美国自然主义介绍演讲稿

Opening
1 Good afternoon everyone, I’m honored to represent my group to stand here and talk about the American Naturalism with you today. I hope you can enjoy it. We always say that literature originates from life. Naturalism is probably the most faithful one to describe the life. In the world of naturalism we can hardly enjoy ourselves. The whole picture of naturalism is somber and dark; and the general tone is hopelessness and even despair. So before we go into it there’s something that I hope you can remember about the naturalism.
2 We can finds humanistic values in these naturalistic works. In the works there is a desire to assert one’s human identity, to define oneself against the social and natural forces one confronts. Whenever we find the weakness of ourselves we try to fight against it.
History background
Social background
During 1980s (the decades after the Civil War) the United States were changing into “Modern America” in the economic, social a nd cultural aspects. Industrialism, science and the new philosophy of life influenced the change of the country. The spread of industrialization created extremes of wealth and poverty. The Proletariat workers' life was decided by the external forces beyond their control. There appeared a lot of slums. The conditions in the slums became worse and worse. The city poor lived a life of insecurity, suffering and violence.
Westward expansion continued to push the frontier nearer the Pacific coast. But the settlers found themselves controlled by the cruel forces as railroad companies. These forces charged heavy rates and drove farmers to bankruptcy.
Life became a struggle for survival. Man is helpless and insignificant in a cold world. Culture background
The literature climate of the country was also changing. Apparently the realism writers were too old and too set in their ways to re-orient themselves in the new period. Realism was now too restrained and genteel in tone to tell the truth of the harsher realities of American life.
Darwin & Spencer
At the same time th e spread of Darwin’s theory of evolution changed people’s ideology. Darwin, in On the Origin of Species referred that humans are highly evolved animals. (first)Herbert Spencer is English philosopher. He adapted the theory of evolution into a social system in which those individuals, species, or races with the best acquired characteristics would survive. (social Darwinism)
émile Zola (1840～1902) French writer 对比他们的不同
Zola held that the literary artist “must operate with characters, passions, human and social data as the chemist and the physicist work on inert bodies, as the physiologist works on living bodies.” Human beings as "products" should be studied impartially, without moralizing about their natures. He dared to describe the bloody scenes of the life and have the extraordinary and excessive description in human nature. The surroundings and heredity can decide one’s dest iny.
French Naturalism with its new techniques and new ways of writing, appeal to the imagination of the younger generation like Crane Norris and Dreiser. Put yourself on the operating table.加结语）
Definition
Let’s see the general definition of the naturalism.
The term naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings.
Thus, if a writer wishes to depict life as it really is, he or she must be rigorously.
Features of Naturalism
1.Human is controlled by laws of heredity and environment and has no free will or choice
(determinism). The universe is cold, indifferent, and essentially Godless, man was enslaved, they are helpless, insignificant and lacking dignity. Everything is determined by a complex of internal chemisms and by the forces of social pressure.
2.The naturalist writers report the life of the helpless people truthfully and objectively. They
write their novels with a passion for scientific accuracy. There are a lot of factual details in their works. They paint life as it is lived in the slums, and are blamed of telling just the ugly side of it. The typical settings are slums, sweatshops, factories, farms.
3.The naturalists are different from the realists. Though the naturalists write about real life,
they do not look at the average. They look at the violent, unpleasant and ugly sides of life.
Instead of reflecting the middle-class life, they write about the life of failure, poverty and even crime. Characters are always ill-educated or lower-class whose lives are governed by the forces of heredity, instinct, and passion. The reality is found when the forces of Nature are most powerful in checking human desires, in keeping humans from realizing their dreams.
extreme experiences
4.There are less happy ending in the naturalistic fictions than in the realistic ones. The tone of
Naturalistic writings is more ironic and pessimistic and less sympathetic and serious than realistic writings.
5.Life became a struggle for survival. Therefore, naturalistic novels reflect the struggle of
man to adapt to environment. However the characters in the novels never give up. They died, but they didn’t admit defeat.
Representative writers
•The young writers were not admitted by the critics of that time and some of there books were forbidden because of their truly reveal of the life. Naturalistic writers cleared the way for the next generation, “the lost generation” of the 1920s.
•In theme they represented the life of the lower classes truthfully and broke into such forbidden regions as violence, death, and sex.
•In technique their works exhibit honest skills and artistry.
Stephen Crane
Crane's works reflect many of the major artistic concerns at the end of the nineteenth century, especially naturalism, impressionism, and symbolism.
his first book, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) transitional period
a sympathetic study of an innocent and abused slum girl Maggie descents into prostitution and her eventually suicide.
the red badge of courage
Fleming, a young recruit under fire for the first time in an unnamed battle of the Civil War. A farm
boy whose struggle with his emotions might be that of the eternal recruit in any battle of any war, Henry has dreamt of fighting heroically in "Greek-like" battles. In first battle, Fleming witnessed the real, cruel war and the death of soldiers. He began to run like a wild animal. At the same time, he wanted to own a wound ---“the symbol of courage”. In his way of return, he was hit by a scared soldier and accidentally got the “the red badge of courage”. Y et he received great praise and careful care because of this “red badge”. In the second war, Fleming began to act like a real hero to fight with his enemy. He was like a war beast and fired without a stop until his comrades remind him of the retreat of the enemy. He became a real man.
Comments
The Red Badge of Courage is often considered one of the best American war stories ever written, even though the author was born after the events and never saw battle himself. His purpose in writing the book was to rewrite the traditional hero, explore the complicated mental world and instinctive fear, and also to criticize the insignificance of war. It is also a psychological novel.
Theodore Dreiser
Dreiser read voraciously by himself. He immersed himself in Dickens and Thackeray, read widely Shakespeare, and tasted Fielding, Pope, Thoreau, Emerson, and Twain, but his true literary influences were from Balzac, Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer.
Sister Carrie
A country girl comes to Chicago to look for a better life. On the train, she gets acquainted with a traveling salesman, Drouet. She first stays with her sister. However, her sister is too poor to keep her. Then when she is seriously ill, Drouet comes to her rescue and takes her home. Later, her beauty attracts Drouet’s friend, Hurswood. Hurswood deserts his comfortable home and family, and forces her to elope with him. For sometime, they experience terrible poverty. Sister Carrie goes out to work on the stage and becomes successful. But Hurswood proves himself to be unfit. He tries different jobs but fails. Then Sister Carrie deserts him. On a cold winter night, he commits suicide.
Comments
Materialism, including the desire for money, is an important theme in Sister Carrie. The materialism is shown mostly through Carrie's character but also through Hurstwood, a man with a respectable life and money, who still wants more and for that reason commits a crime. The city in itself is also a place of materialism, it is a place that offers all kinds of amusements, pleasures and things to buy, but to participate in what the city has to offer one has to have money.
•Style
–(1) Lack of concision, without good structure. And readers are sometimes burdened with massive detailed description of characters and events.
–(2) Lack in imagination, journalistic method
–(3) He broke away from the gentle tradition of literature and dramatized the life in a very realistic way. There is no comment, no judgment but facts of life in the
stories. His style is not polished but very serious and well calculated to achieve
the thematic ends he sought.
Franklin Norris
Frank Norris was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1870. His father, Benjamin, was a self-made Chicago businessman and his mother, Gertrude Glorvina Doggett, had a stage career.
In 1884 the family moved to San Francisco where Benjamin went into real estate.
In Paris where he studied painting for two years and was exposed to the naturalist novels of Emile Zola
He attended the University of California, Berkeley between 1890 and 1894 where he picked up the ideas of human evolution of Darwin and Spencer, that are reflected in his future writings. Although he did not openly support socialism as a political system, his work nevertheless evinces a socialist mentality and influenced socialist/progressive
Comment on The Octopus
The railroad is compared to octopus with millions of tentacles. It illustrates how social and economics conditions ruined the lives of innocent, powerless people.
But Norris did not seem to blame the railroad officials for the tragedies. To him, conditions, natural forces, not men were responsible for what had happened, and the laws of nature could ruin an insignificant farmer as well as a financial superman.
The novel reveals his determinist view clearly.。