ChapterRealism大四美国文学PPT课件

1、Chapter 5The Age of Realism (1865-1914)第1页/共81页1. Social Background Civil War. The 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, man was not and God was not. T

2、he war marked a change, a deterioration of American moral values.第2页/共81页 In 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 extremes of wealth and poverty. Wealth and p

3、ower were more and more concentrated in the hands of the few. In the meantime, life for the millions was fast becoming a veritable struggle for survival.第3页/共81页 The worth of the American dream, the idealized, romantic view of man and his life in the New World, began to lose its hold on the imaginat

4、ion of the people. Beneath the glittering surface of prosperity there lay suffering and unhappiness. Disillusionment and frustration were widely felt. What had been expected to be a “Golden Age” turned out to be a “Gilded” one.第4页/共81页The Age of Realism1) Time: By the 1870s, the age of Romanticism a

5、nd Transcendentalism was by and large over. 2) Change of Cultural Center: Boston and New England ceased to be the cultural center of the country. It is moved to New York第5页/共81页Representatives: William Dean Howells, Henry James, Mark Twain, and a good number of “local colorists”.With Howells, James,

6、 and Mark Twain active on the scene, realism became a major trend in the seventies and eighties.第6页/共81页 Definition: In American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came into existence. It came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentiment

7、alism. 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 rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience. 第7页/共81页Real

8、istic features: downplay plot in favor of details of everyday life, the details rather than the “story,”; turns away from the noble or heroic towards familiar everyday aspects of life; depicted in a straightforward and matter-of-fact manner designed to reflect the true picture of life; prefer simple

9、, clear and direct prose; apply the techniques of selection, deletion, concentration and reorganization, often in the form of slice of life. Realism is defined as the truthful treatment of materials. (W.D. Howells)第8页/共81页The Magic Realism: There is a kind of fiction that we call “magic realism,” in

10、 which the fantastic, absurd or impossible elements are included in a narrative that is mainly objective and realistic. 第9页/共81页Local Colorism 1. Definition: Hamlin Garland “such quality of texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place or by anyone else than a native.

11、” (texture: refers to the elements which characterize a local culture, elements such as speech, customs and mores peculiar to one particular place.)第10页/共81页2. Local colorists: Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Willa Cather, John Steinbeck and William Faulkner. 第11页/共81页1. Mark Twain (1

12、835-1910)“the true father of our national literature” -H. L. Mencken realist local colorist humorist第12页/共81页1) WorksThe celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County 1865 Life on the Mississippi 1883 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1876 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1886第13页/共81页Innocents Abroad 18

13、69 Roughing It 1872 The Gilded Age 1873 The Prince and the Pauper 1881 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court 1889 Puddnhead Wilson 1893 The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg 1890 第14页/共81页2) LifeMark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was brought up in the small town of Hannibal, Missour

14、i, on the Mississippi River.He was twelve when his father died and he had to leave school. He was successively a printers apprentice, a trampprinter, a silver miner, a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, and a frontier journalist in Nevada and California.第15页/共81页With the publication of his frontier

15、 tale, “The celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”, Twain became nationally famous.The Adventure of Tom Sawyer was an immediate 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 Ameri

16、can literature comes.”第16页/共81页In his later works the change from an optimist and humorist to an almost despairing determinist is unmistakable.Some 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 of

17、f his debts, and added to this, the death of his wife and two daughters which left him absolutely inconsolable.第17页/共81页3) Evaluation Although 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 A

18、merican society; Howells concerned himself chiefly with middle class life; Mark Twain dealt largely with 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

19、to the development of realism and to American literature as a whole was partly through his theories of localism in American fiction, and partly through his colloquial style. 第18页/共81页Another feature of the book which helps to make it famous is its language. The book is written in the colloquial styl

20、e, in the general standard speech of uneducated Americans. 第19页/共81页One of Mark Twains significant 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. Its influence is clearly visible in

21、 twentieth-century American literature.第20页/共81页Sherwood Anderson was the first writer after twain to take the vernacular as a serious way of presenting reality. Ernest Hemingway was the direct descendant of Mark Twain.William Faulkner declared, “In my opinion, Mark Twain was the first truly America

22、n writer, and all of us since are his heirs, who descended from him.”第21页/共81页J. 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.第22页/共81页第23页/共81页desire for money第24页/共81页第25页/共81页第26页/

23、共81页第27页/共81页第28页/共81页第29页/共81页第30页/共81页第31页/共81页第32页/共81页第33页/共81页第34页/共81页第35页/共81页第36页/共81页第37页/共81页第38页/共81页1865-1881 international novel/theme 1882-1895 tales of inter-personal relationships. 第39页/共81页1895-1916 novellas and tales dealing with childhood and adolescence; international novelLitera

24、ry criticism第40页/共81页第41页/共81页第42页/共81页第43页/共81页第44页/共81页第45页/共81页第46页/共81页第47页/共81页Book III第48页/共81页NaturalismTerm: As a genre, naturalism emphasized heredity and environment as important deterministic forces shaping individualized characters who were presented in special and detailed circumstances

25、. At bottom, life was shown to be ironic, even tragic.第49页/共81页Time: 1890sTheoretical basis: Darwins Evolutionary Theory “The survival of the fittest”environmenthereditydesire for moneysexual desire第50页/共81页Representatives: Stephen Crane, Norris and Theodore DreiserStephen Cranes Maggie: A Girl of t

26、he 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.第51页/共81页Theodore Dreiser(1871-1945)American author, outsta

27、nding representative of naturalism, whose novels depict real-life subjects in a harsh light 第52页/共81页1. WorksSister Carrie1900Jennie Gerhardt1911An American Tragedy1925The Financier1912The Titan1914The Stoic (posthumously)The Genius 1915 Dreiser Looks at Russia 1928autobiographicallyautobiographical

28、lyTrilogy of DesireTrilogy of Desire 第53页/共81页2. LifeTheodore Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1871. The ninth child of German i m m i g r a n t s , h e e x p e r i e n c e d considerable poverty while a child and at the a g e o f f i f t e e n w a s forced to leave home in search of work

29、. 第54页/共81页 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 was a voraci

30、ous reader, and the impact of such writers as Hawthorne, Poe, Balzac, Herbert Spencer, and Freud influenced his thought and his reaction against organized religion. 第55页/共81页Dreiser worked for the New York World before Frank Norris, who was working for Doubleday, helped Dreisers first novel, Sister

31、Carrie (1900), to be published. However, the owners disapproved of the novels s u b j e c t m a t t e r ( t h e m o r a l corruption of the heroine, Carrie Meeber) and it was not promoted and therefore sold badly. 第56页/共81页The young author felt so depressed by “a decades delay”in the words of Larzer

32、 Ziffin social recognition that he was said to have walked by the East River at the turn of the century, seriously committing suicide.第57页/共81页Dreiser was left-oriented in his views.D r e i s e r c o n t i n u e d t o w o r k a s a journalist and as well as writing for mainstream newspapers such as

33、the 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. 第58页/共81页In 1898 Dreiser married Sara White, a Missouri schoolteacher, but the marria

34、ge was unhappy. In his own life Dreiser practiced his principle that mans greatest appetite is sexual - the desire for women 第59页/共81页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 Hollywoods For

35、est Lawn Cemetery on January 3, 1946. 第60页/共81页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. 第61页/共81页3. About Sister Carrie

36、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 delicate to depict without o

37、ffense to the reader the continued illicit relations of the heroine. Dreiser received a reputation as a naturalist-barbarian.第62页/共81页Sister Carrie sold poorly but was redeemed by writers like Frank Norris and William Dean Howells who saw the novel as a breakthrough in American realism. However, the

38、 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. 第63页/共81页Sister Carrie, published in 1900, is one of the best-known story of American Dream, tracing the material rise of Carrie Meeber and the tragic d

39、ecline of G. W. Hurstwood.第64页/共81页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.第65页/共81页Dreiser faced every form of attack that a serio

40、us artist could encounter misunderstanding, misrepresentation, artistic isolation and commercial seduction. But he survived to lead the rebellion of the 1900s.第66页/共81页4. EvaluationDreiser has been a controversial figure in American literary history.His works are powerful in their portrayal of the c

41、hanging American life, but his style is considered crude.It is in Dreisers works that American naturalism is said to have come of age.第67页/共81页 Dreisers novels are formless at times and awkwardly written, and his characterization is found deficient and his prose pedestrian and dull, yet his very ene

42、rgy 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 burn a central impression into the readers mind.第68页/共81页“despite Dreisers flaw

43、s 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 after his time, differed almost as much as biology before and after Darwin. He was a man

44、of large originality, of profound feeling, and of unshakable courage. All of us who write are better off because he lived, worked, and hoped. 第69页/共81页Here lies the power and permanence that have made Dreiser one of Americas foremost novelists.第70页/共81页1. Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) A poet

45、of transitionNaturalistic poeta sober TranscendentalistHe used the traditional forms to express the modern fears and uncertainty in his own era.第71页/共81页1) WorksThe Children of the Night (1897)The Town down the River (1909)The Man against the Sky (1916) “Richard Cory”“Miniver Cheevy”“Mr. Floods Party”第72页/共81页2）LifeRobinson was born in Head Tide, Maine, and was raised nearby i