PartIV1TheLiteratureofRealism美国文学.pptx

Part IVThe Literature of RealismRise of American Realismfrom the Civil WarBy the 1870s,the age of Romanticism and Transcendentalism was by and large over.With Henry James and Mark Twain active on the scene,realism became a major trend in the 70s and 80s.RealismRealism is a term applied to a mode of writing that aims at an interpretation of the actualities of any aspect of life,free from subjective prejudice,idealism,or romantic color.I.Historical IntroductionII.Literary characteristicsIII.Notable writersI.Historical Introduction1.The Civil War 2.Commerce 3.The frontierGilded Age II.Literary characteristicsChange of Cultural Center:Boston and New England New YorkAs a reaction against“the lie”of romanticism and sentimentalism,realists thematic concerns:the concern for the world of the commonplace(interesting features of everyday existence),for the familiar and the low,depicting what was brutal or sordid,and the open portrayal of class struggleinterest in the problems of the individual conscience in conflict with social institutionsStyle:gentility and graceful prose or vernacular diction,rough and ready frontier humoropen ending verisimilitude of detail derived from observation a reliance on the representative in plot,setting,and character;to offer an objective rather than an idealized view of human nature and experience Three dominant figures:William Dean Howells,Mark Twain,and Henry James.Local Colorism Definition:A kind of fiction or verse that came to prominence in the USA in the late 19th century,which was devoted to capturing the unique customs,dialect,landscape,manners,speech,folklore and other qualities of a particular regional community,usu.in humorous short stories.Having“such quality of texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place or by anyone else than a native.”Hamlin GarlandTime:Local colorism as a trend first made its presence felt in the late 1860s and early seventies.Not until the turn of the century did local colorism cease to be a dominant fashion.social and cultural background:westward expansion:East and the rest frontier humorists:“tall tales”in which there was an obvious emphasis on local peculiarities of speech,dress and habits of thought and the presentation of native character typescontribution of mediaFamous local colorists:Bret Harte:“The Luck of Roaring Camp”(1868)Harriet Beecher Stowe,Sara Orne Jewett,R.E.Robinson,Mary W.Freeman in New England;J.C.Harris in Georgia;G.W.Cable and Kate Chopin in Louisiana;Mary N.Murfree and John Fox in Tennessee and Kentucky;Clemens in California and on the Mississippi;Hamlin Garland and Zona Gale in the Middle West;R.H.Davis,Brander Matthews,and O.Henry in New York City Willa Cather,John Steinbeck,William FaulknerAim:to create the illusion of an indigenous little world with qualities that tell it apart from the world outsideFeature:present and interpret the local character of their regions,tend to idealize and glorify,but never forgot to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life III.Notable writers1.Harriet Beecher Stowe2.Mark Twain3.O.Henry4.Henry James5.Jack London6.Theodore DreiserHarriet Beecher Stowe(1811 1896)writer abolitionistphilanthropist Puritan upbringing:a daughter of a religious leadersupported the Underground Railroad and helped fugitive slaves antislavery writingcontributed so much to popular feeling against slavery that it is cited among the causes of the American Civil War“So youre the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!”(Abraham Lincoln)An overall evaluation of her works:unevenAt their worst,they indulge in a romanticized Christian sensibility that was much in favor with the audience of her time,but that finds little sympathy or credibility with modern readers.At her best,Stowe was an early and effective realist.Her settings are often accurately and detailedly described.Her portraits of local social life,particularly with minor characters,reflect an awareness of the complexity of the culture she lived in,and an ability to communicate that culture to others.In her commitment to realism,and her serious narrative use of local dialect,Stowe predated works like Mark Twains Huckleberry Finn by 30 years,and influenced later regionalist writers including Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary Wilkins Freeman.ContributionIn her commitment to realism,and her serious narrative use of local dialect,Stowe predated works like Mark Twains Huckleberry Finn by 30 years,and influenced later regionalist writers including Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary Wilkins Freeman.Major WorksUncle Toms Cabin(1852)Dred:A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp(1856)The Pearl of Orrs Island (1862)Oldtown Folks(1869)Poganuc People(1878)Uncle Toms Cabindepicts the cruel reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the US,helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s and intensify the sectional conflict leading to the American Civil War Mark Twain(1835-1910)writer(realist,local colorist,humorist,satirist),social critic,lecturerSamuel Langhorne Clemens“The true father of our national literature”H.L.Mencken“The father of American Literature”William FaulknerHannibal,Missouri,on the Mississippi River a printers apprentice,a tramp printer,a silver miner,a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi,and a frontier journalist in Nevada and California Literary career:start as a teller of tall tales and local colorist and work his way into polite society,not forgetting his pastchanges in his writings:from an optimist and humorist to an almost despairing determinist Thematic concerns:social life of mostly the lower strata of society through portraits of local places he knew best(the Mississippi and the West)and the life with which he was familiarfreedom“I have never tried in even one single little instance to help cultivate the cultivated classes.I am not equipped for it,either by native gifts or training,and I never had any ambition in that direction,but always hunted for bigger game the masses”Mark TwainTechniques:precise and well-crafted magic power with language,the use of vernacular,colloquial style,attempting to reproduce actual daily speech with a degree of accuracyhumor,satire and terse sarcasm use of historical settings As a social critic:In both his fictions and essays,he criticizes tyranny,iniquity,cruelty,slavery,U.S.imperialism abroad,the persecution of the Chinese and the Jews,pretensions of the elite,legislative corruption,speculation,monarchy,feudal caste,inhumanity,social Darwinism.He loves life and people and freedom and justice,has ideals of democracy and equality,feels a pride in human dignity and advocates brotherhood of man.EvaluationA great literary artist and a great social critic.A master at rendering colloquial speech and made colloquial speech an accepted,respectable literary medium in the literary history of the country.He helped create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language.Mark Twain was the first truly American writer,and all of us since are his heirs,who descended from him William FaulknerMark Twain is“the Lincoln of our literature.”W.D.HowellsSherwood Anderson；Ernest HemingwayJ.D.Salingerconversational element in modern poetry:E.A.Robinson,Robert Frost,Carl Sandburg,William Carlos Williams,E.E.Cummings,T.S.Eliot and Ezra Pound Major Works“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”1865 卡拉维拉斯县驰名的跳蛙(“The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”or Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog”)(national attention)The Gilded Age:A Tale of Today 1873 (in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner)The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1876 Sequel:The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1884 The Prince and the Pauper 1881 Life on the Mississippi 1883 The 1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories 1893A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court 1889 The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg 1900The Mysterious Stranger 1916Autobiography 1924The Adventures of Huckleberry Finna sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer one of the great books of Western literature and Western civilization“all modern American literature comes”HemingwayCharacterization of HuckHuck is in moral conflict with the received values of the society in which he lives,and while he is unable to consciously refute those values even in his thoughts,he makes a moral choice based on his own valuation of Jims friendship and human worth,a decision in direct opposition to the things he has been taught,which embodies the major theme of the novel,the search for freedom.a sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience.a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat.”The journey down the Mississippi is both realistic and symbolic.Language:simple,direct,lucid,faithful to the colloquial speech(vernacular)or tall story,is a humorously exaggerated story of impossible feats.general standard speech of uneducated Americans:different dialectsmost words are of Anglo-Saxon origin,short,concrete and direct.sentence structures are simple or compound,with a series of“thens”and“ands”and semi-colons as connectivesuse of ungrammatical elements