第四十九篇

The Beginning of American Literature

American has always been a land of beginnings. After Europeans‘discovered' America in the fifteenth century, the mysterious New World became for many people a genuine hope of a new life, an escape from poverty and persecution¹, a chance to start again. We can say that, as nation, America begins with that hope. When, however, does American literature begin?

American literature begins with American experiences. Long before the first colonists³ arrived, before Christopher Columbus1, before the Northmen who 'found' America about the year 1,000, Native Americans lived here. Each tribe's literature was tightly woven into the fabric⁴ of daily life and reflected the unmistakably American experience of lining⁵ with the land2. Another kind of experience, one filled with fear and excitement, found its expression in the reports that Columbus and other explorers sent home in Spain, French and English. In addition, the journals of the people who lived and died in the New England wilderness3 tell unforgettable tales of hard and sometimes heartbreaking experiences of those early years.

Experience, then, is the key to early American literature. The New World provided a great variety of experiences, and these experiences demanded a wide variety of expressions by an even wider variety of early American writers. These writers included John Smith, who spent only two-and-a-half years on the American continent. They included Jonathan Edwards and William Byrd, who thought of themselves as British subjects, never suspecting a revolution that would create a United States of America with a literature of its own. American Indians, explorers,来源：考试大

     Puritan ministers, frontier wives, plantation⁷ owner - they are all the creators of the first American literature.

词汇：

colonist² n. 殖民者

subject n.臣民考试大

Puritan adj.清教徒的

注释：

1. Christopher Columbus 克里斯托弗·哥伦布，美洲新大陆的发现者

2. Each tribe's literature was tightly woven into the fabric of daily life and reflected the unmistakably American experience of lining with the land. 每个部落的文学都紧密地交织到日常生活的架构中去，反映了和土地密切相连的确凿无疑的美洲生活经历。

3. New England wilderness⁶ 新英格兰的荒原，新英格兰指如今美国东北部的几个州，为来自欧洲的殖民者最早定居的地区。