美国文学名词解释 总结

Basic Literary Knowledge

I. Literary Terms

1. Short story: A fictional prose tale of no specified length, but too short to be published as a volume on its own. A short story will normally concentrate on a single event with only one or two characters, more economically than a novel‟s sustained exploration of social background. The short story flourished in the magazines of the 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in the USA. 2. Plot: Plot is the first and most obvious quality of a story. Plot is what happens in a story. Unlike life, which is random and unpredictable, the story will usually be shaped by a chain of events, one leading inevitably to another in a line of rising action to a moment of crisis—the climax.

3. Nonfiction: It refers to any prose narrative that tells about things as they actually happen or that presents factual information about something. Autobiography and biography are among the major forms of nonfiction. The purpose of this kind writing is to give a presumably accurate accounting of a person‟s life. Essays are also common forms of nonfiction. Other kinds of nonfiction include the stories, editorials, and letters to the editor found in newspapers, as well as diaries, journals and travel literature.

4. Imagery: It is the representation in poetry of sensory experiences. It is a device by which poets appeal to our senses. Although we usually think with words, many of our thoughts come to us as pictures or imagined sensations in our minds. Such imagined pictures or sensations are called images.

5. Character: Characters are the persons presented in a dramatic or narrative work. In order to have a full understanding of a character‟s moral, dispositional and emotional qualities, the readers need to interpret what they say and what they do.

6. Surrealism: It is a literary and art movement influenced by Freudianism, dedicated to expressing the imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and convention. In literature, surrealism was confined almost exclusively to France, and was based on the associations and implications of words. Surrealism was a major intellectual force between the wars.

7. Theatre of absurdity: It is a term used to identify a body of plays written primarily in France from the mid-1940s through the 1950s. the plays usually employ illogical situations, unconventional dialogues, and minimal plots to express the apparent absurdity of human existence. The leading figures of the movement are Irish-born playwright Samuel Beckett and the French playwright Eugen Ionesco.

8. Deconstruction: it is the method of analyzing literature that seeks to uncover multiple layers of meaning, including the author‟s intentions and other meanings that are based on how the same language, images, or ideas have been used before. The leading figure is the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.

IV. Questions and answers.

1. How do you understand Mark twain‟s use of local color in his writing?

Mark Twain‟s narratives are distinguished for his use of local color. This may be defined as the careful attention to details of the physical scene and to those mannerisms in speech, dress, or behavior peculiar to a geographical locality. He insisted that the job of the native novelists was to depict each of the country‟s regions and people accurately. Only in this way could the peculiarity of American experience, the polyglot tongues of its people, and the vastness of the continent be captured. He mainly exploited the possibilities of the local color in the Mississippi region. 2. Discuss the concept of wasteland in relation to the works of those writers in the 20th century American literature.

„The Waste Land‟ is a poem written by T.S. Eliot on the theme of the sterility and chaos of th3 contemporary world. This most widely known expression of the despair in the postwar era has appeared over and over again in the works of those writers in the 2oth century American literature. Faulkner exemplified T.S. Eliot‟s concept of modern society as a wasteland is a dramatic way, he condemned the mechanized, industrialized society that has dehumanized man by forcing him to cultivate false values and decrease those essential human values such as courage, fortitude, honesty and goodness. Fitzgerald sought to portray a spiritual wasteland of the jazz age. Beneath the masks of relaxation and joviality, there was only sterility, meaningless and futility amid the grandeur and extravagance, there was a hint of decadence and moral decay. Hemingway, the leading spokesman of the Lost Generation, though disillusioned in the postwar period, strove to bring about man‟s “grace under pressure”. He tried to bring out the idea than man can be physically destroyed but never defeated spiritually.

3. Analyze Walt Whitman‟s „O Captain! My Captain‟ in terms of free verse.

In the poem, Whitman celebrates the heroic struggle of the American people for democracy, freedom and justice and expresses his seething hatred of slavery.

Free verse is a kind of poetry that lacks regular meter or pattern and may not rhyme. Depending on natural speech rhythms, its lines may be of different lengths and may switch abruptly from one rhythm to another. Whitman was the first American poet to use free verse extensively, because it is an appropriate form for his liberating view of life and for his poetry that would allow every aspect of life to speak without restraint. He tried to approximate the natural cadences of speech in his poetry, carefully varying the length of his lines according to his intended emphasis.

Literature of Colonial America

I. Literary Terms

1.Separatists: In the colonial period, the Puritans who had gone to extreme were known as “separatists”. Unlike the majority of Puritans, they saw no hope of reforming the Church of

England from within. They felt that the influences of politics and court had led to corruptions within the church. They wished to break free from the Church of England. Among them was the Plymouth plantation group. They wished to follow Calvin‟s model, and to set up “particular” churches.

2.Pilgrims and Puritans: A small group of Europeans sailed from England on the Mayflower in 1620. The passengers were religious reformers--- Puritans who were critical of the Church of England. Having given up hope of “purifying” the Church from within, they chose instead to withdraw from the Church. This action earned them the name Separatists. We know them as the pilgrims.

II. Question and answer.

Who was Anne Bradstreet? What were her literary achievements?

Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) is one of the most important figures in the history of American literature. She is considered by many to be the first American poet and her first collection of poems, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America, by a Gentlewoman of Those Parts, was the first book written by a woman to be published in the United States. Mrs. Bradstreet‟s work also serves as document of the struggles of a Puritan wife against the hardships of new England colonial life.

Literature of Reason and Revolution

I. Literary terms.

1. Autobiography: An autobiography is a person‟s account of his or her life. Generally written in the first person, with the author speaking as “I”. Autobiographies present life events as the writer views them. In addition to providing inside details about the writer‟s life, autobiographies offer insights into the beliefs and perceptions of the author. They also offer glimpse of what it was like to live in the author‟s time period. They often provide a view of historical events that you won‟t find in history books. Benjamin Franklin‟s Autobiography set the standard for what was then a new genre.

2. Persuasion: Persuasion is writing meant to convince readers to think or act in a certain way. A persuasive writer appeals to emotions or reason, offer opinions and urges action.

3. Aphorism: An aphorism is a short, concise statement expressing a wise or clever observation or a general truth. A variety of devices make aphorisms easy to remember. Some contain rhymes or repeated words or sounds. Others use parallel structure to present contrasting ideas. The aphorism “no pains no gains” uses rhyme, repetition and parallel structure. II. Questions and Answers.

1. What are the characteristics of Benjamin Franklin‟s literary work?

The main quality in all Benjamin Franklin‟s writing is its genuine humanness. His literary work

was typical of himself. Honest, plain, democratic, clear-headed, shrewd, worldly-wise, he was interested in the practical side of life. The absence of ideality is obvious in all his compositions. He never reached the high levels of imaginative art. But on this lower plane of material interest and every-day life he was, the works possess a universal charm 2. Give a brief account of American literature of this period.

Much work during the Revolutionary period was public writing. By the time of the War for Independence, nearly fifty newspapers had been established in the coastal cities. At the time of Washington‟s inauguration, there were nearly forty magazines. Almanacs were popular from Massachusetts to Georgia. The mind of the nation was on politics. Journalists and printers provided a forum for the expression of ideas. The writing of permanent importance is mostly political writing. The best-known writing of the period outside the field of politics was done by Benjamin Franklin.

3. Write an analysis of The Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Independence, adopted on July 4, 1776, not only announced the birth of a new nation, it also set forth a philosophy of human freedom which served as an important force in the western world. Its ideas inspired mass fervor for the American cause, for it instilled among the common people a sense of their own importance, and inspired struggle for personal freedom, self-government, and a dignified place in society.

Romantic Period of American Literature I. Literary Terms.

1. Romanticism: The literature term was first applied to the writers of the 18th century in Europe who broke away from the formal rules of classical writing. When it was used in American literature it referred to the writers of the middle of the 19th century who stimulated the sentimental emotions of their readers. They wrote the mysteries of life, love, birth and death. The romantic writers expressed themselves freely and without restraint. They wrote all kinds of materials: poetry, essays, plays, fiction, history, works of travel, and biography.

2. Fireside poets: William Gullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russel Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and John Greenleaf Whittier constituted a group called the Fireside Poets. They earned this nickname because they frequently used the hearth as an image of comfort and unity, a place where families gathered to learn and tell stories. They were widely read around the hearthsides of 19th-century American families.

3. Transcendentalism: In New England, an intellectual movement known as transcendentalism developed as an American version of Romanticism. The movement began among an influential set of authors based in Concord, Massachusetts and was led by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Like Romanticism, transcendentalism rejected both 18th century rationalism and established religion, which for the transcendentalists meant the Puritan tradition in particular. The transcendentalists celebrated the power of the human imagination to commune with the universe and transcend the

limitations of the material world. They found their chief source of inspiration in nature. Emerson‟s essay nature was the major document of the transcendental school and stated the ideas that were to remain central to it.

4. Symbolism: It is a movement in literature and the visual arts that originated in France in the poetry of Charles Baudelaire in the late 19th century. In literature, symbolism was an aesthetic movement that encouraged writers to express their ideas, feelings, and values by means of symbols or suggestions rather than by direct statements. Hawthorne and Melville are masters of symbolism in America in the 19th century.

5. Free verse: free verse is the rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without attention to conventional rules of meter. Free verse was first written and labeled by a group of French poets of the late 19th century. Their purpose was to deliver poetry from the restrictions of formal metrical patterns and to recreate the free rhythms of natural speech. Walt Whitman was the precursor who wrote lines of varying length and cadence, usually not rhymed. The emotional content or meaning of the work was expressed through its rhythm. Free verse has been characteristic of the work of many modern American poets, including Ezra Pound and Carl Sandburg.

6. Puritanism: The word is originally used to refer to the theory advocated by a party within the Church of England. It is also used to refer to attitudes and values considered characteristics of the Puritans. It denotes a rigid moral, or the condemnation of innocent pleasure, or religious narrowness adhered by the early New England Puritans. It exerted great influence over American Romanticism. The preoccupation with the Calvinist view of original sin and the mystery of evil marked the works by such famous writers as Hawthorne and Melville.

II. Questions and answers

1. What are the artistic achievements of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow‟s poetry?

He was the best known of the Fireside Poets. American poetry began its emergence from the shadow of its British parentage. His poetic narrative helped create a national historical myth, transforming colorful aspects of the American past into memorable romance. The works include Evangeline (1847), the Song of Hiawatha (1855). No American poet before or since was as widely celebrated during his or her lifetime as Longfellow. He became the first and the only American poet to be honored with a bust in the Poets‟ Corner. 2. How to define the Romantic period in American history?

The period stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War. it started with the publication of Washington Irving‟s The Sketch Book and ended with Whitman‟s Leaves of Grass. Being a period of the great flowing of American literature, it is also called “the American Renaissance”.

3. What are the literary characteristics in the works of American romantic period?

The characteristics are moral enthusiasm, faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that natural world was a source of goodness and man‟s society a source of corruption.

4. What is the relationship between American romanticism and European Romanticism?

They share much in common: in reaction to the enlightenment and its emphasis on reason, Romanticism stressed emotion, the imagination, and subjectivity of approach. European literary masters, especially the English counterparts exerted a stimulating impact on the writers of the new World. American romanticism is to some extent derivative after their English predecessors. But the great American Romantic works were typically American. The writers developed some new forms of fiction or poetry. They placed an increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions and displayed an increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters. The strong tendency to exalt the individual and common man was another focus of the movement. 5. What is Ralph Waldo Emerson‟s transcendental idea and his view of nature?

His transcendental idea has some ideological concerns of American Puritanism and European Romanticism, with its focus on the intuitive knowledge of human beings to grasp the absolute in the universe and the divinity of man. Emerson rejected the formal religion of the churches. He based his religion on an intuitive belief in an ultimate unity, which he called the “over-soul”. The over-soul is an all-pervading power from which all things come from and of which all are a part. In Emerson‟s view, nature is emblematic of the spiritual world, alive with God‟s overwhelming presence. It exercises a healthy and restorative influence on human mind. By employing nature as a big symbol of the spirit, or God, or the Over-soul, Emerson has brought the Puritan legacy of symboalism to its perfection.

6. What is the main idea of Henry David Thoreau‟s Walden?

Thoreau‟s work demonstrates how the abstract ideals of libertarianism and individualism can be effectively instilled in a person‟s life. In Walden (1854) Thoreau explains his motives for living apart from society and devoting himself to a simple lifestyle and to the observation of nature. The book not only displays Emersonian ideas of self-reliance but also develops Thoreau‟s own transcendental idea. For Thoreau, nature is not merely symbolic, but divine in itself and human beings can receive precise communication from the natural world by way of pure sense. To achieve personal spiritual perfection he thinks the most important thing for man is to be self-sufficient.

7. What are the artistic achievements of Edgar Allan Poe?

Poe is known as a poet and critic but most famous as the first master of the short story form, especially tales of the mysterious and macabre. He originated the novel of detection. The best known tale in this genre is The Murders in the Morgue (1841). Many of Poe‟s tales are distinguished by the author‟s unique grotesque inventiveness in addition to his superb plot construction. Such stories include The Fall of the House of Usher (1983), in which the penetrating gloominess of the atmosphere is accented equally with plot and characterization. Poe‟s poems are remarkable for their flawless literary construction and for their haunting themes and meters as in the poems „The Raven‟ and „ Annabel Lee‟.

8. What are the artistic characteristics of the Scarlet Letter?

The novel, a story of rebellion within an emotionally constricted Puritan society, is an undisputed masterpiece written by Hawthorne. It reveals both Hawthorne‟s super craftsmanship and the powerful psychological insight with which he probed guilt and anxiety in the human soul.

Hawthorne‟s remarkable sense of the Puritan past, his understanding of the colonial history in England, his apparent preoccupation with the moral issue of sin and guilt, and his keen psychological analysis of people are brought to full display in the novel. With modern psychological insight, Hawthorne probed the secret motivations in human behavior and the guilt and anxiety that he believed resulted from all sins against humanity, especially those of pride. Hawthorne is a master of symbolism. The structure and the form of the novel are carefully worked out to cater for the thematic concern. By using Pearl as a thematic symbol, Hawthorne emphasizes the consequence of the sin of adultery has brought to the community and people living in that community. The letter A takes on different layers of symbolic meanings. 9. Discuss the symbolism in Melville‟s Moby Dick?

Moby Dick was published in 1851. Holding the theme that “all visible objects are but as pasteboard mask”, Melville strikes through the surface of his adventurous narrative to formulate concepts of good and evil embedded as allegory in its events. Moby Dick is a symbolic voyage of the mind in quest of the truth and knowledge of the universe, a spiritual exploration into man‟s deep reality and psychology. The Pequod is the microcosm of human society and the voyage becomes a search for truths. The white whale, Moby Dick, symbolizes nature, for it is complex unfathomable, malignant and beautiful as well. For Ahab, the whale represents only evil. For the author, the narrator Ishmael and the readers, Moby Dick is an ultimate mystery of the universe. The voyage of the mind will forever remain a search of the truth. 10. Why is Leaves of Grass considered a milestone in American literature?

The work has always been considered a monumental work because of its uniquely poetic embodiment of American democratic ideal. It has nine editions and the first edition was published in 1855.In the giant work, Whitman shows concern for the whole hardworking people and the burgeoning life of the cities. The realization of the individual value also found a tough position in his poems in a particular way. In celebrating the self, Whitman emphasizes the physical dimension of the self and openly celebrates sexuality. Some of his poems are politically committed. Stylistically, Whitman experiments with a mixture of the colloquial diction and prose rhythm of journalism. The direct address is another salient feature of his poetry. He constructs a democratic “I”, a voice that sets out to celebrate itself and the rapture of its sense experiencing the world. He initiated the form of free verse in America that endows his poems with a flow of musicality a sense of rhythm.

11. What are the thematic concerns and the artistic characteristics of Emily Dickinson‟s poetry? Her poetry covers the issues vital to humanity, which include religion, death, immortality, love and nature. Her poems have no titles, hence are always quoted by their first lines. In her poetry, there is a particular stress pattern, in which dashes are used as a musical device to create cadence and capital letters as a means of emphasis. Most of her poems borrow the repeated four-line, rhymed stanzas of traditional Christian hymns, with two lines of four-beat meter alternating with two lines of three-beat meter. A master of imaginary that makes the spiritual materialize in surprising ways, Dickinson managed manifold variations within her simple form. She uses imperfect rhythms, subtle breaks of rhythm, and idiosyncratic syntax and punctuation to create fascinating world puzzles, which have produced greatly divergent interpretations over the years. Due to her

deliberate seclusion, her poems tend to vivify some abstract ideas. Her poetry, despite its ostensible formal simplicity, is remarkable for its variety, subtlety and richness. Her limited private world have never confined the limitless power of her creativity and imagination.

Period of Realism

I. Literary terms.

1. Realism: A mode of writing that gives the impression of recording or reflecting faithfully an actual way of life.

2. 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 environment.

3. Local color: It may be defined as the careful attention to details of the physical scene and to those mannerisms in speech, dress, or behavior peculiar to a geographical locality.

4. Psychological realism: It is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters‟ thoughts and motivation. Henry James‟ novel The Ambassadors is considered to be a masterpiece of psychological realism.

II. Questions and answers

1. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck Finn is a thirteen-year-old boy. Why does Mark twain use a child as the center of consciousness in this book?

In using a child protagonist, Twain is able to imply a comparison between the powerlessness and vulnerability of a child and the powerlessness and vulnerability of a black man in pre-Civil War America. Huck and Jim frequently find themselves in the same predicaments: each is abused, each faces the threat of losing his freedom, and each is constantly at the mercy of adult white men. In Huck‟s moral dilemmas, Jim is also vulnerable to Huck who is white. Twain also uses his child protagonist to dramatize the conflict between societal or received morality. As a boy, Huck is a character who can develop morally, whose mind is still open and being formed, who does not take his principles and values for granted. By tracing the education and experiences of a boy, Twain shows that conclusions about right and wrong that are based on logic and experience. The society‟s rules and morals are often hypocritical rather than logical.

2. Discuss the influence of Charles Darwin‟s theories on The Call of the Wild.

In writing his novel, Jack London was profoundly influenced by the writings of Charles Darwin. Darwin, the founding father of evolution theory, thought that life in the national world consists of a constant struggle for survival, in which only the strong could thrive and produce offspring. This “survival of the fittest” was the engine that drove evolution. The world that London creates in The Call of the Wild operates strictly according to Darwinist principles in its brutality and amorality, only the fit survives in the cruel landscape of the Klondike. 3. What is special about Mark Twain‟s realism?

Mark Twain‟s contribution to the development of realism and to American literature as a whole was partly through his theories of local color in American fiction, and partly through his colloquial style. Mark Twain drew heavily from his own rich fund of knowledge of people and places. He

confined himself to the life with which he was familiar. By quoting from his own experience, he managed to transform into art the freedom and humor, in short, the finest elements of western culture.

20th Century American Poetry

I. Literary terms

1. Imagism: Imagism is a school of poetry that flourished in North America and England at the beginning of the 20th century. Imagists rejected the sentimentalism of late 19th century verse in favor of the poetry that relied on concrete imagery. Ezra Pound originally led the movement. Amy Lowell soon became its proponent. The major criteria are : a) regularly use everyday speech but avoids clichés; b) create new rhythms; c) address any subject matter the poet desired; d)depict its subjects through precise, clear images. The poets include H.D., Carl Sandburg; William Carlos William, D. H. Lawrence etc.

2. Confessional poetry: An autobiographical mode of verse that reveals the poet‟s personal problems with unusual frankness. The term is usually applied to certain poets of the US. From the late 1950s to the late 1960s, notably Robert Lowell, whose Life Studies and For the Union Dead deal with his divorce and mental breakdowns. Other examples are Anne Sexton‟s To Bedlam and Part Way Back, including poems on abortion and life in mental hospitals. John Berryman‟s Dream Songs on alcoholism and insanity; Sylvia Plath‟s poems on suicide in Ariel and W.D. Snodgrass‟ Heart‟s Needle on divorce.

3. Black Mountain poets: A loosely associated group of poets that formed an important part of the avant-garde of American poetry in the 1950s, publishing innovative yet disciplined verse in the Black Mountain Review (1954-57), which became a leading forum of experimental verse. Their experimental yet disciplined style took its impetus from the essay “Projective Verse” (1950) by Charles Olson. The Black Mountain School is linked with Charles Olson‟s theory of “projective verse”, which insists on an open from based on the spontaneity of the breath pause in speech and the typewriter line in writing. The group grew up around the poets Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan and Charles Olson while they were teaching at Black Mountain.

4. The Beat Generation: The term Beat Generation was introduced by Jack Kerouac in approximately 1948 to describe his social circle to a novelist who published an early novel about the generation. The members of the beat generation were engaged in a spontaneous, messy creativity. The beat writers produced a body of written work controversial both for its advocacy of non-conformity and for its non-conforming style. The major beat writings are Jack Herouac‟s On the Road, Allan Ginsberg‟s Howl and William Burroughs‟ Naked Lunch.

5. The New York School: Unlike the Beat poets, the poets of the New York School are not interested in overtly moral questions and in general, they steer clear of political issues. They have the best formal education of any group. The major figures of the New York School—John Ashberry, Frank O‟Harra and Kenneth Koch—met while they were undergraduates at Harvard University. They are quintessentially urban, cool, nonreligious, witty with a poignant, pastel

sophistication. Their poems are fast moving, full of urban detail, incongruity and an almost palpable sense of suspended belief. New York city is the fine arts center of America and the birthplace of abstract expressionism a major inspiration of this poetry. Most of the poets worked as art reviewers or museum curators, or collaborated with painters. Perhaps because of their feeling for abstract art, which distrusts figurative shapes and obvious meanings, their work is often difficult to comprehend, as in the later work of John Ashbery.

II. Questions and answers

1. What are the major characteristics of imagist poetry? The major characteristics are as follows:

1) direct treatment of objects, concreteness of imagery. 2) No ideas or insight but things or images. 3) Free verse without imposing a rhythmical pattern. 4) Common speech, economy of expressions 2. What is the theme of The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot?

The theme is modern spiritual barrenness, the despair and depression that followed the WWI, the sterility and turbulence of the modern world, and the decline and break-down of western culture. It also shows the search for regeneration by people living in a chaotic world.

20th Century American Fiction

I. Literary terms

1. Camera eye: A literary device developed by Dos Passos, which provides an autobiography account of his life corresponding to the time of the fictional narrative. Written usually in a stream-of-consciousness style, they record the author‟s activities and reflections at roughly the same time that events in the fictional narratives are taking place. These impressionistic accounts recreate his changing moods in a turbulent age, showing that his private life is part of a greater cultural complexity.

2. Expressionism: The term refers to a movement in Germany early in the 20th century, in which a number of painters sought to avoid the representation of external reality and instead , to project a highly personal vision of the world. The main principle involved is that expression determines form, and therefore imagery, punctuation, syntax and so on. In brief, any of the formal rules and elements of writing can be bent or disjointed to suit the purpose. Theatrically, expressionism was a reaction against realism in that it tends to show inner psychological realities.

3. Free association: A term commonly used in psychology but which has achieved some currency in literary criticism and theory. The point involved is that a word or idea acts as a stimulus or trigger to a series or sequence of other words or ideas which may or may not have some logical relationship. Some writing that looks like it is probably the result of carefully thought out and contrived arrangement. This technique is often adopted in modern works, such as James Joyce‟s

Ulysses.

4. Stream of consciousness: It was first used in the 19th century by William James, an American philosopher and psychologist, in his book The Principle of Psychology. As a literary technique that novelists experiment with in the 20th century, it is employed to evince subjective as well as objective reality. It reveals the character‟s feelings, thoughts, and actions, often following an associative rather than a logical sequence, without commentary by the author. It is a literary technique in which authors represent the flow of sensations and ideas, added to the depth of character portrayal. The British Richardson was the pioneer in use of the device. James Joyce brought it to its highest point of development. Other exponents include Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

5. Avant-garde: The French military and political term for the vanguard of an army or political movement, extended since the late 19th century to that body of artists and writers who are dedicated to the idea of art as experiment and revolt against tradition. It means to stay ahead of one‟s time through constant innovation in forms and subjects.

6. Collage: A term adopted from the vocabulary of painters to denote a work which contains a mixture of allusions, references, quotations, and foreign expressions. It is common in the work of James Joyce, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.

7. Lost Generation: Also termed the Sad Young Men, which was created by F.S. Fitzgerald in his book All the Sad Young Men. The term in general refers to the post- World War I generation, but specifically a group of US writers who came of age during the war and established their reputation in the 1920s. It stems from a remark made by Gertrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway, “You are all a lost generation.” Hemingway used it as an epigraph to The Sun Also Rises, a novel that captures the attitudes of a hard-drinking, fast living set of disillusioned young expatriates in postwar Paris. The generation was “lost” in the sense that its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world and because of its spiritual alienation from US, they seemed hopelessly provincial, materialistic, and emotionally barren. The term embraces Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, e.e. cummings and so on.

8. Multiple point of view: William Faulkner is a master at presenting multiple points of view, showing within the same story how characters react differently to the same person or the same events. It gives the story a circular form with one event as the center and various points of view radiating from it. This technique makes it difficult for the reader to see the truth of the story.

II. Questions and answers

1. What is the type of heroes in Hemingway‟s novels?

Some of his heroes live a disorderly and immoral life, wild with alcohol. Some of them are mentally wounded and hold a nihilistic or cynical view toward life. Deep at the bottom of their hearts, they are never lost. Nor they ever cease to search for the meaning and ultimate truth of life. They may be physically destroyed by fate, but they can never be spiritually defeated. The Hemingway code hero is brave and unyielding. Though suffering from physical pains and psychological alienations from their surroundings, they can always possess the quality of “grace under pressure”.

2. Why was Fitzgerald regarded as spokesman of the “Jazz Age”?

Fitzgerald was a representative figure of the 1920s. He never failed to remain detached and foresee the tragedy of the “Dollar Decade”. His works mirror the exciting age in almost every way. Through the glittering world of his fiction run the themes of moral waste and decay and necessity of personal responsibility. The Great Gatsby, a book about the Jazz Age, is a case study in people‟s pursuit of an elusive American Dream. It is also a powerful criticism of American society. Thus he is often acclaimed literary spokesman of the Jazz Age.

3. Where did William Faulkner usually locate his stories? What does the place stand for?

Faulkner usually located his stories in a fictional town called Jefferson in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. With his imagination, Faulkner turned the land, the people and the history of the place into a literary creation and a mythical kingdom, which stands for the American South. The Yoknapatawpha County fiction has an overall pattern in which Faulkner‟s protagonists collide with the 20th century society. Most of the major themes are directly related to this confrontation in Faulkner‟s fiction.

4. List at least three William Faulkner‟s themes.

The themes cover (a) the pre-civil war Southern values vs. the post civil war Southern values;(b) the decline of the old aristocratic families of the south; (c)the past vs. the present(social changes);(d) racial problems in the old south and the good traits of the blacks.

III. Essay questions

1. Discuss Hemingway‟s “iceberg principle” of writing.

His aim and achievement as a novelist and short story wrier were to convey his concerns in a prose style built from what was left after eliminating all the words one “could not stand to bear”. He once said “I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows”. He believes that a good writer does not need to reveal every detail of a character or action; the one-eighth that is present will suggest all other meaningful dimensions of the story. According to him, good literary writing should be able to make readers feel the emotion of the characters directly and the best way to produce the effect is to set down exactly every particular kind of feeling without any authorial comments, with a bare minimum of adjectives and adverbs. His language is simple, symbolic and suggestive, improving more than what is actually said.

2. Compared with earlier writings, especially those of the 19th century , what are the characteristics of modern American writings?

The modern work seems to begin arbitrarily, to advance without explanation, and to end without resolution. The book is no longer a record of sequence and coherence but a juxtaposition of the past and the present, of the history and the memory. There are shifts in perspective, voice and tone, but the biggest shift is from the external to the internal, from the public to the private, from the chronological to the psychological, from the objective description to the subjective projection. The traditional educated literary voice, conveying truth and culture, has lost its authority to a more detached and ironic tone.

20th Century American Drama

Black American Literature

I. Literary terms

1. Harlem Renaissance: A literary movement that began in the 1920s in the almost exclusively African American area of Harlem in New York City. Harlem had grown tremendously following WWI, when a mass migration of black Americans out of the South and into northern cities had taken place. Thanks to the Harlem Renaissance, African American culture was for the first time highlighted for a multiracial, multiethnic national audience. The Harlem area became not only the link of black literature, theater, music, and dance but also, for a time, an intellectual and artistic nerve center for the entire nation. Distinguished writers included poets Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Cloude McKay and Sterling Brown, novelist Jean Toomer, Jessie Faucet and many essayists, memoirists and writers in diverse modes such as James Weldon Johnson and Arna Bontemps. The Great Depression of 1929 brought it to an end.

II. Essay questions

1. Make a summary of African American literature.

Due to racist discrimination, African Americans were segregated and denied the right to read and write during the 19th century. As a result, African American literature remained for a long time in the form of songs, ballads and spirituals. However, written literature found its way in the 18th and especially 19th century when some African American writers appeared on the scene. Douglass, Washington and Du Bois were the greatest African American writers in the 19th century, though more politically than artistically. Harlem Renaissance in the 1020s brought great prosperity of African American literature with Harlem area in New York City as a center of African American literature. Important literary figures of this time include Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Cloude McKay, Jean Toomer and Zora Nearle Hurston. The Great Depression of 1929 and the early 1930s brought it to an end. From 1930s, their works powerfully depict the brutality of racist oppression and its traumatic effects on African Americans. In the 1940s, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, with the universality of its profound theme and exquisite style, marked a higher degree of maturity of African American literature. Contemporary African American writers include Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Alex Haley, among whom Toni Morrison is the most outstanding of all.

African Americans have made significant contributions to all aspects of American life. The writers provide the most striking example of alienation in American literature. 2. Discuss Toni Morrison‟s art of fiction.

Toni Morrison is known for “magical realism” in that she uses magic, folktales and the supernatural in her novels. Her style combines unrealistic elements with a realistic presentation of life and characters.

For Morrison, “all good art has been political” and the Black artist has a responsibility to the Black community. She aims at capturing “the something” that defines what makes a book “Black”. All her fiction “bears witness” to the experience of the Black community. Sense of loss, roots,

community and identity of the Blacks are usual themes of her works. Her sympathy is especially given to the Black women who suffer from both the Whites and Black men.

Morrison‟s prose has the quality of speech. She deliberately strives for this effect, which she calls “aural literature”. Morrison wants readers to participate in her novels, to be involved actively. Readers are encouraged to create the novel with her and to help construct the meaning.