美国文学史复习整理

美国文学史复习整理 American literature History 1607---1775 1775---1865 1828---1865 1865---1914 1914---1939 1939--- Colonial Period the Early National Period Romantic Period in American Realistic Period Modern Literature Contemporary Period 1775) Chapter 1 Colonial America(1607--- The first permanent English settlement in North America was established at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. It endured starvation, brutality, and misrule. However, the literature of the period paints America in glowing colors as the land of riches and opportunity. Mayflower, 1620 ,brought the from England to New England. Christopher Jones Plymouth Before landing, an agreement for the temporary government of the colony by the will of the majority was drawn up in the famous . Captain John Smith William Bradford John Winthrop Cotton Mather Anne Bradstreet Edward Taylor American Puritanism • They stressed predestination, original sin, total depravity, and atonement from God’s grace. limited • They went to America to prove that they were God’s chosen people who would enjoy God’s blessings on earth and in Heaven. • Finally, they built a way of life that stressed hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety. • Both doctrinaire and an opportunist. Literary Influence: • American Literature is based on a myth ------ the Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden. • The American Puritan’s metaphorical made of perception ---- symbolism. Chapter 2 Edwards?Franklin?Crevecoeur • Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin shared the 18th century between them. • They embodied Puritan naïve idealism and crude materialism. • Deism • They were not interested in theology but in mans own nature. Jonathan Edward(1703-1758) Edwards embodied the spirit of revivalism (Great Awakening) He has 2 goals: a. b. Major works: The Freedom of the Will (1754) The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended (1758) The Nature of True Virtue (1765) Edwards was, probably, at once the first modern American and the country’s last medieval man. Edwards was obviously grappling in all his intellectual life with the knotty problem of reconciling to evoke the original sense of religious commitment. b. speak about the difference between head thinking and heart feeling Puritan ideas with the new rationalism of Locke and Newton. Edwards represents the element of piety, the religious passion, the aspect of emotion and ecstasy, of the New England tradition, a tradition that he did his best but failed to revitalize复活. 和 discovered, beneath the dogmas of the old theology, a dynamic world filled with the presence of God. Edwards extends typology beyond the strict limits of the Bible, anticipated the nature symbolism of the nineteenth-century Transcendentalism. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Life story: • Born in 1706 into a poor candle-maker’s family in Boston. • At 17 he ran away to Philadelphia to make his own fortune. His entrance onto the city marked the beginning of a long success story of an archetypal kind. • He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital, an academy which led to the University of Pennsylvania, and the American Philosophical Society. • During the War of Independence, he was made a delegate to the Continental Congress and a member of the committee to write • He was the only American to sign the four documents that created the United States including the Declaration of Independence. • He was regarded as the father of the country. Literary Achievement • Almanac autobiography (‘Poor Richard’s Almanac’, ‘Autobiography’ ) His Style • Clear, plain, formal (the organization of his material is informal) Major Works: 1) Poor Richard’s Almanac 2) The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • On the art of self-improvement s rise to wealth • The first of its kind in literature------- An account of a poor boy’ and fame and the fulfillment of the American dream • A Puritan document------a self-examination and self-improvement. The book is a convincing illustration of the Puritan ethic that, in order to get on in the word, one has to be industrious, frugal, and prudent. • An eloquent elucidation说明 of the fact that Franklin was the spokesman of American enlightenment, and he represented in America all its ideas. • The book celebrates the fulfillment of the American dream. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur Work: Letters from an American Farmer (1775) The first eight of the twelve letters reveal the pride of a man being an American. It is evident that, to Crevecoeur, the American is a new man acting on principles: He is self-sufficient, self-reliant, and essentially self-made. Crevecoeur saw and spoke of the hope of a new Garden of Eden materializing in America. Crevecoeur also saw and spoke of the illusory nature of that dream. Starting from the ninth letter, he began to speak with a voice of a definitely disillusioned man. There in the same New World, he became aware of the existence of slavery, avarice, violence, famine and disease, and all other forms of the Atlantic. Chapter 3 American Romanticism?Irving?Cooper American Romanticism 1.Characteristics of Romanticism: reason and common sense. ividual against the group, against authority. express his own inner thoughts. problem novel, historical novel , gothic romance, metrical romance, sonnet. 2. Distinctive features of American Romanticism • the end of the 18th \century through the out break of the Civil War. • strongly influenced by European culture • American romantics tended to moralize 3. Main contents: the exotic landscape , the frontier life, the westward expansion, the myth of a New Garden Eden in America (the native materials) New England Poems • It produced a feeling of ―Newness‖ which inspired the romantic imagination.. 4. Representatives: • New England Poets: William Cullen Bryant; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; • Writers: James Fenimaore Cooper, Washington Irving Elements of Romanticism • • • • • Frontier: vast expanse, freedom, no geographic limitations. Optimism: greater than in Europe because of the presence of frontier. Experimentation: in science, in institutions. Mingling of races: immigrants in large numbers arrive to the US. Growth of industrialization: polarization of north and south; north becomes industrialized, south remains agricultural Romantic Subject Matter • 1. The quest for beauty: non-didactic, ―pure beauty‖ • 2. The use of the far-away and non-normal----antique and fanciful: • a. In historical perspective: antiquarianism; antiquing or artificially aging; interest in the past. • b. Characterization and mood: grotesque, Gothicism, sense of terror, fear; use of the odd and queer. • 3. Escapism----from American problems • 4. Interest in external nature: for itself, for beauty • a. Nature as source for the knowledge of primitive. • b. Nature as refuge. • c. Nature as revelation of God to the individual. Romantic Attitude • Appeals to imagination; use of the ―willing suspension of disbelief.‖ • Stress on emotion rather than reason; optimism, geniality. • Subjectivity: in form and meaning. Romantic Techniques • • • • • • • • 1. Remoteness of settings in time and space. 2. Improbable plots. 3. Inadequate or unlikely characterization. 4. Authorial subjectivity. 5. Socially ―harmful morality‖, a world of ―lies‖ 6. Organic principle in writing: form rises out of content, non-formal. 7. Experimentation in new forms: picking up and using obsolete patterns. 8. Cultivation of the individualized, subjective form of writing. Washington Irving (1783-1859) 1. Masterpieces: ―The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Grayon‖ (1819-1820) ―Bracebridge Hall‖ ―Tales of a Traveller‖ ―The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus ‖ The Sketch Book (1819), contains two most enduring stories ―Rip Van Winkle‖ and ―The Legend of Sleepy Hollow‖. In both these stories, Irving aims at creating a past in which history and myth blend into each other, providing for a rapidly changing American society kind of historical tradition so apparent in England and so apparently absent in the new nation.The plots of both stories are based on old German folk tales. However, Irving fills them with the ―local color‖ of New York’s Hudson River Valley. In ―The Legend‖, Irving tells of a Connecticut schoolmaster plying his trade near Tarrytown, New York, among the Dutch families there. A fervent believer in witchcraft and the spirit world, Ichabod Crane is also one of the few educated men in the community, and as such is a notable figure in the area. In all, The Sketch Book contains thirty-two stories. The majority are on European subjects, mostly English. Like many important American writers after him, Irving found that the rich, older culture of the Old World gave him a lot of material for his stories. Few of his stories are really original. ―We are a young people,‖ he explains in the preface, ―and must take our examples and models from the existing nations of Europe‖. A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (1809)---------his first book 2. Comment • His stories, essays, histories, and biographies win him the acclaim as the 1st prose stylist of American romanticism. • He was the first American author to win international recognition, and was extremely popular in Europe. • In his ‘Sketch Book’ appeared the First American modern American short stories and the first great American juvenile literature. • He perfected the best classic style that American literature ever produced. • Humor, ironic 3(Features which characterize Irving’s writing: 1) Irving avoids moralizing as much as possible 2) he is good at enveloping his stories in an atmosphere, the richness of which is often more than compensation for the slimness of plot. James Fenimore Cooper (1789----1851) Cooper’s first novel was an imitation of Jane Austin’s novels and did not meet with great success. His second, , was based on Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly series, and told an adventure tale about the American Revolution, set in Westchester Country. The protagonist was Harvey Birch, a supposed loyalist who actually was a spy for George Washington, disguised as ―Mr. Harper‖. The book brought Cooper fame and wealth and he gave up farming. In 1823 appeared Natty Bumppo, also called Leatherstocking or Hawkeye, and his Indian companion Chingachgook. They included such classics as Cooper had the idea of transporting Leatherstocking to the Far West while he was writing Literary Achievements: The lst successful American novelist In his fiction he dealt with the themes of wilderness versus civilization, freedom versus law, order versus change, aristocrat versus democrat, and natural rights versus legal rights. Cooper developed 3 kinds of novels: --the 1st kind is the novels about the revolutionary past (―The Spy‖); --the 2nd is the sea novels (he also was the 1st writer to write a novel on the sea, ―The Pilot‖); --the 3rd is novels about the American frontier (―The Pioneers ‖, ―The Pathfinder‖ and ―The Deerslayer‖ ) ―The Leather Stocking Tales‖---------Natty Bumppo Comment: • the characters in his fiction help create that part of American mythology: the story of the cow boy, the winning of the American West (daring frontiersman and friendly Indian) • Among his comtemporaries, Cooper was no doubt the best in exploring the possibilities of the American frontier in fiction. Chapter 4 New England Transcendentalism?Emerson?Thoreau New England Transcendentalism Backgrounds: 1. Ralph Waldo Emerson published ‘Nature’ in 1836 which represented a new way of intellectual thinking in America. 2. ‘The Universe is composed of Nature and the Soul, Spirit is present everywhere. ’ 3. romantic idealism on Puritan soil 4. 1836, the Transcendental Club Transcendentalism In the realm of art and literature it meant the shattering of pseudo-classic rules and forms in favor of a spirit of freedom, the creation of works filled with the new passion for nature and common humanity and incarnating a fresh sense of the wonder, promise, and romance of life. Major Concepts (main ideas) ‘transcendere’: to rise above, to pass beyond the limits senses and from the inner world by intuition. first and matter second the spiritual, of God’s presence. Nature could exercise a healthy and restorative influence on human mind.) the individual (the individual was the most important element in society, the ideal kind of individual was self-reliant and unselfish.) universal ‘oversoul’. Comments: nifestation of romantic movement in literature and philosophy (the positive life ) history of American literature tic philosophy. It borrowed from many sources, but lacked of logical connection, finally, it turned to mysticism. Major writers and Literary Works Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803----1882) Henry David Thoreau (1817----1862) Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803----1882) • Ralph Waldo Emerson, the towering figure of his era, had a religious sense of mission. • The address he delivered in 1838 at his alma mater, the Harvard Divinity School, made him unwelcome at Harvard for 30 years. • In it, Emerson accused the church of acting "as if God were dead" and of emphasizing dogma while stifling the spirit. • Emerson’s philosophy has been called contradictory, and it is true that he consciously avoided building a logical intellectual system because such a rational system would have negated his Romantic belief in intuition and flexibility. • Achievement: • ‘Nature’ has been called ―the manifesto of American transcendentalism‖ • ‘The American Scholar’ has been called ―America’s Declaration of Intellectual Independence‖ • American way instead of imitating things foreign. • The contribution both for philosophy and literature • His perception of humanity and nature as symbols of universal truth encouraged the development of the American symbolist movement. • Emphasize the common life worth of highest art • Believed the work’s form was determined by the writer’s perception of the higher truth he found symbolized in nature. Most of his major ideas – the need for a new national vision, the use of personal experience, the notion of the cosmic Over-Soul, and the doctrine of compensation -- are suggested in his first publication, Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) • If Ralph Waldo Emerson was the philosopher of Transcendentalism, Thoreau was its most • While Emerson wrote and lectured about Transcendentalism, Thoreau tried to live as a Life Story: • Classically educated at Harvard • Father, John, was a pencil maker • Siblings Helen, John, and Sophia • Lived in and around Concord, Mass., all his life • Two books published in his lifetime--neither sold well The Walden Experiment • From 1841 – 1843 Thoreau decided to conduct an experiment of self-sufficiency by building his own house on the shores of Walden Pond and living off the food he grew on his farm. Major Work: • Thoreau later documented his experiment in his famous memoir Walden. • Another work that was a result of Thoreau’s Walden Experiment was his essay Civil Disobedience. • Civil Disobedience has been a highly influential work that has inspired peaceful activists such as Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. • Famous Quote: ―If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.‖ 1860)and Walden Henry David Thoreau (1817--- • --- a spiritual book • --- a diary of a nature lover, a classic of American prose (this is a book of essays put together, exploring subjects concerned with Nature, with the meaning of life, and with morality) 3 aims in writing the book: • to make people evaluate the way he lived and thought; • to reveal the hidden spiritual possibilities in everyone’s life; • to condemn the weakness and errors of society subjects: • • • • The essentials of life: living rather than getting a living It is a condemnation of making social improvement and comfort all important. It stresses the importance of thought over material circumstance. It has confidence in the individual, and holds that individual freedom breaks down the rules and barriers of society so that the individual can express himself and act on his own principles. • There is the possibility for and importance of change in one’s spiritual life which is in harmony with nature. Style: • • • • • • • Chapter 5 Hawthorne?Melville Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804----1864) Themes in Hawthorne’s Writings • Moral allegories——a story where everything is symbol, used commonly to instruct especially in religious matters • • • • The sinful man Hypocrisy (伪善) The Dark side of human nature Religious in nature Prophetic voice Direct forceful sentence Conversational in tone Humor Proverbial expressions Brief tales, fables and allegories Metaphors Hawthorne’s Major Works • Two collections of short stories: Twice-told Tales + Mosses from an Old Manse(古屋青 苔) • The Scarlet Letter-------His masterpiece, which established him as the Leading American native novelist of the 19th century • The House of the Seven Gables(带有七个尖角阁的房子 ) • The Blithedale Romance(福谷传奇) • The Marble Faun(玉石雕像 ) Hawthorne’s Point of View -------Hawthorne is influenced by Puritanism deeply. He was not a Puritan himself, but he had Puritan ancestors who played an important role in his life and works. • Evil is at the core of human life. • Whenever there is sin, there is punishment. Sin or evil can be passed from generation to generation. • Evil educates • He has disgust in science. One source of evil is overweening intellect. His intellectual characters are villains, dreadful and cold-blooded Hawthorne’s aesthetic ideas 1) he took a great interest in history and antiquity. • To him these furnish the soil on which his mind grows to fruition. • Trying to connect a bygone time with the very present, he makes the dream strange things look like truth. 2) he was convinced that romance was the best form to describe America • The poverty of materials+the avoidance of offending the puritan taste—— romances rather than novels to tell the truth and satirize and yet not the offend Writing Style • A man of literary craftsmanship, extraordinary in • The use of symbol: symbols serve as a weapon to attack reality. It can be found everywhere in his writing. • Revelation of characters’ psychology: he is good at exploring the complexity of human psychology. There isn’t much physical movement going on in his works • The use of supernatural mixed with the actual • His stories are parable(allegory)——to teach a lesson • Use of ambiguity to keep the reader in the world of uncertainty——multiple point of view Comments: • Hawthorne is significant as a romantic writer because he used the New England regional past as subject and setting for his stories and he showed great concern about the American past. • He is significant for his themes: the consequences of pride, selfishness, and secret guilty; the conflict between lighthearted and somber toward life; the impingement of • He is significant for his style ---His style is soft, flowing, and almost feminine. ---He used ambiguity to keep the reader in a world of uncertainty. Herman Melville (1819----1891) ―Moby Dick‖ • • • • Some critics hold it the greatest American novel. The book suggests the beauty, terror, and mystery of creation. Moby Dick is a symbol of nature. Nature is capable of destroying the human world. Nature threatens humanity and thus calls out the heroic powers of the human beings. So the power of the universe is both of blessing and curse. style: • Allusions to classical myths • A threefold quality in his writing: the style of fact, the style of oratory celebrating the fact, and the style of meditaion. • The original design of Moby Dick made sense within the romantic tradition. Melville wanted to write a romantic text on the whale fishery, giving much exotic information, derived from encyclopedias and world literature. The characters were to be colorful and picturesque, including the Byronic captain of the whaling ship. • The result was a novel with MIXED STYLES: • FICTIONAL ADVENTURE • STORY • HISTORICAL DETAIL • SCIENTIFIC DISCUSSION • The novel’s plot is built on one basic conflict – AHAB vs. THE WHALE. It is essentially the story of Ahab and his quest to defeat the legendary Sperm Whale Moby Dick, for this whale took Ahab’s leg, causing him to use an ivory leg. • Whaling described as a ROYAL ACTIVITY (whales were considered prizes significant enough to be a dowry. Oil used in the coronation of kings is sperm oil) Chapter 6 Whitman?Dickson Walt Whitman (1819---1892) Major Work: : 9 editions ,more than 400 poems all written in free verse form, that is , poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. The title implies rebirth, renewal, or green life. Features of Whitman’s poems: • The sprawling lines of the poems are often extremely long. • Parallelism: the parallel lines say the same thing but use different words. • Envelope structure: the first line begins with the subject, and then more and more lines list modifiers till the verb appears in the last line of the stanza. This is like enclosing a whole list of ideas in an envelope. • Catalogue technique: means listing. Typical poems by Whitman make long, long lists of images, of sights, sounds, smells ,taste, and touch. • No regular pattern. • The verse unit is usually an independent clause. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson(1830--1886) subjects: love, death, religion, immortality, pain, beauty Theory: • She regarded the poet as a seer. She thought the poet could grasp truth through her imagination and then the poem would reveal this truth to the reader. • She believed that poetry contributed to growth and poetry had an impact on one’s life. • She stressed indirection. • Her poems demonstrate inconsistence.(The reader can find one of her poems that says one thing about a problem and another poem that says the exact opposite) Style: • • • • Lyric Influence of Christian tradition New England perspective Puritan introspection Chapter 7 Edgar Allen Poe Edgar Allen Poe(1809—1849) • Poe established a new symbolic poetry, formulated the new short story in detective and • science fiction line, developed an important artistic theory, and laid foundation for analytical criticism. Poe is generally regarded as a pioneering aesthetician, psychological investigator, literary technician and his influence on American literary circles can never be overrated. Major Literary Works • • • • • • • ―The Raven‖ 《乌鸦》 ―Annable Lee‖ 《安娜贝尔?李》 ―The Sleeper‖ 《睡梦 人》 ―A Dream Within a Dream‖ 《梦中梦》 ―Sonnet—To Science‖ 《十四行诗 —致科学》 ―To Helen‖ 《致海伦》 ―The City in the Sea‖ 《海中的城市》earlier entitled The Doomed City 《衰败的城 市》 1. Horror • Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque?述异集?-------a collection of short stories • ―The Black Cat‖ 《黑猫》 • ―The Cask of Amontillado‖ (红色死亡假面舞会) • ―The Fall of the House of Usher‖ 2. Ratiocination(推理) • ―The Murders in the Rue Morgue‖ 《莫格街谋杀案》 • ―The Gold Bug‖《金甲虫》 • ―The Purloined Letter‖《被窃的信件》 • ―The Mystery of Marie Roget‖ 《玛丽罗杰谜案》 Literary theory: • The Philosophy of Composition 《创作原理》 • The Poetic Principle 《诗歌原则》 Themes • death – predominant theme (―Poe is not interested in anything alive. Everything in Poe’s writings is dead.‖ ) • horror • negative thoughts of science Poe’s theory for poetry • short but achieve maximum effect • produce a feeling of beauty in the reader • "pure―, not to moralize • He stresses rhythm • insists on an even(规则的) metrical flow 真实能够满足人的理智,感情能够满足人的心灵, 而美则能激动人的灵魂 Poe’s theory for short story • Short story should be of brevity, totality, single effect, compression(压缩) and finality. Poe’s achievement 1. His aesthetics, his call for "the rhythmical creation of beauty" have influenced French symbolists and the devotees of "art for art’s sake." 2. He is the father of psychoanalytic(心理分析的) criticism. 3. He is the father of the detective story. Conclusion about his theories: • Only short poems could sustain the level of emotion in the reader that was generated by all good poetry. • The most important purpose of poetry is the creation of beauty • The tone of its highest manifestation is one of sadness. (The death of a beautiful woman is the most potential topic.) • • • • • • • • The immediate object of poetry is pleasure, not truth. Music is essential because it is associated with indefinite sensations. (alliteration, assonance, repetition) Poe preferred the tale to other fictional such as the novel because it is brief. He stressed the principle of concentration and thematic totality. The writer must decide the effect first and then determine the incidents. Truth rather than beauty is often the aim of the tale. The merit of a work of art should be judged by its psychological effect upon the reader. Chapter 8 The Age of Realism?Howells?James Realism: Realist literature is based on the accurate, unromanticized observation of human experiences. It insists on precise description, authentic action and dialogue, moral honesty, and a democratic openness in subject matter and style. Major Features: • Realism is the theory of writing in which familiar aspects of contemporary life and everyday scenes are represented in a straightforward or mother-of-fact manner. • Open ending (means real life is complex and cannot be fully understood) • Focuse on the lives of the common people • Emphasize objectivity William Dean Howells(1837-1920) Howells’s realistic principles • Realism is ―fidelity to experience and probability of motive‖.完全真实对待生活 和素材 • The aim is ―talk of some ordinary traits of American life‖.写作目的是讲述 普通人的生活 • Man in his natural and unaffected dullness was the object of fictional representation. 人自然流露出的呆板和迟钝是描写的对象 • Realism is by no means mere photographic pictures of externals but includes a central concern with ―motives‖ and psychological conflicts. 现实主义不仅表现外在 的影像，还应包含对动机和心理冲突的分析 • He avoids such themes as illicit love.避免涉及违背伦理道德的爱情话题 • Characters should have solidity of specification and be real. 人物塑造应真实可 信 • The ―common feelings of commonplace people‖ was best suited as a technique to express the spirit of America.表现普通人的普通感情是表达美国精神的最好方式 • Truth is the highest beauty, it includes the view that morality penetrates all things. 真理是最美的，真理蕴含一个观点:道德无处不在。 • With regard to literary criticism, Howells felt that the literary critic should follow the detached scientist in accurate description, interpretation, and classification. 使用科学的方法，仔细描述、解读和分类 Works • • • • The Rise of Silas Lapham 《塞拉斯•拉帕姆的发迹》 A Chance Acquaintance 《偶然相遇》 A Modern Instance 《一个现代例证》 Criticism and Fiction 《批 评与小说》 1910) O. Henry (1862— Style: original conception, exaggeration, simile and metaphor, humor, and surprise ending Henry James (1843—1916) realism writer, philosopher, critic, playwright 西方现代心理分析小说的开拓者 Literary career: three stages a. 1865~1882: international theme • The American 《美国人》 • Daisy Miller 《黛西米勒》 • The Portrait of a Lady 《贵妇画像》 b. 1882~1895: inter-personal relationships and some plays • The novels and plays were poorly received but he got a better knowledge of literary techniques. c. 1895~1900: novels and tales dealing with childhood and adolescence, then back to international theme • • • • • The Turn of the Screw《螺丝在拧紧》 What Maisie Knew 《梅西所知道的》 The Ambassadors 《奉使记》 The Wings of the Dove 《鸽翼》 The Golden Bowl 《金碗》 James’s international theme • • are set against a large international background, usually between Europe and America focus on the confrontation of the two different cultures with two different groups of people representing two different value systems Major Subjects: • • • Children: James wrote about children as children, not as small adults. He examined their minds, their psychology and accepted it as valid, ‘What Maisie Knew ’ New woman: James’s fiction is filled with female characters, not as sexual objects, never married, reticent form sexual passion. Artist: Many of Jame’s novels and short stories deal with the artist, whether he is a painter, sculptor, author, or playwright. --- Theory of Fiction (‘The Art of Fiction’(1884)) • The novelist must be faithful to life as it actually appears. • There must be freedom for the artist to choose what subject he will deal with. • The novel must be regarded as an organic whole with every part a functioning contributor to the achieving of the novel’s ultimate expression • Dramatization: showing rather than telling • Psychological realism • James has been called the first of the ―modern psychological novelists,‖ and ―a realist of the inner life‖ • Ambiguity: uncertainty Chapter 9 Local Colorism?Mark Twain Local Colorism Local Color Fiction: • Local colorism as a trend became dominant in American literature in the late 1860s and early 1870s • The frontier humorists who had been popular with their ―tall tales‖ before the Civil War paved the way for local color fiction. Basic Features • Local color fiction presents a locale which is distinguished form the outside world. • Local color fiction describes the exotic and the picturesque. It describes things that are not common in other regions. • Local color fiction also attempts to show things as they as they are. • Local color fiction glorifies the past. (nostalgic about the past) • Local color fiction stresses the influence of setting on character. Representatives: Mark Twain(马克•吐温) Samuel Langhorne Clemens(塞缪尔•朗赫恩•克莱门斯) (1835-1910) Mark Twain(1835-1910) Pseudonym 笔名 Major Works: rog of Calaveras County‖ ―卡拉韦拉斯县驰名的跳蛙‖------a frontier tale-----He became nationally famous ―the two advantages‖ • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer ?汤姆索耶历险记? • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ?哈克贝里费恩历险记? 《镀金时代》 written in collaboration with Charles Dudley 《密西西比河上》 These works contain bitter attacks on the human race • • • • ’s Court 《亚瑟王朝里的康涅狄格州美国佬》 The Man That Corrupted Hardleybug 《败坏了哈德莱堡的人》 The Mysterious Stranger 《神秘的陌生人》 Autobiography The Innocents Abroad ?傻子国外旅行记? Roughing It《艰难岁月》 Pudd’nhead Wilson《傻瓜维尔逊》 The Prince and the Pauper《王子与贫民》 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court 《 在亚瑟王朝的美国佬》 American Claimant《美国申请人》 These works show Mark Twain’s attitude towards the Chinese • • • • "Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy"《残害一个男童》 "Goldsmith’s Friend Abroad Again," 《哥德斯密斯的朋友又出国了》 "The Treaty with China"《与中国的条约》 "To the Person Sitting in Darkness"《致坐在黑暗中的人》 s Writing Features Mark Twain’ • local colour • • • represented social life through portraits of local places which he knew best drew from his own rich fund of knowledge of people and places tall tales (highly exaggerated) -----a texture of most local color literature，a kink of humor • • • Mark Twain was the first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs, who descended from him." he used colloquial language, vernacular language, dialects humour----is of witty remarks mocking at small things and making people laugh, is a kind of artistic style used to criticize the social injustice Chapter 10 American Naturalism?Crane?Norris?Dreiser?Robinson American Naturalism Background: • Charles Darwin (Darwinism): the struggle of existence, • survival of the fittest, natural selection Major Features: • Humans are controlled by laws of heredity and environment • The universe is cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desires. Common points of American naturalists: • • • • They ventured the forbidden subjects such as sex, death, and evidence. They wrote in a daring, open, and direct manner. it disappeared with WWI. But American naturalists were evidently original and experimental in their respective styles. • Naturalism as a literary movement was short-lived as the unique conditions that promoted Stephen Crane斯蒂芬?克莱恩1871-1900 Magic: • A Girl of the Streets街头女郎梅姬(美国文学史上首次站在同情立场上描写受 辱妇女的 悲惨命运); • The Red Badge of Courage红色英勇勋章; • The Open Boat小划子; • The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky新娘来到黄天镇 Frank Norris弗兰克?诺里斯1870-1902 • Moran of the Lady Letty茱蒂夫人号上的莫兰(romantic); • Mc-Teague麦克提格(naturalistic); • The Epic of the Wheat(realistic)小麦诗史(The Octopus章鱼,The Pit小麦交易所); • A Deal in Wheat and Other Stories of the Old and New West小麦交易所及其他 新老西部故 事 Theodore Dreiser西奥多?德莱塞1871-1945 • Sister Carrie嘉莉姐妹; • Jennie Gerhardt珍妮姑娘; • Trilogy of Desire欲望三部曲(Financer金融家,The Titan巨人,The Stoic); • An American Tragedy美国的悲剧(被称为美国最伟大的小说); • Nigger Jeff黑人杰弗 Edwin Arlington Robinson鲁宾逊1869-1935 • Captain Craig克雷格上尉---诗体小说; • The Town Down the River河上的城镇; • The Man Against the Sky衬托着天空的人; • Avon’s Harvest沃冯的收成; • Collected Poems诗集 Jack London(1876-1916) • ―The Son of the Wolf‖ • ―The Call of the Wild‖ • ―The People of the Abyss‖ • ―The Sea Wolf‖ • ―Martin Eden‖ O. Henry(1862-1910) Chapter 11 Imagism?Pounds Imagism: Major features: • --- it was one of the most essential technique of writing poetry in modern period. • --- with a spirit of revolt against conventions, imagism was anti—romantic and anti-victorian • --- IN a sense, imagism was equivalent to naturalism in fiction, (Naturalism was based on scientific observation, a feeling of determinism that the reader should look only at the outside objects with no attempt to get inside of them. The imagist writers also had the same feeling of determinism that the reader should look only at the image. If the reader looks at the image, it will evoke an emotion immediately. ) • --- it produced free verse without imposing a rhythmical pattern. • --- Imagism tried to record objective observations of an object or a situation without interpretation or comment by the poet. (suggestion rather than compete statement) The most outstanding figures: Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, Hilda Doolittle. The form of free verse (Ezra Loomis Pound) Ezra Pound 庞德 (1885—1973) Pound’s Imagist Theories • Imagism flourished from 1909 to 1917 and involved(含括)quite a number of British and American writers and poets. • The Imagist Movement advanced Modernism in arts and concentrated on reforming the medium of poetry as opposed to (而不是)Romanticism. The three Imagist poetic principles 1. of poetic subjects, 2. 3. andin the sequence of the musical phrase rather than in the sequence of a ―‖. (直接表现主客观事物,删除一切无助于―表现‖的词语,以口语节奏代替传统格 律。) Pound’s Major Literary Works 1) Cathay 《华夏集》《神州集》 《中国诗章》 2) Hugh Selwyn Mauberley 《休赛尔温•毛伯利》------ his disillusionment and his view of his own career 3) The Cantos ?诗章? -------encyclopedic epic poem • It explores western civilization from the classical past through the medieval period and 4) ―A Pact‖ ―合同‖，―协约‖ 5) ―In a Station of the Metro‖ ―在地铁站里‖ Comments on Ezra Pound • Ezra Pound is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining (characterizing) • In the early twentieth century, he opened an influential exchange of work and ideas • His own significant contributions to poetry begin with his promulgation (spread) of • He stressed clarity, precision, and economy of language, and foregoing (earlier) traditional rhyme and meter in order to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase . Chapter 12 T. S. Eliot?Steven?Williams T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965) His works: 1. Poetry 1) Eliot’s early poetical works——employing myths, religious symbolism, and literary allusion, signified a break with 19th-century poetic traditions, express the anguish and barrenness of modern life and the isolation of the individual, particularly as reflected in the failure of love. Their models were the metaphysical poets, Dante, and French Symbolists. Their meter ranged from the lyrical to the conversational. 2) turned from spiritual desolation to hope for human salvation. his best work is a group of four long poems entitled Four Quartets, written between 1935 and 1941, which led to his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1948 and made him one of the most distinguished literary figures of the 20th century. 2. Eliot was an extraordinarily influential critic, rejecting Romantic notions of unfettered originality and arguing for the impersonality of great art. His later criticism attempts to support Christian culture against what he saw as the empty and fragmented values of secularism. His outstanding critical works are contained in: tion of Culture (1948). 3. His plays attempt to revitalize verse drama and usually treat the same themes as in his poetry. The most important is: His Style of Poetry: 1) Eliot attempted to produce ―pure imagery‖ with no added meaning or symbolism. 2) He began adding one image to another in such a way that his attitude and mood became clear. In his best works, the image, his own philosophy and the music of words are all harmoniously blended although he mingled grand images with commonplace ones and combined trivial and tawdry images with traditional poetic subjects. 3) Eliot rarely made his meaning explicit. The internal logic of his poems is carried out by swiftly accumulating images, suggestions and echoes, depending for their interpretation upon the imagination of the reader. William Carlos Williams(1883-1963) 威廉?卡罗斯?威廉斯 • Des Imagistes意像派(意像派的第一部诗选) • 诗集:Sour Grapes; • Spring and All春; • The Desert Music; • The Journey of Love爱的历程; • Collected Poems; • Complete Poems; • Collected Later Poems; • Pictures from Brueghel布留盖尔的肖像; • Paterson佩特森(5卷长诗); • Asphodal, That Green Flower常青花日光兰(长诗) • Red Wheelbarrow红色手推车; s Lament in Spring寡妇的春怨; • The Widow’ • The Dead Baby; —致父亲; • The Sparrow ,to My Father麻雀 • Proletarian Portrait无产阶级画像(from An Early Martyr先驱); • The Great American Novels伟大的美国小说; • In the American Grain美国性格; • Autobiography自传 Chapter 13 Frost Robert Frost His life: 1. Robert Frost was a great poet who was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California. When Frost was two years old, his mother fled to Lawrence, Massachusetts, to get away from her husband, who was a drunkard. She stayed there until her second baby was born, Jeannie, Robert’s sister. Then they went back to San Francisco on a train. A few years later, Robert’s father died, so they took the body to Lawrence to be buried in the 2. After this rough beginning, Robert went on to become a great poet. He married Elinor 3. Robert won four Pultizer awards and read The Gift Outright at the inauguration of John. F. Kennedy. He died on January 29, 1963 of a heart attack. He was 88 years old. His works: 1. Collection of poems: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) A Boy’s Will(1913) North of Boston(1914) New Hamphshire(1923) Collected Poems(1930) A Further Range(1936) A Witness Tree(1942) 2. Poems: 1) 2) 3) 4) Birches After Apple-Picking The Road Not Taken Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening雪夜伫立林边有感 • It is a peaceful poem and makes man feel relaxed when we read the lines: "The only other sounds the sweep of easy wind and downy flake." Frost also uses alliteration and repetition in his poems. The rhyme scheme he uses is a-a-b-a. It is one of the most quietly moving of Frost’s lyrics. On the surface, it seems to be simple, descriptive verses, records of close observation, graphic and homely pictures. It uses the simplest terms and commonest words. But it is deeply meditative, adding far-reaching meanings to the homely music. It uses its superb craftsmanship to come to a climax of responsibility: the promises to be kept, the obligation to be fulfilled. Few poems have said so much in so little. • • Chapter 14 Fitzgerald?Hemingway The Lost Generation The Lost Generation is a term used to describe a group of American writers who were rebelling against what America had become by the 1900’s. Seeking the bohemian lifestyle and rejecting the values of American materialism, a number of intellectuals, poets, artists and writers fled to France in the post World War I years. Paris was the center of it all. Background: • Many young American writers and artists lived abroad for months and years. • Marxism and Freudianism were widely studied. • There occurred in America an intense reexamination of the structure of literature and of the nature of the critical activity itself. • The term ―Lost Generation‖ was first used by Getrude Stein. • It means this generation had lost the beautiful sense of the calm idyllic past. • Stein’s comment suggests the ambiguous and pointless lives of expatriates as they aimlessly wandered about the continent, drinking, making love, and traveling from place to place and from party to party. • Being cut off from their past, disillusioned in reality, and without a meaningful future to fall on, they were lost in disillusionment and existential voids. Excellent writers: • Sherwood Anderson, • • • • • • Henry Louis Mencken, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Francis Scott Fitzgerald(1896-940) Francis Scott Fitzgerald said to be representative of the American viewpoint because: • • • • He was one of America’s greatest dreamers. He reflected America’s exaggerated hopes and dreams, especially The American Dream. He was self-indulgent. He was passionate and committed and he died ―with his boots on.‖ Major Works: • • • • • • • 1922--The Beautiful and the Damned 1922--Tales of the Jazz Age (short stories) 1923--The Vegetable (a play) 1925--The Great Gatsby – the defining novel of the 20’s 1934--Tender is the Night (last finished novel) This Side of Paradise------This Side of Paradise captured the hopes of success of Americans but also the fears of failure and poverty. The Last Tycoon The Roaring 20’s ’s are also referred to as ―The Jazz Age,‖ a term coined by F. Scott Fitzgerald U.S. had emerged as a world power. nded with the stock market crash of 1929. American life in such a way that it has never been the same since. Ernest Hemingway1899-1961 Hemingway as "Kid Balzac" Hemingway - himself a great sportsman - liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters - tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories, some of which are collected in Men Without Women (1927) and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938). Hemingway died in 1961. Influence One of the most famous American novelist, short-story writer and essayist, whose deceptively simple prose style have influenced wide range of writers. Hemingway was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature. Main works • • • Hemingway’s first novel, Another title is Fiesta (《节 • The Sun Also Rises (1926)--- 日》) A Farewell to Arms (1929) For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) The Old Man and the Sea (1952)--- It is the story of an epic struggle between an old, seasoned fisherman and the greatest catch of his life. Chapter 15 The Southern Renaissance?William Faulkner William Faulkner(1897-1962) 威廉.福克纳 The theme of writing: the universal theme of ―the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself‖人类 心灵与自己冲突是宇宙永恒的主题。 Works: • • • • Soldier’s Pay and Mosquitoes-----------first two novels ―The Sound and the Fury‖《喧嚣与骚动》---------mature work ―Absalom, Absalom!‖ ―Go Down, Moses‖ Narrative method tream of consciousness 意识流 1、 s 2、 multiple point of view, narrator多角度，多个叙述者 comments: Faulkner has been considered America’s greatest novelist to come out of the twentieth century. The best of his fictions, which deals with basic human nature and the basic pattern of human behavior, rank among the most enduring works of world literature. In writing about his land and about ―man in the ageless. Eternal struggles,‖ Faulkner speaks for both his people and humanity, and becomes as timeless and spaceless as his stories. John Steinbeck(1902-1968) The foremost novelist of the American Depression.美国大萧条时期最杰出的小说 家。 Major Works: • • ―Of Mice and Men‖《人鼠之间》 portrayed the tragic friendship between two migrant workers ―The Grapes of Wrath‖《愤怒的葡萄》regarded as masterpiece. O’Neill(1888-1953) Eugene O’Neill is unquestionably America’s greatest playwright. He won the Pulitzer Prize four times and was the only dramatist ever to win a Nobel Prize (1936). He is widely acclaimed "founder of the American drama." His life and writing career: O’Neill was born in New York on October 16, 1888 into a theatrical family. He grew up in New London, Connecticut, and spent his early years with his parents on theatrica1 road tours. He received university education for one year and later traveled all over the world. He avidly read up on dramatic literature, and cultivated an interest in play writing. In 1914, he attended Professor George Pierce Baker’s drama workshop at Harvard, where his career as a dramatist began. Since then, O’Neill had been wholly dedicated to the mission as a dramatist. His major plays: During all his career as a dramatist, O’Neill wrote and published about forty-nine plays altogether of various lengths. objective factors, and this theme is dramatized more explicitly in and of O’Neill’s personal vision, showing us that life is a closed circle of possibi1ities from which it is impossible to escape. Between 1920 and 1924 came his prominent achievements in symbolic expressionism: The Emperor Jones (1920), The Hairy Ape (1922), All God’s chillun Got Wings (1924), and Desire Under the Elms (1924). Built on the success of these expressionistic experimentations, O’Neill reached out to extend his mastery of the stage and worked up to the summit of his career. He concerned himself with some realistic forms to contain his tragic vision in a number of his plays, such as The non-- Great God Brown (l926), Lazarus Laughed (1927). With the winning of , O’Neill consolidated his experience of two decades of playwriting and paved the way to the honor of the Nobel Prize in 1936. Late in his life, he produced the best and greatest plays of the modern American theater. The Iceman Cometh (l946) proves to be a masterpiece in the way it is a complex, ironic, deeply moving exploration of human existence, written out of a profound insight into human nature and constructed with tremendous skill and logic. Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956) can be read autobiographically. However, like most great works of literature, the play reaches beyond its immediate subject, dedicated not only to the life of the American family, but also "to the life of Man, to Life itself." As a product of hard-won art, Long Day’s Journey Into Night has gained its status as a world classic and simultaneously marks the climax of O’Neill’s literary career and the coming of age of American drama. Themes: O’Neill is always remembered for his tragic view of life and most of his plays deal with the basic issues of human existence and predicament: life and death, illusion and disillusion, alienation and communication, dream and reality, self and society, desire and frustration, etc. His characters in the plays are described as seeking meaning and purpose in their lives in different ways, some through love, some through religion, others through revenge, but all meet disappointment and despair. As a playwright, O’Neill himself was constantly wrestling with these issues and struggling with the perplexity about the truth of life. He was searching for an answer both psychologically and artistically, and his dramatic thought fol1owed a tragic pattern running through all his plays, from a celebration and exaltation of "pipe dreams," the romantic dream so to speak, to the doubt about the reality of the dream or the inevitability of the defeat. So, his final dramas became" transcendental," in the way that the dramatization of man’s effort in finding the secret of life results in a reconciliation with the tragic impossibility. Achievements: (1) He introduced the realistic or even the naturalistic aspect of life into the American theater. He borrowed freely grom the best traditions of European dramas, be it Greek tragedies, or the realism of Ibsen, or the expressionism of Stringberg, and fused them into the organic of his own. In those expressionistic plays, abstract and symbolic stage sets are used to set off against the emotional inner selves and subjective states of mind; lighting and music are employed to convey the changes of mood. (2) He borrowed freely from modern literary techniques such as the stream-of-consciousness device with the help of which he managed to reveal the emotional and psychological complexities of modern man. He made use of setting and state property to help in his dramatic representation (3) As to his language, O’Neill frequently wrote the lines in dialect, or spelled words in ways which indicate a particular accent or manner of speech. This, sometimes, makes his plays difficult to read, but when they are spoken aloud, the sense becomes clear and the meaning is amplified by the accent. O’Neill’s ceaseless experimentation enriched American drama and influenced later playwrights.