Questions For American Literature
Week 1. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
1. Is Franklin a man of religious principles? Why does he stop attending public service?
2. Explain 13 virtues Franklin chooses for his moral improvement.
3. What is Franklin’s attitude towards moral perfection?
4. What are significance of the moralistic self- discipline, according to Franklin?
5. What virtues does Franklin think he has never achieved?
6. Comment on the Criticism that some authors made on Franklin, such as Hawthorn, Lawrence. (History p.53-54)
Week 2: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
1. What does “whim” mean in the “Self-reliance”? and why does Emerson call consistency “foolish”?
2. What is an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza character like, according to the Self-relaince?
3. Explain “to talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which relies, because it works and is.” and the context that gives rise to this statement in the Self-reliance.
4. What are Emerson’s comments on Jesus Christ in “The Divinity School
Address”? Please compare it with Thomas Paine’s in The Age of Reason. Week Three：Henry David Thoreau (1817--1862)
1. What is the analogy between that striped snake lying on the bottom of the pond and the man in the early spring? How is a stray goose like the spirit of the fog?
2. What is Thoreau’s understanding of the beauty of an architecture? And what does he think of the architectural ornaments? In what cases will a “carpenter” be a “coffin-maker”?
3. Why does Thoreau say “Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants” ? What is your comment on Thoreau’s idea of higher education?
4. Is Thoreau a quietist or a hermit in the woods of Walden? Why or why not?
Week four: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-18):
1. What did the boy, at nightfall, hear when he was playing with the scattered
fragments of marble? And how did he respond?
2. What does author compare the kiln with?
3. What question struck Ethan Brand’s mind on that portentous night 18 years ago? Did he find the answer to it after 18-year-wandering in the world? What is it?
4. What kind of person is Ethan Brand in his youth hood? What causes his transformation? What is the end of his life?
5. How does the old dog’s pursuit of his tail parallel Ethan Brand’s search for the Unpardonable Sin?
6. What is your understanding of the little boy Joe? What virtues does he stand for?
Week Five: Herman Melville (1819-11)
1. How did Ahab respond when Moby-Dick appear before him in the last day of the chasing Moby-Dick? And how did he respond in the last two days before ? Do you think Ahab’s attitudes towards Moby-Dick undergo any changes? Why?
2. What are the Fedallah’s prophecy about Ahab’s death? Does it come true? And how? I
3. Who is the only survivor of the Pequod? And how?
4. What are the symbolic meanings of Moby-Dick and Captain Ahab? And also the symbolic meaning of the death of the bird of heaven at the end of the novel?
5. How do you understand the ending sentence: “and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.” ?
Week 6 Walt Whitman （1819-12）
1. What does Whitman’s “self” refer to? Why is Whitman’s “myself” different from the narrow egotism?
2. Why does Whitman call his life’s work Leaves of Grass? What does “a leaf of grass’’ mean to you? To Whitman?
3. What is the ending of Song of Myself? And how will you respond to Whitman’s invitation?
Week 7 Emily Dickinson （1830-1886）
1. Dickinson is well-known for her poetic meditations on dying and death. What is so moving and touching in her death meditations? Do you think the speak fears of death? Discuss your understanding with the help of her poems.
2. What images does the poetess introduce in the “Hope”, and how do they
work as the metaphors of the idea ---HOPE?
3. How does the triumphing human spirit permeate through Dickinson’s poetry of human suffering? Illustrate your ideas with her specific poems.
Week 8 Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
1. How many times is the word “nevermore” repeated? And what inquiries that “I” raised incites the raven to respond to with “Nevermore’?
2. Besides “nevermore”, what is (are) the other word or words that you find highly repeated? Why?
3. How do Poe’s poems and stories correspond to the literary principals he raised in his “Poetic Principles” and “The Philosophy of Composition”? Discuss with Poe’s poems and stories as example.
