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Winner of the National Book Award in 1950 and the Pulitzer Prize in 1960, William C. Williams is the author of the five-volume epic Patersonwhich is a lucid statement of the author’s aesthetics.
The prose masterpieces of Carl Sandburgis the monumental biography Abraham Lincohn: The Praire Years and Abraham Lincohn: The War Years, the latter of which earned him the 1940 Pulitzer Prize in history.
Wallace Stephen was successful in two different fields which seemed rather incompatible with each other: he was
viece-president of an insurance company and a remarkable poet at the same time.10.Besides, . Eliot also wrote verse plays and he excelled in
dramatic monologue, Murder in the Cathedralis widely acknowledged as his best verse play which is based on the story of Thomas a Becket, a saint of the Roman Catholic Church of the ancient time.Multiple choiceIII.
1.Imagist poems are mainly composed in the form of ___.
A. blank verse B. free verse C. heroic couplet D. sonnet
Imagism was equivalent to ___ in fiction in a sense. Imagist
never stated the emotion in the poem, but just presented an image: concrete, firm and definite in picture.A. naturalismB. romanticism C. modernism D. surrealism
Pioneer of modern American poetry,___ did not only produce great poetry himself but also helped his contemporary poets including . Eliot, ., and Robert Frost with their literary careers.
A. Robert Lowell B. Edgar Allan Poe
C. Ezra Pound D. William Carlos WilliamsWhich of the following poets is a Nobel Prize winnerA. Ezra Pound B. Robert Frost C. . Eliot D. Wallace Stevens
To many who read Fog, I Am the People, the Mob, Grass, and the
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21 sections of Good Morning, America, ___ was successor to 19century poet Walt Whitman as the proclaimer of the American spirit.
A. Eliot B. Ezra Pound C. Robert Frost Sandburg
Four of Robert Frost’s poetic collections were Pulitzer Prize
D. Carl
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Collected Poems, A Further Range, and a winners. They are ___,
Witness Tree.A.Paterson B. New Hampshire C. Cathay D. Des Imagistes. Robinson wrote narrative poems based on Arthurian legends in his later life. The poems include___, Lancelot, and Tristram.A. Merlin B. Guinevere C. The Holy Grail D. CamelotWhich of the following was not written by Robert FrostA. ‘The Road not Taken’ B. ‘After Apple –Picking’C. ‘Birches’ D. ‘Richard Cory’Like . Eliot, ___ mainly appealed to the taste of the so-called
elites.
A. . Robinson B. Wallace StevensC. . Cummings D. Carl Sandburg
Like Robert Frost, ___ was also noted for his use of a dry, sometimes biting, New England humor.
A. Carl Sandburg B. Wallace Stevens C. . Robinson D. . Cummings
Carl Sandburg was associated with the imagists and wrote well-known imagist poems such as___.
A. ‘The Harbor’ B. ‘Merlin’ C. ‘Smoke and Steel’ D. ‘Camelot’The imagist poets followed three principles, they are ___, direct treatment and economy of expression.A. blank verse B. clear rhythm C. free verse D. everyday speech
. Eliot was a ___.A. playwright, critic and poet B. critic, poet and novelistC. novelist, essayist and poet D. poet, novelist and politician
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___ championed the imagist movement from 1912 to 1914, setting down the imagist principles. Then Amy Lowell led the movement into the period of “Amygism”, as Pound called it, from 1914 to 1917.
A. . Eliot B. . C. Ezra Pound D. Carl Sandburg
IV.Questions and answers
1.What are the major characteristics of imagist poetryThe major characteristics are as follows:
1)direct treatment of objects, concreteness of imagery.
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2)3)4)
No ideas or insight but things or images.
Free verse without imposing a rhythmical pattern.Common speech, economy of expressions
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What is the theme of The Waste Land by . EliotThe theme is modern spiritual barrenness, the despair depression that followed the WWI, the sterility and turbulence of the modern world, and the decline and break-down of western culture. It also shows the search for regeneration by people living in a chaotic world.
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20 Century American Fiction
Literary terms
Camera eye: A literary device developed by Dos Passos, which provides an autobiography account of his life corresponding to
and
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the time of the fictional narrative. Written usually in a stream-of-consciousness style, they record the author’s activities and reflections at roughly the same time that events in the fictional narratives are taking place. These impressionistic accounts recreate his changing moods in a turbulent age, showing that his private life is part of a greater cultural complexity.Expressionism: The term refers to a movement in Germany early
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in the 20century, in which a number of painters sought to avoid the representation of external reality and instead , to project a highly personal vision of the world. The main principle involved is that expression determines form, and therefore imagery, punctuation, syntax and so on. In brief, any of the formal rules and elements of writing can be bent or disjointed to suit the purpose. Theatrically, expressionism was a reaction against realism in that it tends to show inner psychological realities.
Free association: A term commonly used in psychology but which has achieved some currency in literary criticism and theory. The point involved is that a word or idea acts as a stimulus or trigger to a series or sequence of other words or ideas which may or may not have some logical relationship. Some writing that looks like it is probably the result of carefully thought out
and contrived arrangement. This technique is often adopted in modern works, such as James Joyce’s Ulysses.
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Stream of consciousness: It was first used in the 19 century by William James, an American philosopher and psychologist, in his book The Principle of Psychology. As a literary technique
that novelists experiment with in the 20century, it is employed to evince subjective as well as objective reality. It reveals the character’s feelings, thoughts, and actions, often
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following an associative rather than a logical sequence, without commentary by the author. It is a literary technique in which
authors represent the flow of sensations and ideas, added to the depth of character portrayal. The British Richardson was the pioneer in use of the device. James Joyce brought it to its highest point of development. Other exponents include Ulyssesand Finnegans Wake.Avant-garde:The French military and political term for the vanguard of an army or political movement, extended since the
late 19th
century to that body of artists and writers who are dedicated to the idea of art as experiment and revolt against tradition. It means to stay ahead of one’s time through constant innovation in forms and subjects.
Collage:A term adopted from the vocabulary of painters to denote a work which contains a mixture of allusions, references, quotations, and foreign expressions. It is common in the work of James Joyce, Ezra Pound and . Eliot.
Lost Generation: Also termed the Sad Young Men, which was created by . Fitzgerald in his book All the Sad Young Men. The term in
general refers to the post- World War I generation, but specifically a group of US writers who came of age during the war and established their reputation in the 1920s. It stems from a remark made by Gertrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway, “You are all a lost generation.”Hemingway used it as an epigraph to The Sun Also Rises, a novel that captures the attitudes of a hard-drinking, fast living set of disillusioned young expatriates in postwar Paris. The generation was “lost”in the sense that its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world and because of its spiritual alienation from US,
they seemed hopelessly provincial, materialistic, and emotionally barren. The term embraces Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, . cummings and so on.Multiple point of view:William Faulkner is a master at presenting multiple points of view, showing within the same story how characters react differently to the same person or the same events. It gives the story a circular form with one event as the center and various points of view radiating from it. This technique makes it difficult for the reader to see the truth of the story.
The impact of Darwin’s evolutionary
theory on the American
Fill in the blanks
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III.
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thought and the influence of the 19 century French literature on the American men of letters give rise to another school of realism: American naturalism.The Sound and the Fury has four sections with four different narrators. The daughter of the Compson family named Caddy, who is the only one capable of loving among the Compson children, appears in all the narratives.Multiple choice
Of the following Americans writers, who has NOT been anexpatriate in Paris
A. Ernest Hemingway B. Sherwood AndersonC. . Fitzgerald D. Emily DickinsonWhich of the following works by Willa Cather shows Thea Kronberg finding spiritual renewal in the American SouthwestA. O Pioneers!B. The Song of the LarkC. Death Comes for the Archbishop D. Shadows on the RockWhich of the following statements concerning Willa Cather is NOT true
A.Estrangement from conventional sexuality and sex roles is
typical of Cather’s main characters.
B.O Pioneers represents the first stage of Cather’s literary
life centering around the theme of heroic manhood.C.Books from her middle period include A Lost Lady and The Professor’s House; both deal with spiritual and cultural crises in the lives of their main characters.D.Death Comes for the Archbishop, a work that initiates her
third stage and is set in nineteenth century New Mexico, evokes the solidity of a vanished past.
In which of the works of Hemingway does the character Santiago
occur
The Old Man and the SeaA. In Our Time B.
C. For Whom the Bell Tolls D. The Sun Also RisesWhich of the following statements concerning the role of the sea in Hemingway’s novella The Old Man and the Sea is NOT correctA.Through the protagonist’s interactions with the sea, his
character emerges.
B.The sea provides glimpses of the depth of the protagonist’s
knowledge.
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His struggle, resolve and pride are measured in terms of how far out into the gulf he sails.
The sea symbolizes the benevolent side of nature
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