American Literature

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American Literature

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Title: American Literature

1
American Literature

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Part V Twentieth-Century Literature

3
Section 1 The 1920s

I. Introduction
The 1920s is a flowering period of American
literature. It is considered the second
renaissance of American literature.
The nicknames for this period
(1) Roaring 20s comfort
(2) Dollar Decade rich
(3) Jazz Age Jazz music

II. Background
1. First World War a war to end all wars
(1) Economically became rich from WWI. Economic
boom new inventions. Highly-consuming society.
(2) Spiritually dislocation, fragmentation.
2. wide-spread contempt for law (looking down
upon law)
3. Freuds theory

III. Features of the literature
Writers three groups
(1) Participants
(2) Expatriates
(3) Bohemian (unconventional way of life)
on-lookers

Two areas
(1) Failure of communication of Americans
(2) Failure of the American society

7
Imagism

I. Background
Imagism was influenced by French symbolism,
ancient Chinese poetry and Japanese literature
haiku

8
II. Development three stages

1. 19081909 London, Hulme
2. 19121914 England -gt America, Pound
3. 19141917 Amy Lowell

9
III. What is an image?

An image is defined by Pound as that which
presents an intellectual and emotional complex in
an instant of time, a vortex or cluster of fused
ideas endowed with energy. The exact word must
bring the effect of the object before the reader
as it had presented itself to the poets mind at
the time of writing.

10
IV. Principles

1. Direct treatment of the thing, whether
subjective or objective
2. To use absolutely no word that does not
contribute to the presentation
3. As regarding rhythm, to compose in the
sequence of the musical phrase, not in the
sequence of a metronome.

11
V. Significance

1. It was a rebellion against the traditional
poetics which failed to reflect the new life of
the new century.
2. It offered a new way of writing which was
valid not only for the Imagist poets but for
modern poetry as a whole.
3. The movement was a training school in which
many great poets learned their first lessons in
the poetic art.
4. It is this movement that helped to open the
first pages of modern English and American poetry.

12
VI. Ezra Pound

1. life
2. literary career
3. works
(1) Cathay
(2) Cantos
(3) Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

4. point of view
(1) Confident in Pounds belief that the artist
was morally and culturally the arbiter and the
saviour of the race, he took it upon himself to
purify the arts and became the prime mover of a
few experimental movements, the aim of which was
to dump the old into the dustbin and bring forth
something new.
(2) To him life was sordid personal crushing
oppression, and culture produced nothing but
intangible bondage.
(3) Pound sees in Chinese history and the
doctrine of Confucius a source of strength and
wisdom with which to counterpoint Western gloom
and confusion.
(4) He saw a chaotic world that wanted setting to
rights, and a humanity, suffering from spiritual
death and cosmic injustice, that needed saving.
He was for the most part of his life trying to
offer Confucian philosophy as the one faith which
could help to save the West.

5. style very difficult to read
Pounds early poems are fresh and lyrical. The
Cantos can be notoriously difficult in some
sections, but delightfully beautiful in others.
Few have made serious study of the long poem
fewer, if anyone at all, have had the courage to
declare that they have conquered Pound and many
seem to agree that the Cantos is a monumental
failure

6. Contribution
He has helped, through theory and practice, to
chart out the course of modern poetry.

7. The Cantos the intellectual diary since
1915
Features
(1) Language intricate and obscure
(2) Theme complex subject matters
(3) Form no fixed framework, no central theme,
no attention to poetic rules

17
?. Thomas Stearns Eliot

His life (1888----1965)

18
His works Poems

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock ????????
The Waste Land (epic) ??
Hollow Man ???
Ashy Wednesday ?????
Four Quarters ?????

????????????????????????????????????
???????????????The Poems(1920)???????
??The Waste??
The Hollow Man???
??Gerontion???? Ashy Wednesday ?????
Sweeney Among the Nightingales
???????
The Hippopotamus ?? Four Quarters
?????
Mr. Eliots Sunday Morning Service????????????

20
Four Quarters ?????

??????????,??????????????????,????????????????????
??????????????????????????????,??????????????????
???????Burnt Norton, 1935 ?????? East Coker,
1940 ????The Dry Salvages, 1941
????????Little Gidding, 1943 ???

21
His works Plays

Murder in the Cathedral ??????
The Cocktail Party ????
The Confidential Clerk ??????

22
His works Critical essays

The Sacred Wood
Essays on Style and Order
Elizabethan Essays
The Use of Poetry and The Use of Criticisms
After Strange Gods

23
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

It depicts a timid middle-aged man going to
propose marriage to a lady but hesitating all the
way there. It takes the form of soliloquy, like
interior monologue like that of Brownings.
Prufrock is the image of a ineffectual,
sorrowful, tragic twentieth-century Western man,
possibly the modern intellectual who is divided
between passion and timidity, between desire and
impotence. He is tragic flaw is timidity his
curse is his idealism. Knowing everything, but
able to do nothing, he lives in an area of life
and death and caught between the two worlds, he
belongs to neither. He craves love but has no
courage to declare himself. He despairs of life.
He discovers its emptiness and yet has found
nothing to replace it.

24
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Thus the poem develops a theme a frustration and
emotional conflict.
The title of the poem is ironic in that the Love
Song is in fact about the absence of love.
Prufrock the name is of a furniture dealer in
St. Louis. His initial J sounds tony and
classy, giving one a sense of the upper class to
which he belongs.

25
The Waste Land

It is the masterpiece of Eliot.
The waste land itself is a desolate and sterile
country ruled by an impotent king.
It is broadly acknowledged as one of the most
recognizable landmarks of Modernism.

26
The Waste Land??

It includes five parts
(1) The Burial of the Dead, representing the
stirring life in the land after the barren
winter.
(2) A Game of Chess, contrasting the splendors of
the past represented by Cleopatra with uneasiness
and despair of modern life.
(3) The Fire Sermon, making an imaginative
silhouette sketch of the ugliness of cities and
the mechanization of modern life and emotion.

27
The Waste Land

(4) Death by Water, presumptively proving by the
vision of a drowned phoenician sailor that water
is not only the constructive source of life, but
also the destructive source of death because of
drowning and its absence as well, which causes
drought.
(5) What the Thunder Said, presenting a picture,
through symbols of the Grail legend, of the
drought, the decay and emptiness of modern life.

28
The Waste Land

The theme of the poem is modern spiritual
barrenness, the despair and depression that
followed the First World War, the sterility and
turbulence of the modern world, and the decline
and break-down of Western culture.
The poems noticeable characteristics are varied
length and rhythm to harmonize with the changing
subject matter, the unrhymed lines, lots of
borrowing from some 35 different writers, the
employment of materials such as the legends of
the Holy Grail, Frazers anthropological work The
Golden Bough, several popular songs, and passages
in six foreign language, including Sanskrit.

29
Some literary terms

Allusion (??) A reference, generally brief, to
a person, place, thing or event with which the
reader is presumably familiar.
It is a device that allows a writer to compress
great deal of meaning into a very few words. It
work to the extent they are recognized and
understood when they are not, they tend to
confuse.

Soliloquyin drama, an extended speech delivered
by a character along onstage.
The character reveals his or her innermost
thoughts and feelings directly to the audience,
as if thinking aloud.

Dramatic monologue a kind of narrative poem in
which one character speaks to one or more
listeners whose replies are not given in the
poem.
It reveals the speakers personality as well as
the incident that is the subject of the poem. An
example of a dramatic monologue is My Last
Duchess by Robert Browning.

32
point of view

(1) The modern society is futile and chaotic.
(2) Only poets can create some order out of
chaos.
(3) The method to use is to compare the past and
the present.

33
Style

(1) Fresh visual imagery, flexible tone and
highly expressive rhythm
(2) Difficult and disconnected images and
symbols, quotations and allusions
(3) Elliptical structures, strange
juxtapositions, an absence of bridges

34
?. Robert Frost(1874-1963)

His life story is on the Page 166-168

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Point of View

(1) All his life, Frost was concerned with
constructions through poetry. a momentary stay
against confusion.
(2) He understands the terror and tragedy in
nature, but also its beauty.
(3) Unlike the English romantic poets of 19th
century, he didnt believe that man could find
harmony with nature. He believed that serenity
came from working, usually amid natural forces,
which couldnt be understood. He regarded work as
significant toil.

37
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His Works

the first A Boys Will(1913)
collections
North of Boston (1914)
Mountain Interval (mature)
New Hampshire
Four Pulitzer Prizes Winner

39
The Interpretation of his poems

The Road Not Taken (p.170)
Stopping by woods on a Snowy Evening

40
The road not taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,

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45
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923)--by
Robert

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sounds the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep

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51
Features of his poems

(1)He is a poet of nature. Most of his poems took
New England as setting, and the subjects were
chosen from daily life of ordinary people, such
as mending wall, picking apples.

(2) He writes most often about landscape and
people the loneliness and poverty of isolated
farmers, beauty, terror and tragedy in nature. He
also describes some abnormal people, e.g.
deceptively simple, philosophical poet.

(3) Although he was popular during 1920s, he
didnt experiment like other modern poets. He
used conventional forms, plain language,
traditional metre, and wrote in a pastured
tradition.

54
IX. E. E. Cummings

a juggler with syntax, grammar and diction
individualism, painter poet

55
Novels in the 1920s

I. F. Scott Fitzgerald
1.life participant in 1920s
2. works
(1) This Side of Paradise
(2) Flappers and Philosophers
(3) The Beautiful and the Damned
(4) The Great Gatsby
(5) Tender is the Night
(6) All the Sad Young Man
(7) The Last Tycoon

3. point of view
(1) He expressed what the young people believed
in the 1920s, the so-called American Dream is
false in nature.
(2) He had always been critical of the rich and
tried to show the integrating effects of money on
the emotional make-up of his character. He found
that wealth altered peoples characters, making
them mean and distrusted. He thinks money brought
only tragedy and remorse.
(3) His novels follow a pattern dream lack of
attraction failure and despair.

4. His ideas of American Dream
It is false to most young people. Only those who
were dishonest could become rich.

5. Style
Fitzgerald was one of the great stylists in
American literature. His prose is smooth,
sensitive, and completely original in its diction
and metaphors. Its simplicity and gracefulness,
its skill in manipulating the relation between
the general and the specific reveal his
consummate artistry.

6. The Great Gatsby
Narrative point of view Nick
He is related to everyone in the novel and is
calm and detected observer who is never quick to
make judgments.
Selected omniscient point of view

60
II. Ernest Hemingway

1. life
2. point of view (influenced by experience in
war)
(1) He felt that WWI had broken Americas culture
and traditions, and separated from its roots. He
wrote about men and women who were isolated from
tradition, frightened, sometimes ridiculous,
trying to find their own way.
(2) He condemned war as purposeless slaughter,
but the attitude changed when he took part in
Spanish Civil War when he found that fascism was
a cause worth fighting for.
(3) He wrote about courage and cowardice in
battlefield. He defined courage as an
instinctive movement towards or away from the
centre of violence with self-preservation and
self-respect, the mixed motive. He also talked
about the courage with which to face tragedies of
life that can never be remedied.
(4) Hemingway is essentially a negative writer.
It is very difficult for him to say yes. He
holds a black, naturalistic view of the world and
sees it as all a nothing and all nada.

3. works
(1) In Our Time
(2) Men Without Women
(3) Winner Take Nothing
(4) The Torrents of Spring
(5) The Sun Also Rises
(6) A Farewell to Arms
(7) Death in the Afternoon
(8) To Have and Have Not
(9) Green Hills of Africa
(10) The Fifth Column
(11) For Whom the Bell Tolls
(12) Across the River and into the Trees
(13) The Old Man and the Sea

4. themes grace under pressure
(1) war and influence of war on people, with
scenes connected with hunting, bull fighting
which demand stamina and courage, and with the
question how to live with pain, how human
being live gracefully under pressure.
(2) code hero
The Hemingway hero is an average man of
decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and
intelligent, a man of action, and one of few
words. That is an individualist keeping emotions
under control, stoic and self-disciplined in a
dreadful place. These people are usually
spiritual strong, people of certain skills, and
most of them encounter death many times.

5. style
(1) simple and natural
(2) direct, clear and fresh
(3) lean and economical
(4) simple, conversational, common found,
fundamental words
(5) simple sentences
(6) Iceberg principle understatement, implied
things
(7) Symbolism

64
III. Sinclair Lewis

the worst important writer in American
literature
1. life
2. works
(1) Main Street
(2) Babbitt
(3) Arrowsmith
(4) Dodsworth
(5) Elmer Gantry

3. point of view satirical critic of American
middle class
(1) Lewis showed the villagers to be
narrow-minded, greedy, pretentious and corrupt.
(2) He attacked middle class for its igogoumption
that economic success made it superior.

4. style
(1) photographic, verisimilitude
(2) colloquialism
(3) characterization he often created a type of
character rather than an individual
(4) old fashioned in theme
(5) lack in psychological exploration

67
IV. Willa Cather

1. life
2. works
(1) Alexanders Bridge
(2) O Pioneers
(3) The Song of the Lark
(4) My Antonia

3. features of her works
(1) She was one of the few uneasy survivors of
the nineteenth century. Hanging onto the
traditional values, she was never able to come to
terms with modernity.
(2) Old west becomes in most of her novels the
centre of moral reference against which modern
existence is measured.
(3) She withdraws in her later fiction into the
historical past.
(4) She often uses women protagonists in her
novels.

69
Southern Literature

I. Heritage
American southern literature can date back to
Edgar Allen Poe, and reach its summit with the
appearance of the two giants Faulkner and
Wolfe. There are southern women writers
Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, and Flannery
OConnor.

70
II. Southern Myths guilt, failure, poverty

1. Chevalier heritage
2. Agrarian virtue
3. Plantation aristocracy
4. Lost cause
5. White supremacy
6. Purity of womanhood
Southern literature twisted, pessimistic,
violent, distorted
Gothic novel Poe

71
III. William Faulkner

1. life
literary career three stages
(1) 19241929 training as a writer
The Marble Faun
Soldiers Pay
Mosquitoes
(2) 19291936 most productive and prolific
period
Sartoris
The Sound and the Fury
As I Lay Dying
Light in August
Absalom, Absalom
(3) 1940end won recognition in America
Go Down, Moses

3. point of view
He generally shows a grim picture of human
society where violence and cruelty are frequently
included, but his later works showed optimism.
His intention was to show the evil, harsh events
in contrast to such eternal virtues as love,
honor, pity, compassion, self-sacrifice, and
thereby expose the faults of society. He felt
that it was a writers duty to remind his readers
constantly of true values and virtues.

4. themes
(1) history and race
He explains the present by examining the past,
by telling the stories of several generations of
family to show how history changes life. He was
interested in the relationship between blacks and
whites, especially concerned about the problems
of the people who were of the mixed race of black
and white, unacceptable to both races.
(2) Deterioration
(3) Conflicts between man and environment
(4) Horror, violence and the abnormal

5. style/features of his works
(1) complex plot
(2) stream of consciousness
(3) multiple point of view, circular form
(4) violation of chronology
(5) courtroom rhetoric formal language
(6) characterization he was able to probe into
the psychology of characters
(7) anti-hero weak, fable, vulnerable (true
people in modern society)
He has a group of women writers following him,
including OConnor and Eudora Welty

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Section 2 The 1930s

Radical 1930s
I. Background
Great Depression (1929 Black Thursday)
II. Literature
1. Writers of the 1920s were still writing, but
they didnt produce good works.
2. The main stream is left-oriented.

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III. Writers of 1930s

1. social concern and social involvement
2. revival of naturalistic tradition of Dreiser
and Norris

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IV. John Steinbeck

1. life
2. works
(1) Cup of Gold
(2) Tortilla Flat
(3) In Dubious Battle
(4) Of Mice and Men
(5) The Grapes of Wrath
(6) Travels with Charley
(7) Short stories The Red Pony, The Pearl

3. point of view
(1) His best writing was produced out of outrage
at the injustices of the societies, and by the
admirations for the strong spirit of the poor.
(2) His theme was usually simple human virtues,
such as kindness and fair treatment, which were
far superior to the dehumanizing cruelty of
exploiters.