1、The Sad Young Men Rod W.Horton and Herbert W.Edwards About the Author:Horton and Edwards are joint authors of the book,Background of American Literary Thought(1967),from which this piece is taken.vRod W.Horton(1910-?)Born in White Plains N.Y.Instructor,New York University,(1937-45)Assistant professo
2、r(1945-49)Associate professor(1949-57)Cultural affairs officer(1957-64)Professor,Colorado University(1964-)Visiting professor,University of Brazil,Coimbra(1961-64).The BackgroundIn 1914,World War I broke out in Europe.In 1917,the United States entered the war against Germany,which was defeated in 19
3、18.After the war,the United Statess economy boomed,but prosperity did not last.A stock market crash in 1929 led to the Great Depression,a deep economic slump in the 1930sAmerican Culture in the 1920s The decade of the 1920s is often characterized as a period of American prosperity and optimism.It wa
4、s the Roaring Twenties,the decade of bath tub,gin（杜松子酒）,the model T,the$5 work day,the first transatlantic flight,and the movie.It is often seen as a period of great advance as the nation became urban and commercial.The decade is also seen as a period of rising intolerance（偏执）and isolation:chastened
5、（抑制）by the first world war,historians often point out that Americans retreated into a provincialism（偏狭观念）evidenced by the rise of the Ku Klux Klan(is a secret organization of white Protestant men in the U S,which promotes violence against black people,Jews,and other minorities),the anti radical hyst
6、eria of the Palmer raids,restrictive immigration laws,and prohibition(禁酒）.Overall,the decade is often seen as a period of great contradiction:of rising optimism and deadening cynicism（愤世嫉俗）,of increasing and decreasing faith,of great hope and great despair.Put differently,historians usually see the
7、1920s as a decade of serious cultural conflict.Some termsvThe Sad Young MenvThe Lost GenerationvThe Beat GenerationvThe Angry Young MenThe Sad Young Men and The Lost Generation Both refer to the same group of people.The first name was created by F.Scott Fitzgerald in his book All the Sad Young Men.A
8、nd the second by Gertrude Stein,The remark of Gertrude Stein you are all a lost generation,addressed to Hemingway,was used as a preface to the latters novel The Sun Also Rises which brilliantly describes an expatriate group typical of the lost generation.They wre applied to the disillusioned（幻想破灭的）i
9、ntellectuals and aesthetes of the years following the First World War,who rebelled against former ideals and values,but could replace them only by despair or cynical hedonism(享乐主义享乐主义)Significant members including Ernest Hemingway,F.Scott Fitzgerald,Ezra Pound,Sherwood Anderson,Waldo Peirce,John Dos
10、 Passos,and T.S.Eliot.The Beat Generation After World War II appeared the Beat Generation in the United States.This term was applied to certain American artists and writers who were popular during the 1950s.Essentially anarchic（无政府的）,members of the beat generation rejected traditional social and art
11、istic forms.They sought immediate expression in multiple intense experiences and beatific（极乐的）illumination like that of some Eastern religions.In literature they adopted rhythms of simple American speech and of so-called progressive jazz.Among those associated with the movement were the novelists Ja
12、ck Kerouac and Chandler Brossard,numerous poets(e.g.Kenneth Rexroth,Allen Ginsberg,Lawrence Ferlinghetti,and Gregory Corso),and others,many of whom had worked in and around San Francisco.During the 1960s beat ideas and attitudes were absorbed by other cultural movements,and those who practiced the b
13、eat life style were called hippies.Long hairColorful clothesMusicDrugSexHippieThe Angry Young Men At this time there appeared in England a group called the angry young men.This term was applied to a group of English writers of the 1950s whose heroes shared certain rebellious and critical attitudes t
14、owards society.This phrase,which was originally taken from the title of Leslie Allen Pauls autobiography,Angry Young Man(1951),became current with the production of John Osbornes play Look Back in Anger(1956).The group not only expressed discontent with the staid（不动的）,hypocritical institutions of En
15、glish society-the so-called Establishment-but betrayed disillusionment with itself and with its own achievements,included among the angry young men were the playwrights John Osborne and Arnold Wesker and the novelists Kingsley Amis,John Braine,John Wain,and Alan Sillitoe.In the 1960s these writers t
16、urned to more individualized themes and were no longer considered a group.The main idea of the lesson The two American writers explain a certain period in American literary and social history.It focuses especially on the attitudes and revolt of the young people who returned from World War 1,disappoi
17、nted and disillusioned.In this revolt the young intellectuals,writers and artists,stood in the van and was the most vocal group.Many of these intellectuals lived abroad,especially in Paris,as expatriates,but most of them later returned to the United States voluntarily.These intellectuals were called
18、 Sad Young Men,or The lost Generation,because they were critical and rebellious.However,they were never lost because they were also very creative and productive and as this essay says:gave the nation the liveliest,freshest,most stimulating writing in its literary experience.18 以上有不当之处，请大家给与批评指正，谢以上有不当之处，请大家给与批评指正，谢谢大家！谢大家！
