美国文学史资料整理

● 1. Realistic Fiction (Sherwood Anderson, John Steinbeck, John Dos

Passos)

● 2. Lost Generation (F.S. Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway)

● 3. Southern Literature (William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter )

● 4. Modern Poetry (Ezra Pound , Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot )

● 5. African American Literature (Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Alice

Walker/ Harlem Renaissance)

● 6. The Rise of Modern American Drama (Eugene O?Neil)

●7. Black Humor Literature (Joseph Heller, Kurt V onnegut)

●8. Realistic Fiction (J.D. Salinger, John Updike )

●9. Chinese American Literature(Amy Tan)

名词解释：

1.The Lost Generation

The phrase was coined by Gertrude Stein (spoken to Hemingway): “You are all a lost generation.”

Group of American writers in the Post-World War One era who were:

Displeased with American social values, sexual and aesthetic conventions, and established morality.

First fled to cities such as Chicago and San Francisco; then to Paris, London, Madrid, Barcelona, and Rome (in particular, Montparnasse蒙帕纳斯).

All pioneered new ways of writing, rebelling against the traditional Victorian literary style.

Writers such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, and Gertrude Stein.

2.Jazz Age

The Jazz Age describes the period of the 1920s and 1930s, the years between World War I and World War II, particularly in North America; with the rise of the Great Depression, the values of this age saw much decline. Perhaps the most representative literary work of the age is American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald?s The Great Gatsby, highlighting what some describe as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individualism. Fitzgerald is largely credited with coining the term “The Jazz Age”.

3.Imagism:

Ezra Pound defines an image as that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.

An image was “ a virtex or cluster of fused ideas …endowed with energy”.

It was a rebellion against the traditional poetics which failed to reflect the new life of the new country.

It offered a new way of writing

It influenced lots of modern poets

In a Station of the Metro 在一个地铁车站（Ezra Pound）

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; 人群中这些面孔幽灵一般显现；Petals on a wet, black bough. 湿漉漉的黑色枝条上的许多花瓣.

4.Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. It was known as the "New Negro Movement", The Harlem Renaissance is unofficially recognized, representatives are Langston Hughes, Richard Wright(Native Son (1940) 《土生子》) and so on.

Theme: to search for their own lives and values, to get the same attention as well as the whites

5.Black humor

Black humor, in literature, drama, and film, grotesque or morbid humor used to express the absurdity, insensitivity, paradox, and cruelty of the modern world, Joseph Heller 约瑟夫?海勒Catch-22(1961) 《第二十二条军规》

Kurt V onnegut 库尔特?冯内古特Slaughterhouse Five（1969）《五号屠宰场》Thomas Pynchon 托马斯?品钦Gravity…s Rainbow(1973) 《万有引力之虹》

I. Realistic Fiction

Sherwood Anderson：Sherwood Anderson was an American writer, mainly of short stories, most notably the collection Winesburg, Ohio.

That work's influence on American fiction was profound, and its literary voice can be heard in Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, John Steinbeck, Erskine Caldwell and others.

Novels:

Windy McPherson?s Son 《饶舌的麦克弗森的儿子》1916

Marching Men 《前进的人们》1917

Winesburg, Ohio 《小镇畸人》1919

Poor White 《穷白人》1920

Many Marriages 《多种婚姻》1923

Dark Daughter 《黑暗的笑声》1925

Short Stories:

The Triumph of the Egg《鸡蛋的胜利》1921

Horses and Men 《马与人》1923

Death in the Woods《林中之死》1933

John Steinbeck P234 The Wrath of Grapes

16 novels; 6 non-fiction books;5 collections of short stories

In the 1930s:

Of Mice and Men (1937)《人与鼠》: migrant workers, a best seller

The Grapes of Wrath (1939)《愤怒的葡萄》

In the 1940s:

The Moon Is Down (1942)《月亮下去了》

The Pearl (1947)《珍珠》

After 1950s:

East of Eden (1952)《伊甸园之东》:the most ambitious work of his

The Winter of Our Discontent (1961) 《烦恼的冬天》

1940: Pulitzer Prize --The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

1962: Nobel Prize for Literature

Writing Style:“realistic and imaginative writing, combining as it does sympathetic humor and keen social perception.”

通过现实主义的、富于想象的创作，表现出富于同情的幽默和对社会的敏感的观察

John Dos Passos U.S.A (His trilogy)

The U.S.A trilogy:

《美利坚》三部曲：

The 42nd Parallel 《北纬42度》

1919 《1919》

The Big Money 《赚大钱》

Dos Passos used experimental techniques in these novels, incorporating newspaper clippings, autobiography, biography and fictional realism to paint a vast landscape of American culture during the first decades of the 20th century.

In the fictional narrative sections, the U.S.A. trilogy relates the lives of twelve characters as they struggle to find a place in American society during the early part of the twentieth century. Each character is presented to the reader from their childhood on and in free indirect speech

his experimental device:

Newsreels 新闻短片Camera Eye 摄影机眼Biographies 人物肖像

II. The Lost Generation 迷惘的一代

Francis Scott Fitzgerald

He had been regarded as the representative figure of the …Jazz Age?;the spokesman of the “Roaring Twenties”

This Side of Paradise《人间天堂》(1920) (an immediate success; the first American novel depicting the cas ual dissipations of “flaming youth”; also reflects the new norms of the 1920s which also known as the “roaring 20s”, “Jazz Age”, and “Dollar Decade” )

The Beautiful and Damned (1922) (sold extremely well)

The Great Gatsby (1925) (his best novel)

Tender Is the Night (1934) (deeper and more tragic)

The Last Tycoon (1940)(published posthumously)

Fitzgerald is largely credited with coming the term "Jazz Age," which he used in such books as his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age.

His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned (1922), also deals with the era and its effect on a young married couple.

Fitzgerald's last completed novel, Tender Is the Night(1934) takes place in the same decade but is set in France and Switzerland not New York, and consequently is not widely considered a Jazz Age novel.

Hemingway, Ernest Miller1899-1961)

Nobel Prize Winner

Hemingway's writings and his personal life exerted a profound influence on American writers of his time.Many of his works are regarded as classics of American literature, and some have been made into motion pictures

(1)“The Sun Also Rises”1926 (Deep illusion of the whole generation after the WWI; the characters indulged themselves in depraved life to make themselves numb)

(2)“A Farewell to Arms” 1928 (a tragic story about war and love) (Hero and heroine: Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley)

(3)“For Whom the Bell Tolls” 1940 (Spanish civil war) (also a story about war and love) (the title o f the novel: from John Donne?s sermons )

(4)"The Old Man and the Sea” 1952 (In 1954, Hemingway got the Nobel Prize)

a quite special novel in all his novels

symbolism

Santiago – mankind;

sea – nature and environment;

marlin – purpose of life;

shark – the evil force which control human’s fate

theme: the importance of life lies in the process of searching and resistance Major Themes of Hemingway’s work:

*The “Nada” Concept

*Grace under pressure

*Code Hero

*Grace under pressure:

However, 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 physically destroyed but never defeated spiritually.

*Code Hero:

a Hemingway character who lives correctly, following certain principles of honor, courage, and endurance which in a life of tension and pain make a man a man. Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory:

There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn’t show.”

展现在人们面前的每一处冰山都有八分之七藏在水面以下。你所知道的一切，你都可以删剪，这只会让你的冰山更有份量。重要的是水面以下的部分。Writing style of Hemingway

(1) simple and natural

(2) direct, clear and fresh

(3) lean and economical

(4) simple, conversational, common found, fundamental words

(5) simple sentences

(6) Iceberg principle: understatement, implied things

(7) Symbolism

III.American Southern Literature

William Faulkner

Won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949

Won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954 and 1962.

Won O Henry Award in 1939: Barn Burning 《烧牲口棚》

He invented a county: Yoknapatawpha, and a town in his imagination, very similar to his own part of Mississippi.

Faulkner is considered one of the most important writers of the Southern Literature of the United States. He is primarily known and acclaimed for his novels and short stories, many of which are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County,a setting Faulkner created based on Lafayette County, where he spent most of his childhood. Katherine Anne Porter(女性作家)

Pulitzer Prize

She is known for her penetrating insight; her works deal with dark themes such as betrayal, death and the origin of human evil.

Ship of Fools

IV. Modern Poetry

Ezra Pound

the father of modern American poetry

Pound’s Cantos is the best long poem in modern literature.

Cathay 《华夏集》(1915)

Translation of ancient Chinese poetry

Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (1920)《休·塞尔温·莫伯利》

The Cantos 《诗篇》(1917-1959)

Homage to Sextus Propertius (1917)

T.S. Eliot

influence of his contemporary Ezra Pound

In 1927 he became a British citizen

In 1948 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature

In 1965 he died in London.

●1915: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock《普鲁弗洛克的情歌》

●1922: The Wasteland《荒原》

●1935-1942: Four Quartets《四个四重奏》

●1935: Murder in the Cathedral 《大教堂谋杀案》

●1939: Family Reunion 《阖家团聚》

●1949: The Cocktail Party《鸡尾酒会》

Robert Frost

Nature and rural surroundings became for Frost a source for insights into deeper design of life.

He once said: "Literature begins with geography."

Pulitzer Prize Winner

New Hampshire 1923 <<新罕布什尔>>

Collected Poems 1930 <<诗集>>

A Further Range 1936 <<又一片牧场>>

A Witness Tree 1942 <<见证树>>

Collection of poems:

A Boy?s Will 1913 <<一个男孩的意愿>>

North of Boston, 1914 << 波士顿的北部>>

Mountain Interval, 1916 <<山间>>

Some famous poems

“The Road Not Taken” (1916)

“Stopping by Woods” (1923)

“Fire & Ice” (1923)

“Nothing Gold Can Stay” (1923)

V. African American Literature

Langston Hughes

Poet laureate 桂冠诗人

●The Weary Blues, 1926 诗集《疲靡的布鲁斯》

●Fine Clothes to the Jew, 1927 诗集《犹太人的好衣服》

●The Ways of White Folks. 1934 小说集《白人的行径》

●The Negro Speaks of Rivers 诗歌《黑人谈河流》

Richard Wright

●Uncle Tom…s Children (1938) 《汤姆大叔的孩子们》

●Native Son (1940) 《土生子》

●Black Boy (1945) 《黑孩子》

●The Outsider (1953) 《局外人》

VI. American Drama and Eugene O’Neil

Eugene O'Neill

The only American playwrite ever to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature

The first American dramatist to regard the stage as a literary medium

Influenced by realism of Ibsen and expressionism of Strindberg

●1920: Beyond the Horizon 《天边外》

●1920: The Emperor Jones 《琼斯王》

●1920: Anna Christie《安娜·克里斯蒂》

●1921: The Hairy Ape 《毛猿》

●1924: Desire Under the Elms 《榆树下的欲望》

●1925: The Great God Brown 《大神布朗》

●1928: The Strange Interlude 《奇异的插曲》

●1931: Mourning Becomes Electra 《悲悼》

●1934: Days Without End 《无穷的岁月》

●1939: The Iceman Cometh 《送冰人来了》

●1940: Long Day’s Journey into Night《进入黑夜的漫长旅程》

Three Pulitzer Prizes(1920, 1922, 1928) and the Noble Prize in 1936

VII. Black Humor Literature(见名词解释)

VIII. Realistic Fiction

J. D. Salinger

●THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (1951), a story about a rebellious teenage

schoolboy and his quixotic experiences in New York.

John Updike

Rabbit series

Beat Generation

Jack Kerouac: On the Road

William Burroughs : Naked Lunch

In Poetry:

Allen Ginsberg：Howl

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Pictures from the Gone World.

VIIII.Chinese American Literature

Chinese American Literature

Amy Tan (谭恩美):

The Joy Luck Club (喜福会)

The Kitchen God’s Wife 《灶君娘娘》(1991)

The Hundred Secret Senses 《百种神秘感觉》(1995)

?The Bonesetter's Daughter called The Bonecutter's Daughter when first published. 《接骨师之女》(2001)

Saving Fish from Drowning 《沉没之鱼》(2005)