【正文】 r. It came of age as an expression of a national spirit. One of the most important influences in the period was that of the Transcendentalists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau. The Transcendentalists contributed to the founding of a new national culture based on native elements. Apart from the Transcendentalists, there emerged during this period great imaginative writers Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitmanwhose novels and poetry left a permanent imprint on American literature. social historical and cultural background The development of the American society nurtured the literature of a great nation. America was flourishing into a politically, economically and culturally independent country. Historically, it was the time of westward expansion in America economically, the whole nation was experiencing an industrial transformation. Politically, democracy and equa1ity became the ideal of the new nation, and the twoparty system came into being. Worthy of mention is the literary and cultural life of the country. With the founding of the American Independent Government, the nation felt an urge to have its own literary expression, to make known its new experience that other nations did not have: the early Puritan settlement, the confrontation with the Indians, the frontiersmen39。s literary milieu was ready for the Romantic movement as we11. Thus, with a strong sense of optimism, a spectacular outburst of romantic feeling was brought about in the first ha1f of the 19th century. writers of this period There emerged a great host of men of letters during this period, among whom the betterknown are poets such as Philip Freneau, William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wordsworth Long Fellow, James Russel Lowell, John Greenleaf Whitter, Edgar Ellen Poe, and, especially, Walt Whitman, whose Leaves Of Grass established him as the most popular American poet of the 19th century. The fiction of the American Romantic period is an original and diverse body of work. It ranges from the ic fables of Washington Irving to the The Gothic tales of Edgar Allen Poe, from the frontier adventures of James Fenimore Cooper to the narrative quests of Herman Melville, from the psycho1ogical romances of Nathaniel Hawthorne to the social realism of Rebecca Harding Davis. (二 )．領(lǐng)會(huì)內(nèi)容 impact of European Romanticism on American Romanticism Foreign literary masters, especially the English counterparts exerted a stimulating impact on the writers of the new world. Born of one mon cultural heritage, the American writers shared some mon features with the English Romantic ists. They revolted against the literary forms and ideas of the period of classicism by developing some relatively new forms of fiction or poetry. (1) They put emphasis upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature, which included a liking for the picturesque, the exotic, the sensuous, the sensational, and the supernatural. (2) The Americans also placed an increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions and disp1ayed an increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters. Heroes and heroines exhibited extremes of sensitivity and excitement. (3) The strong tendency to exalt the individual and the mon man was almost a national religion in America. Writers like Freneau, Bryant, and Cooper showed a great interest in external nature in their respective works. (4) The literary use of the more colorfu1 aspects of the past was also to be found in Irving39。s long series of historical tales. (5) In short, American Romanticism is, in a certain way, derivative. unique characteristics of American Romanticism Although greatly influenced by their English counterparts, the American romantic writers revealed unique characteristics of their own in their works and they grew on the native lands. For examp1e,(1) the American national experience of pioneering into the west proved to be a rich source of material for American writers to draw upon. They celebrated America39。s Leather Stocking Tales, in Thoreau39。s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (3) With the growth of American national consciousness, American character types speaking local dialects appeared in poetry and fiction with increasing frequency. (4) Then the American Puritanism as a cultural heritage exerted great influences over American moral values and American Romanticism. One of the manifestations is the fact that American romantic writers tended more to moralize than their English and European counterparts. (5) Besides, a preoccupation with the Calvinistic view of origina1 sin and the mystery of evil marked the works of Hawthorne, Melville and a host of lesser writers. (三 )．應(yīng)用內(nèi)容 1. The American Puritanism and its great influence over American moral values, as is shown in American romantic writings. (1) American Puritanism Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans. (The Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church, who came into existence in the reigns Queen Elizabeth and King James Ⅰ .The first settlers who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quite a few of them Puritans. They came to America out of various reasons, but it should be remembered that they were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles. As the word itself hints, Puritans wanted to purify their religious beliefs and practices. They felt that the Church of England was too close to the Church of Rome in doctrine form of worship, and anization of authority.) The American Puritans, like their brothers back in England, were idealists, believing that the church should be restored to plete purity. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion