美国文学选读下册重点内容总结

The 1920s (1) Modernism

a general term applied retrospectively to the wide range of experimental and avant-garde trends in the literature (and other arts)of the early 20th century, including Symbolism, Futurism, Expressionism, Imagism, Vorticism, Dada, and Surrealism, along with the innovations of unaffiliated writers. Modernist literature is characterized chiefly by a rejection of 19th-century traditions. Modernist writers disturbed their readers by adopting complex and difficult new forms and styles. In fiction, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf attempted new ways of tracing the flow of characters’ thoughts in their stream-of –consciousness style. In poetry, Ezra Pound and T.S.Eliot replaced the logical exposition of thoughts with collages of fragmentary images and complex allusions.

Modernist writing is predominantly cosmopolitan, and often expresses a sense of urban cultural dislocation, along with an awareness of new anthropological and psychological theories. Its favored techniques of juxtaposition and multiple point of view challenge the reader to reestablish a coherence of meaning from fragmentary forms. In English, its major landmarks are Joyce’s Ulysses and Eliot’s The Waste Land (both 1922).

The 1920s (2) Imagism

Imagism: the doctrine and poetic practice of a small but influential group of American and British poets calling themselves imagists between 1912 and 1917. Imagist Movement is a revolt against the sentimental and manneristic （格式化的）poetry at the turn of the century. Led at first by Ezra Pound, and the by Amy Lowell, the group rejected most 19th-century poetry as cloudy（含糊的）verbiage（啰嗦）, and aimed instead at a new clarity and exactness in the short lyric poem. The imagists cultivated concision and directness, building their short poems around single images; they also preferred looser cadences（节奏）to traditional regular rhythms. Apart from Pound and Lowell, the group also includes H.D., F.S.Flint, D.H. Lawrence and William Carlos Williams.

The three phrases

1908 – 1909. T. E. Hulme founded a club in London

Basic principles; more discussion, less writing

1912 – 1914. Ezra Pound

1912, the three imagist poetic principles came out

1914, the first anthology of Imagist poems---- Des Imagistes 诗选

1914 – 1917. Amy Lowell No great achievements

The three Imagist poetic principles

1.Direct treatment of the ―thing‖, whether subjective or objective.

要求诗歌直接呈现描写对象（以雕塑和绘画的手法，只展现而不加评论所用的语言尽可能相似于描写对象。

2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation ---Economy of expression. (There must be no explanations, no drawing of conclusions.)

不用没有意义的形容词、修饰语，意象具有跳跃性(fragmented)

3. Rhythm--- It concerns a breaking away from conventional prosody, the use of free verse and interrelationship between music and verse.

摒弃传统格律，注重诗歌形式的自由。主张按照语言的音乐性写诗，反对按固定音步写诗。

Modernist writers

1. Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972)

---- father of modern American poetry, a leading spokesman of the Imagist movement

Works :

imagist poem: In a Station of the Metro

Cathay 华夏（中国古诗译集）1915

Homage to Sextus Propertius 向普罗波蒂斯致敬1917

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley 休塞尔温莫伯利1920

Cantos 诗章(masterpiece) (containing a total of 117 poems)

the influence of Confucius over Pound (embodied in the ideas of Cantos):

Pound sees in Chinese history and the doctrine of Confucius a source of strength and wisdom with which to counterpoint western gloom and confusion.

To him, the wisdom of Confucianism boils down to one notion: Order and tranquility, from which light shines forth.

Order and tranquility come from enlightened rule, and a salient feature of Confucian enlightened rule is even distribution of wealth and light taxation.

His survey of Chinese history is highly simplistic and idealistic. He sees the rise and fall of dynasties purely as the result of their following or violating the Confucian principle…

The character for the cardinal Confucian virtue, ―compassion‖, opens and informs the whole canto. 2. T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) Nobel Prize winner （1948）

T·S·艾略特的著名长诗《荒原》的副题就是：―献给埃兹拉·庞德，最卓越的匠人‖，该诗曾得利于庞德的亲自修改。He became a British naturalized citizen in 1927.

his famous principle of objective correlative 客观相关物

poems:

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 普鲁弗洛克的情歌1911

Gerontion 小老头1920 Hollow man 空心人1925

Ash Wednesday 圣灰节1930 Four Quartets 四个四重奏1943

The Waste Land 荒原1925 ---the manifesto of “lost Generation”, established Eliot’s position as the leader of “Waste Land Painters”.“Waste land”itself becomes a symbol of the declining western civilization. It is a milestone of the modern western poetry.

drama:

Sweeney Agonistes 力士斯威尼The Cocktail Party 鸡尾酒会

The Confidential clerk 机要秘书Murder in the Cathedral 大教堂谋杀案

As a literary critic, he has famous doctrine on poets and poetry:the“impersonal theory ”非个性化理论All these would necessarily lead to the emergence of the New Criticism.

Collection of critical essays:

Essays on Style and Order风格及秩序论文集The Sacred Wood神木

The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism Elizabethan Essays

Essays Ancient and Modern After Strange Gods 拜异教之神

3.Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

An unusual poet in modern American literary history. He was a very successful business man.

To him, a poet lives in two worlds---one of imagination and the other of reality ---and builds bridges between them. All his poems recorded the unending dialogue of imagination & reality.

famous poem:

Anecdote of the Jar 坛子的故事

The Emperor of Ice-Cream 冰淇淋大帝

The Idea of Order at key West 在基韦斯特的秩序的思考

prose writing:

The Necessary Angel 必不可少的安琪儿

volume of poetry:

Ideas of Order 关于秩序的思考

The Man with the Blue Guitar

Parts of a World

Transport to Summer 转入夏季

The Auroras of Autumn 秋天的晨曦

Collected Poems 诗集

4.William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

Williams worked all his life as a physician. He wrote poems about everyday subjects and the lives of ordinary people, using clear, concrete language. An American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He wrote poetry not because he had to but because he wanted to.

William’s attitude toward Eliot and Pound:He is a friend of Pound’s but resented his broken multi-cultural style.As a matter of fact, he was anti-Eliot all his life. His antagonism to T. S. Eliot dated from the publication of The Waste Land, which, he believed, gave the poem back to the academics. He strongly disapproves of the Pound-Eliot bookish, and intellectual brand of poetry, for he believes that ―localism alone can lead to culture.

His poetics :

1.The source of information -- American poetry must be rooted in America as its fount of inspiration（灵感）and its source of information and subject matter. He believes that ―localism alone ca n lead to culture.‖(民族化同样能产生好的文学)

What he wanted to achieve is to reach the universal plane of meaning through the representation of the local.通过描写本土的状貌来反映普遍意义Life as it is lived is the beginning and the end of the poet’s endeavor. Life is in itself poetry simple and pure. Poetry inheres in the life around us.

2. The language and rhythm-- He feels strongly that poetry must be grounded in everyday experience and in the speech of the common man. It must use the common meters of living speech.

3.The use of image ---He is an excellent imagist poet. To him, Philosophical and metaphysical speculation has absolutely no place in poetry. In Paterson he writes, ―Say it! No ideas but in things‖ ,(思想仅寓于事物之中) which means that don’t philosophize and say it in terms of so me kind of concretization . ( 不要说教，要借助于意象使观点具体化)

poem: The Red Wheelbarrow 红色手推车

Spring and All 春天及一切

long poem: Paterson 佩特森

Prose work: In the American Grain 美国性格

The Red Wheelbarrow

The picture presents common sights in the colorful, lively life.

The wheelbarrow is very common in country life, and rainwater means hope, virility to the crops. The moving chicken are very lively and make one light-hearted.

The picture, with red and white, is very colorful.

This lively, colorful scene makes one light-hearted and cheerful.

The picture conveys a very lively common life. It makes the readers realize that beauty inheres in the lively, common life. Or life itself is poem pure and poem inheres in the life around us.

On the surface level, ―so much depends on‖emphasizes the necessity and importance of these things to farm life . What is the metaphorical meaning?

The metaphorical meaning may be that common life is very important to people. Life is poetic; it can

offer enough material for poetry writing. ?

1. How to understand the ―object‖ and the ―image‖ in the poem ―The Red Wheelbarrow‖ ?

In order to understand the poem, it’s necessary for us to state the writer’s poetic ideas. William Carlos Williams believes that life itself can provide enough material efor poetry writing, and poetry inheres in the life around us. The consensus seems to be that he states his poetic idea in this poem. Then the poem can be understood as the following:

The ―image’ is a quick succession of related images ---―the red whe elbarrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens‖. (the lively, common life; synecdoche提喻)

The poet doesn’t state the ―object‖ directly in the poem. The ―object‖ is subjective. It refers to the poet’s poetic idea concerning ―material for poetry writing‖.

Through this image, the poet points out that the lively common life can provide material enough for poetry writing; poetry inheres in life around us. Poets should make their poetry as lively as life.

2. Appreciate the poem ―The Red Wheelbarrow‖ on the basis of the three Imagist poetic principle

1) The poet directly presents the image in the poem --- ―the red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens‖, and this suggests the lively, common life.

According to the poet W illiam Carlos Williams’s poetic ideas, the poem maybe illustrates his poetic idea concerning ―material for poetry writing‖. He is perhaps comparing ―material for poetry writing‖ to the lively, common life. ―wheelbarrow, chicken, rainwater‖ are very commo n objects in farm life. These things are important to both farm life and poets’ poetic endeavor for life can provide enough writing material. Poets should make their poetry as lively as life itself.

2) Altogether 16 words . No words that does not contribute to the presentation. No explanation.

3)It is written in free verse. What’s more, there is special sound effect in it: the whole poem consists of one sentence which is divided into 8 lines and 4 stanzas. Pause falls between the units of the sentence ,for example: so much depends (P) upon (P) … such unnatural pauses gives the poem a spasmodic (不连续的）sound effect, which represents the actual movement of the red wheelbarrow. the influence of Imagism

1)the imagist theories call for brief language, describing the precise picture in as few words as possible. This new way of poetry composition has a lasting influence in the 20th century poetry.

2)the second lasting influence of Imagism is the form of free verse. There are no metrical rules. There are apparent indiscriminate（杂乱的）line breaks, which reflects the discontinuity of life itself. That is art of the poem. (The poet uses the length of the lines and the strange groupings of words to show how life itself can be broken up into somehow meaningless clusters.)

5.Robert Frost (1874-1963) “新英格兰诗人”诗多以田园生活为题材

He won the Pulitzer Prize four times. He was considered as the ―unofficial poet laureate of the nation‖. In 1961, he was invited to read his poems in the inauguration ceremony of President Kennedy. He was the only poet who once had such an honor.

Poetry Collections：

his first volume —A Boy’s Will (1913)少年的意志

North of Boston（1914) 波士顿以北

“Mending Wall ”修墙

The Wood Pile 柴堆

Mountain Interval (1916) 山间

“The Road Not Taken” 一条未走的路

New Hampshire (1923) 新罕布什尔

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”雪夜林边驻

West-Running Brook (1928) 西去的溪流

A Further Range (1936) 又一片牧场

A Witness Tree (1942) 见证树

writing feature：

He is one of the most popular American modernist poets. The charm of his poetry is that it seems to be natural,direct and simple and the fact is that it is deceptively simple.貌似简单的复杂性

Frost’s poems are New England in their setting.The subjects come from country life of ordinary people.He used plain language, traditional poetics and common symbols to express profound ideas. His innovation is to combine traditional poetic forms （传统英诗形式）with American speech rhythms and vocabulary.

He showed little interest in experimentation in form. But for him, form of poetry is as important as sense . The ordering of sound and sense(诗歌的语调与内容的统一) is one major concern of his career.

His poetry emphasizes modern thematic concern . By writing poem, he managed to construct a ― momentary stay against confusion‖.（暂时逃避现实的混乱）

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

some sound devices

alliteration: （头韵）诗句中相邻的词以相同的字母或声韵开头

The sun sank slowly .

assonance（元音韵）相同或相似的元音在诗行中反复出现

The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain

consonance（辅音韵）诗行中两个或两个以上的词的词尾辅音相同

I like to see it lap the Miles And lick the Valleys up

the sound devices employed

the rhyme pattern in this poem (Vowels and diphthongs)

Winter Solstice冬至---the longest and darkest evening

alone, dark, quiet, cold

Robert Frost was greatly influenced by the Transcendentalist ideas which hold that nature can exercise a healthy and restorative influence upon people’s mind.

Major features of New England Transcendentalism:

3) The Transcendentalists regarded nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God

Nature is the garment of the Oversoul. Therefore it could exercise a healthy and restorative influence on the human mind. Things in nature tended to become symbolic.

Symbolism

The woods (beyond the borders of the village) sit on the edge of civilization. It is restful, seductive, lovely, deep–-nature

the village (or "society," "civilization," "duty," "responsibility") --human world

the theme——constructing ―a momentary stay against confusion‖

The speaker was in his onerous life journey. The woods is so lovely & fascinating that he had a strong desire to escape from the chaotic society & find refuge in the forest.

Frost was deeply influenced by the Transcendentalist idea which holds that nature can exercise a healthy and restorative influence upon the human mind. So after pausing a little while beside the woods, the speaker got enough energy and virility from the restorative nature. He remembered he had so much responsibilities. He must continue his life journey. His short stay by the woods provides ―a momentary stay against confusion‖.

Some information concer ning ―Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening‖

As a poet, Frost started very late. (His first volume of poetry wasn’t published until he was nearly forty. )The large family was a heavy burden for him. At the same time, He was intensely aware of the

chaos of the modern age. How he wanted to escape from the harsh reality.

American Modernism Novelists：

1.F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) 爵士乐时代的命名者和象征

Fitzgerald is generally regarded as spokesman of the 1920s ,the peculiar decade that combined the postwar economic boom and the sense of spiritual disorientation.

novels:

This Side of Paradise人间天堂(1920)

The Beautiful and Damned 漂亮冤家(1922)

The Great Gatsby 了不起的盖茨比(1925)

Tender is the Night 夜色温柔(1934)

The Last Tycoon( unfinished) 最后的大亨

Collections of short Stories:

Flappers and Philosophers (1921) 时髦女郎和哲学家

Tales of the Jazz Age (giving its name to the 1920s）

the 1920s---- the Jazz age 爵士乐时代的故事(1921)

All the Sad Young Man 一代悲哀的年轻人(1926) (The Rich Boy—one of his best story)

Taps at Reveille 清晨起床号

The diamond as big as the Ritz 大如里兹饭店的钻石（短篇故事集中的故事）

The Great Gatsby ( two heroes)

it is set in Long Island's North Shore and New York City during the summer of 1922.

hero :

Jay Gatsby

Nick Carraway ( he is both a narrator and a character in the novel )

heroine:

Daisy Buchanan （her husband---Tom Buchanan)

Theme of the novel：

The novel is the single most profound commentary in American fiction on American Dream. Fitzgerald deals with the bankruptcy of the American dream, which is highlighted by the disillusionment of the hero’s personal dreams due to the clashes between the romantic version of life and the sordid reality.

It is a story of an idealist who tries to recapture his lost love but in vain and is finally destroyed by the influence of the wealthy people around him. Gatsby is the true heir to the American dream. He fails to understand that he cannot recapture the past no matter how much money he makes. Material can’t identify with happiness. Daisy refuses to leave the security of her established position for Gatsby’s adoration and precarious wealth.

the magnitude of The Great Gatsby

Fitzgerald’s greatness lies in the fact that he found intuitively, in his personal experience, the embodiment of that of the nation and created a myth out of American life.

Gatsby’s life follows a clear pattern: at first, a dream, then a disenchantment, and finally a sense of failure and despair. Gatsby’s personal experience approximates the whole of the

American experience up to the first few decades of the twentieth century.

Gatsby’s personal life has assumed a magnitude as a ―cultural-historical allegory‖ for the nation. Here lies the greatest intellectual achievement that Fitzgerald ever achieved.

Techniques in the novel

1.first-person point view: using the ―dramatic narrator‖--- Nick Carraway (meaning the narrator is also a character in the novel); Nick is related with all the three groups of characters in the novel. He is a reliable person and makes no quick judgments. His limited omniscience (对故事所知很有限的叙述

者）creates an effect of mystery and suspense.

2.Symbolism

Gatsby: the country’s history

Daisy: seemingly beautiful American Dream

Tom: commercialization which brought the country only moral depravity

Nick: hope of the country

Theme of his works

Fitzgerald's fictional world is the best embodiment of the spirit of the Jazz Age, in which he shows a particular interest in the upper-class society . His fiction reveals the hollowness of the American worship of money and the unending American dreams. He dealt most with the double theme of love and money. He believed that the wealthy class corrupted the whole of Am society.

American Dream is a popular belief that people can achieve material success through honest hard working in a new world of liberty, equality, chances and promises in America. In this way they can achieve happiness.

American Dream is deceptive because it proposes the satisfaction of all desire as an attainable goal and identifies desire with material.

In the 1920s, the American Dream went bankrupt in the sense that the wealthy people were spiritually disorientated and morally corrupted. The fact that the rich people turned to be more indifferent and careless brought forth the disillusionment of American Dream.

2.Ernest Hemingway (1899 –1961)

His books paint a whole generation---the Lost Generation. He was termed as the spokesman of the Lost Generation. In 1954, Hemingway got the Nobel Prize.

He was a public hero because he acted out the theme of his own books.

novel:

The Torrents of spring (1926)

The Sun Also Rises (1926) 太阳照常升起

（for the first time he paints the Lost generation)

A Farewell to Arms (1928)

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940s)丧钟为谁而鸣

The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Collection of Short stories:

In Our Time 我们的时代(1925)

Men without Women (1927)

Winner Take Nothing 胜者无所谓(1933)

To Have and Have Not 富有与贫穷(1937)

play: The Fifth Column 第五纵队(1938)

non-fiction: 非小说

Death in the Afternoon 午后之死(1932)

Green Hills of Africa 非洲的青山（1935）

The Old Man and the Sea

1.symbolism

Santiago – mankind;

sea – nature and environment;

marlin – purpose of life;

shark –the evil force which control human’s fate

2. Theme

To behave well in the lonely, losing battle with life is to show "grace under pressure" and constitutes in itself a kind of victory, a theme clearly established in The Old Man and The Sea. Though life is but a losing battle, it is a struggle man can dominate in such a way that loss becomes dignity; man can be physically destroyed but never defeated spiritually.

A Farewell to Arms

hero: Frederic Henry heroine: Catherine

The end of the novel: (After Catharine's death, Henry stayed in the room where Catharine is lying) But after I had got them out and turned off the light it wasn't any good. It was like saying good-bye to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.

The symbolic meanings of ―arms‖:

1.arms-weapons---war

farewell to war

---he is longing for peace, happiness

2.arms—lover’s arms---love

farewell to love

---the great pain

The typical theme of Hemingway

In one sense, Hemingway wrote all his life about one theme, ―grace under pressure‖重压下的风度, and created one hero who acts that theme out. There is a particular term ―the code hero‖ for his character. The Hemingway hero possesses ―despairing courage‖(绝望中的勇气). It is this courage that enables a man to behave like a man ,to assert his dignity in face of adversity. This is the essence of a code of honor（典型品质）, which all his heroes believe in.

In his fiction the nihilistic（虚无主义的）vision of sterility, failure, and death is modified by his affirmative assertion of the possibility of living with style and courage.（与他活出风格、活出勇气的肯定观点相对照）Therefore, he often dealt with war and courage, and with the question of how to live with pain. style ---the iceberg theory of Hemingway（冰山原则）

1/8 of an iceberg is above the water. All of the rest is underneath the water. The same is true with Hemingway’s writing. His sentences only give one sm all bit of the meaning. The rest is implied. One must go very deep beneath the surface to understand the full meaning of his writing.

According to Hemingway, good literary writing should be able to make readers feel the emotion of the characters directly and the best way to produce the effect is to set down exactly every particular kind of feeling without any authorial comments, without conventionally emotive language, and with a bare minimum of adjectives and adverbs. characters and the corresponding works

Nick Adams—In Our Time

Jake Barnes---The Sun Also Rises

Frederic Henry---A Farewell to Arms

Robert Jordan---For Whom the Bell Tolls

Santiago---The Old Man and the Sea

Hemingway’s Code Hero（硬汉形象）

It refers to some protagonists in Hemingway's works. Hemingway defined the Code Hero as "a man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honor, courage and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful, and always painful."

In the general situation of Hemingway's novels, life is full of tension and battles;the world is in chaos and man is always fighting desperately a losing battle. Those who survive and perhaps emerge victoriously in the process of seeking to master the code with a set of principles such as honor, courage, endurance, wisdom, discipline and dignity are known as "the Hemingway code hero".

Lost Generation: Name applied to the disillusioned intellectuals and aesthetes of the years following WWI,who rebelled against former ideals and values but could replace them only by despair or a cynical hedonism（享乐主义）. The remark of Gertrude Stein ―you are all a lost generation,‖ addressed to Hemingway, was used as a preface to the latter’s novel The sun Also Rises, which brilliantly describes an expatriate group(旅居作家) typical of the ―lost generation.‖ Other expatriate American authors of the period to whom the term is generally applied include E.E. Cummings, F. Scott. Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound etc.

More information

In some sense, all his life, he lived with war emotionally and continued to write about it in order to relive and forget it. Therefore, he often dealt with war and its effects on people, and with the question of how to live with pain. All his works dramatize this concept: life is dangerous and always ready to defeat and destroy you, but if you keep calm and stand on your set of principles, you may win on your own terms.

Hemingway held a black, naturalistic (自然主义式的) view of the world, saw it as ―all a nothing,‖ and saw life in terms of battles and tension, which was nothingness (虚无) for him.

The Southern Renaissance

Since the beginning of the 20th century, there have emerged a few generations of Southern writers who have all tried to root their works in the south with a view to achieve universal plane of meaning.

William Faulkner (1897 -1962) The most important figure in the Southern Renaissance

He was born into a Southern family with a fairly long tradition in the town of Oxford. His hometown Oxford became the model for his fictional Jefferson town, the seat of his fictional Yoknapatawpha county约克那帕特法县. His own family history found its way into his novels. His family members …He won the Nobel Prize in 1949.

collection of poems:The Marble Faun

novels:

Soldier’s Pay士兵的报酬(his first novel)1927

Mosquitoes 蚊群(1927)

Sartoris 沙多里斯(1929)

The Sound and the Fury 喧哗与骚动(1929)

As I Lay Dying我弥留之际(1930)

Sanctuary 圣殿(1931)

Light in August 八月之光(1932)

Absalom, Absalom! 押沙龙，押沙龙(1936)

Go Down, Moses 去吧，摩西(1942)

masterpiece:

The Sound and the Fury,

Absalom, Absalom! Go Down, Moses

his famous short story—A Rose for Emily 献给艾米丽的玫瑰花

Special setting: Yoknapatawpha County

The Yoknapatawpha county is a typical small southern county. The Yoknapatawpha stories deal, generally, with the historical period from the Civil War up to the 1920s when the First World War broke out, and people of a stratified society, the aristocrats, the new rich, the poor whites, and the blacks. Yoknapatawpha county is not only a complete and detailed creation of a mythical kingdom, it functions also as an allegory of the South.

Yoknapatawpha saga (Faulkner’s theme)

Faulkner’s works have been termed the Yoknapatawpha saga. He writes about the histories of a number of southern aristocratic families.南方封建贵族家庭In the very rise of these family fortunes, Faulkner sees their inevitable fall. When the same story of the tragic rise and fall recurs in one novel after another, it assumes symbolic proportions. The spiritual deterioration which characterizes modern life stems directly from the loss of love and want of emotional response ---that seems to be one important message of Faulkner’s stories. Yoknapatawpha county is not only a complete and detailed creation of a mythical kingdom, it functions also as an allegory of the South. Its appeal became universal as well as particular.

The Sound and the Fury (1929) 《喧哗与骚动》

The title of the novel comes from a drama written by William Shakespeare.( ―It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing‖—Macbeth)

The main story of the novel is about the family history of the Compsons, who were once the owner of a plantation.

The novel is recounting the death of a family, including some of its members, as well as the decline of the traditional upper-class Southern family. （南方封建贵族家庭的衰败）

The novel takes place in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County and is split into four parts narrated by four characters.

1. Benjy Compson: an idiot

2.Quentin Compson: a student in Harvard, full of imagination, felt modern life unbearable, at last committing suicide

3.Jason Compson: the eldest son; all vices of modern world, empty and meaningless, traditional humanistic values alien to him

4.Dilsey: a black woman servant in the Compsons, a natural woman who had the common feeling and compassion; her response to life and people is natural and intuitive.

Theme of the novel

It is an account of the tragic downfall of the Compson family. The idealized past forms a contrast with the loveless present. It conveys a nostalgic feeling about the past and a strong sense of grief over the family’s deterioration.

Technique in the novel

1. Narration: a new and experimental technique – multiple points of view and unreliable narrator

2. Most parts of the novel were written in Stream-of-consciousness: telling the story by recording the thoughts of the characters. The traditional time order of the novel was totally broken in this novel. No capitalization, no proper punctuations. Most parts are fragments with mistaken information.

Multiple Points of View多重视角

It is one of the literary techniques William Faulkner used, which shows within the same story how the characters reacted differently to the same person or the same situation. The use of this technique gave the story a circular form wherein one event was the center, with various points of view radiating from it. The multiple points of view technique makes

the reader recognize the difficulty of arriving at a true judgment.

Stream of consciousness

It refers to the continuous flow of thoughts, feelings, and memories in the human mind. As a literary method, it represent such a blending of mental processes in fictional characters, usually in the form of interior monologue. It is an important device of modernist fiction, pioneered by James Joyce in Ulysses and further developed by Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner.

Thematic concerns of Faulkner

He lamented the decline of the old South and condemned the mechanized, industrialized society which has dehumanized people. (In his mind, the traditional southerners are prisoners of the past, or of the society, or of some social and moral taboos, or of their own introspective personalities. )

His works were in praise of eternal virtues in human history--- love, pity, honor and self-sacrifice. Faulkner thought that the doom of the South was caused by ill-treatment of Indians and blacks and the way to change the meaningless modern life is to recover the traditional and eternal virtues. Characters and the corresponding works

The Sound and Fury—the Compsons Dilsey

Absalom, Absalom!—Thomas Sutpen

Go down, Moses—Carothers McCaslin

Ike McCaslin Sam Fathers

Light in August—Lena Grove

A summary on his writing technique

1.authorial transcendence (作者尽可能少介入故事)Withdrawal of the author as a controlling narrator:

a writer should observe with no judgment whatsoever and reduce authorial intrusion to the lowest minimum.

2. employing a fallible narrator or multiple narrators (For example, The Sound and the Fury uses four different narrative voices to piece together the story and thus challenges the reader by presenting a fragmented plot told from multiple points of view.)

3. dislocation of the narrative time: 混乱的叙事顺序The most characteristic way of structuring his stories is to fragment the chronological time. He deliberately broke up the chronology of his narrative by juxtaposing the past with the present.（in the way the montage 蒙太奇手法does in a movie. ）

4.modern stream-of-consciousness technique: There were a lot of interior monologue in his works.

Writers of the 1930s

Background

While authors who made their names in the twenties continued to produce great works, new forces appeared on the scene. Wall Street crash of 1929 set the tone for the writing /economic crisis/ physical wasteland /sheer despair /the New Deal/ not until WWII that America felt safe again

the features of the writing in this period

1.social involvement

2.revival of naturalism

the scene in various fields of literature

1.A great age of fiction

naturalists:

John Dos Passos,

John Steinbeck

Left-oriented naturalist 左翼自然主义作家: James T. Farrell: Studs Lonigan trilogy

Danny O’Neill pentalogy

Bernard Carr trilogy

John O’Hara

Erskine Caldwell

other novelists

Richard Wright: Uncle Tom’s Children(collection of short stories)

Margaret Mitchell : Gone With the Wind

2.drama: Eugene O’Neill Clifford Odets

3.poetry: New Criticism

John Dos Passos----the leading naturalist of the Depression

an about-face in his political outlook:

He started off writing for the oppressed; his writing were Communist-oriented for a long period. During the latter part of his career, he showed admiration for business, and supported the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

he is remembered chiefly for the following:

trilogy: U.S.A 美国三部曲(his masterpiece)

including: The 42nd Parallel (1930) 北纬四十二度

1919 (1932)

The Big Money (1936) 赚大钱(about the booming twenties)

trilogy: District of Columbia 哥伦比亚特区

his experimental device in novel-writing:

Newsreels 新闻片Biographies人物小传Camera Eye 摄影机眼

John Steinbeck

Tortilla Flat 托蒂亚平地（1935）

In Dubious Battle 胜负未决的战争（1936）

Of Mice and Men 人与鼠（1937）

The Grapes of Wrath 愤怒的葡萄（1939）

The Moon is Down 月落（1942）

East of Eden 伊甸园以东（1952）

The Winter of Our Discontent 我们不满的冬天（1961）

the field of poetry in the 1930s

The New Criticism

1.time range:1920s-1940s

2. members: T.S. Eliot, I.A.Richards, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren …

3.development

1)beginning in the 1920s: the base--T.S. Eliot’s theory of ―impersonality‖ and ―objective correlative‖

2)Receiving further impetus in the 1930s

The first generation of New Critical Poets---the Fugitives(or the Southern Critics)

―I’ll Take My Stand‖ (1930)

Ransom’s book ―the New Criticism‖(1941) gave this movem ent its final historic name.

3)the 1940s: the second generation New Critical Poets : Robert Lowell…

4)in the 1950s and 1960s:the wind of change beginning to blow

4.features of the New Criticism

5.features of the New Critical Poem

American Drama (It was not until the 1920s that American drama began to draw the attention of the critics. )

1920s:

―Little Theatre Movement‖ began after 1912 as a revolt against the conventions of the commercial theater. They are freed from the conventional theatre and can be as experimental as they like. With them the playwrights came into their own.

1）Eugene O’Neill(1888-1953)

2）Elmer Rice

1930s Clifford Odets

Post-war (WWII）：1940s-1960s

(second climax of American drama)

the dominant playwrights are Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee

Eugene O’Neill(1888-1953)

Founder of modern American drama. A Nobel Prize Winner in 1936

In 1916, the performance of his play ―Bound East for Cardiff‖ ushered in the modern era of the American theatre.

O’Neill was no doubt the g reatest American dramatist of the first half of the 20th century. He was the first American playwright to explore serious themes in the theater and carry out courageous experiments in theatrical devices. He came only after Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw in the world of drama.

Expressionism（表现主义）a general term for a mode of literary or visual art which, in extreme reaction against realism or naturalism, presents a world violently distorted under the pressure of intense personal moods, ideas, and emotions: image and language thus express feeling and imagination rather than represent external reality. In the English-speaking world, expressionist dramatic techniques were adopted in some plays of Eugene O’Neill (the Hairy Ape, The Emperor Jones); Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman as well as in the Theater of the Absurd（荒诞派戏剧); in poetry, T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land may be considered expressionist.

It is a German movement in literature and the other arts which was at its height between 1910 and 1925. The expressionist artist or writer undertakes to express a personal vision – usually a troubled or tensely emotional vision of human life and human society. It can be found in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman as well as on the Theater of the Absurd（荒诞派戏剧)

His works:

Bound East for Cardiff---东航加迪夫(ushered in the modern era of the American theatre)

Beyond the Horizon 天边外The Emperor Jones 琼斯皇

Desire Under the Elms 榆树下的欲望The Hairy Ape 毛猿

All God’s Chillun Got Wings 上帝的孩子都有翅膀

The Great God Brown 大神布郎Lazarus Laughed 拉撒路笑了

Strange Interlude 奇异的插曲Anna Christie

Marco Millins Ah, wilderness

Dynamo 精力充沛的人Mourning Becomes Electra 悲悼

Days Without End 不幸的日子The Iceman Cometh 卖冰的人来了

Long Day’s Journey into Night (his best work)进入黑夜的漫长旅程

A Moon for the Misbegotten 月照不幸人

A Touch of the Poet 诗人气质

Elmer Rice:

The Adding Machine 加算机On Trial

Street Scene Left Bank

Judgement Day Dream Girl

1930s: Clifford Odets

Waiting For Lefty 等待老左

Till the Day I Die Awake and Sing! 醒来歌唱Paradise Lost Golden Boy 金童Dramatizati on of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men

1940s:Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)

The Glass Menagerie 玻璃动物园1944

A Streetcar Named Desire 欲望号街车

Summer And Smoke

The Rose Tattoo 玫瑰刺花

Cat On a Hot Tin Roof 热铁皮屋顶上的猫

Suddenly Last Summer 去年夏天突然来到

Sweet Bird of Youth 可爱的青春小鸟

Period of Adjustment 适应阶段

Night of the Iguana 蜥蜴之夜

The Milk Train Does Not Stop Here Anymore牛奶车不再在此停留

Red Devil Battery Sign 红鬼炮兵连的信号

Vieux Carre 维厄卡雷

Arthur Miller（1915-2005）

The Man Who Had All the Luck 鸿运高照的人1944

All My Sons 我的儿子们1947

Death of a Salesman(masterpiece) 推销员之死1949

The Crucible 严峻的考验1953

A View from the Bridge 1955桥头眺望

After the Fall 堕落(about Marilyn)1964

Incident at Vichy 维希事件1965

The Price 代价1968

1960s: Edward Albee The Theater of the Absurd