美国文学Chapter 3 The Modern Period (现代文学时期)
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本章概述
一. 20 世纪初期到中叶美国现代文学产生的历史、文化背景；
二、美国现代文学创作的基本特征、基本主张；
三、对当代美国文学发展的影响。
文学史分析
一、The cultural background
ism 达尔文主义and Maxism马克思主义 :
ism was still a big influence over the writers of this period .
believed that the root cause of all behavior was economic , and that the leading feature of the economic life was the division of society into antagonistic classes based on a relation to the means of production .
an 佛洛伊德theories :
propounded an idea of human beings themselves as grounded in the "unconsious ",and made the practice of the psychoanalysis 精神分析.
m James威廉?詹姆斯 ,famous for his theory of "stream of conciousness ."and Carl Jung, noted for his " collective unconscious "and "archetypal原始的 symbol " plus Freud's interpretation of dreams , have infused modern American literature .
modern European arts :
painting ,both the French Impressionist and the German Expressionist artists depicted the human reality in a rather subjective point of view .
is the name for another School of modern painting . Its emphasis on the formal structure of a work of art , especially its emphasis on the multiple-perspective viewpoints ,had provided the writers with more than one way to explain the reality .
C. Composers like lgor produced music in a " modern "mode ,featuring dissonance and discontinuity .
二. The literature between WWI and WW II :
expatriate movement :
A. The most recognizable literary movement that gave rise to the twentieth century American literature , the second American Renaissance , is the expatriate movement .
B. When the First World War broke out , many young men volunteered to take part in " the war to end wars " only to find that modern warfare was not as glorious or heroic as they thought it to be . They began to write and they wrote from their own experiences in the war.
C. They were basically expatriates who left America and formed a community of writers and artists in paris . These writers were later named by an American writer , Gertrude Stein, "The Lost Generation ."迷失的的一代
2. Imagist movement:
American literature are famous poets such as EZra Pound , Williams, Frost , Pound's role as a leading spokesman of the famous imagist movement in the history of American literature can never be ignored .
B. Williams rooted his poetic imagination in American native tradition .Frost 弗洛斯特is always liked by the Americans because the subject and the landscape of his poems are forever New England and his simplicity never fails to reveal some profound truth .
gs 卡明斯, Stevens are also remembered for . The former always used "i" instead "I"
to refer to himself as a protest against self-importance , while the later . Whose style is more cultivated and refined .
3. The great novelists :
A. Fitzgerald 菲茨杰拉德, Hemingway 海明威, Faukner 福克纳are considered to be the masters in the field of American fiction . The Jazz Age of the 1920s is brought vividly to life in The Great Gatsby了不起的盖茨比 by Fitzgerald .Hemingway dramatizes in his novels the sense of loss and despair Faulkner creates his own mythical kingdom .
B. Besides , writers like Anderson 安德森，Lewis 刘易斯, Steinbeck 斯坦贝克contributed a great deal to modern American literature . Anderson explores the motivations and frustrations of his fictional characters . Lewis is a sociological writer and his Babbit巴比特 presents a documentary picture of the narrow and limited middle-class mind , Steinbeck is a representative of the 1930s . His The Grapes of Wrath愤怒的葡萄 proves to be a symbolic journey of man an the way to finding some truth about life and himself .
4. The plays :
A. The leading playwright of the modern period in American literature is Eugene O' Nell尤金奥尼尔 . For his tragic view of life and most of his plays are about the root , the truth of human desires and human frustration .
B. Arthur Miller 阿瑟米勒and Tennessee Williams 田纳西威廉姆斯were yet to acclaim the literary recognition and to hold the central position in American drama until the present times .
三. The literature after WWII:
poetry:
A. The postwar poets , with Robert Lowell 洛厄尔in the lead , would typically write about an object or a situation showing a growing sense of resistance to the express culture and at the same time an assertion of the self .
B. The outstanding ones are Gary Snyder 盖瑞?施奈德, who tends to liberate poetry from the academy and Allen Ginsberg艾伦金斯堡 , whose " Howl " became the manifesto of the Beat Movement .
features :
A. First of all , a group of new writers who survived the war wrote about their traumatic experience 创伤经历among whom we have Norman Mailer and Herman Wouk . Warren and O' Conner are representatives of the talented Southern writers .
B. By the 1950s a significant group of Jewish -American writers had appeared and one of them was Saul Bellow . Their work , Examined subtly the dismantiling of the self by an intolerable modern history .
fiction began to attract critical attention during this period too . The two major figures are Wright and Ralph Ellison.拉尔夫?埃利森
D. Other important writers who were writing at the time include J.D. Salinger and John Updike 约翰?厄普代克. Salinger is considered The Catcher in the Rye麦田里的守望者 is regarded as a students' classic Updike's Rabbit novels examine the middle-class values .
E. American fiction in the 1960s and 1970s is always referred to as " new fiction," with Kurt Vonnegut 库尔特?冯内古特, Joseph Heller
约瑟夫?海勒, John Bath , and Thomas Pynchon托马斯?品钦 at its forefront . These writers shared almost the same belief that human beings are trapped in a meaningless world .
四. The features :
creation :
A. Modern American writings are notable for what they omit -the explanations , interpretations ,connections and summaries .
B. There are shifts in perspective , voice , and tone , but the biggest shift is from the external to psychic心灵的, from the public to the private , from the chronological to the psychic , the objective description to the subjective projection .
C. Moern American writers in general emphasize the concrete sensory images or details . They rely on the reference or allusions to literary , historical ,philosophical , or religious details of the past .
2. In techniques:
A. Writers strove for directness , compression , and vividness and were sparing of words .
B. The average novel became quite a bit shorter than it had been in the 19th century .
C. New significance was given to the short story . If realistic fiction achieved its effects by accumulation积聚 and saturation饱和 , modern fiction preferred suggestiveness .
D. Modern fiction tended to employ the first person narration or limit the reader to the " Central consciousness " or one character point of view .
E. The modernistic vision is truth does not exist objectively but is product of a personal interaction with reality .
主要作家作品
A. 埃兹拉.庞德
B.罗伯特.弗洛斯特
C.尤金.奥尼尔
D.斯各特.菲兹杰拉德
E.欧内斯特.海明威
F.威廉.福克纳
A. 埃兹拉.庞德
一. The literary creation :
poetry :
works :
Pound's poetic works include twelve volumes of verse in Collected in Collecte Early Poems of Ezra pound ,and some longer pieces such as Hugh Selwyn Mauberley and his life's work , Cantos .诗章
theme:
Pound's earlier poetry is saturated with the familiar poetic subjects :
songs in praise of a lady ,song concerning the poet's craft , love and friendship ,death ,the transience of beauty and the permanence of art ,and some other subjects .Later he is more concerned about the problems of the modern culture: the contemporary cultural decay and the possible sources of cultural renewal as well
2. The critical essays :
works :
Pound produced quite a number of critical essays , which can be found in Make it New Literary Essays推陈出新 , The ABC of Reading 论文阅读and Polite Essays, 论礼教
B. The theme :
Essays best reflect Pound's appraisals 评价of literary traditions and of modern writing .
translations :
works :
He also published several volumes of translation , most notably , The Translation of Ezra Pound , Confucius ,and Shih-Ching 诗经
B The significance :
They have not only cast light on Pound's affinity to the Chinese and his strenuous effort in the study of Oriental literature , but also offered us a
clue to the understanding of his poetry and literary theory .
二. The achievements to American Literature :
Imagist movement :
A . Imagist Movement flourished from 1909 to 1917 .
B. This is a movement that advanced modernism in arts which concentrated on reforming the medium of poetry as opposed to Romanticism
C. Three main principles direct treatment of poetic subjects , elimination of 消除merely ornamental or superfluous[sju'p?:flu?s] 多余的 words , rhythmical composition in the sequence of the musical phrase rather than in the sequence of a metronome 节拍器.
D. The primary Imagist objective is to avoid rhetoric 修辞学and moralizing , to stick closely to the object or experience being described , and to move from explicit generalization Pound's famous one-image poem is "In a Station of the Metro ".地铁站
2. The artistic features:
A. Pound's poetic work include his use of myth and personae . Pound could sustain a dialogue between past and present successfully .
B. As to his language , his lines are usually oblique 倾斜yet marvelously compressed. His poetry is dense with personal , literary , and historical allusions ,but at the expense of syntax 语法and summary statements . 总表
B.罗伯特.弗洛斯特
一. the poetic creation :
subject-matter :
The subject matters mainly focus on the landscape and people in New England .
theme:
The basic themes of man's life in his long poetic career are the individual 's relationships to himself , to his fellow-man , to his world ,and to his God .
3 The works :
first collection A Boy's Will 一个男孩的愿望, is marked by an intense but restrained emotion and the characteristic flavor of New England life波士顿以北
B. North of Boston is described by the author as "a book of people ".
C. The same expressive idiom and brilliant observation appear in Mountain Interval .
D. New Hampshire 新贝干布什尔won Frost the first of four Pulitzer Prizes 普利策文学奖.
E. The collection West-Running brook poses disturbing uncertainties about man's prowess and importance .
F. A Witness Tree证人树 includes " The Gift Outright ," 直率的礼物the poem he later recited at President Kennedy 's inauguration
G. At the age of seventy Frost took up , a religious question he had explored before , most notably in " After Apple-Picking ."摘苹果
二. The artistic features :
conventions of nature poetry and classical pastoral poetry :
A. Unlike his contemporaries in the early 20th century , he did not break up with the poetic tradition nor made any experiment on form . Instead , he learned from the tradition .
B. He made the colloquial New England speech into a poetic expression .
C. Many of his poems are fragrant with natural quality . Images and metaphors in his poems are drawn from the simple country life and the pastoral landscape .
2. The theme concerned :
A. These thematic concerns include the terror
恐怖and tragedy in nature , as well as its beauty , and the loneliness and poverty of the isolated human being .
B. First and foremost Frost is concerned with his love of life and his belief in a serenity .
三. The styles :
1. the grace is style :
By using simple spoken language and conversational rhythms , Frost achieved an effortless grace in his style .
verse forms :
He combined traditional verse forms -with a clear American local speech rhythm , the speech of New England farmers .
C.尤金.奥尼尔
一. The literary creation :
Eugene O'Neill is unquestionably America's greatest playwright .He won the Pulitzer four times and was the only dramatist ever to win a Nobel Prize . He is widely acclaimed " founder of the American drama . "美国戏剧之父
early period :
one- act melodramatic 夸张的plays
A. He gained some experience by writing some one-act melodramatic plays at first , including Bound East for Cardiff .驶向东边的卡尔笛福
B. O'Neill's first full-length play , Beyond the Horizon天外边 , Made a great hit and won him the first Pulizer Prize , which theme is the choice between life and death , the interaction of subjective and objective factors .
2. The middle period :
-Symbolic expressionism
A. Between 1920 and 1924 came his prominent achievements in symbolic expressionism : The Emperor Jones ,琼斯皇帝 The Hairy Ape 毛袁, All God's Chillun Got Wings 所有上帝烟斗都有翅膀,and Desire Under the Elms 榆树下的欲望. The expressionistic techniques are used in these plays to highlight the theatrical effect of the rupture .决裂
B. He concerned himself with some non-realistic forms to contain his tragic vision in a number of his plays , such as The Great God Brown伟大的布朗 , and Lazarus Laughed 拉扎拉斯笑了, Strange Interlude 奇怪的幕间戏, paved the way to the honor of the Nobel Prize in 1936 .
3. The late period :
- Autobiographical plays :
A. The best and greatest plays of the modern American theater late in his life are The Iceman Cometh冰人来了 ,and Long Day's Journey Into Night . 直到夜晚的漫长的一天
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 .
二. The artistic features :
pessimism features :
A. Of all the plays O' Neill wrote , most of them are tragedies , dealing with the basic issues of human existence and predicament .
B. His characters in the plays are described as seeking meaning , but all meet disappointment and despair .
C. 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 impossiblity .
2. The stylistic features :
A. He was constantly experimenting with new styles and for his plays . He used just a single actor , alone on the stage , in his one
-act play .
B. In those expressionistic表现主义的 plays , abstract and symbolic stage sets are used and lighting and music are employed .
C. As to his language , O' Neil frequently wrote the lines in dialect , or spelled words in ways which indicate a particular accent or manner of speech .
3. The Variety of creation :
In verse form he was assorted he wrote in both the metrical forms and the free verse , in a form that might be called semi-free or semi-conventional .
D.斯各特.菲兹杰拉德
一. The literary creation :
Francis Scott Fitzgerald was a most representative figure of the 1920s , he is often acclaimed literary spokesman of the Jazz Age .爵士时代的故事
creation in novel :
A. His first novel This Side of Paradise 人间天堂was so successful that it won for him not only wealth and fame , but also the expensive prize of Zelda Sayre . He has been regarded as the prototype of a series of rich , beautiful women .
B. His second novel , The Beautiful and Damned ,美丽而遭骂的人 increased his popularity .
C. His masterpiece The Great Gatsby了不起的盖茨比 made him one of the greatest American novelists .
D. Fitzgerald wrote one more important novel Tender is the Night 夜色温柔, leaving his last novel The Last Tycoon最后的巨头 unfinished .
2. The creation in novellas :
A. His short-story collections won him great popularity , such as Flappers and Philosopher 吹捧着和哲学家, Tales of the Jazz Age爵士时代的故事 , All the Sad Young Men .所有悲惨的小伙子
B. One of his best short stories is " Babylon Revisited ."重访巴比伦
二. The achievements in literature :
1. The a panorama of the Jazz Age
A. Most critics have agreed that Fitzgerald is both that Fitzgerald is both an insider and an outsider of the Jazz Age with a double vision . This doubleness or irony is one of the distinguishing marks as a writer and helps Fitzgerald to present a panorama of the Jazz Age with a deep insight .
B. Fitzgerald 's fictional world is the best embodiment of the spirit of the Jazz Age , in which he shows a particular interest in the upper-class society , especially the upper-class young people .
theme of American Dream :
A. Fitzgerald never spared an intimate touch in his fiction to deal with the bankruptcy of the American Dream , which is highlighted by the disillusionment of the protagonists' personal dreams .
B. Money is only a convenient and inadequate symbol for what he dreams of earning , and love merely a vehicle that can transport him to a magic world of eternal happiness .
C. Although the protagonist's pursuit of his dream only proves to be futile to be futile , Fitzgerld does not negate the the affirmative role the " magic moments " play , which attend the hope and expectations of eternal happiness .
3. The artistic features :
A. Fitzgerald is a great stylist in American literature . His style , closely related to his themes , is expli
cit and chilly .
follows the Jamesian tradition in using the scenic method in his chapters , leaving the tedious process of transition to the readers' imagination .
c. He also skillfully employs the device of having events observed by a "central consciousness" to his great advantage .
E.欧内斯特.海明威
一. the literary creation :
collection of short stories :
A. The features :
Greatly and permanently affected by the war experiences , Hemingway formed his writing style , together with his theme and hero .
B. The masterpiece :
In Our Time is the first book to present a Hemingway hero- Nick Adams . Nick becomes the prototype of the wounded hero .
C. The significance :
In this book , Hemingway sought to endow prose with the density of poetry , making each image each scene , and each rendered act several purposes .
novels :
A. The Sun Also Rises 太阳照样升起
a. The contents :
The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway 's first true novel . It casts light on a whole generation after the First World War and the effects of the war by way of a vivid portrait of " The Lost Generation .
b. The significance :
The young expatriates in this novel are a group of wandering , amusing , but aimless people . In this period the Hemingway Code hero is exemplified in different versions .
B. A Farewell to Arms :永别了武器
a. The contents :
A Farewell to Arms wrote the epitaph 墓志铭telling us a story about the tragic love affair of a wounded American soldier with a British nurse .
significance :
In this novel , Hemingway not to only emphasizes his belief that man is refute 反驳the idea of nature as an expression of either God's design or his beneficence and to suggest that man is doomed to必定 be entrapped .
C. For whom the Bell Tolls :
a . The contents :
For Whom the Bell Tolls clearly represents a new beginning in Hemingway 's career as writer , which concerns a volunteer American guerrilla Robert Jordan fighting in the Spanish Civil War .
b. The significance :
In the end , the manner of his dying convinces people that life is worth living and there are causes worth dying for .
D. The old man and the sea :
a . The contents :
Capping his career and leading to his receipt of the Nobel Prize , this short novel is about an old Cuban fisherman Santiago and his losing battle with a giant marlin .
b. the significance "
It is a representation of life as a struggle against unconquerable natural forces
3. Other works :
Men without Womenn 没有女人的男人, Death in the Afternoon,战不败的人 The Green Hills of Africa美国的绿山 ,The Snows of Kilimanjaro ,乞力马扎罗山 To Have and Have Not .有钱人和没钱人
二. The artistic features :
1. The Hemingway code here:
A. Hemingway's world is limited . He deals with a limited range of characters in quite similar circumstances and measures them against an unvarying code , known as "grace under pressure ". Those who survive
in the process of seeking to master the code with the honesty , the discipline , and the restraint are Hemingway Code heroes .
B. In the general situation of his novels , life is full of tension and battles the world is in chaos man is always fighting desperately a losing battle .
C. Hemingway 's limited fictional world implies a much broader thematic pattern and serious philosophical concern .
2. The theory of iceberg:
A. Hemingway himself once said , "the dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water ."
B. According to Hemingway , good literary writing should be able to make readers feel the emotion of the characters directly and the best way to produce the effect is to set down exactly every particular kind of feeling without any authorial comments ,without conventionally emotive language , and with a bare minimum of adjectives and adverbs .
3. The stylistic features :
A. seemingly simple and natural , Hemingway 's style is actually polished and tightly controlled ,but highly suggestive and connotative .
B. Hemingway develops the style of colloquialism intiated by Mark Twain.
C. He uses short , simple and conventional words and sentences has an effect of clearness , terseness and great care .
D. No wonder Hemingway was highly praised by the Nobel Prize Committee for" his powerful style- forming mastery of the art " of creating modern fiction .
F.威廉.福克纳
一. the works :
1. After training in Canada :
A. Faulkner published a volume of poetry The Marble Faun . 玉石雕像
B. His first novel is Soldier's Pay . 士兵的薪水
2. After the trip to Europe :
A. Sartoris
B. The sound and the Fury
C. Major works : As I Lay Dying Light in August我弥留之际 , Absalom , Absalom!押沙龙押沙龙 Wild Palms疯狂的手掌 , The Hamelet 小屋, The Unvanquished未被征服者 and Go Down , Moses . 摩西走下去
3. After 1946:
A. The Portable Faulkner 福克的作品集.
B. The Nobel Prize for the anti-racist Intruder in the Dust .红尘入侵者
C. Remarkable novels such as Requiem for a Nun修公安魂曲 , The Fable, 寓言The Town 城镇, and The Mansion. 豪宅
二. the Yoknapatawpha Kingdom :
background:
A. The source :
Most of Faulkner's works are set in the American South , with his emphasis on the Southern subjects and consciousness . His stories are about people from a small region in Northern Mississippi , Yoknapatawpha County , which is actally an imaginary place .
B. The time period :
The Yoknapatawpha stories deal, generally , with the historical period from the Civil War up to the 1920s.
C. The significance:
Yoknapatawpha county has become an allegory or a parable of the Old South , with which Faulkner has managed Successfully to show a panorama of the experience and consciousness of the whole Southern society .
2. The theme:
A. The overran pattern :
The Yoknapatawpha County series have an overall patter in which the fate o
f ruined homeland always focuses on the collision of Faukner's intelligent , sensitive , and idealistic protagonist with the society of the twentieth century .
B. The theme :
Most of the major themes are directly related to this confrontation .面对
C. The stylistic methods :
The past and the present , nature and society are always juxtaposed并列 in his novels and stories . All his heroes turn out to be tragic . Faulkner suggests that society , eliminates man's chance of responding naturally to the experiences of his existence . According to Faulkner , the life-death cycle, the spring and winter of the earth , the birth and death of the animals is reality . Man, becomes weak and cowardly , confused and ineffectual .
三. The masterpiece:
Of Faulkner's literary works , four novels are masterpieces by any standards :The sound and the Fury 喧嚣与骚动, light in August ,八月之光 Absalom ,Absalom! And Go Down , Moses .
Sound and the Fury :
The Sound and The Fury is a story of "Lost innocence "which proves itself to be an intensification of the theme of imprisonment in the past .
in August is primarily about the South as a state of mind .
3. Absalom , Absalom ! is a novel entirely of interpretation , the attempts of several characters -to explain the past , characterized by involutions of narrative structrue which express corresponding complexities of meaning.
4. Go Down , Moses is a sense a companion piece to Absalom , Absalom ! In this book , Faulkner illumintes the problem of black and white in Southern society as a close-knit destiny of blood brotherhood .The best story to highlight Faulkner's concern is " The Bear" .In this story ,Faulkner skillfully employs an old crafty bear as a symbol of the timeless freedom of the wilderness .
四. The literary achievements :
1. The literary theory :
A. Faulkner has always been regarded as a man with great might of invention and experimentation. He added to the theory of the novel as an art form and evolved his own literary strategies .
B. To him , the primary duty of a writer was to explore and represent the infinite possibilities inherent in human life .
2. The narrative skills :
A. the objective narration :
He would never step between the characters and the reader to explain , but let the characters explain themselves and hinder as little as possible the reader's direct experience of the work of art .
B. The inversion of chronological time:
He deliberately broke up the chronology of his narrative by juxtaposing the past with the present , in the way the montage does in a movie .
C. The stream-of-consciousness technique:
Modern stream-of-consciousness technique was also frequently and skillfully expoited by Faulkner to emphasize the reactions and inner musings of the narrator .
D. The description of multiple points of view :
Faulkner was good at presenting multiple points of view , which gave the story a circular form . Thus a high degree of tru
th could be reached .
E. Others :
The other narrative techniques Faulkner used to construct his stories include symbolism and mythological and biblical allusions .
3. The stylistic features :
A. In style :
His prose , marked by long and embedded sentences , complex syntax , and vague reference pronouns on the one hand and a variety of " registers " of the English language on the other , is very difficult to read .
B. The formal pattern :
In Faulkner's writings there are syntactical structures and verbals paralleled , negatives balanced against positives , compounded adjectives swelling his sentences , complex modifying elements placed after the nouns .
C. The informal pattern :
He captured the dialects方言 of the Mississippi characters ,including Negroes and the redneck ,as well as more refined and educated narrators like Quention .
D. The imageries :
They symbols and imageries , they are most of them drawn from nature .