American Literature 美国文学讲义

American Literature Lecturer Cao LiangchengUndergraduates Grade 2005 Department of English, FTC.-American LiteratureBased on History and Anthology of American Literature. Compiled by Wu Weiren.Beijing: Foreign Languages Teaching and Research Press, 2003.Book 2 (pp. 1-286)Part IV The Literature of Realism (18651914)Teaching Duration: EIGHT periodsTeaching Aims and Demands: 1. The students should learn the history, cultural background of the 19th century literature. 2. They should know the basic characteristics, ideas and its influence. 3. They should learn the main literary career of the writers in this period and understand the contents and artistic characteristics of the selected works.Key points: realism; naturalism; local colorismrealistic writers and their main works.Teaching Methods: presentation and discussion.Teaching Aids: Computer and PPT Teaching Procedures: STAGE ONE INTRODUCTION TO REALISMA. Realism I. Background: From Romanticism to Realism1. the three conflicts that reached breaking point in this period(1) industrialism vs. agrarian(2) culturely-measured east vs. newly-developed west(3) plantation gentility vs. commercial gentility2. 1880s urbanization: from free competition to monopoly capitalism3. the closing of American frontierII. Characteristics1. truthful description of life2. typical character under typical circumstance3. objective rather than idealized, close observation and investigation of life“Realistic writers are like scientists.”4. open-ending:Life is complex and cannot be fully understood. It leaves much room forreaders to think by themselves.5. concerned with social and psychological problems, revealing the frustrations of characters in an environment of sordidness and depravityB. Psychological realismPsychological realism is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters thoughts and motivations. Henry James novel The Ambassadors (1903) is considered to be a masterpiece of psychological realism. Henry James is considered the founder of psychological realism. He believed that reality lies in the impressions made by life on the spectator, and not in any facts of which the spectator is unaware. Such realism is therefore merely the obligation that the artist assumes to represent life as he sees it, which may not be the same life as it “really” is.C. Naturalism I. Background1. Darwins theory: “natural selection”2. Spensers idea: “social Darwinism”3. French Naturalism: ZolaII.Features1. environment and heredity2. scientific accuracy and a lot of details3. general tone: hopelessness, despair, gloom, ugly side of the societIII.significanceIt prepares the way for the writing of 1920s “lost generation” and T. S. Eliot.D. Local Colorism1860s, 1870s1890sI.Appearance1. uneven development in economy in America2. culture: flourishing of frontier literature, humourists3. magazines appeared to let writer publish their worksII.What is “Local Colour”?Tasks of local colourists: to write or present local characters of their regions in truthful depiction distinguished from others, usually a very small part of the world.STAGE TWO DETAILED APPRECIATIONHistorical Introduction1. Political Background (pp1-4) Northern industrialism/ Southern agrarianism/ Mechanization (pa1) American life has been changed drastically for the political, scientific and economic development. (pa2-5) population doubled as the process of urbanization (pa2, p3) the national income quadrupled. (pa3, p3) a gingerbread era to attract Europeans (pa4, p3-4) “The Gilded Age” (Mark Twain): an age of excess and extremes, of decline and progress, of poverty and dazzling wealth, of gloom and buoyant hopean age of conflicts. (pa1, p2) 2. Literary Characteristics of the Age (pp4-8)Emily Dickinson: the greatest woman writer of the realistic ageHariet Beecher Stowe: the most famous literary woman in the world for her work Uncle Toms CabinWalt Whitman:offering a new literary vision to the worldRealism: “reality and truth” (in France) - William Dean Howells “Dean of American Realism” - Henry James the individual psychology of his characters - Mark Twain the expansion of American experiencesNaturalism - Stephen Crane The Red Badge of Courage (1895) - Frank Norris The Octopus (1901) - Jack London Martin Eden (1909) - Theodore Dreiser Sister Carrie (1900) Local Color Ficition: its peak in 1880s - Mark Twain - Bret Hartes The Luck of Roaring CampThe Key Points:1. In the latter half of the 19th century, women became the nations dominant culture force, a position they have never relinquished. 2. A new generation of women authors appeared whose poetry and fiction enlivened the pages of popular ten-cent monthly and weekly magazines.3. The greatest woman writer of the age, Emily Dickinson, was almost completely unknown; her first collection of poetry was not published until 1890, four years after her death.4. But Hariet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Toms Cabin (1852), had become an American institution and the most famous literary woman in the world. (pa1, p4-5)5. Although Americans continued to read the works of Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne, and Poe, the great age of American romanticism had ended. By the 1870s the New England Renaissance had waned.6. Only Walt Whitman continued to offer a new literary vision to the world, issuing a fifth edition of Leaves of Grass in 1870 (the first edition of which was issued in 1855) and publishing Democratic Vistas in 1871. (pa2, p5)7. A host of new writers appeared, among them Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, Hamlin Garland, and Mark Twain, whose background and training, unlike those of the older generation they displaced, were middle-class and journalistic rather than gentle or academic.8. Influenced by such Europeans as Zola, Flaubert, Balzac, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy, Americas most noteworthy new authors established a literature of realism. They sought to portray American life as it really was, insisting that the ordinary and the local were as suitable for artistic portrayal as the magnificent and the remote. (pa3, p5)9. The literary term:Realism: fidelity in art and literature to nature or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization. Fundamentally, in literature, realism is the portrayal of life with fidelity.10. As in most literary rebellions, the new literature rose out of a desire to renovate the literary theories of a previous age. Realists had grown scornful of artistic ideals that had been trivialized, worn thin by derivative writers eager to supply the “great popular want” for sentiment, adventure, and “tingling excitement.” (pa3, p5-6)11. In contrast, the realists had what Henry James called “a powerful impulse to mirror the unmitigated realities of life.”12. Earlier in the 19th century, James Fenimore Cooper had insisted on the authors right to present an idealized and poetic portrait of life, to avoid representations of “squalid misery.” But by the last of the 19th century the realists, and the literary naturalists who followed them, rejected the portrayal of idealized characters and events. Instead, they sought to describe the wide range of American experience and to present the subtleties of human personality, to portray characters who were less simply all good or all bad. (pa1, p6)13. Realism had originated in France as ralisme, a literary doctrine that called for “reality and truth” in the depiction of ordinary life. “Realism” first appeared in the United States in the literature of local color, an amalgam（混合物）of romantic plots and realistic description of things immediately observable: the dialect, custom, sights, and sounds of regional American.14.Local color fiction reached its peak of popularity in the 1880s, but by the turn of the century it had begun to decline as its limited resources were exhausted and as its most popular writers grew tediously repetitious or turned to other literary modes. (pa2, p6)15.The arbiter（仲裁者）of the 19th century literary realism in America was William Dean Howells. (“Dean of American Realism”)He defined realism as “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material,” and he best exemplified his theories in such novels as A Modern Instance (1882), The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), and A Hazard of New Fortune (1890). Howells spoke for a generation of writers who found their subject matter in the families and jobs, their social customs, achievements and failures. The bulk of Americas literary realism was limited to optimistic treatment of the surface of life. 16.Yet the greatest of Americas realists, Henry James and Mark Twain, moved well beyond a superficial portrayal of 19th century America. James probed deeply at the individual psychology of his characters, writing in a rich and intricate style that supported his intense scrutiny of complex human experience.17. Mark Twain, breaking out of the narrow limits of local color fiction, described the breadth of American experience as no one had ever done before, or since, and he created, in Huckleberry Finn (1884), a masterpiece of American realism that is one of the great books of world literature. (pa1, p7)18. In the 1880, Howells spoke out against the writing of a bleak fiction of failure and despair. He called for the treatment of the “smiling aspects of life” as being the more “American,” insisting that America was truly a land of hope and of possibility that should be reflected in its literature.19. But at the end of the century, a generation of writers arose whose ideas of the working of the universe and whose perception of societys disorders led them to naturalism, a new and harsher realism.20. The literary term:Naturalism: a technique developed out of realism, reflecting a deterministic view of human nature, attending a non-idealistic, detailed, quasi-scientific observation of life event, and reproducing the subjects natural appearance without avoidance of the ugly. or: an extreme form of realism or a harsher realism. Naturalistic writers usually depict the sordid side of life and show characters who are severely, if not hopelessly, limited by their environment and heredity.21. Americas literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were dominated by their environment and heredity. In presenting the extremes of life, the naturalists sometimes displayed an affinity to the sensationalism of early romanticism, but unlike their romantic predecessors, the naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment, that religious “truths” were illusory, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. (the “a slice of life” theory) (pa2, p7-8)22. Naturalism, like realism, had come from Europe. In America it had been shaped by the war, by the social upheavals that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age, and by the disturbing teachings of Charles Darwin, the author of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) Charles Darwin (1809-1882), English naturalist. As official naturalist on the survey vessel H.M.S. “Beagle” he sailed round the world (1831-1836). This started his work of observation, investigation and correlation that led to his theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwins Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle was published in 1839 and his On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859.23. Darwinism seemed to stress the animality of man, to suggest that he was dominated by the irresistible forces of evolution. The pessimism and deterministic ideas of naturalism pervaded the works of such writers as Stephen Crane the author of The Red Badge of Courage (1895), Frank Norris the author of The Octopus (1901) about an actual clash in 1880 between farmers and the South Pacific Railroad, the octopus of the title, Jack London the author of Martin Eden (1909) about a poor sailor who becomes rich and successful and then drowns himself because of despair, and Theodore Dreiser the author of Sister Carrie (1900) about a poor country girl looking for better life and becoming mistress first to a salesman Drouet and then a manager Hurstwood. Their detailed description of the lives of the downtrodden and the abnormal, their frank treatment of human passion and sexuality, and their portrayal of men and women overwhelmed by the blind forces of nature still exert a powerful influence on modern writers. (pa2, p8)24. Although realism and naturalism were produced of the 19th century, their final triumph came in the twentieth century, with the popular and critical successes of such writers as Edwin Arlington Robinson, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Robert Frost, and William Faulkner. But the triumph of realism, even in the twentieth century did not bring an end to the extremes of romanticism, for they still abound in the popular television heroes and heroines of unspotted virtue and dazzling accomplishments. (pa3, p8)25. American RealismRealism is the attempt in literature and art to represent life as it is without sentimentalizing or idealizing it. Realistic writing often depicts the everyday life and speech of ordinary people. This had led, sometimes, to an emphasis on sordid details. In American literature, the Civil War (1861-1865) brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came into existence. It came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism. Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived. It expresses the concern for the commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience. Realist literature finds the drama and the tension beneath the ordinary surface of life. A realist writer is more objective than subjective, more descriptive than symbolic. Realists looked truth in everyday truths. A fearless and enthusiastic champion of the new school was William Dean Howells, who by virtue of his powerful critical writings and of his generous patronage as senior editor of the influential journal Atlantic Monthly, made for the triumph of realism over romanticism and thus remained for ever three decades the “defacto” dean of American literature. Two other staunch fighters for realism were Mark Twain and Henry James. Beginning as a local colorist, Mark Twain wrote works which have become part of the American cultural tradition. Henry James, with his “international theme,” and his psychological realism, is now considered as one of the most important literary figures coming out of the 19th century.Psychological realism is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters thoughts and motivations. Henry Jamess novel The Ambassadors (1903) is considered to be a masterpiece of psychological realism. And Henry James is considered the founder of psychological realism. He believed that reality lies in the impressions made by life on the spectator, and not in any facts of which the spectator is unaware. Such realism is therefore merely the obligation that the artist assumes to represent life as he sees it, which may not be the same reality as it “really” is.Localism is a trend in the late 1860s and early 1870s, having the elements that characterize a local culture such as speech, customs, and other peculiarities, and the physical setting and those distinctive qualities of landscape which condition human thought and behavior.26. Psychological RealismPsychological realism is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters thoughts and motivations. Henry James novel The Ambassadors (1903) is considered to be a masterpiece of psychological realism. Henry James is considered the founder of psychological realism. He believed that reality lies in the impressions made by life on the spectator, and not in any facts of which the spectator is unaware. Such realism is therefore merely the obligation that the artist assumes to represent life as he sees it, which may not be the same life as it “really” is.27. American NaturalismNaturalism is an extreme form of realism or a harsher realism. Naturalistic writers usually depict the sordid side of life and show characters who are severely, if not hopelessly, limited by their environment and heredity.American naturalism was a new and harsher realism, and like realism, it had come from Europe. Naturalism was an outgrowth of Realism that responded to theories in science, psychology, human behavior and social thought current in the late 19th century. In the last decade of the 19th century, with the development of industry and modern science, intelligent minds began to see that man was no longer a free ethical being in a cold, indifferent and essentially Godless universe. In this chance world, he was both helpless and hopeless. European writers like Emile Zola had already developed this acute social consciousness. They saw mans life as governed by the two forces of heredity and environment, forces absolutely beyond mans control. American naturalism had been shaped by the war, by the social upheavals that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age, and by the disturbing teachings of Darwinism. Americas literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were dominated by their environment and heredity. In presenting the extremes of life, the naturalists sometimes displayed an affinity to the sensationalism of early romanticism, but unlike their romantic predecessors, the naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment, that religious “truths” were illusory, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. The pessimism and deterministic ideas of naturalism pervaded the works of such writers as Stephen Crane the author of The Red Badge of Courage (1895), Frank Norris the author of The Octopus (1901) about an actual clash in 1880 between farmers and the South Pacific Railroad, the octopus of the title, Jack London the author of Martin Eden (1909) about a poor sailor who becomes rich and successful and then drowns himself because of despair, and Theodore Dreiser the author of Sister Carrie (1900) about a poor country girl looking for better life and becoming mistress first to a salesman Drouet and then a manager Hurstwood. Cranes Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is the first American naturalistic work. Norriss McTeague is the manifesto of American naturalism. Dreisers Sister Carrie is the work in which naturalism attained maturity. These writers detailed description of the lives of the downtrodden and the abnormal, their frank treatment of human passion and sexuality, and their portrayal of men and women over-whelmed by blind forces of nature still exert a powerful influence on modern writers.Although naturalist literature described the world