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1、英美文学精粹赏析英美文学精粹赏析Selected Readings In English and American Literature人民邮电出版社人民邮电出版社American RealismAmerican Realism 1.A faithful representation of reality in literature,also known as“verisimilitude.”2.Written in natural vernacular,or dialect.3.The ultimate goal of a realistic writer.is to depict life
2、 honestly and accurately4.Prominent from 1860-1890.The Civil War1.The American Civil War(18611865)was between the United States of America(the Union)and the Southern slave states of the newly formed Confederate States of America under Jefferson Davis.The Union included all of the free states and the
3、 five slaveholding border states and was led by Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party.2.The war ended with the overwhelming triumph of industrialism over agrarianism.3.The Civil War destroyed the romantic concept of war.4.The Civil War changed American peoples views on values,morality and religio
4、n,puritan ethic vs.materialism.Gilded Age An age of extremes of decline and progress，of poverty and dazzling wealth,of gloom and buoyant hope.Mark TwainMark Twain 1835-19101835-1910 Born in Florida,Missouri,on November 30,1835.In 1851,he began working as a typesetter and contributor of articles and
5、humorous sketches for a newspaper owned by his brother.From 1857 to 1861,Twain worked as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River.This occupation gave him his pen name,Mark Twain.Mark Twain died of illness on April 21,1910.When he passed away,newspapers around the country declared,“The whole world
6、 is mourning.”I.LifeDuring his seventeen years in Hartford(18741891)and over twenty summers at Quarry Farm,Twain wrote many of his classic novels：The Prince and the Pauper(1881)Life on the Mississippi(1883)A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court(1889)II.Classical Works Twains greatest fame and hi
7、s importance in American literature rest largely on his two best known novels,The Adventures of Tom Sawyer The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn II.Classical Works 1.Comic narrator Twains narrator can be himself,a mischievous boy or a nave tourist.His narrator is as colorful as his varieties of laughte
8、r.Yet whoever they are,they are all of comic nature.2.Local colorism Twain has brought local colorism to world fame.It is he who gives literary life to the mother river and truthfully depicts the colors of the local life.III.Special features3.Humor Twain is a great humorist.His humor is indeed a ser
9、ious way to poke at social injustice,human disgrace and human follies.4.Language With his great mastery and effective use of vernacular,Twain has make colloquial speech an accepted,respectable literary medium in the literary history.1.Comic narrator Twains narrator can be himself,a mischievous boy o
10、r a nave tourist.His narrator is as colorful as his varieties of laughter.Yet whoever they are,they are all of comic nature.2.Local colorism Twain has brought local colorism to world fame.It is he who gives literary life to the mother river and truthfully depicts the colors of the local life.III.Spe
11、cial features The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn According to Ernest Hemingway,it was the one book from which all modern American literature came,and contemporary critics and scholars have treated it as one of the greatest American works of art.Of all MTs novels,it was also the one that sold best at
12、its initial appearance.On the other hand,it was condemned by many reviewers in MTs time as coarse and by many commentators in our time as racist.The novel,rich in meaning,can be interpreted on multiple levels.First,it is about slavery and freedom.Second,it can be seen as a journey of Hucks moral gro
13、wth.Third,it can be regarded as a satire on sentimentalism and cheap romanticism.Huck is undeniably an American boy,noted for his toughness,friendliness,and adventurous spirit.His voyage with Jim is a journey of learning and discovery through his own observation.Like his country,he is always on the
14、move and on the road to grow.With him every thing is possible and nothing is fixed.IV.Selected readings Emily Dickinson1830-1886Emily Dickinson1830-1886 Born and spent her life inAmherst,Massachusetts,a small Calvinist village.Never married,led an unconventional life that was outwardly uneventful bu
15、t was full of inner intensityDeeply loved natureSpent the latter part of her life as a recluseThe most solitary literary figure of her time,almost unpublished,but created some of the greatest American poetry of the 19th century and has fascinated the public since the 1950s,when her poetry was redisc
16、overed.Ranked with Whitman as the harbinger of modern American poetry,she wrote altogether 1,775 poems,of which only seven had appeared during her lifetime.I.Life 1.religion 2.death and immortality 3.love 4.natureII.Themes telling images,suggestive and connotative,sometimes incomprehensible direct a
17、nd plain words(Anglo-Saxon origin),simple syntax faulty grammar no regular rhythm,at most off or slant rhymes unusual capitalization unusual use of punctuation marks Short lines,typically lack titles her poems,and the editors numbered them approximately according to the time sequence in which they w
18、ere written.Her poetry is a clear illustration of her religious-ethical and political-social ideas.III.Characteristics of Her PoetryBecauseIcannotstopfordeathBecauseIcannotstopfordeath The poem is discussing death,a very gloomy subject,but it is done with a rather light tone.The tone is light just b
19、ecause the author does not take death as a catastrophe;instead,she treats the angel of death as a very polite gentleman,as a long-missing guest,giving up her work and leisure,putting on her fine silky dresses,she accompanies death in the same carriage to eternity.All the beauty of this work lies in
20、the poetess open-minded attitude towards death.IV.Selected readings Theodore Dreiser 1871-1945 I.Life Born on August 27,1871,in Terre Haute,Indiana,a strict Catholic family.From the age of fifteen,he earned meager support from a variety of menial jobs.1889-1890,he attended Indiana University after g
21、raduating from high school in Warsaw,IN From 1892 to 1902,he worked as an itinerant journalist.In 1904,he was on the way to several successful years as an editor.1945-Dreiser died of heart failure at his home in Hollywood,California at the age of 74,on December 28.He was buried at Forest Lawn Cemete
22、ry in Hollywood.1900-published first novel,Sister Carrie(has been called the greatest of all American urban novels”).1901-the short story,Nigger Jeff,appeared in Ainslees Magazine.He wrote it because he witnessed a lynching in 18931911-published second novel,Jennie Gerhardt.1918-published his first
23、collection of short stories,Free and Other Stories.1925-published An American Tragedy,his first commercial success.II.Literary Career Naturalistic viewTo Dreiser,since man is not controlled by reason,man is merely an animal driven by greed and lust in a struggle for existence in which only the fitte
24、st,the most ruthless,survive.The illusion of Am.DreamDreiser sought consistently,through his tragic protagonist,to condemn the Am.Dream as a destructive illusion.The use of the symbolDreiser uses a lot of symbols in his works.The rocking chair at the end of Sister Carrie is symbolic of the flux of N
25、ature.III.Literary StyleSister Carrie The novel is about the story of a poor country girl Carrie who comes to Chicago and seek for a new life.At first,she think that she can live in the big city and have a better life.But the reality is often brutal.Due to the pressures of life and she did not satis
26、fied with her new life,she becomes a cold and ambitious girl whose goals are beautiful clothes,money and fame.At last,she becomes one of the most popular actress in New York city by chance,while her lover Hurstwood killed himself.Carrie:hopeful-ambitious-vain-immoral 1.When Carrie was taking the tra
27、in to Chicago,she imagined a bright future.She hopes to seek employment so that she can get and buy all the nice things that she wants.Carrie does not have any idea how hard this is going to be.2.She wanted to realized her dream in cities.3.Carrie desire for materials and wealth.4.During her life in the city.she lived with two men as their mistress.They gave her the material things which she wanted.Her judgment in selecting men was based on their money and not on their character or something else.Finally,she was without support and forced to make it on her own.IV.Selected readings