American literature

1
American literature

• Xue Ling

2
Chapter One

• Edgar Allan Poe (1809 1849)

3

• Born in Boston, the son of itinerant actors who
  died before he was 3 years old.
• Became the ward of a Virginia couple, the Allans,
  whose name he added to his own.
• An editor of a number of magazines and won a
  number of literary prizes for his poems and
  fiction.

4

• His short fiction, with its effects of terror and
  its supernatural trappings, made him a household
  name for American readers.
• He is regarded as father of modern American short
  story.
• His poems have been highly appreciated for their
  aesthetical quality and music is essential in
  them as it is associated with indefinite
  sensations.

5
Literary terms

• Romanticism
• As a literary trend or movement, it occurred and
  developed in Europe and America at the turn of
  the 18th and 19th centuries under the historical
  background of the Industrial Revolution around
  1760 and the French Revolution (1789 1799).

6
Characteristics of Romanticism

• It was a rebellion against the objectivity of
  rationalism.
• For romantics, the feelings, intuitions and
  emotions were more important than reason and
  common sense.

7

• Romantics did not think of the world as a ticking
  watch made by God. They thought of the world as a
  living, breathing being. They stressed the close
  relationship between man and nature.
• They emphasized individualism, placing the
  individual against the group, against authority.

8

• They affirmed the inner life of the self, and
  wanted each person to be free to develop and
  express his own inner thought.
• They cherished strong interest in the past,
  especially the medieval.

9

• They are attracted by the wild, the irregular,
  the indefinite, the remote, the mysterious, and
  the strange.
• They are interested in variety. They aspired the
  sublime and the wonderful, and tried to find the
  absolute, the ideal by transcending the actual.

10
American Romanticism

• American romantics tend to moralize, to edify
  rather than to entertain.
• It presented an entirely new experience alien to
  European culture.
• The exotic landscape, the frontier life, the
  westward expansion, the myth of a New Garden of
  Eden in America, and the Puritan heritage were
  just a few examples of the native material for an
  indigenous literature.

11
Literary theories

• Poe preferred the tale to other fictional forms
  such as novel because it is brief.
• The writer must decide the effect first and then
  determine the incidents.

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• Truth rather than beauty is often the aim of the
  tale. As beauty can be better treated in the
  poems, tales can deal with terror, passion,
  horror, humor, sarcasm, wit, and ratiocination.
• The merit of a work of art should be judged by
  its psychological effect upon the reader.

13
Text study The Cask of Amontillado

• Setting a nameless Italian city
• Time an unspecified year (possibly in the 18th
  century)
• Theme It concerns the deadly revenge taken by
  the narrator on a friend whom he claims has
  insulted him.
• Writing style Poe conveys the story through the
  murderer's perspective.

14
Class activities

• Read the dialogue parts by pair-work.
• Recite the parts from the last paragraph on P15
  to the end.

15
Questions to ponder

• Who is the narrator of the story?
• Is the murderer punished by law or not? What
  evidence can you give?
• How do you comment on the two characters in the
  story?
• What romantic elements are expressed through the
  story?

16
Further reading recommendation

• 1. The Black Cat
• http//www.online-literature.com/poe/24/
• 2. The Tell-Tale Heart
• http//www.online-literature.com/poe/44/

17
Chapter Two

• Nathaniel Hawthorne ( 1804 1864)
• 1.Born in Salem, Massachusetts and studied at
  Bowdoin College.
• 2.The Scarlet Letter (1850) brought him
  recognition as a major literary figure.

18
Literary term

• Romance
• An ideal combination of facts and fancy,
  idealistic details and fanciful things, or
  reality and imagination.

19
Text study The Scarlet Letter

• The Scarlet Letter (1850) is a novel written by
  Nathaniel Hawthorne, considered to be his
  masterpiece and most famous work. Set in
  17th-century Puritan Boston, it tells the story
  of Hester Prynne, who gives birth after
  committing adultery and struggles to create a new
  life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the
  novel, Hawthorne explores themes of legalism,
  sin, and guilt.

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(No Transcript)
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Major themes

• 1? Sin
• 2? Past and present

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The Scarlet Letter Symbolism, Imagery Allegory

• The Prison Door
• Pearl, Hesters Daughter
• The Scarlet Letter
• The Red Mark on Dimmesdales Chest
• The Meteor
• The Black Man
• The Forest and the Wilderness

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The Scarlet Letter Genre

• Gothic
• Romance
• Historical

24
Class activities

• 1. Role-play
• The five womens comments on Hester Prynnes
  punishment.
• 2. Group discussion
• -Why should the women be so hard on Hester
  Prynne?
• -What social norm do you see through the
  womens words?

25
Questions to ponder

• Do you agree with Hesters folk that she should
  be punished? Why or why not?
• What image is Hester Prynne set before readers?
• Why Hawthorne describes Hesters appearance in
  such a way? What might be his purpose?

26
Further reading recommendation

• The Scarlet Letter http//www.classicreader.com/b
  ook/69/2/
• The Ministers Black Veil http//www.classicreade
  r.com/book/205/1/

27
Chapter Three

• 19th-Century American Poets

28
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• (1807 1882)

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I Shot an Arrow
30
Edgar Allan Poe (1809 1849)
31
To Helen

• Helen, thy beauty is to me
• Like those Nicean barks of yore
• That gently, oer a perfumed sea,
• The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
• To his own native shore.

32

• On desperate seas long wont to roam,
• Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
• Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home
• To the glory that was Greece,
• And the grandeur that was Rome.

33

• Lo! In yon brilliant window-niche
• How statue-like I see thee stand,
• The agate lamp within thy hand!
• Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
• Are Holy-Land!

34
Poes principles on poetry writing

• A poem should be short, readable at one sitting.
• The chief aim of a poem is to produce a sense of
  beauty.
• The most appropriate tone for all poems is
  melancholy.
• A poem must be composed with rhythms.
• A poem must be pure, written for its own sake.

35
Walt Whitman (1819 1892)
36
Literary term

• Free verse
• A form of poetry which refrains from meter
  patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.

37
Poetic theory

• Whitman wrote in the preface to the 1855 edition
  of Leaves of Grass, "The proof of a poet is that
  his country absorbs him as affectionately as he
  has absorbed it." He believed there was a vital,
  symbiotic relationship between the poet and
  society.This connection was emphasized especially
  in "Song of Myself" by using an all-powerful
  first-person narration.

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• As an American epic, it deviated from the
  historic use of an elevated hero and instead
  assumed the identity of the common people. Leaves
  of Grass also responded to the impact that recent
  urbanization in the United States had on the
  masses.

39
O Captain! My Captain!
40
Emily Dickinson (1830 1886)

• frequent use of dashes
• sporadic capitalization of nouns
• convoluted and ungrammatical phrasing
• off-rhymes
• broken meters
• bold and unconventional and often startling
  metaphors
• aphoristic wit.

41
To Make a Prairie

• To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
• One clover and a bee,

• And revery.
• Revery alone will do,
• If bees are few.

42
Class activities

• Recite all the poems in this chapter.
• Perform recitation of one of you favorite poems
  in this chapter.

43
Questions to ponder

• How do you like the poems in this chapter?
• Whose poems do you like best? Why?
• What are the differences in writing style in
  these poems?
• What have you learned through these poems?

44
Chapter Four

• Stephen Crane (1871 1900)
• Born in Newark, New Jersey.
• In 1893, he published at his own expense Maggie
  A Girl of the Streets, a pioneering work of
  sociological naturalism.
• His short stories were collected in The Open Boat
  and Other Tales of Adventure (1898).

45
Literary term Naturalism

• Naturalism was a literary movement taking place
  from 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to
  suggest that social conditions, heredity, and
  environment had inescapable force in shaping
  human character. It was depicted as a literary
  movement that seeks to replicate a believable
  everyday reality, as opposed to such movements as
  Romanticism or Surrealism, in which subjects may
  receive highly symbolic, idealistic, or even
  supernatural treatment.

46

• Naturalism is the outgrowth of Realism, a
  prominent literary movement in mid-19th-century
  France and elsewhere. Naturalistic writers were
  influenced by the evolution theory of Charles
  Darwin. They believed that one's heredity and
  social environment determine one's character.
  Whereas realism seeks only to describe subjects
  as they really are, naturalism also attempts to
  determine "scientifically" the underlying forces
  (e.g. the environment or heredity) influencing
  the actions of its subjects.

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• Naturalistic works often include uncouth or
  sordid subject matter for example, Émile Zola's
  works had a frankness about sexuality along with
  a pervasive pessimism. Naturalistic works exposed
  the dark harshness of life, including poverty,
  racism, sex, prejudice, disease, prostitution,
  and filth. As a result, naturalistic writers were
  frequently criticized for being too blunt.

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Literary realism

• Most often literary realism refers to the trend,
  beginning with certain works of
  nineteenth-century French literature and
  extending to late-nineteenth- and
  early-twentieth-century authors in various
  countries, towards depictions of contemporary
  life and society "as they were." In the spirit of
  general "realism," Realist authors opted for
  depictions of everyday and banal activities and
  experiences, instead of a romanticized or
  similarly stylized presentation.

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Impressionistic literature

• Impressionistic literature can basically be
  defined as when an author centers his
  story/attention on the character's mental life
  such as the character's impressions, feelings,
  sensations and emotions, rather than trying to
  interpret them.

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• Authors such as Virginia Woolf (Mrs Dalloway) and
  Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness and The Lagoon)
  are among the foremost creators of the type.
  These novels have been said to be the finest
  examples of a genre which is not easily
  comprehensible.

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The Commodore
52
The four characters

• The correspondent -- a pretentious, erudite, and
  mocking observer
• The cook -- fat and comic
• The captain -- morose and indifferent
• The oiler -- physically strong and industrious.

53
Major themes

• They are Naturalistic and Realistic concerns,
  including ideals versus realities, spiritual
  crises and fear.
• Extreme isolation from society and community is
  also apparent in Crane's work.

54
Class activities

• Group work find out different words in
  description of the sea waves.
• Share your favorite part(s) with your partner.

55
Questions to ponder

• What do you feel after reading the story?
• How do you explain the death of the oiler, the
  strongest of the four?
• What is the theme of the story?
• What have you learned from story from the
  perspective of naturalism?
• What is the relationship between man and nature?

56
Further reading recommendation

• The Red Badge of Courage
• http//etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id
  CraRedb.sgmimagesimages/modengdata/texts/engl
  ish/modeng/parsedtagpublicpart1divisiondiv1

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Chapter Five

• Katherine Anne Porter
• (1890 1980)

58

• Born in Indian Creek, Texas and educated at home,
  in private schools, and in an Ursualine convent.
  
• Her first book of stories, Flowering Judas was
  published in 1930.

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• She lived for a time in Mexico, which provided
  material for some of her most famous stories.
• Her novel A Ship of Fools was published in 1962.
• The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter
  appeared in 1965, winning the Pulitzer Prize and
  the National Book Award.

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Stream of consciousness

• Stream of consciousness is a method of narrative
  representation of "random" thoughts which follow
  in a freely-flowing style.

61

• Primarily associated with the modernist movement,
  stream of consciousness is a form of interior
  monologue which claims as its goal the
  representation of a lead consciousness in a
  narrative (typically fiction).

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• This representation of consciousness can include
  perceptions or impressions, thoughts incited by
  outside sensory stimuli, and fragments of random,
  disconnected thoughts. Stream of consciousness
  writing often lacks "correct" punctuation or
  syntax, favoring a looser, more incomplete style.
  

63
Text study

• 1. Characters
• 2. Setting the bedroom where Granny Weatherall
  is dying
• 3. Theme
• self-pity
• death
• 4. Style
• stream-of-consciousness

64
Class activities

• Class discussion
• What impression have you got from Granny
  Weatherall?
• Identification of the parts written in stream of
  consciousness with your partners.

65
Questions to ponder

• Do you find reading this text difficult? Why or
  why not?
• Is Porters writing technique most proper in this
  story? Why?
• What pain has tortured Granny Weatherall for
  sixty years?
• What weakness can you see in Granny Weatherall?

66
Further reading recommendation

• The Flowering Judas
• (Source from libraries or elsewhere)
• A Ship of Fools
• (Source from libraries or elsewhere)

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Chapter Six

• FScott Fitzgerald
• (1896 1940)

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• Born in St. Paul, Minnesota.
• A spokesman for the so-called Jazz Age, setting a
  personal as well as literary example for a
  generation whose first commandment was Do what
  you will.
• His novels such as The Great Gatsby (1925),
  Tender Is the Night (1934), and The Last Tycoon
  (1941), amplify the melancholy he discovered
  beneath the glitter of American-style success.

69
Literary term

• Jazz Age
• It is an epithet applied, often invidiously, to
  the era of the 1920s in the U.S., whose frenetic
  youth of the post war period were conceived as
  more juvenile and hedonistic than the
  contemporary lost generation of expatriates. F.
  Scott Fitzgeralds Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
  was a classic representation of the period.

70
Text study

• Character analysis
• Nick Carraway
• Jay Gatsby
• -Origins Jimmy Gatz
• -The Man Jay Gatsby
• -The Legend The Great Gatsby
• Daisy Buchannan
• Tom Buchannan
• Jordan Baker
• George Wilson
• Myrtle Wilson
• Meyer Wolfsheim
• Owl Eyes and Klipspringer

71
Setting

• Geographical setting in New York City and on
  Long Island, in two areas known as "West Egg" and
  "East Egg" in the early 1920s.
• Social setting The social setting is among
  wealthy, educated people, those with a good deal
  of leisure time and little concern about people
  who are not in their social milieu.

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Symbolism, Imagery Allegory

• Gatsbys "books
• The Owl-Eyed Man

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Plot type Tragedy

• Anticipation Stage
• Dream Stage
• Frustration Stage
• Nightmare Stage
• Destruction or Death Wish Stage

74
Narrative technique

• The story is told through Nick Carraway who
  functions both as a character in the story and
  the narrator of the whole work.
• As a character, he is within, involving himself
  in the actions of the story.

75

• As a narrator, he is standing away from the story
  and able to give an objective presentation to the
  events and characters of the novel.
• Fitzgerald inherits this narrative technique from
  James and Conrad.

76
Class activities

• Class discussion
• 1. What is the social significance of the story?
• 2. What life value is expressed through this
  part of the story?

77
Questions to ponder

• In what way do you see the shadow of Jazz Age
  over the story?
• How do you comment on Gatsbys greatness?
• What does the tragic end of Gatsby imply?
• What have you learned from the writing technique
  of this story?

78
Further reading recommendation

• The Great Gatsby http//ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/f/
  fitzgerald/f_scott/gatsby/
• Tender is the Night http//ebooks.adelaide.edu.au
  /f/fitzgerald/f_scott//tender/

79
Chapter Seven

• William Faulkner (1897 1962)

80

• Born in New Albany, Mississippi.
• The work which won Faulkner a Nobel Prize in 1950
  is often a depiction of life in his fictional
  Yoknapatawpha County, an imaginative
  reconstruction of the area adjacent to Oxford.

81

• His major novels include The Sound and the Fury
  (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctury (1931),
  Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936),
  and The Hamlet (1940).
• His books of short stories include These Thirteen
  (1931), Go Down, Moses (1942), and The Collected
  Stories of William Faulkner (1950).

82
Text study Barn Burning

• Characters and Themes
• Plot Structure and Setting

83
Symbolism

• Fire
• Rug
• Cheese

84
Modernist Themes and Techniques

• Faulkner is a modernist writer as well as a
  Southern writer. Barn Burning therefore
  demonstrates some of the themes and experimental
  techniques typical of American and European
  modernist fiction of the first half of the
  twentieth century.

85

• Experimentation with Consciousness
• Experimentation with Time
• Experimentation with Space
• Writing Style

86
Language study

• - description of motion.
• - description of inner world.
• - complex sentences

87
Class activities

• Discuss your impression on Faulkners writing
  technique.
• Analyze the boys inner world with your partner.

88
Questions to ponder

• What is the living condition of the Snopes?
• In what ways do you see conflicts between father
  and son?
• Whats your comment on Sartys father?
• What does the end of the story imply?

89
Further reading recommendation

• A Rose for Emily
• http//wenku.baidu.com/view/f73a4ddb6f1aff00bed51
  e2d.html

90
Chapter Eight

• Ernest Hemingway (1899 1961)

91

• Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) born in Oak Park,
  Illinois, volunteered for service as an ambulance
  driver with the Italian Army, was seriously
  wounded during WWI. From the publication of his
  first books he was acclaimed as a spokesman for
  the Lost Generationthe young who had been
  disillusioned and cast adrift by the murderous
  blunders of those who had plunged the world into
  war.

92
Literary achievements

• Novels
• The Sun Also Rises (1926)
• A Farewell to Arms (1929)
• To Have and Have Not (1937)
• For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
• The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

93

• Story collections
• In Our Time (1925)
• Men without Women(1927)
• Winner Take Nothing (1933)
• He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954.

94
The Lost Generation

• The term Lost Generation was first used by
  Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), one of the leaders of
  this group.
• It included the young English and American
  expatriates as well as men and women caught in
  the war and cut off from the old values and yet
  unable to come to terms with the new era when
  civilization had gone mad.

95

• It means this generation had lost the beautiful
  sense of the calm idyllic past.
• Steins comment suggests the ambiguous and
  pointless lives of expatriates as they aimlessly
  wandered about the Continent, drinking, making
  love, traveling from place to place and from
  party to party. These activities seem to justify
  their search for new meanings to replace the old
  ones.

96

• Yet in fact, being cut off from their past,
  disillusioned in reality, and without a
  meaningful future to fall on, they were lost in
  disillusionment and existential voids. They
  indulged in hedonism in order to make their life
  less unbearable.

97
Text study A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

98
Themes

• Theme of Dissatisfaction
• Theme of Mortality
• Theme of Drugs and Alcohol
• Theme of Old Age

99
Writing style

• Sparse, Simple, Unornamented classic Hemingway
• His writing is journalistic and no-nonsense
  he reports dialogue cleanly and directly, without
  any froufy adjectives or fancy-pants
  descriptions. This sparse, tight economy of words
  is one of the things that made Hemingway so very,
  very famous in the 1920s, and his distinctive
  style is still much admired to this day.

100
Hemingways Iceberg Theory
101
Class activities

• Role play the whole parts in dialogue.

102
Questions to ponder

• Why is the old man so unhappy?
• Do you think that the world, as conceived of by
  Hemingway, is really made up of two kinds of
  people those who are happy and those who
  aren't?
• What do you think the older waiter means when he
  says "It was all a nothing and a man was a
  nothing too" ?
• Why is it different to drink alone in a café than
  to drink alone at home?
• What does the younger waiter understand about old
  age?

103
Further reading recommendation

• Hills Like White Elephants
• http//www.gummyprint.com/blog/archives/hills-like
  -white-elephants-complete-story/
• The Old Man and the Sea (Source from library or
  elsewhere)

104
Chapter Nine

• 20th-Century American Poets

105

• Ezra Pound
• (1885 1972)

106
Literary Term

• Imagism
• It refers a poetic expression that was embraced
  by some American poets, including some of the
  European ones, in the early 20th century, aiming
  at a full expression of the modern spirit, the
  sense of fragmentation and dislocation.

107

• Imagism came as a reaction to the traditional
  English poetics with its iambic pentameter, its
  verbosity, and extra-poetic padding but it also
  voiced the spirit of the age. The most
  outstanding American spokesman for the Imagist
  Movement is Ezra Pound.

108
Images in Chinese poetry

• ? ?
• ???
• ?????
• ?????
• ?????
• ?????

109
Three Imagist poetic principles

• direct treatment of the thing, whether subjective
  or objective
• to use absolute no word that does not contribute
  to the presentation.
• to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase,
  not in the sequence of a metronome in regarding
  to rhythm.

110
In A Station of the Metro

• The apparition of these faces in the crowd
• Petals on a wet, black bough.

111

• Wallace Stevens
• (1879 1955)

112
Surrealism

• A cultural movement that began in the early
  1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks
  and writings of the group members.
• Surrealist works feature the element of surprise,
  unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur
  however, many Surrealist artists and writers
  regard their work as an expression of the
  philosophical movement first and foremost, with
  the works being an artifact.

113
Analysis of Anecdote of the Jar
114

• William Carlos Williams
• (1883 -1963)

115
The Red Wheelbarrow

• So much depends
• upon
• A red wheel
• barrow
• Glazed with rain
• water
• beside the white
• chickens.

116

• Robert Frost
• (1874 1963)

117
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
118
Plot and Major Characters

• The speaker (presumably a man, although no gender
  is specified), while traveling on horseback (or
  in a horse-drawn sleigh) on the darkest evening
  of the year, stops to watch the woods fill up
  with snow. He thinks the owner of these woods is
  someone who lives in the village and will not see
  the speaker stopping on his property.

119

• While the speaker continues to gaze into the
  snowy woods, his little horse impatiently shakes
  the bells of its harness. The speaker describes
  the beauty and allure of the woods as lovely,
  dark, and deep, but reminds himself that he must
  not remain there, for he has promises to keep,
  and a long journey ahead of him.

120
Major Theme

• The individual caught between nature and
  civilization

121
The Road Not Taken
122
Langston Hughes

• (1902 1967) was an American poet, novelist,
  playwright, short story writer, and columnist. He
  was one of the earliest innovators of the new
  literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is
  best-known for his work during the Harlem
  Renaissance. He famously wrote about the Harlem
  Renaissance saying that "Harlem was in vogue."

123

• Archibald MacLeish (1892 1982)

124
Ars Poetica

• A poem should be palpable and mute
• As a globed fruit,

125

• Dumb
• As old medallions
• to the thumb,

126

• Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
• Of casement ledges where the moss has grown

127

• A poem should be wordless
• As the flight of birds.

128

• A poem should be motionless in time
• As the moon climbs

129

• Leaving, as the moon releases
• Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

130

• Leaving, as the moon behind winter leaves,
• Memory by memory the mind

131

• A poem should be motionless in time
• As the moon climbs.

132

• A poem should be equal to
• Not true.

133

• For all the history of grief
• An Empty doorway and maple leaf.

134

• For love
• The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea

135

• A poem should not mean
• But be.

136
Class activities

• Recite all the poems in this chapter in pairs.
• Class recitation performance.

137
Questions to ponder

• What are the differences between 19th century and
  20th century poems?
• How do you comment on the different writing
  styles in this chapter?
• How should we appreciate the poems in this
  chapter?
• Whose poems do you like best? Why?

138
Chapter Ten

• Eugene ONeill ( 1888 1953)

139

• Born in a Broadway hotel in New York City, a son
  of a famous and popular actor, best know for his
  role as the Count of Monte Cristo.
• He came in close contact with the outcasts of
  society and tasted the bitterness of life.
• In 1920 his first full-length play, Beyond the
  Horizon, was professionally produced on Broadway
  and won the Pulitzer Prize.

140

• His major works include The Iceman Cometh (1946),
  and Long Days Journey into Night (1956).
• Four Pulitzer Prizes (1920, 1922, 1928, 1957) and
  the Nobel Prize in 1936 show his achievement and
  influence at home and abroad.

141
Text study

• Language learning
• Form of drama
• Outline of the story
• Source of the tragedy Oedipus, Phaedra, Medea
• Theme of the play Desire of various kinds.

142
Class activities

• Performance of the play

143
Questions to ponder

• What is the family relationship in Cabots
  family?
• What are the desires expressed through different
  characters?
• What is your comment on Cabots marriage with
  Abbie?
• Whats your comment on the relationship between
  Abbie and Eben?

144
Further reading recommendation

• Long Days Journey into Night (Source from
  libraries or elsewhere)
• The Iceman Cometh (Source from libraries or
  elsewhere)

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Desire Under the Elms

• http//www.douban.com/group/topic/1112340/
• (Online reference by a group of lovers of
  American literature)

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Chapter Eleven

• Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914 1994)

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• Black novelist.
• Born in Oklahoma City and educated at Tuskegee
  Institute.
• Though his publications have been few, his novel
  Invisible Man (1952) is one of the most discussed
  and praised books published in America since
  World War II.

148

• In his other writings, including the essays
  published in Shadow and Act (1964), Ellison
  explored the problem of identity within the
  context of black culture.

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Text study

• Writing style
• Jazzy
• A life-long lover of jazz, Ellison
  conceived of Invisible Man as jazz's literary
  equivalent. By turns sad, playful, shy, loud,
  fast-paced, drawing on different styles and
  traditions of writing, weaving constant refrains
  throughout the book, and creating a whole new
  aesthetic, the novel doesn't just have a style,
  it's got style.

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Narrator point of view

• First Person (Central Narrator)
• The invisible man is our narrator throughout the
  entire novel, sandwiching the bulk of his story
  with a prologue and epilogue from his manhole.

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Setting

• The American South and Harlem, New York in the
  late 1930s.

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Genre

• Literary Fiction, Coming-of-Age, African-American
  Literature
• - Invisible Man is literary fiction because of
  its in-depth exploration of one man's psyche and
  its innovative style.

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Class activities

• Discussion
• -What is the living situation of I in the
  story?
• -Find out the parts that show racial
  discrimination in the text.

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Questions to ponder

• What does boomeranging symbolize?
• Why is the main character in the story invisible?
• What special effect does grandfathers deathbed
  curse have?
• What social significance does the story have?

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Further reading recommendation

• Invisible Man (source from libraries or elsewhere)

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Chapter Twelve

• Joseph Heller (1923 1999)

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• New York author who served in the air force in
  World War II.
• Received an A. B. from New York University, an
  M.A. from Columbia, studied at Oxford, and taught
  briefly before writing Catch-22 (1961).

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Literary term

• Black humor
• Black humor, in literature, drama, and film,
  refers to grotesque or morbid humor used to
  express the absurdity, insensitivity, paradox,
  and cruelty of the modern world. Ordinary
  characters or situations are usually exaggerated
  far beyond the limits of normal satire or irony.
  Black humor uses devices often associated with
  tragedy and is sometimes equated with tragic
  farce.

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Catch-22

• Novel by Joseph Heller, published in 1961.

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(No Transcript)
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Text study

• General review of the text the three incidents
• Yossarians having an operation.
• Yossarians deal with Colonels Cathcart Korn.
• Yossarains attempt to save Snowden.

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Points for discussion

• 1. Is it really necessary for Yossarian to have
  this operation?
• 2. Why does one of the doctors insist that
  Yossarian have an operation?
• 3. How should Yossarian feel from this hospital
  scene?
• 4. What do we readers feel through this part ?

163
Points to ponder

• What is the deal?
• Theyll let me go home a big hero if I say nice
  things about them to everyone and never criticize
  them to anyone for making the rest of the men fly
  more missions.P315.
• Its that or a court-martial. P316.

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• 2.What predicament is Yossarian in?
• Go home but sell his soul to say nice things
  about the colonels.
• Fly more missions to get killed.
• Go into the prison to stay with a bunch of
  criminals.

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• 3. What kind of people are the colonels?
• Liars.
• Regardless of the soldiers lives in order to
  achieve their promotions.
• Opportunists war for them is a chance to make a
  fortune, to get promotion.

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• 4. Is there a humor in this part?
• Yes, but its twisted and disgusting. On
  Yossarians part, we again see that the giant
  standing with its back to the plight of the ants.

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What is Catch-22?

• If the men are really crazy, then they will
  want to fly the missions, regardless of whether
  or not they want to be killed. If they do not
  want to fly the missions, then they are sane and
  must fly them.

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Conclusion

• War is only disaster for small people.
• War is the source to make sb. famous and rich
  through unreasonable ways.
• Catch is a trap for common people that they
  find it hard to get rid of.

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Class activities

• Role play the part that Yossarian is having an
  operation in the hospital.

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Further reading recommendation

• Catch-22
• (Source from libraries or elsewhere)

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Chapter Thirteen

• Toni Morrison
• (1931 - )
• Born in Lorain, Ohio, on February 18, 1931,
  originally called Chloe Anthony Wofford.
• Black female novelist.

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• Major works include The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula
  (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981),
  Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), Paradise (1998).
• Nobel Prize winner in1993.

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Text study

• Definition of Recitatif
• The word recitatif will likely be unfamiliar
  to you. It is derived from the word recitative,
  which has a number of definitions, all of which
  hold possible significance for Toni Morrisons
  story.

174

• The word may refer to a style of expression
  between song and ordinary speech used by
  performers during the narrative or dialogue parts
  of an opera. It also has a now obsolete
  definition the tone or rhythm peculiar to any
  language. Recitative may also refer to anything
  that has the nature of a recital or repetition.  
  

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Themes

• Race and Racism
• The issue of race and racism is central to the
  story. Twyla's first response to rooming with
  Roberta at St. Bonny's is to feel sick to her
  stomach. "It was one thing to be taken out of
  your own bed early in the morningit was
  something else to be stuck in a strange place
  with a girl from a whole other race."

176

• Throughout the story Twyla and Roberta's
  friendship is inhibited by this sense of an
  uncrossable racial divide, played out against the
  background of national racial tensions such as
  the busing crisis. Racial conflicts provide the
  main turning points in the story's plot.

177
Class activities

• Group discussion Find evidence to prove which is
  black and which is white between Twyla and
  Roberta.

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Questions to ponder

• What role does Maggie play in the whole story?
• What are the themes in this story?
• What have you learned from the story?

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Further reading recommendation

• The Bluest eye
• (Source from libraries or elsewhere)
• Beloved
• (Source from Libraries or elsewhere)

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Thank you!

• Xue Ling