Realism大四美国文学课件

1、Realism大四美国文学课件 Chapter 5 The Age of Realism (1865-1914) Realism大四美国文学课件 1. Social Background vCivil War. vThe war led many to question the assumptions shared by the Transcendentalistsnatural goodness, the optimistic view of nature and man, benevolent God. It taught men that life was not so good, ma

2、n was not and God was not. The war marked a change, a deterioration of American moral values. Realism大四美国文学课件 vIn post-bellum America, commerce took the lead in the national economy. Increasing industrialization and mechanization of the country, now in full swing after the war, soon produced extreme

3、s of wealth and poverty. Wealth and power were more and more concentrated in the hands of the few. vIn the meantime, life for the millions was fast becoming a veritable struggle for survival. Realism大四美国文学课件 vThe worth of the American dream, the idealized, romantic view of man and his life in the Ne

4、w World, began to lose its hold on the imagination of the people. Beneath the glittering surface of prosperity there lay suffering and unhappiness. v Disillusionment and frustration were widely felt. What had been expected to be a “Golden Age” turned out to be a “Gilded” one. Realism大四美国文学课件 The Age

5、 of Realism v1) Time: By the 1870s, the age of Romanticism and Transcendentalism was by and large over. v2) Change of Cultural Center: Boston and New England ceased to be the cultural center of the country. It is moved to New York Realism大四美国文学课件 vRepresentatives: William Dean Howells, Henry James,

6、Mark Twain, and a good number of “local colorists”. vWith Howells, James, and Mark Twain active on the scene, realism became a major trend in the seventies and eighties. Realism大四美国文学课件 vDefinition: In American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came

7、into existence. It came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism. Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived. It expresses the concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective

8、 rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience. Realism大四美国文学课件 Realistic features: vdownplay plot in favor of details of everyday life, the details rather than the “story,”; vturns away from the noble or heroic towards familiar everyday aspects of life; depicted in a straightf

9、orward and matter-of-fact manner designed to reflect the true picture of life; vprefer simple, clear and direct prose; apply the techniques of selection, deletion, concentration and reorganization, often in the form of slice of life. vRealism is defined as the truthful treatment of materials. (W.D.

10、Howells) Realism大四美国文学课件 The Magic Realism: There is a kind of fiction that we call “magic realism,” in which the fantastic, absurd or impossible elements are included in a narrative that is mainly objective and realistic. Realism大四美国文学课件 Local Colorism v1. Definition: Hamlin Garland “such quality o

11、f texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place or by anyone else than a native.” (texture: refers to the elements which characterize a local culture, elements such as speech, customs and mores peculiar to one particular place.) Realism大四美国文学课件 v2. Local colorists: Ma

12、rk Twain, Bret Harte, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Willa Cather, John Steinbeck and William Faulkner. Realism大四美国文学课件 1. Mark Twain (1835-1910) “the true father of our national literature” -H. L. Mencken realist local colorist humorist Realism大四美国文学课件 1) Works wThe celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras Cou

13、nty 1865 wLife on the Mississippi 1883 wThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1876 wThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1886 Realism大四美国文学课件 wInnocents Abroad 1869 wRoughing It 1872 wThe Gilded Age 1873 wThe Prince and the Pauper 1881 wA Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court 1889 wPuddnhead Wilson 1893 wTh

14、e Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg 1890 Realism大四美国文学课件 2) Life Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was brought up in the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi River. He was twelve when his father died and he had to leave school. He was successively a printers apprentice,

15、a trampprinter, a silver miner, a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, and a frontier journalist in Nevada and California. Realism大四美国文学课件 With the publication of his frontier tale, “The celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”, Twain became nationally famous. The Adventure of Tom Sawyer was an i

16、mmediate success as “a boys book”; its sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn became his masterpiece, the one book from which, as Ernest Hemingway noted, “all modern American literature comes.” Realism大四美国文学课件 wIn his later works the change from an optimist and humorist to an almost despairing d

17、eterminist is unmistakable. wSome critics link this change with the tragic events of his later life, the failure of his investments, his fatiguing travels and lectures in order to pay off his debts, and added to this, the death of his wife and two daughters which left him absolutely inconsolable. Re

18、alism大四美国文学课件 3) Evaluation wAlthough Howells, James and Twain all worked for realism, there were obvious differences between them. In thematic terms, James wrote mostly of the upper reaches of American society; Howells concerned himself chiefly with middle class life; Mark Twain dealt largely with

19、the lower strata of society. Technically, Howells wrote in the vein of genteel realism, James pursued an “imaginative” treatment of reality or psychological realism, but Mark Twains contribution to the development of realism and to American literature as a whole was partly through his theories of lo

20、calism in American fiction, and partly through his colloquial style. Realism大四美国文学课件 wAnother feature of the book which helps to make it famous is its language. The book is written in the colloquial style, in the general standard speech of uneducated Americans. Realism大四美国文学课件 wOne of Mark Twains si

21、gnificant contributions to American literature lies in the fact that he made colloquial speech an accepted, respectable literary medium in the literary history of the country. wIts influence is clearly visible in twentieth-century American literature. Realism大四美国文学课件 wSherwood Anderson was the first

22、 writer after twain to take the vernacular as a serious way of presenting reality. Ernest Hemingway was the direct descendant of Mark Twain. wWilliam Faulkner declared, “In my opinion, Mark Twain was the first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs, who descended from him.” Realism

23、大四美国文学课件 wJ. D. Salinger, E. A. Robinson, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, William Carlos Williams, E. E. Cummings, and even T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound were all influenced by him. Realism大四美国文学课件 Realism大四美国文学课件 Realism大四美国文学课件 Realism大四美国文学课件 Realism大四美国文学课件 Realism大四美国文学课件 Realism大四美国文学课件 Realism大四美国文

24、学课件 Realism大四美国文学课件 Realism大四美国文学课件 Realism大四美国文学课件 Book III Realism大四美国文学课件 Naturalism Term: As a genre, naturalism emphasized heredity and environment as important deterministic forces shaping individualized characters who were presented in special and detailed circumstances. At bottom, life was s

25、hown to be ironic, even tragic. Realism大四美国文学课件 Time: 1890s Theoretical basis: Darwins Evolutionary Theory “The survival of the fittest” environment heredity desire for money sexual desire Realism大四美国文学课件 Representatives: Stephen Crane, Norris and Theodore Dreiser Stephen Cranes Maggie: A Girl of th

26、e Streets (1893) is the first naturalistic novel in America. Norris McTeague is the “first full- bodied naturalistic American novel” and “a consciously naturalistic manifesto.” Theodore Dreisers Sister Carrie is the greatest naturalistic work. Realism大四美国文学课件 Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) American au

27、thor, outstanding representative of naturalism, whose novels depict real- life subjects in a harsh light Realism大四美国文学课件 1. Works Sister Carrie1900 Jennie Gerhardt1911 An American Tragedy1925 The Financier1912 The Titan1914 The Stoic (posthumously) The Genius 1915 Dreiser Looks at Russia 1928 autobi

28、ographicallyautobiographically Trilogy of DesireTrilogy of Desire Realism大四美国文学课件 2. Life Theodore Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1871. The ninth child of German immigrants, he experienced considerable poverty while a child and at the age of fifteen was forced to leave home in search of

29、 work. Realism大四美国文学课件 After briefly attending Indiana University, he found work as a reporter on the Chicago Globe. Later he worked for the St. Louis Globe- Democrat, the St. Louis Republic and Pittsburgh Dispatch, before moving to New York where he attempted to establish himself as a novelist. He

30、was a voracious reader, and the impact of such writers as Hawthorne, Poe, Balzac, Herbert Spencer, and Freud influenced his thought and his reaction against organized religion. Realism大四美国文学课件 Dreiser worked for the New York World before Frank Norris, who was working for Doubleday, helped Dreisers f

31、irst novel, Sister Carrie (1900), to be published. However, the owners disapproved of the novels subject matter (the moral corruption of the heroine, Carrie Meeber) and it was not promoted and therefore sold badly. Realism大四美国文学课件 The young author felt so depressed by “a decades delay”in the words o

32、f Larzer Ziffin social recognition that he was said to have walked by the East River at the turn of the century, seriously committing suicide. Realism大四美国文学课件 Dreiser was left-oriented in his views. Dreiser continued to work as a journalist and as well as writing for mainstream newspapers such as th

33、e Saturday Evening Post, also had work published in socialist magazines such as The Call. However, unlike many of his literary friends such as Sinclair Lewis, and Jack London, he never joined the Socialist Party. Realism大四美国文学课件 In 1898 Dreiser married Sara White, a Missouri schoolteacher, but the m

34、arriage was unhappy. In his own life Dreiser practiced his principle that mans greatest appetite is sexual - the desire for women Realism大四美国文学课件 His strength clearly ebbing, Dreiser died of heart failure on December 28, 1945, before completing the last chapter of The Stoic. Dreiser was buried in Ho

35、llywoods Forest Lawn Cemetery on January 3, 1946. Realism大四美国文学课件 The Financier (1912) and The Titan (1914) are about Frank Cowperwood, a power- hungry business tycoon. An American Tragedy (1925) was based on the Chester Gillette and Grace Brown murder case that had taken place in 1906. Realism大四美国文

36、学课件 3. About Sister Carrie Sister Carrie, published in 1900, stands at the gateway of the new century. The book was initially rejected by many publishers on the grounds that it was immoral. Indeed, Harper Brothers, the first publisher to see the book, rejected it by saying it was not, sufficiently d

37、elicate to depict without offense to the reader the continued illicit relations of the heroine. Dreiser received a reputation as a naturalist- barbarian. Realism大四美国文学课件 Sister Carrie sold poorly but was redeemed by writers like Frank Norris and William Dean Howells who saw the novel as a breakthrou

38、gh in American realism. However, the publication battles over Sister Carrie caused Dreiser to become depressed, so much so that his brother sent him to a sanitarium for a short while. Realism大四美国文学课件 Sister Carrie, published in 1900, is one of the best-known story of American Dream, tracing the mate

39、rial rise of Carrie Meeber and the tragic decline of G. W. Hurstwood. Realism大四美国文学课件 Materialism, including the desire for money, is an important theme in Sister Carrie. The theme is primarily personified through Carrie with her desire for a fine home, clothes and everything else money can buy. Rea

40、lism大四美国文学课件 Dreiser faced every form of attack that a serious artist could encounter misunderstanding, misrepresentation, artistic isolation and commercial seduction. But he survived to lead the rebellion of the 1900s. Realism大四美国文学课件 4. Evaluation Dreiser has been a controversial figure in America

41、n literary history. His works are powerful in their portrayal of the changing American life, but his style is considered crude. It is in Dreisers works that American naturalism is said to have come of age. Realism大四美国文学课件 Dreisers novels are formless at times and awkwardly written, and his character

42、ization is found deficient and his prose pedestrian and dull, yet his very energy proves to be more than a compensation. Dreisers stories are always solid and intensely interesting with their simple but highly moving characters. Dreiser is good at employing the journalistic method of repetition to b

43、urn a central impression into the readers mind. Realism大四美国文学课件 “despite Dreisers flaws as a stylist, the fact remains that he is a great artist, and that no other American of his generation left so wide and handsome a mark upon the national letters.”- H. L. Mencken “American writing, before and aft

44、er his time, differed almost as much as biology before and after Darwin. He was a man of large originality, of profound feeling, and of unshakable courage. All of us who write are better off because he lived, worked, and hoped. Realism大四美国文学课件 Here lies the power and permanence that have made Dreise

45、r one of Americas foremost novelists. Realism大四美国文学课件 Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) A poet of transition Naturalistic poet a sober Transcendentalist He used the traditional forms to express the modern fears and uncertainty in his own era. Realism大四美国文学课件 1) Works The Children of the Night (1897) The Town down the River (1909) The Man against the Sky (1916) “Richard Cory” “Miniver Cheevy” “Mr. Floods Party” Realism大四美国文学课件 2）Life Robinson was born in Head Tide, Maine, and was raised nearby in Gardiner wh