Review Chapter II—American Realism 1. The time of this period. 2. Three features of the realism. 3. Three greatest realist novelists and their differences.
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Slide 1
Review Chapter IIAmerican Realism 1. The time of this period.
2. Three features of the realism. 3. Three greatest realist
novelists and their differences.
Slide 2
Analysis on works II. look at the pictures, then answer the
questions briefly. Who are the books writers? What are the Writers
features?
Slide 3
Slide 4
Read the following poem, try to analyze whose poem it may
belong to, tell the features of the poet, analyze the poems form,
theme and structure. Im Nobody! Im nobody! Who are you? Are you
nobody, too? Then theres a pair of us dont tell! Theyd banish us.
You know! How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To
tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!
Slide 5
This poem is written by Emily Dickinson. The reason is: 1. It
does not have one title, the first sentence is its title, this is
Dickinsons habit. 2. The poem is very short, not the same as the
other contemporary poets poetry. 3. It is very simple and plain. 4.
It has one dash in the poem, this is Dickinsons style. This poem is
written in dramatic monologue, the speaker is talking to one silent
listener.
Slide 6
Form The two stanzas of "I'm Nobody!" are highly typical for
Dickinson, constituted of loose iambic trimeter occasionally
including a fourth stress ("To tell your name--the livelong
June--"). They follow an ABCB rhyme scheme (though in the first
stanza, "you" and "too" rhyme, and "know" is only a half-rhyme, so
the scheme could appear to be AABC), and she frequently uses
rhythmic dashes to interrupt the flow.
Slide 7
Structure In the first stanza, Dickinson adopts the persona of
a child who is open, naive, and innocent. The child-speaker
welcomes the person who honestly identifies herself and who has a
true identity . These qualities make that person "nobody" in
society's eyes. To be "somebody" is to have status in society;
society, the majority, excludes or rejects those who lack status or
are "nobody"--"they'd banish us" for being nobody.
Slide 8
Chapter 3 American literature Between Two World Wars--Modernism
Introduction of the period (Time, 20 century) Features of the
period Lost generation and its representatives. Imagism poetry and
its representatives. Influential writers Some terms (lost
generation, Imagism and expressionism) Some exercises
Slide 9
Important points 1. The artistic features of this period. 2.
Literary forms and their representatives. 3. Ernest Hemingways
Works features. 4. Fitzgeralds works and his style. 5. William
Faulkners works features. 6. Imagism poets three principles.
Slide 10
Difficulty points 1. Lost generation 2. Imagism 3.
Expressionism
Slide 11
1. Age: Second half of the 19th century to early decades of the
20th century. 2. Background: (1) The U.S. has become the most
powerful country. (2) Technological revolution. (3) A decline in
moral standard, a spiritual wasteland, feelings of fear, loss,
disorientation and disillusionment .
Slide 12
3. Influencing ideas: (1)the same as English Modern period:
Karl Marx, Darwin, Freud. (2)Stream of consciousness: 4. The Lost
Generation 5. John Steinbeck: "The Grapes of Wrath"
Slide 13
The Rise of the Modern American literature Writers of the first
postwar self- consciously acknowledged that they were a lost
generation, devoid of faith and alienated from a civilization In
the years between two world wars American literature achieved a new
diversity and reached its greatest heights.
Slide 14
Forms of literature Novels (lost generations representative:
Earnest Hemingways works) Drama: (the Emperor Jones, Anna Christie,
and the Hairy Ape) Poetry: (Imagism Ezra Pound ) Harlem
Renaissance: An African American cultural movement of the 1920s and
early 1930s that was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of NY
City. Variously known as the New Negro movement.
Slide 15
The features of modernism literature Literature: convey a
vision of social breakdown and moral decay Writers : develop
techniques that could represent a break with the past. Modernistic
works are discontinuity and fragmentation .
Slide 16
Features: (1)American writers emphasize the concrete sensory
images or details as the direct conveyor of experience. (2) Modern
fiction employ the first narration or confine the reader to the
central consciousness or one characters point of view. (3) Common
ground: directness, compression, vividness, sparing of words.
Slide 17
Lost Generation and its representatives The lost Generation
came from the expatriate movement. Disillusioned and disgusted by
the frivolous , greedy and heedless way of life in America, many
young men began to write and they wrote from their own experiences
in the war. These writers were later named by an American writer,
Gertrude Stein, also an expatriate, the Lost Generation( ).
Slide 18
Among those greatest figures in the Lost Generation or modern
American literature are famous poets such as Ezra Pound, William
Carlos Williams, Robert Frost. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest
Hemingway, and William Faulkner are considered to be the masters in
the field of American fiction.
Slide 19
John Steinbeck is a representative of the 1930s, when Novels of
social protest became dominant on the American literary scene. His
The Grapes of Wrath proves to be a symbolic journey of man on the
way to finding some truth about life and himself, and a record of
the dispossessed and the wretched farmers during the Great
Depression as well.
Slide 20
Lost Generation fiction writers and their representatives
Ernest Hemingway F. Scott. Fitzgerald William Faulkner (the
southern famous writer)
Slide 21
Ernest Hemingway
Slide 22
Life and creation Main works: In Our Time The Sun Also Rises A
Farewell to Arms , For Whom the Bell Tolls The Old Man and the Sea
Men without Women (The Undefeated, The Killers, Fifty Grand) Death
in the Afternoon The Green Hills of Africa The Snow of
Kilimanjaro
Slide 23
His works features: His world is limited. Typical of the
iceberg analogy is Hemingways style, which he had been trying hard
to get. His style is actually polished and tightly controlled, but
highly suggestive and connotative .
Slide 24
Render vividly the outward physical events and sensations . He
develops the style of colloquialism initiated by Mark Twain. The
accents and mannerisms of human speech are so well presented.
Slide 25
Hemingways achievements Hemingways hero: one who acts the theme
out, learn to live in grace under pressure. Almost all of his
characters are worldly-weary, but they maintain their grace under
the inescapable pressure of realitys violence. Hemingways prose
style is simple, clear, direct and precise. His diction is
fundamental, favoring plain words. His sentences are short,
declarative. He uses the technique of the repetition of words,
phrases and sentence structure.
Slide 26
the use of dialogue Dialogue is another distinguishing feature
of his style. the master of pause. That is, how the action of his
stories continues during the silence, during the times his
characters say nothing. This action is full of meaning. To sum up,
a statement made by the Nobel Prize Committee, They were highly
impressed by his powerful style-forming, mastery of the art of
writing modern fiction.
Slide 27
His writing theories characterization and style: 1. Hemingways
Iceberg Theory: If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is
writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if
the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those
things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The
dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it
being above water.
Slide 28
2. Hemingways Code heroes : those who survive in the process of
seeking to master the code with the honesty, the discipline, and
the restraint. Code: in the general situation of his novels, life
is full of tension and battle; the world is in chaos; man is always
fighting desperately a losing battle. However, though life is but a
losing battle, it is a struggle man can dominate in such a way that
loss becomes dignity; man can be physically destroyed but never
defeated spiritually.
Slide 29
3. His masculine heroesthe tough man fond of outdoor sports
such as bullfighting, hunting and fishing. 4. Grace Under Pressure:
actually an attitude of his Code heroes towards life or his ideal
of mans greatest achievement (continuing to work even in difficult
times) that he had been trying to demonstrate in his works.
Hemingways limited fictional word implies a much broader thematic
pattern and serious philosophic concerns with its mystery of
darkness and irrationality.
Slide 30
Hemingways theory about his creation: Iceberg Theory (The
dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one eighth of its
being above water.) That part above the water is formed by hard
facts. Readers can understand it. Hemingway acts as a naturalist.
Actually, we should explore what is under the water. He built those
parts like a poet, like a symbolist.
Slide 31
The readers should explore the meaning hidden under it. He has
a skillful craft. He knew how to get the most from the least and
how to prune language and avoid waste motion, how to multiple
intensities , how to tell nothing but truth in a way that always
allowed for (considered) telling more than the truth.
Slide 32
F. Scott Fitzgerald(1896-1940) Fitzgeralds fictional world is
the best embodiment of the spirit of the Jazz Age , in which he
shows a particular interest in the upper-class society, especially
the upper- class young people.
Slide 33
His creation This Side of Paradise 1920 The Beautiful and The
Damned 1922 The Great Gatsby 1925 Tender Is the Night 1934 The Last
Tycoon 1940
Slide 34
Fitzgerald's style: 1. He is a great stylist in American
literature. 2. His style, closely related to his themes, is
explicit and chilly . 3.His accurate dialogues, his careful
observation of mannerism , styles, models and attitudes provide the
reader with a vivid sense of reality.
Slide 35
4.He follows the Jamesian tradition in using the scenic method
in his chapters, each one of which consists of one or more dramatic
scenes, sometimes with intervening passages of narration, leaving
the tedious process of transition to the readers' imagination. 5.
He also skillfully employs the device of having events observed by
a "central consciousness" to his great advantage. The accurate
details, the completely original diction and metaphors, the bold
impressionistic and colorful quality have all proved his consummate
artistry.
Slide 36
William Faulkner (1897-1962) Simultaneously original and
assimilative , is regarded as one of the leading American writers
in the literary history of the USA, and has become the most
frequently and intensely interpreted writer of modern American
literature. Difficult as it is, his work is a text endlessly
searched for meanings.
Slide 37
1.Works: The Sound and The Fury; Light in August; Absalom,
Absalom!; , ! Go Down, Moses; , As I Lay Dying; Wild Palms;
Intruder in the Dust (Nobel Prize); The Bear; Requiem for a Nun;
The Fable; One trilogy: consisting of The Hamlet; The Town; The
Mansion
Slide 38
2. Works background: American South, Northern Mississippi,
Yoknapatawpha County 3.Theme: Almost all his heroes are tragic. (1)
They are prisoners of the past or of the society, or of some social
and moral taboos, or of their own personalities.
Slide 39
(2) Society conditions man with its laws and institutions and
eliminates mans chance of responding naturally to the experiences
of his existence. (3) Man tries to explain the incomprehensible by
turning away from reality, but becomes weak, cowardly and confused
(Emily-coward) (4) nostalgic in The Sound and The Fury
Slide 40
5. Works features: (1)Use of narrative techniques is
remarkable, let the characters explain themselves, the reader
experiences the work of art directly. (2)Breaks up chronology,
juxtaposes , the past with the present. (3)Stream of consciousness.
(4)Inner musings of the narrator. (5)Good at presenting multiple
points of view.
Slide 41
Ezra Pound 1.Imagist: (1)Direct treatment of poetic subjects.
(2)Eliminat ornamental words. (3)rhythmical composition in the
sequence of the musical phrase rather than in the sequence of a
metronome . For example: "In a Station of the Metro
Slide 42
2. Works: Pound composed poems, wrote criticisms and did
translations. (1) His poetic works: The Cantos 1915, which spanned
from 1917 to 1959. A lume Spento ( 1908), Personae (1909), His
other poetic works include twelve volumes of verse Collected Early
Poems of Ezra Pound (1982), and some longer pieces.
Slide 43
(2) His critical essays: Make It New (l934), Literary Essays
(l954), The ABC of Reading (1934) and Polite Essays (l937), etc.
(3) His translations: The Translations of Ezra Pound (1953),
Confucius (1969), and Shih-Ching (1954) These translations have not
only cast light on Pounds affinity to the Chinese and his strenuous
effort in the study of Oriental literature, but also offered us a
clue to the understanding of his poetry and literary theory.
Slide 44
3. Ezra Pounds poetic subjects or themes: (1) His earlier
poetry is saturated with the familiar poetic subjects that
characterize the 19th century Romanticism. (2) Later he is more
concerned about the problems of the modern culture: the
contemporary cultural decay and the possible sources of cultural
renewal as well.
Slide 45
4. His artistic achievement (1) He is the leader of the Imagist
Movement: (2) His use of myth and personae: Pound argued that the
poet cannot relate a delightful psychic experience by speaking out
directly in the first person: he must "screen himself" and speak
indirectly through as impersonal and objective story, which is
usually a myth or a piece of the earlier literature, or a "mask,"
that is a persona. (3) His language: His lines are usually oblique
yet marvelously compressed. His poetry is dense with personal,
literary, and historical allusions, but at the expense of syntax
and summary statements.
Slide 46
What is Persona? Persona: It is an invented person; a character
in drama or fiction. Persona, a Latin word meaning mask, is used in
Jungian psychology to refer to ones public personality-the faade or
mask presented to the world but not representative of inner
feelings and emotions. In literary criticism, persona is sometimes
used to refer to a person figuring in, for example, a poem, someone
who may or may not represent the author himself.
Slide 47
Poem analysis Read the following poem, try to get its meaning
and theme.
Slide 48
In a Station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the
crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.
Slide 49
Theme This poem is an observation of the poet of the human
faces seen in a Paris subway station or a description of a moment
of sudden emotion at seeing beautiful faces in a Metro in Paris. He
sees the faces turned variously toward light and darkness like
flower petals which are half absorbed by half resisting the wet
dark texture of a bough.
Slide 50
Robert Lee Frost 1.Works: The Road Not Taken - Mountain
Interval, uncertainty of the speakers choice between safety and
unknown (meditative) Stopping by Woods on a snowy Evening -New
Hampshire After Apple-Picking, a mans best efforts ever satisfy
God? 2.Idea: a momentary stay against confusion, like Wordsworth.
3.The Road Not Taken: took the one less traveled by and that has
made all the difference.
Slide 51
His thematic concerns (1) Generally Frost is considered a
regional poet whose subject matters mainly focus on the landscape
and people in New England. These thematic concerns include the
terror and tragedy in nature, as well as its beauty, and the
1oneliness and poverty of the isolated human being. (2) Frost wrote
many poems that investigate the basic themes of man's life: the
individual's relationships to himself, to his fellow-man, to world,
and to his God. Profound meanings are hidden underneath the plain
language and simple form.
Slide 52
Frost's style in language 1. By using simple spoken language
and conversational rhythms, Frost achieved an effortless grace in
his style. 2. He combined traditional verse forms -- the sonnet,
rhyming couplets, blank verse with a clear American local speech
rhythm, the speech of New England farmers with its idiosyncratic
diction and syntax. 3. In verse form he was assorted; he wrote in
both the metrical forms and the free verse, and sometimes he wrote
in a form that borrows freely from the merits of both, in a form
that might be called semi-free or semi-conventional.
Slide 53
Eugene ONeill(1888-1953) Category: American Literature Born:
October 16, 1888 New York City, New York, United States Died:
November 27, 1953 Boston, Massachusetts
Slide 54
Eugene ONeill 1.works: Bound East of Cardiff 1913-1914, The
long voyage Home 1916-1917, The Moon of the Caribbeans 1916-1917
Emperor Jones, The Hairy Ape, 1920, ALL the Gods children Got
Wings, 1923 Desire Under the Elms 1924, The Great God Brown
1925.
Slide 55
2. The Hairy Ape Concerns the problem of modern mans position.
Yanks sense of belonging nowhere is a typical of the mood of
isolation and alienation in the early twentieth century in the US
and the whole world as well. ONeills characters seek meaning and
purpose in their lives through love or religion or revenge. The
result is disappointment or despair.
Slide 56
3. His works features a. Most of his works are tragedies,
dealing with the basic issues of human existence and predicament :
life and death, illusion and disillusion, alienation and
communication, dream and reality, self and society, desire and
frustration etc. b. His characters in the plays are described as
seeking meaning and purpose in their lives in different ways, but
all meet disappointment and despair.
Slide 57
c. As a playwright, he himself was constantly wresting with
these issues and struggling with the perplexity about the truth of
life. d. His language: he frequently wrote the lines in dialect, or
spelled words in ways which indicate a particular accent or manner
of speech. Sometimes, make his plays difficult to read, but when
they are spoken aloud, the sense becomes clear and the meaning is
amplified by the accent.
Slide 58
Terms Imagism poetic movement that flourished in the US and
England between 1909 and 1917. The movement was led by the American
poets Ezra Pound and later Amy Lowell. This is a movement that
advanced modernism in arts which concentrated on reforming the
medium of the poetry as opposed to Romanticism, especially
Tennysons wordiness and high-flown language in poetry.
Slide 59
It follows the three principles which include direct treatment
of poetic subject, elimination of merely ornamental or superfluous
words and rhythmical composition in the sequence of the musical
phrase rather than in the sequence of metronome. Influential poets
of the periods are T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Robert
Frost, E.E. Cummings and Wallace Stevens.
Slide 60
Expressionism It is used to describe the works of art and
literature in which the representation of reality is distorted to
communicate an inner vision, transforming nature rather than
imitating it. In literature it is often considered a revolt against
realism and naturalism, a seeking to achieve a psychological or
spiritual reality rather than to record external events.
Slide 61
In drama, the expressionist work was characterized by a bizarre
distortion of reality. Expressionism writers concern was with
general truths rather than with particular situations, hence they
explored in their plays the predicaments of representative symbolic
types rather than of fully developed individualized
characters.
Slide 62
Emphasis was laid on the internal, on an individuals mental
state-the emotional content, the subjective reactions of
characters, and symbolic or abstract representations of reality;
hence the imitation of life is replaced in Expressionist drama by
the ecstatic evocation of states of mind.
Slide 63
In America, Eugene ONeilles Emperor Jones, The Hairy Ape, etc.
are typical plays that employ Expressionism to highlight the
theatrical effect of the rupture between the two sides of an
individual human being, the private and the public. The movement,
though short-lived, gave impetus to a free form of writing and of
theatrical production.
Slide 64
Lost generation The lost Generation came from the expatriate
movement. When the First World War broke out, many young men
volunteered to take part in the war to end wars only to find that
modern warfare was not as glorious or heroic as they thought it to
be. Disillusioned and disgusted by the frivolous, greedy and
heedless way of life in America, they began to write and they wrote
from their own experiences in the war. These writers were later
named by an American writer, Gertrude Stein, also an expatriate,
the Lost Generation. Among those greatest figures in the Lost
Generation or modern American literature are famous poets such as
Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost.
Slide 65
Summary of the chapter III Introduction of the period (Time, 20
century) Features of the period influential writers Some terms
(lost generation and Imagism)
Slide 66
Some exercises There are four multiple choices to be chosen,
please analyze first, then answer.
Slide 67
1. In the first part of the 20th century apart from Darwinism
there were two thinkers whose ideas had the greatest impact on the
period. A. the German Karl Marx and the Austrian Sigmund Freud B.
the German Karl Marx and the American Sigmund Freud C. the Swiss
Carl Jung and the American William James D. the Austrian Karl Marx
and the German Sigmund Freud A
Slide 68
2. Which of the following can be said about Eugene ONeill
plays. A. Most of his plays are concerned about the root the truth
of human desires and human frustrations. B. His tragic view of life
is reflected in many of his works. C. His plays are concerned about
the relationship between man and nature as well as man and woman.
D. both A and B. D
Slide 69
3. As to the great American poet Ezra Pound which of the
following is not right A. His language is usually oblique yet
marvelously compressed and his poetry is dense with personal
literary and historical allusions. B. His artistic talents are on
full display in the history of the Imagist Movement.
Slide 70
C. From his analysis of the Chinese ideogram Pound learned to
anchor his poetic language in concrete perceptual reality and to
organize images into larger patterns through juxtaposition. D. For
he was politically controversial and notorious for what he did in
the wartime his literary achievement and influence are somewhat
reduced. DD
Slide 71
4. In his poetry Robert Frost made the colloquial ___speech
into a poetic expression. A. England B. New England C. Plymouth D.
Boston BB
Slide 72
Slide 73
1. Which of the following statements is right about Robert
Frosts poetry C A. He combined traditional verse forms with the
difficult and highly ornamental language. B. He combined
traditional verse forms with the pastoral language of the Southern
area. C. He combined traditional verse forms with a simple spoken
language-the speech of New England farmers. D. He combined
traditional verse forms with the experimental.
Slide 74
2. Which of the following statements can be said about the
works of Scott Fitzgerald a spokesman of the Roaring 20s A. Many of
them portrayed the hollowness of the American worship of riches and
the unending American dream of fulfillment. B. They are symbolic of
the psychological journey of the modern man and his helplessness in
the modern world. C. They show the primitive struggle of
individuals in the context of irresistible natural forces. D. They
penetrate into the problems of the human heart in conflict with
itself. A
Slide 75
3. As Fitzgeralds writing style is concerned which of the
following is not right A. The author dropped off the device of
having events observed by a central consciousness B. His
intervening passages of narration leaves the tedious process of
transition to the authors imagination. C. The scenic method is
employed each of which consists of one or more dramatic scenes. D.
His diction and metaphors are partially original and details
accurate. 4. Which of the following is not written by Ernest
Hemingway one of the best-known American authors of the 20th
century C A. The Sun Also Rises B. The Old Man and the Sea C.
Mosses From the Old Manse D. The Green Hills of Africa A
Slide 76
5. Which of the following statements is right about the novel A
Farewell to Arms A. The author favored the idea of nature as an
expression of either gods design or his beneficence. B. The author
attempted to write the epitaph to a decade and to the whole
generation in the 1930s. C. The author emphasizes his belief that
man is trapped both physically and mentally and suggests that man
is doomed to be entrapped. D. It tells a story about the tragic
love affair of a wounded American soldier with an Italian nurse.
CC
Slide 77
6. Which of the following is depicted as the mythical county in
William Faulkners novels A. Cambridge. B. Oxford. C. Mississippi.
D. Yoknapatawpha 7. To Faulkner the primary duty of a writer was to
explore and represent the infinite possibilities inherent in human
life. Therefore a writer should ______. A. observe with no judgment
whatsoever B. reduce authorial intrusion to the lowest minimum C.
observe at a great distance and sometimes participate in the events
D. both A and B 6. D 7. D
Slide 78
8. Which of the following is not right about American fiction
from 1945 onwards A. A group of new writers who survived the war
wrote about their ideals within the artistic field. B. There
appeared a significant group of Jewish- American writers whose
works were set against the Jewish experience and tradition. C.
Black fiction began to attract critical attention during the 1950s.
D. American fiction in the 1950s and 1960s proves to be a harvest
which derived from its predecessors. B