over the restraints of law and custom. It is a belief in the transcendence of “Oversoul”, an all-pervading power for goodness from which all things come and of which all things are a part.

(3) Literature ceased to be primarily didactic, a servant of politics and religion. Novels, short stories, and poems replaced sermons and manifestos as America’s principal literary forms.

(4) The major themes of the novel are:

①the desire for an escape from society and a return to nature;

②Gothic terror novels which explore the psychic states of their characters and became the profitable literary staple that it remains today.

(5) Nationalism stimulated a greater literary interest in America’s language and its common people. Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language. Literature began to celebrate American farmers, the poor, the unlettered, children, and noble savages untainted by society.

(1) 浪漫主义：反对传统的艺术形式和理性主义,符合美国传统的革命开拓精神和平等主义。这一时期大部分作家的思想都受到了新大陆本身所处环境以及欧洲早期浪漫主义思潮的双重影响。浪漫主义的一般特征是注重道德，强调个人主义价值观及直觉感受，认为自然是美的源头，而人类社会则是腐败之源。

(2) 超验主义：感觉胜于理性，个人表达胜于规范和惯例的约束。它宣扬“超灵”，一种无处不在的向善的力量，既是万物之源，又包含万物。

(3) 文学不再主要用于说教，不再为政治和宗教服务。小说、短篇故事和诗歌取代布道和宣言成为主要的文学形式。

(4) 小说的主要主题有：

①逃离社会，回归自然的欲望；

②哥特小说：挖掘人物心理状态，作为一种重要的文学形式流传至今。

(5) 民族主义进一步激发了美国作家对本土语言和普通民众的兴趣。韦伯斯特词典出版。文学开始颂扬美国农民、穷人、目不识丁的人、儿童以及没有被社会污染的原始人群。

III. Washington Irving (1783－1859) (华盛顿·欧文)

1．Life (生平)

Washington Irving was born into a wealthy New York merchant family. From a very early age he began to read widely and write juvenile poems, essays and plays. He began a reading for the law at sixteen, but preferred a literary Bohemianism. At nineteen he published in his brother’s newspaper his “Jonathan Oldstyle”, satires of New York life. Irving was a writer, a merchant and a diplomat. The events of his life were characterized by the same casual approach and distinguished results as his works.

欧文生于纽约一个富商的家庭，自幼酷爱读书，少年时代便开始写诗歌、散文和戏剧。16岁时开始学习法律，但是他更喜欢别具一格的文学。19岁时就在他兄长创办的报纸上发表了名为《乔纳森·欧尔德斯泰尔》的对纽约人加以讽刺的作品。欧文不仅是一位作家，还是商人和外交官。他的人生如同其作品一样，别具特色，而且成就非凡。

2．Literary Achievements and Status (文学成就及地位)

(1) He was the first great prose stylist of American romanticism, and his familiar style was destined to outlive the formal prose of such contemporaries as Scott and Cooper, and to provide a model for the prevailing prose narrative of the future.

(2) He was the first great belletrist, writing always for pleasure, and to produce pleasure.

(3) He was among the first of the moderns to write good history and biography as literary entertainment. By 1830s Irving was judged the nation’s greatest writer.

(4) He was the father of American literature. The short story as a genre in American literature probably began with Irving’s The Sketch Book. This book also marked the beginning of American Romanticism.

(1) 他是第一位伟大的美国浪漫主义散文家，其随笔风格注定了他比同时期的其他作家，如斯科特和库柏，更经久不衰，同时也为后来盛极一时的叙事散文奠定了基础。

(2) 他是第一位伟大的纯文学作家，他一直为乐趣和创造乐趣而写作。

(3) 他是首批将历史和传记结合起来进行娱乐文学创作的现代作家之一。到19世纪30年代，欧文被认为是美国最伟大的作家。

(4) 他被称为“美国文学之父”。短篇小说作为美国文学的一种类型源于欧文的《见闻札记》。该书也象征着美国浪漫主义文学的开始。

3．Major Works (主要作品)

The Sketch Book（1819—1820）《见闻札记》

“The legend of Sleepy Hollow” 《睡谷的传说》

“Rip Van Winkle” 《瑞普·凡·温克尔》

A History of New York（1809）《纽约外史》

Tales of a Traveller（1824）《旅客谈》

Life of Oliver Goldsmith（1840）《哥尔德斯密斯传》

Life of George Washington（published in 1855—1859）《华盛顿传》

4．Selected Works (选读作品)

“The Author’s Account of Himself” 《作者自叙》

It seems to be a self-introduction to Irving himself, including his life experience, habits, hobbies, thinking, etc. through which the reader can know much more about the author.

这似乎是欧文的一篇自我介绍，包括他的人生经历，生活习惯，爱好，想法等等，通过阅读本篇文章，读者可以更好地了解作者。

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” 《睡谷的传说》

The legend of Sleepy Hollow is selected from The Sketch Book, which also contains his famous short story “Rip Van Winkle”. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is among the earliest examples of American fiction still read today.

The creation of archetypes is a particularly subtle feat of Irving’s consummate craftsmanship. We may see in Ichabod Crane a New Englander, shrewd, commercial, a city-slicker, who is rather an interloper, a somewhat destructive force, in village life, and who comes along to swindle the villagers. He is driven away from where he does not belong, so that the serene village remains permanently good and happy. Brom Bones, on the other hand, is a Huck Finn-type of country bumpkin, tough, vigorous, boisterous but inwardly very good, a frontier type put out there to shift for himself. Thus the rivalry in love between Ichabod and Brom, viewed in this way, suddenly assumes the dimensions of two ethical groups locked in a kind of historic contest.

The style of the piece represents Irving at his best.

《睡谷的传说》选自《见闻札记》，与《瑞普·凡·温克尔》同是其中的名篇。《睡谷的传说》是美国最早出现并至今仍被广泛阅读的小说之一。

原型的创造是欧文高超的造诣之一。伊卡包德是通权达变的新英格兰人的代表，他是村子里的城市滑头，一种欲行欺诈的破坏性力量。他最后被赶出本不属于他的村庄，于是小村子又恢复平静祥和。布鲁姆则是哈克·费恩式村野之夫，粗鲁、精力充沛，在边疆自食其力。由此可看出，伊卡包德和布鲁姆的情场之争又可以看作是特定历史条件下两个道德群体之间的竞争。

该故事的写作风格也代表了欧文的最高水准。