常耀信《美国文学简史》笔记和考研真题详解(地方色彩小说 马克 吐温)【圣才出品】

第9章地方色彩小说?马克?吐温

9.1 复习笔记

I. Local Colorism（地方色彩主义）

The vogue of local color fiction was the outgrowth of historical and aesthetic forces that had been gathering energy since early 19th century. Local colorism as a literary trend first made its presence felt in the late 1860s and early seventies. It is a variation of American literary realism.

Local colorists were consciously nostalgic historians of a vanishing way of life, recorders of a present that faded before their eyes. They concerned themselves with presenting and interpreting the local character of their regions. They tended to idealize and glorify, but they never forgot to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life. Major local colorists are Bret Harte, Hanlin Garland, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kate Chopin and Mark Twain.

地方色彩小说的流行是自19世纪早期以来历史和艺术力量凝聚的产物。作为一种文学潮流，地方色彩主义在19世纪60年代晚期和70年代早期初展头角。它是美国现实主义文学的一个分支。

地方色彩主义作家是怀念正在消逝的生活方式的历史家，他们记录了在他们眼前逝去的现在。他们致力于展示描述自己地方的特色，倾向于赞颂地方生活并将其理想化，但是他们

又注意不失地方生活的真实色彩。主要的地方色彩主义作家包括布莱特·哈特、汉林·加兰德、哈里耶特·比彻·斯托、凯特·肖邦及马克·吐温等。

II. Mark Twain (1835-1910)（马克·吐温）

1. Life（生平）

Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, is a great literary giant of America. He was brought up in the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi River. He was twelve when his father died and he had to leave school. He was successively a printer’s apprentice, a tramp printer, a silver miner, a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, and a frontier journalist in Nevada and California. This knocking about gave him wide knowledge of humanity. With the publication of his frontier tale, he became nationally famous. His first novel The Gilded Age was an artistic failure, but it gave its name to the American of the post-bellum period. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was his masterwork. Mark Twain was essentially an affirmative writer. But toward the latter part of his life, due to some tragic events, he changed to an almost despairing determinist.

马克·吐温，原名萨缪尔·朗赫恩·克莱门斯，是一位美国文学巨匠。他在密苏里州的汉尼巴尔长大。12岁那年，他的父亲去世，他被迫辍学。他当过印刷所学徒、排字工、银矿矿工，在密西西比河当过舵手，在内华达州和加利福尼亚州当过记者。这样丰富的生活经历让他深刻地了解了人性。他的第一个边地故事使他在国内一举成名。他的第一部小说《镀金时代》虽然在艺术上是个失败，却赋予了战后美国一个新的名字。《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》是他的代表作。马克·吐温基本上是一位乐观的作家。但是在他的

后半生，由于一些悲剧性事件，他转变成一位带有失望情绪的宿命论者。

2. Comparisons among Howells, Henry James and Mark Twain（豪威尔斯、亨利·詹姆斯和马克·吐温的比较）

Although Howells, James and Mark Twain all worked for realism, there were obvious differences between them.

(1) In the thematic Terms, James wrote mostly of the upper reaches of American society, and Howells concerned himself chiefly with middle class life, whereas Mark Twain dealt largely with the lower strata of society.

(2) Technically, Howells wrote in the vein of genteel realism, James pursued an “imaginative”treatment reality or psychological realism, but Mark Twain’s contribution to the development of realism and American literature was partly through his theories of localism in American fiction, and partly through his colloquial style.

尽管豪威尔斯、亨利·詹姆斯和马克·吐温都是美国现实主义作家，但是三者之间具有明显的不同。

(1) 就主题而论，亨利·詹姆斯主要写美国的上层社会，豪威尔斯侧重写社会中层，而马克·吐温则写社会下层人民的生活。

(2) 从技巧上讲，豪威尔斯运用的是温文尔雅的现实主义风格，亨利·詹姆斯致力于一种“想象”处理或者心理现实主义。但是马克·吐温对美国现实主义乃至美国文学的贡献在于他的地方色彩小说写作理论和他的口语体。

3. Comments on Mark Twain（对马克·吐温的评价）

(1) Mark Twain was a famous American literary giant. He was a humorist and acclaimed as “the true father of our national literature” by Mencken.

(2) Mark Twain preferred to represent social life through portraits of local places which he knew best. He drew heavily from his own rich fund of knowledge of people and places.

(3) One of Mark Twain’s significant contributions to American literature lies in the fact that he made colloquial speech an accepted, respectable literary medium in the literary history of the country. His style of language influenced many later writers like Sherwood Anderson, Hemingway, etc.

(4) Mark Twain was also a social critic. All his life Mark Twain loved life and people, and freedom and justice, felt a pride in human dignity and advocated brotherhood of man. He hated tyranny and iniquity, despised meanness and cruelty.

(5) Mark Twain was a friend of the Chinese. He was not indifferent either to the Chinese immigrants persecuted in America or to china suffering intense agonies of humiliation by imperialist power.

(1) 马克·吐温是美国一位著名的文学巨匠。他是一位幽默大师，被门肯评价为“我们真正的民族文学之父”。

(2) 马克·吐温主张通过对自己熟知的地区的描述来展现社会生活。他大量地运用自己对人及地方的丰富知识进行创作。

(3) 马克·吐温对美国文学的重大贡献之一就是他使口语成为受人推崇的一种文学形式。

他的语言风格还影响了舍伍德·安德森和海明威等很多后世作家。

(4) 马克·吐温同时也是一位社会批评家。他一生热爱生活、热爱人民、热爱自由和正义，他伸张人的尊严和骄傲，倡导人与人之间相互关爱。他痛恨专制和不公平，蔑视粗劣和残暴。

(5) 马克·吐温是中国人民的朋友。他关心在美国饱受压迫的华侨，关心备受列强凌辱的中华民族。

4. Major works（主要作品）

Innocents Abroad《傻子出国记》

Roughing it《艰难时代》

The Gilded Age《镀金时代》

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer《汤姆·索亚历险记》

The Prince and the Pauper《王子与贫儿》

Life on the Mississippi《密西西比河上的生活》

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court《亚瑟王宫廷中的美国佬》

The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg《败坏哈德莱堡的人》

The Mysterious Stranger《神秘的陌生人》

Autobiography《自传》

5. Analysis of major work（主要作品分析）

◆The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》

(1) It is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but much deeper and more

mature in theme and technique. It has always been regarded as one of the greatest books of western literature and western civilization. Hemingway described it as the book from which “all modern American literature comes”.

(2) The story tells a story about the U.S. before the Civil War, and takes place along the Mississippi River. It relates the story of the escape of Jim from slavery and how Huck Finn, floating along with him and helping him as best he could, changes his mind, his prejudice about Black people, and comes to accept Jim as a man and as a close friend as well.

(3) It is a veritable recreation of living models. Most of the major characters had prototypes in real life. The portrayal of individual incidents and characters achieved intense verisimilitude of detail. Serious problems are being discussed through the narration of a little illiterate boy. The fact of the wilderness juxtaposed with civilization. Though a local and particular book. It touches upon the human condition in a general indeed universal way: Humanism ultimately triumphs.

(4) Another notable feature of the novel is its language. The book is written in the colloquial style, in the general standard speech of uneducated Americans. Mark Twain made colloquial speech an accepted respectable literary medium in the American literature.

(1) 这部小说是《汤姆·索亚历险记》的续篇，但是其主题更深刻，写作技巧更成熟。它通常被认为是西方文学和西方文明最伟大的著作之一。海明威曾评价其为“现代美国文学之源”。

(2) 它讲述的是美国内战前的一个故事。故事发生在密西西比河上。故事讲述了黑奴吉