American RealismNovelists

1
American RealismNovelists

• Li Wenji, Zhu Defen, Zhou Yujun

2
The literature of Realism(1865-1918)

• 1. Reasons civil war, social development. People
  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.
• 2. Realism originated in France. A literary
  doctrine that called for reality and truth in
  the depiction of ordinary life.
• 3. American realism, different from European
  realism, is more varied and individualistic.

3

• 4. Development of American realism first appear
  in the literature of local color, arbiter
  William Dean Howells. He defined realism as
  nothing more and nothing less than the truthful
  treatment of material.
• 5. Important writers Henry James, Mark Twain.

4
Literary Characteristics

• 1. Feminist movement. Emily Dickinson, Harriet
  Beecher Stowe, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin,
  Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Willa Cather.
• 2. Decline of American Romanticism, Walt Whitman,
  Leaves of Grass.
• 3. Appearance of American realism
• 4. Appearance of American naturalism.

5
Realism

• a mode of writing that gives the impression of
  recording or reflecting faithfully an actual way
  of life. The term refers, both to a literary
  method based on detailed accuracy of description
  and to a more general attitude that rejects
  idealization, escapism, and other extravagant
  qualities of romance in favor of recognizing
  soberly the actual problems of life. Realism is
  not a direct or simple reproduction of reality
  but a system of conventions producing a lifelike
  illusion of some real world outside the text, by
  processes of selection, exclusion, description or
  manners of addressing the reader.

6
William Dean Howells(18371920)
7
Major Works

• A Modern Instance (1882)
• The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885)
• Indian Summer (1886)
• A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890)

8
Some Comments

• Howells believes that the smiling aspects of
  American life were the most prevalent and the
  most typical, and that American life was such
  that novelists could confine themselves to what
  would not offend the innocence of a young girl,
  and should therefore do so.
•  He wrote too much, and sometimes for an
  immediate publicmore than thirty novels or
  novelettes, several volumes of short stories, and
  thirty-one dramas.

9

• Although Howells, James, and Twain all worked for
  realism, there were obvious differences between
  them. In thematic term, for instance, James wrote
  mostly for 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.

10
Samuel Clemens (18351910)
11
Chronology

• 1835 born in Florida, Missouri
• 1839 family settles in Hannibal, Missouri
• 1847 father dies Twain leaves school, becomes
  an apprentice to a printer, and works for brother
  Orion's newspaper
• 1852 several of his sketches were published,
  including "The Dandy Frightening the Squatter.
• 1953 moves to St. Louis, New York and
  Philadelphia.
• 1854 He visited Washington, DC in February.
• 1856 trains as steamboat pilot under Horace
  Bixby and lives experiences recounted in Life on
  the Mississippi

12

• 1858 receives steamboat piloting license
• 1861 fights briefly for Confederates and then
  travels by coach to Carson City and lives
  experiences recounted in Roughing It
• 1862 works for Virginia City Territorial
  Enterprise
• 1863 adopts the pseudonym Mark Twain
• 1865 "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
  County" gives him national recognition
• 1869 travels to Europe and the Holy Land and
  lives experiences recounted in The Innocents
  Abroad

13

• 1869 The Innocents Abroad
• 1870 marries Olivia and settles in Hartford,
  Connecticut
• 1872 Roughing It
• 1894 Paige typesetting machine, in which Twain
  has invested almost 250,000, fails after going
  bankrupt, he goes on a lecturing tour of the
  world
• 1894 Tom Sawyer Abroad
• 1894 The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
• 1895 daughter Susy dies of meningitis
• 1895 suffers from bronchitis and rheumatism

14

• 1896 Tom Sawyer, Detective
• 1896 Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
• 1897 Following the Equator
• 1898 finishes paying off debts
• 1900 "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg"
• 1906 What is Man?
• 1907 Christian Science
• 1909 Is Shakespeare Dead?
• 1910 dies

15
Major Works

• The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
  (1865)
•  The Innocents Abroad (1869)
•  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
•  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
•  A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court
  (1889)
•  The Tragedy of Puddnhead Wilson (1894)
•  The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (1900)
•  The Mysterious Stranger (1916)

16
Interesting anecdotes

• Once, when he had the chance to invest in Bells
  telephone, he declined. I was the burnt child,
  he said, and I resisted all these temptations.
  In spite of his doubts about the telephone,
  Clemens was the first resident of Hartford to
  have one installed in his home. He was also the
  first American writer to use a telephone in a
  story.

17

• Just one year before his death, Clemens remarked
  to Albert Bigelow Paine, his foremost biographer,
  I came in with Harleys comet in 1835. It is
  coming again next year, and I expect to go out
  with it. It will be the greatest disappointment
  of my life if I dont go with Halleys comet.

18
The adventures of Huckleberry Finn
19
Background

• The story is set in the USA, in the period of
  about 1830/40. This was before the American Civil
  War (1861-65) which was fought (mainly) over the
  issue of slavery.

20
Introduction and comments

• Huck, in flight from his murderous father, and
  Nigger Jim, in flight from slavery, pilot their
  raft thrillingly through treacherous waters,
  surviving a crash with a steamboat, betrayal by
  rogues, and the final threat from the
  bourgeoisie.
• Informing all this is the presence of the River,
  described in palpable detail by Mark Twain, the
  former steamboat pilot, who transforms it into a
  richly metaphoric entity.

21
Themes of Huck Finn

• Conflicts between nature and civilization,
  between freedom and slavery
• the natural potential for goodness of the human
  being
• equality between men
• mens initiation
• escapism

22
Contributions

• Use of colloquial language
• No one knew better than Mark Twain the various
  uses of dialogue and the importance of dialogue
  to journalistic writing, yarns, and fiction. Good
  dialogue serves three purposes (1) It can make a
  character real to the reader by reproducing the
  way he talks and by showing through what he says
  the kind of person he is. (2) It can provide
  background information that the reader needs to
  know in order to understand a particular episode.
  And (3) it can advance the action of the story.
• Robert Penn Warren noted. 'It is a language
  capable of poetry.'

23
Preface

• IN this book a number of dialects are used, to
  wit the Missouri negro dialect the extremest
  form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect the
  ordinary "Pike County" dialect and four modified
  varieties of this last. The shadings have not
  been done in a haphazard fashion, or by
  guesswork but painstakingly, and with the
  trustworthy guidance and support of personal
  familiarity with these several forms of speech.

24
Artistic Features

• First, he possessed utter clarity of style. He
  evolved a style so clear and economical that
  other contemporary styles seemed slightly
  archaic, rusty, and redundant.
• Second, he had a supreme command of vernacular
  American English. Before him there had been only
  American dialect after him there was an American
  language. American dialect had been used very
  well by some other writers, but in their hands it
  was surrounded and conditioned by a literary
  language that wittingly or unwittingly patronized
  it. Mark Twain removed the surrounding frame.

25

• Third, there was Mark Twains humor, which
  resists explanation. In Twains time, humor,
  though it was seen as greatly valuable, remained
  clearly subordinate in the value system of the
  19th century. The function of humor was to
  entertain, but it was not expected to participate
  in the high seriousness that Matthew Arnold and
  his age asked of literature. But Twain liberated
  humor, raising it to high arta liberation that
  parallels his creation of vernacular American
  English. Instead of subduing his humor to
  seriousness, twain invaded the citadels of
  seriousness and freed the humor held captive
  there.

26
Some more comments

• Ernest Hemingway once said all American
  literature comes from one book Huckleberry Finn.
•  I believe he wrote that book(Huck Finn) in a
  little hut on a hill on his farm, Anderson said,
  imaginatively. It poured out of him. I fancy
  that at night he came down from his hill stepping
  like a kinga splendid playboy, playing with
  rivers and men, ending on the Mississippi, on the
  broad river that is the great artery flowing out
  of the heart of the land.

27
Local Color

• Style of writing marked by the presentation of
  the features and peculiarities of a particular
  locality and its inhabitants. The name is given
  especially to a type of American literature that
  in its most characteristic form made its
  appearance just after the civil war.

28

• Set during the California gold rush, Bret Hartes
  The Luck of Roaring Camp(1868), with its use of
  miners dialect and western background, is among
  the early local-color stories. Many authors first
  achieved success with vivid descriptions of their
  own localities Mark Twain described Mississippi
  River life, Sarah Orne Jewett wrote of New
  England, Kate Chopin described the deep south.

29
Tall Tale

• Narrative that depicts the extravagantly
  exaggerated wild adventures of North American
  folk heroes. The tall tale is essentially an oral
  form of entertainment the audience appreciates
  the imaginative invention rather than the literal
  meaning of the tales. Associated with the lore of
  the American frontier, tall tales often explain
  the origins of lakes, mountains, and canyons
  they are spun around legendary heroes.

30

• One of the few examples of the tall tale not
  native to the United States is found in the
  German collection Baron Munchausens narratives
  of His Marvellous Travels and Compaigns in Russia
  (1785) by the German scholar and adventurer R. E.
  Raspe.

31
Exerpts from Tom Sawyer (chapter xxi, p51)

• VACATION was approaching. The schoolmaster,
  always severe, grew severer and more exacting
  than ever, for he wanted the school to make a
  good showing on "Examination" day. His rod and
  his ferule were seldom idle now--at least among
  the smaller pupils. Only the biggest boys, and
  young ladies of eighteen and twenty, escaped
  lashing. Mr. Dobbins' lashings were very vigorous
  ones, too for although he carried, under his
  wig, a perfectly bald and shiny head, he had only
  reached middle age, and there was no sign of
  feebleness in his muscle.

32

• As the great day approached, all the tyranny that
  was in him came to the surface he seemed to take
  a vindictive pleasure in punishing the least
  shortcomings. The consequence was, that the
  smaller boys spent their days in terror and
  suffering and their nights in plotting revenge.
  They threw away no opportunity to do the master a
  mischief. But he kept ahead all the time. The
  retribution that followed every vengeful success
  was so sweeping and majestic that the boys always
  retired from the field badly worsted. At last
  they conspired together and hit upon a plan that
  promised a dazzling victory.

33

• They swore in the sign-painter's boy, told him
  the scheme, and asked his help. He had his own
  reasons for being delighted, for the master
  boarded in his father's family and had given the
  boy ample cause to hate him. The master's wife
  would go on a visit to the country in a few days,
  and there would be nothing to interfere with the
  plan the master always prepared himself for
  great occasions by getting pretty well fuddled,
  and the sign-painter's boy said that when the
  dominie had reached the proper condition on
  Examination Evening he would "manage the thing"
  while he napped in his chair then he would have
  him awakened at the right time and hurried away
  to school.

34

• In the fulness of time the interesting occasion
  arrived. At eight in the evening the schoolhouse
  was brilliantly lighted, and adorned with wreaths
  and festoons of foliage and flowers. The master
  sat throned in his great chair upon a raised
  platform, with his blackboard behind him. He was
  looking tolerably mellow. Three rows of benches
  on each side and six rows in front of him were
  occupied by the dignitaries of the town and by
  the parents of the pupils.

35

• To his left, back of the rows of citizens, was a
  spacious temporary platform upon which were
  seated the scholars who were to take part in the
  exercises of the evening rows of small boys,
  washed and dressed to an intolerable state of
  discomfort rows of gawky big boys
  snowbanks(?????) of girls and young ladies clad
  in lawn and muslin and conspicuously conscious of
  their bare arms, their grandmothers' ancient
  trinkets, their bits of pink and blue ribbon and
  the flowers in their hair. All the rest of the
  house was filled with non-participating scholars.
  

36

• The exercises began. A very little boy stood up
  and sheepishly recited, "You'd scarce expect one
  of my age to speak in public on the stage,"
  etc.--accompanying himself with the painfully
  exact and spasmodic gestures which a machine
  might have used--supposing the machine to be a
  trifle out of order. But he got through safely,
  though cruelly scared, and got a fine round of
  applause when he made his manufactured bow and
  retired.

37

• Tom Sawyer stepped forward with conceited
  confidence and soared into the unquenchable and
  indestructible "Give me liberty or give me death"
  speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation,
  and broke down in the middle of it. A ghastly
  stage-fright seized him, his legs quaked under
  him and he was like to choke. True, he had the
  manifest sympathy of the house but he had the
  house's silence, too, which was even worse than
  its sympathy. The master frowned, and this
  completed the disaster. Tom struggled awhile and
  then retired, utterly defeated. There was a weak
  attempt at applause, but it died early

38

• Now the master, mellow almost to the verge of
  geniality, put his chair aside, turned his back
  to the audience, and began to draw a map of
  America on the blackboard, to exercise the
  geography class upon. But he made a sad business
  of it with his unsteady hand, and a smothered
  titter rippled over the house. He knew what the
  matter was, and set himself to right it. He
  sponged out lines and remade them but he only
  distorted them more than ever, and the tittering
  was more pronounced.

39

• He threw his entire attention upon his work, now,
  as if determined not to be put down by the mirth.
  He felt that all eyes were fastened upon him he
  imagined he was succeeding, and yet the tittering
  continued it even manifestly increased. And well
  it might. There was a garret above, pierced with
  a scuttle over his head and down through this
  scuttle came a cat, suspended around the haunches
  by a string she had a rag tied about her head
  and jaws to keep her from mewing as she slowly
  descended she curved upward and clawed at the
  string, she swung downward and clawed at the
  intangible air.

40

• The tittering rose higher and higher--the cat was
  within six inches of the absorbed teacher's
  head--down, down, a little lower, and she grabbed
  his wig with her desperate claws, clung to it,
  and was snatched up into the garret in an instant
  with her trophy still in her possession! And how
  the light did blaze abroad from the master's bald
  pate--for the sign-painter's boy had GILDED it!
• That broke up the meeting. The boys were avenged.
  Vacation had come.

41
Henry James (18431916)
42
Major Works

• The American (1877)
• Daisy Miller (1879)
• The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
• The Turn of the Screw (1898)
• The Wing of the Dove (1902)
• The Ambassadors (1903)
• The Golden Bowl (1904)
• The Art of Fiction (1884)

43
International theme

• During his lifetime his fame rested largely upon
  his handling of his major fictional theme, the
  international theme the meeting of America and
  Europe, American innocence in contact and
  contrast with European decadence, and its moral
  and psychological complications. For the American
  it was a process of progression from inexperience
  to experience, from innocence to knowledge and
  maturity

44
Style and Subject Matter

• Refined, subtle, intricate, later obscure,
  costive, with long and complex sentences.
  detailed psychological depiction capable of
  reproducing every nuances of the fine moral
  intelligence or expressing the subtlest meanings.
  Single point of view, scenic progression.
• He describes upper-class unmarried women involved
  in various courtship rituals and marriage rites
  with upper-class men at the private level, and
  records the social splits that separate males
  from females in the nations public life.

45
Theory on Fiction, The Art of Fiction 1884

• Novelan art form of penetrating analysis of
  individual, confronting society, chronicles of
  the psychological perceptions that James himself
  defined as the highest form of experience. The
  only obligation to which in advance we may hold a
  novel is that it be interesting. A novel, in its
  broadest definition, is a personal, direct
  impression of life that, to begin with,
  constitutes its value, which is greater or less
  according to the intensity of the impression. But
  here will be no intensity at all, and therefore
  no value, unless there is freedom to feel and
  say. The reason for the existence of novel is
  that it tries to show life. the artistic field
  should include all life, all emotions, all
  experiences, all interpretation. Reality is the
  biggest merit of novel.

46
On Novelist

• Novelists should have absolute freedom in
  creating. They must be good at experiencing life.
  They must predict the unknown future from the
  known reality. They must acquire a certain
  knowledge of the flexibility of novel. He points
  out that contents must be in harmony with form
  and compared their close relationship to that
  thread and needle.
• Novelist and world. He also advocates insight and
  depiction of mens inner world and advised
  writers to catch the complexity of psychological
  activities, arguing its not enough to describe
  the outside details. There is one point at which
  the moral sense and the artistic sense lie very
  near together

47
The Portrait of a Lady

• Previewing questions
• 1. Why did Isabel choose Osmond?
• 2. Why did she decide to return to her unhappy
  marriage at the end of the novel?
• 3. Isabels characters.
• 4. How did James show the conflicts between
  American and European cultures?
• 5. Features in style.
• 6. Meaning of the title.
• 7. Themes of the novel.

48
Individualism

• The novel is about how an American girl lose her
  naivety gradually, influenced by sophisticated
  European life. It is a rich and subtle study of
  what it would mean for a woman to practice the
  absolute self-determination, based on a
  completely individual nonconformist personal
  judgment, which Emerson had preached. This
  exploration of transcendental individualism as a
  guide to life may be compared with Melvilles
  exploration of the same idea in his creation of
  captain Ahab. There Melville examined the effect
  such conduct might have when adopted by a
  powerful and ruthless man. James,is much more
  concerned with the effect such an attitude may
  have on his heroine herself. Isabel Archers
  impact on the world around her is comparatively
  unimportant but the result in her own life is as
  devastating as Ahabs, though not as violent, or
  perhaps, as final.

49
Evil

• Madame Merle, Gilbert Osmand are James
  personification of aspects of evil. This
  belatedness of Evil, this understanding of it as
  a matter of texts and letters, ultimately became
  James great contribution to the imagination of
  evil. It leads James to the strategy of
  reasserting its importance by questioning it,
  challenging it actively, not asserting flatly its
  existence but making it a competitor in a world
  acknowledged to be skeptical of it.

50
Freedom

• The work is based on Miltons epic Paradise
  Lost. This is a novel of the fortunate fall.
  Just like in Miltons poem, everything is pointed
  toward a defining of freedom. The novel certainly
  concerns the unexpectedly far-reaching
  consequences of a characters inadequacies of
  perception. But here we have a full development
  of necessity and freedom, circumstances and free
  will, in which each, bewilderingly, may take on
  the appearance of the other. And here alone,
  until James very last works will this freedom be
  achieved, precisely because a character will
  learn the deep comprehension of necessity.

51
O. Henry(William Sydney Porter) (1862-1910)
52
I. Biography

• O. Henry   (1862 - 1910)
• Born  September 11, 1862Greensboro, North
  Carolina, United States Died  June 5, 1910New
  York City, New York, United States
• Famous quotations by O Henry
• Turn up the lights - I don't want to go home in
  the dark.
• Write what you like there is no other rule.
• Life is sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles
  predominating.
• If man knew how women pass the time when they are
  alone, they'd never marry.

53
O.Henrys Childhood

• When William was three, his mother died of
  pneumonia. Then he, his father and brothers moved
  to live with his grandmother who raised the
  children and undertook their education. William
  was an avid reader, but at the age of fifteen he
  left school and then worked in a drug store and
  on a Texas ranch. For extra money William worked
  as a pharmacist at his uncle's drugstore. In 1881
  O. Henry got his pharmacist's license. 

54
In 1887 he married Athol Estes Roach. They had
one daughter. Became a bank teller.

• Just before her death, wife Athol Estes Roach
  posed with William Sydney Porter and daughter
  Margaret.

55
In 1894 he bought a comic magazine and changed it
into a short story magazine called The Rolling
Stone. Began heavy drinking.

• Preserved copy of The Rolling Stone,exhibited in
  restored O. Henry House on Dolorosa St.

56

• In 1894, cash was found to have gone missing from
  the First National Bank in Austin, where Porter
  had worked as a bank teller. When he was called
  back to Austin to stand trial, Porter fled to
  Honduras. Little is known about Porter's stay in
  Central America. It is said that he met one Al
  Jennings and rambled in South America and Mexico
  on the proceeds of Jennings' robbery. After
  hearing news that his wife was dying, he returned
  in 1897 to Austin.

57

• Being locked up for embezzlement freed him to
  write, launching William Sydney Porter on a
  brilliant but boozy career as O. Henry
• In 1897 O.Henry was convicted of embezzling
  money, although there has been much debate over
  his actual guilt. He entered a penitentiary in
  1898 at Columbus, Ohio, where worked night shifts
  at the jail pharmacy and started to send in short
  stories to magazines.

58
How he acquired the pseudonym?

• After doing three years of the five year
  sentence, Porter emerged from the prison in 1901
  and changed his name to O. Henry. According to
  some sources, he acquired the pseudonym from a
  warder called Orrin Henry. It also could be an
  abbreviation of the name of a French pharmacist,
  Eteinne-Ossian Henry, found in the U.S.
  Dispensatory(??), a reference work Porter used
  when he was in the prison pharmacy.

59
His last years were shadowed by alcoholism, ill
health, and financial problems.

• He was a fast writer, like the Russian Anton
  Checkhov (1860-1904), but drinking on average two
  quarts of whiskey daily did not improve the
  quality of his work. In 1907 O. Henry married
  Sara Lindsay Coleman, also born in Greensboro.
  The marriage was not happy, and they separated a
  year later. O. Henry died of cirrhosis of the
  liver(???) on June 5, 1910, in New York. He was
  found dead in the Caledonia Hotel with many empty
  liquor bottles stashed under his bed and he was
  only 47 years old at the time.

60
There are many things that O. Henry tried to keep
a secret while he was alive, such as his health
problems

• He had diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver and was a
  heavy drinker. Also, while William Sydney Porter
  was in jail he changed his pen name several times
  before settling on O. Henry. That was probably so
  that nobody would know that he had been in jail. 
  But his past history never stopped him from
  writing some of the greatest short stories of all
  times, remembered for their suspense and unusual
  twists.

61

• In 1918 the O. Henry Memorial Awards were
  established to be given annually to the best
  magazine stories, with the winners and leading
  contenders to be published in an annual volume.
• O. Henry Museum

• Museum Hours1200 noon - 500 p.m. Wednesday -
  SundayClosed Monday and Tuesday409 East Fifth
  StreetAustin, Texas 78701(512)472-1903

62
II. Professional Life

• O. Henry is one of the most popular and widely
  known American short story writers of the
  twentieth century.  He is best known for his
  typically brief stories, conversational openings,
  plots hinging on improbable coincidence, and
  variations on the surprise ending.

63

• Although by profession O. Henry was a pharmacist
  and bank teller, he began writing even as he held
  these jobs. Even when he was in jail, he
  continued writing and submitting stories to
  various magazines. His first work, Whistling
  Dick's Christmas Stocking (1899), appeared in
  McClure's Magazine. The stories of adventure in
  the U.S. Southwest and in Central America gained
  an immediately success among readers.

64

• When out of jail, O. Henry moved to New York City
  to start writing full- time for Ainslee's
  Magazine in 1902. He began publishing stories in
  many periodicals under variations of his own
  name.  He quickly gained fame under the name O.
  Henry. He then signed a contract with The New
  York Sunday World and wrote weekly short
  stories.  Writing for the World, which had a
  large circulation, he increased his popularity. 
  Many other magazines were very interested in
  publishing his works.

65
He was said to live in hotels for inspiration.

• He lived in many hotels including the Chelsea
  Hotel, the Marty and the Caledonia. He was said
  to live in hotels for inspiration. Henry would
  love to sit in restaurants and bars for hours and
  just watch the people. The people gave him ideas
  for stories, which were mainly about life in the
  city. He would observe their situations and then
  write various fictional stories about them. He
  would also give out money to panhandlers and
  prostitutes, explaining that they gave him ideas
  for stories.

The Chelsea Hotel, one of the many hotels in
which O. Henry lived in New York City.
66

• The year of 1904 was the busiest and most
  productive year of O. Henry's writing life.  He
  assembled all of his short stories into a book
  named Cabbages and Kings. Two years later he
  collected another group of stories under the name
  The Four Million, including his well-known
  stories The Gift of the Magi and The Furnished
  Room.

67
O. Henry's stories are often divided into five
groups according to their setting

• the American South ("The Third Ingredient"), the
  West ("The Moment of Victory"), Central America,
  prison and New York City ("Gift of the Magi").
• The most well-known stories written by O. Henry
  often took place in New York City.  O. Henry
  wrote a total of one-hundred and forty stories
  about the early twentieth-century city life.  His
  complete works comprise two hundred and
  seventy-seven stories.

68
After O. Henry's death his work was criticized by
some.

• A book critic, Katharine Fulerton Gerould,
  believed his stories to be, "Perniciouswhile
  other critics noted how quickly O. Henry stories
  seemed to date, and his trademark surprise
  endings were called overly sentimental and
  predictable" . Most people still believe his
  stories to be interesting and enjoyable to read. 
  O. Henry deeply influenced much of the short
  story writing for half of the twentieth century.

69
III. O. Henry's Famous Works

• Cabbages and Kings (1904)?????
• The Four Million (1906) ???
• The Gift of the Magi ?????
• The Cop and the Anthem ??????
• A Service of Love ????
• Mammon and the Archer ?????
• An Unfinished Story ??????
• The Furnished Room ???????
• The Romance of a Busy Broker ?????????

70

• The Trimmed Lamp (1907) ?????The Last Leaf
  (1907) ???????
• The Gentle Grafter (1908) ?????Conscience in
  Art ????
• The Ransom of the Red Chief ??????
• Sixes and Sevens (1911) ????
• Rolling Stones (1912) ??

71
(No Transcript)
72

• 1.????????????One dollar and eighty-seven
  cents. That was all.. Three times Della
  counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents.
  And the next day would be Christmas. ?1 ??(100
  ??) ?87 ???????????,??????????13
  ????????????????????
• 2.?????1 ????,??????????3 ??????(the Trinity) ,
  1.87?3?????????????????????????????
• 3.?????????22 ?,???????30 ?,??????20 ?(????2 ?)
  ,?????8 ?(????3 ?) .??????(20 ?) ????(8?) , ??12
  ?,?12 ??????????.

73

• 4. ?????????20 (???????20 ????????20
  ?????????????20 ?) ,?????????????7 ??,20 ?7
  ??????13.
• 5. ????????????,????????????????????????????????
  13 ?1 ??87 ????,????????????,?????????????,???
  ??????????????

74

• ?? ????,?????????????????????,???????????????
  ??????????????????????????,?????????????????????
  ?????????,????????,??????????????????.???????
  ?????,???????????????????????????????
• From??????????????????? ??? ???????? 2001
  ?5 ??17 ??3 ?

75
American Naturalism pessimistic realism

• 1. Naturalism came from France.
• 2. Reasons civil war, social upheavals,
  Darwinism, hypothesized that over the millennia,
  man had evolved from lower forms of life. Human
  were special, not because God had created them in
  His image, as the Bible taught, but because they
  had successfully adapted to changing
  environmental conditions and had passed on their
  survival making characteristic genetically. Men
  were dominated by the irresistible forces of
  evolution. Men were conceived as more or less
  complex combination of inherited attributes and
  habits conditioned by social and economic forces,
  by heredity and environment.

76

• 3. Features of naturalist writing A. naturalist
  writers turned literary creation into a
  mechanical record of society, in a way of
  attempting to achieve extreme objectivity and
  frankness. They never made comments on the
  characters and their behaviors. B. The characters
  were often figures of low social and economic
  classes, with animal desire, some physically
  strong but weak-willed figures. There were also
  some healthy and lofty persons, but their ending
  were miserable. C. the viewpoint from which the
  writers understood problems was amoral, or
  non-moral. They stressed men had no free will,
  their lives were controlled by heredity and
  environment. D. their material was infinite.

77

• 4. American Naturalist writers Stephen Crane,
  Frank Norris, Jack London, Henry Adams, Theodore
  Dreiser.

78
Naturalism

• A more deliberate kind of realism in novels,
  stories, and plays, usually involving a view of
  human beings as passive victims of natural forces
  and social environmentthe most significant work
  of naturalism in English being Dreisers Sister
  Carrie. (Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms)

79
(No Transcript)
80
Londons Childhood

• Born in 1876 on the Barbary Coast of San
  Francisco
• Raised by mother, Flora Wellman, and stepfather,
  John London
• Childhood marked by poverty unhappiness

81
London at age 8 with dog Rollo
82
London as a school boy
83

• Became an avid reader at age 10 when an Oakland
  librarian encouraged him to escape his life of
  poverty through reading.
• Bought his first sailboat at age 12loved to sail

84
(No Transcript)
85
YouthAdventure/Responsibility

• Dropped out of school at age 14 had series of
  low-paying jobs
• Seaman delivered paperssweatshop worked
  in canneryfreight train hobo cleaned local
  saloon

• Loved to listen to stories about the California
  Gold Rush of 1849

86
Forming Ideas/Attitudes

• Experiences that shaped Londons life and
  attitudes
• -oyster pirate -seal hunter in the
  North Pacific -1894arrested jailed in
  Niagara Falls for vagrancy -adopted
  socialistic views

• Educated self by reading in public library
• Attended University of California at Berkeley
• Left school after 1 year to seek his fortune in
  gold fields

87
Adventure

• Traveled to Klondike Gold Rush in 1897
• Spent one winter at Split-Up Island, near the
  Stewart River
• Did not find gold had a wealth of experiences he
  would later use to write stories and books
• Returned home to support himself and his family
  by publishing his writin

88
Jack London outfitted to travel to the gold
fields of the Klondike Gold Rush Photo actually
taken in at Truckee, CA.
89
Adult Life

• An avid sailorloved his boat, the Snark

90
http//sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/jack.html
Aboard the Snark with friends
91
Married twicetwo daughters
92

• Bess MaddernLondons first wife
• Becky and Joan LondonLondons daughters

93
Charmian London Jack Londons second wife
94
London owned and loved a ranch in Sonoma Valley
95
Next to my wife, the ranch is the dearest
thing in the world to me.
Jack London
96
The Londons at home
97
I believe the soil is our greatest asset.
Jack London
98
(No Transcript)
99
I hope to do two things with the ranchTo leave
the land better for my having beenTo enable 30
or 40 families to live happily on the ground that
was so impoverished when I bought it.
100

• ..he was mighty good to us, and there never was
  a man who came here who went away hungry.
• Ranch workman

101
Londonthe Author

• Began avidly writing in 1897
• He commonly spent 15 hours a day writing
• Daily quota of 1000 written words a day
• Became recognized as a talented successful
  writer

102
(No Transcript)
103
Jack London wrote 50 books and 1,000 articles
between 1899 and 1916.
104
The greatest story London ever told was the
story he lived. Alfred
Kazin Literary critic
105
(No Transcript)
106
By 1916, London was the highest-paid writer in
the country and the most widely read American
author in the world.
107
(No Transcript)
108
His literary works like The Road, written in
1907, inspired later writers like John Steinbeck
and Jack Kerouac.
109
(No Transcript)
110
The Londons several weeks prior to his death
111

• Jack London died on November 22, 1916.
• A memorial for he and his second wife, Charmian
  Kittredge, is located at Glen Ellen.

112
One of the reasons Jack Londons popularity as
an author remainsso high in the world today is
because his life was as interesting as his
works.
113
Jack London's "Credo"I would rather be ashes
than dust! I would rather that my spark should
burn out     in a brilliant blaze than it should
be stifled by dry-rot.The function of man is to
live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days
trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
114
What others thought of Jack London
115
No writer, unless it were Mark Twain, ever had a
more romantic life than Jack London. Ernest J.
Hopkins
116
The story of his adventure-filled life still
intrigues readers of all ages and from all walks
of life. Russ Kingman
117
London was described as a born teller of tales
who wrote as he livedin a hurry.
Howard Lachtman
118
(No Transcript)
119
Title The Call of the WildGenre Realistic
FictionSetting Late 1800s, Klondike
gold rush
120
(No Transcript)
121
Call of the Wild--Comments
122
In his story the Klondike became not only a
real country, but a territory of the mind where
his characters lived or died because of what they
had in them.
(Lachtman, 1984)
123
He was paid three cents per word for the story,
which he had shortened by 5,000 words.
124
London received a total of 2,750.00 for his
work.
125
The book has never been out of print during the
last seventy-five years
http//www.parks.sonoma.net/JLPark.html
126
The Call of the Wild is the greatest dog story
ever written and is at the same time a study of
one of the most curious and profound motives that
play hide-and-seek in the human soul.
Carl Sandburg
127
(No Transcript)
128
From the time The Call of the Wild caught the
imagination of the world in 1903, until his death
by a stroke and heart attack in 1916,
129
his 51 books, hundreds of short stories, essays
and other writings had more newspaper coverage
than any other writer.
130
I have everything to make me glad I am alive. I
am filled with dreams and mysteries.
Jack London
131
Overall, he wrote 19 novels, 150 short stories, 3
plays, and many nonfictions. He even tried to
write poems.Selected works

• Novels
• The Call of the Wild(1903)
• The Sea Wolf (1904)
• White Fang(1906)
• The Iron Heel(1908)
• Martin Eden(1909)
• The Star Rover(1915)
• Nonfiction
• The People of The Abyss(1903)
• War of the Classes(1905)
• The Road(1907)
• John Barleyborn(1913)

132

• The Sea Wolf
• Humphrey Van Weyden Ghost the ship
  Wolf Larsen
• ???????????, ??????????????????????,
  ?????????????????, ???????????,
  ??????????????????? ???19?????????????????????,
  ?????????????, ???????????????????????????????????
  ????????????????????
• (Irving Stone)
• I believe that life is a mess. It is like yeast,
  a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a
  minute, an hourbut that in the end will cease to
  move. The big eat the little that they may
  continue to move, the strong eat the weak that
  they may retain their strength. ( The Sea Wolf )

133

• Martin Eden ( Londons most autobiography novel)
• Ruth Morse
• Perhaps Nietzsche had been right. Perhaps there
  was no truth in anything, not truth is truth no
  such thing as truth.
• ( Martin Eden)
• Being unaware of the needs of others, of the
  whole human collective, Martin Eden lived only
  for himself, fought only for himself, and if you
  please, died for himself.
• (Jack London)

134

• ????, ????
• ?????????
• ?????????
• ??????,??
• ?????, ???
• ?????????
• ?????????
• ????????????
• ??, ?????????
• ???,??????
• ???????

135
Theodore Dreiser (18711945)

• Sister Carrie (1900)
• An American Tragedy (1925)

136
Stephen Crane (18711900)

• Maggie A Girl of the Street (1893)
• The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
• The Open Boat
• The Blue Hotel

137
Theodore Dreiser (18711945)

• Sister Carrie (1900)
• An American Tragedy (1925)

138
Stephen Crane (18711900)

• Maggie A Girl of the Street (1893)
• The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
• The Open Boat
• The Blue Hotel

139
Sarah Orne Jewett (18491909)

• The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896)

140
Kate Chopin (18511904)

• The Awakening (1899)

141
Ambrose Bierce (18421914)

• Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891)
• The Devils Dictionary
• In June 1913, he had written to a friend Ive
  seen the lastmy lastof California and of you.
  Pretty soon I am going awayO very far away. I
  have in mind a little valley in the heart of the
  Andes, just wide enough for one

142
(No Transcript)
143
Henry Adams (18381918)

• The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

144
(No Transcript)
145
(No Transcript)
146
(No Transcript)
147
(No Transcript)