美国文学下学期期末复习(课堂PPT).ppt

American Modernism(I)American Modernism(I)II.ModernismII.ModernismIII.ImagismIII.ImagismIV.Ezra PoundIV.Ezra PoundI.Historical BackgroundI.Historical Background1I.Historical BackgroundA.Influences of the World War Ia.People went into it with extreme enthusiasm,inspired by the ideal of making the world safe for democracy.b.There was a tremendous disillusionment because nothing had changed.There was a popular contempt for the law.A loss of faith began with Darwins theories of evolution.2B.Philosophical IdeasB.Philosophical IdeasA.NietzscheA.NietzscheNietzsche offered the most insightful analysis as to why the mainstream Western civilization has declined:the highest values(a combination of Christianity and Platonism)have devalued themselves.3B.FreudB.FreudFreud boldly and naturalistically explained that human behavior is largely the result of instinctual drives,such as sexual and aggressive urges.The“self”is a dynamism shaped by tension-filled negotiations between the individual desires(id)and the pressures from civilization(superego).When the tensions and traumas therein do not appear,they become unconscious.The repressed in the unconscious returns repeatedly as symptoms.4c.Marxismc.MarxismMarxism is an indispensable paradigm for modernism because it defines“modernity”as a historical stage in which capitalism,profit-oriented and technology-driven,seriously changes the world we live in and our“humanity”.5II.ModernismA.Modernist MovementA.Modernist MovementThe term modernism refers to the radical shift in aesthetic and cultural sensibilities evident in the art and literature of the post-World War One period.The ordered,stable and inherently meaningful world view of the nineteenth century could not,wrote T.S.Eliot,accord with the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history.6The large cultural wave of Modernism,which gradually emerged in Europe and the United States in the early years of the 20th century,expressed a sense of modern life through art as a sharp break from the past,as well as from Western civilizations classical traditions.Modern life seemed radically different from traditional life-more scientific,faster,more technological,and more mechanized.7B.Modernism in LiteratureB.Modernism in LiteratureIn literature,the movement is associated with the works of(among others)Eliot,James Joyce,Virginia Woolf,W.B.Yeats,Ezra Pound,Gertrude Stein,H.D.,Franz Kafka and Knut Hamsun.In their attempt to throw off the aesthetic burden of the realist novel,these writers introduced a variety of literary tactics and devices.8The most active and influential writers Poets:Ezra Pound,T.S.Eliot,E.E.Cummings,Robert Frost,William Carlos Williams,Wallace Stevens,and Carl Sandburg;Novelists:Ernest Hemingway,F.Scott Fitzgerald,and William Faulkner;Playwright:Eugene ONeill.Other writers,such as Sherwood Anderson,Gertrude Stein,Sinclair Lewis and Willa Cather are also important.9Modernism is often derided嘲弄嘲弄 for abandoning the social world in favor of its narcissistic自我陶醉的自我陶醉的 interest in language and its processes.Recognizing the failure of language to ever fully communicate meaning,the modernists generally downplayed content in favor of an investigation of form.The fragmented,non-chronological,poetic forms utilized by Eliot and Pound revolutionized poetic language.10III.ImagismA.DevelopmentA.Development1.19081909 T.E.Hulme founded a Poets Club in 1908.The most effective means to express the momentary impressions is through“the use of one dominant image”.2.19121914 Ezra Pound took over the movement.In 1912,they published Des Imagistes.a.Direct treatment of the“thing”,whether subjective or objective;11b.To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation;c.As regarding rhythm,to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase,not in the sequence of a metronome节拍节拍.3.19141917 Amy Lowell took over the movement and developed it into“Amygism”.In 1915,1916,1917,three volumes of Some Imagist Poets came out,containing six principles based on the original three.12B.DefinitionB.DefinitionRichard Aldington:The exact word must bring the effect of the object before the reader as it had presented itself to the poets mind at the time of writing.T.E.Hulme:The image must enable one“to dwell and linger upon a point of excitement,to achieve the impossible and convert a point into a line”.Ezra Pound:An image is“that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time”.13C.Contribution C.Contribution It was a rebellion against the traditional poetics which failed to reflect the new life of the new century.It offered a new way of writing which was valid not only for the Imagist poets but for modern poetry as a whole.Almost all major modern poets were in one way or another associated with it and benefited from it in a significant way.It is this movement that helped to open the first pages of modern English and American poetry.14IV.Ezra Pound（1885-1972）A.General IntroductionA.General IntroductionB.Main WorksB.Main Works1909 Personae,poems；1909 Exultations,poems；1910 The Spirit of Romance,essays;1915 Cathay,poems/translations;1920 Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,poems；1931 How to Read,essays;151934 ABC of Reading,essays;1935 Make It New,essays;1936 Chinese written character as a medium for poetry,by Ernest Fenollosa,edited and with a foreword and notes by Ezra Pound;1948 The Pisan Cantos,poems；1951 Confucian analects,translated by Ezra Pound;1915-1962 The Cantos16C.C.Three Imagist Poetic PrinciplesThree Imagist Poetic Principles Direct treatment of the thing whether subjective or objective.To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.As regarding rhythm:to compose in the sequence of musical phrase,not in sequence of a metronome.17In a Station of the MetroThe apparition of these faces in the crowd:Petals on a wet black bough.Modernism-MetroApparition:魅影魅影18补充补充：How is the central image in the poem related to the subject the poet intends to present?This poem is probably the most famous of all imagist poems.Pound attempt to produce the emotion he felt when he walked down into a Paris subway station and suddenly saw a number of faces in the dim light.To capture the emotion,Pound uses the image of petals on wet,black boughs.19In two lines it combines a sharp visual image or two juxtaposed images意象的叠加“petals on a wet,black bough”with an implied meaning.The faces in the dim light suggest both the impersonality and haste of city life and the greater transience of human life.The word“apparition”is a well-chosen one which has a two-fold meaning:firstly,it means a visible appearance of something real.Secondly,it builds an image of a ghostly sight,a delusive and unexpected appearance.20 Pounds short one-image poem In a Station of the Metro is among the most celebrated Imagist works.Pound had seen a succession of beautiful faces one day on the Paris Metro,and in the evening he found suddenly the expression for his sudden emotion.21 Through the metaphoric suggestion of that word,Pound fuses融合融合 the mundane image of faces in the crowd,with an image possessing visual beauty and the rich connotations of countless poems about spring.In a Station of the Metro relies on just two images,both presented in a simple,direct way,plus the catalyst of one word which is not straightforward description:apparition.22 The heart of the poem lies neither in the apparition nor in the petals,but in the mental process which leaps from one to the other.In a poem of this sort,as Pound explained,one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself,or darts into a thing inward and subjective.23pseud.H.D.,AmericanpoetMarriedtoRichardAldingtonin1913InEngland,undertheinfluenceofEzraPound,shebecameassociatedwiththeimagistsanddevelopedintooneofthemostoriginalpoetsofthegroup.VolumesofherverseincludeSeaGarden(1916),RedShoesforBronze(1931),TheWallsDoNotFall(1944),andBidMetoLive(1960).Hilda Doolittle Hilda Doolittle(1886-1961)(1886-1961)24William Carlos Williams(1883-1963)Americanpoetandphysician.Hewrotestories,playsandautobiographiesaswellaspoems.HemetandbefriendedEzraPound,andwasinfluencedbyPound.Biographical FactsHewasborninNewJersey,U.S.1883.HereceivedhisM.D.fromtheUniversityofPennsylvania.Hesustainedhismedicalpracticethroughouthislife.HediedinVienna,Austria,1963.25The Red WheelbarrowThe Red WheelbarrowSomuchdependsuponaredwheelbarrowglazedwithrainwaterbesidethewhitechickens.William Carlos Williams26Carl SandburgAmericanpoet,historian,novelistandfolklorist,thesingingbard.AcentralfigureintheChicagoRenaissanceHeemphasizedthetraditionofAmericanexperienceandplayedasignificantroleinthedevelopmentinpoetrythattookplaceduringthefirsttwodecadesofthe20thcentury.InhisworkSandburggavevoicetoleastpowerfulpeople.WiththeappearanceofhisChicagoPoems(1916),Cornhuskers(1918),SmokeandSteel(1920),andSlabsoftheSunburntWest(1922),hisreputationwasestablished(1878-1967)27The Lost GenerationThe Lost Generation is a term used to describe a group of American writers who were rebelling against what America had become by the 1900s.At this point in time,America had become a great place to,“go into some area of business”.However,the Lost Generation writers felt that America was not such a success story because the country was devoid of a cosmopolitan culture.Their solution to this issue was to pack up their bags and travel to Europes cosmopolitan cultures,such as Paris and London.Here they expected to find literary freedom and a cosmopolitan way of life.Page 28The term lost generation was coined by Gertrude Stein,a lost generation writer herself,after World War I.It was between the first and second World Wars,that these writers spent their time abroad.In the 1930s,the forces of politics and war drove artists back to America.Page 29This temporary emigration of American talent into cosmopolitan cities such as Paris,is significant to American culture in two parts.One,because it aided in the desire for a cosmopolitan culture to be established and to exist in America.Two,because when American Culture became more defined,European and other countries began to recognize a distinctive Democratic American culture.Page 30Ernest Hemingway(1899-1961)Hemingway,the winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature,is one of the most famous American novelist,short-story writer and essayist,whose simple prose style has influenced wide range of writers.Brief Introduction Brief IntroductionPage 31Main WorksMain WorksThree Stories and Ten Poems,1923 In Our Time,1924 The Sun Also Rises,1926Men Without Women,1927 A Farewell to Arms,1929 Death In The Afternoon,1932 Winner Take Nothing,1933 The Green Hills of Africa,1935Page 32Main WorksMain WorksTo Have and Have Not,1937 The Spanish War,1938 Fifth Column,1938 For Whom the Bell Tolls,1940 Across the River and Into the Trees,1950 The Old Man and the Sea,1952 Two Chrismas Tales,1958 Page 33 Style StyleHemingwayisknownforbriskpreciseprosestyle.His sentences are uncomplicated in their directconveyingofinformation.At no time does the narrator intrude with anyindication of what the reader should think or feelabouttheeventsdescribed.This style is a reflection of Hemingways view ofgoodwriting.HesaidthatIalwaystrytowriteontheprincipleoftheiceberg.Page 34n补充nHemingwayavoideddescribinghischaractersemotionsandthoughtsdirectly.Instead,in providing thereaderwiththerawmaterialofanexperience and eliminating theauthorialviewpoint,Hemingwaymadethereadingofatextapproximatetheactualexperienceascloselyaspossible.Page 35V.Iceberg TheoryV.Iceberg TheoryIf it is any use to know it,I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg.There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg.-Interview in Paris ReviewPage 36 A Farewell to Arms A Farewell to Arms(1929)(1929)ErnestHemingways1929novel,AFarewelltoArms,isoftenregardedashisbestartisticachievement.Itwascertainlyhisgreatestcommercialsuccesstodatewith80,000copiessoldwithinthefirstfourmonths.Page 37n补充nThe novelis botha farewell to war,which is condemned as purposelessslaughter,andafarewelltolove,whichissoshort-lived.Page 38B.Character Analysis Frederic Henry,the novels narrator andprotagonist.A young American ambulancedriver in the Italian army during World War I,Henry meets his military duties with quietstoicism.Hedisplayscourageinbattle,buthisselfishmotivationsundermineallsenseofgloryand heroism,abstract terms for which Henryhas little patience.His life lacks real passionuntilhemeetsthebeautifulCatherineBarkley.A.Plot OverviewPage 39CatherineBarkley,anEnglishnursesaidewhofallsinlovewithHenry.Catherineisexceptionallybeautifulandpossesses,perhaps,themostsensuouslydescribedhair in all of literature.When the novel opens,Catherines grief for her dead fianc launches herheadlong轻率的intoaplayful,thoughreckless轻率的,gameofseduction.HerfeelingsforHenrysoonintensify and become more complicated,however,andsheeventuallyswearslifelongfidelitytohim.Page 40Priest,a kind,sweet,young man who providesspiritualguidancetothefewsoldiersinterestedinit.Oftenthebutt笑柄oftheofficersjokes,thepriestrespondswithgood-naturedunderstanding.ThroughHenrysconversationswithhimregardingthe war,the novel challenges abstract ideals likeglory,honor,andsacredness.Rinaldi,asurgeonintheItalianarmy.Mischievous,wry,andoversexed,RinaldiisHenrysclosestfriend.AlthoughRinaldiisaskilleddoctor,hisprimarypracticeisseducingbeautifulwomen.WhenHenryreturnstoGorizia,Rinalditriestowhipup激起aconvivial欢乐的atmosphere.Page 41C.Themea.The Grim Reality of WarTheattitudesofthemajorityofthecharacterstowardthewarThedescriptionsoftheconflictAmbivalence矛盾心理Thecharactersseekingsolace慰藉fromthewar-ravagedworldHemingwayssuggestionPage 42b.The Relationship between Love and PainFalselove:temporarysolacefrompainCatherine:mourningforherdeadfianc(distancingherselffromthepainofloss)Henry:gettingasfarawayfromthewaraspossibleTruthlove:asalveforthedamagethatthewarhasinflictedTragedy:love,evenwhengenuine,beingnevermorethantemporaryPage 43D.MotifMasculinity男子气概:HemingwaysconsistentthreadDomineering刚愎自用,supremelycompetent,andswaggeringly狂妄的virile强壮的Rinaldi:anoversexedwomanizerDr.Valentini:aboldcompetentsurgeonTheoppositesPriest:lackoflustThethreedoctors:mousy胆小的,overlycautiousPage 44E.SymbolRainapotentsymbolFirstappearance:atendencytoruinthingsforloversProphesy:doomCatherinesdeath:validationofheranxietyandconfirmationofoneofthenovelsmaincontentionsGreatlovecannotlastPage 45F.Important Quotations1.“There,darling.Nowyoureallcleaninsideandout.Tellme.Howmanypeoplehaveyoueverloved?”“Nobody.”“Notevenme?”“Yes,you.”“Howmanyothersreally?”“None.”“Howmanyhaveyouhowdoyousayit?stayedwith?”“None.”“Yourelyingtome.”“Yes.”“Itsallright.Keeprightonlyingtome.ThatswhatIwantyoutodo.Weretheypretty?”-fromChapter16Page 46 Influence of the Novela.The novel established Ernest Hemingway as the literary master of a style that was characterized by brisk assertive staccato,or crisp precise p