The United States of America

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The United States of America

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Title: The United States of America


1
The United States of America
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2
Chapter 13 Literature
The United States of America
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3
CONTENT
4
The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods
I
5
1.1 The Colonial Period (1607-1775)
Q2 What is the influence of pluralism on
American literature?
6
1.1 The Colonial Period (1607-1775)(cont.)
  • Character of Writingsreligious, practical, or
    historical.
  • American Puritanismmajor topic stresses
  • predestination (??)
  • original sin
  • total depravity (??)
  • limited atonement (??) or the salvation (??) of a
    selected few who would receive Gods grace.

Discussion Compare the American Puritanism with
Chinese Confucianism.
7
1.2 The Revolutionary Period
  • representative workThomas Jeffersons
    Declaration of Independence.
  • Character of Declaration of Independence
  • rhetorical (??????) vigor
  • refined diction (??)
  • polished style
  • ardent longing for freedom

Q How was American literature forwarded in the
Revolutionary Period?
8
1.3 Representative Figures
9
1.3.1 Jonathan Edwards
  • religious idealism
  • powerful sermons (??)preaching the puritan ideas
    and condemning peoples depravity.
  • best-known work Sinners in the Hands of an
    Angry God (1741).
  • initiating the Great Awakening Movement to revive
    Puritanism.

10

1.3.1 Jonathan Edwards (cont.)
  • Almanacpublished continuously for almost a
    quarter of a century.
  • adages (??) and sayings
  • A penny saved is a penny earned.
  • Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man
    healthy, wealthy, and wise.

11
1.3.2 Benjamin Franklin
  • levelheaded (?????) common sense
  • a completely worldly man a statesman,
    ambassador, scientist, essayist as well.
  • Poor Richards Almanacboth a literary
    achievement and a profitable business.

12
1.3.2 Benjamin Franklin (cont.)
  • Autobiographymost famous work.
  • the faithful account of the colorful career of
    Americas first self-made manrising from
    poverty and obscurity (????) to wealth and fame.
  • Autobiographya record of spiritual growth in
    addition to self-examination and self-improvement.

13
The Romantic Period (1790-1865)
II
14
2.1 Feature
  • American Renaissance.
  • Character of American writings
  • free expression of emotions, attention to the
    psychic (???) states of their character.
  • exalted (??) the individual and the common man.
  • revealed unique characteristics of their own and
    grew on the native lands.
  • Best Representives
  • Washington Irving James Fennimore Cooper
  • Walt Whiteman Emily Dickinson

15
2.2 Writers of Fiction
2.2.1
2.2.2
2.2.3
2.2.4
2.2.5
2.2.6
16
2.2.1 Washington Irving (1783-1859)
  • the father of American literature
  • the first to write using the local color and the
    details in his works.
  • symbolism to the themes.
  • Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy
    Hollowmost famous stories.

17
2.2.2 James Fennimore Cooper (1789-1851)
  • two great figures of American mythology the
    brave frontiersman and the bold Indian.
  • author of the Leather Stocking Talesa series
    of five novels
  • The Pioneers (1823)
  • The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
  • The Prairie (1827)
  • The Pathfinder (1840)
  • The Deerslayer (1841)
  • frontiersman heroNatty Bumppo representing the
    ideal American.

18
2.2.3 Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
  • chief spokesman of New England Transcendentalisms
    ummit of American Romanticism.
  • defined as the recognition in man of the
    capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or of
    attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the
    senses.
  • His essays have a casual style.
  • The bestNature and Essays

19
2.2.4 Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
  • a descendant of Puritan immigrants.
  • a pioneer in psychological description.
  • wrote as a moralist tried to find out how men
    reacted in their mind when they found they had
    done something wrong exposed the evils of the
    society by describing the psychological
    activities of human beings.
  • most famous novelThe Scarlet Letter
  • other works
  • The House of Seven Gables (1851)
  • The Blithedale Romance (1852)
  • The Marble Faun (1860)

20
2.2.5 Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
  • a lonely writer both in life and literature
    history.
  • literary output poetry, short stories, and
    reviews for literary works.
  • strange theme and style make him an outsider of
    the main current of American literature.
  • foreigners acclaimed him as genius
  • masterpieces
  • The Raven (1845)
  • The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)

21
2.2.6 Herman Melville (1819-1891)
  • fameestablished on Moby Dick.
  • acknowledged as one of the worlds great
    masterpieces.
  • themetoo far advanced for his contemporaries
  • presenting a bleak view of the world
  • the universe is Godless and purposeless
  • human life is also meaningless and futile.

22
2.3 Writers of Poets
2.3.1
2.3.2
23
2.3.1 Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
  • poemsThe Leaves of Grass
  • combined the ideal of democratic common man and
    that of the rugged individual
  • poetic style
  • free versepoetry without a fixed beat (??) or
    regular rhyme scheme.
  • his poetry ironically ignored by the general
    public due to his unconventional style.

24
2.3.2 Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
  • different from Whitman
  • the poetessturned to the outer world and
    embraced society, democracy and nation
  • cast her eyes inward to explore the inner
    feelings of the individual.
  • shy and sensitive nature, she avoided visitors
    and led a quite reclusive (???) life.

25
2.3.2 Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) (cont.)
  • short poems
  • the real worldinvisible in the concise lines,
    neither are there people.
  • nature dwell in her world, and metaphysical
    (?????) thinking like death and immortality
    occupies her mind.
  • most famous poems
  • My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close (1896)
  • Because I could Not Stop for Death (1890)
  • A Narrow Fellow in the Grass (1891)
  • constructing a wonderful worldsmall but intense,
    fresh, individual and original.

26
2.4 Questions
  • Q1 What are the characteristics of American
    writing during the Romantic period?
  • Q2 How much do you like Nathaniel Hawthornes
    workThe Scarlet Letter, and how do you interpret
    the letter A?

27
The Realistic Period (1790-1865)
III
28
3.1 Feature
  • a reaction against Romanticism.
  • stressingtruthful treatment of material.
  • the writings are concerned with the world of

    experience, the
    commonplace, the familiar and the low.
  • dominant figures
  • Mark Twain
  • William Dean Howells
  • Henry James

29
3.2 Representative Figures
3.2.1
3.2.2
3.2.3
2.2.5
2.2.6
30
3.2.1 Mark Twain (1835-1910)
  • grew up in the Mississippi River frontier town of
    Hannibal, Missouri.
  • Twains style based on vigorous, realistic,
    colloquial American speecha new appreciation of
    their national voice.
  • first major author coming from the interior of
    the country capturing its distinctive, humorous
    slang and iconoclasm.

31
Masterpiece
3.2.1 Mark Twain (1835-1910) (cont.)
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  • Hucks inner struggle between his sense of guilt
    in helping Jim to escape and profound conviction
    that Jim is a human being.
  • Through escape, he gets to know Jim better and
    accepts Jim as both a human being and a loyal
    friend.

32
Other Famous Novels
3.2.1 Mark Twain (1835-1910) (cont.)
  • The Adventure of Tom Sawyer (1876)
  • The Prince and the Pauper (1882)
  • Life on the Mississippi (1883)
  • The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (1900)
  • The Mysterious Stranger (1916)

33
Contribution
3.2.1 Mark Twain (1835-1910) (cont.)
  • making colloquial speech an accepted, respectable
    literary medium in literature.
  • influence of his style
  • sweeping across the American literary world.
  • far-reaching
  • making Some 20th-century writers acknowledge
    their indebtedness (??) to Mark Twain

34
3.2.2 Henry James (1843-1916)
  • bridges the 19th and 20th centuries and connects
    America and Europe.
  • the international theme the meeting of
    America and Europe.
  • Europeansmore cultured, more concerned with art,
    and more aware of the subtleties of social
    situations
  • Americansmorality and innocence

35
Major Works
3.2.2 Henry James (1843-1916) (cont.)
  • The American (1877)
  • Daisy Miller (1878)
  • The Wings of the Dove (1902)
  • The Golden Bowl (1904)
  • The Portrait of A Lady (1881)

36
3.2.3 William Dean Howells (1837-1920)
  • realismphotographic pictures of externals but
    includes a central concern with motives and
    psychological conflicts.
  • prolific writer drama, poetry and novels in
    addition to criticism, travelogues (????) and
    autobiography.
  • masterpieceThe Rise of Silas Lapham (1885)

37
The Naturalistic Period (1900-1914)
IV
38
4.1 Feature
  • Apply principles of scientific determinism to
    fiction and drama.
  • Viewing human beings as animals in the natural
    world responding to environmental forces and
    internal stresses and drives.

39
Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
4.2 Representative Figure
  • American valuesmaterialistic
  • human individual is obsessed with a never-ending,
    yet meaningless search for satisfaction of his
    desires.
  • Money
  • Sex
  • embracing social Darwinism
  • the survival of the fittest

40
Masterpiece
4.2 Representative Figure (cont.)
  • Sister Carrie (1900)
  • Carriea country girl looking for a better life
    in Chicago. Drouet took her home as mistress.
    Hurstwood, Drouets friend, deserted family and
    forced her to run away with him. Carrie became a
    famous actress Hurstwood committed suicide.
  • Dreisers naturalistic pursuit
  • expounding the purposelessness of life
  • attacking the conventional moral standards.

41
Other Works
4.2 Representative Figure (cont.)
  • Trilogy (???) of desire
  • The Financer (1912)
  • The Titan (1914)
  • The Stoic (1945)
  • masterpieceThe American Tragedy (1925)

42
The Modern Period (1914-1939)
V
43
5. 1 Lost Generation
Q What is the Lost Generation?
  • American writers caught in WWI and cut off from
    the old values unable to come to terms with the
    new era.

5.1.1
44
5.1.1 F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
  • The Great Gatsbya masterpiece in American
    literature.
  • Gatsby discovers the devastating cost of success
    in terms of personal fulfillment and love.
  • Gatsbys life pattern
  • first, a dream
  • Then, disenchantment (??)
  • Finally, a sense of failure and despair
  • end of the American Dream

45
5.1.2 Earnest Hemingway (1899-1961)
  • Nobel Prize winner
  • major works
  • A Farewell To Arms (1928)
  • For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
  • The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

46
5.1.2 Earnest Hemingway (1899-1961) (cont.)
47
5.1.2 Earnest Hemingway (1899-1961)(cont.)
  • Hemingways worldchaotic and meaningless
  • man fighting a solitary struggle against a force
    he does not understand.
  • Hero possessing a despairing courage.
  • the courage enables a man to behave like a man,
    to assert his dignity in face of adversity (??).
  • writing style colloquialism
  • concrete, specific words
  • casual and conversational
  • short, simple sentences

48
5.2 Modern Poetry
Representative Figure
  • Ezra Pound (1885-1972) a link between US and
    Britain
  • Imagism
  • image
  • something that presents an intellectual and
    emotional complex in an instant of time.
  • The Cantos he wrote and published until his
    death.

49
The Contemporary Period (1939- )
VI
Black Writers
6.1
Literature of Modern South
6.4
50
6.1 Black Writers
  • Richard WrightNative Son (1940)
  • Ralph EllisonInvisible Man (1952)
  • James BaldwinGo Tell It on the Mountain (1954)
  • readers conscious of an oppressed race groaning
    and struggling for salvation

51
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
6.1 Black Writers (cont.)
  • poet laureate, literary figure of Harlem
    Renaissance.
  • embraced African-American jazz rhythms and
    incorporated blues, spirituals, colloquial
    speech, and folkways in his poetry.
  • most beloved poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers
  • suggesting that, like the great rivers of the
    world, African culture will endure and deepen.

52
6.2 Jewish writers
  • Jewish writers not only focus upon Jewish
    characters and social questions, but also bring a
    distinctively Jewish sense of humor to their
    novels.
  • Yiddishlanguage used by European Jews
  • preserve Jewish culture, isolated but intact
    (???), until the early 20th century.

53
Saul Bellow (1915-2005)
6.2 Jewish writers (cont.)
  • Won Nobel Prize in 1976
  • Famous works
  • Dangling Man (1944)
  • The Victim (1947)
  • The Adventures of Augie March (1954)
  • Henderson the Rain King (1959)
  • Herzog (1964)
  • Mr. Sammlers Planet (1970)
  • Humboldt's Gift (1975)

54
Saul Bellow (1915-2005)
6.2 Jewish writers (cont.)
55
6.3 The Beat Movement
  • beat representing a non-conformist, rebellious
    attitude toward conventional values concerning
    sex, religion and the American way of life, an
    attitude resulting from the feeling of depression
    and exhaustion and the need to escape into an
    unconventional, communal mode of life.
  • central Beat writers
  • William Burroughs
  • Allen Ginsberg
  • Jack Kerouac

56
Beat Writers Works
6.3 The Beat Movement (cont.)
  • express emotion raw, rather than cooked
    through memory and translation into art.
  • representative works
  • Jack Kerouac On the Road (1957),
  • William BurroughsNaked Lunch (1959)
  • Allen GinsbergHowl (1956)

57
Beat Writers Works
6.3 The Beat Movement (cont.)
58
6.4 Literature of Modern South
  • William FaulknerNobel Prize winning novelist
  • Major works
  • The Sound and the Fury (1929)
  • As I Lay Dying (1930)
  • Light in August (1932)
  • Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
  • Go Down, Moses (1942)
  • stories set in a small southern county,
    exploration of basic human nature and basic
    patterns of human behavior make them enduring
    works in world literature.

59
6.5 Womens Voices
  • Feminist movement during the 1960s and 1970s
    affected American culture and womens
    relationship with the opposite sex.

60
Tony Morrison (1931- )
6.5 Womens Voices (cont.)
  • Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.
  • explored the experience of black women in a
    racist culture.
  • famous novelsThe Bluest Eye (1970) Beloved
    (1987)
  • the latter is about Margaret Garner, a slave
    escaping with her children when recaptured,
    attempted to kill her children rather than return
    them to life of slavery.

61
Alice Walker (1944- )
6.5 Womens Voices (cont.)
  • spoke for the womens movement, for the
    anti-nuclear movement.
  • concern of her works
  • sexual and racial realities within black
    communities
  • unavoidable connections between family and
    society.

62
Alice Walkers Masterpiece
6.5 Womens Voices (cont.)
  • Fictionweaving back and forth through time and
    individual perspectives.
  • Charactersseek redemption, forgiveness and
    peace.
  • received the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for The Color
    Purple.

63
Amy Tan (1952- )
6.5 Womens Voices (cont.)
  • Chinese-American writer
  • portrays the lives of Chinese American daughters
    and their Chinese immigrant mothers.
  • characters conflicting emotions
  • being native-born Americans of Chinese ancestry.
  • Novels
  • The Joy Luck Club (1989)
  • The Kitchen Gods Wife (1991)
  • focus on the relationships between mothers and
    daughters.

64
6.6 Drama
  • rise of American drama in 20th century.
  • With the opening of theatres, drama turned up as
    an influential literary form in American
    literature.
  • three representative playwrights.

65
Eugene ONeill (1888-1953)
6.6 Drama (cont.)
  • greatest playwright, won Nobel Prize in 1936.
  • dramaserious literature and wrote tragedies
    consistently.
  • wrote 45 plays
  • highly experimental in form and style
  • combining literary theories of symbolism,
    naturalism and expressionism.
  • great influence on later American playwrights.

66
Eugene ONeills Famous Plays
6.6 Drama (cont.)
  • Beyond the Horizon (1920)
  • The Hairy Ape (1922)
  • Desire Under the Elms (1924)
  • The Iceman Cometh (1946) climax of his career
  • Long Days Journey into Night (1956)
  • sensitive artist.
  • felt the discordant (????), broken, faithless
    rhythm of his time
  • probing into the root of human desires and
    frustrations
  • pessimistic plays, leaving the characters without
    illusion and hope.

67
Eugene ONeills Famous Plays
6.6 Drama (cont.)
68
Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)
6.6 Drama (cont.)
  • a dramatist, wrote novel, poetry, prose and short
    stories.
  • representative works
  • The Glass Menagerie (1945)
  • A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)for which was
    awarded Pulitzer Prize.
  • Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
  • Suddenly Last Summer (1958)

69
Tennessee Williams Writing Features
6.6 Drama (cont.)
  • wrote of isolated and lonely people of American
    society.
  • good at creating pathetic (???) woman
  • typical one Laura, heroine in The Glass
    Menagerie.
  • a fragile girl lives in illusion, which is
    smashed to pieces by a male intrudersymbol of
    reality.

70
Arthur Miller (1915-2005)
6.6 Drama (cont.)
  • social dramatistconcerns the conflicts of the
    individual within society and presents a social
    critique of the inhuman capitalist system.
  • Death of a Salesman (1947)
  • modern tragedy
  • presentation and disclosure of the cruelty and
    bloodiness of capitalism.
  • other important plays
  • All My Sons (1947)
  • The Crucible (1953)
  • A View from the Bridge (1955)

71
Arthur Miller MasterpieceDeath of a Salesman
6.6 Drama (cont.)
72
Arthur Miller MasterpieceDeath of a Salesman
6.6 Drama (cont.)
  • modern tragedy
  • presentation and disclosure of the cruelty and
    bloodiness of capitalism.
  • miserable life and tragic death of Willy firm
    conviction in American dream.
  • Disillusioned, he killed himself to get 20,000
    life insurance money.

73
Willythe salesman
6.6 Drama (cont.)
74
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