一个美国农民的来信（牛津世界经典系列） Letters from an American Farmer J Hector St John de Crèvecoeur

基本信息

Edited by:Susan Manning

Series:Oxford World's Classics

Format:Paperback / softback 288 pages

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Imprint:Oxford University Press

ISBN:9780199554744

Published:23 Apr 2009

Weight:222g

Dimensions:200 x 160 x 19 (mm)

页面参数仅供参考，具体以实物为准

书籍简介

`对欧洲人来说，美国人首先是一个美元的狂热者。我们往往会忘记赫克托-圣约翰-德-克雷维科尔的情感遗产。

当D.H.劳伦斯在他的《美国古典文学研究》中发表这一声明时，他想到的是《一个美国农民的来信》。这些信于1782年在英国初次出版，在独立革命战争的末年，人们的注意力集中在美国，因此这些信来得很及时。Crevecoeur的问题 "那么，美国人，这个新人是什么？

美国，这个新的国家，正在世界的眼前成形。美国文学紧迫和经常关注的一些问题在《信札》的内容和风格中都有所体现：除了美国人的身份问题，它们还赞美了土地的广阔和肥沃、个人的决心以及摆脱生硬的规则压迫的自由。

制度压迫的自由。然而，更黑暗和更具象征意义的因素使初时的阳光画面变得复杂：在一个特别令人不安的情节中提出了奴隶制的问题，而一封信 "一个边疆人的烦恼 "则戏剧性地描述了美国农业的理性开明社会解体为混乱、不理解和不可言说的邪恶预兆的噩梦。

《一个美国农民的来信》是由一个移民法国的贵族写的，它有资格被视为美国文学作品，它本身就非常有趣，并对后来的美国作家和欧洲关于新国家的道德、精神和物质地形的旅行描述产生了长期的影响。

关于该系列。100多年来，《牛津世界经典》提供了来自全球各地的广泛的文学作品。每一卷都体现了牛津大学对学术的承诺，提供准确的文本和大量其他有价值的功能，包括由学者提供的专家介绍、澄清文本的有用注释、用于进一步研究的新书目以及更多。

`to the European, the American is first and foremost a dollar-fiend. We tend to forget the emotional heritage of Hector St John de Crevecoeur'

When D.H. Lawrence made this statement in his Studies in Classic American Literature, he was thinking of the Letters from an American Farmer. First published in England in 1782, the Letters came at a timely moment as attention was focused on America in the closing year of the Revolutionary War of Independence. Crevecoeur's famous question `What, then, is the American, this new man?' was a matter of great interest, as it became evident that America, that new

nation, was taking shape before the eyes of the world. Some of American literature's most pressing and recurrent concerns are adumbrated in the substance and style of the Letters: in addition to the question of American identity, they celebrate the largeness and fertility of the land, personal determination, and freedom from

institutional oppression. Darker and more symbolic elements complicate the initially sunny picture, however: the issue of slavery is raised in a particularly disturbing episode, and the final Letter, `Distresses of a Frontier Man,' dramatizes the disintegration of the rational enlightened society of agrarian America into a nightmare of confusion, incomprehension and premonitions of unspeakable evil.

Written by an emigrant French aristocrat turned farmer, the Letters from an American Farmer has a good claim to be regarded as the first work of American literature, at once intensely interesting in its own right, and casting a long shadow of influence on both subsequent American writers and European travel accounts of the moral, spiritual and material topography of the new nation.

ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

作者简介

苏珊-曼宁是大学英语讲师和剑桥大学纽纳姆学院的研究员。她编辑了华盛顿-欧文的《Geoffrey Crayon, Gent的素描书》和斯科特的《Quentin Durward》--这两本书都在《世界经典》中。

Susan Manning is University Lecturer in English and Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. She edited Washington Irving's The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent and Scott's Quentin Durward - both in World's Classics.