第3章　美國浪漫主義?歐文?庫柏

3.1　復習筆記

I. Overview of American Romanticism（美國浪漫主義簡介）

In the history of American literature, the Romantic period is one of the most important periods. It stretched from the end of the eighteenth century through the outbreak of the civil war.

美國文學中的浪漫主義時期開始于18世紀末，到南北戰爭爆發為止，是美國文學史上的重要階段。

1．Background（背景）

(1) A nation bursting into new life cried for literary expression. The buoyant mood of the nation and the spirit of the times seemed in some measure responsible for the spectacular outburst of romantic feeling. The literary milieu proved fertile and conductive to the imagination. Magazine appeared in ever-increasing numbers. They played an important role in facilitating literary expansion.

(2) Foreign influences added incentive to the growth of romanticism. The Romantic Movement, which had flourished earlier in the century both in England and Europe, proved to be a decisive influence on the upsurge of American romanticism.

(3) There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider.

(1) 生機勃勃、開創新生活的美國渴望有新的文學表達形式。國家的上升狀態、時代的上進精神促進了浪漫主義情感的爆發。文學環境為文學創作提供了廣闊的空間。各種雜志如雨后春筍出現，在很大程度上促進了文學的長足發展。

(2) 外國思想和文化影響激發了美國浪漫主義思潮的蔓延。19世紀初波及英國和歐洲的浪漫主義運動對美國浪漫主義文學的成長發揮了相當重要的作用。

(3) 美國浪漫主義受到美國清教主義這一文化遺產的影響。

2．Characteristics（特點）

(1) American Romanticism exhibited from the very outset distinct features of its own. It originated from an amalgam of factors that were altogether American rather than anything else. It was in essence the expression of “a real new experience” and contained “an alien quality”.

(2) As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American Romanticism was both imitative and independent.

(1) 美國浪漫主義文學自一開始便具有其獨特的屬性。它是美國因素熔為一體的產物。它所表達的是“一種真正的新的經歷”，包含著“一種陌生的特質”。

(2) 由于國內外因素的影響，美國浪漫主義既有模仿，也有獨立創造的特性。

II. Washington Irving (1783-1859)（華盛頓·歐文）

1．Life（生平）

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. His first book A History of New York was a great success. With the publication of The Sketch Book, he won a measure of international recognition. In 1826 he was sent to Spain as an American diplomatic attaché. From 1829-1832 he was Secretary of The United States Legation in London. He spent almost the rest of his life at Sunnyside on the Hudson River. He was not married and died in 1859.

歐文生于紐約一個富商的家庭，自幼酷愛讀書，少年時代便開始寫詩歌、散文和戲劇。他的第一部小說《紐約外史》獲得很大成功。《見聞札記》使他獲得國際聲譽。1826年歐文作為外交隨員被派往西班牙。1829年至1832年他任美國駐倫敦大使館秘書。他晚年大部分時間生活在哈德遜河畔的住所。他終身未婚，死于1859年。

2．His literary contribution（文學貢獻）

Irving’s contribution to American literature is unique in more ways than one. He did a number of things that have been regarded as the first of their kind in America.

(1) He was first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame.

(2) 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.

歐文對美國文學有著獨特的貢獻，他開創了美國文學史上的許多先河。

(1) 他是第一個獲得國際聲譽的美國作家。

(2) 他被稱為“美國文學之父”。短篇小說作為美國文學的一種類型源于歐文的《見聞札記》。該書也象征著美國浪漫主義文學的開始。

3．Literary career（文學生涯）

Irving’s career can be roughly divided into two important phases, the first of which spanned from his first book up to 1832, the other stretching over the remaining years of his life.

(1) In the first period, most of time, he wrote about subjects either English or European. He found value in the past and in the tradition of the Old World.

(2) In the second period, Irving found a whole new spirit of nationalism in American feeling and art and letters.

歐文的文學生涯大致可分為兩個重要的時期。第一個時期從其處女作的發表到1832年。第二個時期跨越他的余生。

(1) 第一個時期歐文主要描寫英國或歐洲主題。他在過去和舊世界里的傳統中尋求價值。

(2) 第二個時期歐文在美國人情感和文藝中發掘新的民主主義精神。

4．Writing style（寫作風格）

Irving was a highly skillful writer. The gentility, urbanity, and pleasantness of the man all seem to have adequate expression in his style.

(1) First, Irving avoids moralizing as much as possible; he writes to amuse and entertain.

(2) He is good at enveloping his stories in an atmosphere, the richness of which is often more than compensation for the slimness of plot.

(3) His characters are vivid and true so that they tend to linger in the mind of the reader.

(4) The humor has built itself into the very texture of his writings.

(5) The finished and musical language and the patent workmanship have been among the points of critical attention.

歐文是一位精湛的文體家。他的雅人深致、文質彬彬及和顏悅色在他的文風里都能找到充分的反映。

(1) 首先，他盡量避免說教。他創作的目的在于讓人賞心悅目。

(2) 他擅長烘托氣氛，這很大程度上彌補了情節單薄這一不足。

(3) 他的人物刻畫得惟妙惟肖，讀后如聞其聲，如見其人。

(4) 幽默是他文風的有機組成部分。

(5) 其作品精深圓熟，富有音樂性且技藝嫻熟，這些都成為評論界關注的焦點。

5．Major works（主要作品）

A History of New York《紐約外史》

The Sketch Book《見聞札記》

“The Authors Account of Himself”《作者自述》

“Rip Van Winkle”《瑞普·凡·溫克爾》

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”《睡谷的傳說》

The history of Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus《哥倫布傳》

A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada《征服格拉納達》

Life of Goldsmith《哥爾斯密傳》

Life of Washington《華盛頓傳》

The Crayon Miscellany《克瑞恩文集》

“A Tour on the Prairies”《大草原之旅》

“Astoria”《阿斯托里亞》

Adventures of Captain Bonneville《博納維爾船長歷險記》

6．Analysis of major works（主要作品分析）

◆“Rip Van Winkle”《瑞普·凡·溫克爾》

This story reveals the conservative attitude of its author. Before the war, there was peace and harmony. But there comes now the scramble for power between parties and the tempo of life has quickened. The story might be taken as an illustration of Irving’s argument that change—and revolution—upset the natural order of things and the fact that Irving never seemed to accept a modern democratic America.

故事反映了作者保守的態度。戰前生活悠閑、平和。戰后卻出現政黨之爭，生活節奏加快。這個故事表明了歐文的立場，即變革和革命打亂了生活的自然秩序，表明他對現代民主的美國持有保留的態度。

◆“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”《睡谷的傳說》

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.

原型的創造是歐文高超的造詣之一。伊卡包德是通權達變的新英格蘭人的代表，他是村子里的城市滑頭，一種欲行欺詐的破壞性力量。他最后被趕出本不屬于他的村莊，于是小村子又恢復平靜祥和。布魯姆則是哈克·貝恩式村野之夫，粗魯、精力充沛，在邊疆自食其力。由此可看出，伊卡包德和布魯姆的情場之爭又可以看作是特定歷史條件下兩個道德群體之間的競爭。

該故事的寫作風格也代表了歐文的最高水準。

III. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)（詹姆斯·費尼莫·庫柏）

1．Life（生平）

Cooper was born into a rich land-holding family of New Jersey. He was sent to Yale at 14 but was expelled because of improper behavior. He went and spent five year at sea; In his early twenties, he inherited his father’s vast fortune and them began to write. His second novel, The Spy, proved to be an immense success. In the three decades that followed, he wrote thirty-odd novels, including eleven of the sea, and a voluminous amount of other writings. He was best known in his own day and is still read and remembered today as the author of Leatherstocking Tales.

庫柏出生于新澤西州一個富有家庭，家里擁有大片土地。庫柏14歲進入耶魯大學學習，后來因行為不端被開除。于是他出海做水手長達5年之久。20歲時他繼承了父親的巨額遺產，后來開始寫作。他的第二本小說《間諜》獲得巨大成功。接下來的30年，他又創作了30余部作品，其中包括11部航海小說。《皮裹腿故事集》使他生前聞名遐邇，至今仍擁有大量讀者。

2．Literary contribution（文學貢獻）

Cooper was one of the first authors to write about the American Westward movement. Cooper’s claim to greatness in American literature lay in the fact that he created a myth about the formative period of the American nation. Cooper wrote with increasing awareness of the importance to fiction of the Western frontier, where American society may be conceived as passing from one set of principle to another in two directions. Cooper’s power lay in his assurance that one direction was morally right and the other practically inevitable. Here lies Cooper’s conflict of allegiance. He was devoted to the principles of social order and responsible to the idea of nature and freedom in the wildness.

庫柏是首批描寫西進運動的作家之一。庫柏在美國文壇的重要地位體現在他創造了一個關于美國成長階段的神話。在其小說中，庫柏逐漸意識到在西部邊疆，社會活動受到兩種相互矛盾的原則的制約，庫柏的偉大之處在于，他指出其中一種在道義上是正確的，另外一種則在實際上是勢在必行的。這也是庫柏思想上的矛盾所在。他既推崇社會秩序，又崇尚親近自然、無拘無束的理想境界。

3．Writing style（寫作風格）

(1) Cooper is good at inventing plots. His plots are sometimes quite incredible, but his stories are immensely intriguing.

(2) His landscape descriptions are majestic and suggestive of Sir Walter Scott.

(3) He was quite conscious of the association of different locales. The fact that he had never been to the frontier and among the Indians and yet could write five huge epic books about them which is an eloquent proof of the richness of his imagination. His Indians are among the first appearing in American fiction and probably the first group of noble savages.

(4) His style is dreadful. His characterization seems wooden and lacks probability, and his language, his use of dialect, is not authentic.

(1) 庫柏擅長虛構情節。其情節雖有時過于離奇，但是他的故事十分引人入勝。

(2) 其筆下風景波瀾壯闊，頗有司各特小說之風。

(3) 他很注重聯系不同的場景。他從未去過邊疆，也沒有跟印第安人生活在一起過，但是他卻創作了五部關于他們的史詩般巨作。這充分證明了庫柏想象力極其豐富。他筆下的印第安人是美國小說中最早出現的印第安人之一，他們或許也是首批“高貴的野蠻人”。

(4) 他的文體也有缺陷。他的人物刻畫呆板，缺乏可信度，語言尤其是方言的使用并不純正。

4．Major works（主要作品）

The Spy《間諜》

Leatherstocking Tales《皮裹腿故事集》

The Pioneers (1823)《拓荒者》

The Last of the Mohicans (1826)《最后的莫西干人》

The Prairie (1827)《草原》

The Pathfinder (1840)《探路者》

The Deerslayer (1841)《獵鹿人》

5．Analysis of major work（主要作品分析）

◆Leatherstocking Tales《皮裹腿故事集》

(1) Leatherstocking Tales is a series of five tales about the life of American settlers. The protagonist Natty Bumppo is a mythic figure. When he first appears, we see a real frontiersman, a man of flesh and blood in the virgin forests of North America. But as the story moves on, he does so gathering more and more of the halo of a legendary and mythic nature around him. He becomes a type, a representation of a nation struggling to be born, progressing from old age to rebirth and youth. The Leatherstocking novels go backwards, from old age to golden youth. That is the true myth of America.

(2) The Pioneers is the first of Leatherstocking Tales. Its historical importance lies in the fact that it was probably the first true romance of the frontier in American literature. The basic conflict of the story is, in essence, one between Leatherstocking who insists on man’s old forest freedom and Judge Temple to whom man remains savage without law and order. Bumppo embodies the idea of brotherhood of man and of nature and freedom, and is morally right. Judge Temple symbolizes law and civilization, and represents the practically inevitable aspect. It is between them that they built the wilderness into anything like a civilized place. Hence the plural in the title of the book, The Pioneers.

(1) 《皮裹腿故事集》由五部描寫美國西部移民生活的系列小說組成。主人公納蒂·班波的形象頗具神話色彩。剛出場時，他是一位有血有肉、實實在在的活躍在北美叢林里的拓荒者形象。隨著故事的不斷深入，他的神話和傳說成分愈漸增強。他成為一個典型，代表著整個國家努力從暮年走向重生、走向青春。皮裹腿系列小說由后向前，主人公從暮年到青年黃金時代。這是真正的美國神話。

(2) 《拓荒者》是《皮裹腿故事集》中最早發表的一部。該小說的重大歷史意義在于，它是美國文學史上首部真正意義上的邊疆小說。故事圍繞皮裹腿和坦普爾法官之間的矛盾展開，皮裹腿崇尚自由自在、無拘無束的叢林生活，而坦普爾法官則認為沒有法律和秩序人就會淪為野蠻人。班波代表了博愛、親近自然、無拘無束的理想，是道義上正確的一方。坦普爾法官象征著法律和文明，是勢不可擋的一方。他們一起把西部荒野建成了文明的地方，因而標題《拓荒者》使用了復數形式。