Sherwood+Anderson.ppt

1、Sherwood Anderson,1876-1941,Sherwood Anderson,Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 March 8, 1941) was an American writer, mainly of short stories, most notably the collection Winesburg, Ohio. That works influence on American fiction was profound, and its literary voice can be heard in Ernest Heming

2、way, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, John Steinbeck, Erskine Caldwell and others.,Sherwood Anderson,Life Works Winesburg, Ohio,Life (Major Works included),Sherwood Anderson, the third of seven children, was born in Camden, Ohio in 1876. He left school at 14 and after various jobs served in the Spani

3、sh-American War (1898-9). After leaving the US Army, Anderson worked as a manager of a paint factory in Elyria, Ohio. In 1908 he began writing short stories and novels. He moved to Chicago where he found work in an advertising agency. Anderson became friends with other writers in Chicago such as Flo

4、yd Dell, Theodore Dreiser, Ben Hecht and Carl Sandburg.,Life,Anderson shared his friends radical political views and in 1914 and began having his work published in The Masses, a socialist journal edited by Floyd Dell and Max Eastman. This included the stories about small-town life that were subseque

5、ntly published as Winesburg, Ohio. Andersons first novel, Windy McPhersons Son was published in 1916. This was followed by the novel, Marching Men (1917) and a collection of prose poems, American Chants (1918).,Life,Winesburg, Ohio (1919), Andersons most important work, was published in 1919. The bo

6、ok, a collection of 23 inter-related stories of small-town life, features George Willard, a reporter for the local newspaper, who has ambitions to become a famous writer. Other books published by Anderson during this period included Poor White (1920), The Triumph of the Egg (1921), Many Marriages (1

7、923) and Horses and Men (1923). Although considered to be a minor work by the critics, Andersons most commercial successful novel was Dark Laughter (1925).,Life,Anderson, whose autobiography, A Story Tellers Story, was published in 1924, failed to recapture the standard of the work produced in Wines

8、burg, Ohio. His later work such as Tar: A Midwest Childhood (1926), Beyond Desire (1932) and Death in the Woods (1933) failed to make an impact on critics or the book-buying public. Sherwood Anderson died of peritonitis in Panama on 8th March, 1941.,Works,Windy McPhersons Son, (1916, novel) Marching

9、 Men, (1917, novel) Winesburg, Ohio, (1919, novel) Poor White, (1920, novel) Triumph of the Egg, (1921, short stories) Many Marriages, (1923, novel) Horses and Men, (1923, short stories) A Story-Tellers Story, (1924, semi-autobiographical novel) Sherwood Andersons Memoirs, (1924, memoirs) An Exibiti

10、on of Paintings By Alfred H. Maurer, (1924, non-fiction) Dark Laughter, (1925, novel) A Meeting South, (1925, novel) Modern Writer, (1925, non-fiction),Works,Tar: A Midwest Childhood, (1926, semi-autobiographical novel) Sherwood Andersons Notebook, (1926, memoirs) Hello Towns, (1929, short stories)

11、Alice: The Lost Novel, (1929, novel) Onto Being Published, (1930, non-fiction) Beyond Desire, (1932, novel) Death in the Woods, (1933, essays) Puzzled America, (1935, essays) Kit Brandon, (1936, novel) Dreiser: A Biography, (1936, non-fiction) Winesburg and Others, (1937, play) Home Town, (1940, nov

12、el),Works,San Francisco at Christmas, (1940, memoirs) Lives of Animals, (1966, novel) Return to Winesburg, Ohio, (1967, essays) The Memoirs of Sherwood Anderson, (1968, memoirs) No Swank, (1970, novel) Perhaps Women, (1970, novel) The Buck Fever Papers, (1971, essays) Ten Short Plays, (1972, plays)

13、Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein: Correspondence and Personal Essays, (1972, essays) Nearer the Grass Roots, (1976, novel),Works,The Writer at His Craft, (1978, non-fiction) Paul Rosenfeld: Voyager in the Arts, (1978, nonfiction) The Tellers Tale, (1982, novel) Selected Letters: 1916 1933, (1984

14、, letters) Writers Diary: 1936 - 1941, (1987, memoir) Early Writings of Sherwood Anderson, (1989, short stories) Love Letters to Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson, (1990, letters) The Selected Short Stories of Sherwood Anderson, (1995, short stories) Southern Odyssey: Selected Writings By Sherwood Anderso

15、n, (1998, short stories),Winesburg, Ohio,Short Summary Characters Major themes,Short Summary,1. Winesburg, Ohio begins with a sort of prologue, in which an old writer imagines all the people he has known as grotesques, warped in their pursuits of various truths. A series of stories ensues, each conc

16、erned with a single resident of Winesburg. The first, entitled Hands, describes Wing Biddlebaum, a recluse with remarkable hands that he cannot control, who has fled from false accusations of molesting a boy in another town. The second, Paper Pills, is about Doctor Reefy, an aging medical man who ma

17、rries one of his young patients, only to have her die six months later. In the third, Mother, we meet Elizabeth Willard, the mother of the books central character, George Willard, who is a young reporter for the local paper. Elizabeth is a sick woman, trapped in an unhappy marriage, and she imagines

18、 herself locked in a struggle with her husband for influence over George.,Short Summary,2. In the next story, The Philosopher, the eccentric Doctor Parcival imagines that a lynch mob is after him, and tells George Willard the secret of life: Everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified

19、. In Nobody Knows, George goes out into the fields and sleeps with a girl named Louise Trunnion, only to feel guilty about it afterward. The next four stories, all lumped under the heading Godliness, depict Jesse Bentley, a wealthy farmer who imagines himself a Biblical figure chosen by God. His dau

20、ghter, Louise Bentley, receives no love from him, and stumbles into a loveless marriage. Her son, David Hardy, is sent to live with his grandfather on the old mans farm, and Jesse takes the boy out into the forest in search of a message from God. He finds no message, however, and succeeds only in tr

21、aumatizing the boy so much that David runs away from Winesburg forever.,Short Summary,3. In A Man of Ideas, the next story, a talkative man named Joe Welling successfully courts a woman whose father and brother are notorious thugs. The following story, Adventure, depicts the loneliness of Alice Hind

22、man, an unmarried woman whose true love (as she considers him) left Winesburg years ago and has never returned. Respectability portrays Wash Williams, the filthy, ugly telegraph operator in Winesburg who despises women because of his wifes infidelity and his mother-in-laws treachery. The Thinker, te

23、lls the story of a brooding young man named Seth Richmond who feels that he does not belong in Winesburg. At the end of a long evening with Helen White, the daughter of the Winesburg banker, he tells her that he plans to leave town for good.,Short Summary,4. Tandy tells the story of a little girl na

24、med Tandy Hard whose first name comes from a drunken mans description of the perfect woman. In The Strength of God, a minister named Curtis Hartman is tempted into lust by the sight of Kate Swift, a local schoolteacher. His temptation passes when he sees her, one snowy night, praying naked. The Teac

25、her takes place on the same night, and depicts Kate Smiths attraction to George Willard-her simultaneous desires to teach and embrace him-and her sudden guilty flight from his office, which leaves him confused. Loneliness details Enoch Robinsons move from Winesburg to New York, where he populates hi

26、s apartment with imaginary friends, only to have them move out when he tries to tell his female neighbor about them.,Short Summary,5. In An Awakening, George Willard goes out walking one night and has what he thinks is an epiphany. He tries to tell Belle Carpenter, the girl he has been seeing, about

27、 it, but another one of her suitors beats him up, and the magic of the evening slips away. Queer depicts the resentment that Elmer Cowley, the son of a store owner, feels toward Winesburg and George Willard because he thinks that the town considers his family to be odd. The story ends with Elmer bea

28、ting up George and hopping a train out of town. In The Untold Lie, a farmhand named Hal Winters asks another farmhand named Ray Pearson for advice about whether to get married, causing Ray to reflect on his marriage, which he does with disgust. Drink portrays a genial, happy young man named Tom Fost

29、er and his first experience with drunkenness.,Short Summary,6. In Death, Elizabeth Willard and Doctor Reefy spend time together and begin to fall in love, as she slips toward death. She dies, finally, and George decides to quit Winesburg forever. In Sophistication, he and Helen White go out walking

30、together on the night of the county fair, and run around like children as evening falls on Winesburg. Both are moving on from their small town, as Helen is going to college, and in the final story, Departure, George Willard boards a train and leaves Winesburg for good, letting his life there become

31、but a background on which to paint the dreams of his manhood.,Characters,George Willard Wing Biddlebaum Doctor Reefy Elizabeth Willard,George Willard,A young man who works as a reporter in Winesburg, Ohio. Despite the fact that he is one of the least developed of the major characters, he occupies th

32、e central role in the book. As a result of either chance meetings or other peoples decisions to confide in him, George is the figure who links many of the novels disparate stories together.,Wing Biddlebaum,A sensitive ex-schoolteacher who was accused of molesting one of his male pupils in a town nea

33、r Winesburg. His hands are amazingly dexterous, but he has difficulty controlling them, and they tend to wander where they dont belong.,Doctor Reefy,An aging doctor with a declining practice. He marries a young female patient, but she dies after less than a year. He also develops a close relationshi

34、p with Elizabeth Willard during her last months.,Elizabeth Willard,George Willards mother, and Tom Willards wife. She lives in the familys run-down boarding house, where she is constantly ill and has become an invalid. She displays desperate impotence in her dealings with other people, including her

35、 husband and son.,Major Themes,Life in death The pastoral Failure of absolute truth Rebellion against values dominating American culture Winesburg as a microcosm of the universal,Life in death,Most of the figures share the similar history of a failed passion in life, of some kind or another. Many ar

36、e lonely introverts who struggle with a burning fire which still smolders inside of them. The moments described by the short stories are usually the moments when the passion tries to resurface but no longer has the strength. The stories are brief glimpses of people failing.,The pastoral,The narrator

37、 often employs a theme of mock sentimentality toward the old, colloquial farmland that Winesburg represents as small town. More largely, it provides a background for examining the break down of the archetypal patterns of human existence: sacrifice, initiation, and rebirth.,Failure of absolute truth,

38、Anderson believed that one should keep separate the worlds of realism and fantasy. He did not believe that an author could not write about both or about the collision of these worlds but he feared that authors would become stuck on realism or naturalism and forget about the importance of dreams, idealism, surrealism, and fantasy. Each of his figures