Ⅰ.本章学习目的和要求
通过本章的学习，了解20世纪初期至中叶美国现代文学产生 的历史、文化背景，认识该时期文学创作的基本特征、基本主张，及其对当代美国文学发展的影响；了解该时期主要作家的文学生涯、创作意图、艺术特色及其代表作品的主题结构、人物刻画和语言风格等；同时结合注释，读懂所选作品，了解其思想内容和写作特色，培养理解和欣赏文学作品的能力。
Ⅱ本章重点及难点
1． 美国现代文学的特征
2． 主要作家的创作思想、艺术特色及其代表作品的主题结构、人物刻画和语言风格
3． 名词解释："迷惘的一代"，意象派诗歌，象征主义，表现主义，意识流
4． 选读作品的主题结构、艺术特色、人物刻画和语言风格
Ⅲ 考核知识点和考核要求
（一）现代时期美国文学概述
1． 识记：
a．两次世界大战期间美国文学产生的历史及文化背景
（1）两次世界大战
（2）移居国外的美国人
（3）马克思主义理论和弗洛伊德学说
（4）欧洲现代派艺术
b．战后美国文学产生的历史及文化背景
2． 领会：
a． 两次世界大战期间的美国文学
（1）诗歌：意象派诗人；象征主义
（2）小说；"迷恫的一代"
（3）戏剧：表现主义
b．战后美国文学
（1）诗歌："垮掉的一代"等
（2）小说：黑人小说、犹太人小说、实验小说（荒诞派 小说）等
（3）美国现代文学多元化的现象
c．美国现代文学写作手法的创新
3．应用
a．名词解释："迷惘的一代"，意象派诗歌，象征主义，表现主义，意识流
b．"荒原"意识在美国20世纪文学中的反映
c．分析选读作品的主题结构、艺术特色、人物刻画和语言风格
（二）美国现代时期的主要作家
a．埃兹拉。庞德
1．一般识记：庞德的生平和创作生涯
2．识记：庞德的诗歌
（1）短诗：《地铁站一瞥》
（2）长诗：《诗章》
3． 领会：
（1）庞德与意象主义
（2）庞德与中国文化
（3）庞德的诗歌理论及艺术特色
4．应用：《地铁站一瞥》《盟约》〈〈河商的妻子》：主题、意象、语言
b．罗伯特·弗洛斯特
1．一般识记：弗洛斯特的生平及创作生涯
2．识记：弗洛斯特的诗歌：田园诗；自然诗
3．领会：
（1）弗洛斯特诗歌的艺术特色
（2）弗洛斯特的诗论
4．应用：
(1) 弗洛斯特的自然诗
(2)〈〈摘苹果后〉〉〈〈未选择的路〉〉〈〈雪夜停马在林边》：主题、 象征与比喻、语言
c．尤金·奥尼尔
1．一般识记：奥尼尔的生平及创作生涯
2．识记：奥尼尔的戏剧
（1）早期作品：独幕剧；多幕剧《天外边》
（2）中期作品：《琼斯皇帝》〈〈伟大之神布朗〉〉〈〈毛猿》 -------表现主义和象征主义的力作
（3）后期作品：《直到夜晚的漫长一天》 一 自传体戏剧 剧
3．领会：
（1）奥尼尔戏剧的悲观主义和神秘主义色彩
（2）奥尼尔戏剧的艺术特色
4．应用：选读《毛猿》第八场：主题结构、表现主义和象征主义手
法、语言特色
d．司各特·菲兹杰拉德
1．一般识记：菲兹杰拉德的生平及创作生涯
2．识记：
（1）菲兹杰拉德与"爵士时代"
（2）主要作品：短篇小说集：《爵士时代的故事》
中、长篇小说：《人间天堂》《了不起的盖茨比》《夜色温柔》〈〈最后一个巨头》
3．领会：
（1）《了不起的盖茨比》与"美国梦
（2）菲兹杰拉德的小说艺术
4．应用：《了不起的盖茨比》第三章：主题结构、人物刻画、语言风格
e．欧内斯特·海明威
1．一般识记：海明威的生平及创作生涯
2．识记：海明威的主要作品
（1）短篇小说集：《在我们的时代里》-一涅克的故事
（2）长篇小说：《太阳照样升起》〈〈永别了，武器》《丧钟为谁而鸣》《老人与海》
3．领会：海明威与"迷惘的一代"
4．应用：
（1）海明威小说的艺术特色："硬汉"形象、"重压下的风 度"、"冰山"原则等
（2）《在我们的时代里》选篇：主题结构、人物刻画、语言 风格
f．威廉·福克纳
1．一般识记: 福克纳的生平及创作生涯
2．识记：
（l）福克纳的主要作品：中、短篇小说：《给艾米莉小姐的玫瑰》《老人》《熊》等；长篇小说：《喧嚣与骚动》 《八月之光》《我弥留之际》《押沙龙，押沙龙！》
（2）福克纳的"约克纳帕塔法'神话王国
3．领会：
（1）福克纳小说的艺术特色："意识流"、"内心独白"、"时序颠倒"、"对位式结构"、"象征隐喻"等
（2）福克纳的文体
（3）福克纳与美国南方文学
4．应用：《给艾米莉小姐的玫瑰》：主题结构、人物刻
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chapter 3 the modern period
一．识记
1.the historical and socio-cultural background of the american literature between the two world wars:
(1) the two world wars: the twentieth century began with a strong sense of social breakdown. the two wor1d wars, especially the first world war (l914--l918), became the emblem of all wars in the twentieth century, which means violence, devastation, blood and death, and made a big impact on the life of the american people and their literary writings.
with all these wars the whole wor1d had undergone a dramatic social change, a transformation from order to disorder. america in this period was characterized by economic boom and material prosperity but social chaos, spiritual waste and and moral decay. economically, with america's participation in wor1d war i and the technological revolution, the united states had its booming industry and material prosperity. socially, the world was disorderly and turbulent. there was a sense of unease and restlessness underneath. spiritually and morally, there was a decline in moral standard and the first few decades of the twentieth century was best described as a spiritual wasteland. the censor of a great civilization being destroyed or destroying itself, social breakdown, and individual powerlessness and hopelessness became part of the american experience as a result of the first world war, with resulting feelings of fear, loss, disorientation and disillusionment.
(2) the impact of marxism, freudianism and european modern art on american modern literature: between the mid-l9th century and the first decade of the 20th century, there had been a big flush of new theories and new ideas in both social and natural sciences, as well as in the field of art in europe, which played an indispensable ro1e in bringing about modernism and the modernistic writings in the united states.
a. marxism and freudianism
apart from darwinism, which was still a big influence over the writers of this period, the two thinkers whose ideas had the greatest impact on the period were the german karl marx and the austrian sigmund freud. marx was a sociologist who believed that the root cause of all behavior was economic, and that the leading feature of the economic life was the division of society into antagonistic classes based on a relation to the means of production. freud propounded an idea of human beings themselves as grounded in the "unconscious" that controlled a great deal of overt behavior, and made the practice of the psychoanalysis which emphasizes the importance of the unconscious or the irrationa1 in the human psyche. william james, an american psychologist famous for his theory of "stream of consciousness," and carl jung, a swiss psychiatrist, noted for his "collective unconscious" and "archetypal symbol" as part of modern mythology. their theories, plus freud's interpretation of dreams, have infused modern american literature and made it possible for most of the writers in the modern period to probe into the inner world of human reality.
b. european modern art:
the implications of modern european arts to modern american writings can also be strong1y felt in the american literature between the wars, even thereafter. in painting, both the french impressionist and the german expressionist artists avoided the representation of external reality and depicted the human rea1ity in a rather subjective point of view. this highly personal vision of the world is self-evident in the works by writers such as william faulkner, eugene o'neill, etc. cubism, another school of modern painting popular in the early 20th century with its emphasis on the formal structure of a work of art, especially its emphasis on the multiple-perspective viewpoints, had provided the writers with more than one way to explain the reality and engaged the readers in creating order out of fragmentation as we1l. composers like igor stravinsky similar1y produced music in a "modern" mode, featuring dissonance and discontinuity rather than neat formal structure and appealing total harmonies.
(3)the expatriate movement
there was a spiritual crisis in the modern period, but a full blossoming of literary writings. the expatriate movement, also called the second american renaissance, is the most recognizable literary movement that gave rise to the twentieth century american literature. 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. among these young writers were the most prominent figures in american literature, especially in modern american 1iterature. they were basically expatriates who 1eft america and formed a community of writers and artists in paris, involved with other european novelists and poets in their experimentation on new modes of thought and expression. these writers were later named by an american writer, gertrude stein, also an expatriate, "the lost generation."
2. the historical and socio-cultural background of the american literature after the world war Ⅱ:
what happened immediately after the second world war in the united states and other parts of the world exerted a tremendous influence on the mentality of americans. it changed man's view of himself and the world as well.
first of all, the dropping of an atomic bomb over hiroshima in japan shocked the whole world and made possible the destruction of the western civilization. then a mutual fear and hostility grew between the eastern and western courtries with the cold war, the effect of which could be felt in the form of mccarthyism in the unites states. besides, the korean war and the vietnam war broadened the gap between the government and the people. the assassination of john f. kennedy, and of martin luther king, spokesman of the american civil rights movement, the resignation of nixon because of the water-gate scandal, etc. intensified the terror and tossed the whole nation again into the grief and despair. the impact of these changes and upheavals on the american society is emotional. people start to question the role of science in human progress and the fear of the misuse of modern science and technology is spreading. they no longer believe in god but start to reconsider the nature of man and man's capacity for evil. they begin to think of life as a big joke or an absurdity. the world is even more disintegrating and fragmentary and people are even more estranged and despondent.
二．领会
1. american literature between the two world wars:
(1) the imagist movement and the artistic characteristics of imagist poems:
led by the american poet ezra pound, imagist movement is a poetic movement that flourished in the u.s. and england between 1909-1917. it advances modernism in arts which concentrates on reforming the medium of poetry as opposed to romanticism, especially tennyson's worldliness and high-flown language in poetry. pound endorsed three main principles as guidelines for imagism, including direct treatment of poetic subjects, elimination of merely ornamental or superfluous words, and rhythmical composition should be composed with the phrasing of music, not a metronome. the primary imagist objective is to avoid rhetoric and moralizing, to stick closely to the object or experience being described, and to move from explicit generalization. the leading poets are ezra pound, wallace stevens, d.h.lawrence, etc.
the characteristic products of the movement are more easily recognized than its theories defined; they tend to be short, composed of short lines of musical cadence rather than metrical regularity, to avoid abstraction, and to treat the image with a hard, clear precision rather than with overt symbolic intent. the influence of japanese forms, tanka and haiku, is obvious in many. most of the imagist poets wrote in free verse and they like to emply common speech. they stressed the freedom in the choice of subject matter and form.
(2) the lost generation
it refers to, in general, the post-world warⅠgeneration, but specifically a group of expatriate disillusioned intellectuals and artists, who experimented on new modes of thought and expression by rebelling against former ideals and values and replacing them only by despair or a cynical hedonism. the remark of gertrude stein, "you are all a lost generation, "addressed to hemingway, was used as an epigraph to the latter's novel the sun also rises, which brilliantly describes those expatriates who had cut themselves off from their past in america in order to create new types of writing. the generation was "lost" in the sense that its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world and because of its spiritual alienation from a u.s. that seemed to its members to be hopelessly provincial, materialistic, and emotional barren. the term embraces hemingway, f. scott fitzgerald, ezra pound, e.e.cummings, and many other writers who made paris the center of their literary activities in the 1920s.
(3) what is expressionism?
expressionism 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.
in drama, the expressionist work was characterized by a bizarre distortion of reality. expressionist writers's 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. emphasis was laid not on the outer world, which is merely sketched in and barely defined in place or time, but on the internal, on an individual's mental state; hence the imitation of life is replaced in expressionist drama by the ecstatic evocation of states of mind. in america, eugene o'neille's emperor jones, the hairy ape, etc. are typical plays that employ expressionism.
4) the concept of "wasteland" in relation to the works of those writers in the twentieth-century american literature
the waste land is a poem written by t.s.eliot on the theme of the sterility and chaos of the contemporary world. this most widely known expression of the despair of the post-war era has appeared over and again in the works of those writers in the twentieth-century american literature. fitzgerald sought to portray a spiritual wasteland of the jazz age. beneath the masks of relaxation and joviality, there was only sterility, meaninglessness and futility amid the grandeur and extravagance, there was a hint of decadence and moral decay. hemingway, the leading spokesman of the lost generation, dramatized in his novels the sense of loss and despair among the post-war generation who are physically and psychologically scarred. though disillusioned in the post-war period, he strove to bring about man's "grace under pressure" and tried to bring out the idea that man can be physically destroyed but never defeated spiritually. william faulkner exemplified t.s. eliot's concept of modern society as a wasteland in a dramatic way. he created his own mythical kingdom that mirrored not only the decline of the southern society but also the spiritual wasteland of the whole american society. he condemned the mechanized, industrialized society that has dehumanized man by forcing him to cultivate false values and decrease those essential human values such as courage, fortitude, honesty and goodness.
2. postwar american literature
(1) the beat generation
also called beat movement, it is an american social and literary movement originating in the 1950s. beat generation writings expressed profound dissatisfaction with contemporary american society and endorsed an alternative set of values. they rejected traditional forms and advocated personal release, purification, and illumination through the heightened sensory awareness.
beat poets sought to liberate poetry from academic preciosity and bring it "back to the streets." allen ginsberg and other major figures of the movement, such as the novelist jack kerouac and gary snyder, advocated a kind of free, unstructured composition in which the writer put down his thoughts and feelings without plan or revision-to convey the immediacy of experience-an approach that led to the production of much undisciplined and incoherent verbiage on the part of their imitators.
(2) the pluralism of postwar american fiction:
american fiction from 1945 onwards is a bigger story than poetry and drama.
a. war fiction: a group of new writers who survived the war wrote about their traumatic experience within the military machine and on european and pacific battlefields, among whom we have norman mailer and herman wouk.
b. southern literature: robert penn warren and flannery o'conner are representatives of the talented southern writers, who followed faulkner's footsteps in portraying the decadence and evil in the southern society in a gothic manner.
c. jewish literature: by the 1950s a significant group of jewish-american writers had appeared and one of them was saul bellow. their works, drawing on the jewish experience of suffering and endurance, tradition and the jewish religion, examined subtly the dismantling of the self by an intolerable modern history. other iportant jewish writers include bernard malamud, issac bashevis singer, and philip roth. saul bellow placed emphasis upon the power of intellect. the power to understand their own experience, to judge their lives rationally, to think well, is considered a high virtue. self-teaching is at the heart of all his novels as his jewish heroes or anti-heroes seek a rational interpretation of the world through their own experiences in it.
d. black fiction: it began to attract critical attention during this period too. the two major figures are richard wright and ralph ellison, both of whom captured the wide attention of the white readers by truthfully, openly, and shockingly describing the life of black people as they knew it from their own experience. for the first time in the history of american writings, african writers started to question their identity as a group and as an individual.
e. other important writers who were writing at the time include j.d.salinger and john updike. salinger is considered to be a spokesman for the alienated youth in the post-war era and his the catcher in the rye (1951) is regarded as a students' classic. updike's rabbit novels examine the middle-class values and portray the troubled relationships in people's private life and their internal decay under the stress of the modern times.
f. "new fiction" or novels of absurdity: american fiction in the 1960s and 1970s proves to be different from its predecessors in that the writers started to depart from the conventions of the novel writing and experimented with some new forms. hence, it is referred to as "new fiction," with kurt vonnegut, joseph heller, john bath, and thomas pynchon at its forefront. roughly speaking, these writers shared the same belief that human beings are trapped in a meaningless world and that neither god nor man can make sense of the human condition. what's more, this absurdist vision is integrated with an absurd form, which is characterized by comic exaggerations, ironic uses of parodies, multiple realities, often two-dimensional characters, and a combination of fantastic events with realistic presentations.
g. literature of ethnic groups: more recently american literature is alive with a diversity of interests. writers from different ethnic and multicultural backgrounds, including women writers, african-americans, asian-americans, and indian-americans, are beginning to make their voices heard and they are writing about american experience and consciousness from quite a fresh outlook, hence, bringing vitality to the american literary imagination.
3.the literary characteristics of american modern literature:
(1) theme: in general terms, much serious literature written from 1912 onwards attempted to convey a vision of social breakdown and mora1 decay and the writer's task was to develop techniques that could represent a break with the past. thus, the defining formal characteristics of the modernistic works are discontinuity and fragmentation.
(2) technical experimentation: an awareness of the irrational and the workings of the unconscious mind are pervasive in much modernistic writing. technically, modernism was marked by a persistent experimentalism. it rejected the traditional framework of narrative, description, and rational exposition in poetry and prose, in favor of a stream of consciousness presentation of personality, a dependence on the poetic image as the essential vehicle of aesthetic communication, and upon myth as a characteristic structural principle.
compared with earlier writings, modern american writings are notable for what they omit -- the explanations, interpretations, connections, and summaries. there are shifts in perspective, voice, and tone, but the biggest shift is from the external to the internal, from the public to the private, from the chronological to the psychic, from the objective description to the subjective projection. modern american writers in general emphasize the concrete sensory images or details as the direct conveyer of experience. they strive for directness, compression, and vividness and are sparing of words. modern fiction prefer suggestiveness and tend to employ the first person narration or limit the reader to the "central consciousness" or one character's point of view. this limitation accorded with the modernistic vision that truth does not exist objectively but is the product of a personal interaction with reality. as a result, the effect of modern american writings is surprising, unsettling, and shocking.
the major writers of the modern period
Ⅰ.ezra pound (1885-1972)
一． 一般识记
ezra pound's contribution to american literature: pound was one of the most important poets and critics of his time and he was regarded as the father of modern american poetry. he is a leading spokesman of the "imagist movement", which though short-lived, had a tremendous influence on modern poetry.
二． 识记
his major works:
pound composed poems, wrote criticisms and did translations.
(1) his poetic works: in 1915 pound began writing his great work, the cantos, which spanned from 1917 to 1959 and were collected in the cantos of ezra pound (1986). he joined a famous literary salon run by an american woman writer gertrude stein, and became involved in the experimentations on poetry. his other poetic works include twelve volumes of verse collected early poems of ezra pound (1982), and personae (1909), and some longer pieces such as hugh selwyn mauberley (1920).
(2) his critical essays: make it new (l934), literary essays (l954), the abc of reading (1934) and polite essays (l937), etc. these essays best reflect pound's appraisals of literary traditions and of modern writing.
(3) his translations: the translations of ezra pound (1953), confucius (1969), and shih-ching (1954) these translations have not only cast light on pound's 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. from the analysis of the chinese ideogram pound learned to anchor his poetic language in concrete, perceptual reality, and to organize images into larger patterns through juxtoposition.
三． 领会
1． ezra pound's poetic subjects or themes:
(1) his earlier poetry is saturated with the familiar poetic subjects that characterize the 19th century romanticism: songs in praise of a lady, songs concerning the poet's craft, love and friendship, death, the transience of beauty and the permanence of art, and some other subjects that pound could call his own: the pain of exile, metamorphosis, the delightful psychic experience, the ecstatic moment, etc.
(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. in the cantos, pound traces the rise and fall of eastern and western empires, the moral and social chaos of the modern world, especially the corruption of america after the heroic time of jefferson. from the perception of these things, stems the poet's search for order, which involves a search for the principles on which the poet's craft is based.
2. his artistic achievment:
(1) he is the leader of the imagist movement:
led by the american poet ezra pound, imagist movement is a poetic movement that flourished in the u.s. and england between 1909-1917. it advances modernism in arts which concentrated on reforming the medium of poetry as opposed to romanticism, especially tennyson's wordiness and high-flown language in poetry. pound endorsed three main principles as guidelines for imagism, including direct treatment of poetic subjects, elimination of merely ornamental or superfluous words, and rhythmical composition in the sequence of the musical phrase rather than in the sequence of a metronome. the primary imagist objective is to avoid rhetoric and moralizing, to stick closely to the object or experience being described, and to move from explicit generalization. the leading poets are ezra pound, wallace stevens, d.h.lawrence, etc. pound's famous one-image poem "in a station of the metro" would serve as a typical example of the imagist ideas.
(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. in this way, pound could sustain a dialogue between past and present succesfully. (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 one's "public personality"-the facade 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. )
(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.
四．应用：selected readings:
1. in a station of the metro
(1) 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.
(2) the one image in this poem: this poem is probably the most famous of all imagist poems. in two lines it combines a sharp visual image or two juxtoposed images (意象叠加) "petals on a wet, black bough" with an implied meaning. the faces in the dim light of the metro suggest both the impersonality and haste of city life and the greater transience of human life itself. the word "apparition" is a well-chosen one which has a two-fold meaning: firstly, it means a visible appearance of something real. secondly, it builds an image of a ghostly sight, a delusive and unexpected appearance.
(3) pound uses the fewest possible words to convey an accurate image, which is the principle of the imagist poetry. this poem looks to be a modern adoption of the haiku form of japanese poetry which adapts the 3-line, 17 syllable and where the title is an intergral part of the whole. the poem succeeds largely because of its internal rhymes: station/apparition; metro/petals/wet; crowd/bough. its form was determined by the experience that inspired it, involving organically rather than being chosen arbitrarily.
2. the river-merchant's wife: a letter
(1) theme: it is an adaptation from the chinese li po (701-762) named rihaku in japanese, which, by means of vivid images and shifting tones, describes the silky shy tenderness of the young wife writing to her absent husband the river-merchant.
the history of her feelings for her husband develops as the following: her bashfulness when she was a young girl, her spiritual affinity with him during the phase of their marriage, the material nature of her love at the time of his departure as well as her longing for his return when she grows old.
(2) use of images and allusion: in this poem pound uses images such as "hair" "grown moss" "falling leaves" to suggest the passing years and growing age. besides, pound employs an allusion to "a story of a woman waiting for her husband on a hill." in pound's version, the line emphasizes the otherworldly nature of her love during her marriage.
3. a pact
this poem is about pound's evaluation on whitman. pound started to find some agreement between "whitmanesque" free verse, which he had attacked for its carelessness in composition, and the "verse libre" of the imagists who showed more concern for formal values. in the poem pound affirmed whitman's contribution in the experiment on the form and content of american poetry and expressed his eagerness to communicate with whitman..
Ⅱ. robert lee frost (l874-l963)
一． 一般识记
his life and writing:
frost is an important poet in the 20th century .he won the pulitzer prize four times and read poetry at the inauguration of president john f. kennedy in 1961.
he spent his early childhood in the far west and later the family moved to new hampshire. he went to harvard but left in the middle because of his tuberculosis. when he was 28, he began to venture on writing.
二． 识记
his major works:
his first book a boy's will (1913), whose lyrics trace a boy's development from self-centered idealism to maturity, is marked by an intense but restrained emotion and the characteristic flavor of new eng1and life. his second book, a volume of poems north of boston (1914), is described by the author as "a book of people," which shows a brilliant insight into new england character and the background that formed it. many of his major poems are collected in this volume, such as "mending the wall," in which frost saw man as learning from nature the
zones of his own 1imitations, and "home buria1," which probes the darker corners of individual lives in a situation where man cannot accept the facts of his condition. mountain interval (19l6) contains such characteristic poems as "the road not taken," "birches". new hampshire (1923) that won frost the first of four pulitzer prizes includes "stopping by woods on a snowy evening", which stems from the ambiguity of the speaker's choice between safety and the unknown. the collection west-running brook (1928) poses disturbing uncertainties about man's prowess and importance. collected poems (l930) and a further range (1935) gathered frost's second and third pulitzer prizes. both translate modern upheaval into poetic materia1 the poet could skillfully control. frost's fourth pulitzer prize was awarded for a witness tree (l942) which includes "the gift outright," the poem he later recited at president kennedy's inauguration. frost took up a religious question most notably in "after apple-picking:" can a man's best efforts ever satisfy god? a masque of reason (l945) and a masque of mercy (1947) are comic-serious dramatic narratives, in both of which biblical characters in modern settings discuss ethics and man's re1ations to god.
三． 领会
1. 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. but first and foremost frost is concerned with his love of life and his belief in a serenity that only came from working usefully, which he practiced himself throughout his life.
(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. his poetry, by using nature as a storehouse of analogy and symbol, often probes mysteries of darkness and irrationality in the bleak and chaotic landscapes of an indifferent universe when men stand alone, unaided and perplexed.
2. his nature poems:
robert frost is mainly known for his poems concerning new england life. he learned from the tradition, especially the familiar conventions of nature poetry and of classical pastoral poetry, and made the colloquial new england speech into a poetic expression. a poem so conceived thus becomes a symbo1 or metaphor, a careful, loving exploration of reality, in frost's version, "a momentary stay against confusion." many of his poems are fragrant with natural quality. images and metaphors in his poems are drawn from the rural world, the simple country 1ife and the pastoral 1andscape. however, profound ideas are delivered under the disguise of the p1ain language and the simple form, for what frost did is to take symbols from the limited human world and the pastoral landscape to refer to the great world beyond the rustic scene. 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. but first and foremost frost is concerned with his love of life and his belief in a serenity that only came from working usefully, which he practiced himself throughout his life.
3. frost's style in language:
by using simple spoken language and conversational rhythms, frost achieved an effortless grace in his style. he combined traditiona1 verse forms -- the sonnet, rhyming coup1ets, blank verse with a clear american local speech rhythm, the speech of new england farmers with its idiosyncratic diction and syntax. 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.
四． 应用
selected readings:
l. after apple-picking
this poem is so vivid a memory of experience on the farm in which the end of labor leaves the speaker with a sense of completion and fulfilment yet finds him blocked from success by winter's approach and physical weariness. on the one hand, frost expressed his love of life and his belief in a serenity that only came from working usefully. on the other hand, the poet was concerned with individual's relationships to himself, to his fellow-man, to world, and to his god. he took up a religious question: can a man's best efforts ever satisfy god?
besides this is a typical lyric poem describing the pastoral landscape in new england. symbols and images from the pastoral landscape to refer to the great world beyond the rustic scene.
the language of this poem is characterized by simple spoken language and conversational rhythms, the combination of traditiona1 verse forms -- the sonnet, rhyming coup1ets, blank verse with the speech of new england farmers with its idiosyncratic diction and syntax. frost wrote in both the metrical forms and the free verse, in a form that might be called semi-free or semi-conventional.
2. the road not taken
(1) the theme: this poem seems to be about the poet, walking in the woods in autumn, hesitating for a long time and wondering which road he should take since they are both pretty. in reality, this is a meditative poem symbolically written. it concerns the important decisions which one must take in the course of life, when one must give up one desirable thing in order to possess another. then, whatever the outcome, one must accept the consequences of one's choice for it is not possible to go back and have another chance to choose differently. in the poem, he followed the one which was not frequently travelled by. symbolically, he chose to follow an unusual, solitary life; perhaps he was speaking of his choice to become a poet rather than some common profession. but he always remembered the road which he might have taken, and which would have given him a different kind of life.
(2) language: this poem is written in classic five-line stanzas, with the rhyme scheme a-b-a-a-b and conversational rhythm. the poet uses "the road " to symbolize life's journey.
3. stopping by woods on a snowy evening
(1) the theme: this is a deceptively simple poem in which the speaker literally stops his horse in the winter twilight to observe the beauty of the forest scene, and then is moved to continue his journey. philosophically and symbolically, it stems from the ambiguity of the speaker's choice between safety and the unknown.
(2) this poem suggests deep thought about death and about life. the strange attraction of death to man is symbolized by the dark woods silently filled up with the coldness of snow. frost frequently uses the technique of symbolism in his poetry. some critics think that the "village" stands for the human world, "woods" for nature, "horse" for the animal world, and "promises" for obligations. the poem represents a moment of relaxation from the burdensome journey of life, an almost aesthetic enjoyment and appreciation of natural beauty which is wholesome and restorative against the chaotic existence of modern man.
(3) the last stanza shows a kind of sad, sentimental but also strong and responsible feeling. the attraction of the beauty of the nature makes the speaker stop in the journey. he finally turns away from it, with a certain weariness and yet with quiet determination, to face the needs of life. this stresses the central conflict of the poem between man's enjoyment of nature's beauty and his responsibility in society. this shows a man's despairing courage to seek out the meaning of life.
in the last stanza, the three adjectives "lovely" "dark" "deep" reinforce one another. not only do they represent beauty and terror of nature symbolized by the dark woods, but they also reveal the speaker's love for nature and human isolation from it. besides, the word "sleep" here means "die" symbolically.
Ⅲ. eugene o'neill (1888-1953)
eugene o'neill is unquestionably america's greatest playwright. he won the pulitzer prize four times and was the only dramatist ever to win a nobel prize (1936). he is widely acclaimed "founder of the american drama."
一． 一般识记
his life and writing career: o'neill was born in new york on october 16, 1888 into a theatrical family. he grew up in new london, connecticut, and spent his early years with his parents on theatrica1 road tours. he received university education for one year and later traveled all over the world. he avidly read up on dramatic literature, and cultivated an interest in play writing. in 1914, he attended professor george pierce baker's drama workshop at harvard, where his career as a dramatist began. since then, o'neill had been wholly dedicated to the mission as a dramatist.
二． 识记
his major plays: during all his career as a dramatist, o'neill wrote and pub-
lished about forty-nine plays altogether of various lengths. he wrote some one-act melodramatic plays at first, including bound east for cardiff (1916), which describes the dying sailor yank and his dream about the security and peace which could never exist. o'neill's first full-length play, beyond the horizon, made a great hit and won him the first pulitzer prize. its theme is the choice between life and death, the interaction of subjective and objective factors, and this theme is dramatized more explicitly in the straw (1921) and anna christie (1921). anna christie is more of a success because it deploys the developing complexity of o'neill's personal vision, showing us that life is a closed circle of possibi1ities from which it is impossible to escape.
between 1920 and 1924 came his prominent achievements in symbolic expressionism: the emperor jones (1920), the hairy ape (1922), all god's chillun got wings (1924), and desire under the elms (1924). these plays are daring forays into race relations, class conflicts, sexual bondage, social critiques, and american tragedies on the greek model. what is more, the expressionistic techniques are used in these plays to highlight the theatrical effect of the rupture between the two sides of an individual human being, the private and the public. built on the success of these expressionistic experimentations, o'neill reached out to extend his mastery of the stage and worked up to the summit of his career. he concerned himself with some non--realistic forms to contain his tragic vision in a
number of his plays, such as the great god brown (l926), which fuses symbolism, poetry, and the affirmation of a pagan idea1ism to show how materialistic civilization denies the life--giving impulses and destroys the genuine artist, and lazarus laughed (1927), which makes full use of the bible, greek choruses, elizabethan tirades, expressionist masks, populous crowd scenes, and orchestrate laughter. with the winning of the third pulitzer prize for strange interlude (l928), o'neill consolidated his experience of two decades of playwriting and paved the way to the honor of the nobel prize in 1936.
late in his life, he produced the best and greatest plays of the modern american theater. the iceman cometh (l946) proves to be a masterpiece in the way it is a complex, ironic, deeply moving exploration of human existence, written out of a profound insight into human nature and constructed with tremendous skill and logic. long day's journey into night (1956) can be read autobiographically. however, like most great works of literature, the play reaches beyond its immediate subject, dedicated not only to the life of the american family, but also "to the life of man, to life itself." as a product of hard-won art, long day's journey into night has gained its status as a world classic and simultaneously marks the climax of o'neill's literary career and the coming of age of american drama.
三． 领会
1.themes: o'neill is always remembered for his tragic view of life and most of his plays deal 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. his characters in the plays are described as seeking meaning and purpose in their lives in different ways, some through love, some through religion, others through revenge, but all meet disappointment and despair. as a playwright, o'neill himself was constantly wrestling with these issues and struggling with the perplexity about the truth of life. he was searching for an answer both psychologically and artistically, and his dramatic thought fol1owed a tragic pattern running through all his plays, from a celebration and exaltation of "pipe dreams," the romantic dream so to speak, to the doubt about the reality of the dream or the inevitability of the defeat. so, his final dramas became" transcendental," in the way that the dramatization of man's effort in finding the secret of life results in a reconciliation with the tragic impossibility.
2.o'neill's experimentations in dramatic art: o'neill's inventiveness seemingly knew no limits. he was constantly experimenting with new styles and forms for his plays.
(1) he introduced the realistic or even the naturalistic aspect of life into the american theater. he borrowed freely grom the best traditions of european dramas, be it greek tragedies, or the realism of ibsen, or the expressionism of stringberg, and fused them into the organic of his own. in those expressionistic plays, abstract and symbolic stage sets are used to set off against the emotional inner selves and subjective states of mind; lighting and music are employed to convey the changes of mood.
(2) he borrowed freely from modern literary techniques such as the stream-of -consciousness device with the help of which he managed to reveal the emotional and psychological complexities of modern man. he made use of setting and state property to help in his dramatic representation
(3) as to his language, o'neill frequently wrote the lines in dialect, or spelled words in ways which indicate a particular accent or manner of speech. this, sometimes, makes his plays difficult to read, but when they are spoken aloud, the sense becomes clear and the meaning is amplified by the accent.
o'neill's ceaseless experimentation enriched american drama and influenced later playwrights.
3.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.
in drama, the expressionist work was characterized by a bizarre distortion of reality. expressionist writers's 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. emphasis was laid on the internal, on an individual's 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. in america, eugene o'neille's 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.
四．应用selected reading:
an excerpt from scene vⅢ of the hairy ape
1.the theme of the play or the tragic vision in it:
the tragic sense of modern man belonging nowhere, being helpless and impotent remained as the common theme of o'neill's works.
the hairy ape is a good illustration. the play concerns the problem of modern man's identity. yank's sense of belonging nowhere, hence homelessness and rootlessness, is typical of the mood of isolation and alienation in the early twentieth century in the united states and the whole world as well.
yank was a stroker on a transatlantic liner. he was happy with life until the day when his brutality shocked and made faint mildred douglas. he was greatly insulted. thus became gloomy, sullen and violent. he attempted to seek identity with the aristocratic class, the radical class. in the last scene of the play, rejected, yank wandered to the zoo where he found affinity with the great ape there, only to be crushed to death. so, yank's journey in quest of self-identity finished with his death, yet with the realization that he did belong nowhere. the general feeling is one of despairingly tragic. man is homeless and rootless, alienated from the indifferent society.
2. the expressionistic techniques in the play:
(1) in this expressinistic play, abstract and symbolic stage sets are used to set off against the emotional inner selves and subjective states of mind. take o'neill's use of contrastive tones of remarks for example, yank's friendliness and excitement contrasts the ape's anger, indifference and impatience and also contrasts his own bitterness, self-mocking and despair. so the emotional content, the subjective reactions of characters are emphasized, which symbolically represent the despairing reality.
(2) externalization of human interior: o'neill uses vision to reveal psychological reality. in this play, yank was haunted by appearance of mildred douglas, which shows his pain and despair. therefore, o'neill does not record external events as realists do. he sought to portray the way in which hidden psychological processes impinge upon outward action. he brought psychological realism, philosophical depth, and poetic symbolism into american literature.
3.language: in this play o'neill intentionally wrote the lines of yank in dialect to show his social and economic status as an uneducated coal stoker. many other examples could be found in this selection, for instance, "dat" for that, "yuh" for you, etc.
iv. f. scott fitzgerald (l896-l940)
一． 一般识记
his life and writing:
francis scott fitzgerald was a most representative figure of the 1920s, who was mirror of the exciting age in almost every way. an active participant of his age, he never failed to remain detached and foresee the failure and tragedy of the "dollar decade." thus he is often acc1aimed literary spokesman of the jazz age.
f. scott fitzgerald was born in st. paul, minnesota on september 24, l896. in his childhood, he admired his gentleman1y father who retained his upper-class manners but was always a little sensitive to the poor irish beginnings on his mother's side. he had an expensive education in private schools at princeton. but due to illness and neglect of academic study, he left the university in 1917 without graduation. he married zelda sayre, who exerted a strong influence on his literary career and his personal life. zelda has been regarded as the prototype of a series of rich, beautiful women who figure so prominently in his fiction. the young couple frequently went abroad and lived extravagantly a luxurious life. to keep earning enough money, fitzgerald wrote short stories and novels at a rapid speed. the l930s brought relentless decline for fitzgerald with a series of misfortunes: his reputation declined, his wealth fell, his health failed, and what's more, ze1da had suffered from some serious mental breakdowns which confined her in a sanitarium for the rest of her life. a1coholism, loneliness and despair combined to ruin fitzgerald. he died in 1940 of a heart attack.
二． 识记
his major works:
his novels and short stories chronicled changing social attitudes during the 1920s, a period dubbed "the jazz age". his first novel this side of paradise won for him wealth and fame. his second novel, the beautiful and damned increased his popularity, which also portrays the emotiona1 and spiritual collapse of a wealthy young man during an unstable marriage. the coup1e in the novel were undoubtedly modeled after fitzgerald himself and zelda. his masterpiece the great gatsby (1925) made him one of the greatest american novelists. afterwards, fitzgerald wrote one more important novel tender is the night (l934), in which he traces the decline of a young american psychiatrist whose marriage to a beautiful and wealthy patient drains his personal energies and corrodes his professional career. his last novel the last tycoon remains unfinished.
fitzgerald also wrote short stories of great popularity. his short story collections include flappers and philosophers (l92l), tales of the jazz age (1922), all the sad young man (l926) and taps at reveille (1935). one of his best short stories is "babylon revisited," which depicts an american's return to paris in the 1930s and his regretful rea1ization that the past is beyond his reach, since he can neither alter it nor make any amends.
三． 领会
1. fitzgerald and the jazz age:
(1) the jazz age: it refers to the 1920s, a time marked by frivolity, carelessness, hedonism and excitement in the life of the flaming youth. fitzgerald is largely responsible for the term and many of his literary works portray it. the jazz age is brought vividly to life in the great gatsby.
(2) most critics have agreed that fitzgerald is both an insider and an outsider of the jazz age with a double vision of fascination and aloofness. he lived in his great moments and joined the big party in the l920s, partaking of the wealth, frivolity, temptations of the time, whi1e reproducing the drama of the age by standing aloof and keeping a cold eye on the performance of his contemporaries. he drank and did crazy things after he got drunk, whereas staying sober enough to see the corruptive nature of the society and the vanity fair that everyone, including himself, was infatuated with. this doubleness or irony is one of the distinguishing marks as a writer and helps fitzgerald to present a panorama of the jazz age with a deep insight.
(3) fitzgerald's 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. young men and women in the 1920s had a sense of reckless confidence not only about money but about 1ife in genera1. since they grew up with the notion that the world would improve without their help, they felt excused from seeking the common good. plunging into their persona1 adventures, engaging themselves in casual sex and heavy drinking, they took risks that did not impress them as being risks, and they spent money extravagant1y and enjoyed themselves to their hearts' content. but beneath their masks of relaxation and joviality there was only sterility, meaninglessness and futi1ity, and amid the grandeur and extravagance a spiritual waste1and and a hint of decadence and moral decay. this undeniable juxtaposition of appearance with reality, of the pretense of gaiety with the tension underneath, is easily recognizable in fitzgerald's novels and stories.
2. fitzgerald and the american dream:
(1) fitzgerald's fictions often deal with the bankruptcy of the american dream, which is high1ighted by the disillusionment of the protagonists' personal dreams due to the clashes between their romantic vision of life and the sordid reality. american dream is a popular belief that people can achieve success, whether it is wealth, fame or love through honest hard working in a new world of liberty, equality, chances and promises. yet in the 1920s, the american dream was bankrupt in the sense that the wealthy people were spiritually disorientated and morally corrupted. the fact that the rich people turned to be more indifferent and careless brought forth the disillusionment of american dream.
a great number of his stories started with the basic situation in which a rising young man of the middle class is in love with the daughter of a very rich family. the young man is not attracted by the fortune in itself; he is not seeking money so much as what money can bring to him; and he loves the girl not so much as he loves what the gir1 symbolizes. money is only a convenient and inadequate symbol for what he dreams of earning, and love merely a vehicle that can transport him to a magic world of eternal happiness. the man's real dream, as malcolm cow1ey suggested, is that of achieving a new status and a new essence, of rising to a loftier place in the mysterious hierarchy of human worth.
(2) fitzgerald's own life was a mirror of the 1920s. he was the victim of his "american dream." he was fascinated with material wealth on one hand by writing hard to accumulate wealth to live an extravagant life, yet was bewildered with the wealth on the other, fully aware of the underlying spiritual disorientation and moral decay. finally in his life, alcoholism, loneliness and despair combined to ruin him. so his dream backfires him.
3. fitzgerald's style:
he is a great stylist in american literature. his style, closely re1ated to his themes, is explicit and chilly. his accurate dialogues, his careful observation of mannerism, styles, models and attitudes provide the reader with a vivid sense of reality. he fol1ows 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. 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.
四．应用selected reading:
an excerpt from chapter ili of the great gatsby
(1) the theme of the novel: the great gatsby, by summarizing the experiences and attitudes of the glamorous and wild 1920s, deals with the bankruptcy of the american dream, which is high1ighted by the disillusionment of the protagonist's personal dream due to the clashes between his romantic vision of life and the relentless reality. american dream is a popular belief that people can achieve success, whether it is wealth, fame or love through honest hard working in a new world of liberty, equality, chances and promises. yet in the 1920s, the american dream was bankrupt in the sense that the wealthy people were spiritually disorientated and morally corrupted. the fact that the rich people turned to be more indifferent and careless brought forth the disillusionment of american dream.
the story of the great gatsby is a good illustration. at the beginning of the story, gatsby, a poor young man from the midwest, is in love with but rejected by an upper-class woman, daisy. he later attains the wealth by bootlegging and other criminal activities. yet his fascination with and pursuit of money is but the means of recapturing the past and regaining his lost love. and for him, daisy is the representation of a kind of idealized happiness. so gatsby's real dream is that of achieving a new status and a new essence, of rising to a loftier place in the mysterious hierarchy of human worth. that is why daisy buchanan seems so charming to gatsby and that is why gatsby has directed his who1e life to winning back her love. yet his dream ended up with daisy's indifference and carelessness. under this thematic design, the novel displays some modern motifs like the waste-land theme as symbolized by the valley of ashes and boredom as reflected in daisy and tom.
(2) chapter Ⅲ of the novel, a vivid description of one of gatsby's fabulous parties, presents a vivid atmosphere of paradox. gatsby's party, characteristic of the roaring twenties in the u.s. evokes both the romance and the sadness of the jazz age. on the surface, the party is crowded, yet empty of warmth or friendship, with people coming to the party eagerly but appearing indifferent and contemptuous of their host. gatsby himself as the host is a paradox -- exceedingly courteous but keeps himself detached from the noisy and confusing crowd, because he, though fascinated with the wealth, was fully aware of the corruptive nature of the society and the vanity fair. the charm and sweetness of the youth is spoiled by triviality and tawdriness; the splendid house and garden is purchased not for enjoyment but for impression. there is every sign of merriment, with guests eating, drinking, laughing, moving about and dancing, but people get dead drunk, break down in tears or quarrel over trivialities. so beneath the wealthy people's masks of relaxation and joviality there was only sterility, meaninglessness and futi1ity, and amid the grandeur and extravagance a spiritual waste1and and a hint of decadence and moral decay. this undeniable juxtaposition of appearance with reality, of the pretense of gaiety with the tension underneath, is easily recognizable in fitzgerald's novels and stories.
v. ernest hemingway (l899-1961)
一．一般识记
his life and writing:
hemingway was a myth in his own time and his life was colorful. he was born in oak park, illinois. hemingway loved sports and often went hunting and fishing with his father, which provided him with writing materials. after high school, he worked as a reporter. during world war i he served as an honorable junior officer in the american red cross ambulance corps and in 1918 was severely wounded in both legs. after the war, he went to paris as a foreign reporter. influenced and guided by sherwood anderson, stephen crane and gertrude stein he became a writer and began to attract attention. later he actively participated in the spanish civil war and world war ii. in 1954, he was awarded the nobe1 prize for literature. in 196l, in ill hea1th, anxiety and deep depression, hemingway shot himself with a hunting gun.
二．识记
his major works: greatly and permanently affected by the war experiences, hemingway formed his own writing style, together with his theme and hero. his first book in our time (1925) presents a hemingway hero called nick adams. exposed to and victimized by violence in various forms, nick becomes the prototype of the wounded hero who, with all the dignity and courage he could muster, confronts situations which are not of his own choosing yet threaten his destruction. the sun also rises(l926), hemingway's first true novel, casts light on "the lost generation." the young expatriates in this novel are a group of wandering, amusing, but aimless peop1e, who are caught in the war and removed from the path of ordinary life. hemingway's second big success is a farewell to arms (1929) wrote the epitaph to a decade and to the whole generation in the 1920s. it tells us about the tragic 1ove story about a wounded american soldier with a british nurse. frederick henry represents the experience of a whole nation, who is wounded in war and disi11usioned with the insanity and futility of the universe. in this novel, hemingway not on1y emphasizes his belief that man is trapped both physically and mental1y, but goes to same lengths to refute the idea of nature as an expression of either god's design or his beneficence and to suggest that man is doomed to be entrapped. for whom the bell tolls concerns a volunteer american guerrilla robert jordan fighting in the spanish civil war. although fully aware of the doomed failure of his struggle, he keeps on striving because it is a cause of freedom and democracy. in the end, the manner of his dying convinces people that life is worth living and there are causes worth dying for. the old man and the sea, capping his career and leading to his receipt of the nobel prize, is about an old cuban fisherman santiago and his losing battle with a giant marlin. in a tragic sense, it is a representation of life as a struggle against unconquerable natural forces in which only a partial victory is possible. nevertheless, there is a feeling of great respect for the struggle and mankind.
hemingway's other important works include men without women (1927), death in the afternoon (l932), the green hills of africa (1935), the snows of kilimanjaro (1936) and to have and have not (1937).
三．领会
1. the themtic patterns of his works:
(1) the lost generation: it refers to, in general, the post-world warⅠgeneration, but specifically a group of expatriate disillusioned intellectuals and artists, who experimented on new modes of thought and expression by rebelling against former ideals and values and replacing them only by despair or a cynical hedonism. the remark of gertrude stein, "you are all a lost generation, "addressed to hemingway, was used as an epigraph to hemingway's novel the sun also rises, which brilliantly describes those expatriates who had cut themselves off from their past in america in order to create new types of writing. the generation was "lost" in the sense that they were disillusioned with the war-wrecked world and spiritually alienated from a u.s. that seemed to be hopelessly provincial, materialistic, and emotional barren. the term embraces hemingway, f. scott fitzgerald, ezra pound, e.e.cummings, and many other writers who made paris the center of their literary activities in the 1920s.
(2) the hemingway code hero: it refers to some protagonists in hemingway's works. in the general situation of hemingway's novels, life is full of tension and battles; the world is in chaos and man is always fighting desperately a losing battle. those who survive and perhaps emerge victorious in the process of seeking to master the code with a set of principles such as honor, courage, endurance, wisdom, discipline and dignity are known as "the hemingway code". to behave well in the lonely, losing battle with life is to show "grace under pressure" and constitutes in itself a kind of victory, a theme clearly established in the old man and the sea. 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 physical1y destroyed but never defeated spiritually. obviously, hemingway's limited fictional world implies a much broader thematic pattern and serious philosophica1 concern. hemingway code heroes plainly embody hemingway's own values and view of life.
2. hemingway's style:
his style is probably the most widely imitated of any in the 20th century. he is generally known for his "mastery of the art of modern narration." hemingway himself once said, "the dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. typical of this "iceberg" analogy is hemingway's style. according to hemingway, good literary writing should be ab1e to make readers feel the emotion of the characters directly and the best way to produce the effect is to set down exact1y every particular kind of feeling without any authoria1 comments, without conventionally emotive language, and with a bare minimum of adjectives and adverbs. seemingly simple and natural, hemingway's style is actually polished and tightly contro1led, but highly suggestive and connotative. while rendering vividly the outward physical events and sensations hemingway expresses the meaning of the story and conveys the complex emotions of his characters with a considerable range and astonishing intensity of feeling. besides, hemingway develops the style of co1loquia1ism initiated by mark twain. the accents and mannerisms of human speech are so well presented that the characters are fu11 of flesh and blood and the use of short, simple and conventional words and sentences has an effect of clearness, terseness and great care. this ruthless economy in his writing stands as a striking app1ication of mies van der rohe's architectural maxim: "less is more." no wonder hemingway was highly praised by the nobel prize committee for "his powerful style-forming mastery of the art" of creating modern fiction.
四． 应用
selected reading: indian camp
(1) theme: hemingway's concern about violence and death by revealing nick's feeling of perplexity, anxiety and terror over the misery of life and death.
(2) characterization: "indian camp" relates the story of young nick watching his father deliver an indian woman of a baby by caesarian section with a jack-knife and without anesthesia to relieve the pain. the cries of the mother and the cruel death of the husband brings the boy into contact with something that is perplexing and unpleasant. and this is actually nick's initiation into the pain and violence of birth and death. the reader is impressed by nick's innocence and perplexity over the misery of life and death.
nick adams is, when he first grows up, the early hemingway protagonist, introduced to a world of violence, disorder, and death, and learning the hard way about what the world is like. growing up in violent and dismal surroundings, nick is psychologically and emotionally wounded and is later alienated from the society. the wound is a symbol and the climax for a process of the development of the character of hemingway hero; it is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual disgrace.
(3) language: hemingway sought to endow prose with the density of poetry, making each image, each scene and each rendered act serve several purposes.
Ⅵ. william faulkner (1897-l962)
一． 一般识记
his life and writing:
faulkner is the most powerful and eloquent representative of american southern writers. american southern writers mainly write about the histiry, customs, people and social change of the american south, a region that contains much beauty, violence, passion, courage and, finally tragedy. it was from the region's characteristics that faulkner drew the material for most of his fiction.
faulkner was born in new albany, mississippi and raised in nearby oxford, and lived there almost all his life. he left school in his teens and later studied as aspecial student at the university of mississippi. fond of literature, he was increasingly motivated to become a writer. in 1918, he enlisted in the british royal flying corps. later he travelled europe and learned the experimental writing of james joyce and of the ideas of sigmund freud. he died of a heart attack in oxford, mississippi.
二． 识记
his major works: faulkner published a volume of poetry the mirble faun (1924) and his first novel soldiers' pay (1926). in writing sartoris (l929), he began to see and feel the dignity and sorrow of what was to become his most frequently used subject matter. the sound and the fury was considered as the work of a major writer. his other major works include as i lay dying (l930), light in august (l932), absalom, absalom (1936), wild palms (1939) and the hamlet (1940). the unvanquished (1938) and go down moses (1942) are thematica1ly interwoven. an anthology of his writings is entitled the portable faulkner. in l950, he was awarded the nobel prize for the anti-racist intruder in the dust (1948). his other remarkable novels include requiem for a nun (l951), the fable (1954), the town (1957), and the mansion(1959).
of faulkner's literary works, four novels are masterpieces by any standards: the sound and the fury, light in august, absalom, absalom! and go down, moses. the sound and the fury is his acclaimed masterpiece, an account of the tragic downfall of the compson family. it is a story of "lost innocence," which proves itself to be an intensification of the theme of imprisonment in the past. faulkner develops the theme of deterioration and loss by juxtaposing the childhood of the compson brothers with their present experience. as a resu1t, the novel not merely relates quentin's nosta1gic feeling about the past, or a southern family that remains trapped within its past, but conveys a strong sense of grief over the deterioration of the south from the past to the present.
the major concern of light in august is primarily about the south as a state of mind. in this novel, different attitudes towards life - plainly obsessions with the past, with blood or race and solely concern with bringing forth and preserving life - represented by different major characters.
absalom, absalom! is a novel entirely of the attempts to explain the past, characterized by involutions of narrative structure. it is immensely complex, for it is both a "historical novel" and a novel about history as an epistemological problem.
go down, moses is in a sense a companion piece to absalom, absalom! but at the same time another and very different attempt to handle the southern reality of land, family and the plantation as a form of life. in this book, faulkner illuminates the problem of b1ack and white in southern society as a close-knit destiny of blood brotherhood.
the best story to highlight faulkner's concern is "the bear" in which the view of the moral abomination of slavery and the human entanglements goes beyond history, to the beginnings, to the mythic time. in this story, fau1kner skillfully emp1oys an o1d crafty bear as a symbol of the timeless freedom of the wilderness.
三．领会
1. yoknapatawpha county as the setting:
most of faulkner's works are set in the american south, with his emphasis on the southern subjects and consciousness. they are about people from a sma1l region in northern mississippi, yoknapatawpha county, which is actually an imaginary place based on faulkner's childhood memory about the town of oxford in his native lafayette county. with his rich imagination, faulkner turned the land, the people and the history of the region into a literary creation and a mythical kingdom. the yoknapatawpha stories deal, generally, with the historical period from the civil war up to the 1920s when the first world war broke out, and people of a stratified society, the aristocrats, the new rich, the poor whites, and the blacks. as a result, yoknapatawpha county has become an allegory or a parable of the old south, with which faulkner has managed successfully to show a panorama of the experience and consciousness of the whole southern society. the yoknapatawpha saga is faulkner's real achievement.
2. the thematic pattern:
most of the major themes are directly related to the tragic collision or confrontation between the old south and the new south (or the civilized modern society) represented by different characters in his novels.
(1) faulkner exemplified t. s. eliot's concept of modern society as a wasteland in a dramatic way. he lamented the decline of the old south and condemned the mechanized, industrialized society which has dehumanized man by forcing him to cultivate fa1se values and decrease those essential human values such as love, courage, fortitude, honesty and goodness. faulkner held tolerance and compassion with traditional values such as serenity and elegance on one hand, and recognized the need to redefine and reaffirm them on the other.
(2) the past and the present, nature and society are always juxtaposed in his works. almost all of his protagonists turn out to be tragic because they are prisoners of the past, or of the society, or of some social and moral taboos, or of their own introspective personalities. by describing his protagonists the way he does, faulkner suggests that society, which conditions man with its hierarchical stratification and with its laws, the civi1ization and socia1 institutions, eliminates man's chance of responding naturally to the experiences of his existence. man, turning away from reality by alienating himself from truth with his attempts to explain the inexplicable, becomes weak and cowardly, confused and ineffectua1.
3. faulkner's narrative technique:
he has always been regarded as a man with great might of invention and experimentation. he added to the theory of the novel as an art form and evolved his own literary strategies.
(1) withdrawal of the author as a controlling narrator: to him, the primary duty of a writer was to explore and represent the infinite possibilities inherent in human life. therefore a writer should observe with no judgement whatsoever and reduce authorial intrusion to the lowest minimum.
(2) dislocation of the narrative time: the most characteristic way of structuring his stories is to fragment the chronological time. he deliberately broke up the chrono1ogy of his narrative by juxtaposing the past with the present, in the way the montage does in a movie.
(3) the modern stream-of-consciousness technique and the interior monologue: stream-of-consciousness technique was frequent1y and skillfully exploited by faulkner to emphasize the reactions and inner musings of the narrator. and the interior monologue helps him achieve the most desirable effect of exploring the nature of human consciousness.
(4) multiple points of view: the employment of several narrators or narrative points of views to tell a story, thus making the structure of the book somewhat radiative. for example, the sound and the fury uses four different narrative voices to piece together the story and thus challenges the reader by presenting a fragmented plot told from multiple points of view.
(5) the other narrative techniques he used to construct his stories include symbolism and mythological and biblical a11usions.
3. faulkner's language: he was a master of his own particular style of writing. great writers such as edgar allen poe, nathaniel hawthorne, henry james and james joyce all had a part in influencing faulkner. his prose, marked by long and embedded sentences, complex syntax, and vague reference pronouns and a variety of "registers" of the english language, is very difficu1t to read. in contrast, faulknen cou1d sound very casual or informal sometimes. he captured the dialects of the mississippi characters. most of the symbols and imageries are drawn from nature.
四． 应用
a rose for emily
(1) the theme: "a rose for emily" is faulkner's first short story published in 1930. set in the town of jefferson in yoknapatawpha, the story expresses faulkner's theme of the confrontation of the old south and the civilized modern society. emily is in collision with the industrialized and mechanized society by clinging to the past and alienating herself from the modern society, which makes her a tragic victim.
(2) characterization: as a descendent of the southern aristocracy, emily grierson is typical of those in faulkner's yoknapatawpha stories that are symbols of the old south but also the prisoners of the past. firstly, she depended on her father and clang to his memory by remaining unmarried because of dominance of her father and his rigid ideas about social status, by keeping his portrait in a prominent place in her living room, by refusing to release her father's dead body for burial and by assuming her father's domineering traits ( she "carries her head high in her dignity as the last grierson." ) secondly, emily was eccentric in refusing to accept the passage of time or the inevitable social change by refusing to pay taxes, buying poison and offering no explanation and refusing to cooperate with modern postal service. thirdly, emily demonstrates her deformed personality and abnormality in her relationship with her sweetheart. her refusal to adapt herself to the new order and her defiance of the old order are not just pathetic attempts to cling to the past, but developed into obsession and homicidal mania by killing homer barren in order to keep him.
however, it is important to remember that emily, for all her eccentricities, not to mention her serious mental illness, is never laughed at or treated with contempt or disgust. she is seen first and foremost as a tragic human being. though twisted by forces beyond her control, her struggle to assert her will even in madness, has something valiant and heroic about it. faulkner holds tolerance and compassion for her tragedy on one hand, because she displays serenity and elegance in character; he partially condemns her alienation of herself from the reality which makes her tragedy inevitable.
(3) stylitic features: in this story, faulkner also employed the dislocated time sequence by juxtaposing the past with the present. the story is divided into five sections which represent five petals of rose. faulkner makes best use of the gothic devices in narration to dramatize emily's deformed personality and abnormality in her relationship with her sweetheart. other narative techniques used in the story include the multiple points of view and symbolism. take symbolism for example, emily as "the fallen monument " is the symbol of tradition, the old south and old way of life, while gin and gasoline pumps, taxes, postal service are symbols of mechanized and civilized modern society. rose is associated with love, but here "a dead rotten love." it shows faulkner's sympathy or respect for emily.