4-01-Part 2基础英语

1、1.The reasons for the coming of American realism: 1)The Civil War which broke out in 1861 taught men that life was not so good, man was not and God was not. The war marked a change, in the quality of American life, a deterioration, in fact, of American moral values. It led people to question the ass

2、umptions: natural goodness, the optimistic view of nature and man, benevolent God. 2)In America increasing industrialization and mechanization of the country in full swing produced soon extremes of wealth and poverty. Wealth and power were more and more concentrated in the hands of the few “captains

3、 of industry” or “robber barons”, but life for the millions was fast becoming a veritable struggle for survival. 3)The frontier was about to close and the safety valve was ceasing to operate, a reexamination of life began. Disillusionment and frustration were widely felt. 4)The age of Romanticism an

4、d Transcendentalism was by and large over. Meanwhile younger writers appeared on the scene, such as William Dean Howells, Henry James, Mark Twain, and so on, which means the coming of new literary age, American realism. I. Introduction 2.What is American realism? 1)As a literary movement realism cam

5、e in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a reaction against “the lie” of romanticism and sentimentalism. It expressed the concern for the world of experience, of the commonplace, and for the familiar and the low. 2)The American realists advocated “verisimilitude of detail derived from obser

6、vation,” the effort to approach the norm of experience a reliance on the representative in plot, setting, and character, and to offer an objective rather than an idealized view of human nature and experience. 3)The schools of American Realism: Regionalism (local color) Naturalism 1.The concept: The

7、style of writing derived from the presentation of the features and peculiarities of a particular locality and its inhabitants. Simply it means The use of regional detail in a literary or artistic work. The name is given especially to a kind of American literature that in its most characteristic form

8、 made its appearance just after the Civil War and for nearly three decades was the single most popular form of American literature. Local colorists were interested in realistically depicting life in different sections of the United States in order to promote understanding and unification. Fiction wr

9、iters like Sarah Orne Jewett, Bret Harte, O. Henry, and Mark Twain have been identified within this tradition. By the 1930s, the local color style had spread beyond the bounds of novels and short stories into less formal territory like the hometown material section of local newspapers. Local color w

10、riting had always been premised on an informal approach and rejection of high-culture concerns. Now it entered mass media. Regionalism (local color writing) Mark Twain (1835-1910) Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 18351910. He was an American author, a humorist, narrator, and social observer. Twain is

11、unsurpassed in American literature. His novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a masterpiece of humor, characterization, and realism, has been called the first (and sometimes the best) modern American novel. After the death of his father in 1847, young Clemens was apprenticed to a printer in Hann

12、ibal, Mo., the Mississippi River town where he spent most of his boyhood. works: 1.The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865) 2.Innocents Abroad (1869) 3.Roughing It (1872) 4.The Gilded Age (with Charles Dudley waenner,1873) 5.The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) 6. A Tramp Abroad (1880)

13、7. The Prince and the Pauper (1882) 8.Life on the Mississippi (1883) 9.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) 10.The Tragedy of Puddnhead Wilson (1894) 11. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court (1889) 12. The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg (1900) 13.What Is Man? (1906) 14. The Mysterious Stra

14、nger (1916) 15. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896) 16. Following the Equator (1897) Henry James (1843 - 1916) vHenry Jamess fame rested largely upon his handling of his major fictional theme, the international theme, that is the meeting of America and Europe, American innocence in contact

15、and contrast with cosmopolitan European decadence, and the moral and psychological complications arising therefrom. So he was called the cosmopolitan novelist. vnovelist, literary critic, playwright and essayist 2) Works Daisy Miller 1879 The American 1877 The Portrait of a Lady 1881 (1865-1881 inte

16、rnational novel/theme ) The Bostonians 1886 The Princess of Casamassima 1886 (1882-1895 tales of inter-personal relationships. ) “What Maisie Knew” 1895-1916 (novellas and tales dealing with childhood and adolescence; international novel ) 1897 The Wings of the Dove 1902 The Ambassadors 1903 The Gol

17、den Bowl 1904 “The Art of Fiction” Literary criticism The Portrait of a Lady In The Portrait of a Lady (1881) again a young American woman is fooled during her travels in Europe. James started to write the novel in Florence in 1879. He continued to work with it in Venice. The definitive version of t

18、he novel appeared in 1908. The protagonist is Isabel Archer, a penniless orphan. She goes to England to stay with her aunt and uncle, and their tubercular son, Ralph. Isabel inherits money and goes to Continent with Mrs Touchett and Madame Merle. She turns down proposals of marriage from Casper Good

19、wood, and marries Gilbert Osmond, a middle-aged snobbish widower with a young daughter, Pansy. Isabel discovers that Pansy is Madame Merles daughter, it was Madame Merles plot to marry Isabel to Osmond so that he, and Pansy can enjoy Isabels wealth. Caspar Goodwood makes a last attempt to gain her,

20、but she returns to Osmond and Pansy. 3) Evaluation Henry James was a prolific writer. He composed novels, travel papers, critical essays, plays, autobiographies and a series of critical prefaces on the art of fiction. Henry James produced a number of international novels. He was fascinated with his

21、“international theme”. Daisy Miller won him international fame. The last 3 （The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl ） ones represent the summit of his art. James contribution to literary criticism is immense. In his whole writing career James was concerned with “point of view” which

22、is at the center of his aesthetic of the novel. The author should avoid artificial omniscience as much as possible. He is, today, a world literary figure, one of the “largest” to come out of America during the 19th century and the early 20th century. an observer of the mind, psychological realism st

23、ream of consciousness the workings of the mind things happen to the character but not as a result of their own actions watch life more than live it What do they see? How do they try to understand it? The changing consciousness of the character is the real story interested in how characters respond t

24、o the events of the story events inside ones head can be dramatic Criticism on The Jolly Corner First published in the inaugural issue of The English Review in 1908, The Jolly Corner also appeared the following year in the definitive New York edition of Jamess work. The main character of the story,

25、Spencer Brydon, is a middle-aged man who returns to his birthplace of New York City. He has lived abroad for thirty-three years, and while visiting his childhood homesituated on a jolly cornerhe questions if leaving the States was the best decision. He walks around the vacant house late at night, wo

26、ndering about what could have been. The story reaches a climax when he believes that he is being haunted by his alter ego. Some critics praise Jamess creation of a ghost story worthy of Edgar Allan Poe with The Jolly Corner. The protagonists decision to move from his homeland echoes the lives of fam

27、ous, romanticized writers who died far from homePercy B. Shelley, Lord Byron and Margaret Fullerand foreshadows the themes and experiences of other great expatriate writersGertrude Stein, James Joyce and James Baldwin. American Naturalism Background financial giants; slums; biographical determinism

28、of Darwins theory and the economic determinism of Marx; Naturalism It is a late 19th- and early 20th-century literary approach of French origin that vividly depicted social problems and viewed human beings as helpless victims of larger social and economic forces. Naturalism is a critical term applie

29、d to the method of literary composition that aims at a detached, scientific objectivity in the treatment of natural man. It holds to the philosophy of determinism. It conceives of man as controlled by his instincts or his passions, or by its social and economic environment and circumstances. Since i

30、n this view man has no free will, the naturalistic writer does not attempt to make moral judgments. It is outgrowth of 19th-century scientific thought, following in general the biographical determinism of Darwins theory, or the economic determinism of Marx. In a word, naturalism evolved from realism

31、 when the authors tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic. It is no more than a different philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence. Common Features 1) Emphasis on reality, objectivity, no exaggeration, give no comments and critic

32、izing 2) Focus on the lower class and common people 3) Be concerned about the influence of social environment. According to them, human beings are victims of the crushing forces of heredity and environment. 4) Explain human activities and human society according to biological law, highlight the effe

33、ct of animal instincts and heredity on human beings. 5) Apply scientific experiment to writing, try to test human feelings in various kinds of environment. 6) Hold very pessimistic attitude towards human society, and this pessimism often goes to determinism. Representatives I Stephen Crane II Frank

34、Norris III Theodore Dreiser IV Edwin Arlington Robinson V Jack London VI O. Henry American author, whose second book, The Red Badge of Courage (1895), brought him international fame. Cranes first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, was a milestone in the development of literary naturalism. Novels:

35、Active Service 1899 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets 1893 The Red Badge of Courage 1895 The Little Regiment 1896 The ORuddy 1903 The third Violet 1897 Short Stories:The Open Boat 1898 The Monster 1899 Wilomville Stories 1900 Men, Women and Boats 1921 Poems :The Black Riders 1895 War is Kind 1899 Histor

36、ical book Great Battles of the War 1901 Stephen Crane (1871-1900) Evaluations and Subject matters (1) He is the first American to portray war realistically from the point of view of the individual soldier not in a romantic way, and one of the first to treat slums, prostitution, alcoholism, and other unpleasant subjects which are associated with the school of naturalism. (2) The colors of nature are always