常耀信《美国文学简史》笔记和考研真题详解(20世纪30年代 多斯 帕索斯 斯坦贝克)【圣才出品】

第17章20世纪30年代?多斯?帕索斯?斯坦贝克

17.1 复习笔记

I. The 1930s（20世纪30年代）

1. Historical background（历史背景）

To begin with, the mood of 1930 was colored differently from the very beginning. On October 24, 1929 “the bottom dropped of the stock market” and the Great Depression began. For ten years the Americans plodded through a lightless tunnel and substantial change came only when WWIIbroke out. The 1930s was truly a dark time. Banks failed, factories closed, and agriculture withered. Jobless millions roamed the streets, breadlines stretched long, and absolute poverty became a fact of life. As the Depression spread, life became a nightmarish experience of a struggle for survival for millions of people.

20世纪30年代的社会氛围从一开始便与众不同。1929年10月24日纽约华尔街证券交易所“掉穿了底盘”，大萧条至此开始。在其后长达十年间的时间里，美国人在黑暗中挣扎。直到二战爆发情况才有所改观。20世纪30年代是真正黑暗的时代，银行关门，工厂倒闭，农业凋敝。数百万失业者涌上街头，等待救济食物的队伍像长龙一般，极度贫困成为不争的事实。随着大萧条的进一步蔓延，对于许多人来是说生存本身成为一场不折不扣的搏斗。

2. Overview of literature in 1930s（20世纪30年代文学简介）

If T. S. Eliot had tried to represent a spiritual waste land in his famous poem, the writers of the 1930s were faced with the challenge of painting a physical waste land that America had become. It was apparent that social concern was topmost in the minds of many authors, and that social involvement was to be the major feature of the literature of the thirties. All the three major departments of literature—fiction, poetry and drama—exerted their best efforts to rise to the challenge of history.

(1) The 1930s was a great age of fiction. Dreiser’s naturalistic style became a model of sorts for the depression novelists. The two major authors who became dominant figures in fiction were John Dos Passos and John Steinbeck. Dos Passos’U. S. A and Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, along with their works and those of other writers, offer an authentic account of the American experience in the debilitating years of the Depression.

(2) The drama of the 1930s is rich and varied. It is true that no figure comparable to O’Neill appeared, but many people of talent tried to enrich the stage with their plays. Among these were Clifford Odets, Maxwell Anderson, Lillian Hellman, and Thornton Wilder, to list just a few.

(3) Probably because of the overwhelming influence of T. S. Eliot, poetry did not flourish in the new decade as the novel and drama. No new major poet appeared on the scene.

如果艾略特试图在其著名诗歌《荒原》中表现精神上的荒原，那么20世纪30年代的

作家则面临着描绘美国这个物质上的荒原。显然，对大多数作家来说，社会关注成为头等大事，社会参与成为20年代文学的主要特点。文学的三大分支——小说，诗歌，戏剧——都竭尽全力应对历史的挑战。

(1) 20世纪30年代是小说的伟大时代。德莱赛的自然主义风格成为大萧条时期作家的典范。约翰·多斯·帕索斯和约翰·斯坦贝克成为这一成为小说界的著名人物。多斯·帕索斯的《美国》和斯坦贝克的《愤怒的葡萄》以及其他作家的作品真实地反映了大萧条时期美国的经历。

(2) 20世纪30年代的戏剧也是丰富多彩的。诚然，这一时期没有人能与奥尼尔相媲美。但是许多有才学之士都竭尽全力，为时代的舞台添彩。这其中包括克利福德·奥德茨，马克斯威尔·安德森，莉莲·海尔曼，索顿·怀尔德等。

(3) 可能是因为有诸如艾略特等大师们的掩盖之故，这一时期诗歌没有像小说和戏剧那样繁盛。诗歌舞台上没有出现新的大诗人。

II. John Dos Passos (1896-1970)（约翰·多斯·帕索斯）

1. Life（生平）

John Dos Passos was born in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard University in 1916 and went to Spain to study architecture. Later he went to the World War I in French. After the war, he became a journalist. He was a spectacular phenomenon in the twentieth-century literary history of the United States. Of all the major figures involved in the turbulent of modern American life, he experienced most the agony of having to do an about-face in his political outlook. He started off writing for the oppressed, calling himself in 1917 a “red radical revolutionary.” His writings were Communist-oriented for a long period. In 1936 he switched over to being a New

Dealer. In the meantime, his attack on capitalism remained vehement until the fifties when his change to conservatism seemed complete. During the latter part of his career, he showed admiration for business, and support the U. S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

约翰·多斯·帕索斯生于芝加哥。1916年毕业于哈佛大学，赴西班牙学建筑。后赴法参加第一次世界大战。大战结束后，他成为新闻工作者。他是20世纪美国文学史上的一位奇特人物，在所有与动荡的现代美国生活紧密联系的主要作家中，他的政治观点经历了从左向右的最突出的激烈转变。他是从描绘下层人的境遇开始他的写作生涯的。1917年，他曾自称是“红色的激进的革命者”。他的作品在很长时间内具有共产主义倾向。而1936年他成为“新政”的支持者。与此同时，他对资本主义的抨击仍然非常强烈，直到20世纪50年代，他彻底转向保守主义。多斯·帕索斯后期对大企业表现出赞许态度，支持美国对越南的侵略战争。

2. Major works（主要作品）

U. S. A《美国》

The 42nd Parallel《北纬四十二度》

1919《一九一九年》

The Big Money《赚大钱》

District of Columbia《哥伦比亚特区》

Adventures of a Young Man《一个年轻人的冒险》

3. Analysis of major work（主要作品分析）

◆U.S.A《美国》

(1) U.S.A comprises The 42nd Parallel, 1919and The Big Money. The first of these covers the period in which America emerged as an industrial giant, the “machine” which was to dominate and impede the free growth of individual lives. 1919 is a record of the First World War, a continuation of the “depersonalizing”process that had been going on as narrated in the first book, and a preparation for documenting the booming twenties in the last, The Big Money.

(2)U.S.A has been known as a “collective”novel, dealing with the lives of eleven leading characters and over 30 minor ones to body forth one pervasive idea that the “machine”is hostile to the physical and spiritual welfare of the individual.

(3) In U.S.A Dos Passos’ picture of the lower classes is done with a pathos at times bordering on sentimentality.

(4) This trilogy shows that Dos Passos’ was a courageous experimentalist in the art of novel-writing. In his fiction, devices like “Newsreels,” the “Biographies,”and the “Camera Eye” are introduced.

(5) Besides, Dos Passos is proficient in the use of simple diction, impressive images, rhythmical sentences and parallels. His language has the typical features of twentieth-century colloquial style in America. He is a stylist in his own way.

(1) 《美国》由《北纬四十二度》、《一九一九年》和《赚大钱》组成。第一部《北纬四十二度》描绘了美国资本主义“机器”的形成过程以及它对个人的专制和摧残。第二部《一九一九年》是第一次世界大战中美国生活的记录，继续描写第一部小说中提到的“非人格化”

过程，为下一部小说《赚大钱》记述“繁荣”的20世纪20年代奠定了基础。

(2) 《美国》是部“群体小说”，它描述了11位主要人物和30余位次要人物的生活。其中心意图在于揭露资本主义“机器”如何左右个人身心发展的社会现实。

(3) 在《美国》里作者对下层人民的刻画具有一种动人的伤感色调。

(4) 《美国》三部曲表现了多斯·帕索斯勇于创新的精神。在其小说中，他引用了“新闻片”、“人物传记”及“照相机镜头”等手法。

(5) 此外，多斯·帕索斯的语言简练，意象感人，句子富有节奏感，结构多排比句，其语言具有美国口语风格的一些典型特点，他是独具特点的文体家。

III. John Steinbeck (1902-1968)（约翰·斯坦贝克）

1. Life（生平）

John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California. His father was a government official, and his mother was a school teacher. He grew up at home reading British and French classics. He went to Stanford University, but never graduated. A rather odd period of his youth followed in which he did not know what to do with himself. He did many odd jobs. This was a very educational period for him because it set the basis of his works. Later, with his father’s support, he decided to be a professional writer. He wrote some romantic books, but none of them made any stir on the literary scene. His masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath came out in 1939 and it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Steinbeck in his later years turned very conservative. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

约翰·斯坦贝克出生于加利福尼亚州的萨利纳斯，父亲是政府官员，母亲是教师。他自