Transcript Document

American Literature:
Lecture 6
REALISM
(1865 - 1914)
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American Literature (I) Autumn
2008
Objectives
To enable the Ss to get a general idea
about American Realism;
To enable the Ss to get in touch with some
important realistic writers, such as Mark
Twain and Henry James;
To enable the Ss to know what Local
Colorism is and who the leaders of Local
Colorism are;
To enable the Ss to comprehend the major
writing techniques of Mark Twain
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Teaching Materials
Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Henry James (1843 - 1916)
Daisy Miller
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Teaching Methodology
Lecturing
Text-analysis
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Realism --- as a literary term
A term applied to literary composition that
aims at an interpretation of the actualities of
any aspect of life, free from subjective
prejudice, idealism, or romantic color.
As a way of writing, realism has been applied
in almost every literature throughout history.
As an attitude of the writer toward his
materials, it is relative, and no chronological
point may be indicated as the beginning of
realism.
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I. Introduction
1.
The reasons for the coming of American realism:
1)
The Civil War which broke out in 1861 taught men that
life was not so good, man was not and God was not. The
war marked a change, in the quality of American life, a
deterioration, in fact, of American moral values. It led
people to question the assumptions: natural goodness,
the optimistic view of nature and man, benevolent God.
1)
In post-bellum America increasing industrialization and
mechanization of the country in full swing produced soon
extremes of wealth and poverty. Wealth and power were
more and more concentrated in the hands of the few
“captains of industry” or “robber barons”, but life for the
millions was fast becoming a veritable struggle for
survival.
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3) The frontier was about to close and the safety valve
was ceasing to operate, a reexamination of life began.
Beneath the glittering surface of prospective there lay
suffering and unhappiness, Disillusionment and
frustration were widely felt.
3) The age of Romanticism and Transcendentalism was
by and large over. Meanwhile younger writers
appeared on the scene, such as William Dean
Howells, Henry James, Mark Twain, and so on, which
means the coming of new literary age, American
realism.
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Major Features
Realism is the theory of writing in
which familiar aspects of
contemporary life and everyday
scenes are represented in a
straightforward or matter-of-fact
manner.
It insists on precise description,
authentic action and dialogue, moral
honesty, and a democratic openness
in subject matter and style.
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Open ending is also a good example
of the truthful treatment of material.
Realism focuses on commonness of
the lives of the common people who
are customarily ignored by the arts.
Realism emphasizes objectivity and
offers an objective rather than an
idealistic view of human nature and
human experience.
Realism presents moral visions.
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2.What is American realism?
1)
2)
As a literary movement realism came in the latter
half of the nineteenth century as a reaction against
“the lie” of romanticism and sentimentalism. It
expressed the concern for the world of experience,
of the commonplace, and for the familiar and the
low.
The American realists advocated “verisimilitude of
detail derived from observation,” the effort to
approach the norm of experience —— a reliance
on the representative in plot, setting, and character,
and to offer an objective rather than an idealized
view of human nature and experience.
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3. The schools of American Realism:
1) Frontier Humor
2) Midwestern realism (Howells)
3) Cosmopolitan Novelist
4) Regionalism (local color)
5) Naturalism
6) The Chicago School of poets
7) The rise of black American literature
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Frontier Humor
It is the vital and exuberant literature that was
generated by the westward expansion of the United
States in the late 18th and the 19th centuries.
The spontaneity, sense of fun, exaggeration, fierce
individuality, and irreverence for traditional Eastern
values in frontier humor reflect the optimistic spirit of
pre-Civil War America.
Frontier humor appears mainly in tall tales of
exaggerated feats of strength, rough practical jokes
(especially on sophisticated Easterners and
greenhorns), and tales of encounters with panthers,
bears, and snakes. These tales are filled with rough,
homely wisdom
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Midwestern Realism
It just refers to William Dean Howells’s
realism because he came from the
American midwest and carefully
interweaved the life and emotions of
ordinary middle-class there in his works.
Also because he was the champion of
realism, having helped to publish many
realistic local color writings by Bret Harte,
Mark Twain, George Washington Cable,
and others.
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William Dean Howells
(1837 - 1920)
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About the author:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
Howells, the second son of eight children, had little formal
education. Working as a typesetter and a printer's apprentice,
he educated himself through intensive reading and the study
of Spanish, French, Latin, and German.
His campaign biography for Abraham Lincoln earned him
enough money to travel to New England and meet the great
literary figures of the day, and the post of U. S. Consul to
Venice from 1861 to 1865.
As editor and critic Howells was generous in constructive and
sympathetic reviews, helping younger and more radical
writers to get a hearing by encouraging many others from
Henry James to Bret Harte and Frank Norris to Mark Twain.
He was, for several decades, the dean of his country’s
literature and became the first president of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters in 1907.
He supported socialism and opposed American imperialism.
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His literary-aesthetic ideas:
1)
2)
3)
He defines realism as “fidelity to experience and
probability of motive”, as a quest of the average
and the habitual rather than the exceptional or the
uniquely high or low.
To him realism is not mere photographic pictures of
externals but includes a central concern with
motives and psychological conflicts. So the main
line of development in the novel is not from
Dickens and Thackeray but from the psychological
analysis of Hawthorne and George Eliot to James.
In his eyes truth is the highest beauty, but truth
includes the view that morality penetrates all things.
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4) A free and simple design where event follows
event without the fettering control of intrigue,
but where all grows naturally out of character
and conditions, is the supreme form of fiction.
5) Writers should winnow tradition and write in
keeping with current humanitarian ideals.
6) The literary critic should not try to impose
arbitrary or subjective evaluations on books
but should follow the detached scientist in
accurate description, interpretation, and
classification.
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His Works:
 Although he wrote over a hundred books in various
genres, including novels, poems, literary criticism,
plays, memoirs, and travel narratives, Howells is
best known today for his realistic fiction, including
1) A Modern Instance (1881), on the then-new topic of
the social consequences of divorce
2) The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), his best-known
work and one of the first novels to study the
American businessman
3) A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), an exploration of
cosmopolitan life in New York City as seen through
the eyes of Basil and Isabel March, the protagonists
of Their Wedding Journey (1871) and other works.
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His masterpiece: The Rise of Silas Lapham
1) A fine specimen of American realistic
writing. There is nothing heroic, dramatic or
extraordinary. Howells is here so devoted
to the small, the trivial, and the
commonplace.
2) He has always emphasized on ethics. He
stresses the need for sympathy and moral
integrity, and the need for different social
classes to harmoniously adapt to their
environment and to one another.
3) Howells did not approve of competitive
economic individualism. He was convinced
that laissez-faire competition had proved
the rapacity of man .
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Cosmopolitan Novelist
Henry James ‘s fame rested largely upon his
handling of his major fictional theme, the
international theme, that is the meeting of
America and Europe, American innocence in
contact and contrast with cosmopolitan
European decadence, and the moral and
psychological complications arising therefrom.
So he was called the cosmopolitan novelist.
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Henry James (1843 - 1916)
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Brief account of his life:
1)
2)
3)
He was born into a wealthy cultured family of New
England. His father was an eminent philosopher
and reformer, and his brother, William James, was
the famous philosopher and psychologist.
Most of his life he settled down in Europe except of
some visits to America. In 1915 he became the
naturalized British citizen. He was not married but
once loved his attractive cousin who died young.
A voluminous writer, he was influenced by some
English, European and American writers. One
American author who exerted a measure of
influence on James is Hawthorne whose insight
into the human psyche impressed the younger
writer deeply.
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His creative life
1)
2)
3)
1)
2)
The first period(1865-1882). The works in this
period reveal James’ fascination with his
“international theme”.
The American
Daisy Miller
The Portrait of a Lady
The second period (1882-1895). During this
time he focuses on tales and plays, but most of
them prove a failure
The last one(1895-1909)
A few novellas and tales dealing with childhood and
adolescence.
In the major phase of his career he returned to his old
ground. He completed his trilogies (the summit of his
art): The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, The
Golden Bowl
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His literary-aesthetic ideas
（see his The Art of Fiction）
1) Art must be related to life. It must be life
transformed and changed so that the art
form would give the truthful impression of
actuality.
2) Though closely related to life, art is
important in its own way. It is art that makes
life, makes interest, makes importance.
3) He was concerned with point of view which
is at the center of his aesthetic of the novel.
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His political-social ideas and attitudes:
1) The spokesman of the wealthy.
2) Be conservative toward overzealous
reformers (the similar way of Hawthorne)
3) But he was critical of U.S. imperialist
behavior and American’s obsession with
business, its extremes of wealth and
poverty, its lack of culture and
sophistication.
4) Like Hawthorne, James regarded evil as
essentially of inward cause and cure,
advocated free willed renunciation of the
low or mean, and repeatedly emphasized
magnanimity and the beauty of goodness.
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IV. Regionalism (local color writing)
The concept:


The style of writing derived from the presentation
of the features and peculiarities of a particular
locality and its inhabitants. Simply it means The
use of regional detail in a literary or
artistic work. The name is given especially to a
kind of American literature that in its most
characteristic form made its appearance just after
the Civil War and for nearly three decades was the
single most popular form of American literature.
Following in the footsteps of the pre-war "sectional
humorists," local colorists were interested in
realistically depicting life in different sections of the
United States in order to promote understanding
and unification
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 Fiction writers like Sarah Orne Jewett, Bret
Harte, O. Henry, and Mark Twain have
been identified within this tradition.
 By the 1930s, the local color style had
spread beyond the bounds of novels and
short stories into less formal territory like
the "hometown material" section of local
newspapers. Local color writing had always
been premised on an informal approach
and rejection of high-culture concerns. Now
it entered mass media.
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Local Color
Term applied to literature which emphasizes
its setting, being concerned with the
character of a district or of an era, as marked
by its customs, dialects, costumes,
landscape or other peculiarities that have
escaped standardizing cultural influences.
The local color movement came into
particular prominence in Am after the Civil
War, perhaps as an attempt to recapture the
glamour of a past era, or to portray the
sections of the reunited country. In local
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color literature, one finds the dual
influence of romanticism and realism
since the author frequently looks away
from ordinary life to distant lands,
strange customs, or exotic scenes, but
retains through minute detail a sense of
fidelity and accuracy of description.
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Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
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Life
Clemens was born on November 30, 1835
in Florida, Missouri, of a Virginian family.
He was brought up in Hannibal, Missouri.
After his father's death in 1847, he was
apprenticed to a printer and wrote for his
brother's newspaper. He later worked as a
licensed Mississippi river-boat pilot. The
Civil War put an end to the steamboat
traffic and Clemens moved to Virginia City,
where he edited the Territorial Enterprise.
On February 3, 1863, 'Mark Twain' was
born when Clemens signed a humorous
travel account with that pseudonym.
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In 1864 Twain left for California, and worked in
San Francisco as a reporter. He visited Hawaii as
a correspondent for The Sacramento Union,
publishing letters on his trip and giving lectures. He
set out on a world tour, traveling in France and Italy.
His experiences were recorded in 1869 in The
Innocents Abroad, which gained him wide
popularity, and poked fun at both American and
European prejudices and manners.
The success as a writer gave Twain enough
financial security to marry Olivia Langdon in 1870.
They moved next year to Hartford. Twain
continued to lecture in the United States and
England. Between 1876 and 1884 he published
several masterpieces, Tom Sawyer (1881) and
The Prince And The Pauper (1881). Life On The
Mississippi appeared in 1883 and Huckleberry
Finn in 1884.
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In the 1890s Twain lost most of his
earnings in financial speculations and in the
failure of his own publishing firm. To
recover from the bankruptcy, he started a
world lecture tour, during which one of his
daughters died. Twain toured New Zealand,
Australia, India, and South Africa. He wrote
such books as The Tragedy Of Pudd'head
Wilson (1884), Personal Recollections Of
Joan Of Arc (1885), A Connecticut Yankee
in King Arthur's Court (1889) and the travel
book Following The Equator (1897). During
his long writing career, Twain also
produced a considerable number of essays.
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The death of his wife and his second
daughter darkened the author's later
years, which is seen in his
posthumously published
autobiography (1924). Twain died on
April 21, 1910.
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Style
Broad, often irreverent humor or biting social
satire, realism of place and language,
memorable characters, hatred of hypocrisy
and oppression.
Simple and plain diction, precise, direct.
His earlier works are light, humorous,
optimistic.
His later works become darker and more
obscure, showing his discontent and
disappointment toward the social reality. His
last works shows his acute pessimism,
despair, skepticism determinism.
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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.
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Third, there was Mark Twain’s humor, which
resists explanation. In Twain’s 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 art—a 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.
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His Works:
1. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County, and Other Sketches (1867)
2. The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873)
3. Mark Twain's Sketches: New and Old (1876)
4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
5. The Prince and the Pauper (1881)
6. Life on the Mississippi (1883)
7. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
8. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court (1889)
9. The 1,000,000 Pound Bank-Note, and
Other New Stories (1893)
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His masterpiece:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Much of the book is concerned with
Huck’s inner struggle between this
sense of guilt in helping Jim to escape
and his profound conviction that Jim is
a human being.
The book is written in the colloquial
style, in the general standard speech
of uneducated Americans.
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This novel tells a story along the
Mississippi River before the civil war.
Here lies an America with its great
national faults, full of violence and even
cruelty, yet still retaining the virtues of
“some simplicity, some innocence,
some peace”.
This novel, through Huck’s adventures,
presented the change of the white boy
Huck’s attitude toward the run-away
black slave Jim .
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It shows Mark Twain’s satire on
southern culture before the Civil War.
He exposed the problems of slavery,
the mistreatment of humans by humans
and then in a deep level condemned
racial discrimination.
He showed the readers how the poor
whites thought they were better than
black slaves. The only thing that made
them feel good about themselves was
that they were white. And Twain made
the readers laugh at this idea.
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The second object of satire is the
upper-class southerners. The
shepherdson-Grangerford feud is a
good example. The feud has been
going on for generations. Its cause has
been forgotten. The satire is merciless,
not because these people are violent,
but because they accept their violence
as right.
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1. Plot Summary
Huck lives with Miss Watson who is trying to
civilize him. He and Tom Sawyer become friends
with her slave Jim. Huck's drunk father returns to
try and take Huck back, but Huck fakes his own
murder and runs away with Jim to a nearby island.
Jim and Huck discover a raft, which they make
their new home and set out to sail down the
Mississippi River where they will both be free. Jim
and Huck travel by night to avoid being caught,
and sleep out in the woods during the day time.
During the journey, Huck and Jim's friendship
grows considerably, and the two become like
family. Huck and Jim are separated when their raft
hits a steamboat and Huck goes ashore to stay
with a family, the Grangerford's. Huck soon
becomes involved in their ongoing feud and leaves
when several family members are killed. Huck also
plays with the concept of morality and debates
over the question of whether to turn Jim in or risk
being shunned by society
if he is caught with a
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runaway.
The Duke and the King soon join
Huck and Jim on the raft, and the four
scam several cities out of money by
performing plays and circuses. They
stay at the Wilkes' house where they
steal money from a family of girls
whose father just died, by pretending
to be their uncles. Huck eventually
confesses to the girls, and abandons
the Duke and the King when they try
to sell Jim.
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Eventually Huck winds up at Aunt Sally's
house and pretends to be Tom Sawyer,
who they are expecting. He soon learns
that she is keeping Jim hostage until his
master comes to get him, and tries to think
of a way to free his friend. When the real
Tom comes to Aunt Sally's, the two form an
intricate plan involving ransom notes and
digging holes in order to free Jim. When the
plan is activated, Huck and Tom are caught
by angry townspeople and are forced to
confess their identity and reason for
disturbing the slave. Huck learns that Miss
Watson set Jim free in her will, and he is no
longer a slave. Huck plans to escape being
civilized once more, and suggests that he
will flee to live in Indian territory.
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2. Major Themes
Maturity: Huck is forced to take care of himself
because he has no parents. Although he is a
young boy, he faces many problems that adults
struggle with, and is forced to deal with them
maturely.
Friendship: Huck never really had any true friend
before Jim, but the time spent with him allowed the
two to become very close.
Legality vs. Morality: Huck faces the question of
whether he should obey the law and turn in Jim, or
if he should risk a bad reputation and keep his
friend happy.
Love: Jim loves Huck and he has been a true
friend and been through many tough situations.
Huck learns to love through his friendship with Jim,
who is devoted and willing to do anything for Huck.
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Racism: The novel is set in the South. Blacks are
slaves with no legal rights and are faced with high
degrees of discrimination. Their status is lower
than that of a white person, and Huck grows up
debating that reality. It is a barrier at first between
himself and Jim, which they eventually realize and
overcome.
Freedom : Literally, Jim seeks freedom from
slavery. Figuratively, Huck seeks to be free, and
not have to live in fear of his father, or being
civilized.
Lessons: Huck learns that although society has
taught him to regard blacks as inferior, he should
listen to his own opinion, even if it means
sacrificing his reputation and being labeled. He
realized this when he befriended Jim and went out
of his way to secure Jim's freedom, by risking his
own safety and name.
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Morals: Huck also learned that although people in
his life may have hurt him, he is able to be loved
and to love back. He learns this when his
friendship with Jim evolves, and they become like
family. Huck is able to love Jim back, and is willing
to help him escape slave if it will attain happiness.
Applications: Huck realizes that Tom's intricate
plans for solving problems sometimes are fun, but
are not usually the best answers. Huck is a more
realistic character and understands that effort and
efficiency are better than confusion and
complication. He depicts this when Tom's plan to
free Jim becomes involved and eventually
backfires. Huck's plan at the beginning was more
reasonable, but he used Tom's plan instead.
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Conflict between civilization and "natural life":
The primary theme of the novel is the conflict
between civilization and "natural life." Huck
represents natural life through his freedom of spirit,
uncivilized ways, and desire to escape from
civilization. He was raised without any rules or
discipline and has a strong resistance to anything
that might "sivilize" him. This conflict is introduced
in the first chapter through the efforts of the Widow
Douglas: she tries to force Huck to wear new
clothes, give up smoking, and learn the Bible.
Throughout the novel, Twain seems to suggest
that the uncivilized way of life is more desirable
and morally superior. Drawing on the ideas of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Twain suggests that
civilization corrupts, rather than improves, human
beings.
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Honor: The theme of honor permeates the novel
after first being introduced in the second chapter,
where Tom Sawyer expresses his belief that there
is a great deal of honor associated with thieving.
Robbery appears throughout the novel, specifically
when Huck and Jim encounter robbers on the
shipwrecked boat and are forced to put up with the
King and Dauphin, both of whom "rob" everyone
they meet. Tom's original robber band is paralleled
later in the novel when Tom and Huck become true
thieves, but honorable ones, at the end of the
novel. They resolve to steal Jim, freeing him from
the bonds of slavery, which is an honorable act.
Thus, the concept of honor and acting to earn it
becomes a central theme in Huck’s adventures.
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Food: Food plays a prominent role in the
novel. In Huck’s childhood, he often fights
pigs for food, and eats out of "a barrel of
odds and ends." Thus, providing Huck with
food becomes a symbol of people caring
for and protecting him. For example, in the
first chapter, the Widow Douglas feeds
Huck, and later on Jim becomes his
symbolic caretaker, feeding and watching
over him on Jackson's Island. Food is again
discussed fairly prominently when Huck
lives with the Grangerford's and the Wilks's.
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Mockery of Religion: A theme Twain
focuses on quite heavily on in this novel is
the mockery of religion. Throughout his life,
Twain was known for his attacks on
organized religion. Huck Finn’s sarcastic
character perfectly situates him to deride
religion, representing Twain’s personal
views. In the first chapter, Huck indicates
that hell sounds far more fun than heaven.
Later on, in a very prominent scene, the
"King", a liar and cheat, convinces a
religious community to give him money so
he can "convert" his pirate friends. The
religious people are easily led astray, which
mocks their beliefs and devotion to God.
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Superstition: Superstition appears
throughout the novel. Generally, both Huck
and Jim are very rational characters, yet
when they encounter anything slightly
superstitious, irrationality takes over. The
power superstition holds over the two
demonstrates that Huck and Jim are childlike despite their apparent maturity. In
addition, superstition foreshadows the plot
at several key junctions. For instance,
when Huck spills salt, Pap returns, and
when Huck touches a snakeskin with his
bare hands, a rattlesnake bites Jim.
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Money: The concept of wealth or lack thereof is
threaded throughout the novel, and highlights the
disparity between the rich and poor. Twain
purposely begins the novel by pointing out that
Huck has over six thousand dollars to his name; a
sum of money that dwarfs all the other sums
mentioned, making them seem inconsequential in
contrast. Huck demonstrates a relaxed attitude
towards wealth, and because he has so much of it,
does not view money as a necessity, but rather as
a luxury. Huck's views regarding wealth clearly
contrast with Jim’s. For Jim, who is on a quest to
buy his family out of slavery, money is equivalent
to freedom. In addition, wealth would allow him to
raise his status in society. Thus, Jim is on a
constant quest for wealth, whereas Huck remains
apathetic.
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Slavery: The theme of slavery is perhaps the most
well known aspect of this novel. Since it’s first
publication, Twain’s perspective on slavery and
ideas surrounding racism have been hotly debated.
In his personal and public life, Twain was
vehemently anti-slavery. Considering this
information, it is easy to see that The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn provides an allegory to explain
how and why slavery is wrong. Twain uses Jim, a
main character and a slave, to demonstrate the
humanity of slaves. Jim expresses the complicated
human emotions and struggles with the path of his
life. To prevent being sold and forced to separate
from his family, Jim runs away from his owner,
Miss Watson, and works towards obtaining
freedom so he can buy his family’s freedom. All
along their journey downriver, Jim cares for and
protects of Huck, not as a servant, but as a friend.
Thus, Twain's encourages the reader to feel
sympathy and empathy for Jim and outrage at the
society that has enslaved him and threatened his
life.
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However, although Twain attacks slavery
through is portrayal of Jim, he never directly
addresses the issue. Huck and Jim never
debate slavery, and all the other slaves in the
novel are very minor characters. Only in the
final section of the novel does Twain develop
the central conflict concerning slavery:
should Huck free Jim and then be
condemned to hell? This decision is lifealtering for Huck, as it forces him to reject
everything "civilization" has taught him. Huck
chooses to free Jim, based on his personal
experiences rather than social norms, thus
choosing the morality of the “natural life” over
that of civilization.
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Mississippi River:
The majority of the plot takes place on the
river or its banks. For Huck and Jim, the river
represents freedom. On the raft, they are
completely independent and determine their
own courses of action. Jim looks forward to
reaching the free states, and Huck is eager
to escape his abusive, drunkard of a father
and the “civilization” of Miss Watson.
However, the towns along the river bank
begin to exert influence upon them, and
eventually Huck and Jim meet criminals,
shipwrecks, dishonesty, and great danger.
Finally, a fog forces them to miss the town of
Cairo, at which point there were planning to
head up the Ohio River, towards the free
states, in a steamboat.
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Originally, the river is a safe place for the two
travelers, but it becomes increasingly dangerous
as the realities of their runaway lives set in on
Huck and Jim. Once reflective of absolute freedom,
the river soon becomes only a short-term escape,
and the novel concludes on the safety of dry land,
where, ironically, Huck and Jim find their true
freedom.
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3.writing technique
This novel shows his two famous writing
techniques: local color and colloquial
language.
The novel is a true recreation of living
models. Though a local and particular book,
it touches upon the human situation in a
general indeed “universal” way: Humanism
ultimately triumphs.
This book is written in the colloquial style,
approximating the actual speech habit of an
uneducated boy from the American South of
mid-nineteenth century.
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Key to Questions for Chapter 11
Q1: P344 Li ne3 & last para.
Q2: P350 the woman’s words
Q3: P347 line8 & line17
Q4: p345 & P348
Q5: p349 lines19----29
Q6: p348 last para.
Q7: ppt 56
Q8: open
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4. His contributions and achievement :
Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, is a
very famous humorist, whose best work is characterized by
broad, often irreverent humor or biting social satire. His
writing is also known for realism of place and language,
memorable characters, and hatred of hypocrisy and
oppression.
One of his significant contributions to American literature lies
in the fact that he made colloquial speech an accepted,
respectable literary medium in the literary history of the
country.
In social criticism he loved life, people, freedom and justice,
felt a pride on human dignity and advocated brotherhood of
man. He hated tyranny and iniquity, despised meanness and
cruelty, and took his role as a social critic in a serious and
responsible manner.
He was not indifferent either to the Chinese immigrants
persecuted in America or to a China suffering intense
agonies of humiliation and dismemberment by imperialist
powers.
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Assignment
Search for information about American
Naturalism on the net or elsewhere and
give an oral presentation about features
of naturalism or works of any naturalist
next time.
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VI. Naturalism and Muckraking
1.
The reasons on the coming of American
Naturalism:
1)
Industrialism produced financial giants, but at the same time
created an industrial proletariat entirely at the mercy of
external forces beyond their control. Slums appeared in great
numbers where conditions became steadily worse.
New ideas about man and man’s place in the universe began
to take root in America. Living in a cold, indifferent, and
essentially Godless world, man was no longer free in any
sense of the word. Darwinian concepts like “the survival of
the fittest” and “the human beast” became popular
catchwords and standards of moral reference in an amoral
world.
French naturalism, with its new technique and new way of
writing, appealed to the imagination of the younger
generation.
2)
3)
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2. The main characteristics of naturalism:
1)
2)
3)
The writers of naturalism tore the mask of gentility
to pieces and wrote about the helplessness of man,
his insignificance in a cold world, and his lack of
dignity in face of the crushing forces of
environment and heredity. In their works there is a
desire to assert one’s human identity, to define
oneself against the social and natural forces one
confronts
They reported truthfully and objectively, with a
passion for scientific accuracy and an
overwhelming accumulation of factual detail.
The major representatives of American naturalists
include Jack London, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris,
Theodore Dreiser and so on.
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3. Muckraking:
In dictionary:
1)Finding and publishing stories, perhaps using
underhand methods, that expose misconduct,
corruption, hypocrisy, or the like.
2)Publishing (perhaps invented) stories that
give salacious details of peoples’ private lives.
In literature:
1)Muckraking is applied to American
journalists, novelists, and critics who in
the first decade of the 20th century
attempted to expose the abuses of
business and the corruption in politics.
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2) Muckraking novels used eye-catching
journalistic techniques to depict harsh
working conditions and oppressions.
Norris’s Octopus (1901) exposed big
railroad companies while Upton Sinclair’s
The Jungle (1906) painted the squalor of
the Chicago meat-packing houses, and
Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio,
emphasizes the quiet poverty, loneliness,
and despair in small-town America.
3) The muckraking movement lost support in
about 1912. Historians agree that if it had
not been for the revelations of the
muckrakers the Progressive movement
would not have received the popular
support needed for effective reform.
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Jack London (1876 – 1916)
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About the author:
It is believed that London is an illegitimate child,
who passed his childhood in poverty in the
Oakland slums. He had little formal schooling, but
was an avid reader, educating himself at public
libraries.
At the age of 17, he ventured to sea on a sealing
ship and from then on to voyages on ship became
one of his favorites and material for his later writing.
In his teens, he joined Coxey’s Army in its famous
march on Washington, D.C., and was later
arrested for vagrancy. The turning point of his life
was a thirty-day imprisonment that was so
degrading it made him decide to turn to education
and pursue a career in writing.
His years in the Klondike a Gold Prospector (from
1897-1898 ) had to be ended because of his poor
health, which would provide abundant material for
his future novels and stories .
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Upon his return to Oakland, California, he could
not find steady work. In desperation, he decided to
dive into writing, launching his writing career.
Jack married two times in his life. The first wife is
his math tutor and the second one his secretary.
From 1905 to 1913, London set up his own
“Beauty Ranch” totaling 1,400 acres bought. At
Beauty Ranch, he raised many animals such as
prize bulls, horses, and pigs and cultivated a wide
variety of crops, fully enjoying the life of a rancher.
By his death at age forty on November 22, 1916,
Jack had been plagued for years by a vast number
of health problems, including stomach
disturbances, ravaging uremia, and failing kidneys.
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His masterpiece:
Many people argue as to what London's
masterpiece was. Some say The Call of the
Wild, others say The Sea Wolf, and still
others say Martin Eden.
The Call of the Wild is thrilling adventure story set
in the Yukon frontier, telling the gripping tale of a
dog named Buck who is wrenched out of his life of
ease and luxury to become a sled dog in Alaska.
Drawing on his wolf heritage, Buck must fight for
survival in an alien environment, experiencing both
the cruelty of man and the freedom of the wild。
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The Sea-Wolf was based on his experiences at
sea. When fate lands Humphrey Van Weyden on
board the Ghost, a sealing schooner bound for
Japan, little does he know of the weeks of brutality
which lie ahead. Captain Wolf Larsen is feared and
despised by all on board, and only the chance
arrival of Maud Brewster spurs Van Weyden into
action in a desperate attempt to free them both
from the terrifying power of the Sea-Wolf. This
work embraced the concepts of unconfined
individualism and Darwinism in its exploration of
the laws of nature. London portrays a version of
the Nietzschean superman in schooner captain
Wolf Larsen, one of the most memorable
characters in American literature.
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Martin Eden. One of London's most
important books is this semiautobiographical account of a young
sailor who struggles to improve
himself and achieves eventual
success as a writer, but grows
disenchanted with fame and wealth. It
represents both an indictment of the
American dream and an important
reflection on London's own
background and career.
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Evaluation on him:
Jack London, whose life symbolized the power of
will, was the most successful writer in America in
the early 20th Century. His vigorous stories of men
and animals against the environment, and survival
against hardships were drawn mainly from his own
experience.
In fact, he was a prolific writer whose fiction
explored three geographies and their cultures: the
Yukon, California, and the South Pacific. He left
over fifty books of novels, stories, journalism, and
essays, many of which have been translated and
continue to be read around the world.
He experimented with many literary forms, from
conventional love stories and dystopias to science
fantasy. His noted journalism included war
correspondence, boxing stories, and the life of
Molokai lepers.
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A committed socialist, he insisted against
editorial pressures to write political essays
and insert social criticism in his fiction.
He was among the most influential figures
of his day, who understood how to create a
public persona and use the media to
market his self-created image of poor-boyturned-success.
London's great passion was agriculture,
and he was well on the way of creating a
new model for ranching through his Beauty
Ranch when he died of kidney disease at
age 40.
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Love of Life
Love of Life is one of the most famous
Northern short stories by Jack London.
The author's skill, his peculiar literary talent
and the emotional impact the story produces
account for its appeal.
London relied on visual imagery to draw a
clearer picture of events as well as to
intensify the illusion of authenticity.
The story is the life experience of a
courageous, energetic and strong-willed man,
who loves to compete with danger until the
end of his life.
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Key to Questions for Love of Life
Q1: open
Q2: the peculiar description of harsh
and dangerous conditions; the
condensed dialogues; the vivid and
pithy dipiction of action
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Stephen Crane(1871 – 1900)
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About the author:
1) Stephen Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey, in
1881, as the 14th child of a cultural family. Both of
his parents did some writing and two of his brothers
became newspapermen.
2) Crane started to write stories at the age of eight; at
16 he was writing articles for the New York Tribune.
3) Crane studied at Lafayette College and Syracuse
University. After his mother's death in 1890- his
father had died earlier-Crane moved to New York.
He worked as a free-lance writer and journalist for
the Bachellor-Johnson newspaper syndicate. While
supporting himself by his writings, he lived among
the poor in the Bowery slums to research his first
novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893)
4) In 1895 the publication of The Red Badge of
Courage and of his first book of poems, The Black
Riders, brought him international fame.
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5)
6)
7)
His reputation as a war writer, his desire to see if
he had guessed right about the psychology of
combat, and his fascination with death and danger
sent him to Greece and then to Cuba as a war
correspondent.
His first attempt in 1897 to report on the
insurrection in Cuba ended in near disaster; the
ship sank, and Crane--reported drowned--finally
rowed into shore in a dinghy with the captain. The
result was one of the world's great short stories,
The Open Boat. His others are The Bride Comes
to Yellow Sky, and The Blue Hotel.
In 1898 Crane settled in Sussex, England. On
June 5, 1900 in Germany he died of tuberculosis,
which was worsened by malarial fever he had
caught in Cuba.
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His Major Works:
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
About the story: It is the harrowing story
of a poor sensitive young girl whose
uneducated alcoholic parents utterly fail
her. In love and eager to escape her
violent home life, she allows herself to
be seduced into living with a young
man, who soon deserts her. When her
self-righteous mother rejects her,
Maggie becomes a prostitute to survive,
but soon commits suicide out of despair.
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The Red Badge of Courage.
About the story:
The story is set during the American Civil War. Henry
Fleming enrolls as a soldier in the Union army. He
has dreamed of battles and glory all his life, but his
expectations are shattered in his encounter with the
enemy when he witnesses the chaos on the battle
field and starts to fear that the regiment was leaving
him behind. He flees from the battle.
Later he returns to the lines and feels sore and stiff
from his experiences. In the heat of the battle, he
picks up the regiment's flag with his friend when it
falls from the color sergeant's hands. Following the
conventions of a bildungsroman, Henry has matured
after the final battle and he understands better his
strengths and weaknesses.
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Relevant Evaluation:
1) It depicted the American Civil War from the point of view of an
ordinary soldier and has been called the first modern war novel.
2) It reveals the basic theme of the animal man in a cold,
manipulating world. Here Crane is looking into man’s primitive
emotions and trying to tell the elemental truth about human life.
3) War shown in the novel is a plain slaughter-house. There is
nothing like valor or heroism on the battlefield, and if there
anything, it is fear of death, cowardice, the natural instinct of
man to run from danger.
4) By thus un-romanticizing war and heroism, Crane initiated the
modern tradition of telling the truth at all costs about the
elemental human situation, and writing about war as a real
human experience. So this was an event of a revolutionary
nature both in theme and technique.
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Evaluation on him:
1) Crane was a pioneer writing in the naturalistic
tradition. His writings gave the whole esthetic
movement of the nineties a sudden direction and a
fresh impulse.
2) Crane was also a pioneer in the field of modern
poetry. His early poems, brief, quotable, with their
unrhymed, unorthodox conciseness and
impressionistic imagery, was to exert a significant
influence on modern poetry: As a matter of a fact,
he is now recognized as one of the two
precursors of Imagist poetry, the other being
Emily Dickinson.
3) His basic motif is about environment and heredity
overwhelming man.
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4) Crane’s fictional world is a naturalistic one
in which man is deprived of free will and
expects no help from any quarter whatever.
5) The secret of Crane's success as war
correspondent, journalist, novelist,
short-story
writer, and poet lay in his achieving
tensions between irony and pity,
illusion and reality, or the double
mood of hope contradicted by despair.
He was a great stylist and a master of
the contradictory effect.
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Benjamin Franklin Norris (1870 - 1902)
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About the author:
Benjamin Franklin Norris, 1870–1902, American
novelist, b. Chicago. After studying in Paris, at the
Univ. of California (1890–94), and Harvard, he wrote
McTeague (1899), a proletarian novel influenced by
the experimental naturalism of Zola. His most
impressive work was his proposed trilogy, “The Epic
of Wheat,” of which only two parts were written—The
Octopus (1901), depicting the brutal struggle
between the wheat farmers and the railroad, and
The Pit (1903), dealing with speculation on the
Chicago grain market, and The third part, The Wolf,
was never written.
Norris spent several years as a war correspondent in
South Africa (1895–96) and Cuba (1898).
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His masterpiece: The Octopus
1)It illustrates how social and economic
conditions ruined the lives of innocent,
powerless people.
2)The railroad reached out its millions of
tentacles , coiling round the throats of the
farmers who had no alternative but to choose
between leaving their crops to rot and carting
them out through the railroad at a
capriciously exorbitant freight rate, in either
case ending up in bankruptcy and
destruction; and what is worse, the railroad
raises the price of the land, which it has
rented for the people so that all the farmers
and the poor in general face stark destitution
and ruin.
退出
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Table of Contents
 Theodore Dreiser
 Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Carl Sandburg
 Sinclair Lewis
 Henry L. Mencken
 F. Scott Fitzgerald
 John Steinbeck
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Theodore Dreiser
(1871-1945)
American author,
outstanding
representative of
naturalism, whose
novels depict real-life
subjects in a harsh
light
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Theodore Dreiser was born
in Terre Haute, Indiana in
1871. The ninth child of
German immigrants, he
experienced considerable
poverty while a child and at
the age of fifteen was
forced to leave home in
search of work.
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After briefly attending Indiana University, he
found work as a reporter on the Chicago Globe.
Later he worked for the St. Louis GlobeDemocrat, the St. Louis Republic and
Pittsburgh Dispatch, before moving to New
York where he attempted to establish himself
as a novelist.
He was a voracious reader, and the impact of
such writers as Hawthorne, Poe, Balzac,
Herbert Spencer, and Freud influenced his
thought and his reaction against organized
religion.
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Dreiser worked for the New York
World before Frank Norris, who was
working for Doubleday, helped
Dreiser's first novel, Sister Carrie
(1900), to be published. However,
the owners disapproved of the
novel's subject matter (the moral
corruption of the heroine, Carrie
Meeber) and it was not promoted
and therefore sold badly.
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The young author felt so
depressed by “a
decade’s delay”—in the
words of Larzer Ziff—in
social recognition that
he was said to have
walked by the East River
at the turn of the century,
seriously committing
suicide.
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Dreiser was left-oriented in his views.
Dreiser continued to work as a journalist and
as well as writing for mainstream
newspapers such as the Saturday Evening
Post, also had work published in socialist
magazines such as The Call. However, unlike
many of his literary friends such as Sinclair
Lewis, and Jack London, he never joined the
Socialist Party.
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In 1898 Dreiser married Sara White, a
Missouri schoolteacher, but the marriage was
unhappy. Dreiser separated permanently from
her in 1909, but never earnestly sought a
divorce.
In his own life Dreiser practiced his principle
that man's greatest appetite is sexual - the
desire for women
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His strength clearly ebbing,
Dreiser died of heart failure
on December 28, 1945,
before completing the last
chapter of The Stoic.
Dreiser was buried in
Hollywood's Forest Lawn
Cemetery on January 3,
1946.
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1. Works
Trilogy of Desire
Sister Carrie
1900
Jennie Gerhardt
1911
An American Tragedy
1925
The Financier
1912
The Titan
1914
The Stoic
(posthumously)
The Genius
1915
Dreiser Looks at Russia 1928
autobiographically
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The Financier (1912) and The Titan (1914)
about Frank Cowperwood, a powerhungry business tycoon.
An American Tragedy (1925) was based
on the Chester Gillette and Grace Brown
murder case that had taken place in 1906.
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About Sister Carrie
Sister Carrie, published in 1900, stands at the
gateway of the new century. Theodore Dreiser
based his first novel on the life of his sister
Emma. In 1883 she ran away to Toronto, Canada
with a married man who had stolen money from
his employer. The story as told by Dreiser, about
Carrie Meeber who becomes the mistress of a
traveling salesman, is unapologetically told and
created a scandal with its moral transgressions.
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The book was initially rejected by many
publishers on the grounds that is was
"immoral". Indeed, Harper Brothers, the first
publisher to see the book, rejected it by saying
it was not, "sufficiently delicate to depict
without offense to the reader the continued
illicit relations of the heroine".
Finally Doubleday and Company published the
book in order to fulfill their contract, but Frank
Doubleday refused to promote the book. As a
result, it sold less than seven hundred copies
and Dreiser received a reputation as a
naturalist-barbarian.
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Sister Carrie sold poorly but
was redeemed by writers
like Frank Norris and
William Dean Howells who
saw the novel as a
breakthrough in American
realism.
However, the publication
battles over Sister Carrie
caused Dreiser to become
depressed, so much so that
his brother sent him to a
sanitarium for a short while.
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Sister Carrie, published
in 1900, is one of the
best-known story of
American Dream,
tracing the material rise
of Carrie Meeber and
the tragic decline of G.
W. Hurstwood.
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Carrie Meeber, penniless
and full of the illusion of
ignorance and youth,
leaves her rural home to
seek work in Chicago. On
the train, she becomes
acquainted with Charles
Drouet, a salesman. In
Chicago, she lives with her
sister, and work for a time
in a shoe factory.
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Meager income and terrible working condition
oppress her imaginative spirit. After a period of
unemployment and loneliness, she accepts
Drouet and becomes his mistress.
During his absence, she falls in love with
Drouet’s friend Hurstwood, a middle aged,
married, comparatively intelligent culture saloon
manager. They finally elope. They live together
for three years more.
Chicago
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New York
Carrie becomes mature in intellect and
emotion, while Hurstwood steadily
declines. At last, she thinks him too great a
burden and leaves him. Hurstwood sinks
lower and lower. After becoming a beggar,
he commits suicide, while Carrie becomes
a star of musical comedy. In spite of her
success, she is lonely and dissatisfied.
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The theme in Sister Carrie,
a novel written by
Theodore Dreiser, is
materialism. The theme is
primarily personified
through Carrie with her
desire for a fine home,
clothes and everything
else money can buy.
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Materialism, including the desire for money,
is an important theme in Sister Carrie. The
materialism is shown mostly through Carrie's
character but also through Hurstwood, a man
with a respectable life and money, who still
wants more and for that reason commits a
crime. The city in itself is also a place of
materialism, it is a place that offers all kinds
of amusements, pleasures and things to buy,
but to participate in what the city has to offer
one has to have money.
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Evaluation
He faced every form of attack that a
serious artist could encounter
misunderstanding,
misrepresentation, artistic isolation
and commercial seduction. But he
survived to lead the rebellion of the
1900s.
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Dreiser has been a
controversial figure in
American literary history.
His works are powerful in
their portrayal of the
changing American life, but
his style is considered crude.
It is in Dreiser’s works that
American naturalism is said
to have come of age.
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Dreiser’s novels are formless at times and
awkwardly written, and his characterization is
found deficient and his prose pedestrian and dull,
yet his very energy proves to be more than a
compensation.
Dreiser’s stories are always solid and intensely
interesting with their simple but highly moving
characters. Dreiser is good at employing the
journalistic method of reiteration to burn a central
impression into the reader’s mind.
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For a commemorative service in 1947, H. L.
Mencken wrote a eulogy in which he stuck by the
argument that he had been making for over thirtyfive years: despite Dreiser's flaws as a stylist, "the
fact remains that he is a great artist, and that no
other American of his generation left so wide and
handsome a mark upon the national letters.
American writing, before and after his time, differed
almost as much as biology before and after Darwin.
He was a man of large originality, of profound
feeling, and of unshakable courage. All of us who
write are better off because he lived, worked, and
hoped."
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Here lies the power
and permanence
that have made
Dreiser one of
America’s foremost
novelists.
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