美國文學選讀（簡體書）

《美國文學選讀》是《求知高等學校英語專業系列教材》的一部分，旨在為英語專業高年級學生、美國文學愛好者和研究者提供一片園地，用以學習和研究美國文學，提高文學素養，開拓視野，陶冶情操。《高等學校英語專業系列教材：美國文學選讀》是一本集歷史、文本、批評理論於一書的文學選讀教材。該書介紹了美國自殖民地時期到20世紀末的歷史文化背景和各個時期的文藝思潮以及代表作家和他們的代表著作。本書按照美國文學的發展分九章，每章包括歷史文化背景簡介、作家作品選讀、文學聚焦、閱讀與欣賞和時代之聲5個部分。精簡而豐富的注釋、引導自主性研究的思考題能有效幫助讀者加深對所選作品的理解和鑒賞。·

《21世紀英語專業系列教材:美國文學選讀》是《求知高等學校英語專業系列教材》的一部分，旨在為英語專業高年級學生、美國文學愛好者和研究者提供一片園地，用以學習和研究美國文學，提高文學素養，開拓視野，陶冶情操。

Chapter 1　EARLY AMERICA TO 1750INTRODUCTIONWilliam Bradford （ 1590-1657 ）from Of Plymouth PlantationAnne Bradstreet（1612-1672）To My Dear and Loving HusbandLITERARY FOCUSREADING FOR APPRECIATIONVOICE OF THE AGEChapter 2　REASON AND REVOLUTION 1750-1800INTRODUCTIONBenjamin Franklin （1706-1790）from Poor Richard's AlmanacThomas Paine （1737-1809）from The American CrisisThomas Jefferson （1743-1826）The Declaration of IndependenceLITERARY FOCUSREADING FOR APPRECIATIONVOICE OF THE AGEChapter 3　NATIVE GROUNDS 1800-1840INTRODUGTIONWashington Irving（1783-1859）Rip Van WinkleJames Fenimore Cooper （ 1789-1851 ）from The Last of the MohicansWilliam Cullen Bryant（1794-1878）ThanatopsisEdgar Allan Poe （ 1809-1849 ）To HelenThe RavenLITERARY FOCUSREADING FOR APPRECIATIONVOICE OF THE AGEChapter 4　NEW ENGLAND RENAISSANCE 1840-1855INTRODUCTIONRalph Waldo Emerson （1803-1882）from Naturefrom Self RelianceNathaniel Hawthorne （1804-1864）from The Scarlet LetterHenry Wadsworth Longfellow （1807-1882）A Psalm of LifeThe Tide Rises, the Tide FallsLITERARY FOCUSREADING FOR APPRECIATIONVOICE OF THE AGEChapter 5　CONFLICT AND CELEBRATION 1855-1880INTRODUCTIONWalt Whitman（1819-1892）from Song of Myself0 Captain ! My Captain !Emily Dickinson （1830-1886）Success is counted sweetestBecause I could not stop for DeathI heard a fly buzz--when I died--Mark Twain（1835-1910）The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras CountyAbraham Lincoln（ 1809-1865 ）The Gettysburg AddressLITERARY FOCUSREADING FOR APPRECIATIONVOICE OF THE AGEChapter 6　REGIONALISM AND REALISM 1880-1910INTRODUCTIONBret Harte （1836-1902）The Outcasts of Poker Flat·

Self-Reliance
（Excerpt）
I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, —that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, —and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
There is a time in every man' s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance;that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony.The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides,redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.