本书是高等院校英语专业高年级必修课之一。本课程的目的在于帮助学生了解美国文学发生、发展及嬗变的历史过程，培养他们阅读、欣赏和理解英语文学原著的能力，掌握文学批评的基本知识和方法。经典文学作品演绎着百态人生，书写着世界各族人民的生活变迁。它们可以引导学生了解各国人民对世界的诠释，在扩大学生视野、提高学生文化品位的同时，使他们学会独立思考社会和人生，最终获得完整的人格和较强的社会适应能力。

本教材正确处理文学史、经典作家、作品和文学理论之间的关系。通过美国历史和文学史，使学生了解美国文学的发展历程，建立整体的结构框架，把握文学流派、文学理论沿革的清晰脉络，认识到文学发展与社会发展的密切联系。通过介绍和分析具体作家和作品，使学生在欣赏、学习优美文学语言的同时，通过文本阅读了解人生、感悟生活。通过对文学理论深入浅出的讲解，使学生掌握文学阅读、文学批评的基本专业能力，使知识传授、能力培养和素质教育融为一体。

Chapter One General Introduction

I Background to English Literature

Ⅱ A General Survey of American Literature

Chapter Two Colonial and Revolutionary Periods

I The Literature of Colonial America

Anne Bradstreet 

Ⅱ The Literature of the Revolutionary Period

Benjamin Franklin

Chapter Three American Romanticism

I The Rise of American Romanticism

Ⅱ Early Romanticism

Washington Irving

James Fenimore Cooper

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

William CuUen Bryant

Ⅲ Transcendentalism

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Henry David Thoreau

IV High Romanticism

Nathanie Hawthorne

Herman Melville

Walt Whitman

Emily Dickinson

Edgar Allan Poe

Chapter Four American Realism

I The Rise of Realism

William Dean HoweUs

Ⅱ Local Colorism

Mark Twain

Ⅲ Psychological Realism

Henry James

1V American Naturalism

Frank Norris

Stephen Crane 

Theodore Dreiser

Chapter Five American Modernism

I American Modernism

Ⅱ Imagism1

Ezra Pound

T.S.Eliot

William Carlos Willams

Robert Frost

ⅢThe“Lost Generation”

F.Scott Fitzgerald

Ernest Hemingway

1V Sherwood Anderson&John Steinbeck

Sherwood Anderson

John Steinbeck

V Southern Literature

Willam Faulkner

Flannery O’Connor

Ⅵ African American Literature

Langston Hughes

Ralph Ellison

Chapter Six Postmodernism

I Postmodernism

Ⅱ Post—War Realism

Jerome David Salinger

Ⅲ Black Humor

Joseph Heller

1V Jewish Literature

Saul Bellow

V Black Women Writers

Alice Walker

Tony Morrison

Chapter Seven American Drama

I A Brief History of American Drama

Ⅱ Modern American Playwright

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

Tennessee Willams

Arthur Miller

Ⅲ Absurd Theater

Edward Albee

Bibliography