美國文學課件Chapter Nine Realism and Mark Twain

1、realismthe literature of realism(1865-1918)i. historical introduction: the civil war brought about 2 results: 1. further industrialization, mechanization, urbanization, development of transportation and communication. 2. westward movement, homestead act, by 1890, the last of the first 48 states were

2、 settled.realism a mode of writing that gives the impression of recording or reflecting faithfully an actual way of life. the term refers, both to a literary method based on detailed accuracy of description and to a more general attitude that rejects idealization, escapism, and other extravagant qua

3、lities of romance in favor of recognizing soberly the actual problems of life. realism is not a direct or simple reproduction of reality but a system of conventions producing a lifelike illusion of some real world outside the text, by processes of selection, exclusion, description or manners of addr

4、essing the reader.american naturalism: pessimistic realism1. naturalism came from france.2. reasons: civil war, social upheavals, darwinism, hypothesized that over the millennia, man had evolved from lower forms of life. human were special, not because god had created them in his image, as the bible

5、 taught, but because they had successfully adapted to changing environmental conditions and had passed on their survival-making characteristic genetically. men were dominated by the irresistible forces of evolution. men were conceived as more or less complex combination of inherited attributes and h

6、abits conditioned by social and economic forces, by heredity and environment.american naturalism3. features of naturalist writing: a. naturalist writers turned literary creation into a mechanical record of society, in a way of attempting to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness. they never made

7、comments on the characters and their behaviors.b. the characters were often figures of low social and economic classes, with animal desire, some physically strong but weak-willed figures. there were also some healthy and lofty persons, but their ending were miserable.c. the viewpoint from which the

8、writers understood problems was amoral, or non-moral. they stressed men had no free will, their lives were controlled by heredity and environment. d. their material was infinite.american naturalism4. american naturalist writers: stephen crane, frank norris, jack london, henry adams, theodore dreiser

9、.mark twain (1835-1910)realistic novelist, humorist, first american writer who used the american vernacular language.life story: he has been printer, steamboat pilot, volunteer soldiers, silver miner, reporter, writer, lecturer.main worksthe celebrated jumping frog of calaveras county 1865 the innoc

10、ents abroad 1869, roughing it 1872, the adventures of tom sawyer 1876, a tramp abroad 1880,. the prince and pauper 1881, life on the mississippi 1881, .the gilded age the adventures of huckleberry finn 1885, a connecticut yankee in king arthurs court 1889, pudds head wilson 1894,. personal recollect

11、ions of joan of arc 1896, following the equator, 1897 the man that corrupted hadleyburg 1900 what is man 1906 the mysterious stranger 1916stylebroad, often irreverent humor or biting social satire, realism of place and language, memorable characters, hatred of hypocrisy and oppression.simple and pla

12、in diction, precise, direct.stylehis earlier works are light, humorous, optimistic.his later works become darker and more obscure, showing his discontent and disappointment toward the social reality. his last works shows his acute pessimism, despair, skepticism determinism.artistic featuresfirst, he

13、 possessed utter clarity of style. he evolved a style so clear and economical that other contemporary styles seemed slightly archaic, rusty, and redundant. second, he had a supreme command of vernacular american english. before him there had been only american dialect; after him there was an america

14、n language. american dialect had been used very well by some other writers, but in their hands it was surrounded and conditioned by a “l(fā)iterary” language that wittingly or unwittingly patronized it. mark twain removed the surrounding frame. third, there was mark twains humor, which resists explanati

15、on. in twains time, humor, though it was seen as greatly valuable, remained clearly subordinate in the value system of the 19th century. the function of humor was to entertain, but it was not expected to participate in the high seriousness that matthew arnold and his age asked of literature. but twa

16、in liberated humor, raising it to high arta liberation that parallels his creation of vernacular american english. instead of subduing his humor to seriousness, twain invaded the citadels of seriousness and freed the humor held captive there.the adventures of tom sawyera story of his seeking for fre

17、edom, fame, fortune, love, manhood. the novel reveals the american values: one is hero complex, the other is american dream. his adventures is the realization of american dream. on the other hand, the book record the rising age of american bourgeois system. it also bears the irony and satire toward

18、the religion and by-then popular rigid, didactic children education, which curbed the imagination of children and their innate nature for freedom and adventures and molded them into a stereotype of lifeless man.significance he portrayed uniquely american subjects in a humorous and colloquial, yet poetic, language. his success in creating this plain but evocative language precipitat