African-American-Literature知识讲解.ppt

,单击此处编辑母版文本样式,第二级,第三级,第四级,第五级,*,单击此处编辑母版标题样式,African American Literature,美国黑人文学,African American writers are the minority literary tradition most familiar to literary criticism in the United States,from eighteenth-century poems by slaves such as,Phillis Wheatley,to the experimental novels of,Toni Morrison.,I.Overview:,II.African American Literature,Colonial and Early American(1773-1860),Antebellum(1860-1865),Post-war and Reconstruction(1865-1900),Pre-World War I(1900-1917),the Harlem Renaissance(1918-1937),Naturalism and Modernism(1937-1960),Contemporary(1960-present),the first African American poet,Poems on Various Subjects,Religious and Moral,1.Phillis Wheatley,菲丽丝,惠特利,2.Harlem Renaissance,哈莱姆文艺复兴,Time:,during the 1920s and the early 1930s,Place:,the Harlem district of New York,Literary position:,the first important literary movement of African-American writers,Harlem,a neighborhood in New York City,was the center of the African American political,cultural,and artistic movement in the 1920s and early 1930s.,Representatives:,Many influential African American writers and literary promoters,including,Langston Hughes,(,休斯,),James Weldon Johnson,（约翰逊）,and W.E.B.Du Bois(,杜博斯,)Claud Mckay(,麦凯,)and etc.,“If We Must Die”by Mckay,If we must die,let it not be like hogs,若我们必须牺牲，不要像猪一般死去,Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,被囚禁在一个不体面的处所，,While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,疯狂而饥饿的狗在我们周围吠叫,Making their mock at our accursed lot;,嘲笑我们不幸的命运；,If we must die,O let us nobly die,若我们必须牺牲，啊 让我体面的死去,So that our precious blood may not be shed,这样我们高贵的血不会白流,In vain;then even the monsters we defy,那时，就算是我们所蔑视的妖魔们，,Shall be constrained to honour us though dead.,也会在我们死后不得不表示尊敬。,O kinsmen!We must meet the common foe!,啊 同胞们！我们有着共同的敌人！,Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,尽管敌人数目众多，让我们鼓起勇气来，,And for their thousand blows deal one death blow!,把对他们的万千控诉汇成致命一击！,What though before us lies the open grave?,就算在我们面前敞开坟墓又如何？,Like men well face the murderous,cowardly pack.,像真的猛士一般直面惨淡的人生,pressed to the wall,dying,but fighting back!,被逼到墙角等死不如奋起一搏,!,Langston Hughes,我了解河流：,我了解像世界一样古老的河流，,比人类血管中流动的血液更古老的河流。,我的灵魂变得像河流一般深邃。,晨曦中我在幼发拉底河沐浴。,在刚果河畔我盖了一间茅舍，,河水潺潺催我入眠。,我瞰望尼罗河，在河畔建造了金字塔。,当林肯去新奥尔良时，,我听到密西西比河的歌声，,我瞧见它那浑浊的胸膛,在夕阳下闪耀金光。,我了解河流：,古老的黝黑的河流。,我的灵魂变得像河流一般深邃。,黑人谈河流,Dreams,梦想,-Langston Hughes,Hold fast to dreams,紧紧抓住梦想，,For if dreams die,梦想若是消亡,Life is a broken-winged bird,生命就象鸟儿折了翅膀,That can never fly.,再也不能飞翔,Hold fast to dreams,紧紧抓住梦想，,For when dreams go,梦想若是消丧,Life is a barren field,生命就象贫瘠的荒野，,Frozen only with snow,雪覆冰封，万物不再生长,3.Modernism,Zora Neale Hurston:,Their Eyes Were Watching God,Richard Wright:,Native son,Ralph Ellison:,The Invisible Man,The outpouring of African American literature in the 1980s and 1990s by such writers as Toni Morrison,Alice Walker.,1).Zora Neale Hurston,赫斯顿,One of the greatest writers of our time.,-Toni Morrison,Mules&Men,Their Eyes Were Watching God,他们眼望上苍,There is no book more important to me than this one.,-Alice Walker,2).Richard Wright,赖特,author of strange,dark fiction,an African-American author of powerful,sometimes controversial novels,short stories and non-fiction.Much of his literature,concerned racial themes,.,His work helped redefine discussions of race relations in America in the mid-20th century.,Native Son,土生子,Fiction:,Uncle Toms Children,(New York:Harper,1938),Native Son,(New York:Harper,1940),The Outsider,(New York:Harper,1953),Savage Holiday,(New York:Avon,1954),The Long Dream,(Garden City,New York:Doubleday,1958),Eight Men,(Cleveland and New York:World,1961),Lawd Today,(New York:Walker,1963),Rite of Passage,(New York:Harper Collins,1994),A Fathers Law,(London:Harper Perennial,2008),Native Son-,Plot Overview,Bigger Thomas,a poor,uneducated,twenty-year-old black man in 1930s Chicago,wakes up one morning in his familys cramped apartment on the South Side of the city.He sees a huge rat scamper across the room,which he corners and kills with a skillet.Having grown up under the climate of harsh racial prejudice in 1930s America,Bigger is burdened with a powerful conviction that he has no control over his life and that he cannot aspire to anything other than menial,low-wage labor.His mother pesters him to take a job with a rich white man named Mr.Dalton,but Bigger instead chooses to meet up with his friends to plan the robbery of a white mans store.,Anger,fear,and frustration define Biggers daily existence,as he is forced to hide behind a faade of toughness or risk succumbing to despair.While Bigger and his gang have robbed many black-owned businesses,they have never attempted to rob a white man.,Bigger sees whites not as individuals,but as a natural,oppressive forcea great looming“whiteness”pressing down upon him,.Biggers fear of confronting this force overwhelms him,but rather than admit his fear,he violently attacks a member of his gang to sabotage the robbery.Left with no other options,Bigger takes a job as a chauffeur for the Daltons.,Mary,Mr.Daltons daughter,frightens and angers Bigger by ignoring the social taboos that govern the relations between white women and black men.On his first day of work,Bigger drives Mary to meet her communist boyfriend,Jan.Eager to prove their progressive ideals and racial tolerance,Mary and Jan force Bigger to take them to a restaurant in the South Side.Despite Biggers embarrassment,they order drinks,and as the evening passes,all three of them get drunk.Bigger then drives around the city while Mary and Jan make out in the back seat.Afterward,Mary is too drunk to make it to her bedroom on her own,so Bigger helps her up the stairs.,Drunk and aroused by his unprecedented proximity to a young white woman,Bigger begins to kiss Mary.,Just as Bigger places Mary on her bed,Marys blind mother,Mrs.Dalton,enters the bedroom.Though Mrs.Dalton cannot see him,her ghostlike presence terrifies him.Bigger worries that Mary,in her drunken condition,will reveal his presence.,He covers her face with a pillow and accidentally smothers her to death,.Unaware that Mary has been killed,Mrs.Dalton prays over her daughter and returns to bed.Bigger tries to conceal his crime by burning Marys body in the Daltons furnace.He decides to try to use the Daltons prejudice against communists to frame Jan for Marys disappearance.Bigger believes that the Daltons will assume Jan is dangerous and that he may have kidnapped their daughter for political purposes.Additionally,Bigger takes advantage of the Daltonsracial prejudices to avoid suspicion,continuing to play the role of a timid,ignorant black servant who would be unable to commit such an act.,Marys murder gives Bigger a sense of power and identity he has never known.Biggers girlfriend,Bessie,makes an offhand comment that inspires him to try to collect ransom money from the Daltons.They know only that Mary has vanished,not that she is dead.Bigger writes a ransom letter,playing upon the Daltons hatred of communists by signing his name“Red.”He then bullies Bessie to take part in the ransom scheme.However,Marys bones are found in the furnace,and,Bigger flees with Bessie to an empty building.Bigger rapes Bessie and,frightened that she will give him away,bludgeons her to death with a brick after she falls asleep,.,Coincidentally,Mr.Dalton is also Biggers landlord,as he owns a controlling share of the company that manages the apartment building where Biggers family lives.Mr.Dalton and other wealthy real estate barons are effectively robbing the poor,black tenants on Chicagos South Sidethey refuse to allow blacks to rent apartments in predominantly white neighborhoods,thus leading to overpopulation and artificially high rents in the predominantly black South Side.Mr.Dalton sees himself as a benevolent philanthropist,however,as he donates money to black schools and offers jobs to“poor,timid black boys”like Bigger.However,Mr.Dalton practices this token philanthropy mainly to alleviate his guilty conscience for exploiting poor blacks.,Bigger eludes the massive manhunt for as long as he can,but he is eventually captured after a dramatic shoot-out.The press and the public determine his guilt and his punishment before his trial even begins.The furious populace assumes that he raped Mary before killing her and burned her body to hide the evidence of the rape.Moreover,the white authorities and the white mob use Biggers crime as an excuse to terrorize the entire South Side.,Jan visits Bigger in jail.He says that he understands how he terrified,angered,and shamed Bigger through his violation of the social taboos that govern tense race relations.Jan enlists his friend,Boris A.Max,to defend Bigger free of charge.Jan and Max speak with Bigger as a human being,and Bigger begins to see whites as individuals and himself as their equal.,Max tries to save Bigger from the death penalty,arguing that while his client is responsible for his crime,it is vital to recognize that he is a product of his environment,.Part of the blame for Biggers crimes belongs to the fearful,hopeless existence that he has experienced in a racist society since birth,.Max warns that there will be more men like Bigger if America does not put an end to the vicious cycle of hatred and vengeance.Despite Maxs arguments,Bigger is sentenced to death.,Bigger is not a traditional hero by any means.However,Wright forces us to enter into Biggers mind and to understand the devastating effects of the social conditions in which he was raised.Bigger was not born a violent criminal.He is a“native son”:a product of American culture and the violence and racism that suffuse it.,3)Ralph Ellison,埃里森,Life,Ralph Ellison was born inOklahoma City,Oklahoma.,His father died when Ralph was three years old.,In 1933,Ellison entered theTuskegee Institute on a scholarship to study music.,After his third year,Ellison moved to New York City to study the visual arts.A short story entitled“Hymies Bull”was finished during the period.,In 1975,Ellison was elected toThe American Academy of Arts and Letters.,In 1986,his,Going to the Territory,was published.,Writing career,DuringWorld War II,Ellison joined theMerchant Marine;,In 1952,Invisible Man,published;,In 1955,Ellison went abroad to Europe to travel and lecture before settling for a time in Rome,Italy.,A New Southern Harvest,in 1957.,In 1964,Ellison published,Shadow and Act;,In 1967,Ellison experienced a major house fire at his home in which he claimed more than 300 pages of his second novel manuscript were lost.,work,Invisible man1952,看不见的人,又译,无形人,The first novel,Shadow and Act1964,影子与行动,a collection of political,social and critical essays,Going to the Territory1986,走向领域,Juneteenth1999,六月庆典,prepare it for 40 years,the last novel,Invisible Man,IM,was published in 1952.,Winning for him the National Book Award in 1953.,As you read the story,think of the intersecting issues of,race,class,and,gender,.,Invisible Man,看不见的人,The narrator is the“invisible man”of the title.,A black man in 1930s America.,The narrator considers himself invisible because people never see his true self beneath the roles that stereotype and racial prejudice compel him to play.,I am a man of substance,of flesh and bone,fiber and liquids-and I might even be said to possess a mind,.I am invisible,understand,simply because people refuse to see me,.When they approach me they only see my surroundings,themselves,or figments of their imagination-indeed,everything and anything,except me,.,4).Alice Walker,沃克,The Color Purple,紫色,Thank You!,