本书原为执教于河南大学外语系的美籍专家Fred Mednick编写的一部美国文学教材,在使用中受到广大师生的一致欢迎。这次出版之前,又经作者作了必要的补充和认真的修改。
为了帮助读者了解美国文学的来龙去脉和主要成就,本书将移民时期至自然主义时期的美国文学划分为若干阶段。对每一阶段的哲学流派、社会思潮及文学理论均作了概要的介绍和深入的剖析,然后选取若干主要流派及代表作家,介绍其生平、文学成就和创作特点,并**赏析其主要作品。章末还附有必要的选文。
本书可作为高等学校英语专业的美国文学教材,研究生及进修生的辅助教材,也可作为英语教师及一般英语工作者的参考书。

Foreword and Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 Colonial America:A New Land/A New Literature:Bradford,Bradstreet,Edwards
Chapter 2 The Revolutionary Period:An Emergent National Literature
Chapter 3 Early National Period:Irving,Bryant,Cooper
Chapter 4 A National Literature and Romantic Individualism
Chapter 5 Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864):Consummate Romantic
Chapter 6 Mid-Century Poets Edgar Allan Poe(1809-1849) and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
Chapter 7 Nature and the Individual:The Transcendentalism of Emerson (1803-82)and Thoreau (1817-62)
Chapter 8 The Anti-Slavery Impulse:Stowe,Douglass,Lowell,Whittier
Chapter 9 Herman Melville (1819-1891) Master of Philosophical Allegory
Chapter 10 An Experiment in Form:Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Chapter 11 Emily Dickinson (1830-1886):The Recluse of Amherst
Chapter 12 From Civil War to New Century:Industrialism and the Rise of Literary Realism :Introductions to Howells,O Henry
Chapter 13 Mark Twain(1835-1910):The Man,The Humorist,The Social Critic,The Pessimist
Chapter 14 Psychological Realism :Henry James (1843 1916)
Chapter 15 Inner Conflict: Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
Chapter 16 At the Turn of the Century:Muckraking and Reform,Naturalism
Chapter 17 Two Naturalists:Jack London and (1876-1916) Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
Chapter 18 Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945):Naturalism and Moral Crisis in the Twentieth Century
Selected Bibliography
Index of Literary Works Used