常耀信《美国文学简史》(第3版)笔记和考研真题详解(9-14章)【圣才出品】

第9章地方色彩小说•马克•吐温

9.1复习笔记

I.Local Colorism（地方色彩主义）

The vogue of local color fiction was the outgrowth of historical and aesthetic forces that had been gathering energy since early19th century.Local colorism as a literary trend first made its presence felt in the late1860s and early seventies.It is a variation of American literary realism.

Local colorists were consciously nostalgic historians of a vanishing way of life,recorders of a present that faded before their eyes.They concerned themselves with presenting and interpreting the local character of their regions.They tended to idealize and glorify,but they never forgot to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life.Major local colorists are Bret Harte,Hanlin Garland, Harriet Beecher Stowe,Kate Chopin and Mark Twain.

地方色彩小说的流行是自19世纪早期以来历史和艺术力量凝聚的产物。作为一种文学潮流，地方色彩主义在19世纪60年代晚期和70年代早期初展头角。它是美国现实主义文学的一个分支。

地方色彩主义作家是怀念正在消逝的生活方式的历史家，他们记录了在他们眼前逝去的现在。他们致力于展示描述自己地方的特色，倾向于赞颂地方生活并将其理想化，但是他们又注意不失地方生活的真实色彩。主要的地方色彩主义作家包括布莱特·哈特、汉林·加兰德、哈里耶特·比彻·斯托、凯特·肖邦及马克·吐温等。

II.Mark Twain(1835-1910)（马克·吐温）

1.Life（生平）

Mark Twain,pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens,is a great literary giant of America. He was brought up in the small town of Hannibal,Missouri,on the Mississippi River.He was twelve when his father died and he had to leave school.He was successively a printer’s apprentice,a tramp printer,a silver miner,a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi,and a frontier journalist in Nevada and California.This knocking about gave him wide knowledge of humanity. With the publication of his frontier tale,he became nationally famous.His first novel The Gilded Age was an artistic failure,but it gave its name to the American of the post-bellum period.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was his masterwork.Mark Twain was essentially an affirmative writer.But toward the latter part of his life,due to some tragic events,he changed to an almost

马克·吐温，原名萨缪尔·朗赫恩·克莱门斯，是一位美国文学巨匠。他在密苏里州的汉尼巴尔长大。12岁那年，他的父亲去世，他被迫辍学。他当过印刷所学徒、排字工、银矿矿工，在密西西比河当过舵手，在内华达州和加利福尼亚州当过记者。这样丰富的生活经历让他深刻地了解了人性。他的第一个边地故事使他在国内一举成名。他的第一部小说《镀金时代》虽然在艺术上是个失败，却赋予了战后美国一个新的名字。《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》是他的代表作。马克·吐温基本上是一位乐观的作家。但是在他的后半生，由于一些悲剧性事件，他转变成一位带有失望情绪的宿命论者。

parisons among Howells,Henry James and Mark Twain（豪威尔斯、亨利·詹姆斯和马克·吐温的比较）

Although Howells,James and Mark Twain all worked for realism,there were obvious differences between them.

(1)In the thematic Terms,James wrote mostly of the upper reaches of American society, and Howells concerned himself chiefly with middle class life,whereas Mark Twain dealt largely with the lower strata of society.

(2)Technically,Howells wrote in the vein of genteel realism,James pursued an“imaginative”treatment reality or psychological realism,but Mark Twain’s contribution to the development of realism and American literature was partly through his theories of localism in American fiction, and partly through his colloquial style.

尽管豪威尔斯、亨利·詹姆斯和马克·吐温都是美国现实主义作家，但是三者之间具有明显的不同。

(1)就主题而论，亨利·詹姆斯主要写美国的上层社会，豪威尔斯侧重写社会中层，而马克·吐温则写社会下层人民的生活。

(2)从技巧上讲，豪威尔斯运用的是温文尔雅的现实主义风格，亨利·詹姆斯致力于一种“想象”处理或者心理现实主义。但是马克·吐温对美国现实主义乃至美国文学的贡献在于他的地方色彩小说写作理论和他的口语体。