英语国家社会与文化入门下册课件BII-U7.pptx

1、英语国家社会与文化入门英语国家社会与文化入门(下册）下册）The Society and Culture of Major English-Speaking Countries An Introduction(Book Two)The United States of AmericaUnit 7 American Literature Quiz Give the English and a brief explanation for the following:1 超验主义者 2 惠特曼 3 马克吐温 4 荒原 5“迷惘的一代”Focal Points Washington Irving Ja

2、mes Fenimore Cooper Transcendentalism Henry David Thoreau Nathaniel Hawthorne Herman Melville Walt Whitman Mark TwainnaturalistsSherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis T.S.Eliotthe Lost GenerationWilliam FaulknerEugene ONeillAfrican-American writersThis Unit Is Divided into Five SectionsI.Early Fiction

3、II.Major Writers of the 19th CenturyIII.Major Writers at the Turn of the CenturyIV.Major Writers of the 20th CenturyV.New American VoicesI.Early Fiction Washington Irving(1783-1859):His History of New York is supposedly an account of the Dutch settlement of Manhattan Island.With this work Irving fur

4、nished America with its first myth-hero,Father Knickerbocker.In“Rip Van Winkle”and“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”,Irving focused on Americas natural landscape and contributed even more memorable characters to his legendary recreation of the American past.He was among the first American writers to earn

5、 acclaim in Europe,and was also admired by some European writers,including Walter Scott,Lord Byron,and Charles Dickens.Irving encouraged American authors that followed him.Washington Irving（1783-1859）The story“Rip Van Winkle”is set before and after the American Revolution.The protagonist falls aslee

6、p in the mountain and wakes up to discover shocking changes:the American has taken place.I.Early Fiction James Fenimore Cooper(1789-1851):Coopers The Pioneers was the first of the five great romances known as the Leather-Stocking Tales.The author introduced in The Pioneers the fabulous woodsman,Natt

7、y Bumppo.He was the forerunner of all heroic forest scouts,bear hunters,and cowboys of later American novels and films.The Last of the Mohicans,The Prairie,The Pathfinder,and The Deerslayer pursued Nattys career both forward and backward in time,from the first flush of manhood to his death as an old

8、 man on the western plains.He also imagined a bi-cultural and bi-racial friendship between Natty Bumppo and a Native American warrior,thereby projecting the fulfillment of the democratic dream which persists in American literature.James Fenimore Cooper(1789-1851)Natty Bumppo,although the child of wh

9、ite parents,grew up among Delaware Indians and was educated by Moravian Christians,becoming a fearless warrior.II.Major Writers of the 19th Century Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau Nathaniel Hawthorne Herman Melville Walt Whitman Mark Twain Emily DickensonII.Major Writers of the 19th CenturyR

10、alph Waldo Emerson(1803-1882):In 1836 Emerson published his book Nature.In this work,Emerson claimed that by studying and responding to nature individuals could reach a higher spiritual state without formal religion.He was the representative of a circle of intellectuals who gathered around him,as“th

11、e Transcendentalists,based on their acceptance of Emersons theories about spiritual transcendence.Emersons other major work includes“The American Scholar”and“Self-Reliance”.Emerson wrote on a number of subjects,developing certain ideas such as individuality,freedom,the ability for humankind to reali

12、ze almost anything,and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world.Ralph Waldo EmersonBoth during his lifetime and since his death,Emersons reputation and influence have been enormous.He was acknowledged as a major thinker and author and as the central proponent of Transcendental phi

13、losophy.His efforts straddled a number of disciplines such as literature,philosophy,theology,psychology,education,and social commentary.He made important contributions to American thought and letters.II.Major Writers of the 19th CenturyHenry David Thoreau(1817-1862)was one of Emersons most gifted fe

14、llow-thinkers.Thoreau was passionate not only about individuals learning to think for themselves and being independent,both traditional American values,but also about the necessity for humans to live simply and to know and care for the place where they lived.In 1849 he published an essay titled“Civi

15、l Disobedience”.In it,Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences,and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice.His commitment to passive resistance continues to i

16、nfluence social activists today.Henry David Thoreau Thoreau carried out his ideals by building a small cabin by a wooded pond,where he lived alone with only the company of natural creatures.His best-known book,Walden(1854),records his daily observations of the changing seasons and his convictions th

17、at living in close relation to nature is personally liberating and ethically rejuvenating.His commitment to living sustainably and to learning from nature continues to this day to influence environmental writers and environmental activists world-wide.Thoreaus House on Walden PondII.Major Writers of

18、the 19th CenturyNathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864)published a volume called Twice-Told Tales,stories rich in symbolism and peculiar incidents.His rebelled against the traditional New England outlook on life by writing imaginative“romances,”stories and novels which were not necessarily realistic but whic

19、h were designed to explore certain moral themes such as guilt,pride and emotional repression.Nathaniel Hawthorne Hawthorne wrote novels and many short stories.His masterpiece is The Scarlet Letter,a novel published in 1850.Set in the Puritan past,it is the stark drama of a woman harshly cast out fro

20、m her community for committing the sin of adultery.II.Major Writers of the 19th Century Herman Melville(1819-1891),worked at many jobs before signing on in 1839 for the first of several sea voyages.Seven years later,he began writing accounts of his adventures on the open seas and in exotic ports,whi

21、ch won him instant success.Inspired by Hawthornes example,he wrote novels which scrutinized capitalism,colonialism,psychology,racism,philosophy,politics and religion.The public rejected them,however,and,discouraged,Melville published several short stories on difficult subjects such as homelessness a

22、nd mutiny as well as several collections of poetry.Ironically,the very books that proved unacceptable during his lifetime are the ones most admired today.Melvilles masterpiece Moby Dick or The White Whale,published in 1851,uses a story of a whaling voyage to explore numerous profound themes question

23、ing democracy and morality with which contemporary readers continue to grapple.Many consider it to be Americas greatest novel.II.Major Writers of the 19th CenturyWalt Whitman(1818-1892)was a great poet who asserted a truly American voice,one that celebrated the American landscape,the American people

24、,their speech and democratic form of government.In 1855,he published a ground-breaking book called Leaves of Grass.His poetry was characterized by a free-flowing structure with its long irregular lines.Whitman ventured beyond traditional forms to meet his need for more space to express the American

25、spirit.One of the poems is“The Song of Myself”in which Whitman dwelt on himself because he saw himself as a prototype of“The American.”It won Whitman admirers across America and in Europe.Throughout the rest of his life,he kept rewriting and republishing editions of Leaves of Grass.He celebrated a s

26、weeping panorama of the American landscape and sang almost mystically of the rhythms of life uniting all citizens of the democracy.Walt WhitmanII.Major Writers of the 19th CenturyMark Twain(1835-1910)grew up in a small town on the banks of the Mississippi River and received only a basic public schoo

27、l education.Twain was a new voice,a man of the people.He captured a peculiarly American sense of humor,telling outrageous jokes and tall tales in a calm,innocent,matter-of-fact manner.He sometimes used local dialect for comic effect,but even his normal prose style sounded distinctively American.Twai

28、n had a cynical streak that matched the country skeptical post-Civil War mood.He soon developed beyond merely regional stories and turned to comic novels.His shrewd social satire was most apparent in books such as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court.Mark Twain Twains greatest book is The Adve

29、ntures of Huckleberry Finn(1884).This is the story of a boy running away from home and steering a raft down the Mississippi River,but it is more than that.The people the boy meets cover the entire spectrum of humanity,and his voyage down the river becomes a metaphor for a journey through life.At the

30、 heart of Hucks journey is his friendship with a runaway slave,Jim,who teaches him to be morally responsible.Emily Dickinson(1830-1886)Emily Dickinson,deeply admired by later generations,was barely known while she lived.Her poetry mixed gaiety and gloom.She rarely left the grounds of the Dickinson h

31、ousehold in Amherst,Massachusetts,but she displayed great power of imagination.She made poetic drama out of things close at hand as she was fascinated by life.Almost all of her poems are short,but they are charged with a surprising emotional force.III.Major Writers at the Turn of the Century“Natural

32、ists”concentrated upon the grimmer aspects of reality and a deterministic view of life,linking them to European naturalists such as French novelist Emile Zola.William Dean Howells led the American realistic movement.Theodore Dreisers Sister Carrie in 1900 was considered shocking because it described

33、 young urban women who fell into sexual sin.Upton Sinclairs The Jungle(1906)exposed the horrible lives of meat-packing factory workers.Jack London Call of the Wild(1903),the tale of a sled dog,was set in the snowy wilderness of the Northwest,where the discovery of gold had caused a rush of greedy pr

34、ospectors.In this novel and other celebrated tales set in Alaska and in the South Pacific,London,relying on Social Darwinism,expressed his sense that primitive urges underlie all of life.Henry James(1843-1016)Henry James is regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism.He wrote

35、 three brilliant novels,The Wings of the Dove,The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl,in which he explored the fate of the individual.These were chiefly wealthy,cultured Americans living in Europe,but,like the lower-class characters of the naturalists novels,James people were trapped in their environmen

36、t,struggling to find happiness.James interest was psychological rather than social.Edith Wharton(1862-1937)Edith Wharton,from a wealthy family,wrote insightful novels and stories about high society.Her novel The House of Mirth tells the tragic story of a fading beauty falling victim to the hypocriti

37、cal high society of New York.Her The Age of Innocence is another successful novel,in which she exposed her upper-class world as only an insider could.The film of The Age of Innocence based on Whartons novel.III.Major Writers at the Turn of the Century Two other women,in different parts of the countr

38、y,were also writing psychological studies.Kate Chopins（1851-1904）The Awakening is set in the heart of the South,in New Orleans,and she is now considered by some to have been a forerunner of the feminist authors of the 20th century.Willa Cathers（1873-1947）O Pioneers!depicts life on the sweeping plain

39、s of Midwestern Nebraska.Cather went on to write several novels such as My Antonia,the Song of the Lark and One of Ours,for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.She establish herself as a major American writer,but Chopin stopped writing after her book was condemned by literary critics.IV.Major W

40、riters of the 20th Century Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis T.S.Eliot the Lost Generation William Faulkner Eugene ONeill African-American writers IV.Major Writers of the 20th CenturyAs the United States became increasingly urban in the first decades of the 20th century,two major works of literat

41、ure expressed a new attitude of rebellion against the limited life of the typical small American town.Sherwood Anderson(1876-1941)published a book of short stories called Winesburg,Ohio in 1919,a series of portraits of different personalities in one mid-western town,depicting narrow-minded ignorance

42、 and frustrated dreams.Sinclair Lewis(1885-1951),published Main Street in 1920.In this book and others such as Babbitt and Arrowsmith,Lewis satirized the traditional“American dream”of success.He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930,the first American to be so honored.T.S.Eliot(1888 196

43、5)Eliot was an essayist,publisher,playwright,literary and social critic.He was born in America,but emigrated to England in 1914 and became a British subject in 1927.Eliots poem“The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock”(1915)is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement.It was followed by his best and

44、 long poem The Waste Land(1922),widely regarded as“one of the most important poems of the 20th century”and a central text in Modernist poetry.Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.F.Scott Fitzgerald（1896-1940）After WWI many novelists produced a literature of disillusionment,and the

45、y were known as“the Lost Generation.”F.Scott Fitzgeralds(1896-1940)novels captured the restless,pleasure-hungry,defiant mood of the 1920s.Fitzgeralds great theme,expressed in The Great Gatsby,is of youths golden dreams turning to disappointment.Gatsby in the film played by Leonardo DiCaprioErnest He

46、mingway(1899-1961)War had also affected Hemingway.Having seen violence and death close at hand,Hemingway adopted a moral code exalting simple survival and the basic values of strength,courage and honesty.His main characters were usually tough,silent men,good at sports or war but awkward in their dea

47、lings with women.Among his best books are The Sun Also Rises,A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls.He,too,eventually won the Nobel Prize.William Faulkner(1897-1962)William Faulkner wrote 19 novels and nearly a hundred short stories.Though the setting of his fiction is often in the American

48、South,he deals with major universal themes in literature.In terms of writing techniques,Faulkner is among the greatest experimentalists of the 20th century fiction.His major novels include The Sound and the Fury,As I Lay Dying,Light in August,and Absalom,Absalom!.In 1950 Faulkner won the Nobel Prize

49、 for Literature.Eugene ONeill(1888-1953)ONeill was a playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature.His depict characters on the fringes of society,where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations,but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair.His greatest theme was the individuals se

50、arch for identity.Among his major plays were Desire under the Elms and Long Days Journey into Night.Long Days Journey into Night on stageIV.Major Writers of the 20th Century African-American Writers:-The 1920s saw the rise of an artistic black community centered in New York City in Harlem.New poets