美国文学Chapter 5

1、Chapter 5 1. Modernism: 1.1. Political and Economic Background : WW 1.2. Cultural Background Darwins Origin of Species Freuds analytical psychology (libido, id, ego, superego) Irrational Philosophers: Schopenhauer & Nietzsche 1.3 Modernist literature is characterized chiefly by a rejection of 19th-c

2、entury traditions.Chapter 52. Imagism: 2.1. Definition: Imagism is the doctrine and poetic practice of a small but influential group of American and British poets calling themselves imagists between 1912 and 1917. Aiming at a new clarity and exactness in the short lyric poem, the imagists cultivated

3、 concision and directness, building their short poems around single images; they also preferred looser cadences to traditional regular rhythms. 2.2. Leaders: Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell 2.3 Features: Free choice of subject matter Free verse Image Without interpretation or commentChapter 5 2.4. Influen

4、ces: The imagist theories call for brief language, describing the precise picture in as few words as possible. This new way of poetry composition has a lasting influence in the 20th century poetry. The second lasting influence of Imagism is the form of free verse. There are no metrical rules. There

5、are apparent indiscriminate line breaks, which reflects the discontinuity of life itself. That is art of the poem. (The poet uses the length of the lines and the strange groupings of words to show how life itself can be broken up into somehow meaningless clusters.)Chapter 53. The Lost Generation: 3.

6、1 It was first used by Gertrude Stein, an American woman writer, who was one of the leaders of the group. 3.2. It defines a sense of moral loss or aimlessness. The WWI destroyed the innocent ideas, many good young men went to the war and died, or returned damaged, both physically and mentally; their

7、 moral faith were no longer valid- they were “Lost.”Chapter 5 Narrow sense: a group of American writers, including Hemingway, F.S.Fitzgerald, J.Dos Passos, E.E.Cummings, Sherwood Anderson, and Hart Crane, etc. Broad Sense: the entire post -WWI American young generation 3.3 Main Characteristics Suffe

8、ring from the war, losing beliefs, being cut off from the past, disillusioned, unable or unwilling to settle back into the routines of peacetime life, indulged in drinking and partying.Ezra Loomis Pound (1885-1972)His Life: the father of modern American poetry Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho Territo

9、ry in 1885. When he was 18 months old, his family moved to the suburbs of Philadelphia. In 1901 at the age of 15, he entered the University of Pennsylvania, but after studying there for two years transferred to Hamilton College, where he received his Ph.B. in 1905. He then returned to Penn, completi

10、ng an M.A. in Romance philology in 1906. In 1908 he moved to Europe, living first in Venice but eventually settling in London after spending a brief stint working as a tour guide in Gibraltar. In 1920, Pound moved to Paris, where he moved among a circle of artists, musicians, and writers who were re

11、volutionizing the whole world of modern art. Ezra Loomis Pound (1885-1972) On 10 October 1924, Pound left Paris permanently and moved to Italy. In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Pound made his first trip back home to the U.S. in many years. He considered moving back permanently, but in the end he

12、 chose to return to Italy. After the war, Pound was brought back to the United States to face charges of treason. The charges covered only his activities during the time when Italy was officially at war with the United States. He was found incompetent to face trial by a special federal jury and sent

13、 to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he remained for 12 years from 1946 to 1958. In 1972, two days after his 87th birthday, Pound died in Venice, where he is buried.Ezra Loomis Pound (1885-1972)Major Works: In a Station of the Metro 在地铁站里 Homage to Sextus Propertius 向塞克斯特斯普罗波蒂斯致敬 P

14、ersonae 人物 Hugh Selwyn Mauberley 休 塞尔温 莫伯利 The Cantos 诗章 The Pisan Cantos 比萨诗章William Carlos William (1883-1963) an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism.Life: Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey to an English father and a Puerto Rican mother. He received his primary an

15、d secondary education in Rutherford until 1897. He attended the Horace Mann High School upon his return to New York City and after having passed a special examination, he was admitted in 1902 to the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania. Williams married Florence Herman (18911976) in 1912

16、, after his first proposal to her older sister was refused.William Carlos William (1883-1963) On a trip to Europe in 1924, Williams spent time with writers Ezra Pound and James Joyce. Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a full literary career. He became involved in the Imag

17、ist movement but soon he began to develop opinions that differed from those of his poetic peers, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Later in his life, Williams toured the United States giving poetry readings and lectures. Williams disliked Ezra Pounds and especially T. S. Eliots frequent use of allusions t

18、o foreign languages and Classical sources, as in Eliots The Waste Land. After Williams suffered a heart attack in 1948, his health began to decline, and after 1949 a series of strokes followed. Williams died on March 4, 1963 at the age of seventy-nine at his home in Rutherford.William Carlos William

19、 (1883-1963)Major Works: Paterson 帕特森 The Red Wheelbarrow 红色手推车Langston Hughes (1902-1967)His Life Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri in 1902 and he was of African American, European American and Native American descent. Both his paternal and maternal great grandmothers were African Americ

20、an, and both his paternal and maternal great grand-fathers were white: one of Scottish and one of Jewish descent. Hughes had a very poor relationship with his father. He lived with his father in Mexico for a brief period in 1919.Langston Hughes (1902-1967) During his time in England in the early 192

21、0s, Hughes became part of the black expatriate community. In November 1924, Hughes returned to the U. S. to live with his mother in Washington, D.C. Hughes found work doing various odd jobs before gaining white-collar employment in 1925 as a personal assistant to the historian Carter G. Woodson. The

22、 following year, Hughes enrolled in Lincoln University, a historically black university in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Langston Hughes (1902-1967) He then moved to New York. Except for travels to areas that included parts of the Caribbean, Hughes lived in Harlem as his primary home for the remaind

23、er of his life. (The Harlem Renaissance was the African American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture and Hughes is best-known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.) Hughes, like others active in the Harlem Renaissance, had a strong sense of racial pride. Throu

24、gh his poetry, novels, plays, essays, and childrens books, he promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice, and celebrated African American culture, humor, and spirituality. On May 22, 1967, Langston Hughes died at the age of 65.Langston Hughes (1902-1967)Major Works: (African Americans poet la

25、ureate) Poems: The Negro Speaks of River 黑人谈河流 Let America Be America Again 让美国重新成为美国 The Weary Blues 忧郁的布鲁斯 I, Too, Sing America Fictions: The Ways of White Folks 白人的行径 Simple Speaks His Mind 辛普尔这样主张 Simples Uncle Sam 辛普尔的山姆大叔Non-fictions: The Big Sea 大海 I Wonder as I Wonder 我徘徊，我彷徨E. E. Cummings (

26、1894-1962) Life: Edward Estlin Cummings was born at home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 14, 1894. He began writing poems as early as 1904 and studied Latin and Greek at the Cambridge Latin High School. He received his B.A. in 1915 and his M.A. in 1916, both from Harvard. In 1917, Cummings left

27、 the United States for France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso

28、, whose work he particularly admired.E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958, and a Fo

29、rd Foundation grant. At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.E. E. Cummings (1894-1962)Major Works: Tulips and Chimneys 郁金香与烟囱 Is 5 是5 No Thanks 不用谢Er

30、nest Hemingway (1899-1961) Life: Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. His father was a physician and his mother was a musician. From October 17, 1917 to April 30, 1918, he relied on The Kansas City Stars style guide as a foundation for his writing: “

31、Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.” Early in 1918 while in Kansas City, Hemingway responded to a Red Cross recruitment effort and signed on to be an ambulance driver in Italy. When Hemingway returned home early in 1919 he faced a period

32、of readjustment. The war had created a maturity at odds with living at home without a job, and with the need to recuperate from his wounds.Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) Hemingway and Hadley Richardson married in 1921. In 1937, Hemingway travelled to Spain to report on the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway

33、s marriage to Hadley broke down. In the spring of 1926, Hadley became aware of his affair with Pauline Pfeiffer. The couple were divorced in January 1927, and Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer in May. Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn moved to Cuba in 1939, and involved in WW. In 1939, he divorced Paul

34、ine and married Martha. Hemingway married Mary Welsh in March 1946. In 1954, he won the Nobel Prize. On the morning of July 2, 1961, he committed suicide by shooting himself with his rifle.Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)Major Works: The Sun Also Rises 太阳照样升起 (Jake Barnes) A Farewell to Arms 永别了，武器 (Hen

35、ry) For Whom the Bell Tolls 丧钟为谁而鸣(Robert Jordon) The Old Man and the Sea 老人与海 (Santiago) The Snows of Kilimanjaro 乞力马扎罗的雪 To Have and Have Not 有钱人与没钱人 Men Without Women 没有女人的男人Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)Hemingway as the spokesman of the “Lost Generation”: G. Steins remark to Hemingway: “you are al

36、l a lost generation.” Hemingway used the sentence “you are all a lost generation” as an epigraph for his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, which depicts a “lost generation” of postwar American drifters in France and Spain. Almost all of Hemingways works deal with the disillusionment of “the lost gene

37、ration”, almost all his heroes are members of “the lost generation.”Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) Hemingway is the leader of “the lost generation” in the adaptation of naturalistic technique and many modernistic methods. His novels dramatized the social history of “the lost generation.” Intimate conn

38、ection between Hemingway and his heroes: he describes himself when he tells us the story of his heroes; Hemingway, “the lost generation,” and Hemingways heroes share common features. Hemingway speaks for “the lost generation” through his choice of themes and writing style; his themes focus on “the l

39、ost generation”, his style fits for “the lost generation.”Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)His Styles： Typical theme -grace under pressure Almost all his stories deal with the theme of courage in face of tragedy. Hemingways world is a world essentially chaotic and meaningless, in which man fights against

40、 a force he does not even understand. The awareness that it must end in defeat, no matter how hard he strives against it, engenders a sense of despair, but the Hemingway hero possesses “despairing courage”. (绝望中的勇气) It is this courage that enables a man to behave like a man, to assert his dignity in

41、 face of adversity. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) Code Hero: extremely great courage endurance man of great action unconquerable will: A man can be destroyed, but not defeated. Iceberg Theory of Writing 1/8 of an iceberg is above the water. All of the rest is underneath the water. The same is true wi

42、th Hemingways writing. His sentences only give one small bit of the meaning. The rest is implied. One must go very deep beneath the surface to understand the full meaning of his writing.Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)His Life: (the spokesman of the “roaring 20s” / the mirror of Jazz Age) He was

43、 born in St. Paul, Minnesota to an Irish upper middle class Roman Catholic family in 1896. When his father was fired at Procter & Gamble, the family returned to Minnesota, where Fitzgerald attended St. Paul Academy from 19081911. His first literary effort, a detective story, was published in a schoo

44、l newspaper when he was 12. He attended Newman School, a prep school in Hackensack, New Jersey, in 19111912, and entered Princeton University in 1913.Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) While at a country club, Fitzgerald met Zelda, the “golden girl”, in Fitzgeralds words. The two were engaged in 1

45、919, and Fitzgerald moved into an apartment at Lexington Avenue in New York City to try to lay a foundation for his life with Zelda. Working at an advertising firm and writing short stories, he was unable to convince Zelda that he would be able to support her, leading her to break off the engagement

46、. The novel, This Side of Paradise, was published on March 26, 1920, and became one of the most popular books of the year. Scott and Zelda were married in New York. Fitzgerald was sidetracked by financial difficulties that necessitated his writing commercial short stories, and by the schizophrenia t

47、hat struck Zelda in 1930.Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) Although he reportedly found movie work degrading, Fitzgerald was once again in financial straits, and spent the second half of the 1930s in Hollywood, working on commercial short stories, scripts and his fifth and final novel, The Love o

48、f the Last Tycoon, published posthumously as The Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald had been an alcoholic since his college days, and became notorious during the 1920s for his extraordinarily heavy drinking, leaving him in poor health by the late 1930s. Fitzgerald suffered two heart attacks and died in late 19

49、40. Zelda died in 1948, in a fire at the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)Major Works:This Side of Paradise 人间天堂The Beautiful and Damned 美丽与毁灭The Great Gatsby 了不起的盖茨比Tender Is the Night 夜色温柔The Last Tycoon 最后的巨头Flappers and Philosophers姑娘们和哲学家

50、们Tales of the Jazz Age 爵士时代的故事William Faulkner (1897-1965) William Faulkner was a Nobel Prize-winning American author. One of the most influential writers of the 20th century, his reputation is based on his novels, novellas and short stories. He was also a published poet and an occasional screenwrit

51、er. He is considered one of the most important Southern writers.William Faulkner (1897-1965) William Cuthbert Falkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and he later changed the spelling of his name to Faulkner. Faulkner was raised in and heavily influenced by the state of Mississippi, as well as

52、by the history and culture of the South as a whole. When he was four years old, his entire family moved to the nearby town of Oxford, where he lived on and off for the rest of his life. Oxford is the model for the town of “Jefferson” in his fiction, and Lafayette County, which contains the town of O

53、xford, is the model for his fictional Yoknapatawpha County (约克纳帕塔法郡 ).William Faulkner (1897-1965) Faulkners great-grandfather, William Clark Falkner, was an important figure in northern Mississippi who served as a colonel in the Confederate Army, founded a railroad, and gave his name to the town of

54、 Falkner in nearby Tippah County. He also wrote several novels and other works, establishing a literary tradition in the family. Colonel Falkner served as the model for Colonel John Sartoris in his great-grandsons writing. The elder Falkner was greatly influenced by the history of his family and the region in which they lived. Mississippi marked his sense of humor, his sense of the tragic position of blacks and whites, his characterization of Southern characters and timeless themes.William Faulkner (1897-1965) Unable to join the United States Army because of his height, Faulkner first join