英美文学选读笔记-整理版美国Modern

Chapter 3 -----------The Modern Period:(美国)

Background:

1. Historical background:

a. The US became the most powerful industrialized nation in the world. B. Despite its booming industry and prosperity, there was a sense of unease and restlessness underneath.

c. There was a decline in moral standard – a spiritual wasteland. 2. Cultural background:

a. Darwinism: the survival of the fittest b. Karl Marxism: the cause of all behavior is economic. c. Freudian psychoanalysis: the unconscious and the irrational in the human psyche.

d. French Impressionism and German Expressionism: to depict the human reality in a rather subjective point of view. e. Cubism: multiple-perspective viewpoints that provided the writers with more than one way to explain the reality. Poetry : 20’ and 30’ Ezra Pound: Imagist Movement: This is a movement that advanced modernism in arts which concentrated on reforming the medium of poetry as opposed to Romanticism.

Robert Frost: his subject is New England and his simplicity to reveal the truth. 40’ Robert Lowell: a growing sense of resistance to the existing culture 50’ and 60’ Gary Snyder: liberate poetry from the academy and make it popular among the ordinary people Allen Ginsberg: the manifesto of the Beat Movement Novel: 20‘ F. Scott Fitzgerald: frivolity and carelessness Ernest Hemingway: the sense of loss and despair William Faulkner: the decline of the Southern society. 30‘ John Steinbeck: “novels of social protest” (The Grapes of Wrath: a symbolic journey of man on the way to finding some truth about life and himself, and a record of the dispossessed and the wretched farmers during the Great Depression.) 40‘ and 50’ 1. New writers who survived the war: traumatic experience: Norman Mailer, Herman Wouk 2. Jewish-American writers: dismantling of the self by intolerable history: Saul Bellow

3. Black fiction: life of the black people: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison 60‘ and 70‘ -- “new fiction”

Experiment with new forms and combination of fantastic events with realistic presentations: Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, John Bath, Thomas Pynchon Drama:

Eugene O’Neil: Tragic view of life and most of his plays are about the root, the truth of human desires and human frustrations.

His experiment with dramatic structure and theatrical production through technology.

Comparison of realistic fiction and modern fiction Realistic fiction:

1. achieved its effects by accumulation and saturation 2. Authoritative narrator in telling a story Modern fiction:

1. preferred suggestiveness. 2. The first person narration.

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

Spokesman of the “Imagist Movement” (1909-1917) Works: Poetry: The Cantos:

Theme: Pound traces the rise and fall of eastern and western empires, the moral and social chaos of the modern world, especially the corruption of America after the heroic time of Jefferson.

2. Criticl essays: Literary Essays (1954)

3. Translation:The Translations of Ezra Pound (1953) Themes: 1. Early poetry:

romantic themes, such as songs in praise of a lady, songs concerning the poet’s craft, love and friendship, death, the transience of beauty and the permanence of art. 2. Subjects he called his own: the pain of exile, metamorphosis, the delightful psychic experience, the ecstatic moment. 3. Contemporary cultural decay and the possible sources of cultural renewal as well Imagist Movement A movement that advanced modernism in arts which concentrated on reforming the medium of poetry as opposed to Romanticism.

Three principles: direct treatment of poetic subjects, elimination of merely ornamental or superfluous words, and rhythmical composition in the sequence of the musical phrase Characteristics

1. One-image poem 2. The use of myth, personae and allusions 3. Language: oblique, compressed.

Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963) Semi-free or semi-conventional Works

1. A Boy’s Will a boy’s development from self-centered idealism to maturity.

2. North of Boston – ‘a book of people’A brilliant insight into New England and the background. 3. Pulitzer Prize winners

New Hampshire (1923), Collected Poems(1930), Further Range (1935),A Witness Tree (1942) Comic-serious dramatic narratives: A Masque of Reason 1945 A Masque of Mercy 1947

In both of which biblical characters in modern settings discuss ethics and man’s relations to god. Characteristics

1. Comic-serious dramatic narratives and semi-free or semi-conventional form2. Colloquial New England speech: fragrant with natural quality 3. Profound ideas are delivered under the plain language and the simple form.

Eugene (Gladstone) O'Neill (1888-1953) Founder of the American drama Works

1. Beyond the Horizon (1920)the choice between life and death, the interaction of subjective and objective factors

2. Symbolic expressionism: The Emperor Jones, The Hairy Ape, All God’s Chillun Got Wings, Desire Under the Elms 3. Strange Interlude (1928)

4. Masterpiece: The Iceman Cometh (1946) Exploration of human existence and insight into human nature 5. Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956) autobiography Themes

The basic issues of human existence and predicament: life and death, dream and reality, desire and frustration, etc. Characteristics

1. Experimenting with new styles and forms for his plays----Expressionism 2. Language: dialect, spelled words

F(rancis) Scott (Key) Fitzgerald (1896-1940) Spokesman of the Jazz Age Works Novels:

1.This Side of Paradise (1920)2.The Beautiful and Damned (1922) Similar theme: the emotional and spiritual collapse of a wealthy young man during an unstable marriage.

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (1900-1948) 3. The Great Gatsby 1925 Theme:

The bankruptcy of the American Dream, which is highlighted by the disillusionment of the protagonists’ personal dreams due to the clashes between their romantic vision of life and the sordid reality. 4. Tender is the Night 1934

Theme: the decline of a young American psychiatrist whose marriage to a beautiful and wealthy patient drains his personal energies and corrodes his professional career.

Short stories:

1. Flappers and Philosophers2. Tales of the Jazz Age3. “Babylon Revisited” Characteristics He is a stylist

1. explicit and chilly style. 2. accurate dialogues and accurate details3. “central consciousness”

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) Works

1. The Sun Also Rises 1926：a whole generation after the 1st World War and its effects by portrait of “the Lost Generation” 2. A Farewell to Arms 1929A story about a tragic love affair and disillusionment with the insanity and futility of the universe 3. For Whom the Bell Tolls 1940

4. The Old Man and the Sea 1952 life as a struggle against unconquerable natural forces Hemingway Code hero

In the general situation of his novels, life is full of tension and battles; the world is in chaos; man is always fighting desperately a losing battle. Life is a struggle man can dominate in such a way that loss becomes dignity; man can be physically destroyed but never defeated spiritually. Characteristics

1. Style: polished and tightly controlled– 2. Language: colloquialism 3. Ruthless economy “his powerful style-forming mastery of the art”

William Faulkner (1897-1962) Nobel Prize winner in 1950 The Yoknapatawpha County series Works The Marble Faun 1924 ；The Sound and the Fury 1929---- loss of innocence；Light in August 1932---- three attitudes towards life；Absalom, Absalom! 1936---- a novel of entirely interpretation；Go Down, Moses 1942；Intruder in the Dust 1948 (Nobel Prize) Themes:

The Yoknapatawpha stories deal with the historical period from the Civil War to the First World War and people of a stratified society. Yoknapatawpha County becomes an allegory or a parable of the Old South.

They have an overall pattern in which the fate of a ruined homeland always focuses on the collision of his intelligent, sensitive and idealistic protagonist with the society of the 20th century. Characteristics

1. Modern stream-of-consciousness 2. Multiple points of view

3. Symbolism, mythological and biblical allusions 4. Language: long and embedded sentences, complex syntax, vague reference pronouns. A Rose for Emily

1. Setting: the town of Jefferson in Yoknapatawpha

2. Characterization: Emily Grierson, who refuses to accept the passage of time or the inevitable change and loss. 3. Theme: decadence of the Old South 4. Technique: Gothic devices in narration

历年真题汇总后：

50. Please discuss Henry James’ contribution to American literature in regard to his representative works, themes, writing techniques and language.

A. International themes:In almost all the stories and novels he wrote during this period, James treated with great care the clashes between tow different cultures and the emotional and moral problems of Americans in Europe, or Europeans in America. Nearly every work is important in its own way in terms of James's cultivation of the theme.

B. Representative works：Daisy Miller (1878), a novella about a young American girl who gets \the first time.

The Portrait of A Lady (1881) is generally considered to be his masterpiece, which incarnates the clash between the Old World and the New in the life journey of an American girl in a European cultural environment.

C. Language:As to his language, James is not so easy to understand. He is often highly refined and insightful. With a large vocabulary, he is always accurate in word selection, trying to find the best expression for his literary imagination.

D. Style：Moreover, James's realism is characterized by his psychological approach to his subject matter. One of the James's literary techniques innovated to cater for this psychological emphasis is his narrative \

E. Summary：That is why James is generally regarded as the forerunner of the 20th-chentury \realism.