1、 Post-war NovelsRevisionWhat is drama?Who is called the founder of American Drama?Name some of the representatives of American Drama and tell us their major works.Major feature Diversity“The child born in 1900 would be born into a new world which would not be a unity but a multiple”-Henry AdamsDiver
2、sified 20th century American novel(postwar novels)Jewish FictionSouthern FictionRealistic FictionBlack FictionJewish Fiction犹太小说犹太小说vSaul Bellow(1915-2005)v Bernard Malamud(1914-1986)v Flannery OConnor(1925-1964)Southern FictionRealistic Fictionv Norman Mailer(1923-)v John Updike(1932-)v J.D.Salinge
3、r(1919-)Black Fictionv Richard Wright(1908-1960)v Ralph Ellison(1914-1994)v Toni Morrison(1931-)v Alice Walker(1944-)v Langston Hughes(1902-1967)Jewish Writers “to portray the dilemmas of misfit heroes yearning for meaningful lives and moral regeneration”Saul Bellow(1915-2005)Bernard Malamud(1914-19
4、86)Saul Bellow(1915-2005)索尔索尔贝娄贝娄Winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literaturethe voice of the modern intellectualSaul Bellow(1915-2005)Works:Dangling Man,1944.摇来晃去的人摇来晃去的人 The Victim,1947.The Adventures of Augie March,1953.(won the National Book Award)奥吉奥吉玛琪历险记玛琪历险记 Seize The Day(1956),只争朝夕只争朝夕 Hend
5、erson The Rain King(1959),Herzog(1964),赫索格赫索格Mr.Sammlers Planet(1970).Humboldts Gift(1975),洪堡的礼物洪堡的礼物was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.Both Herzog and Mr.Sammlers Planet were awarded the National Book Award for fiction.Saul Bellow(1915-2005)Themes:Saul Bellows basic themes are essentially three-fold:（p
6、430）Characters are Jews,especially Jewish intellectuals or writers who,facing violence and victimization,try to discover“the queerness of existence”and overcome it.HERZOG(1964)a man seeking balance,trying to regain a foothold on his life.Themes:1.Alienation2.QuestSaul Bellow(1915-2005)Protagonist:He
7、rzog undergoes a significant change in his personality and his way of perception.We see a gradual but clear movement from restlessness to tranquility,from cold and icy feelings to warm recollections of the past and joyful contact with child and nature,and from a negative outlook to an attitude of af
8、firmation.A.The lengthy letters that he wrote all indicate his desire for improvement of the human condition.Saul Bellow(1915-2005)B.However,he could not hope to save anybody before he saves himself.He has to touch ground and place himself under close scrutiny.C.Then to be positive,seeing positive t
9、hings in people,and beginning to forgive and love even his foes,It is interesting to note that Herzogs change is,in a sense,archetypal of the change in the temper of the times.Saul Bellow(1915-2005)The style:Herzog reflects both modernism and postmodernism characteristics aspects well.It is basicall
10、y a stream of consciousness work,especially in the first two thirds of the book.Saul Bellow(1915-2005)The difference between modernism andpostmodernism:p435The 1950s and 1960s witnessed a transformation on the literary scene from Modernism to Postmodernism.This manifested itself in both thematic and
11、 formal terms.Saul Bellow(1915-2005)a.Thematically,there is,between the two phases of literary creation,a difference in attitude toward life.The modernists tend to impose shape and significance on life with which they feel at odds,while the postmodernists accept life for what it is,chaotic and conti
12、ngent as it is,and try to make sense of it for survival.b.In formal aspect,modernist writings tend to be ponderously retrospective,often full of interior monologues,and stream of consciousness.Postmodernist writings,however,while feeling free to borrow technically from modernist works,feel equally f
13、ree to borrow from every other mode of writing that serves their purpose.Bernard Malamud(1914-1986)伯纳德伯纳德马拉默徳马拉默徳The effects of suffering are central to Malamuds fiction.His Jews symbolize all victims.Bernard Malamud(1914-1986)Comment:American novelist and short-story writer who made parables out of
14、 Jewish immigrant life;He has been regarded as one of the major writers of the Jewish group in the postwar period.Bernard Malamud(1914-1986)His works,except his first book,The Natural,are all about Jews and their lives:The Assistant,A New Life,The Fixer,The Tenants.As a major 20th-Century writer,Mal
15、amud helped introduce marginal ethnic culture to mainstream America.Bernard Malamud(1914-1986)Malamud was basically an autobiographical writer.He converted the facts of his Jewish life and immigrant background into imaginary fiction.To Malamud,a Jew is a good person.One does not have to be one of th
16、e Jewish race and faith to be a Jew.Everyone is a Jew in the sense that the Jewish condition is universal to all mankind.The Assistant(1957)店员店员mans struggle to survive against all odds,and the ethical underpinnings of recent Jewish immigrants.Morris BoberIda Bober Helen Bober Frankie Alpine Themati
17、c Issues1.Suffering and Endurance 2.Father and Son RelationshipsSouthern WriterFlannery OConnor(1925-1964)弗兰纳里弗兰纳里奥康纳奥康纳 She Told Stories About People Living in Small Towns in the American South.Flannery OConnor(1925-1964)Late in her life someone asked the American writer Flannery OConnor why she wr
18、ote.She said,Because I am good at it.Andalusia,Home of Flannery OConnorWorks:Wise Blood 1952 智血智血A Good Man Is Hard to Find 1955 好人好人难寻难寻The Violent Bear It Away 1960 暴力得暴力得逞逞Everything That Rises Must Converge 1965水到渠成水到渠成In“Wise Blood”a young man,Hazel Motes,leaves the Army but finds his home town
19、 empty.He flees to a city,looking for“a place to be”.On the train,he announces that he does not believe in Jesus Christ.He says,I wouldnt even if he existed.Even if he was on this train.His moving to the city is an attempt to move away from the natural world and become a thing,a machine.He decides t
20、hat all he can know is what he can touch and see.In the end,however,he destroys his physical sight so that he may truly see,because he says that when he had eyes he was blind.Critics say his action seems to show that he is no longer willing to deny the existence of Jesus but now is willing to follow
21、 him into the dark.A Good Man is Hard To Find(short story collection)-1955 OConnor once referred to the collection as nine stories about original sin.Combining a deft comic sensibility with the grotesque and tragic,they are stories in which characters lead lives of brutal poverty and fierce cruelty;
22、where ordinary events can tip over into misfortune,violence and despair.Norman Mailer 诺曼诺曼梅勒梅勒(b.1923-2007)A multi-faceted talent:a novelist,a philosopher-metaphysician,a poet,a playwright,a filmmaker,a journalist,a politician,and a performer.Norman Mailer(1923-)Works(p438)first book,The Naked and t
23、he Dead,his best work.-a spectacular success in 1948.The critical world was thrilled at the prospect that a new major writer was emerging on the horizon.The Naked and the Dead(1948)裸者与死者裸者与死者 The story of a U.S.Army platoon during the invasion of a Japanese-held island in the Pacific during World Wa
24、r II one of the finest novels written in America since World War IIAbout the Title:The Naked and the Dead “Those who had fought such a war were either stripped naked,having lost all hope,or dead,having lost even life itself.”丧失了人性良知的丧失了人性良知的“裸者裸者”和被死和被死亡阴影笼罩的亡阴影笼罩的“死者死者”However,mailers conclusion wa
25、s not one of absolute hopelessness.Mailer said in a 1948 interview:The book finds man corrupted,confused to the point of helplessness,but it also finds that there are limits beyond which he cannot be pushed,and it finds that even in his corruption and sickness there are yearnings for a better world.
26、Norman Mailer(1923-)2)The White Negro,a sociological and semi-autobiographical essay,one of his best pieces,in the authors own opinion.3)Advertisements for Myself,a collection of the best of Mailers essays,stories,interviews and journalism from the 40s and 50s.4)Why Are We in Vietnam,a soul-searchin
27、g novel on the place of violence in the Vietnam Years.J.D.Salinger(1919-)J.D.塞林格塞林格 He is a unique writer for a couple of reasons.He wrote one novel and became famous for it.Then for the last few decades now ever since 1953,he has been a recluse in his New Hampshire home,refusing interviews or any o
28、ther forms of contact with the press and the world outside.塞林格在欧洲期间曾经与一个塞林格在欧洲期间曾经与一个女医生结婚女医生结婚，但不久便离异。但不久便离异。1953年他与一个叫年他与一个叫克莱克莱尔尔道格拉斯（道格拉斯（Claire Douglas）的女学生的女学生相识，两人后来在相识，两人后来在1955年结婚，但是后年结婚，但是后来又离婚。来又离婚。1972年塞格林在一本杂志上年塞格林在一本杂志上看到一个名叫看到一个名叫乔伊斯乔伊斯梅纳德（梅纳德（Joyce Maynard）的耶鲁大学女学生的文章和的耶鲁大学女学生的文章和照片，
29、立即被她吸引，两人开始通信。照片，立即被她吸引，两人开始通信。两人的关系在十个月后破裂。如今，塞两人的关系在十个月后破裂。如今，塞林格娶了三任妻子林格娶了三任妻子科琳科琳。科琳是一名护。科琳是一名护士，比他小士，比他小50岁左右。岁左右。The novel centered on a sensitive 16-year-old,Holden Caulfield,who flees his elite boarding school for the outside world of adulthood,only to become disillusioned by its materialism
30、 and phoniness.The Catcher in the Rye(1951)麦田里的麦田里的守望者守望者J.D Salinger(1919-)One novel,The Catcher in the Rye,(p442)has been definitely a very influential book to come out of the postwar period.It has been popular with the postwar young generation who have found in Holden an approximation of their ow
31、n experience.Holden represents a social type of adolescents thrown upon themselves in a corrupt and decadent world.It is a critical look at the problems facing American youth during the 1950s.J.D Salinger(1919-)It relates the painful story of a high-school boy growing up in the world of decadent New
32、 York.The novel depicts in eloquent language an adolescents disgust and despair at the fallen state of the adult world around him.It is a world of jerks and perverts,a salient feature of which is its decadence.John Updike(1932-)约翰约翰厄普代克厄普代克 a writer of manners with his suburban settings,domestic the
33、mes,reflections of ennui and wistfulness,and,particularly,his fictional locales on the eastern seaboard,in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.Updike is best known for his four Rabbit books,depictions of the life of a man-Harry Rabbit Angstrom through the ebbs and flows of his existence across four decad
34、es of American social and political history.Rabbit,Run(1960)is a mirror of the 1950s,with Angstrom an aimless,disaffected young husband.Rabbit Redux(1971)-spotlighting the counterculture of the 1960s-finds Angstrom still without a clear goal or purpose or viable escape route from mundaneness.In Rabb
35、it Is Rich(1981),Harry has become prosperous through an inheritance against the landscape of the wealthy self-centeredness of the 1970s,as the Vietnam era wanes.The final volume,Rabbit at Rest(1990),glimpses Angstroms reconciliation with life,and inadvertent death,against the backdrop of the 1980s.L
36、icks of Love Rabbit is back alive,resurrected in the memories of his family.John Updike(1932-)This“rabbit”is the nickname for the main character,Harry angstrom,a person of no importance in American middle society.The series of novels relates the saga of this man,a blue collar,whose peak in life was
37、a high school basketball star.The nickname indicates major character traits of the man_ his uncontrollable sexual desire and his place as a petty person in society.Like a rabbit,he is always looking for something and is always running away from something.The rabbit has thus become a legend in the po
38、stwar period.Black WritersBlack WritersRichard Wright(1908-1960)Ralph Ellison (1914-1994)Toni Morrison(1931-)Alice Walker(1944-)Richard Wright(1908-1960)Native Son(1940)protest novelThemes:racial prejudice,poverty,criminalityMajor character:Bigger ThomasTripartite structure:“Fear,”“Flight,”and“Fate”
39、Ralph Ellison (1914-1994)He may turn out to be the most alive fictional talent of his generation,and perhaps,with Faulkner and Melville and Twain,of American writing of all time.-Jack LudwigInvisible Man(1952)A great classic in American literatureA book on racial discrimination,black-white relations
40、hip,and the rebellious stance toward an unjust and repressive societyAn archetypal existential story of modern timesAn odyssey of modern mans quest for self-realization I am an invisible man.No,I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe;nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms.I
41、am a man of substance,of flesh and bone,fiber and liquids-and I might even be said to possess a mind.I am invisible,simply becausepeople refuse to see me.Toni Morrison(1931-)Winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature Im interested in survival-who survives and who does not,and why-and I would like
42、to chart a course that suggests where the dangers are and where the safety might be.-Toni MorrisonThe Themes in her Novels:The terror and trauma of racial oppressionThe complex behavior of living under gender and racial conflictsThe psychology of survivalThe Bluest Eye(1970)Alice Walker(1944-)A femi
43、nist black writer The black woman struggling towards self-realization in a hostile environment is a theme in much of her work.The Color Purple(1982)The American Book AwardThe Pulitzer PrizeAn epistolary NovelA great book both in thematic and formal termsThematically:1.African American womens growth against the backdrop of social and familial oppression2.Black mens change and growth as wellIn formal terms:1.The narrative scheme and the suspense2.The language3.The symbolism:the color purple
