1.1殖民时期

Major stages of American Literature：

1. The Colonial and Revolutionary Period: 1607 --- 1810

2. The Romantic Period: 1810 --- 1860

3. The Realistic Period: 1860 --- 1914

4. The Modern Period: 1914 --- 1945

5. The Period of Pluralism: 1945 --- the present

The Colonial and Revolutionary Period (1607 ---1810)

1. The Colonial Period : 1607 --- 1750（启蒙运动，第一次工业革命）

2. The Revolutionary Period: 1750 --- 1810（Charles Brown去世， The Sketch Book, 1819）

Historical Background: The Colonization of North America

 Indians of North America

 1492, Christopher Columbus

 Migration from Europe

 1607, more than 120 British men founded the first English Colony, Jamestown in Virginia

 1620, “May Flower”, Puritans, Plymouth colony in New England

 1630, Massachusetts Bay colony

 Thirteen English colonies (1607-1733)

Colonial Literature

Early American writers: Captain John Smith (Jamestown)； William Bradford (Plymouth)； John Winthrop (Massachusetts Bay)

Early poets: Anne Bradstreet； Edward Taylor

Anne Bradstreet (1612 — 1672) 安妮·布雷兹特里特

 First famous poet in North America, known as the “Tenth Muse”

 Major works:

The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America (1650) 《最近在美洲出现的第十位缪斯》

-- the first collection of poems in North America.

Contemplations 《沉思录》

Literature in the Age of Reason and Revolution (1750—1810)

Historical Background

 1. War of Independence

 2. Enlightenment (science, order, reason; deism 自然神论; Jean Jaques Rouseau, Social Contract社会契约论,)

Overview of the Literary Scene

Major Thinkers and Writers：

Thomas Jefferson: “Declaration of Independence”

Thomas Paine: “Common Sense”, “The American Crisis”

Benjamin Franklin: “Poor Richard’s Almanac”, “Autobiography”

Philip Freneau: “The Wild Honeysuckle” (金银花p. 23), “The Indian Burying Ground”

Jonathan Edwards: religious, a minister

Major works of Tomas Jefferson

1. Declaration of Independence, 1776

2. Notes on the State of Virginia 《 弗吉尼亚笔记》

托马斯·潘恩 （1737— 1809）

Most influential thinker and writer in the War of Independence

Major works：Common Sense 《常识》；The Rights of Man (1791 — 1792 )《人的权利》

The American Crisis 《美洲危机》 （“The Times that Try Men’s Souls”《考验人的灵魂的时代》)；

The Age of Reason 《理性的时代》back

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

 Statesman, essayist, orator, philosopher, ambassador, scientist, inventor, publisher

 “master of each and mastered by none”—Herman Melville

 One of the Founding Fathers of America

 Symbol of America in the Age of Enlightenment

 The only American to sign the four documents that created the United States:

the Declaration of Independence ； the treaty of alliance with France；

the treaty of peace with England； The constitution

 The symbol of American Dream, a self-made man

Major Works：

Poor Richard’s Almanac (1732) 《穷理查历书》

General Characteristics: As an author, Franklin is best known for his philosophy of the practical and the useful. Franklin’s energies were bent toward improving the conditions of this mundane existence.

Style:

Simple, easy, natural way of relating events；

Simplicity, practicality, suggestiveness, common sense, was his leading attributes.

Colonial Prose Writers

John Smith (1580 - 1631) 约翰·史密斯, the first American writer

A true Relation of Virginia (1608) 《关于弗吉尼亚的真实叙述》

A Description of New England （1616)《新英格兰概述》

William Bradford (1590-1657), 威廉·布拉福德 ，“Father of American History”.

Of Plymouth Plantation《 普利茅斯种植园史》

John Winthrop (1588-1649), 约翰·温斯罗普

The History of New England 《新英格兰史》

1.2本杰明 富兰克林

Major Works：

Poor Richard’s Almanac: household book

Collection of poems, essays, common sense； witticisms； Instruction to people in their development of character, career and relationship with people； Franklin’s devotion to better the world as he believes a practical idea reflects an aspect of truth

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Account of a man rising from obscurity and poverty to fame and wealth

Features：Puritan document, a record of self-examination and self-improvement；

A book that places Franklin as the spokesman of American Enlightenment

Style: plain, direct, concrete, easy, leisurely and morally conscious

2.1浪漫主义

Historical Background

Time Range: From the end of the 17th century through the outbreak of the Civil War.

National independence, democracy

Rising materialism and business --leisure and wealth

Religious dogma, rationalism --spiritual void精神空虚

Features： American Romanticism was both imitative and independent.

Imitative: English and European Romanticists, about home, family, nature, children and idealized love, etc.

Independent: Emerson and Whitman, on major problems of American life, like the westward expansion and democracy and equality, etc.

Authors in Romanticism：

Washington Irving: Father of the American literature --The Sketch Book

James Fenimore Cooper: Father of the American novel -- “Leather stocking Tales”

Nathaniel Hawthorne -- The Scarlet Letter

Herman Melville -- Moby Dick

Edgar Ellen Poe -- The Fall of the House of Usher; The Tell-Tale Heart

Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Nature, The American Scholar

Henry David Thoreau – Walden瓦尔登湖

Poets: Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass; Emily Dickinson: “My life closed twice before its close”

2.2先验主义( 浪漫主义)

Transcendentalism: Proposes a belief in a higher reality than that found in sense experience or in a higher kind of knowledge than that achieved by human reason. Suggests that every individual is capable of discovering this higher truth on his or her own, through intuition

 Movement began with Emerson’s informal club in mid 18th C.

Major Tenets and Features: 宗旨和特色

Spirituality in the universe: “Oversoul” (All people, animals, things are connected and share the same soul. )

Importance of the individual: to explain the world in terms of an individual (All knowledge began with self-knowledge)

Nature as symbolic of God (Oversoul): a living mystery, full of signs

New England Transcendentalists:

Magazine: The Dial

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Nature”; “Divinity School Address”; “Self-Reliance”; “The American Scholar"

Margaret Fuller; Bronson Alcott

Henry David Thoreau: Walden; “Civil Disobedience”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882):

Major Works:

1. Nature: Emerson’s best known work

2. “The American Scholar”: America’s declaration of Intellectual Independence

Important views in Emerson’s Philosophy

 Oversoul: ultimate source of the universe, its transcendence connecting all in one

 Individual: unique and infinite in his power as a part of the Oversoul

 Nature: emblematic 象征性的of the spiritual world, spiritual guide

Henry David Thoreau

Close friend of Emerson

Tried out the Transcendentalist ideas by recording his experiment of essential living in Walden

explained his rejection to pay the tax in “Civil Disobedience”

3.1梅尔维尔(1819—1891) Herman Melvill

Received recognition until the 1920s; “He has a very high and noble nature”

Three important things in his life: 1)Going out to sea; 2) His marriage; 3) His friendship with Hawthorne

Moby-Dick «白鲸»，«莫比•狄克»: An encyclopedia百科全书 of everything -- history, philosophy, religion, the whaling industry; a Shakespearean tragedy of man fighting against fates

Symbols in Moby Dick:

1. The Pequod: a symbol of doom

2. Moby Dick: a metaphor for the human relationship with the Christain God: God is unkown and cannot be pinned down

Themes of Moby Dick

Themes -- the sense of futility and meaninglessness; alienation; loneliness and suicidal individualism; rejection and quest

1) Melville's bleak view (negative attitude): the sense of futility and meaninglessness of the world.

His attitude to life is “Everlasting Nay”

Man in this universe lives a meaningless and futile life, meaningless because futile. Man cannot overcome nature. Once he attempts to seek power over it he is doomed.

2) Alienation (far away from each other) -- exists between man and man, man and society, and man and nature.

Ahab cuts himself off from his family, stays away from his crew, hates Moby Dick and becomes a devil rushing to his doom.

3) Loneliness and suicidal individualism (individualism causing disaster and death)

-- The basic pattern of nineteenth-century American life

Ahab: too much of a self-reliant individual to be a good human being -- a victim of extreme individualism

→Moby Dick is a negative reflection upon Transcendentalism

The price of self-reliance is death.

4）rejection and quest:

Voyaging for Ishmael has become a journey in quest of knowledge and values.

starts out feeling bad → hopes to find an ideal life → comes to see the folly of Ahab seeking to conquer nature → feels the significance of love and companionship → learns to accept, n attitude which ensures his survival

3.2 Nathaniel Hawthorne

Major Works:

Twice-Told Tales: collection of short stories

“Young Goodman Brown”

“The Minister’s Black Veil”

“Dr. Rappacini’s Daughter”

Mosses from an Old Manse

The Scarlet Letter

The House of the Seven Gables

The Blithedale Romance

The Marble Faun

红字

Major Characters

● Hester Prynne: proud, strong-willed, a character of maternal love, transcends her sin through her acts of mercy

● Arthur Dimmesdale: indecisive, a tortured soul, saved finally through public confession

● Roger Chillingworth: unsympathetic, revengeful, “leech” that suck life out, a worse sinner

Artistic features：

● Puritan severity towards sex and matrimony结婚

● Concern with effect of sin and goodness, redemption: Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth

● Three Scaffold scenes

● Hawthorne's use of psychological analysis

● Symbolism “A”

4.1Walt Whitman (1819-1891)

Life

Born into a working class background

Worked as printer’s apprentice, teacher, editor and journalist

Wrote short stories before he worked at Leaves of Grass

Travels in New Orlends : experience with nature and slavery

Leaves of Grass: eight editions

Leaves of Grass

Some best known : “Song of Myself”, “I Sing the Body Electric”, "There Was a Child Went Forth" “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, ”O Captain! My Captain!”, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”

Writers like Longfellow, Holmes were shocked by his book:

a. unconventional rhyme, meter (free verse)

b. erotic imagery and themes: “I Sing the Body Electric.”

Whitman’s status

Whitman stands as one of two giants of American poetry in 19th C.

a. Found new subjects for typical American type of poetry.

b. rejected conventional themes, traditional rhyme

He influenced Harlem Renaissance writers as Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson.

Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot (Modernist poets) were also influenced by Whitman.

From “Song of Myself”

4.2艾米丽·迪金森Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Life and Literary Career

Born into a Calvinist family in Massachusetts, attended Amherst Academy and Holyoke Seminary

Confined to household life, she spent most of her leisure time writing poetry

Over 1700 poems, only a few published in her lifetime

Posthumous publication

Features of Writing

● Illustration of her religious-ethical and political-social ideas

● Basic tone: tragic (Predestination, pessimism)

● Yearning for religious certitude (“At last to pray is left”)

● Perplexities in search of love and help

● Not always believe in God’s plan

This is my letter

This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,--
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.

这是我给这个世界的信件，
它则从不写给我，―
自然告知的简单消息，
用温柔的庄严。

Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!

她的信息已交到

我无法看见的人手里；

出于对她的爱，亲爱的同胞，

请给予我轻柔的裁判！

Dickinson’s choice of subjects

Love: “With a Flower”, “Proof”

Nature: “A Service of Song”, “Summer Shower”

Faith and Doubt

Death and immortality: “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died”, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, “My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close”, “I Died for Beauty”

Miscellaneous: “Tell all the Truth but tell It Slant”, “Wild Nights”

On death

At the centre of her poetry

Reveals Emily ever ready for death

Shows her mostly at a tranquil, meditative state of mind

Concerned about death as an entry into immortality

Dickinson’s techniques

Regular meter:

Quatrains; Tetrameter四音步, trimeter三音步; second and fourth lines rhyme (ABCB) in iambic pentameter

Her originality: Capitalizations and dashes; Metaphors; symbolism

A 9-line stanza in which the first 8 lines are in iambic pentameter抑扬格五音步诗行

while the 9th line in iambic hexameter 抑扬格六音步诗行.

Dickinson’s status

Her unconventionality influenced modern poets like Adrienne Rich, Richard Wilbur, Ezra Pound and William Stafford.

Along with Walt Whitman, Dickinson is considered a true genius of American poetry of the 19th

“Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-

Because I could not …

With A Flower

Proof

Love: Though she was lonely and isolated, Emily appears to have loved deeply, perhaps only those who have "loved and lost" can love, with an intensity and desire which can never be fulfilled in the reality of the lovers' touch.

A Service of Song

Nature: A fascination with nature consumed Emily. She summed all her lyrics as "the simple news that nature told," she loved "nature's creatures" no matter how insignificant - the robin, the hummingbird, the bee, the butterfly, the rat .Only the serpent gave her a chill.

5.1现实主义American Realism (1865—1900)/(from the 1870s to the 1880s)

By the 1870s New England Renaissance had waned. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the age of realism arrived. Realism became a major trend in the 70s and 80s of the 19th century.

Historical Background

◆ Industrialization and expansion west of the Mississippi River

The Industrialization moved the country from a rural economy to an urban one. With this shift came the accompanying social ills, which began to appear in American literature.

◆ American was becoming the “melting-pot” society with the influx of millions of immigrants.

During the thirty-year period of 1870-1900, the population almost doubled, from 39 million to 76 million. The increase is largely due to the influx of European immigrants.

Social &cultural context

1. Aftermath of the Civil War

The Civil War broke out in 1861, which marked a change in America. After the Civil War, the United States was transformed into an industrial and urban nation. On the surface there were elegance, security and comfort; but underneath there were all disconcert and disappointment.

2 .Question on the Transcendentalists’ assumptions.

Great wealth and economic power became more and more concentrated in the hands of the few. So the nation became a land of contrasting wealth and poverty; political and commercial corruption grew widespread.

All these made its people begin to question the assumptions shared by the Transcendentalists — natural goodness, the optimistic view of nature and man, benevolent God.

3. A great interest in the realities of life.

The people of the United States began to tire of the sentimental feelings of the Romanticism after the Civil War, just as they turned away from Puritanism at the close of the 18th century. A new inspiration came over them. Instead of thinking about the mysteries of life and death, people’s attention was now directed to the interesting features of everyday existence. Therefore a new spirit—realistic attitude—entered American literature, which started a new period in American writing known as the rise of Realism.

4. The close of the Frontier.
Now that the frontier was about to close, a re-examination of life began. The worth of the American dream, the idealized, romantic view of man and his life in the New World, began to loss its hold on the imagination of the people. Beneath the glittering surface of prosperity there lay suffering and unhappiness. Disillusionment and frustration were widely felt.

Realistic Literature

1. Propose of art : produce reality.

2. Individuals confronted by hardship and moral dilemma

3. The world of the commonplace, values of common humanity

4. Present characters’ action directly

Features of American Realism

As a literary movement realism came in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a reaction against “the lie” of romanticism and sentimentalism. It expressed the concern for the world of experience, of commonplace, and for the familiar and the low.

Realism is the theory of writing in which familiar aspects of contemporary life and everyday scenes are represented in a straightforward or matter-of-fact manner. It stresses truthful treatment of material. It is anti-romantic, anti-sentimental, and without interest in nature, death, etc. Writers would describe the charm of human character reacting under various circumstances or authors picture the pioneers of the Far West, the new immigrants, and the struggles of the working classes.

 1. Anti-romantic, anti-sentimental ; truthful description of life真实性

 2. typical character and plot under typical setting人物、情节与背景的典型性、代表性

 3. Objective rather than idealized view of human nature and experience客观性

 4. Concern for social and psychological problems关注社会与个人心理问题

Principles of Realism

 1. Insistence upon and defense of "the experienced commonplace".

 2. Character more important than plot.

 3. Attack upon romanticism and romantic writers.

 4. Emphasis upon morality often self-realized and upon an examination of idealism.

 5. Concept of realism as a realization of democracy.

Characteristics of Realistic Writing

(1). the philosophy of Realism is known as non-transcendental. The purpose of writing is to instruct and to entertain. Realists were pragmatic, relativistic, democratic, and experimental.

(2). the subject matter of Realism is drawn from "our experience," - it treated the common, the average, the non-extreme, the representative, the probable.

(3). The morality of Realism is intrinsic, integral, relativistic - relations between people and society are explored.

(4). The style of Realism is the vehicle which carries realistic philosophy, subject matter, and morality. Emphasis is placed upon scenic presentation, de-emphasizing authorial comment and evaluation. There is an objection towards the omniscient point of view. 无所不知的

American Literature in Realistic Period

 Main Writers

William Dean Howells: 威廉·狄思·豪威尔斯

the founder of American realism and the most prominent critic of the entire realistic period. The main exponent of American realism, he vigorously defended realism as “the truthful treatment of material.”

Henry James: One of the fathers of the psychological novel. His short stories have had much influence on modern American writers.

Mark Twain: make contribution to the development of realism. He made colloquial speech an accepted, respectable literary medium in the literary history.

Bret Harte: his region was the Far West.

The three dominant figures of the realistic period in American literature are Mark Twains, Henry James, and William Dean Howells.

5.2 Howells and Henry James

William Dean Howells

He was the most influential. The champion of the new school, felt that he must write what he observed and knew (“He …can only write of what his fleshly eyes have seen,” as Henry James says of him.)

Life and experience

Born in Ohio, began at the age of nine to work in his father’s printing office. His formal education was very slight and he had to educate himself in the pressroom and from his father’s bookcase.

• Autobiography: A Boy’s Town (1890)

Criticism: In his life, he spread the credo 信条of realism. Most of his literary-aesthetic ideas are best elucidated in his Criticism and Fiction. 《批评与小说》

Career and ideas

1. editor of Atlantic Monthly (1871-1881)

2. Howells’ definition of realism:

a. “fidelity to experience and probability of motive”; b. “common feelings of commonplace people”

Other works

• A Modern Instance （1881） 《现代婚姻》

• Indian Summer （1886） 《晚秋之暧》

• Annie Kilburn （ 1888） 《安妮·吉尔伯恩》

• A Hazard of New Fortunes （1890） 《时来运转》

• A Chance Acquaintance

Features of His Works:

1) Optimistic tone; 2) Moral development/ethics; 3) Lacking of psychological depth

A Brief Assessment

A prolific 多产的writer, Howells is regarded as "the father of American Realism." Although not an exciting writer, he broke new grounds which led to the achievements of Mark Twain and Henry James. In Howells' view, writing should be "simple, natural, and honest" and should not delve into "romantic exaggeration." His famous definition of the function of a writer indicates his limitations as a Realist writer and of Realism as he conceived of it: "Our novelists, therefore, concern themselves with the more smiling aspects of life, which are the more American, and seek the universal in the individual rather than the social interests."

Henry James

Literary Creation

1. Period I (1862-1882): Innocence in a Corrupted World -- The Portrait of a Lady

2. Period II (1882-1895): Inter-personal relationship

3. Period III (1895- 1916): The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl

Literary views

Revealed in his famous essay “The Art of Fiction”

The aim of novel: represent life

Common, even ugly side of life

Social function of art

Avoiding omniscient 无所不知的point of view (minimal intervention of the author; consciousness of characters )

Works: A voluminous大量的 writer (novels, travel papers, critical essays, literary portraits, play, autobiographies, letters)

Three periods of his writing:

1. (1865—1882), “international theme” (American innocence in face of European sophistication):

The American （1877） 《美国人》;

Daisy Miller （1879） 《苔瑟·密勒》;

The Portrait of a Lady （1881） 《贵妇人的画像》

2. (1882 – 1895), studies of inter-personal relationship and play-writing, poorly received

The Bostonians （1886） 《波士顿人》

The Princess Casamassima （1886） 《卡萨玛西玛公主》

3. (1895 -- 1916), “the major phase”, the summit of his art, a return to “international theme”

1) Novellas about childhood and adolescence:

What Maisie Knew （1897） 《梅吉的见闻》; The Turn of the Screw 《拧螺丝》

2) Three great novels: The Wings of the Dove （1902） 《鸽翼》; The Ambassadors （1903） 《专使》; The Golden Bowl （1904） 《金碗》

Theme and Style

• The international theme: American innocence in face of European sophistication, Am. Simplicity confronted with the complex European world of art and affairs

• The genteel society as his main characters

• Psychological realism

• The detached-narrator point of view

• Refined and polished prose style, large vocabulary

James and psychological analysis:

James, by emphasizing the inner awareness and inward movements of his characters in face of outside occurrences rather than merely delineating描写 their environment in any detail, became probably the first of the modern psychological analysts in the novel and anticipated in his works the modern stream-of-consciousness technique so widely employed in the first decades of the century.

Henry James - A Brief Assessment

He is a master of character portrayal and has extensively used the "stream of consciousness" method in his fictional writing.

6.1乡土文学Local Colorism

Time period: 1860s to the end of 19th cent.

Definition: Local color is fiction and poetry that focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region.

Chief Characteristics: (p.130)

Emphasis of elements which characterize a local culture, such as speech, customs, and mores peculiar to one particular place.

Emphasis of physical setting and those distinctive qualities of landscape which condition human thought and behavior.

Major principles of Local Colorism

(1). A specific locus, whether it be geographical or temporal.

(2). Emphasis on the setting and the character of a district or of an era, as marked by its customs, dialect, costumes, landscape, or other peculiarities that have escaped standardizing cultural influences.

(3). Using words, phrases, and slang that were native to the particular region in which the story took place.

Difference between local color and realism

Eric Sundquist: "Economic or political power can itself be seen to be definitive of a realist aesthetic, in that those in power (say, white urban males) have been more often judged 'realists,' while those removed from the seats of power (say, Midwesterners, blacks, immigrants, or women) have been categorized as regionalists." 

Main form: the sketch, the short story

Representative writers: (p.132)

Bret Harte (1836 —1902) 布雷特·哈特

⏹ Peculiar to the west

⏹ Short story: “The Luck of Roaring Camp” （ 1868 ） 《咆哮营的幸运儿》;

Tennessee’s Partner《田纳西的伙伴》

⏹ Poem: “Plain Language from Truthful James”《老实人詹姆斯的老实话》

Hamlin Garland（ 1860 — 1940）哈姆林·加兰

⏹ Peculiar to the west

⏹ Main Travelled Road 《大路》

Edward Eggleston（ 1837 — 1902）爱德华·埃格尔斯顿

⏹ Peculiar to Indiana

⏹ The Hoosier Schoolmaster （1871）《呼泽的小学校长》

Sarah Orne Jewett （1849 — 1909）萨拉·奥恩·朱厄特

⏹ Peculiar to Maine

⏹ Deephaven（1877） 《迪普黑文》; The Country of Pointed Firs（ 1896） 《尖枞树之乡》

6.2马克吐温Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Life and Career

Real name: Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Born in Florida, Missouri, in 1835

Printer, writer, river-boat pilot, correspondent

In 1863 adopted Pen name “Mark Twain”, the sailor’s jargon on Mississippi: 12 feet deep: an available depth of water for ship sailing

Great Affection to Mississippi River

"When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman." (From 'Old Times on the Mississippi', 1875

Writing Stages: 1. 1867—1870:short story； 2. 1870s–1900:novel；3. 1900s –1910s: Travelogue, scribble杂文, political comment

Works

Early period (1860s): light humor and social concern, mild criticism

“The celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865) 《卡拉维拉斯县驰名的跳蛙》his first story of success; Innocents Abroad (1869) 《傻子国外旅行记》

Middle Period (early 70s-mid 90s): maturity and success, married Olivia Langdon, met Howells

The Gilded Age (1873) collaboration, unsuccessful;

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876);

Life on the Mississippi (1883);

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)

More aware of social evils and committed to expose theme: hypocrisy, trickery, corruption, repression of democracy, racial discrimination, etc.

Late Period (late 1890s-1900s): period of pessimism

Failure in business, death of wife and daughters, despairing determinism, bitter skepticism in human nature

The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg (1900)《败坏了哈德莱堡的人》

The Mysterious Stranger (1906)《神秘的来客》

What Is Man (1906) 《人是怎么一回事》

Features of Twain’s Writing: Mississippian Flavor

Colloquial通俗的speech: He is the first who makes colloquial speech an accepted, respectable literary medium in the literary history of the country.

Southwestern humor

A brief summary of Mark Twain’s literary creation:

Representing social life through portraits of local places which he knew best.

eg: Boyhood experience: Autobiography (1924); The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) ;Its sequel:续集 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

Mississippi experience: Life on the Mississippi.

Contributions

His theories of localism in American fiction

He made colloquial speech an accepted, respectable literary medium in the literary history of the country.

He was a great social critic: His writings touch upon almost every issue of his time such as politics, religion, capital and labor, slavery, U.S imperialism abroad, and the persecution of the Chinese and the Jews

The Jumping Frog of Calaverious County

Published in1865, giving Twain fame all over the country.

Local color: Frame story (story within story); Setting; Narrator; Language (vo animals cabulary, grammar, sentence structure); Deadpan humor 冷幽默& exaggeration

Themes: Clash between East and West; Human greed; Human cruelty on animals

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn哈克贝利·费恩历险记

-- Mark Twain's first novel

-- an American classic

● “All modern American Literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn… all American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." (E. Hemingway)

● Vivid portrayal of realistic characters

● Truthful depiction of life on the Mississippi

● The use of colloquial speech, making it an acceptable and respectable literary medium.

Background information:

The story takes place before the Civil War, around 1850, when the great Mississippi Valley was still being settled. Here lies an America, with its great national faults, full of violence and even cruelty, yet still retaining the virtues of “some simplicity, some innocence, and some peace”. The story takes place along the Mississippi River.

Major theme of the book: anti-slavery; lashing at social prejudices and social discrimination

Main characters

Tom Sawyer: mischievous; active imagination; good heart; strong moral conscience

Huckleberry Finn: a juvenile outcast; superstitious; ready for an adventure

Injun Joe; violent, villainous

Themes: Moral and Social Maturation; Society’s Hypocrisy; Freedom through Social Exclusion; Superstition in an Uncertain World

7.1自然主义American Naturalism ( late 19th~early 20th)

Historical Background

● Time period:1890s

● Social background:

– Industrialism, the widening division bet. the rich and the poor

● Intellectual background:

– Darwinism: biological determinism, “the survival of the fittest”, “natural selection”

– Herbert Spencer: social Darwinism, social determinism

– Marx and Freud: socioeconomic forces & sexual drive

● Literary background: French Naturalism, Russian novelists

Definition： A critical term applied to the method of literary composition that aims at a detached, scientific objectivity in the treatment of natural man. It is thus more inclusive and less selective than realism, and holds to the philosophy of determinism. It conceives of man as controlled by his instincts or his passions, or by his social and economic environment and circumstances. Since in this view man has no free will, the naturalistic writer does not attempt to make moral judgments, and as a determinist he tends toward pessimism. (The Oxford Companion to American lit.)

Naturalism Vs Realism

Realism: it captured the true essence of life; focused on literary technique.

Naturalism: doctrine of determinism (biological, economic, and social)—studied human beings governed by their instincts and passions as well as the ways in which the characters' lives were governed by forces of heredity 遗传and environment ;focused on characters and their surroundings.

Naturalism is a "child" of Realism; in other words, it is a branch off of the main category which we call Realism.

American Literature in Naturalistic Period

A type of writing called naturalism also developed during the second half of the 1800’s. It can be described as an extreme form of realism/a new and harsher realism. Like the realist, the naturalist tried to portray people and events accurately. But unlike the realists, naturalists believed that people have no control over their fates.

They felt that human beings are simply victims of their surroundings and of their own drives and desires. The pessimism and deterministic ideas of naturalism pervades the works of such writers as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, Henry Adams, and Theodore Dreiser.

Theme

The fight for survival —man against nature and man against society; violence; the consequences of sex and sex as a commodity; the waste of individual potential because of the conditioning forces of life; and man’s struggle with his animalistic, base instincts.

Tone: pessimistic (The whole picture is somber and dark; and the general tone one of hopelessness and even despair.)

Features

Characters: Frequently but not invariably ill-educated or lower-class, often poor, driven souls who are seeking to do the impossible in an already difficult environment. (as Maggie in Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Stephen Crane)

Setting: Frequently an urban setting, like slums; or the commonplace and the unheroic.

Plots: illustrating how social and economic conditions ruined the lives of innocent, powerless people; discussion of fate and "hubris" that affect a character; generally the controlling force is society and the surrounding environment.

Representative writers

Frank Norris (1870-1902) 弗朗克·诺里斯; Stephen Crane (1871-1900) 斯蒂芬·克莱恩; Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) 西奥多·德莱塞; Jack London (1876-1916) 杰克·伦敦; Upton Sinclair (1878-1968); John Dos Passos (1896-1970); John Steinbeck (1902-68)

7.2西奥多·德莱塞Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)

♦ American author, outstanding representative of naturalism

♦ An advocate for freedom of expression.

Writing Background

Dreiser’s family background: German Catholic immigrant family

Major Works: 1) Sister Carrie «嘉莉妹妹» ; 2) Jennie Gerhardt 1911 «珍妮姑娘» 3) The Trilogy of Desire «欲望三步曲» :(a) The Financier 1912 «金融家»; (b) The Titan 1914 «巨人»; (c) The Stoic «斯尔葛»

4) The Genius 1915 «天才» an autobiographical work ; 5) An American Tragedy 1925«美国悲剧» (it was banned in Boston in 1927 ; 6)The Bulwark《堡垒》

Dreiser’s Thoughts

♦ Left-oriented view, sympathy to the poor

♦ Critical to America’s moral and social code

♦ Embrace Social Darwinism, believing man as merely an animal driven by greed and lust

His Style:

Dreiser's style is marked by long sentences and intense attention to detail. Since his works deal with social status and the pursuit of material goods and pleasures, this level of realism and description services his theme; on the other hand, it can make many of his works, particularly Sister Carrie, difficult for some. It should be noted that Dreiser is not well-regarded for his style, but for the realism of his work, character development, and his points-of-view on American life. Still, he is known to have had an enormous influence on the generation that followed his.

A brief comment on Dreiser:

With the publication of Sister Carrie in 1900, Dreiser committed his literary force to opening the new ground of American naturalism. His heroes and heroines, his settings, his frank discussion, celebration, and humanization of sex, his clear dissection of the mechanistic brutality of American society. All were new and shocking to a reading public reared on genteel romances and adventure narratives.

His Achievement and Influence:

1. A leader of Naturalism in American writing; outstanding representative of naturalism;

2. Dreiser’s stinging criticism of the genteel tradition and of what Howells described as the "smiling aspects of life" typifying America.

3. Dreiser's novels were held to be amoral, and he battled throughout his career against censorship and popular taste. This started with SISTER CARRIE (1900). It was not until 1981 that the work was published in its original form.

4. Despite Dreiser's alleged deficiencies as a stylist, his novels succeed in their accumulation of realistic detail and in the power and integrity with which they delineate the tragic aspects of the American pursuit of worldly success. Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy are certainly enduring works of literature that display a deep understanding of the American experience around the turn of the century, with its expansive desires and pervasive disillusionments.

Subject Matter and Major Themes:

1. Dreiser deals with social problems and with characters who struggle to survive.

2. His novels depict real-life subjects in a harsh light.

3. His sympathetic treatment of a "morally loose" woman in Sister Carrie was called immoral and he suffered at the hands of publishers.

4. Dreiser's principal concern was with the conflict between human needs and the demands of society for material success.

Character:

♦ Caroline Meeber, (known as Sister Carrie): an ordinary girl who rises from a low-paid wage earner to a high-paid actress.

♦ George Hurstwood: a member of the upper middle class who falls from his comfortable lifestyle to a life on the streets.

♦ Charlie Drouet: a charming, flashy salesman with a strong appetite for romance. he never takes any of his romantic affairs seriously and never really intends on following through his promises.

Jennie Gerhardt «珍妮姑娘»

7.3 Frank Norris(1870-1902) & Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

Frank Norris(1870-1902) 弗兰克·诺里斯

His Works: Greatly influenced by Zola, the first to introduce naturalism to American lit.

McTeague (1899) 《麦克提格》“the first full-bodied naturalistic American novel”

-- McTeague “the human beast”, Trina, Marcus, a winning lottery ticket , greed

“The Epic of the Wheat”: a trilogy 《小麦史诗》

The Octopus （1901）《章鱼》 the best, about the production of the wheat, the octopus—the railroad

The Pit (1903)《陷阱》 the distribution and consumption of the wheat on the market

The Wolf《野狼》left unwritten

Stephen Crane (1871-1900) 斯蒂芬·克莱恩

Stephen Crane, born in New Jersey, had roots going back to Revolutionary War soldiers, clergymen, sheriffs州长, judges, and farmers who had lived a century earlier. Primarily a journalist who also wrote fiction, essays, poetry, and plays, Crane saw life at its rawest, in slums and on battlefields.

⏹ Pioneer writing in the naturalistic tradition.

⏹ Pioneer in the field of Modern poetry : One of the two precursors of Imagist意象派先驱, the other being Emily Dickson

Major Novels:

Maggie: A Girl of the Street (1893) 《街头女郎梅季》a masterpiece of Am. Naturalism

The Red Badge of Courage (1895)《红色英勇勋章》

A book about the Civil War, based solely on a book of the history and Tolstoy and imagination

Henry Fleming, an in experienced young soldier in the Civil War, his romantic ideas about war & instinctive fear of it when in the war

The first to portray war realistically from the point of view of an individual soldier, deromanticizing war and heroism

Fear and biological need for self-preservation as the primary motive of human action

Short Stories:

1. “The Open Boat” 《海上扁舟》 (1897), his most famous short story

2.《新娘来到黄天镇》（“The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky”）

3.《蓝色旅馆》（“The Blue Hotel”）

Poetry:

1. Collection: 《黑衣骑士及其他》（The Black Riders and Other Lines, 1895）

2.Long poem: 《战争是仁慈的》（War Is Kind, 1899

3. “A Man Said to the Universe”

God is cold. Man is helpless and with no freedom

4. “A Man Adrift on a Slim Spar”

8.1意象派与庞德Imagism and Pound

Imagism -- A Survey of American Naturalistic Literature

Historical Background

1912—1922 poetry boom

Imagism 意象主义: The imagist movement (1908—1917), 3 phases, most flourishing period: 1912—1914, with Ezra Pound as the leader

The Coming of Imagism

The first Imagist theorist: T. E. Hulme and his Poets’ Club

Definition: Name given to a movement in poetry, originating in 1912 and represented by Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and others, aiming at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images. In the early period often written in the French form Imagism.

The 2nd American renaissance in American Literature: 1920s

The Stages of Imagism

⏹ 1908-1909 Britain, Hulme --absolutely accurate presentation and no verbiage废话

⏹ 1910-1914 U.S. Ezra Pound -- the climax of this literary movement

⏹ 1914-1917 U.S. Amy Lowell -- “Amigism”

Three imagist poetic principles:

1) Direct treatment

2) Economy of expression

3) Rhythm achieved with freedom of verse

Major Features of Imagist Poems

Contains a single dominant image

“Exact word” (concision & precision)

Emotional complex in an instant of time (momentary phases)

Enables the reader to see the object as it presents

Representative Imagist Poets:

Ezra Pound; William Carlos Williams; Wallace Stevens; T.S. Eliot; Carl Sandburg; Marianne Moore, etc

Influences

⏹ Free verse got legitimacy with Imagists.

⏹ Rebellion against the traditional poetics

⏹ Influence to poets including William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, Carl Sandburg, Marianne Moore,etc.

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)庞德

⏹ Leader of the Imagist movement

⏹ Indebtedness to Chinese culture

⏹ Hugh Selwyn Mauberley《休·西尔文·毛伯莱》

⏹ Cantos （1915-1945）《诗章》

Masterpiece of Pound： Hugh Selwyn Mauberley 1920； The Cantos 1915-1970

Pound’s Thoughts on Imagism：

⏹ 1. direct treatment of the “thing”

⏹ 2. exact words

⏹ 3. sequence of musical phrase

In a Station of a Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough

在地铁车站（飞白译）

　这几张脸在人群中幻景般闪现；
　　湿漉漉的黑树枝上花瓣数点。

Techniques---image

Two images, faces and petals.

Faces: using the word “apparition” to modify human faces, creating a sense of mystery and suddenness

Petals: using “wet” and “black” to form a color contrast.

Introduction of the Poem

First published in 1913

Contents: the poet’s changing view about Walt Whitman

Why does Pound change his view about Whitman?

⏹ a panorama of a wasteland , 全景

⏹ “Intangible bondage.” 无形的束缚

⏹ Aestheticism vs. “socially useful”.

⏹ Whitman is an innovative poet.

What is the message of the poem?

Pound considered Whitman the pathfinder, and showed both regret and determination that he would take his responsibility as what Whitman had done before. Only by combined effort of the artists, could the art and society be saved.

The Writing Style of the Poem: Ambivalence矛盾心理; free verse; "poetry-as-sculpture“

Comment on Ezra Pound

⏹ A visionary artist

⏹ Confucian philosophy: to save the West.

⏹ Pound’s influence on the writing of new poetry.

⏹ Chart out the course of modern poetry...

8.2现代主义American Modernism

Modernism: is a movement in the 20th century. It takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psychoanalysis 精神分析as its theoretical base and in many aspects is a reaction against realism, because modernist literature is characterized chiefly by a rejection of 19th century traditions and of their consensus between author and reader: the conventions of realism.

Historical background

Lit. Of the 1920s: The second renaissance in American lit.

Historical Background (influence of WWI):

⏹ A stronger image of America in international arena

⏹ Economic boom, superficial affluence

⏹ Technological development

⏹ Intellectually, Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, Marx

⏹ Spiritually, sense of disillusionment & fragmentation

⏹ The Jazz Age, the “Roaring Twenties”, the spiritual wasteland, the Lost Generation

Development of Modernism Literature:

⏹ Emerge in the 1st decades of the century, popular in the year between WWI and WWII

⏹ WWI: a division line

⏹ Lost Generation

⏹ 1920s a new diversity: a modern tradition started from The Waste Land: symbolism and learning

⏹ Still traditional works

⏹ New American drama

Major Features:

⏹ Pluralism: multiple perspectives in narrative

⏹ Fragmentation and open-endedness in structure

⏹ Interests in the psychological depths of characters (method of stream-of-consciousness)

⏹ Irony and ambiguity as favored rhetorical modes

⏹ A broad dependence on the image in modern poetry

⏹ Gender, race, class as accepted registers

⏹ Social-Economic themes

-- efforts to represent postwar world as incoherent, futile, fragmented, and meaningless, man as misplaced, lost and alienated, to resist traditional totalized views of reality

-- Fragmentation, loneliness, and alienation are also major themes in modern literature.

Trends

Between 2 Great Wars: Imagism; Lost Generation; The Jazz Age

Post WWII: The Beat Generation; Multi-culturalism: minority writing – black, Jewish, woman writing, etc.

Representative Writers

1. in Poetry: The Imagist movement

Ezra Pound (1885-1975); T. S. Eliot (1888-1965); Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)华莱士·史蒂文斯; William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)威廉·卡洛斯·威廉斯; Robert Frost (1874-1963)弗洛斯特; Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)卡尔·桑德堡; E.E. Cummings (1894-1963)卡明斯

2. in Fiction: The Lost Generation (Gertrude Stein (1874-1946))

Ernest Hemingway; F. Scott Fitzgerald; William Faulkner; Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) 刘易斯， the first Nobel Prize winner, Main Street 《大街》, Babbitt《巴比特》; Sherwood Anderson （1876-1941）安德森Winesburg, Ohio 《小城畸人》

3. in Drama

Eugene O’Neil; Elmer Rice; Clifford Odets; Tennessee Williams; Arthur Miller; Edward Albee

Influences

⏹ Modernism: create something new in the space of modern crisis and change.

⏹ Discontentment and a deliberate & radical break with traditional expression

⏹ Innovative experimentation

⏹ Impressionism, Dadaism, expressionism, symbolism, surrealism, cubism

⏹ James Joyce, T.S Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, Faulkner, etc.

9.1罗伯特 弗洛斯特Robert Frost (1874-1963)

—America’s poet laureate

Robert Frost was forty before his poetry “caught on” with the American public, but from 1914 to his death, he was probably the nation’s best-known and best-loved serious poet. It was a sign of his unique position in American letters that president-elect JFK invited him to read a poem –The Gift Outright– at the inauguration in 1961.

Frost – “A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and thought has found the words…words that have become deeds.”

A traditionalist but with a modernist voice

Fond of “the old way of being new”

Chose to work within traditional formal limitations: the sonnet, the iambic line, blank verse.

Themes and imagery

• Nature or pastoral poetry: woods, snow, ice, orchards, birds, flowers, rivers and pools, farmhouses, stars apples

• man’s relationship to these things,

• Rural in imagery and deliberately “rustic” in tone

• Many of his poems are complex, disquieting and “dark”

• Man by no means lives idyllically amid the beauties of the New England countryside

• Alienated from his rural surroundings, or doing battle with them, even in so many cases driven mad or killed them

Regionalism rather than internationalism

Affirm the New England myth but far less affirmative about the universe than Transcendentalists while believing in individuality

Major Poems

• Nature lyrics describing or commenting on a scene (“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” ‘Birches”, “After Apple-picking”)

• Poems of commentary and generalization (The Gift Outright)

• Poems of satirical and sardonic 讽刺的touches (Fire and Ice)

Poets on Poet

Mr. Frost is an honest writer, writing from himself, from his own knowledge and emotion; not simply picking up the manner which magazines are accepting at the moment, and applying it to topics in vogue. He is quite consciously and effortlessly putting New England rural life into verse. He is not using themes that anybody could have cribbed out of Ovid. —Ezra Pound, 1914

Frost’s Style

Frost took no part in the literary movement in the 20th century. He did not experiment with form, as many poets did in the 1920’s. He used conventional forms, plain language and a graceful style. His poems were very carefully constructed yet he made them seem effortless by using colloquial language and familiar, conversational rhythms.

Images and metaphors in his poems are drawn from the simple country life and the pastoral landscape that can be easily understood – mowing, scything, wind’s rustling in the grass, bird’s singing, as well as ponds, roads, the cycle of the seasons, and the alteration of night and day.

Most of Frost’s poems are short and direct on the information level, and they have simple diction. However, profound ideas are delivered under the disguise of the plain language and the simple form.

By using simple spoken language and conversational rhythms, Frost achieved an effortless grace in his style. He combined traditional verse forms – sonnet, rhyming couplets, blank verse. He wrote in both the metrical forms and the free verse, and sometimes he wrote in a form that borrows freely from the merits of both, in the form that might be called semi-free or semi-conventional.

9.2托·斯·艾略特Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)

Life Experience

Poet, dramatist, literary critic: influential

1888, born in a highly cultured family

1915, married & settled down in England

1927, became a naturalized British citizen

1922-1939, founder & editor of The Criterion

1948, Nobel Prize winner "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry“

Major Works

Poetry :

⏹ The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1911)《普鲁弗洛克的情歌》

⏹ The Waste Land (1922) 《荒原》

⏹ Hollow Man (1925) 《空心人》

⏹ Ash Wenesday (1930)《圣尘星期三》

⏹ Four Quartets (1943)《四个四重奏》

Literary criticism （p.175）

⏹ The Sacred Wood《圣林》

⏹ The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism《诗歌的作用和批评的作用》

Drama (p.174)

⏹ Murder in the Cathedral 《大教堂的凶杀案》

⏹ The Cocktail Party《鸡尾酒会》

⏹ The Confidential Clerk 《机要秘书》

Critical Thoughts

The impersonal theory/ the theory of impersonality & objectivity (非个性化)

The importance of tradition and the past

“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from it; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality”– a piece of art is an independent entity (forerunner of New Criticism)

Objective correlative （客观对应物）（P.176): The concept to find outer correlative for inner feelings

Influences on Eliot:

Classical lit. (Dante), Whitman’s style, esp. the use of colloquialism in poetry, 17th cent. Metaphysical poets, French symbolism, Christianity

The Waste Land (1922)

An epoch-marking poem

Theme: contrasting the spiritual decadence, revealing the declining of western civilization

Features:

1) impersonal, confusing, discontinuous with fragments

2) Written in different languages, dialects, colloquialism

3) Rich in literary allusions,ancient myths

4) Symbolism

He went to Switzerland where he finished writing The Waste Land in 1922; after its publication he was hailed致敬as the most important English-speaking poet of the time.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

1. Pound was responsible for its print in the Chicago Poetry in 1915.

2. Prufrok: a perfect mid-aged gentleman

General evaluation: The first masterpiece,A precedent for “The Waste Land”

The title: irony & satire

Themes: Ineffectuality; Sterility, Meaninglessness, Disillusionment

Characters: “I”: the protagonist; “you”: the generalized reader

Features

Dramatic monologue

Classical allusions: Guido, John the Baptist, Lazarus, Hamlet

Association of ideas

Non-explicit references to earlier lit.

Stream of consciousness

Writing Style of T. S. Eliot

⏹ fresh visual imagery

⏹ flexible tone

⏹ highly expressive rhythm

⏹ ‘impersonal theory’

⏹ literary traditions

⏹ A highly refined sensibility

Comments on T. S. Eliot

⏹ The leader of new America poetry

⏹ A distinguished literary critic

⏹ The most successful dictator in American literary history.

⏹ Great influence on “metaphysical poets” and “French symbolism”.

10.1菲茨杰拉德 F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896—1940)
Literary Works

This Side of Paradise (1920) 《人间天堂》-- immature, autobiographical

.The Beautiful and Damned (1922)《美人与丑鬼》-- The first attempt at writing The Great Gatsby.

The Great Gatsby (1925) 《了不起的盖茨比》-- a masterpiece of the 1920s

Tender Is the Night (1934) 《夜色温柔》—F’s second important novel

The Last Tycoon (1941)《最后一个巨头》unfinished

Two short story collections: Flappers and Philosophers (1920) 《少女与哲学家》;

Tales of the Jazz Age (1922) 《爵士时代的故事》 Give its name to the decade– the Jazz Age

The Crack-Up (1945), essays collected by Edmund Wilson 《崩溃》

Major Themes

● The new generation

● Mutability 易变性

● The influence of money

● Failure of the American Dream

Fitzgerald’s Writing Style

Fitzgerald was one of the great stylists in American literature.

 Epitomized 概括the excesses of the Jazz Age.

 Portrayal of the hollowness of the American worship

 pursuit of wealth, success, and happiness

 Concerns of affluent, upper-middle-class men and women.

 Smooth, sensitive, and its diction and metaphors.

 simplicity and gracefulness

Major Features

 He expressed the so-called “American Dream”

 He showed the integrating effects of money

 His novel pattern: dream – failure and despair.

 His ideas of “American Dream”

The Jazz Age

The young set themselves free especially, the young women. They shocked the older generation with their new hair style (a short bob) and the clothes that they wore were often much shorter than had been seen and tended to expose their legs and knees. The wearing of what were considered skimpy beach wear in public could get the Flappers, as they were known, arrested for indecent exposure. They wore silk stockings rolled just above the knee and they got their hair cut at male barbers. The President of Florida University said the low cut gowns and short skirts "are born of the devil they are carrying the present generation to destruction".

In 1920's America - known as the Jazz Age, the Golden Twenties or the Roaring Twenties - everybody seemed to have money. The nightmare that was the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, was inconceivable right up until it happened. The 1920’s saw a break with the traditional set-up in America. The Great War had destroyed old perceived social conventions and new ones developed. 

The Great Gatsby

Dreaming an American dream; the very embodiment of the American Dream

As the novel was first published in 1925, T.S. Eliot referred to it as “the first step that American fiction [had] taken since Henry James”.

Main Idea

Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner now living on Long Island, finds himself fascinated by the mysterious past and lavish lifestyle of his neighbor, Jay Gatsby. He becomes a witness to Gatsby’s tragedy: selling alcohol illegally, from rags to riches, tries to regain Daisy’s love, and was sacrificed for her manslaughter in a car-accident

by

Comment on Fitzgerald

A leading participant and observer of the 1920s

His life is a tragic example of the American Dream:

The joys of young love, wealth and success vs. the tragedies associated with excess and failure.

“Echoes of the Jazz Age.”

10.2海明威Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)

The Lost Generation 迷惘的一代 (1920s)

Definition: term applied to the disillusioned intellectuals and aesthetes of the years following WWI, who rebelled against former ideals and values but could replace them only by despair or a cynical hedonism.愤世嫉俗的享乐主义

Source of the name: Gertrude Stein（格特鲁德·斯坦因）, preface to The Sun Also Rises

Common characteristics:

1Coming of age during the War, having something to do with it

2Disillusioned and antagonistic 敌对的against war

3Unhappy about American culture; Expatiates in Paris

Major representatives:

Hemingway, Fitzgerald, E.E. Cummings, Sherwood Anderson, Thomas Wolfe (Eliot, Pound)

Hemingway

Life Experience: A. Birthplace in Oak Park; B. Fishing in childhood; C. Crouched in Italy

Major Works: The Sun Also Rises (1926)《太阳照样升起》-- the lost generation, spiritual crisis

A Farewell to Arms (1929) 《永别了，武器》

-- based on his war experience in Italy, firmly established H’s reputation

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) 《丧钟为谁而鸣》（《战地钟声》）

-- Based on his experience as a journalist in Spain during its civil war, anti-Fascism

The Old Man and the Sea (1952) 《老人与海》-- One of his best, winning the Nobel Prize

Short story collections:

Men without Women (1927)《没有女人的男人》; Winner Take Nothing (1933) 《胜者无所得》

Play: The Fifth Column (1940) 《第五纵队》

The Old Man and the Sea

老渔夫桑提阿果Santiago

Themes and Style

Themes: Courage; Heroism ; War

Style: 1) Simplicity, economy of expression; 2) Colloquialism; 3)The iceberg theory

Features of His Writing

-- code hero /Hemingway hero: men in a man’s world of war or wilderness.

-- a new type of fictional character whose basic response to life appealed very strongly to the people of the 20s. An average man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and intelligent.

Iceberg Theory

The Iceberg Theory is a writing theory stated by American writer Ernest Hemingway as follows: "If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A good writer does not need to reveal every detail of a character or action.” This statement throws light on the symbolic implications of art.

Comment on Hemingway

1) A negative writer 2) Hemingway situations: chaos, brutality and violence. 3) A glamorous public hero of sorts. 4) A “representative” American writer

11.威廉 福克纳William Faulkner (1897-1962)

Summit of Southern Renaissance

Life and Career

Life in the South: Oxford, Miss., model of his fictional Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha county, his family members prototypes for his fictional characters.

Two influential figures: Philip Stone, Sherwood Anderson.

1925, first novel: Soldier’s Pay 《军饷》

1929, two novels: Sartoris, The Sound and the Fury

1929-1942, most productive: 2 short-story collections, a volume of poetry, and 11 novels

Early 1940s, forgotten by the public

1945, a second rise to fame, higher than the first

1950, Nobel Prize for Literature

Major Works and Honors:

19novels; 4 volumes of short stories; 2 volumes of poetry; Accepting the Nobel Prize

Major Works: The Yoknapatawpha saga (“约克纳帕托法世系”小说)

The rise and fall of southern aristocratic families: the Compsons, the Sartorises, the Sutpens, the McCaslins, and the Snopeses

The Sound and The Fury(1929) 《喧嚣与骚动》

-- Describes the decay and downfall of an old southern aristocratic family, symbolizing the old social order, told from four different points of view

▪ As I Lay Dying (1930) 《我弥留之际》

▪ Sanctuary (1931) 《圣殿》

▪ Light in August (1932) 《八月之光》

▪ Absalom, Absalom (1936)《押沙龙！押沙龙》

▪ Go Down, Moses (1942) 《去吧，摩西》

Feature and Style

Authorial transcendence超越

Stream of consciousness and interior monologue独白

Multiple narrators and multiple points of view

Styles

Disruption of time sequence

No capitalization and no punctuation

A variety of registers of English

Evaluation: Summit of Southern Literature; Interpreter of universal themes; Nobel Prize Winner(1950)

12.1The 1930s

Historical background

The Great Depression (1929—1939)

The Rise of Fascism in Europe and WWII

Influence of Communist Lit on American Intellectuals

Tone of Literature in the 1930s: Panic & Despair: Panic –Turbulence; Despair-- Disintegration

Representative Writers: John Dos Passos & John Steinbeck

John Dos Passos (1896-1970) 约翰·多斯·帕索斯

Life and career:

Started as “redradical revolutionary“

Wrote communist-oriented （1917）

Switched to New Dealer（1936）

Turned conservative （ 1950s）

Major Works: District of Columbia 《哥伦比亚特区三部曲》

Masterpiece: U.S.A. 《美国三部曲》:

The 42nd Parallel(1930)《北纬42度》; 1919(1932)《一九一九》; The Big Money(1936)《赚大钱》

Features in writing:

1. Experimental employment of the Biographies, the Newsreels, the Camera Eye

2. Simple diction, Impressive images, Rhythmical sentences, Parallels, Colloquial.

John Steinbeck (1902-1968) 约翰·斯坦贝克

John Steinbeck’s thoughts

1. Outrage at the injustices of the societies

2. Admirations for the strong spirit of the poor

Major works: The Pearl (1947) 《珍珠》; Tortilla Flat (1935)《托蒂亚平地》; In Dubious Battle (1936)《胜负未决的战斗》; East of Eden (1952)《伊甸园以东》; Of Mice and Men (1937)《鼠与人》

Masterpiece: The Grapes of Wrath （1939）《愤怒的葡萄》

Won Pulitzer Prize

Called “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” of the 1930s

Accused of being communist, banned

The migration of agricultural workers from Oklahoma to California

The general picture of the Great Depression

Full of bitterness and pain, sympathy with the dispossessed and the wretched

Style: Poetic prose; Regional dialect; many types of characters rather than individuals; Dramatic factors; Social protest

Structure: Juxtaposition 并列of two blocks of material

The narrative chapters （14）: The westward trek of the Joads and the dispossessed Oklahomans

The interchapters（插入章, 16): The general picture of the great Depression

Won the Nobel Prize for Literature 1962

The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry勇敢 in defeat, for courage, compassion同情 and love.

—Steinbeck Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

Minor Writers: Rising of the New Criticism

Kathrine Anne Porter (1890-1980); Nathanael West (1903-1940); Eudora Wetly (1909-2001); Carson McCullers (1917-1967)

Influences: 1) Social concern & social involvement; 2) a revival of naturalism and realism; 3) Flourishing of left-wing literature

12.2美国戏剧American Drama

Before World War I

Divergence 分歧from British Drama:

A common language and the ready availability of British plays and British actors

The attitudes and manners of the upper classes reflected in British plays in conflict with American values

American drama was not born until the end of World War I

▪ 1. William Vaughn Moody(1869-1910):Realistic drama

▪ 2. Eugene Walter and Percy Mackaye: Dramatic experimentation

In the 1920s

Renaissance

European Dramatists: Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw

Experimental theatres sprang up

Modern American Dramatists

Elmer Rice (1892-1967) :The Adding Machine (1923); A vehement激烈的 protest against the dehumanization of mechanical civilization; Flashback technique; Offstage effect

Eugene O’neill; Maxwell Andersen; Sidney Howard

Susan Glaspell(1882-1948)

Trifles(1916); A detective story; Three levels of tension (Tension between women vs. men; Tension between woman vs. woman; Tension between woman vs. self)

The Theater of the Depression

1. Preoccupied with social concerns 2. Foundation of The Group ofTheater(1931)

In the 1930s:

Clifford Odets; Maxwell Anderson; Dramatization of Steinbeck

Clifford Odets (1906-1963): Waiting for Lefty (1935); a taxi driver’s strike; the actors are scattered to include the audience in the acting.

Post World War II: -- American Drama’s Coming of Age

Tennessee William(1911-1983) 田纳西·威廉斯

Southern dramatist ; The greatest dramatist in the post-O’neill era; Themes such as violence, sex, and homosexuality

Major works

The Glass Menagerie (1945)《玻璃动物园》

A Streetcar Named Desire(1947)《欲望号街车》

The Rose Tattoo(1951) 《玫瑰纹身》

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof(1955)《热铁皮屋顶上的猫》

Masterpiece: The Glass Menagerie(1945) 《玻璃动物园》

A pathetic story of the Wingfields

All three characters at first escape to illusions and later gather up courage and confidence

Style: 1) Autobiological 2) Lonely vulnerable women characters3) Against modern civilization which blasts happiness out human existence

Arthur Miller(1915-2005)

A man of moral integrity; Along with Tennessee William, led the postwar new drama

Concerns the dilemma of modern man in relation to his family and work

A leader of American Absurd Drama

The successor to Arthur Miller, Tennessee Wiliams, and Eugene O’neill.

Masterpiece: Death of a Salesman《推销员之死》

A sad vision of the American dream; American obsession with financial success; Split personality

Style: Autobiological; Lonely vulnerable women characters; Against modern civilization which blasts happiness out human existence

Edward Albee (1928-) 爱德华·阿尔比

Born in Washington DC on March, 1928

Adopted by the rich Albee family, involved in the theatre business

Work1: the Zoo Story --His first major play; One-act; the birth of American Absurd Drama

Absurd Drama: Plays centers on the meaninglessness of life with its pain and suffering that seems funny, even ridiculous.

Work2: Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

The absurdity of human life built on a frail illusion and spiritual emptiness.

Award Albee’s best known play.

Won the Tony Award and New York Drama Critics Circle Reward.

After 1960s

1Decentralization from Broadway; 2Diversity of its development

3Multiracial and multiethnic: August Wilson, Hanay Geiogamah, David Henry Hwang, Luis Valdez,

4Feminist playwrights: Beth Hanley, Marsha Norman, Tina Howe

12.3Eugene O’Neill(1888-1953) 尤金·奥尼尔

-- American Shakespeare

Life and Career

Son of a traveling actor

One year at Princeton

Life as a seaman

1912, TB, start of career as a playwright

1920, first full-length play on Broadway

1936, Nobel Prize, 4 Pulitzer Prizes (1920，1922，1928，1957)

Three periods

▪ 1.Early realistic plays: Period of apprenticeship 学徒

▪ 2.Experimental plays: Summit of his career

▪ 3. Return to realistic plays: Period of maturity

The early period (1913-1919)

Bound East for Cardiff （1916） 《东航卡迪夫》-- First play

Marking the beginning of O’s long and successful dramatic career

Ushered in the modern era of the American theatre

The middle period (1920-1938)

Summit of his career

More experimental in technique

Wider scope of subject matter

Works:

Beyond Horizon (1920) 《天边外》

The Emperor Jones (1920) 《琼斯王》

The Hairy Ape (1922) 《毛猿》

Desire Under the Elms (1924) 《榆树下的欲望》

Strange Interlude (1928) 《奇异的插曲》

Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) 《悲悼》

Features: Exemplify O’Neill’s ability to explore the limits of the human predicament困境, even as he sounds the depths of his audiences’ hearts.

Depicting a day in 1912 in the unhappy life of the Tyrone family exemplify the power of irrational drives, the existence of a subconscious, the role of repression and suppression, the importance of sex and the lifelong influence of parents

The external conflict between people’s aspirations and the mysterious forces in life which limit and shatter their lofty dreams in the end. He wrote plays on various subjects and in various styles

1. American tragedies on the Greek model

2. Daring forays (袭击) into race relations, class conflicts, sexual bondage, social critiques

3. Unusual stage devices and powerful use of symbolism

The late period (1939-1943)

Period of maturity: return to realism , realism + modernism

The Iceman Cometh (1946) 《送冰的人来了》

A tragedy; Realistically set in a Bowery bar

Symbolically portraying the loss of illusion and the coming of Death.

A complex, ironic, deeply moving exploration of human existence and predicament.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956) 《漫漫长夜路迢迢》

Autobiographical tragedy, posthumous

The climax of O’Neill’s literary career and the coming of age of American drama.

Feature and Style

Features:

Discover the root of human desires and frustrations;

Seek meaning and purpose through love, religion and revenge;

Pessimism

Styles:

Experimenting with new styles and forms;

Borrow from both traditional and modern theories and techniques;

Realism, Naturalism, Symbolism, Expressionism

Evaluation

1America’s greatest playwright; 2Founder of American Drama; 3Nobel Price Winner(1936) & Pulitzer PriceWinner (1920,1922,1928,1957)

13.黑人文学Black American Literature

Historical background

Different Traditions in American Literature:

Mainstream: White tradition←→Multi-culture {African American tradition; Jewish American tradition; Indian tradition (Native American tradition); Asia-American tradition; other minority tradition}

A Guide to African American Literature

Based on a biblical myth圣经的

Purposed to tie up their hope of freedom with the story of Hebrew Prophet Moses

Black American Literature; African American Literature; Afro - American Literature

The Harlem Renaissance 1920s - 1930s哈莱姆文艺复兴

1. First known as “The New Negro Movement”, later as “The Harlem Renaissance ”

2. Exalts the unique culture of African-Americans, redefines African-American expression

3. Common themes: a. Alienation, marginality, the use of folk material;

b. the use of the blues tradition; c. the problems of writing for an elite audience

4. Influences: not only transformed African-American identity and history, but it also transformed American culture in general more than just a literary movement

★Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

兰斯顿休斯

1. known as “black poet laureate”

2. One of the founders of the black theatre

3. Editor of a good many of anthologies选集 of Black literature.

4. Author of about 60 books

5. He encouraged other Black writers to write

Hughes’ Representative Works:

1. Poetry:

The Weary Blues (1926) -- Sad in tone, descriptive in showing the harsh circumstances for the blacks

Montage of a Dream Deferred 延迟之梦的蒙太奇(1951) -- an angry book protesting the conditions of the Black and the wretched white.

2. Short Stories: The Ways of White Folks (1934) -- It concerns the Depression.

3. Essays: -- Features: mild satire and quiet humor.

Simple Speaks His Mind (1950); The Best of Simple (1961), Simple’s Uncle Sam (1965) (trilogy)

★Richard Wright (1908-1960) 理查德·赖特

1. Influenced by left- wing Communists

2. Focuses on the strength of the growing social awareness that the blacks are part of the oppressed

3. In 1944 he broke with the Communist Party.

4. Major works: Uncle Ton’s Children: Four Novellas (1938)汤姆大叔的孩子; Native Son (1940) (his master work)

Black Boy (1944) (autobiography)

Native Son土生子: Published in 1940.

1. Protagonist: Bigger Thomas, a new type of Black personality– rebellious, violent, represents a higher lever of Black Racial awareness.

2. Theme: the blacks should be treated as human beings; otherwise they have the right to resort to violence to assert their dignity and identity.

★Ralph Ellison (1914 - 1994)

1. Namesake: in honor of Ralph Waldo Emerson

2. Special inclination towards music

3. Invisible Man (1952)

4. The first black author to win a National Book award (1953)

Invisible Man

Summary: A naive high school student received main stream education given to the black but finally found himself expelled because of its hypocrisy. He wondered to the north and tried several jobs, but never found his own position whether with the white or the black.

– It seemed inhuman everywhere, in sharp contrast to his ideal.

Theme: in search of identity

Mr. Ellison has not adopted a minority tone. If he had done so, he would have failed to establish a true middle-of-consciousness for everyone. ---- Saul Bellow

★James Baldwin (1924-1986) 詹姆斯·鲍德温

1. Successor of Richard Wright

2. Major concern: the Black’s self-recognition

3. Basic themes of his works: race, homosexuality

4. Major Works:

Novel: Go tell it on the mountain (1954) (acceptance of fate)

★Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 - )

格温德琳•布鲁克斯

1. First Afro-American writer to win a Pulitzer Prize (in poetry)

2. Sensitive portraits of urban blacks who encounter racism and poverty

3. Optimistic attitude towards life

4. Major works: The Bean Eater (1960); In the Mecca (1968)

★LeRoi Jones (1934 - ) 勒鲁瓦 琼斯

1. Poet, writer, political activist and teacher

2. A mastermind of the Black Arts Movement

3. Major Works:

Studies: Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963), Black Music (1967), Raise Race Rays

Black Arts Movement (BAM ) 1960s – 1970s

1. The artistic branch of the Black Power movement

2. Founded in Harlem by writer and activist Amiri Baraka (born Everett LeRoy Jones),

美国文学史复习总结正本