American literature in the 20th[1]. century新
the 20th c Am Litrature
The Twentieth Century American LiteratureFictionAt the beginning of the 20th century, American novelists were expanding fiction’s social spectrum to encompass both high and low life and sometimes connected to the naturalist school of realism. In her stories and novels, Edith Wharton(1862-1937) scrutinized the upper-class, Eastern-seaboard society in which she had grown up. One of her finest books, The Age of Innocence, centers on a man who chooses to marry a conventional, socially acceptable woman rather than a fascinating outsider. At about the same time, Stephen Crane (1871-1900), best known for his Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage, depicted the life of New York City prostitutes in Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. And in Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) portrayed a country girl who moves to Chicago and becomes a kept woman (mistress). Hamlin Garland and Frank Norris wrote about the problems of American farmers and other social issues from a naturalist perspective.More directly political writings discussed social issues and power of corporations. Upton Sinclair, most famous for his meat-packing (肉类加工厂) novel The Jungle, advocated socialism. Other political writers of the period included Edwin Markham, William Vaughn Moody. Journalistic critics, including Ida M. Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens were labelled the The Muckrakers. Henry Adams’ literate autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams also depicted a stinging description of the education system and modern life.Experimentation in style and form soon joined the new freedom in subject matter. In 1909, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), by then an expatriate in Paris, published Three Lives, an innovative work of fiction influenced by her familiarity with cubism, jazz, and other movements in contemporary art and music. Stein labeled a group of American literary notables who lived in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s as the Lost Generation.The poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was born in Idaho but spent much of his adult life in Europe. His work is complex, sometimes obscure, with multiple references to other art forms and to a vast range of literature, both Western and Eastern. He influenced many other poets, notably T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), another expatriate. Eliot wrote spare, cerebral (intellectual) poetry, carried by a dense structure of symbols. In “The Waste Land” he embodied a jaundiced (pessimistic) vision of post-World War I society in fragmented, haunted images. Like Pound’s, Eliot’s poetry could be highly allusive, and some editions of The Waste Land come with footnotes supplied by the poet. In 1948, Eliot won the Nobel Prize in Literature.American writers also expressed the disillusionment following upon the war. The stories and novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) capture the restless, pleasure-hungry, defiant mood of the 1920s. Fitzgerald’s characteristic theme, expressed poignantly in The Great Gatsby, is the tendency of youth’s golden dreams to dissolve in failure and disappointment. Sinclair Lewis and Sherwood Anderson also wrote novels with critical depictions of American life. John Dos Passos wrote about the war and also the U.S.A. trilogy which extended into the Depression.Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) saw violence and death first-hand as an ambulance driver in World War I, and the senseless carnage (bloodbath) persuaded him that abstract language was mostly empty and misleading. He cut out unnecessary words from his writing, simplified the sentence structure, and concentrated on concrete objects and actions. He adhered to a moral code that emphasized grace under pressure, and his protagonists were strong, silent men who often dealt awkwardly with women. The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms are generally considered his best novels; in 1954, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.Five years before Hemingway, another American novelist had won the Nobel Prize: William Faulkner (1897-1962). Faulkner managed to encompass an enormous range of humanity in Yoknapatawpha County, a Mississippian region of his own invention. He recorded his characters’ seemingly unedited ramblings (confused remarks) in order to represent their inner states, a technique called “stream of consciousness.”(In fact, these passages are carefully crafted, and their seemingly chaotic structure conceals multiple layers of meaning.) He also jumbled (mix up) time sequences to show how the past endures in the present. Among his great works are The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, Go Down, Moses, and The Unvanquished.Depression era literature was blunt and direct in its social criticism. John Steinbeck (1902-1968) was born in Salinas, California, where he set many of his stories. His style was simple and evocative, winning him the favor of the readers but not of the critics. Steinbeck often wrote about poor, working-class people and their struggle to lead a decent and honest life; he was probably the most socially aware writer of his period. The Grapes of Wrath, considered his masterpiece, is a strong, socially-oriented novel that tells the story of the Joads, a poor family from Oklahoma and their journey to California in search of a better life. Other popular novels include Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row and East of Eden. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.TheaterIn addition to fiction, the 1920s and 1930s were a rich period for drama. There had not been an important American dramatist until Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) began to write his plays. The 1936 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, O’Neill drew upon classical mythology, the Bible, and the new science of psychology to explore inner life. He wrote frankly about sex and family quarrels, but his preoccupation was with the individual's search for identity. One of his greatest works is Long Day’s Journey Into Night, a harrowing drama, small in scale but large in theme, based largely on his own family.Another strikingly original American playwright was Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), who expressed his southern heritage in poetic yet sensational plays, usually about a sensitive woman trapped in a brutish environment.Several of his plays have been made into films, including A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Other playwrights of the period were Maxwell Anderson, Marc Connelly, Elmer Rice, Lillian Hellman, Clifford Odets, Thornton Wilder, and William Saroyan.Post-World War IIThere were a number of major American war novels written in the wake of World War II. Some of the most well known included Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (1948), Irwin Shaw, James Jones, and later Joseph Heller (Catch-22) and Kurt V onnegut, Jr. (Slaughterhouse-Five).In the 1950s the West Coast spawned a literary movement, the poetry and fiction of the “Beat Generation,”a name that referred simultaneously to the rhythm of jazz music, to a sense that post-war society was worn out, and to an interest in new forms of experience through drugs, alcohol, and Eastern mysticism. Poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) set the tone of social protest and visionary ecstasy in Howl, a Whitmanesque work that begins with this powerful line: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness....” Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) celebrated the Beats’rollicking, spontaneous, and vagrant life-style in his masterful and vibrant novel On the Road.Post-Postmodernism and other recent movementsSince 1970, rising along with a literary trend in literature focusing on the minorities, has been a new semi-populist literary trend which has taken hints in terms of some approaches of stylization with postmodernism but that is much more accessible. Authors of this vein include John Irving and T.C. Boyle. Post-Postmodernism, a rather heavy title for an ongoing movement that started in the 1990s, includes younger writers like David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, Brett Easton Ellis, Michael Chabon, Jeffrey Eugenides, Mark Haddon, Audrey Niffenegger,and Michael Szymczyk. These authors typically employ a mix of soulful plots with some ideological context, stylistic maximalism (最高纲领) on top of the substance allowing the substance to be “turned and pinched”many ways (including an almost endless array of storyline-bending and repositioning effects), an almost pop-culture level of enhanced imagery and scene structure influenced by film and television, and a symbolism that includes images from contemporary American culture. This movement can also be called “maximalism”, with its blowing melodrama, use of literary effects, and scale of cultural reference. As well, commentary on the literary process and modes of thought and storytelling and an ambiguous and very close relation between reality and fiction are often features of post-postmodernism. Many critics criticize post-postmodernism for its use of style over true substance in some worse cases, though it can often strike a fine accord between these.Modern humorist literatureFrom Irving and Hawthorne to the present day, the short story has been a favorite American form. One of its 20th-century masters was John Cheever (1912-1982), who brought yet another facet of American life into the realm of literature: the affluent suburbs that have grown up around most major cities. Cheever was long associated with The New Yorker, a magazine noted for its wit and sophistication. John Updike also continued Cheever’s tradition and is best known for his Rabbit series which began with Rabbit Run.Although trend-spotting in literature that is still being written can be dangerous, the recent emergence of fiction by members of minority groups has been striking. Here are only a few examples.Southern literatureFaulkner was part of a southern literary renaissance that also included such figures as Truman Capote (1924-1984) and Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). Although Capote wrote short stories and novels, fiction and nonfiction, his masterpiece was In Cold Blood, a factual account of a multiple murder and its aftermath, which fused dogged reporting with a novelist's penetrating psychology and crystalline prose. Another practitioner of the “nonfiction novel,”Tom Wolfe (1931- ) was one of the founders of “New Journalism,” who honed (polished) his art in such essays as The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby and Radical Chic before he moved on to book-length efforts, such as his history of the American manned space program The Right Stuff and probably his best-known novel Bonfire of the Vanities. Other writers steeped in the Southern tradition include John Kennedy Toole (1937--1969) and Tom Robbins (1936- ).Flannery O’Connor was a Catholic, and thus an outsider in the heavily Protestant South in which she grew up. Her characters are Protestant fundamentalists obsessed with both God and Satan. She is best known for her tragicomic short stories.African American literatureAfrican American literature is literature written by, about, and sometimes specifically for African-Americans. The genre began during the 18th and 19th centuries with writers such as poet Phillis Wheatley and orator Frederick Douglass. Among the themes and issues explored in African American literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American society, African American culture, racism, slavery, and equality.Before the American Civil War, African American literature primarily focused on the issue of slavery, as indicated by the popular subgenre of slave narratives. At the turn of the 20th century, books by authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington debated whether to confront or appease racist attitudes in the United States.African American literature saw a surge during the 1920s with the rise of an artistic Black community in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. The period called the Harlem Renaissance produced such gifted poets as Langston Hughes (1902-1967), Countee Cullen (1903-1946), and Claude McKay (1889-1948). The novelist Zora Neale Hurston (1903-1960) combined a gift for storytelling with the study of anthropology to write vivid stories from the African-American oral tradition. Through such books as the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God— about the life and marriages of a light-skinned African-American woman — Hurston influenced a later generation of black women novelists.After World War II, a new receptivity to diverse voices brought black writers into the mainstream of American literature. James Baldwin (1924-1987) expressed hisdisdain for racism and his celebration of sexuality in Giovanni’s Room. In Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) linked the plight of African Americans, whose race can render them all but invisible to the majority white culture, with the larger theme of the human search for identity in the modern world.Today, African American literature has become accepted as an integral part of American literature, with books in the genre, such as Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley and The Color Purple by Alice Walker, achieving both best-selling and award-winning status. In addition, African American authors such as Toni Morrison are ranked among the top writers in the United States.Jewish American literatureThe United States has had a community and tradition of writing by Jewish immigrants and their descendants for a long time, although many writers have objected to being reduced to “Jewish” writers alone. Key modern writers with Jewish origins are Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Isaac Asimov, and Woody Allen, among others. The New Yorker has been especially instrumental in exposing many Jewish-American writers to a wider reading public.。
浅析《紫色》中的女性主义(英文论文)
浅析《紫色》中的女性主义摘要：二十世纪美国黑人作家对美国文学的发展做出了不可磨灭的贡献，他们的作品极大地丰富了美国文学，同时也对世界文学的创作产生了巨大的影响。
进入七十年代以后，黑人女作家领导文学潮流，掀起了第三次美国黑人文学高潮。
艾丽丝•沃克是当代美国最杰出和最具影响力的黑人女性作家之一。
她对黑人命运问题的研究探讨，引起文坛瞩目，被认为是美国黑人作家中的后起之秀，有“女才子”之誉。
小说《紫色》是她文学创作的最高成就。
本文主旨意在分析《紫色》中的女性主义。
第一章简要地介绍了爱丽丝•沃克的个人经历及作品《紫色》。
第二章论文的理论基础—女性主义的含义和它的发展阶段。
第三章是本文的主体，以小说的主旨及其写作技巧—书信体形式两方面为切入点来分析《紫色》中所体现的女性主义。
最后本文得出女性如果要独立、自尊、自强，需通过自己不懈的努力，战胜重重困难，最终才能取得与男性平等的社会地位与权力的结论。
这也正是爱丽丝·沃克想要表达的女性主义的真正内涵。
关键词：《紫色》美国黑人女性女权主义双重压迫寻求独立An Analysis of Feminism in The Color PurpleLi YixuanAbstract: Afro—American writers have made great contribution to American literature in the 20th century. Their works have enormously enriched American literature and exerted great influence on literary creation in the world. Black women writers have set off a new upsurge of literature since the 1970s. This is called the third Renaissance of Afro—American literature. Alice Walker is one of the most remarkable and influential Afro—Americanwriters in contemporary American literary world. Her famous novel The Color Purple is the summit of her literary achievements. The thesis is intended to explore the Feminism in the novel The Color Purple. Chapter one gives a brief introduction to Alice Walker’s personal experience and her novel The Color Purple. Chapter two shows the theoretical foundation of the thesis—Feminism, the definition and the development of it. Chapter three, is the main body of the thesis, deals with the analysis of Feminism in this novel and its writing technique—epistolary style，use these two aspects as a starting point to analysis the feminist which embodied in this novel. The end of this paper which concluded if women want to gain independence, self—esteem and self—reliance, the only thing they can do is to try every effort and to overcome the numerous difficulties to gain these things. And finally they can get the social status and social rights which is equal to men. This is exactly what Alice Walker wants to express the true meaning of the Feminism.Keywords:The Color Purple; Afro—American women; Feminism; double oppression;independenceContents承诺保证书 (I)摘要 (II)Abstract (III)Introduction (1)I. A Brief Introduction of Alice Walker and Her Novel —The Color Purple (2)1.1 A Brief Introduction of Alice Walker (2)1.2 Alice Walker’s Literary Work—The Color Purple (3)II. Theoretical Foundation (5)2.1The Definition of Feminism (5)2.2The Development of Feminism (5)III. An Analysis of Feminism in the Novel—The Color Purple (8)3.1 The Theme of the Novel (8)3.1.1 Sex ual Oppression upon Black Women (8)3.1.2 Fighting for Independence (11)3.2 The Writing Technique and Rhetoric Method of the Novel (14)3.2.1 Epistolary Style (14)3.2.2 Metaphor (15)Conclusion (17)References (18)IntroductionThe Afro-American literature is one of the important parts of the American literature and it undergoes a very long development and different periods of development. In the earlier stage of the 20th century, Afro-American literature expresses the praise for black nationalities and the longings for equality and freedom. "Fictions of protest" by middle stage writers focus on the exposure of racism and the poverty of Afro-Americans and reveal the writers’anxiety about the American dream. In the later stage, female writers represented by Walker have been turned over a new leaf. This thesis is a brief analysis of Alice Walker and her famous work The Color Purple. In this novel Walker mainly discussed the contradiction between men and women. Disclose the oppression inside the black community. Though telling the story of Celie—an ordinary black woman in the southern village in American—from insensitive to bear the oppression from the black males to realize the reality and fright for herself. The author deeply disclose the life which Afro—American women were suffered and exquisite depicted the Celie’s sufferings. Use Walker’s words:This novel describes the emotion of social oppression and the spirit’s substances are all told by a black woman who suffered a frustrated life. While she—Celie finally found a way out. She finally found a job, got her friendship, her own love and dignity.” The great place of this novel is that it not only disclose the misery of Afro—American women, but also discussed how to help those women to get rid of the “the problem of recover oneself” traditionally.I. A Brief Introduction of Alice Walker and Her Novel —The Color Purple1.1 A Brief Introduction of Alice WalkerAlice Walker is one of the most important contemporary Afro—American women writers, born in 1944. She is a novelist, a short fiction writer, a poet, a critic all at once. She is the eighth child of a sharecropper family in Eatonton, Georgia, where the tenant farmer system kept most black families perpetually in debt. She always lived a very poor life and at that time education was not taken very seriously. But Walker’s mother insisted that her children should go to school. After her trying Walker started school at four years old and proved to be an excellent child.In 1961 Walker was awarded a scholarship to Spelman College, a small black women school in Atlanta. In the following years she was selected to attend the Youth World Peace Festival in Finland. It was also when she first heard about Dr. Marin Luther King in her freshman year at Spelman.In 1964, she transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxvile, New York where she majored in literature and has a deep study in Latin poetry and history. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence with a bachelor’s degree, Walker returned to the South and was actively to participate in the Civil Rights Movement. Her work in Georgia put her closely linked to the poorest and lowest educated Afro—Americans and allowed her to have an attention to the impact of poverty on the relationships between black men and women.In 1970, she wrote her first novel, The Third Life of George Copeland; her second collection of poems, Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems (1973); her first short stories collection,In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973). Walker became a leader of spokesperson for the black feminism.By 1979, her next novel began forming in her mind. She thought she must to write the novel in which the characters are trying to contact her, to speak through her. So she sold her house and moved to California, settling in the countryside of San Francisco, a place that “looked a lot like the town in Georgia most of the characters were from”. And there the things which in her mind came freely and the novel The Color Purple flowed.Alice Walker was a civil rights advocator and actively to take part in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. She was a spokeswoman for the women’s movement. The honors and awards which she gained include Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Scholar in 1966, Merrill Writing Fellow in 1966—1967, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award in 1974 for In Love and Trouble, the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award in 1982 for The Color Purple, and so on. She is claimed to be one of the most famous black women writers in the American literary history.1.2 Alice Walker’s Literary Work—The Color PurpleThe background of the novel is in a southern American village roughly between 1916 and 1942, a period during the status of blacks remained unaltered in the Deep South. The protagonist Celie suffered a miserable life, at first she keeps silent about what happened on her, but this doesn’t stop bad things happening on her. H er mother dies, her two children are taken away, leaving her alone wondering whether they have been sold or even killed. Celie is victimized physically and mentally by her father. Utterly alone and out of desperation, she has no choice but to write to God to express her sufferings and feelings.Celie lives like a slave. In fact, the life with Albert, her husband, is the continuous of her nightmare. In the wedding day, Harpo, the oldest son of Albert welcomes Celiewith a rock laying her head open and the blood runs. He tortured her. His dad tells him not to do that. And he rapes Celie with her head blooding. Actually, Albert marries Celie not for love, just because he is in need of a servant to take good care of his three children and Celie just fit this.To Celie, the most desperate thing is that she never gets love and care from her mother, instead, her mother who doesn’t know the truth always screams and torture her. After she dies, Nettie, the most intimate woman in Celie’s life, is separated from Celie by Mr. Albert. Since then, Celie gets no message from her and thought she has died. Reading through the old letters, Celie knows Mr. Albert’s evil deeds with Nettie and her family’s truth. S he knows that her father, who rapes her, isn’t her natural father; her natural father has been dead because he is succeeding in the financial business in the white business world. Celie is angered by all that God has allowed to happen to her. She writes her last letter to God retelling her sufferings and accusing God of being silence. She is totally desperate to what has happened on her.As Celie curses on Mr. Albert for what he has done to her, she finds something which she has never been aware of. She has learned that the quality of life must not depend on the outside world; to be survived; to find one’s value; is what color purple means for. Celie can surround herself in purple, for she is in control of Kingdom.II. Theoretical Foundation2.1 The Definition of FeminismFeminism refers to a major woman’s experiences as the source and motivation of social theory and political movement. Critique of social relations, many supporters of feminism also focus on the analysis of gender inequality and promote women's rights, interests and issues. It also refers to a social theory and political movement with the female experience for its source in the social relations outside criticism, many women socialist supporters also focuses on the analysis of the gender inequality and promote women's rights and interests issues of feminist theory aims to understand the nature of the inequality, emphasis on gender, political power relations and sex consciousness (sexuality) on the theme of feminist inquiry, including discrimination stereotype materialized (especially about sex and chemical) body housework distribution oppressions and the oppression form the patriarchy. And in my opinion, the Feminism which Alice Walker discussed has a deeper meaning. It is a comprehensive protest to all kinds of oppression system (sexual oppression and racial oppression).2.2 The Development of FeminismFeminism in the nineteenth century gradually changed to the organized social movement because more and more people believe that women in a patriarchal society should treated equally. The feminist movement is rooted in the Western progressive, especially the nineteenth Century reform movement.Early feminists and early feminist movement is often called the first wave, and after 1960 feminist called the second wave. There is also the so-called the third-wave, but feminists for its existence necessity, contribution and concept disagree. The reason why these periods are called is because they like the waves, one after another; never discontinuous, later used the former Walker's contribution and resources.The Western Feminism can be mainly divided into three generations:The first generation of Western Feminism: Western Feminism originated in France bourgeois revolution and enlightenment movement, the second half of the nineteenth Century the emergence of the first generation, and the industrial revolution in Europe, is the representative of the British Harriet Tyler Mill. French female writer Gore in 1790 issued a “Declaration on the Rights of Women”, 17 women's rights. Declaration later became a programmatic document of the feminist movement. M. Wollstonecraft, British writer, published a book “Defense for Women's Rights”, in 1792, proposed that women should enjoy equal treatment with men in education, employment and politics. Until 1920, the United States passed a bill to protect women the right to vote. The initial appeal of women in education and legislation should be equal. In the United States, Elizabeth Cady Stanton National Woman Suffrage Association represented (NWSA) repeatedly requested the federal Congress to allow women to participate in political polling repeatedly refused to encounter, eventually in the Nineteenth Amendment (1920). During this period, feminism is not elevated to the level of theory, is mainly a number of practical activities and “March 8. International Women's Day "was born.The second generation of Western Feminism: The second stage is the most important phase of feminism in the West stage. The feminists found that although the women in the field of political and economic fight for equality and efforts to achieve significant results, but the unequal status of women in social life has not been fundamentally improved. For example, groups of women get the right to vote in politics is still in a low position , occupational segregation and career development prospects of poor highlights, the case of equal pay for equal work , equal employment basically guaranteed. This contradiction prompted feminist thinking in depth, forming a unique feminist theory. From early 20th until 1960s, the world experienced two world wars. During this period, Afro—American woman still under the control of themale society. The challenge which they faced is the patriarchal society, challenges the "class" system.The third generation of Western Feminism: Postmodern Feminism.Postmodern Feminism began in the last century 60-80 age, her resulting presumably and two factors, one is, since 60's "liberation" and the men and women in opposition to the feminist thought, has brought numerous family breakdown, single mothers and the AIDS epidemic, so people began to reflect: especially in the elimination of binary opposition between men and women, forming “Gentle Feminist”, "Green Feminists”. While recognizing the achievements of the feminist movement to protect women's rights, it also questioned the other hand; feminists have tried to subvert the traditional family model. Post-modern feminism is still a growth stage. Trying to eliminate inequality between men and women on the basis of the recognition of gender differences, emphasizing the social nature of gender roles, the idea of equality between men and women as a product of patriarchy .Thus, postmodern feminist emerge as the times require.III. An Analysis of Feminism in the Novel—The Color Purple3.1 The Theme of the NovelThe color purple is a feminist Bildungsroman. It tells how Afro—American women find themselves and fight for themselves though describing the sufferings of what Celie had experienced.While revealing patriarchy’s oppression upon Afro—American women, feminists point out that while disclosing the oppressions, what Afro—American men done had consequently deepens Afro—American women’s suffering. As Hruston states in Their Eyes were Watching God: “So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man thus pick it up. He picks it up because he has to, but he doesn’t tote it. He hand it to his woman folks. De nigger woman is de mule of the worlds so far as ah can see.” Alice Walker tries to disclose these oppressions in her novels. In The Color Purple, Walker also shows us how racism exacerbates these oppressions in Afro—American family. Black feminist writers reveal racial, gender oppressions between the sexes to improve the gender binary opposition between men and women, longing for an ideal, gender relation.Throughout these oppressions that the Afro—American women suffers, the main oppressions were racial oppression and sexual oppression.3.1.1 Sexual Oppression upon Black WomenSexual oppression has a great influence to the Afro—American women. The black has consciously in the face of modern society of sexual discrimination. Compared with men, blac k women’s statuses are lower. Their marginalized status is not only caused by racial discrimination, but also from male social gender discrimination.Alice Walker writes: “Black women are called in the folklore that so aptly identifies one’s status in society ‘the mule of the world’, because we have been handed the burdens that everyone else refuse to carry.” In the Color Purple, the only choice for a girl like Nettie to make is “either to marry somebody like her husband or wind up in some white lady kitc hen.”(CP 1987:17) In a patriarchy society, women are the main labor force both at home and in the fields.Although black women are the main labor force of the black family, they have no rights they deserve. On the contrary, they are constantly beaten by their husband. Mr. X—Celie’s husband, instructs his son: “Wives is like children. You have o let them know who got the upper hand. Nothing can do better th an a good sound beating.”(CP 1997:34) Mr. X beats Celie “like her beat the children. Cept he cont eve r hardly beat them. He say, Celie, git the belt. The children be outside the room peeking through the crack…”(CP 1987:22) The men who exploit and oppress women are acting out what Diana E.H.Russell terms the “masculinity mystique”—“To win, to be superior, to conquer, and to control demonstrate masculinity to those who subscribe to common cultural notions of masculinity.” Since Harpo is confused by the perfect control that his father exerts over Celie, he feels less than a man because of his inability to control his wife Sofia. Following his father’s instruction, Harpo keeps on beat ing Sofia and this finally leads to their separation.Except for the heavy burden and physical hurts, black women are sexually abused. In black men’s eyes, black women are only t he instruments for them to release their bad mood. They just enjoy their own happiness and the only thing left for women is the untold sufferings.In the Color Purple, in order to control women under their power, black men constantly impose their own con cept upon black women. Celie has “always been a good girl.”(CP 1987:3) She is so good—natured even his stepfather has to admit that “she good with children… Never heard her say a hard word to one of them.”(CP1987:12) She selflessly helps to take care of Shug when she is seriously ill, although she is he r husband’s mistress; she is also a clever student in school praised by her teacher, she says that: “long as she been a teacher she never know nobody want to learn bad” as her. But her stepfather always abus es her. He introduces Celie to Mr. X : “She ain’t fresh… She spoiled. She ugly… She is too old to be living her at home. And she has a bad influence on my other girls… She ain’t smart either… And another thing—she tell lies.”(CP1987:10) In his eyes, Celie is “evil and always up to no good” and “he can’t stand” hr no more. (CP 1987:5)Shug is also a good woman. She follows one of the few professions open to black women: blues singer; she is independent economically by hard working; she safeguards her selfhood; she asserts her own value; she displays a wisdom learned in her working lives to teach the girls she loves not to allow others to use or revile their individuality and tells the men what she thinks of their weaknesses. One thing that we can figure out is that one of the strategies the black men employ to take women under their control is to decry their reputation and deprive them of their confidence. They try all the means to let the women believe that they themselves are bad in nature and inborn, so they deserve any kind of ill—treatments black men exert on them.In Africa, men, even some women, don’ think girl need to be educated. When Nettie asks a mother why she thinks so, she said, “A girl is nothing to herself, only to hr husband can she become s omething.”(CP 1987:132) When Tashi, a little girlfriend of Olivia, Celie’s daughter in Africa, learns some knowledge from Olivia and becomes quiet and thoughtful, her patents even get upset for being afraid that she will not fit into village life. In addition, women are deprived of the right to choose the ways of their lives from their own free will. In the novel, it is Celie’s stepfather who chooses husband for Celie. He is her owner. In a scene reminiscent of a slave action, Celie is passed like a piece of property from one creel and domineering black male into the hands of another:The Color Purple is to expose the double oppression endured by the black women so that the solution to this problem existing in the black community can push forward the develo pment of black people’s unity. The most significant for Alice Walker is that she advances her tentative solution—feminism in the hope of curing the social diseases of racism and sexism and promoting the development of society.Walker through the description of a black woman seeking her dual identity reveals to us that only if black women in the United States integrated black blood, do the masters of their own destiny, he creates his own, can they get rid of edge position, and obtain their own identity.3.1.2 Fighting for IndependenceAlthough the Afro—American women under the control of the patriarchal social, they never give up struggling for their own independence. Their independence can be discussed mainly from these two aspects: familial independence and social independence.In the patriarchal family, women are the labor force both inside the house and outside in the field. However they didn’t get what they deserve to get, such as equality, love and respect. On the contrary, they suffered pain and mental torture. What they had experienced also sowed the seeds for the future of their resistance.Social independence implies black women’s independence in the society, including economical and political independence. In America, many Afro—American women have to depend on black men mainly due to their main status in economy. They are generally degraded to objects and became the secondary gender in the society. So exploration for social independence is very significant for black women to change their social status. In the Color Purple, the feminist explores to gain social independence mainly by using the Afro—American woman’s potential ability, whichalso discloses the feministic viewpoint—to make full use of black women’s strong viewpoints and realizing the importance of gaining their own social independence.Number one is Celie’s self-identity and women's socialist mental health.Identity, is one of the major contents in western literary criticism, it advocates accented literature classic, the thorough analysis colonial hegemony and male central cultural rewriting history between men and women in colonial conflict story.If Celie continue to maintain a callous life, resigned, muddy disturbance to spend her life go, then, then the characters will fall into the traditional literature's misconduct. However, Walker doesn’t want to fall into formality. She, in an interview said: "people not only to live, to prosperity but also to love life. She gave her life to the love and life " Live unremitting pursuit, pour into to literary works, Celie from decayed traditional thought to emancipate herself, helped herself to set up the life of optimism attitude, to break the traditional literature in the description of black women "" False image, namely and the reality of black women did not fit with the image, Shaping a new black women's image.Number two is Celie’s exploration: from the rebellious to rebirth.In Ceie’s mind God is omniscient and omnipotent. After these sufferings, God is the only listener and savior to her, however, after sent 55 letters to God and without any answers back to her, Celie could no longer bear it, she even said: “ What did God do for me?—He is a big devil, his behavior is just like any other man I know: frivolous, forgetful and contemptible.” This sentence represents the first leap of her character’s development. She not only challenges the authority of God’s but also challenges the patriarchy’s thought.Independent women, who run away from her family and then return to it again, will have a different feeling. After the success, she forgives her husband whom once abused her, and then they become very good friends. Although she don’t want to rebuild her family, but in her opinion, her husband was not as disgusting as before. Her concern about personal destiny cares about group destiny, from the thinking about the individual value, personal survival significance to all mankind pain and liberation exploration. She stood at the height of the human life, overlooking human life and rethinks the life. This humanity spirit and highly responsibility really make us to rethink on and take example by.Number three is from Celie’s heart journey to see Walker’s women socialist connotationCelie’s self identity and women's socialist spirit is meaningful; it ha s the ideal womanism of the author. The Color Purple describes a group of black women whom representative is Celie, they pursue for equal rights and personal identity, struggle to enlarge the attention range. Walker wrote the black woman whom in the lowest social level, what’s more important, on the basis of racial and sexual oppression; Walker added to the natural element and combines them together. Committed to achieve interpersonal, man and natural’s harmonious survival mode.Moreover, Celie's tolerant and mind is universal love is what Walker’s Socialist soul places. In the process of difficult self-identity construction, pursue women's spirit use the spirit of tolerance to forgive those black men who had abused them; Black male also abandoned the original great man's doctrine thought, through the self-improvement, they not only realize the spirit of their own survival, but also promoted other characters in the novel (especially the female character) complete live, thus bring the black community to a rebirth.In economy, the womanist quests for self—realization form black feminine household activities, which are usually belittled by black males or even females themselves by relating to revelations of black women as the weak sex in the society. The womanist realizes her limitless potential as a black woman in her daily work—the wisdom and artistic creativity, by which she gains self—confidence and self—support, and thus actualizes her independence in the society.In culture, the womanist quests for social independence by her own black feminine tradition. She persists in presenting her creative artistic charm as a black woman, in her feminine creative activities, such as quilting, designing nd making pants. While questing for black woman’s beauty and dign ity in these artistic activities, she gets her cultural independence. Moreover, Celie sticks to speaking her native language instead of the Standard English, which also indicates her persistent exploration for her own cultural tradition and her cultural independence.At the end of the novel, Celie achieves great economical success; she sets up her own company to produce all kinds of pants designed by her. By making pants, Celie creates a new way to make her living and completely frees herself from subordinate status in economy and realizes her self—independence in the society. She is no longer the oppressed, exploitative, abusive object. She can say what she wants to say. She founded her female subjectivity, and eventually became the woman who has full of confidence, dignity, and personality. From the reverse to stand on her own, Celie produced very big change, after awakening has more strong resistance. She insisted on using their own language to express them, express her anger, her joy and her song.3.2 The Writing Technique and Rhetoric Method of the Novel3.2.1 Epistolary StyleEpistolary novel is a type of novel in which the author is carry on by means of series of letters. It is a traditional feminine genre associated with women’s voice, feelings。
American_literature_in_the_20th[1][1]._century
![American_literature_in_the_20th[1][1]._century](https://img.taocdn.com/s3/m/500a27dc5022aaea998f0fbf.png)
War means violence, devastation, blood and death. The gas victim
C. the Lost Generation
or American expatriates in Europe
What does it Mean?
Worthy of mention are William James, an American psychologist famous for his theory of “stream of conscious,” and Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, noted for his “collective unconscious” and “archetypal symbol” as part of modern mythology.
Modernism in Literature
Anti-romantic:do not avoid the ugly, horrible, and sexual descriptions Anti-traditional: experimenting with different techniques to reflect modern people’s inner mind. Anti-heroes:no totally good or bad characters Anti-climax:
Байду номын сангаас
To whom does it refer? Narrow sense: a group of American writers,
(约翰斯坦贝克)John Steinbeck
约翰· 斯坦贝克
Character profile (人物简介) John Steinbeck ( 1902-1968) is one of the most influential writers in the 20th century in American literature. 1902, Steinbeck was born in the United States of America in California. In December 21, 1968, he died of a heart attack.
约翰·斯坦贝克，20世纪美国作家。1902年， 斯坦贝克生于美国加利福尼亚。1968年12月 21日，他因心脏病发作逝世。
Representative works （代表作品）
"Of Mice and Men" "the grapes of Wrath"
“The Forgotten Village”
“The of mice and men", not only art display conflict pastoral village life and the cruel reality of the society, but also reflects the people's true feelings of living conditions. "The best design of the mouse and the human is often lost" -- it is the portrayal of human survival situation, which reflects the tragic connotation and philosophical implication of the works to make it into a modern fable that represents the universal experience.
德莱塞《嘉莉妹妹》——德莱塞笔下的“消费英雄”
摘要摘要西奥多·德莱塞是20世纪美国文学史上一位杰出的自然主义作家，他的第一部小说作品《嘉莉妹妹》自1900年出版后就受到很多争议。
德莱塞生活在美国从生产主导型社会向消费主导型社会转型的时期。
在这个过程中，以生产为主的意识形态让位于消费意识形态，人们的行为和心理越来越受到消费的影响和控制，从而生活方式和价值观念也发生了变化。
德莱塞亲身感受到变革带来的深刻影响。
在他犀利的笔下，一种在消费浪潮中沉浮的新型人物形象——―消费英雄‖得以形成，消费主义笼罩下的社会特征和人际关系也得以呈现。
虽然德莱塞塑造的人物大多都违背了传统的伦理道德标准，但在他看来，他们都是当时消费主义文化的产物。
本文分五部分。
第一章介绍作者和小说概况，前人的研究评论并阐述了本研究的意义，介绍了消费文化理论。
第二章主要从消费文化角度分析小说中的几位主角。
第三章论述了小说中的人物——―消费英雄‖的主要特征。
第四章讲述了德莱塞的人物塑造，他对―消费英雄‖这一新型人物的态度以及该类人物在文学史上的影响。
最后为论文的结论部分。
本文立足于德莱塞的成名作《嘉莉妹妹》，从19世纪末20世纪初美国新兴的―消费文化‖这一特定社会历史背景出发，分析这部作品中出现的新型的人物形象——―消费英雄‖，努力挖掘这类新型人物形象在文学史中的地位和影响。
关键字：西奥多·德莱塞；《嘉莉妹妹》；消费文化；消费英雄AbstractAbstractTheodore Dreiser is an outstanding naturalism writer in the 20th century American literary history. Since his first novel Sister Carrie was published, it had been involved in much controversy. Dreiser lived in an age transforming from production to consumption leading society. During this process, the production predominated ideology had been replaced by the consumption one. Besides, people’s behavior s and mentality were getting more and more influenced by consumption, so were their life styles and concepts of value. Dreiser himself realized the profound effects of the change. Therefore, in his meticulous writing, a kind of new character type ―Consumer Hero‖formed in the consumption wave. New social characteristics and people’s relationships also appeared. Although Dreiser’s characters are mostly contrary to the traditional ethical standards, in his view, they are all products of consumer culture at that time. This paper is divided into five parts. The 1st part will introduce the writer’s life, his works, and previous studies on it and illustrate the significance of this study and the theory of consumer culture. The 2nd part will mainly analyze the characters from the perspective of consumer culture. The 3rd part will clarify main characteristics of characters. The 4th part will describe Dreiser’s characterization, his attitude to ―Consumer Hero‖ and its influence. At last, it will give a conclusion. The paper focuses on a particular historical background, and tries to analyze the new emerging character type ―Consumer Hero‖ in Dreiser’s masterpiece Sister Carrie, and aims to explore the influences of such a character type on the literary history.Key words: Theodore Dreiser; Sister Carrie; consumer culture; consumer heroContentsChapter 1 Introduction (1)1.1 A Brief Introduction to Dreiser and Sister Carrie (1)1.2 Previous Studies and Comments on Sister Carrie (2)1.3 The Significance of This Research (3)1.4 Theory of Consumer Culture (4)Chapter 2 Analysis of Characters from the Perspective of Consumer Culture (7)2.1 Sister Carrie—A “New Woman” Image (7)2.2 Drouet—A Messenger of Material (8)2.3 Hurstwood—A Tragic Character in the Materialized World (10)Chapter 3 Main Characteristics of Characters—“Consumer Heroes” (13)3.1 Greed—Everlasting Desire (13)3.1.1 Miss Desire—Sister Carrie (13)3.1.2 Mr. Desire—Drouet and Hurstwood (15)3.2 Vanity—Attempting to Construct Self-Identity with MaterialConsumption (16)3.3 Pursuit—Self-Realization in the System of Object (18)Chapter 4 Dreiser’s Characterization, His Attitude to Consumer Heroes and Its Influence (19)Chapter 5 Conclusion (23)References (25)Acknowledgements (25)The Consumer Heroes in Dreiser’s Sister CarrieChapter 1 Introduction1.1 A Brief Introduction to Dreiser and Sister CarrieTheodore Dreiser was an American naturalism writer in the 20th century, and he took an important role in the world literary history. Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1871. His father was a German textile worker, who became an American immigrant in order to avoid serving in the army, while, his mother was a peasant’s daughter. Dreiser was born in a large but poor family, so he lived a hard life and did not receive a good education. At the age of 15, he went out to earn his living. When he was 18, a female high school teacher sponsored him to go to the university for one year. In 1892, he worked as a journalist in Chicago Global Newspaper. In 1894, he moved to New York. His first novel Sister Carrie came out in 1900. In 1911, he finished Jennie Gerhardt. Since then, his creation came into a strong period, and he began to write the famous work Trilogy of Desire, The Genius and American Tragedy, and so on. At the year of 1941, he was elected to be the chairman of American Writer Association. He then joined Communist Party USA at 1945 and passed away at the same year. Lawson, the American progressive writer praised him as ―Our own Gorky, and Romain Rolland of American version.‖[1]Dreiser is quite different from any other American novelists. He has his own particular writing style. Indeed, his writing style is simple and easy. He can describe different characters with the use of plain language. He always uses stron g contrast to set off characters’ life and fate. Besides, he is good at creating huge social life scene. The stories he creates are not quite complicated, but they can deeply reveal social problems. He always pays attention to the whole structure to make the story complete. His stories often involve a seeker or quester – sometimes driven by desire, sometimes by other motives –who finds at the end of the novel that he has returned to where he started. It is possible to visualize Dreiser’s novels as a graphic irony – the characters believe they are pushing forward but they are really moving in a circle. [2] So, in this way, his works can give readers some unexpected effectivenesses.In a word, Dreiser is a great naturalist writer—the one who dares to fight against American tradition, while, Sister Carrie becomes a morning star in his writing career.Sister Carrie – a famous work knocking at the door of the 20th century in 1900 is a realism masterpiece. The story mainly focused on three characters –Carrie, Hurstwood, and Drouet. Carrie was born in a country of West America. Though she lived in a poor family, she still had a strong vanity, and always looked forward to rich city life. Then she decided to go to Chicago forher dream. In Chicago, she lived in her s ister Minnie’s home. The life was not as good as she ever thought, so Carrie had to look for a job to make a living. But she was often left out in the cold when living in such an inanimate family. What’s worse, once Carrie lost her job, she was forced to go back to the country. However, she didn’t want to do so, and went to Drouet for help—a salesman whom she came across in the train. Then, she became Drouet’s mistress, and lived with him together. After Drouet introduced Hurstwood –a hotel manager to Carrie, Hurstwood soon fell in love with Carrie and tried to seduce her with all kinds of methods. They finally eloped to New York together. However, experiencing a series of failure, Hurstwood used up money and collapsed finally. At last, he committed suicide when getting on the beach. As a result of chance, Carrie became a famous star and got the upper reaches of society. But she still felt empty and couldn’t find the true meaning of life. With loneliness and desolation, the only thing Carrie could do was just sitting in the rocking chair, dreaming happiness that she would never have.1.2 Previous Studies and Comments on Sister CarrieDreiser was the 1st outstanding writer in American literature of the 20th century, and he was the pioneer of modern American fiction. Many critics thought that Dreiser dared to make innovations and had broken those traditional thoughts in American literary. Elliot, the chief editor of Columbia Literary History of the United States, thought that Dreiser had created a new style. His works were for ―another readers, another group focusing on the consumer culture, rather than aristocratic culture.‖[3]Actually, Dreiser advocated a new ideology. Sister Carrie obviously showed the influences of consumerism on Dreiser himself, and it just indicated his dissatisfaction with the Puritan moral ethics that had suppressed people’s desire, which precisely the new consumer ideology advocated. From this point of view, Dreiser was in favor of those consumers’ behavior with the effects of consumer ideology. He could not completely break with the old ideology which represented the relations of production. Therefore, he also gave criticism and suppression on the unethical behavior of those kinds of characters like Carrie. So, we can find that Dreiser held a complex and contradictory attitude to the new ideology. [4] Dreiser’s fictions like mirrors reflected the evils and conflicts of the social life at that age. However, it seemed that no other writers like Dreiser revealed the darkness of bourgeois society, but also shaped some characters that always swam with stream and did things with strong desire, just as characters in Sister Carrie. Just because Dreiser could expose the hypocritical veil of the upper class and criticized the weakness of capitalism through the description of the working class, much dispute aroused among some critics. The early evaluation of Dreiser could be divided into two categories. A critic who was most in recognition of Dreiser was H. L. Mencken,The Consumer Heroes in Dreiser’s Sister Carriepointing out that Dreiser was not the follower of Norris or Zola, and he could ―take profound sense of wonder into literature.‖[5]The other group was represented by Stewart Sherman. He accused Dreiser of not describing the real American society and people, but viewing them as animals. Some early critics mostly belonged to the biographical criticism of the traditional history. Later, some new ways of comments on it turned up, such as Freud’s psychoanalysis, the criticism of feminism and post-structuralism. In recent years, many scholars have tried to analyze Sister Carrie from more different perspectives. Professor Zhang Fangde and Zhang Xiangting both made comments on the transition from goods consumption to symbolic consumption. Professor Yu Guofei, Zhang Ailing, Tianjing and Chen Zhenhua have done some studies and comments from the perspective of consumer culture. Besides, there has been a new critical perspective in Professor Wang Rong’s study—focusing on the aspect of ―New Woman‖. The domestic and foreign research situation not only lies in its achievement increasing rapidly, but the expansion of its depth and width. So, we can better understand the profound significance of this work.During these years, many researchers viewed Dreiser as a master of naturalism or realism. In their opinions, Dreiser was the revelator of the darkness of American capitalism. However, they overlooked the interdependent relationship between Dreiser and the mainstream society at that time. In addition, researchers viewed Dreiser’s works in the same way, which was not quite accurate. Because society, politics and culture were changing all the time, Dreiser’s writing ideas were basically in a dynamic state. Novels in the early time mainly showed his hedonism, while, in his middle age, especially in his later years, his pursuit transformed from material to spirit. Therefore, Dreiser’s works are full of varieties. With all these mentioned above, when we do research on this work, we should put it more into the cultural environment of the 20th century of the United States. At the same time, we should dig out its writing ideas and methods, so that we can excavate the interrelationship between the main ideology and Dreiser himself in the cultural environment at that moment.1.3 The Significance of This ResearchThe creation of Sister Carrie came out at the occasion of the reform of the United States. The production primarily ideology was gradually being replaced by consumer ideology. As the economy developed rapidly, industrialization and urbanization had reached an unexpected level. At the end of 19th century, there were varieties of commodity in the US Department Store, which attracted many writers’and consumers’attentions. Ideologically, Darwin’s theory of evolution and the survival of the fittest were in vogue, and people’s thoughts were changing obviously. Their desires for material became stronger and stronger, and the thrift of Puritan ethics was castoff. Besides, the bohemian consumption trend became a mainstream. People’s opinions were gradually influenced by consumer culture, so was Dreiser himself. He always showed his ideas through his works, and with his pen, he described people’s different fates in the materialistic society when consumer culture rose.The characters in Sister Carrie are mainly consumers. They are keen to find their own way in the city, and always long for gorgeous clothes to show off their status. Besides, they look forward to live in luxurious accommodations. All in all, they are all addicted into endless lust, which is the great influence of consumer culture. Therefore, characters in this novel are all products of consumer culture. So it is feasible to study these characters from the perspective of consumer culture. These characters’ behaviors are the real reflections of American society at that moment. Their different consequences can make people think a lot—should consumerism be promoted or suppressed in the world? So, it’s necessary to study Dreiser’s novel to reveal the writer’s creative ideas and shape new images from the perspective of consumer culture. Moreover, it has certain academic values.Dreiser’s Sister Carrie not only reflects American social conditions at that moment, but also shows us some universal phenomena and problems at the period of the development of human society. In such a rapid development of commodity economy today, China is in the transition period to the consumer society. There are many people like characters in this novel, full of endless desire and pursuit of money, living for the satisfaction of material, status and wealth. This is just the embodiment of the consumption of ideology acting on human beings. Besides, there have been many characters like ―Consumer Hero‖ appearing in today’s literature work. So this work has great influences on the literature writing.1.4 Theory of Consumer CultureThis section will mainly describe Jean Baudrillard’s theory of sign consumption(符号消费理论). In Baudrillard’s opinion, in capitalist society, material is organized basically on the following four principles: first, the functional logic of the use value; second, the economic logic of exchange value; third, the logic of symbolic exchange; fourth, the logic of symbolic value. Then, he proposes his concept of symbolic value. ―Material‖accordingly becomes the tools, goods, symbols and signs in these four logics. Sign is a mark of material, a mark of social status and identity during people’s consumption. It is also an expression of the potential desires. The so-called symbolic value of goods is that goods, as symbols, are able to provide prestige and perform consumers’personality, characteristics, social status and power.The logic of consumption, as we have seen, can be defined as a manipulation of signs. The object loses its objective finality and its function; it becomes a term in a much greater combinatory, in sets ofThe Consumer Heroes in Dreiser’s Sister Carrieobjects in which it has a merely relational value. [6]In American society, affected greatly by the consumer culture, some people live in a life which has been under the control of ―consumption‖. ―Material‖ is no longer consumed for its use, but it’s consumed for its differences with other ―materials‖. Therefore, in the consume relations, it is not just any old goods which are produced or consumed: they must have some meaning with regard to a system of values. [7]From Baudrillard’s point of view, ―you never consume the object in itself (in its use-value); you are always manipulating objects (in the broadest sense) as signs which distinguish you either by affiliating you to your own group taken as an ideal reference or by marking you off from your group by reference to a group of higher status.‖[8] That is to say, what people consume is not materials, but the symbolic significance which they represent. In such a prosperous and rich society, due to the constant production and manufacture of desires and needs, consumption has become endless. It becomes the master of human activity, and forms an object system to satisfy all kinds of desires, where people can get material and spiritual satisfaction. Besides, it is even the happiness and meaning of life and it becomes the whole process of self-realization.Chapter 2 Analysis of Characters from the Perspective of ConsumerCulture2.1 Sister Carrie—A New Woman ImageIn the late 19th and early 20th century, the consumer ideology gradually took the place of production ideology. The consumer ideology mainly ―emphasized the possession of cost and material, and it weakened the thrift, savings, self-control and other traditional moral standards.‖[9] So, such a kind of consumer culture promoted the rise of ―New Women‖. With the influence of consumer culture, women didn’t consume for daily need but their vanity. Their appetite and lust for material even became a fashion. ―New Women‖ most had their own self-consciousness and always had dependent characteristics. Their opinions on sex were very open. They were not bounded by their family and usually appeared in public areas that belonged to men. What’s more, ―New Women‖ dared to challenge traditional moral standards. In their opinions, women should dress themselves well and enjoy life happily. While, Carrie—a character shaped by Dreiser, was the prominent representative of ―New Women‖.At the beginning of the story, the writer wrote, ―Self-interest with her was high, but not strong. It was, nevertheless, her guiding characteristic… And yet she was interested in her charm, quick to understand the keener pleasures of life, ambitious to gain in material things.‖[20]P2~3 In Carrie’s heart, something called desire was coming around the corner. In the train for Chicago, she came across Drouet—a canvasser with bright dress, whose attracting appearance left deep impressions on Carrie: ―The fat purse, the shiny tan shoes, the smart new suit, and the air with which he did things, built up for her a dim world of fortune, of which he was the center. It disposed her pleasantly toward all he might do. ‖[20] P8In Chicago, Carrie lived in his sister Minnie’s. However, Mr. and Mrs. Hanson’s house was just a flat, most inhabited by families of laborers and clerks. ―The walls of the rooms were discordantly papered. The floors were covered with matting and the hall laid with a thin rag carpet,‖[20] P13 which made Carrie feel the drag of a lean and narrow life. So she had to look for a job to make a living. On the way of looking for a job, she was much affected by the remarkable displays of dress goods and jewelry. ―She could not help feeling the claim of each trinket and valuable upon her personally, and yet she did not stop. There was nothing there which she could not have used—nothing which she did not long to own. The dainty slippers and stockings, the delicately frilled skirts and petticoats, the laces, ribbons, haircombs, purses, all touched her with individual desire, and she felt keenly the fact that not any of these things were in the range of her purchase.‖[20]P26 When Carrie saw thingsthat could make her pretty, her desire soon surged on. Once she saw the shopgirl s’ nature and appearance, a flame of envy lighted in her heart. ―She realized in a dim way how much the city held—wealth, fashion, ease—every adornment for women.‖[20]P26In Carrie’s heart, at this moment, she just longed for dress and beauty. In such a prosperous and lively city, Carrie was gradually touched by those beautiful things. In contrary to Minnie, whose thoughts were staid and solemnly adapted to a condition, Carrie had her own consciousness. She didn’t want to save money, but she would like to buy dress and jewelry, or go to the theatre to enjoy life.While, life was not always as perfect, the job in the shoe factory was not as easy as Carrie thought. She thought that people there were quite dirty and vulgar. Every week, she should pay her board—four dollars, so that she had no money to buy clothes. Then she lost her job due to her illness. Fortunately, she met Drouet again, which became her turning point. Then he even gave twenty dollars to Carrie. Though Carrie contradicted whether she should accept it or not, there was no wonder that the feeling with taking the money was so fantastic: ―Her need was so dire. Now she would buy a nice pair of pretty button shoes. She would get stockings, too, and a skirt, and, and…She had got beyond, in her desires, twice the purchasing power of her bills.‖[20]P75Afterwards, seduced by Drouet, Carrie became his mistress and lived together with him in a rent room. Drouet often took Carrie out to see many new people and things, so Carrie’s vision gradually opened up. She had seen many elegant mansions. When time grew, she began to be dissatisfied with the current situation. After she knew Hurstwood—a bar manager, she threw herself at his feet for his handsome appearance. And then they developed into lovers. In fact, Carrie chose Hurstwood just because she took a fancy to a more prosperous and decent life that he represented. She believed that marrying him would be happy forever, which made Carrie elope with Hurstwood to New York together after she knew his true features. In essence, it was her strong desire for material that made Carrie so easily ―love‖one man from another. Later, Hurstwood came down in the world, and Carrie abandoned him. After she became a famous Broadway star, her life became more and more creditable, and her consumption capacity grew stronger and stronger. However, she seemed not to be quite satisfactory with her possessions, and she still dreamed of happiness that she would never get. From this, it could be seen that Carrie became a new woman image in such a materialistic society. She was a consumer, even a product of consumer culture. She precisely represented people’s consciousness or concept in that era. [10]2.2 Drouet—A Messenger of MaterialWith the help of consumption, people can show their taste through different luxuries. The essence of modern consumption is to make differences. People consume for their own targets,that is to say, people want to make differences with others through consumption to obtain a kind of identity. [6] At the beginning of the story, Drouet’s appearance showed that men deliberately dressed themselves well and always behaved elegantly to attract women’s attentions in that era with consumer culture rampant. To Carrie, Drouet played such an indispensable role that he helped her open the door to the colorful world.When Carrie and Drouet came across on the train for the 1st time, Drouet left a deep impression on Carrie. His charm was completely appealing to inexperienced Carrie: ―His suit was of a striped and crossed pattern of brown wool, new at that time…The low crotch of the vest revealed a stiff shirt bosom of white and pink stripes. From his coat sleeves protruded a pair of linen cuffs of the same pattern, fastened with large, gold-plate buttons…The whole suit was rather tight-fitting, and was finished off with heavy-soled tan shoes, highly-polished, and the gray fedora hat.‖[20]P4Just as the writer wrote, Drouet got such an attractive dress through consumption. In this way, he could make himself more impressed, and have more opportunities to get women’s hearts. The manner of his behavior built up a world of fortune in Carrie’s mind. In Carrie’s heart, he was the messenger of material, who could take her to live a rich life. Although Carrie’s clothes were shabby, she had slim figure and pretty face, which made Drouet strike up a conversation with her at the first sight. When meeting her again and knowing her plight, Drouet felt sorry for her and gave 20 dollars to Carrie generously. Besides, he took her to go shopping and buy many beautiful clothes. In fact, imperceptibly, in such a society with the flood of consumption, men’s perspectives of women had greatly changed. They no longer thought that gentleness and virtuousness were the nature of women. If one had an absorbing woman by side, he could show his identity when they both appeared in public places. So men could make differences with others, while, the envy and jealousy from others’ eyes could meet their own vanity and satisfaction. Just because of getting such a fantastic beauty, Drouet couldn’t wait to introduce her to Hurstwood. From another level to see, it was men’s such kind of view that made women more keen on consumption. So did Carrie. With Drouet’s leading, she had got many gorgeous clothes, and known more upper-class people. Besides, her experience increased much more with her open horizon.Actually, Drouet’s attitudes to Carrie had no difference with Hurstwood’s. When he knew the relationship between Carrie and Hurstwood, he felt indignant and upset. He thought, ―You oughtn’t to have had anything to do with him after all I’ve done for you.‖[20]P260The reason was that he provided Carrie with comfortable living environment, and often took her out to enjoy. So he had the right to possess Carrie. However, she betrayed him. ―His feelings were a mixture of anger at deception, sorrow at losing Carrie, misery at being defeated.‖[20]P265 He tried to get his rights back, including making Carrie stay. But at last, he failed. He lost Carrie and lost her forever. At the same time, he lost his vanity and the proud self-esteem.At the end of the story, Drouet found Carrie again, who had become a star. He tried hard to invite her for dinner and dreamed of getting her back. ―Ah, what a prize! How beautiful, how elegant, how famous! In her theatrical and Waldorf setting, Carrie was to him the all-desirable.‖[20]P553 It could be seen that Drouet tried to get Carrie back to show off his own identity. If he could possess her, he would be much brighter than before. However, today’s Carrie was too rich and noble for him, and he finally could only end up with disappointment.The higher value of a commodity, the more can reveal its owner and user’s social status and prestige. [6] While, to men, women are a kind of senior commodity. The prettier women are, the more honorable men can be. Therefore, Drouet’s fantasy and desire on Carrie was exactly the true portrayal of men to women at that age, and it was also the great influences that consume culture brought to human.2.3 Hurstwood—A Tragic Character in the Materialized WorldHurstwood was a bar manager in Chicago, where he had been a well-known and successful man. He did well in his job and had a considerable income. ―Hurstwood looked the part, for, besides being slightly under forty, he had a good, stout constitution, an active manner, and a solid, substantial air, which was composed in part of his fine clothes, his clean linen, his jewels, and ,above all, his own sense of his important.‖[20]P51 In people’s eyes, he had a successful career, and always enjoyed his life. However, he did not own a happy family. Among his family members, two things were lack—tolerance and respect. His wife was a selfish and indifferent person, who always liked to show herself off. His daughter acted on her own way all the time, and his son was full of vanity. What’s more important was that Hurstwood felt that his status in this family was gradually getting down, and he had no rights any more. What’s worse, he made a mistake of putting his property all under his wife’s name, which made him not be cared by his wife and respected by his children. He used to be respected outside, while, at home, the only thing he could feel was the depressing atmosphere. So, he could only rely on the beautiful clothes and diamond ornaments to comfort his heart. In his opinion, these things could keep his social status and his self-esteem. In that society, only having certain consumption level could make him realize his target. That is to say, he could try to compensate for his spirit with material consumption. Therefore, after he met Carrie, he couldn’t wait to obtain her heart. Compared with those jewelries, Carrie seemed to be a more sophisticated commodity. If Hurstwood could be together with her, not only would he take back his status, but also meet his satisfactions. In Hurstwood’s eyes, Carrie had her own youth and beauty. ―In the mild light of Carrie’s eye was nothing of the calculation of the mistress. In the diffident manner was nothing of the art of the courtesan.‖[20]P144The most charming thing was Carrie’s obedience to him. Her manner didn’t。
现代主义the 20th Century American Literature
the 20th Century American Literature(1900-1910s)Historical BackgroundThe influence of WWI ：•an economic boom• a sudden jump in technology•The breakdown of old moral values ——bobbed hair, short skirts, women drinking and smoking • a tremendous disillusionment (幻想破灭，美国梦，Benjamin Franklin)•Nothing had changed.•There was a popular contempt轻视for the law—the prohibition of alcohol, bootleggers走私者, etc.•The dream美国梦had failed and the country was building up economic troubles toward disaster.• A loss of faith began with Darwin’s theories of evolution达尔文进化论. Without faith man could no longer keep his feeling and thought whole; hence a sense of life being fragmented变成碎片and chaotic混乱的. Without faith, man no longer felt secure and happy; hence the feeling of gloom阴暗and despair绝望•Bertrand Russell伯特兰·罗素（英国哲学家）, commented评论on the spirit of the period—Man must not expect any help from a beneficent慈善的God. Man must recognize that he is of noimportance in such a world ---- Nothing can preserve保护an individual life beyond the grave.Death will doom注定all human endeavors努力and achievements to ultimate extinction化为灰烬. He advises man to believe in himself, to face life with “a despairing courage绝望的勇气”.•.Imagism☐Imagism意象主义was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American英裔美国人poetry that favored赞成precision精度of imagery and clear, sharp language. The Imagists意象主义诗人rejected the sentiment情感and discursiveness散漫、推论typical of much Romantic and Victorian （强调理性）poetry.What is an image?☐T. E. Hulme: The image must en able one “to dwell存在于and linger徘徊upon a point of excitement, to achieve the impossible and convert转变a point into a line”.☐Ezra Pound: An image is “that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant 瞬间of time”.☐Richard Aldington: The exact word must bring the effect of the object before the reader as it had presented itself to the poet’s mind at the time of writing.Literary Sources of Imagism☐The Imagist Movement drew from a variety of poetic traditions—Greek, Provencal, Japanese and Chinese poetry. The ideographic表意的and pictographic象形文字的nature of Chinese language, and virile男性的laconism简洁and austere pregnancy丰富，意味深长which characterize ancient Chinese poetry fascinated the Imagists.three major phases☐1908—1909An Englishman, T. E. Hulme, founded a Poets’ Club in 1908, which met in Soho every Wednesday evening to discuss poetry. He believed that the most effective means to express the momentary瞬间的impressions is through “the use of one dominant image”.☐1912—1914Ezra Pound took over the movement. In 1912, they published a collection of poems, entitled Des Imagistes, in which a manifesto宣言came into being.⏹ a. Direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective;⏹ b. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation;⏹ c. As regarding rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in thesequence of a metronome.☐1914—1917Amy Lowell took over the movement and developed it into “Amygism”. In 1915, 1916, 1917, three volumes of Some Imagist Poets came out, containing six principles based on the original three. After 1917, Imagism ceased to be a movement.Features of Imagism1.To use the language of common speech, but to employ采用the exact word, not the nearly-exact,nor the merely decorative装饰性的word.2.We believe that the individuality of a poet may often be better expressed in free verse自由诗体than in conventional传统的forms. In poetry, a new cadence韵律、节奏means a new idea.3.Absolute freedom in the choice of subject.4. To present an image. We are not a school学派of painters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities模糊的概论, however magnificent华丽的and sonorous响亮的. It is for this reason that we oppose the cosmic广大无边的poet诗人, who seems to us to shirk逃避the real difficulties of his art.5. To produce a poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred玷污nor indefinite.6. Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence本质of poetry.In a Station of the Metro☐ a classic specimen of Imagist poetry☐the use of one dominant image to represent what he was experiencing☐apparition: appearance, something which shows up; something which is not real and which cannot be clearly observed☐influence from ancient Chinese poetry (《长恨歌》: “玉容寂寞泪阑干，梨花一枝春带雨.”)⏹The apparition of these faces in the crowd;⏹Petals on a wet, black bough.☐人群中那些亡魂的脸花瓣，在潮湿的黑色枝头荒木田守武——俳句落花飞回枝蝴蝶Ezra Pound (译文)A fallen blossom is coming back to the branchLook, a butterfly题都城南庄去年今日此门中,人面桃花相映红。
黑人文学American_Black_Literature
Written Literature （from 1760s）(2)
（4）1940s: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison （5）50s~60s: a lot of black writers emerged in the civil rights movement: James Baldwin, Brooks, Jones （6）70s~80s: publishing of Root （Alex Haley）, Alice Walker The Colour Purple, Toni Morrison （the only black who won Nobel Prize）
in Africa The Middle Passage The Slavery The Emancipation The Migration to the Cities The Integration to the Mainstream The Black Power Movement The Civil Rights Movement
The Middle Passage中间通道
the stage of the triangular trade in which millions of people from African were shipped to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manufactured goods, which were traded for purchased or kidnapped Africans, who were transported across the Atlantic as slaves; the slaves were then sold or traded for raw materials, which would be transported back to Europe to complete the voyage.
American literature in the 20th. century
Between the wars was the automobile, which resulted in a mobility unimaginable to the previous generations. Despite its booming industry and material prosperity, there was a sense of unease and restlessness underneath. Strikes took place in several big cities because of industrial depression and uneven distribution of wealth;
the division of society into antagonistic classes based on a relation to the means of production. Freud propounded an idea of human beings themselves as grounded in the “unconscious”that controlled a great deal of over(公开的，明显的)behavior, and made the practice of the psychoanalysis which emphasizes the importance of the unconscous or the
Apart from Darwinism, which was still a big influence over the writers of this period, the two thinkers whose ideas had the greatest impact on the period were the German Karl Marx and the Austrian Sigmund Freud. Marx was a sociologist who believed that the root cause of all behavior was economic, and that the leading feature of the economic life wase human psyche. Worthy os mention are William James, an American psychologist famous for his theory of “stream of conscious,” and Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, noted for his “collective unconscious” and “archetypal symbol” as part of modern mythology.
Emerson-Transcendentalism常耀信-美国文学-超验主义.爱默生PPT课件
（a new way of looking at man）
•7
Features
nature is the symbol of spirit/the garment of the Oversoul
• Nature was alive, filled with God’s overwhelming presence. The physical world was a symbol of the spiritual.
• Spirit / Oversoul is the most important thing in the universe.
•It exists in nature and man alike and constituted the universe. •It is omnipresent (present everywhere) and omnipotent (able to do anything)
a. In Emerson's opinion, poets should function as preachers who gave directions to the mass. b. True poetry should serve as a moral purification c. The argument (or his thought or experience) should decide the form of the poem instead of traditional techniques.
•11
Transcendentalism: quotes
“Standing on the bare ground, -my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball.”
american literature(背诵)
Definition1、Psychological Realism is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of character’s thoughts and motivations. It places more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization and on the motives, and internal action which springs from external action. In Psychological Realism, character and characterization are more than usually important. 心理现实主义是一种深入探究人物思想和动机复杂性的现实主义写作。
它比以往更强调内部特征和动机，以及来自外部行动的内部行动。
在心理现实主义中，性格和人物塑造比通常更重要。
2、Imagism is a literary movement launched by British and American poets early in the 20th century that advocated the use of free verse, common speech patterns, and clear concrete images as a reaction to Victorian sentimentalism. 意象主义是20世纪早期由英美诗人发起的一场文学运动，主张使用自由诗歌、共同的语言模式和清晰的具体形象，作为对维多利亚时代感伤主义的反应。
3、Black Humor is the use of morbid and the absurd for darkly comic purposes in modern fiction and drama. It is used to express the absurdity, insensitivity, paradox, and cruelty of the modern world. Ordinary characters or situations are usually exaggerated far beyond the limits of normal satire or irony. 黑色幽默是在现代小说和戏剧中使用病态和荒谬的黑色喜剧目的。
TEM8美国文学串讲及试卷评析(下)
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) 埃米莉•迪金森
代表作品：Poems by Emily Dickinson (1890) — collection This is My Letter to the World I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died
英语专业八级考试在线课堂
Philip Freneau (1752-1832)菲利普•弗伦诺
作品：The Rising Glory of America (1772) The Wild Honey Suckle (1786) – one of his best lyrics （抒情诗）
英语专业八级考试在线课堂
三、American Romanticism 美国浪漫主义文学（十八世纪末—十九世纪中后期）
英语专业八级考试在线课堂
四、Literature of Realism 美国现实主义文学 （十九世纪中期—二十世纪初）
美国现实主义文学三个组成部分：
Realism 现实主义 Local Color Fiction 地方色彩小说
Naturalism 自然主义
作家作品
D. Ernest
例：The novel For Whom the Bell Tolls is written by ____. A. Scott Fitzgerald B. William Faulkner C. Eugene O’Neil Hemingway
文学评论
例：____ is defined as an expression of human emotion which is condensed into fourteen lines. A. Free Verse B. Sonnet C. Ode D. Epigram （以上例题均为2006年英语专八人文知识真题。答案分别为：A，D， B。）
英美文学American Literature Unit 20 Tennessee Williams
DESIRE:
pursuit of her sexual desires CEMETRIES: loss of Belle Reve, expelled from Laurel ELYSIAN FIELDS: raped and driven to madness
Rhetorical Techniques
Stanley Kowalski: the Polack
Strong, compactly built Animal joy Pleasure with women Power, pride of a richly feathered bird among hens The gaudy seed-bearer
Sister Rose
Rose: elder Sister, emotionally disturbed and spent most of her life in mental institutions Closely attached to his sister, felt lonely after she was hospitalized, turned to writing for expression, began to publish at an early age.
His major works
Chinese_American_literature
Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, 2006
I Love a Broad Margin to My Life, 2011
The End
Resides in Sausalito, California with her husband, Louis DeMattei, a lawyer whom she met on a blind date and married in 1974.
Major Works of Amy Tan
Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat (1994)
Maxine Hong Kingston(湯婷婷)
October 27, 1940 Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley Three novels and several works of non-fiction Feminist movement (her memoir The Woman Warrior ) Received several awards for her contributions to Chinese American Literature including the National Book Award in 1981 for her novel China Men.
• The Kitchen God's Wife
Amy Tan
February19, 1952 Oakland California Chinese American writer
英美国家概况复习资料
英美国家概况复习资料英美国家概况期末复习考试题型说明：10个简答题和5个论述题。
一．简答题1. What is the full name of the U.K.?The full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.2. What are the two components of the British Parliament?They are the House of Commons and the House of Lords.3. Why did Britain cooperate closely with the United States after World War Ⅱ?Because they were allied during the war and shared the same worries about the former Soviet Union.4. What are the three functions of the House of Commons?The three functions are : to draft laws, to scrutinize, criticize and restrain the activities of the government, and to influence future government policy.5. In what ways do British universities enjoy complete academic freedom?British universities enjoy complete academic freedom because they can appoint their own staff, decide which students to admit, provide their own courses and award their own degrees.6. What are the three categori es of Shakespeare’s plays and their representatives?Shakespeare’s plays fall into three categories: comedy, tragedy and historical play. The representatives of his comedies include A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It and Twelfth Night. His major historical plays include Richard III, Henry IV and Antony and Cleopatra. His greattragedies are represented by Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet.7. What were Nixon's well-known contributions during his presidency?Nixon made three well-known contributions:a) brought the Vietnam War to a close;b) reestablishing U.S. relations with China;c) negotiating the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with the former Soviet Union.8. What are the two characteristics of the U.S. Constitution?One is "check and balances". The other is that the powers of the central government and the power of state governments are specified.9. 说出三个英国的节日Christmas, Easter and "Trooping the color"二．论述题1. What are the characteristics of English literature in the 20th century?English literature in the 20th century can be roughly divided into two periods: Modernism and Postmodernism. Modernism prevailed before the Second World War, It can be viewed as a deliberate departure from tradition and is characterized by the use of innovative forms of expression. Modernist writing seems unorganized, hard to understand. It often portrays the action form the viewpoint of a single confused individual, rather than from the viewpoint of all-knowing, impersonal narrator .After World War II, postmodernism begins. Postmodernism differs in some ways from Modernism. Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity, but present that fragmentation as somethingtragic, something to be lamented as a loss. Postmodernism does not lament the idea of fragmentation but rather celebrates it .Modernists look for buried meaning below confusing surfaces, while postmodernists abandon that search, However, there are still many postwar writers who continue traditional themes.2. Why is the United States regarded as a "melting pot" anda "salad"?The United States "is not merely a nation but a nation of nations". The immigrants came in waves, including the Europeans, the Africans and the Asians. Therefore, America was described as a "melting pot" where various racial and ethnic groups were combined into one culture. Recently, Americans have been called a "salad" in that people of different races and ethnic groups mix harmoniously but at the same time keep their distinct culture and custom.3. What was the cause of the American Civil War?(可能该题考简答)The issue of slavery was the focus of American politics, economics and cultural life by the mid-19th century.The southern planters needed a large number of laborers to manage their plantations and they regarded the black slaves as their property. In the North, with the development of industry, there was a growing demand for free labor. What's more, the Northerners demanded a law protecting tariffs and asked the government to finance the building of railways and roads, but the Southerners were strongly against it and advocated free trade so that they could purchase cheaper goods from foreign countries. The accumulating conflicts led to the division of the North and the South and finally the Civil War.4. How is a President voted into office in America? What areyour ideas about the American election?Each party holds its national convention every four years to choose a candidate for the presidency. To win a presidential election, a candidate has to spend millions of dollars, travel all over the country to make speeches, and debate on television with the rival. The general election is technically divided into two stages. During the first stage, presidential electors for each state will be chosen. In the second stage the electors meet and vote a President. Since the second stage is only a kind of formality, everyone knows who will be the next President as soon as the first stage is over.I think the candidates spend too much money on the electoral campaign. However, the election can not solve the social and economic problems as some candidates do not keep their word after they become President.5. How did the U.S. Constitution lay groundwork for America's economic development?The U.S. Constitution, as an economic charter, established that the entire nation, was a unified or "common" market. There were no tariffs or taxes on inter-state commerce. It provided that the federal government could regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the states, establish uniform bankruptcy laws, create money and regulate its value, fix standards of weights and measures, establish post offices and roads, and fix rules governing patents and copyrights. The last mentioned clause was an early recognition of the importance of "intellectual property", a matter that began assuming great importance in trade negotiations since the late 20th century.6. What are the characteristics of American writing during the Romantic period?During the Romantic period, most of the American writings placed an increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions, and they displayed an increasing attention to the psychic state of their characters, They celebrated America’s landscape with its virgin forests, meadows, endless prairies, streams and vast oceans. The Romantic writers had a strong tendency to exalt the individual and the common man.。
20th Century American Literature20世纪美国文学
II. Literature in the 50s.
A new generation of American authors appeared writing in the skeptical, ironic tradition of the earlier realists and naturalists. The writers used a prose style modeled on the works of Ernest Hemingway, and F. S. Fitzgerald, narrative techniques of William Faulkner, psychological insights of Sigmund Freud. In the 1950s, the “Beat” writers, in expression of disaffection with “official” American life, were brutally and directly dominant. The so-called “Beat Generation,” though not expatriate like the Lost Generation, were alienated— feeling like foreigners in their own country.
Lost Generation
refers to those writers who were devoid of faith, values and ideals and who were alienated from the civilization the capitalist society advocated. It includes the writers such as (Hemingway, F.S. Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, and Louis Bromfield) and poets (like Malcolm Cowley, E. E. Cummings, Archibald Macleish, and Ezra Pound), who rebelled against former values and ideas, but replaced them only by despair or a cynical hedonism. They were totally frustrated by the WWI and returned from that “Great War” to their own country only to find the grim reality that the social values and civilization were hollow and affected if compared to the cruel realities of the battleground. They felt alienated from American civilization, which
Part V 20th century American literature
• Imagism is characterized by the 3 principles: • i. Direct treatment of “ the thing”, whether subjective or objective • ii. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation • iii. As regards rhythm , to composed in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome
• • • • •
This Side of Paradise (1920) Tales of the Jazz Age (1922) The beautiful and Damned (1922) The Great Gatsby (1925) Tender is the Night (1925)
• • • • • • • • • •
A Pact I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman— I have detested you long enough. I come to you as a grown child Who has had a pig-headed father; I am old enough now to make friends. It was you that broke the new wood, Now is a time for carving. We have one sap and one root— Let there be commerce between us.
English Literature in the 20th Century
English Literature in the 20th CenturyI. Please define the following terms.1. Modernism: A general term applied retrospectively to the wide range of experimental and avant-garde (Fr. 先锋派) trends in literature of the early 20th century, including Symbolism, Futurism, Expressionism, Imagism, V orticism （旋涡画派——现代资产阶级文艺思潮未来主义的一种支派）, Dada （达达派——现代资产阶级颓废文艺流派），and Surrealism （超现实主义）, along with the innovations of the unaffiliated writers. Modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis at its theoretical base. It is a reaction against realism. It rejects rationalism which is the theoretical base of realism; it excludes from its major concern the external, objective, material world, which is the only creative source of realism; by advocating a free experimentation on new forms and new techniques in literary creation, it casts away almost all the traditional elements in literature such as story, plot, character, chronological narration, etc., which are essential to realism. As a result, the works created by the modernist writers can often be labeled as anti-novel, anti-poetry or anti-drama.2. Allusive language: Modernist writers seem to talk a Dadaist language. It is full of allusions to myths, the Bible, foreign languages, often in form of collages（抽象派的贴拼画）that are random-seeming, making a poemread like a riddle, a story work like a labyrinth. It is highly allusive, which one signifier gliding to several signifiers. Reading this kind of language, the reader is forced to search for meaning on his own.3. Feminist criticism: A development and movement in critical theory and in the evaluation of literature which was well under way by the late 1960s and which has burgeoned steadily since. It is an attempt to describe and interpret and reinterpret women’s experience as depicted in various kinds of literature –especially the novel; and, to a lesser extent, poetry and drama. It questions the long-standing, dominant, male, phallocentric ideologies, a patriarchal attitudes and male interpretations in literature. It attacks male notions of value in literature and challenges traditional and accepted male ideas about the nature of women and about how women feel, act and think, or are supposed to feel, act and think, and how in general they respond to life and living. It thus questions numerous prejudices and assumptions about women made by male writers, not least any tendency to cast women in stock character roles.4. Reader-response criticism: A general term for those kinds of modern criticism and literary theory that focus on the response of readers to literary works, rather than on the works themselves considered as self-contained entities. It is not a single agreed theory so much as a sharedconcern with a set of problems involving the extent and nature of readers’contribution to the meanings of literary works, approached from various positions including those of structuralism, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. The common factor is a shift from the description of texts in terms of their inherent properties to a discussion of the production of meanings within the reading process.5. Post-modernism: A term referring to certain radically experimental works of literature and art produced after World War II. Post-modernism is distinguished from modernism, which generally refers to the revolution in art and literature that occurred during the period 1910-1930, particularly following the disillusioning experience of World War I. Much of post-modernist writing reveals and highlights the alienation of individuals and the meaninglessness of human existence. Postmodernists break away from traditions through experimentation with new literary devices, forms, and styles.6. Post-structuralism: A term referring to the general attempt to contest and subvert structuralism and to formulate new theories regarding interpretation and meaning. It was initiated particularly by deconstructors but also associated with certain aspects and practitioners of psychoanalytic, Marxist, cultural, feminist, and gender criticism.Post-structuralists claim that in the grand scheme of signification, all “signifieds” are also signifiers, for each word exists in a complex web of language and has such a variety of denotation and connotations that no one meaning can be said to be final, stable, and invulnerable to reconsideration and substitution. Leading post-structuralists include French philosophers Derrida, Lacan, Foucault, etc.II．Comment on the development of William Butler Yeats’s poetic career and characteristics of his poetry.William Butler Yeats is considered to be one of the greatest poets in the English language; and his poetic achievement stands at the center of modern literature. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. Yeats is not a poet of nature, but of man. His poems tend to present life in the mode of drama and conflicts in place and time with the value residing in the conflict rather than in the final victory.He had a very long poetic career, stretching from the 1880s to the 1930s, and had experienced a slow painful change in his poetic creation, starting in the romantic tradition and finishing as a matured modernist poet. Generally, his poetic career can be divided into three periods according to the contents and style of his poetry. As a young man in the last decades of the 19th century, Yeats started his poetic career in the romantic tradition. The major themes are usually Celtic legends, localfolktales, or stories of the heroic age in Irish history. His early work is imbued with a haunting beauty, a soreness of heart born of a fundamental loneliness of spirit, and an idealistic longing to transcend the miseries and imperfections of the mundane world. In these early lyrics, his longings often take the form of a rather simplistic but beautifully expressed escapism, as in “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”. The style of his early poetry is very delicate with natural imagery, dream-like atmosphere and musical beauty.The first two decades of the 20th century were a period of transition to Yeats, during which his attitude towards politics, life and poetry experienced a great change. Now Yeats began to write with realistic and concrete themes on a variety of subjects, studying the profound and complicated human problems, such as life, love, politics, and religion. He accepted the modernist ideas in poetry. Gradually, Yeats turned from a traditional poet into a modernist one. The poems of this period are characterized by the mood of anger, disillusion and bitter rhythms. “The Second Coming”, raw and visionary, gives an air of cyclic inevitability to the occurrence of the death and rebirth of the gods as part of the recurring cycles of history, which marks Yeats’ maturity as a modernist poet.Yeats reached the last stage of his poetic creation when he was over fifty. His concern has turned to the great subjects of dichotomy, such as, youth and age, love and war, vigor and wisdom, body and soul, and lifeand art. In this last period, Yeats has developed a realistic, tough complex and symbolical style. In his famous poem, “Sailing to Byzatium”, Yeats explores the problems of death, love, old age and art. The Tower and The Winding Stair are two collections which represent the maturity of his modernist poetry. The mastery of technique that enables Yeats to perfect subtle, forceful and highly unusual poetic style makes him one of the greatest modern poets.III. Discuss the possible theme in William Butler Yeats’s “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” and how that theme is presented in the poem.The major themes in Yeats’ s poems are usually Celtic legends, local folktales, or stories of the heroic age in Irish history. Many of his poems have a dream quality, expressing melancholy, passive and self-indulgent feelings. But in a number of poems, Yeats has achieved suggestive patterns of meaning by a careful counterpointing of contrasting ideas or images like human and fairy, natural and artificial, domestic and wild, and ephemeral and permanent. “Innisfree” is just a popular representative of such poems; around a “fairyland”background, the poem is closely woven, easy, subtle and musical; the clarity and control of the imagery give the poem a haunting quality. The overall style of his early poetry is very delicate with natural imagery, dream-like atmosphere and musical beauty. The possible theme is that tired of the life of his day, Yeats soughtto escape into an ideal “fairyland” where he could live calmly as a hermit and enjoy the beauty of nature. The poem consists of three quatrains of iambic pentameter, with each stanza rhymed abab. Innisfree is an inlet in the lake in Irish legends. Here the author is referring to a place for hermitage.IV. Make a contrast between 1950s’ poetry and 1960s’ poetry.The 1950s is the heyday of the so-called Movement. It reacts against the neo-Romanticism of Dylan Thomas and others and against the modernist mode. It is in some sense the revival of the English tradition. Yet to characterize the style of the Movement in such phrases is difficult, but it may suggest the type of realistic, reflective, moralizing, empirical, personally honest, occasionally satirical poetry, suspicious of human nature and saturated with a sense of life’s pain, which was dominant in Britain for the past thirty years.The most important Movement poets include Philip Larkin, Donald Davie, Thom Gunn, etc. Its influence extended to many years later.The 1960s is a mixture of traditional style with Modernist and Post-modernist styles of the US and of Europe. The Movement poets generated opposition in the 1960s because they carry the anti-modernist, insular reaction, which was present in English poetry since the 1920s, tounusual length. And the movement poetry was attacked for their gentility. English poetry of the new poetry is formed in tension between the strong, persisting appeal of native English styles, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the modernist and post-modernist styles of the US and of Europe. The interaction of opposed values showed itself not only in particular volumes and poems but in the same poet’s reversals of direction over the years. Both international or transatlantic, modernist or post-modernist mode, English traditional modes are shown in the works of the same poets. These poets include Ted Hughes, Geoffrey Hill, etc. V. What are the features of modernist poetry?The 20th century has witnessed a great achievement in English poetry. The early poems of Pound and Eliot and Yeats, with its hardening and maturing style, marked the rise of “modernist poetry”, which is, in a way, a revolution against the conventional ideas and forms of the Victorian poetry. The modernist poets fight against the romantic fuzziness and self-indulged emotionalism, advocating new ideas in poetry writing such as to use the common speech, to create new rhythms as the expression of a new mood, to allow absolute freedom in the choice of subjects, and to use hard, clear and precise images in poetic creation.VI. Comment on T.S. Eliot’s achievements in poetry.T. S. Eliot is a great modernist poet. In poetry, Eliot, with Ezra Pound,replaced the logical exposition of thoughts with collages of fragmentary images and complex allusions.Eliot had a long poetic career, which was generally divided into two periods. As a young man with bitter disillusionment and with boldness in the handling of language, Eliot had explored in his early poetry various aspects of decay of culture in the modern Western world, e xpressing a sense of the disintegration of life. The more important works of this period are “Prufrock, Gerontion”, “The Waste Land”and “The Hollow Man”. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was written with a faultless ear for rhythm and in striking images. Eliot traced the continuous flow of the protagonist’s sense, thoughts, feelings, and memories in stream-of-consciousness style, suggesting a confession of the speaker’s incapability of facing love and life in a sterile modern world. As Eliot’s most important single poem, “The Waste Land” has been regarded as a landmark and a model of the 20th century English poetry, comparable to Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads. With bold innovations in versification and style, the poem not only presents a panorama of physical disorder and spiritual desolation in the modern Western world, but also reflects the prevalent mood of disillusionment and despair of a whole post-war generation. The structure of the poem is built out of contrast in time and also based on the contrasting ideas between life and death, fertility and sterility, love and lust, and reality and imagination. Unlike the traditionalpoems, the shape of the poem is more circular than linear, its order more simultaneous than developing.In his later period, Eliot produced only two major volumes of poetic works: Ash Wednesday(1930) and Four Quartets(1944). Both clearly reflect his loyalty to the Church of England. Four Quartets is characterized by a fourfold structure, a symphonic structure and fourfold themes. Man, alienated from self and society, finds reconciliation in God. Thus, Four Quartets are characterized by a philosophical and emotional calm quite in contrast to the despair and suffering of the earlier works. Four Quartets sufficiently consolidated Eliot’s reputation that in 1948 he was awarded both the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for literature.VII. Make comments on George Bernard Shaw as a playwright.George Bernard Shaw is the greatest critical playwright in the 20th century England. In 1925, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.In his long dramatic career, Shaw wrote as many as 53 plays altogether. His artistic views are largely shaped by his radical political stand. He is strongly against “art for art’s sake”, and thinks art should serve social purposes by reflecting human life, revealing social contradictions and educating common people. Shaw’s plays deal with modern social problems, which bitterly criticize and attack Englishbourgeois society. He tears away the mask of capitalism and deeply exposes the social conflicts. His plays have only one passion: indignation (anger – fury). He portrays the situations frankly and honestly, intending to shock his audiences with a new view of society. Widower’s House, a grotesquely realistic exposure of slum landlordism, and Mrs. Warren’s Profession, a play about the economic oppression of women, can be regarded as the typical representatives of Shaw’s early plays. He wrote quite a few history plays, such as Caesar and Cleopatra and St. Joan. He believes in “Life Force”, which is reflected in Man and Superman and Back to Methuselah. Too True to Be Good is a better play of the later period, with the author’s almost nihilistic (虚无主义的) bitterness on the subjects of the cruelty and madness of World War I and the aimlessness and disillusion of the young.Structurally and thematically, he follows the great traditions of realism. With his wit and love of paradox, he makes full use of comic satire and brought a new kind of intelligence to the drama. He is skilled in ridiculing, upsetting, scandalizing and astonishing his public. The humor of Shaw is always a sharp social lash that exposes and discredits vice or folly of the age. Much of Shavian drama is constructed around the inversion of a conventional theatrical situation. Shaw’s language is easy, witty and forceful. The dialogue and interplay of the minds of the characters take primacy over mere story, instead of action.VII. Please analyze the excerpt from Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession (pp. 405-406) and answer the following questions.1.The sentence “Are you my mother?” is said to her mother by Vivie,which is very inappropriate and therefore unlikely in a congenial conversation between daughter and mother. Why does Vivie say to her mother in this way?2.Do you know what Mrs. Warren’s profession is?3.Describe the female protagonist, Vivie.4.What is the theme of the play?Possible literary understandings.1.Vivie suspects her mother’s profession and she is determined to knowthe answer. She seems to have guessed the answer, thus she feels shameful and angry for the harsh reality.2.She runs a business of prostitution for profit.3.Vivie is a kind of new woman, intelligent and well educated, with astrong sense of justice and a passion for “honest” work. In the play, Vivie discovers her mother’s profession, which leads to a sharp conflict between Mother and Daughter. To Vivie, Mrs. Warren’s choice of profession is understandable, yet not excusable. Finally,Vivie breaks off with her mother and starts to make her own living by finding and “honest” job in London, which show Vivie’s search for a meaningful life and woman’s independence in the man’s world.4.The play deals with Mrs. Warren’s running prostitution as big businessin the bourgeois society, which criticized the evils of the “civilized”capitalist world tartly. The play is not only moral, but has a strong realistic theme of reforming the evil and corrupt capitalist society by exposing its vices, educating the people, and improving the living standard of the lower classes.VIII. Comment on Virginia Woolf’s literary achievements.Virginia Woolf is an important modernist novelist and she is also a strong advocator of the feminist movement. In her fiction and essays, she makes extended analysis of male-female relations to reveal women’s experience and find an alternative to the male-dominated views of reality. Her concern with feminist themes is dominant in A Room of One’s Own (1929). As an important essayist, Woolf is prolific, publishing some five hundred essays in periodicals and collections, beginning in 1905. Characteristics for Woolf’s essays are dialogic nature of style and contitual questioning of opinion in a conversational tone. Though her essays are highly praised, her important literary achievement lies in hernovel writing.She has engaged ceaselessly in experiments of new forms and fresh techniques in novel writing. To evoke the life stories of her characters, Woolf employs the devices of memory and psychic time, restricting her novels to the limited time span of a single day as, in Mrs. Dalloway and in Between the Acts. Thus, by shaping her major novels with a narrow framework of time, Virginia Woolf represented the dual aspect of human life –the inner life simultaneously with the outer life. To provide a necessary unified form for her novel, Virginia Woolf also makes use of recurrent images or symbols, such as: the flashlight of the lighthouse, the tide of the sea, the striking sound of Big Ben, and other natural or artificial cyclical schemes.With To the Lighthouse (1927) and The Waves(1931), Woolf established herself as one of the leading writers of modernism. In each of her major novels, Woolf creates a very limited number of main characters, whose personalities are revealed primarily through the presentation of interior monologues or streams of consciousness. But unlike James Joyce, Woolf presents her characters’ innermind activities by a continual shifting from mind to mind so as to reproduce a psychic structure in the novel. For instance, in Mrs. Dalloway, the streams of consciousness of Mrs. Dalloway, Septimus Smith, and Peter Walsh are presented in a shifting way. A common stimulus, such as the loud burst of a car tyre, the whitetrace left by an airplane in the sky, the striking sound of Big Ben, will trigger the switch of the flowing thoughts from one character to another, while the style of the presentation is uninterrupted. The psychic presentation in To the Lighthouse is mainly focused upon Mrs. Ramsays’thoughts and moods. Woolf goes even further in The Waves, by presenting six characters with their separate interior monologues, which shows a diversity of personal experience in a single design. Thus Woolf brings her experiments of stream-of-consciousness technique to the climax.Woolf’s language is rich, lucid, and transparent. Her novels usually operate on two planes: prose and poetry. Between the Acts is considered to be the most lyrical of all her books, not only in feeling but in style. Virginia Woolf makes a special contribution to the novel of subjectivity by developing a rich and buoyant style of lyrical poetry with sharpened images, central symbols, profound allusions, and varied rhythms.IX. Comment on James Joyce’s creation and literary achievements James Joyce, one of the most radical innovator of twentieth-century writing, dedicated himself to exuberant exploration of the total resources of language. As a great modernist writer, James Joyce wrote altogether three novels, a collection of short stories, two volumes of poetry, and one play. The novel and short stories are regarded as his great works.Dubliners(1914), a collection of 15 short stories, is the first important work of Joyce’s lifelong preoccupation with Dublin life. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce’s first novel. The novel can be read as a naturalistic record of the hero’s bitter experiences and his final artistic and spiritual liberation.Enormously long and complex, using a variety of styles – notably the “stream-of-consciousness” method –Ulysses is one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth-century, and has been described as the greatest novel ever written. Ulysses can be called revolutionary prose, a combination a stream-of-consciousness immediacy and protean flexibility. In Ulysses, the narrative does not merely convey the story, it acts as a collaborative agency, often shifting between a kaleidoscope of styles in order to illuminate alternate meanings, resonances, ironies, or counterpoints within the text. It is such an uncommon novel that there arises the question whether it can be called a “novel” at all; for it seems to lack almost all the story, no plot, almost no action, and little characterization in the usual sense. Ulysses gives an account of man’s life during one day (16 June, 1904) in Dublin. Joyce intends to present a microcosm of the whole human life by providing an instance of how a single event contains all the events of its kind, and how history is recapitulated in the happenings of one day. It presents a realistic picture of the modern wasteland in which modern men are portrayed as vulgarand trivial creature. Another remarkable feature of Joyce’s writing is his straightforward style. To create his modern Odyssey – Ulysses, Joyce also adopts a kind of mock-heroic style. Joyce’s other major novel, Finnegans Wake, is even more uncompromising than Ulysses , written in a language of his own devising, a great mixture of linguistic fragments and borrowings.XI. Compared with Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence and other writers of transitional age in the 20th century, should E.M. Forster be labeled as a traditional writer or a modernist or a writer of transitional age? State your opion.E.M. Forster can be regarded as a writer of the transitional age. On one side, he carries the fine traditions of realism; on the other he accepts and concerns with new ideas of modernism.Forster’s modernistic trend is shown in his themes, in his major concerns with personal relationships and in his use of poetic style and symbolism. Forster has a close affinity to Virginia Woolf in points of view and in writing style. For they both belong to the Bloomsbury group and both write about the middle-class people in the poetic style. Forster also shares with D. H. Lawrence a similar view on personal relaltionships. They both concentrate their efforts on exploring the possibilities of realizing natural and harmonious relationships between man and man in asuppressing and decaying world.But comparing with the modernist masters like James Joyce or Virginia Woolf, Forster is a less experimental writer in forms or techniques. Basically he follows the traditional pattern of realistic novels from Defoe to Meredith. His novels have well-organized, sometimes melodramatic, plots with considerable complexity in structure; his stories are told in a masterly way with incident after incident in a series of pictures, which are easily, vividly and economically drawn his insight into certain aspects of character is acute and with microscopic exactness; he traces and analyses the blended course of thought and feeling and the changing mood of his characters. By using the third-person omniscient narrative, Forster, like Fielding and Thackery, presents subtle comments on his characters. Influenced by S. Butler and T. Hardy, Forster shows great concerns with the social and moral issues. As a matter of fact, he has never cut himself off from the political and economic questions of the outer world. In order to expose the “undeveloped heart”of the English middle class, Forster makes a skillful use of the comic satire inherited from Jane Austen.Thus, E. M. Forster should be labeled as a writer of the transitional age.XII. Through analyzing the symbolic meaning of major characters, Estragon (Gogo), Vladimir (Didi), Pozzo, Lucky, Godot, comment on the symbolic values in Waiting for Godot.In Waiting for Godot, the heroes of the play are two tramps, Estragon (Gogo) and Vladimir (Didi), who spend consecutive evenings waiting for somebody called Godot on a country road. Gogo, who is more elemental and less intelligent and who is always beaten up, never remembers things, and worries about eating, may stand for the body; and Didi, who is more rational, intellectual and philosophical and who expresses awareness of their poverished circumstances, may stand for the soul. Two other characters, Pozzo and Lucky, come along as master and slave, Pozzo being momentary thought to be Godot, whose nature of identity is totally unknown.Beckett has given his characters a wide identity. Estraton, Vladimir, Pozzo and Lucky are not simply four particular men. In a broader sense, they are representatives of mankind. For instance, judging the names of the characters, it can be said that Estragon is French; Vladimir is Russian; Pozzo is Italian; and Luck is English. Thus they represent the whole human race. Estragon is the sensualist, the common, unthinking materialist, while Vladimir might be said to be the embodiment of rational man, who sees a deeper significance in the plight of human life. Lucky shows no desire to inquire and to question. He has found hismeaning in the negation his won personality. He wants to be led and is shown in total submission to Pozzo. Whereas Pozzo finds his meaning in the exercise of personal power. Godot might be regarded as parody of the concept of God. He might be also interpreted as every man’s home for something different in his life, every man’s yearning for a new dynamic which will revitalize his existence.。
notes for 20th century American__ literature 美国文学要点
Towards a definition of modernism:Modernism is generally defined as the new artistic and literary styles that emerged in the decades before 1914 as artists rebelled against the late 19th century norms of depiction and literary form, in an attempt to present what they regarded as a more emotionally true picture of how people really feel and think.Shorthand version of definition: Modernism is the attempt to create something new in the space of modern crisis and change.A more complicated version of definition given by Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms: (Modernism is) a general term applied retrospectively to the wide range of experimental and avant-garde trends in literature (and other arts) of the early 20th century, including Symbolism, Futurism, Expressionism, Imagism, Vorticism, Data, and Surrealism, along with the innovations of the unaffiliated writers. Modernist literature is characterized chiefly by a rejection of the 19th century traditions and of their consensus between author and reader: the conventions of realism, for instance, were abandoned by Franz Kaflka and other novelists, and by expressionist drama, while several poets rejected traditional meters in favor of free verse. Modernist writers tended to see themselves and avant-garde disengaged from bourgeois values, and disturbed their readers by adopting complex and difficult new forms and styles. In fiction, the accepted continuity of chronological development was upset by Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, and William Faulkner, while Jame s Joyce and Virginia Woolf attempted new ways of tracing the flow of characters’ thoughts in their stream-of- consciousness styles. In poetry, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot replaced the logical exposition of thoughts with collages of fragmentary images and complex allusions. Luigi Pirandello and Bertolt Brecht opened up the theatre to new forms of abstraction in place of realist and naturalist representation. Modernist writing is predominantly cosmopolitan, and often expresses sense of urban cultural dislocation, along with an awareness of new anthropological and psychological theories. Its favored techniques of juxtapostion and multiple points of view challenge the reader to reestablish a coherence of meaning from fragmentary forms.Cultural Background of Modernism:Modernism in literature is the result of many forces acting upon literature. As Alan Friedman points out in his pioneering analysis of modern fiction, The Turn of Novel, published in 1966, ―The roots of the change in the novel lie tangled deep in the modern experience. Causes in fields other than literature there doubtless were --- a confluence of psychological, philosophical, scientific, social, economic, and political causes, analogues, and explanations.New Science and Technology:Theories of Relativity: EinsteinInterpretation: No law or observation can be universally reliable, but depends, among other factors, on the position of the individual observers.Uncertainty Principle: HeisenbergInterpretation: It stresses the incapacity of science to establish anything about the physical universe with absolute rigor, logic or certainty.Comment: The new science not only exploded the world, but exploded the novel by proving that the old certainties have faded and nothing is absolute in the universe.The rapid development of modern technology suddenly made people find themselves among the Gallery of machines, the world dominated by new powers. It drives both the modern world and the modern mind into chaos.The result is the modernist writings are heavily tainted with despair, loss of identity and dehumanization of world of materialism.Philosophical Background:Nietzsche:Nietzsche shook the whole world by his famous statement that God is dead, which is proclaimed through a madman in his book Parable of the Madman.Interpretation: The death of God means that the center that used to guide the thinking of the Western world – the―Father‖ in Heaven who supposedly rewards the good and punished evil – is finally gone. In another word, life is not governed by rational principles and there are no absolute standards of good and evil. Human beings are left alone in this godless and absurd world.Comment: This should not be understood as pessimistic view of modern world. To Nietzsche, the death of God is not necessarily a bad news since it opens up a new era in which life is viewed from plural perspectives, not just by the single perspective of the God.The result is it freed the modern minds of the bondage of moral traditions, but it also left them at a loss when there are no new moral codes coming up.Psychological Background:Oedipus ComplexA Freudian term to designate attraction on the part of the child toward the parent of the opposite sex and rivalry and hostility toward the parent of its own. Freud introduced the concept in his Interpretation of Dreams (1899). The term derives from the Theban hero Oedipus of Greek legend, who unknowingly slew his father and married his mother.According to Freud, Oedipus complex occurs during the phallic stage of the psycho-sexual development of the personality, approximately years three to five. Resolution of the Oedipus complex is believed to occur by identification with the parent of the same sex and by the renunciation of sexual interest in the parent of the opposite sex. Freud considered this complex the cornerstone of the superego and the nucleus of all human relationship. Many psychiatrists, while acknowledging the significance of the Oedipal relationships to personality development in the culture, ascribe love and attraction toward one parent and hatred and antagonism toward the other not necessarily to sexual rivalry but to resentment of parental authoritarian power.The Linguistic TurnSaussure: leading people to think more about the nature of language and its reliability and validity as a tool.Since Saussure: the synchronic and structural dimension has been emphasized.Saussure viewed language as a system of signs, which are combinations of signifier and signified, and are the product of ―system of difference.His famous statement —―there are only differences‖ — suggests that the meaning of language is arbitrary. Wittgenstein: putting forward his theory of ―language-game‖.His logic: different ways of using language have different rules, yet meaning can arise within all of them.The conclusion: the use of language determines the meaning of language.The effect of the linguistic turn:The effect of linguistic turn is enormous. Since its function as a reliable tool is doubtful, language becomes ―a real problem‖ for them. In the work of these modernist writers, language is a ―prism‖. Reading such work, the reader has to examine the prism. So language in modernist writings has undergone a sort of revolution: it is made strange or unfamiliar.The Impact of the WarsThe war made men lost, the world a waste land.Bitter disillusionment: During WWI, many idealistic young Americans volunteered to take part in ―the war to end wars‖. But they discovered that modern warfare was not glorious or heroic. They saw the best youth being slaughtered and their ideals for a better world being bargained away for power and profits in the Treaty of Versailles.Frantic pursuit of individual success and personal enjoyment:The rapid economic growth resulted from WWI filled postwar-America with pleasure seeking and materialism. Mass production and modern technologies helped to turn America into a greedily consuming society.The result is the loss of faith, the loss of self, the groundlessness of value and morality, the violence of war, alienation and a nameless, faceless anxiety came under the pens of modernist writers.。
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The largest part by far is the unconscious. It includes all the things that are not easily available to awareness, including many things that have their origins there, such as our drives or instincts, and things that are put there because we can't bear to look at them, such as the memories and emotions associated with trauma.
Freud's fundamental idea was that all humans are endowed with an unconscious in which potent sexual and aggressive drives, and defenses against them, struggle for supremacy.
Modernism
I. Historical Background 1. The Two World Wars A. economical prosperity The U.S.A made a lot of money,and there appeared an economic boom. the technological revolution had brought about great changes in the life of the American people. After the war, the U.S.A had become the most powerful industrialized nation in the world.
弗洛伊德，“有史以来第一位 正视人类心灵问题的人”。
1939年9月23日凌晨，以对潜意识的发现与分 析影响了20世纪人类人文思想的弗洛伊德在伦 敦去世。临终前，他的医生问：“这是最后一 场战争吗？”弗洛伊德平静地回答：“至少对 我是这样。” 1886年，弗洛伊德回到维也纳，在议会街开了 间精神病诊所。不久，全欧洲就都知道了弗洛 伊德博士的名言：“你的眼睛疲倦了，累了， 闭上你的眼睛……”正是在弗洛伊德准确而耐 心的疏导下，每年数以百计的精神病人在议会 街他的诊所里消除了导致幻觉发作的痛苦记忆。
The conscious mind is what you are aware of at any particular moment, your present perceptions, memories, thoughts, fantasies, feelings, what have you. Working closely with the conscious mind is what Freud called the preconscious, what we might today call "available memory:" anything that can easily be made conscious, the memories you are not at the moment thinking about but can readily bring to mind. Now no-one has a problem with these two layers of mind. But Freud suggested that these are the smallest parts!
Cultural Backgof Marxist theory and Freudianism A. Marxist theory: B. Freudianism:
Freud and his Theory
有史以来第一位正视人类心灵问题的人
Austrian Originator of Psycho-Analysis
On October 24, 1929, later to be known as Black Thursday, the stock market began its downhill drop.
After the first hour, the prices had gone down at an amazing speed. Some people thought that after that day, the prices would rise again just as it had done before. But it didn’t. Prices kept dropping, and on October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday, more than 16 million shares were sold, but by the end of the day, most stocks ended below their previous value, and some stocks became totally worthless. Because of that, some people became homeless and penniless, all because of the Stock Market
What does it Mean?
It defines a sense of moral loss or aimlessness. The WWI destroyed the innocent ideas, many good young men went to the war and died, or returned damaged, both physically and mentally; their moral faith were no longer valid--- they were “Lost.”
Pearl Harbor(珍珠港）
Saving Private Ryan
Waterloobridge
Scheduler‘s List
The Patriot(爱国者）
Casablanca（喀萨布
C. the Lost Generation
or American expatriates in Europe
Broad Sense: the entire post -WWI American young generation.
What are the main characteristics? Suffering from the war, losing beliefs, being cut off from the past, disillusioned, strong sense of loss, puzzled, confused, unable or unwilling to settle back into the routines of peacetime life, indulged in drinking and partying, can not adjust themselves to the present life. What are the main subject matters? The lostness, nada and wound (Hemingway), the breaking up of the American dream (Fitzgerald), the sociological zero (Dos Passos), and nothing
To whom does it refer? Narrow sense: a group of American writers,
including Hemingway, F.S.Fitzgerald, J.Dos Passos, E.E.Cummings, A.Macleish, Sherwood Anderson, and Hart Crane, etc. Who left America and went to Europe.
The Interpretation of Dreams (In 1900)
which established the importance of psychoanalytical movement. nearly all his fundamental observations and ideas Freud's theories, including the concept of the Oedipus complex, have had an enormous influence on art, literature, and social thinking.
B. Spiritual barrenness decline in moral code
Indulging themselves in all kinds of pleasure-seeking Dancing, smoking, drinking, playing, having casual sex affaires Luxurious but meaningless life The traditional moral codes were breaking down.
Ballroom dancing