About James Fenimore Copper

1. He was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. His historical romances of frontier and Indian life in the early American days created a unique form of American literature.

2. Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, often regarded as his masterpiece.

"The heart out of the bosom was never given in vain; Tis paid with sighs a plenty and sold for endless rue."

->  When I was one and twenty

    => American: 20 years old ; German: 21years old

-> in vain 徒勞無功

Colonial Literature 1700-1820

About Jonathan Edwards

1. The most impressive mind of the colonial period.

2. Edwards "is widely acknowledged to be America's most important and original philosophical theologian," and one of America's greatest intellectuals.

3. Edwards's theological work is broad in scope, but he was rooted in Reformed theology, the metaphysics of theological determinism, and the Puritan heritage.

4. His greatest work:"Freedom of Will" has been neglected in the general history of American thought ever since the decline of the P
uritan in fluence in the country. 

5. His work: "Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God"

    => original sin, Jesus

About  Anne Bradstreet 

1. She was the most prominent of early English poets of North America and first female writer in the British North American colonies to be published. She was also a prominent Puritan figure in American Literature.

2. Her famous work: "The Author to Her Book", "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America"

About Edward Taylor

1. He hold the chief place as a most gifted of the Puritan poets.

2.  His famous work: "Meditation Eight"About Anne Bradstreet

Revolutionary Period 1763-1810

About Thomas Jefferson

1. was an American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and the third President of the United States (1801–1809).

2.  At the beginning of the American Revolution, he served in the Continental Congress, representing Virginia, and then served as a wartime Governor of Virginia (1779–1781).

3.  In opposition to Alexander Hamilton's Federalism, Jefferson and his close friend, James Madison, organized the Democratic-Republican Party, and later resigned from Washington's cabinet.

4. =>  影集 Scandle

About Benjamin Franklin

1. He was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and in many ways was "the First American".

2. He was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity.

About Thomas Paine

1. He was an English and American political activist, philosopher, political theorist and revolutionary. As the author of the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, he inspired the rebels in 1776 to declare independence from Britain.

2. He has been called "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination"

3. Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution.

4. His powerful pamphlet Common Sense (1776), the all-time best-selling[4] American title which crystallized the rebellious demand for ndependence from Great Britain.

5.Thomas Paine 受啟蒙年代的影響，Common Sense 後來影響法國大革命。

=>管的最少的政府才是最好的政府 (最早出現在Thoreau)

=> 天賦人權

About public vote 普選

1. 香港佔中

2. The Declaration of Independence

1.  In Philadelphia

=> [Movie]   Philadelphia    

About American Dream

1. The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, a set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility for the family and children, achieved through hard work in a society with few barriers.

2. The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that "all men are created equal" and that they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

=> [Movie] American Dream in China  (中國合夥人)

       [Movie] 玻璃之城

       ＿

      [Song] 海闊天空  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu_FSptjRic)

About the land of opportunity

1. The land of opportunity is a phrase used to suggest that a place presents many possibilities for people to earn a prosperous living, and succeed in their economic or social objectives.

2. It is often used with reference to the United States of America, and is similar to the concept of the "American dream". 

About Manifest Destiny

1. Manifest Destiny was the widely held belief in the United States that American settlers were destined to expand throughout the continent. It was always a general notion rather than a specific policy. There were never a set of principles defining manifest destiny. 

Romantic Period 1812-1850

About Washington Irving

1. He was an American author, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century.

2. He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820), both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent..

About Ralph Waldo Emerson

1.  He was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century.

2.  He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society

3. Self-Reliance is an essay written by American transcendentalist philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas.

4. Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".

About Henry Wadsworth Longfellow  

1. He was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline.  He was one of the five Fireside Poets

2. Longfellow wrote predominantly lyric poems, known for their musicality and often presenting stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and also had success overseas. He has been criticized, however, for imitating European styles and writing specifically for the masses.

Obama 7票之差，美國通過健保改革-> 修補美國夢兩大缺口: 種族和經濟 

carbon copy, xerox copy =>影本

mani-: hand

1. manipulate