美国现代主义文学

I. Historical Background

A. Two World Wars

a. Social breakdown and individual powerlessness and hopelessness became part of the American experience

b. There was a decline in moral standard and this period was best described as a spiritual wasteland there was the loss of faith. People lived a purposeless, futile and chaotic life.

B. Economy

a. a booming industry and material prosperity

b. The Great Depression

C. Cultural Background

a. Marxism

b. Sigmund Freud’s Analytical Psychology

c. Stream of Consciousness

II. Features of Modernism

a. Modernism is a cultural movement that generally includes the progressive art and architecture, design, literature, music, dance, painting and other visual arts which emerged in the beginning of the 20th century.

b. The avant-garde movements that followed---including Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Constructivism, and Abstract Expressionism-are generally defined as Modernist.

III. The Schools of American Modernism

A. Modern Poetry

a. Ezra Pound (1885- 1972)

1. Life and Career

Born in Idaho in 1885;

Arrested as a traitor in 1945

Mastered 9 languages;

influenced by Chinese and Japanese poetry;

Advocated free meter, leading the Imagist Movement of poetry. The leader of imagism

2. Achievements:

Imagism

What is imagism?

“a vortex or cluster of fused ideas, endowed with energy.” ---Ezra Pound In a Station of the Metro

In a Station of the Metro

Azra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

人群中幽然浮现的一张张脸庞，

黝黑的湿树枝上的一片片花瓣。

b. Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

1. Life and Career

A poet for his life

Published many poems

Pulitzer Prize for 4 times

“Unofficial poet laureate of the nation”

Read his poems in the inauguration ceremony of President Kennedy

2. Achievements:

His Works

Collection of Poems

A Boy’s Will（1913）

North of Boston（1914）

New Hamphshire（1923）

Collected Poems（1930）

A Further Range（1936）

A Witness Tree（1942）

Poems

Birches

After Apple-Picking

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

The Road Not Taken

3. Features of His Poetry

Nature (Wordsworth and Emerson)

Deceptively simple style

Symbolism

Traditional forms; modern themes

B. Fiction Writing

a. The Lost Generation

1. Definition

The “Lost Generation” is a term used to characterize a general feeling of disillusionment of American literary notables who lived in Europe, most notably Paris, after the First World War.

2. Characteristics

Aimlessness; moral loss melancholy; nostalgic

3. Origin

The term of “the lost generation” was coined by Gertrude Stein

who is rumored to have heard her auto-mechanic while in France to have said that his young workers were, “une generation perdue”. This referred to the young workers’ poor auto-mechanic repair skills. Gertrude Stein would take this phrase and use it to describe the people of the 1920’s who rejected American post World War I values.

b. Representatives

1. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1890 - 1940)

Life and Career

Born of middle-class parents

Attended private schools

Entered Princeton in 1913

Joined the army in 1917

Fell in love with Zelda Sayre

Died in 1940 at the age of 44 in loneliness

Literary Works

This Side of Paradise (1920)

The Beautiful and the Damned (1922)

The Great Gatsby (1925)

Tender is the Night (1934)

The Last Tycoon (1941)

Literary Themes

1. The decline of the American Dream in the 1920s

2. The hollowness of the upper class

2. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

Life and Career

A novelist, short-story writer, journalist

His war experiences in Italy & Spain

His 4 marriages, relation with Stein & Anderson The Nobel Prize in 1954

Suicide in 1961

Spokesman for the “lost generation”

Literary Works:

The Sun Also Rises (1926)

A Farewell to Arms (1929)

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)

The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

C. Southern Renaissance

a. Definition

The Southern Renaissance was the re-invigoration of American Southern literature that began in the 1920s and 1930s with the appearance of writers such as William Faulkner, Caroline Gordon, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Katherine Anne Porter, Allen Tate, Tennessee Williams, and Robert Penn Warren

b. Historical Background

1. The conflict between the north and the south.

2. United closely spiritually after Civil War .

c. Three Themes

The burden of history in a place

The South’s conservative culture

The South’s troubled history in regards to racial issues

d. Representatives

William Faulkner (1897-1962)

Life and Career

New Albany, Mississippi (1897)

Royal Flying Corps in Canada (1918)

The help of Philip Stone and Sherwood Anderson

Nobel Prize (1949)

Died of heart attack in Oxford (1962)

Literary Works

The Sound and the Fury

Light in August

Absalom, Absalom!

Go Down, Moses

Themes

1. modern society as a spiritual wasteland;

2. the juxtaposition of the past and the present, nature and society with the assertion of the healthy life of the primitive man.

Artistic Features

1. Stream of consciousness

2. Dislocation of the narrative time.

3. Multiple point of view

4. Long and complex sentences.