美国文学期末复习完美版 ()

（美国文学期末复习资料(完美版) Imagism （意向主义）(1)Imagism came into being in Britain and US around 1910 as a reaction to the traditional English poetry to express the sense of fragmentation and dislocation. （2）The Imagists, with Ezra Pound leading the way, hold that the most effective means to express these momentary impressions is through the use of one dominant image.(3) Imagism is characterized by the following three poetic principles: i) direct treatment of subject matter; ii) economy of expression; iii) as regards rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome; iv) Ezra Pound’s In a Station of the Metro is a well-known imagist poem.Ezra Pound (爱兹拉·庞德）Cathay (1915)《中国》a volume of Chinese translation.He blue-penciled The Waste Land《荒原》the most significant American poem of the twentieth century.Cantos 《诗章》，a modern epic Pound’s major work of poetry。

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley 《休·塞尔温·莫伯利》In a Station of the Metro《在地铁站》The apparition of these faces in the crowd; 这几张脸在人群中幻景般闪现；Petals on a wet, black bough. 湿漉漉的黑树枝上花瓣数点。

Appreciation and comment:In “In a Station of the Metro” Pound attempts to produce the emotion he felt when he walked down into a Paris subway station and suddenly saw a number of faces in the dim light. To capture the emotion, Pound uses the image of petals on a wet, black bough. The image of “petals” is juxtaposed with another image of “wet, black bough.” The image is not decoration: It is central to th e poem’s meaning. In fact, it is the poem’s meaning. Ezra Pound’s main contribution to American literatureEzra pound is regarded, and rightly, as the father of modern American poetry. Impatient with the fetters of English traditional poetics, he led the experiment in revolutionizing poetry. It was he who first discovered T.S. Eliot and blue-penciled the latter’s famous poem, The Waste Land. It was he who helped William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and William carols Williams in their literary careers. And he survived them all, writing continually right up to his death. Pound’s contribution to the development of modern poetry is very great.T.S. Eliot （T.S.艾略特）The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock《杰·阿尔弗雷德·普鲁弗洛克的情歌》—started 1915—is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement,Literary terms: soliloquy (独白）interior monologue (内心独白）dramatic monologue （戏剧独白）motif （主旨，主题）epigraph （题词）Soliloquy or interior monologue（独白或内心独白）: in drama, an extended speech delivered by a character alone on stage. The character reveals his or her innermost thoughts and feelings directly to the audience, as if thinking aloud.Dramatic monologue（戏剧独白）: A kind of narrative poem in which one character speaks to one or more listeners whose replies are not given in the poem.Epigraph（主旨）: a quotation or motto at the beginning of a chapter, book, short story, or poem that makes some point about the work.Motif（题词）: A recurring feature (such as a name, an image, or a phrase) in a work of literature. A motif generally contributes in some way to the theme of a short story, novel, poem, or play.2）The Waste Land 《荒原》In 1922, Eliot published The Waste Land 《荒原》in The Criterion《标准》. Which was thought as the most significant American poem of the 20th century and helped to establish a modern tradition of literature rich with learning and allusive thought. The poem is subdivided into five sections: I. The Brurial of the Dead II. A Game of ChessIII. The Fire Sermon IV. Death by waterV. What the Thunder Said3) The Hollow Men《空心人》(1925)4) Ash Wednesda y《圣灰星期三》(1927)5)Four Quartets《四个四重奏》（1943）: Eliot regarded Four Quartets as his masterpiece, and it is the work that led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (1948).Eliot also made significant contributions to the field of literary criticism, strongly influencing the school of New CriticismIn 1920 T.S. Eliot published his The Sacred Wood,《圣林》containing his famous critical essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent",《传统与个人才能》Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening《雪夜林边小驻》The Road Not Taken《未选择的路》（诗歌及赏析见第9页）Wallace Stevens（华莱士史蒂文斯）?(1879–1955) was an?American?Modernist?poet He won the?Pulitzer Prize for Poetry?for his?Collected Poems?in 1955.William Carlos Williams?was an American poet closely associatedwith?modernism?and?imagism. He was also a pediatrician and?general practitioner?of medicine with a?medical degree from the?University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Robert Lee Frost （罗伯特弗罗斯特）His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth centuryFrost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry Francis Scott Fitzgerald （F.S`·菲茨杰拉德）The spokesman of the “roaring 20s” “the Jazz Age”美国梦的实践者“爵士乐时代的桂冠诗人”和“喧嚣的二十年代的代言人”In 1920 Fitzgerald’s first novel This Side of Paradise 《人间天堂》（1920）second novel entitled The Beautiful and Damned《美丽的和可诅咒的》（1922）his best novel The Great Gatsby《了不起的盖茨比》（1925）the novel Tender is the Night《夜色温柔》(1934).The Last Tycoon《最后的大亨》, a novel about Hollywood and the film industry. Fitzgerald’s books of short stories include Flappers and Philosophers《时髦女和哲学家》(1921), Tales of the Jazz Age《爵士时代的故事》(1922), All the Sad Young Man 《一代悲哀的年轻人》(1926)Ernest Hemingway（厄内斯特海明威）His economical and?understated?style had a strong influence on?20th-century fiction, won the?Nobel Prize in Literature?in 1954.He was generally regarded as spokesman for the Lost Generation.The Lost Generation （迷惘的一代）1.The Lost Generation is a term first used by Gertrude Stein to describe thepost-World War I generation of American writers: men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war.2. Full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literature to date.3.The three best-known representatives of Lost Generation are F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos.his first novel, The Torrents of Spring《春湖》, but The Sun Also Rises《太阳照常升起》(1926) about the disillusionment of the lost generation was an immediate success. With the success of A Farewell to Arms (1929)《永别了武器》, he firmly established his reputation as a great American writer.The Sun Also Rises《太阳照常升起》Hemingway employed an epigraph（题词）in the novel which had been said by Gertrude Stein to describe the expatriates in Paris “You are a lost generation.” The nov el paints the image of the lost generation.A Farewell to Arms《永别了武器》It is an anti-war novel, describing the love between an American soldier Frederic Henry （弗瑞德里克亨利）and an English nurse Catherine.（凯瑟琳）For Whom the Bell Tolls《丧钟为谁而鸣》It tells of a volunteer American guerrilla in the Spanish Civil War.The Old Man and the Sea.《老人与海》It tells of a Cuban fisherman, Santiago（桑提亚哥）, who catches a big fish, only to see it devoured by sharks. The novel highlights the theme that man can be destroyed but not defeated. （你尽可以把他消灭，但就是打不败他）It is a representation of life as a struggle against unconquerable forces in which only a partial victory is possible. This book led to Hemingway's receipt of the Novel Prize in 1954.1) Hemingway was famous for his novels and short stories written his spare, laconic,terse, clear, telegraph-like, yet intense prose with short sentences and very specific details. This style is his famous “Iceberg Theory”:（冰山理论）Iceberg Theory（冰山理论）:Think of an iceberg: one eighth of an iceberg is above the water. All of the rest is underneath the water. The same is true with Hemingway’s 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. Hemingway’s vocabulary is easy and his sentence patterns are easy, but they are extremely difficult to be fully understood.Hemingway terms courage as “grace under pressure” these heroes are call ed Hemingway heroes or the code hero:（硬汉）Hemingway heroes refer to some protagonists in Hemingway's works. Such a hero usually an average man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and intelligent. And usually he is a man of action and of few words. His such an individualist, alone even when with other people, somewhat an outsider, keeping emotions under control, stoic and self-disciplined in a dreadful place where one can not get happiness. For example, Frederic Henry in A Farewell to Arms, Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises, Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea or the undefeated bullfighter.William Faulkner（威廉·福克纳）Faulkner’s first novel Soldier’s Pay《士兵的报酬》was accepted by the publishers in 1926.Faulkner’s second novel Mosquitoes (1927)《蚊群》is a satirical story about a group of southern artists and intellectuals.The years from 1929 to 1942 were a period of amazing literary output for Faulkner, such as The Sound and the Fury(1929)《喧嚣与骚动》and As I Lay Dying (1930). 《我弥留之际》He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950Major works 1. The Sound and the Fury 《喧嚣与骚动》The book is divided into 4 sections, largely reliant on Stream of Consciousness and Multiple Point of View.This novel is a complex account of the breakdown of the once distinguished and honored Compson family. The book is divided into 4 sections, largely reliant on Stream of Consciousness and Multiple Point of View. Section 1 is narrated by Benjy, the youngest member and an “idiot.” like his brothers Quentin and Jason, he is chiefly preoccupied with his sister Caddy. For Benjy, her disappearance amounts to the loss of the center of his universe. Section 2 is told by Quentin, a Harvard freshman. He commits suicide. In Section 3, Jason, the eldest son, reveals his bitterness and anger at the opportunities he has lost because of the irresponsibility and selfishness which he feels predominate in the family. Section 4 co ncentrates on the Compsons’ black servant, Dilsay, and her grandson, Luster. This section provides some objective information to unify the previous subjective narrations into an organic entity.CommentFaulkner as the foremost southern writer of the 20th century with 19 novels, 4 collections of about 70 short stories, and two volumes of poetry. His important subjects are childhood, families, sex, obsessions the past and the modern southern memory, myth and reality, race, and alienation. His theme is essentially an analysis of the underlyingcause for the failure and decay of the South before the Civil War. His fiction carries a strong sense of fragmentation in social community and within the individual himself due to the loss of love and lack emotional response.He is noted for the Yoknapatawpha stories/saga in which the fictional Yoknapatawpha County is the setting. The country stands for the Old South. It also serves as allegory or a parable of the Old South. He writes about the disintegration of the old social system in the American Southern States and its effect on the lives of modern people, both black and white. It shows a panorama of the experience and consciousness of the whole Southern society.Stream of Consciousness: （意识流）Stream of Consciousness or interior monologue, is one of the modern literary techniques. It was first used in 1922 by the Irish novelist James Joyce. The modern American writer William Faulkner successfully advanced this technique. In the stories, action and plots are less important than the reactions and inner musings of the narrators. Time sequences are often dislocated. The reader feels himself to be a participant in the stories, rather than an observer.Multiple Point of View(多重视角)Faulkner was a master at presenting multiple points of view, showing within the same story how the characters reacted differently to the same person or the same situation. The use of this technique gave the story a circular form wherein one event was the center, with various points of view radiating from it. The multiple point of view technique makes the reader recognize the difficulty of arriving at a true judgment.2. Light in August《八月之光》3. Go Down, Moses.《去吧，摩西》4. As I Lay Dying《在我弥留之际》5. Absalom, Absalom!《押沙龙，押沙龙！》Two famous short s tories:“A Rose for Emily” 《纪念埃米莉的一朵玫瑰花》“The Bear”《熊》Sinclair Lewis （辛克莱`刘易斯）he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the?Nobel Prize in LiteratureBut it was not until 1920 when Main Street《大街》appeared that he established his position as a very effective novelist.Lewis published Babbitt《巴比特》which is generally regarded as his best bookHis other novels ：Arrowsmith (1925)《阿罗史密斯》, and Dodsworth (1929).《杜德史沃斯》John Dos Passos （多斯·帕索斯）major works:U.S.A 《美国》或《美利坚》The trilogy comprises?The 42nd Parallel?(1930)《北纬42度》,?1919?(1932), and?The Big Money?(1936) 《赚大钱》Dos Passos used experimental techniques in these novels: the “Newsreels”（新闻短片）, the “Biographies”（人物小传）and the“Camera Eye”（摄相机镜头）(P263-264)?to paint a vast landscape of American culture during the first decades of the 20th century.John Steinbeck （约翰·斯坦贝克）Steinbeck’s literary reputation was further built up by his next three novels: In Dubious Battle 《胜负未决》(1936), Of Mice and Men (1937)《人鼠之间》about the tragic friendship of two migrant workers, and The Grapes of Wrath(1939)《愤怒的葡萄》. His masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath won a Pulitzer Prize in 1940. In 1947, he published The Pearl. 《珍珠》In 1962, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.American Drama ：Eugene O’Neill （尤金·奥尼尔）Eugene O'Neill was a great American playwright and t he founder of modern American drama. He won Nobel Prize for literature and Pulizter Prize four times in his life. Literary achievementsBeyond the Horizon (1920) 《天边外》(naturalism)（自然主义）The Emperor Jones (1920) 《琼斯王》(symbolism and expressionism)（象征主义和表现主义）The Hairy Ape (1922) 《毛猿》(naturalism)（自然主义）(p286)Desire under the Elms (1924) 《榆树下的欲望》(Oedipus complex)（俄狄浦斯情结/恋母情结）The Great God Brown (1926) 《伟大之神布朗》The Iceman Cometh (1946)《送冰人来了》Long Day’s Journey into Night (1956)《进入黑夜的漫漫旅程》(autobiographical play)(naturalism)（自传体戏剧自然主义）( p287)In what way was Eugene O’ Neill an experimentalist in dramatic art?O’Neill was a tireless experimentalist in dramatic art. He took drama away from the old traditions of the last century and rooted it deeply in life. he introduced the realistic or even the naturalistic aspect of life into the American theater. The stylisti c aspect of O’Neill’s art merits notice for its variety and its display of consummate craftsmanship. He borrowed freely from the best traditions of European dramas be it Greek tragedies, or the realism of Ibsen, or the expressionism of Strindberg, and fused them into the organic art of his own. He borrowed freely from modern literary techniques such as thestream-of-consciousness device with the help of which he managed to reveal the emotional and psychological complexities of modern man. O’Neill’s ceasele ss experimentation enriched American drama and influenced later playwrights such as Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee. It is possible that he will go down in the history of American drama as the American Shakespeare. （P288）Tennessee Williams （田纳西·威廉斯）The Glass Menagerie (1944) 《玻璃动物园》A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)《欲望号街车》, winning the first Pulitzer PrizeOther best plays are Summer and Smoke (1948)《夏日烟云》,The Rose Tattoo (1950)《玫瑰纹身》Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1954)《热铁皮屋顶上的猫》. won him his second Pulitzer Prize, dealing with sultry sex and violence in humorous terms.Arthur Miller （亚瑟·米勒）All My Sons?(1947)《吾子吾弟》,?Death of a Salesman?(1949)《推销员之死》（winning the Pulitzer Prize）,?The Crucible (1953) 《严峻考验》and?A View from the Bridge (1955)《桥头眺望》A typical theme of Arthur Miller’s plays concerns the dilemma of modern man in relation to his family and work. What occurs often in a Miller play is that the hero finds himself under a pressure from his society and its ethics, tries in vain to extricate himself from the physical and spiritual quandary into which he has fallen and finds release only in death, often in the form of actual or virtual suicide. The world is harsh. There is little or no choice for the hero. Either he submits to the impossible demands of society, or he rejects them. He dies in either case. Miller is, however, , not completely pessimistic. Reading his plays, one feels a faith in man and in life, however vague it may be, though very often gloom overweight hope.（P299）Edward Albee （爱德华·阿尔比）The Zoo Story?(1958)《动物园的故事》,?The Sandbox(1959)《沙箱》,?Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf??(1962). 《谁害怕弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫》His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the?Theatre of the Absurd.? （荒诞剧）Postmodernism（后现代主义）（P312-313）Postmodernism represents a new mode of perception and a way of writing. In poetry it strives to go against the vogue of the New Critical poem and its parent style, the High Modernism of the previous decades. It its thematic concerns, Postmodernism views the world as one that is not to be molded, but as formless and unpredictable. Postmodernism does not endeavor to impose on life and reality, but is willing to embrace it for what it is. And it tends to use topics and subjects of a personal, even a forbidden, nature. In its formal aspects, Postmodernism seeks for a freedom in literary expression. Postmodernism asserts its own identify by virtue of its negation, partial in some cases, of its inheritance. Postmodernist novel exhibits its own unique features such as metafiction, black humor, and forms of avantgardism.The Beat Generation（垮掉的一代）（P362）In the 1950s, there was a widespread discontentment among the postwar generation, whose voice was one of protest against all the mainstream culture that America had come to represent. This has co me to be known as the Beat Generation. The word “beat,” which Ginsberg and his friend Jack Kerouac picked up from a junkie friend of theirs, represented a non-conformist, rebellious attitude toward conventional values concerning sex, religion, the arts, and the American way of life. It was an attitude that resulted from the feeling of depression and exhaustion and the need to escape into an unconventional sometimes communal, mode of living. “beat” literature offered something like a fresh breath of wind both in the prose and poetry of the 1950s and 1960s. The most enduring works are represented by Jack Kerouac’sOn the Road杰克·克鲁亚克的《在路上》andWilliam Burroughs’s Naked Lunch威廉·巴勒斯的《裸体午餐》in prose and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl 艾伦·金斯堡的《嚎叫》and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Pictures from the Gone world劳伦斯·弗林盖特《小时的世界之画面》in poetry.Allen Ginsberg （艾伦·金斯堡）The poet laureate of the Beat Generation.The spokesman for the Beat Generation In 1955, at the Six Gallery, he read aloud his poem “Howl” to his friends. This night has been called “the birth trauma of the Beat Generation.”in 1956, with the help of his friend, he published Howl and Other poems which is a consummate work of carefully worded invectives, a torrent of deliberate voluble curses, spearheaded against an America that has destroyed “the best minds” of the postwar generation.Howl《嚎叫》is now regarded as the most significant long poem of the contemporary period, ranking among others, with Whiteman’s “Song of Myself” (惠特曼的《自我之歌》)and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land（艾略特的《荒原》）.(P370)Ginsberg’s other collections include Kaddish and Other Poems《卡迪西》, Empty Mirror《空镜》, Reality Sandwiches《现实的三明治》, White Shroud, Poems 1980-1985, 《白色尸衣，诗集1980-1985》and etcSaul Bellow （索尔·贝娄）Bellow was awarded the?Pulitzer Prize, the?Nobel Prize for LiteratureHis best-known works include The Adventures of Augie March《奥吉·玛琪历险记》,?Henderson the Rain King《雨王汉德逊》,?Herzog《赫索格》,?Mr. Sammler's Planet 《赛姆勒先生的行星》?Seize the Day《只争朝夕》,Humboldt's Gift《洪堡的礼物》?and?Ravelstein《拉维尔斯坦》Saul Bellow’s basic themes of the novelsSaul Bellow’s basic themes are essentially three-fold: first, he views contemporary society as a threat to human life and human integrity. Modern civilization tends to dehumanize, making people lose their distinction and turning them into what he calls “fat goods”. Material affluence distracts and produces a sense of alienation. Then living in such an environment, people tend to become paranoid, high-strung, and impotent, and so lose their sanity. Bellovian characters suffer most from a kind of psychosis. They go through a phase before they regain their mental balance and serenity. Finally, there is the quest motif, a quest for truth and values, difficult, excruciating, but successful in a way. Comment:Saul Bellow is the first important Jewish novelist to begin publishing in themid-1940s. His novels present the problems of the modern urban man in search of his identity. This is a common theme that many writers develop in the postwar era. But he does it with the Jewish character and with particular Jewish flavor. His is often acclaimed as the best writer after Hemingway and Faulkner. He received Nobel Prize in 1976 because “the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture are combined in his work.”J.D. Salinger(J.D·塞林格)In 1951, he published his first and only novel, The Catcher in the Rye《麦田守望者》, and became famous overnight. The novel deals with the 16-year-old boy Holden Caulfield, a modern Huck Finn.Comment on the novelHolden is out of step with the educational, commercial, and sexual customs of the adult society and able to see through and expose its falsities and “phoniness.” as he believes that all children are in danger of losing their innocence and integrity in a corrupt and decadent world, he wishes to be a catcher in the rye. Rebellious against the dubious values of the adult world, he represents the young people who are unable to talk to their parents or accept the “American way of life.” From the experience of this young boy, the novel reveals hypocrisy, venality, and squalor in society. This novel uses the first person point of view, and is written in a typical children’s language and from a child’s perspective of innocence. Evidently, it follows Mark Twain’s tradition.Joseph Heller（约瑟夫·海勒）Joseph Heller is the most prominent American novelist of the absurd in the postwar period.His famous novel, Catch-22 (1961) 《第二十二条军规》The novel is an anti-war novel about death. It is a typical case of black humor（黑色幽默）.The author creates a character, Yossarian, an image of anti-hero（反英雄）Black humor(黑色幽默)：Black humor refers to the use of the morbid and the absurd in literature for darkly comic purpose. It carries the tone of anger and bitterness in the grotesque situations of suffering, anxiety and death. It makes readers laugh at the blackness of modern life. The representative novel of black humor in American literature is Joseph Heller’ Catch-22. 《第二十二条军规》Anti-hero（反英雄）:Ant-ihero refers to the chief person in a modern novel or play whose character is widely discrepant from that which we associate with the traditional protagonist or hero of a serious literary work. Instead of manifesting largeness, dignity, power, or heroism, the antihero is petty, ignominious, passive, ineffectual, or dishonest. The use of non-heroic protagonists occurs as early as the picaresque novel（流浪汉小说）of the 16th century, and the heroine of Defoe’s Moll Flanders《摩尔·弗兰德斯》is a thiefand a prostitute（妓女）. The term “antihero”, however, is usually applied to writings in the period of disillusion after the Second World War. For example, Yossarian in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.《第二十二条军规》Stopping by Woods on a Snowy EveningWhose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village though;He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistakeThe only other sound’s the sweepOf easy wind and downy flake.The woods are lovely, dark and deep.But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep.雪夜林畔小驻?想来我认识这座森林，? 林主的庄宅就在邻村,? 却不会见我在此驻马，? 看他林中积雪的美景。