The Fabricators Of The Eden Myth——"The American Adam" Image In American Literature

The dissertation interprets the American myth of Eden, analyses the image of themyth’s hero "The American Adam" and its social, historical and cultural connotations.There’s a littlle domestic study on the theme and they scattered in some scholars’researches.The foreign research is obvious, but the research of the image in the whole American literature as well as the its cultural connotations are not enough,so we still have some research space.The American myth of Eden was produced in17th Century, it said that, America is "the land of Canaan", the people who emigrated to America were God’s chosen people,they would establish what was called the "City upon the hill".This idea came into the consciousness of every American, and it also became one of the literary subjects. The central hero of the myth is "The American Adam",what was called by the American contemporary scholar R.W.B. Lewis.The figure was active in American iterature of19th Century, and it changed and blurred with the development of American society but never disappeared. On the contrary, it has become a realistic carrier resistance for writers and still existed in the United States of America contemporary literature. The Author will accord to Lewis’definition of "The American Adam",choosing Cooper, Melville, Mark Twain, Fitzgerald, J.D. Salinger and Vonnegut’s novels to study the evolution and the reasons for the changes of the images from the19th to the20th Century.She will explore the relationship between the images and American individualism, study the innocence theme in the literature of the Adam Myth, and evaluate the image in an objective, accurate, and comprehensive way. And at last she hope to have a thorough understanding of American society, culture and literature.