7(美)现实主义时期

（美）现实主义时期

Chapter 2 The Realistic Period

Ⅰ.本章学习目的和要求

通过本章的学习，了解美国19世纪中期现实主义文学产生的历史、文化背景，认识该时期文学创作的基本特征、基本主张，及其对同时代和后期美国文学的影响；了解该时期的主要作家的文学创作生涯、人生观及价值观及其代表作品的主题思想、人物刻画、语言风格；同时结合注释，读懂所选作品并了解其思想内容和艺术特色，培养理解和欣赏文学作品的能力。

Ⅱ.本章重点和难点

1.美国现实主义文学的特点

2.现实主义与自然主义的异同，这两种倾向在美国19世纪小说中的反映

3.主要作家的创作思想、艺术特色、及其代表作品的主题结构、人物刻画、语 言风格、艺术手法、社会意义等

4.分析选读作品的思想内容及艺术特色、人物刻画

Ⅲ.考核知识点和考核要求

（一）．现实主义时期概述

1．识记：美国现实主义文学产生的社会和文化背景

（a）美国南北战争

（b）威廉·迪安·豪威尔斯：美国现实主义的先驱

（c）达尔文主义和法国小说家佐拉的影响

2．领会：A.美国现实主义文学的特点

（a）占主导地位的美国现实主义小说

（b）现实主义文学中的地方色彩小说

（c）现实主义文学中的自然主义倾向

B.现实主义文学和自然主义倾向之异同

C．达尔文主义、法国自然主义作家的主张以及对现实主义时期美国文学的影响

3．应用：A. 名词解释：现实主义、达尔文主义、自然主义、地方色彩主义

B．现实主义文学和自然主义倾向在美国19世纪小说中的反映

（二）．美国现实主义时期的主要作家

A．马克·吐温

1．一般识记：马克·吐温的生平及创作生涯

2．识记：马克·吐温的主要作品

《汤姆·索亚历险记》

《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》

《亚瑟王朝廷上的康涅狄格州美国人》

3．领会：马克·吐温作品中的地方色彩、幽默及语言特色

4．应用：（1）选读《哈克贝里·费恩》第三十一章：主题结构、人物刻画、语言特色

（2）哈克的性格分析及其社会意义

B．亨利·詹姆斯

1．一般识记：詹姆斯的生平和创作生涯

2．识记：詹姆斯的早期作品《黛西。米勒》，〈〈一个美国人〉〉〈〈贵妇人的画像〉〉〈〈欧洲人》

中期作品《波士顿人》〈〈螺丝在拧紧〉〉〈〈丛林猛兽》

后期作品《专使》〈〈鸽翼〉〉〈〈金碗》

文艺理论著作：《小说的艺术》

3．领会：（1）詹姆斯的“现实主义”

（2）詹姆斯的小说艺术特色：“视角”与心理分析

4.应用：（1）选读《黛西·米勒》第一章：主题结构、人物刻画、语言风格

（2）《黛西·米勒》的主题和人物分析

C．艾米莉·狄金森

1．一般识记：狄金森的生平及创作生涯

2．识记：狄金森的诗歌

（1）狄金森有关“永恒”主题的诗

（2）狄金森的爱情诗

（3）狄金森的自然诗

3．领会：狄金森诗歌的主题结构，创新和艺术特色

4．应用：选读狄金森诗歌第441、465．585和712首的结构、主题、语言特色

D．西奥多·德莱塞

1．一般识记：德莱塞的生平及创作生涯

2．识记：德莱塞的主要作品

《嘉丽妹妹》《珍妮姑娘》《美国的悲剧》

“欲望”三部曲：《金融家》《巨头》《斯多葛》

3．领会：德莱塞小说的语言风格

4．应用：（1）达尔文主义与德莱塞作品中的自然主义倾向

（2）选读《嘉丽妹妹》的最后一章节选：主题结构、人物刻画、语言风格

Chapter 2 The Realistic Period

一、识记：

1．The Age of Realism (How to define the Realistic Period in American literary history?)

The period ranging from 1865 to l914 has been referred to as the Age of Realism in the 1iterary history of the United States, which is actually a movement or tendency that dominated the spirit of American literature, especia1ly American fiction, from the 1850s onwards. Realism was a reaction against Romanticism or a move away from the bias towards romance and self-creating fictions, and it paved the way to Modernism. Instead of thinking about the irrational, the imaginative, realists touched upon social and political realities and pressures in the post-Civil war society. Three dominant figures are William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and Henry James.

2.The historical and socio-cultural background of American Realism

The American society after the Civil War provided rich soil for the rise and deve1opment of Realism. This period is characterized with changes, in relation to every aspect of American life,

politically, economically, culturally, and religiously. First of all, politically, the Civil War affected both the social and the value system of the country. America had transformed itse1f into an industria1ized and commercialized society. Wilderness gave way to civilization. The burgeoning economy and industry stepped up urbanization. However, economically, the changes were not all for the better. The industrialization and the urbanization were accompanied by the incalculable sufferings of the laboring people. Therefore, polarization of the wellbeing between the poor and the rich started to show up. Thirdly, as far as the ideology was concerned, people became dubious about the human nature and the benevo1ence of God, which the Transcendentalists cared most. What Mark Twain referred to as “ the Gi1ded Age” replaced the frontier and the spirit of the frontiersman, which is the spirit of freedom and human connection. Fourthly, the literary scene after the Civi1 War proved to be quite different a picture. The harsh rea1ities of life as well as the disillusion of heroism resulting from the dark memories of the Civil War had set the nation against the romance. The Americans began to be tired of the sentimental feelings of Romanticism. Thus, started a new period in the American literary writings known as the Age of Realism, characterized by a great interest in the realities of life.

3.The Gilded Age

It refers to the period of gross materialism and blatant political corruption in the U.S. history during the 1870s that gave rise to important novels of social and political criticism. The period takes its name from the earliest of these, The Gilded Age(1873),written by Mark Twain in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner. The novel gives a vivid and accurate description of Washington D.C., and is peopled with caricatures of many leading figures of the day, including greedy industrialists and corrupt politicians. The political novels of the Gilded Age represent the beginnings of a new strain in the American literature, the novel as a vehicle of social protest, a trend that grew in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the works of the muckrakers and culminated in the proletarian novelists.

二．领会

1.What is Realism?

In art and literature, Realism refers to an attempt to describe human behavior and surroundings or to represent figures exactly as they act or appear in life. Realism emerged as a literary movement in Europe in the 1850s. In reaction to Romanticism, realistic writers should set down their observations impartially and objectively. They insisted on accurate documentation, sociological insight, and avoidance of poetic diction and idealization. The subjects were to be taken from everyday life, preferably from lower-class life. Realism entered American literature after the Civil War. William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and Henry James were the pioneers of realism in the U.S.

2.The literary characteristics of the Realistic Period in American literature

Guided by the principle of adhering to the truthful treatment of 1ife, the realists touched upon various contemporary social and political issues. In their works, instead of writing about the polite, we11--dressed, grammatica1ly correct middle--class young people who moved in exotic places and remote times, they introduced industrial workers and farmers, ambitious businessmen and vagrants, prostitutes and unheroic soldiers as major characters in fiction. They approached the harsh realities and pressures in the post-Civil War society either by a comprehensive picture of modern life in its various occupations, c1ass stratifications and manners, or by a psychological exploration of man's subconsciousness.

The three dominant figures of the period are William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and Henry James. Together they brought to fulfillment native trends in the realistic portrayal of the 1andscape and social surfaces, brought to perfection the vernacular style, and explored and exploited the literary possibilities of the interior life.

3.The three dominant figures of the Realistic period differed in their understanding of the “truth ”

(1) While Mark Twain and Howells paid more attention to the \"life\" of the Americans, Henry James laid a greater emphasis on the\" inner world\" of man. He came to believe that the literary artist should not simply hold a mirror to the surface of social life in particular times and places. In addition, the writer should use language to probe the deepest reaches of the psychological and moral nature of human beings. He is a realist of the inner life.

(2) Though Twain and Howells both shared the same concern in presenting the truth of the American society, they had each of them different emphasis. Howells focused his discussion on the rising middle class and the way they lived, while Twain preferred to have his own region and people at the forefront of his stories, which is known as “ local colorism”, a unique variation of American literary realism.

4.What is Local Colorism?

Post-Civil War America was large and diverse enough to sense its own local differences. Regional voices had emerged. “ Local colorism” is a unique variation of American literary realism. Generally, the works by local colorists are concerned with the life of a small, well--defined region or province. This kind of fiction depicts the characters from a specific setting or of an era, which are marked by its customs, dialects, costumes, landscape, or other peculiarities that have eacaped standardizing cultural influence. Yet for all their sentimentality, they dedicated themselves to minutely accurate descriptions of the life of their regions. They worked from personal experience; they recorded the facts of a unique environment and suggested that the native life was shaped by the curious conditions of the loca1e. Their materials were necessarily limited and topics disparate, yet they had certain common artistic concerns. Writers whose works are characterized with local colors are Mark Twain, Sarah Orne Jewett, Joseph Kirkland and Hamlin Garland.

5.The influence of Darwinism and French naturalist writers on American literature in its Realistic

Period

The impact of Darwin's evolutionary theory on the American thought and the influence of the 19th century French literature on the American men of letters gave rise to yet another school of realism: American naturalism. Darwin, in his The Origin of Species(1859) and Descent Of Man (187l ),expounded his theory of natural selection. The American naturalists accepted the more negative implications of this theory and used it to account for the behavior of those characters in literary works who were conceived as more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes, their habits conditioned by social and economic forces. And consciously or unconsciously the American naturalists followed the French novelist and theorist Emile Zola's call that the 1iterary artist “must operate with characters, passions, human and social data as the chemist and the physicist work on inert bodies, as the physiologist works on living bodies.” They chose their subjects from the lower ranks of society and portrayed the people who were demonstrably victims of society and nature. And one of the most familiar themes in American Naturalism is the theme of human “bestiality”, especially as an explanation of sexual desire. For example, Frank Norris, in his McTeague (l9), described the relations of a crude dentist with a superficially refined German-American girl, who, awakened by his desires, is drawn into an animalistic affection.

三．应用

1.What is Naturalism? (or American Naturalism)

In literature, the term refers to the theory that literary composition should aim at a detached, scientific objectivity in the treatment of natural man. The movement is an outgrowth of 19th –century scientic thought, following in general the biological determinism of Darwin’s theory, or the economic determinism of Karl Marx.

American Naturalism is a more advanced stage of realism toward the close of the 19th century.

The American naturalists accepted the more negative implications of Darwin’s theory and used it to account for the behavior of those characters in literary works who were conceived as more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes, their habits conditioned by social and economic forces. And consciously or unconsciously the American naturalists followed the French novelist and theorist Emile Zola's call that the 1iterary artist “must operate with characters, passions, human and social data as the chemist and the physicist work on inert bodies, as the physiologist works on living bodies.” They chose their subjects from the lower ranks of society and portrayed the people who were demonstrably victims of society and nature. And one of the most familiar themes in American Naturalism is the theme of human “bestiality”, especially as an explanation of sexual desire.

Artistically, naturalistic writings are usually unpo1ished in language, lacking in academic skills and unwieldly in structure. Philosophically, the naturalists believe that the real and true is always partially hidden from the eyes of the individual, or beyond his control. Devoid of rationality and caught in a process in which he is but a part, man cannot fully understand, let alone contro1, the world he lives in; hence, he is left with no freedom of choice.

In a word, naturalism is evolved from realism when the author's tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more detached, ironic and more pessimistic. It is no more than a different philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence. Notable writers of naturalistic fiction were Frank Norris, Sherwood Anderson, and Theodore Driser.

2.The distinction between Realism and Naturalism

Naturalism is evolved from realism when the author's tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more detached, ironic and more pessimistic. It is no more than a different philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence.

The distinction lies, first of all, in the fact that Realism is concerned directly with what is absorbed

by the senses; Naturalism, a term more properly applied to literature, attempts to apply scientific theories to art. Second, Naturalism differs from Realism in adding an amoral attitude to the objective presentation of life. Naturalistic writers, adopting Darwin’s biological determinism and Marx’s economic determinism, regard human behavior as controlled by instinct, emotion, or social and economic conditions, and reject free will. Third, Naturalism had an outlook often bleaker than that of Realism, and it added a dimension of predetermined fate that rendered human will ultimately powerless.

3.What is (Social) Darwinism?

Social Darwinism is a belief that societies and individual human beings compete in a struggle for existence in which natural selection results in “struggle of the fittest.” Social Darwinists base their beliefs on theories of evolution developed by British naturalist Charles Darwin. Social Darwinists typically deny that they advocate a “law of jungle.” But most propose arguments that justify imbalances of power between individuals, races, and nations because they consider some more fit to survive than others. The theory had produced a big impact on Naturalism.

The major writers in the Realistic Period

I. Mark Twain (1835--19l0)

Mark Twain is a great literary giant of America, whom H.L.Mencken considered “the true father of our national literature.” With works like Adventure of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and Life on the Mississippi (1883) Twain shaped the world’s view of America and made a more extensive combination of American folk humor and serious literature than previous writers had ever done.

（一）一般识记

Mark Twain’s life and writing:

Mark Twain, Pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was born on November 30, 1835, in Missouri, and grew up in the river town of Hannibal. After his father died, he began to seek his own fortune .He once worked as a journeyman printer, a steamboat pilot, a newspaper colunist and as a deadpan lecturer. Twain's writing took the form of humorous journalism of the time, and it ennabled him to master the technique of narration.

(二) 识记

Mark Twain’s major works:

In l865, he pub1ished his frontier tale “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” which brought him recognition from a wider public. But his full literary career began to blossom in 1869 with a travel book Innocents Abroad, an account of American tourists in Europe which pokes fun at the pretentious, decadent and undemocratic Old World in a satirical tone. Mark Twain’s best works were produced when he was in the prime of his life. All these masterworks drew upon the scenes and emotions of his boyhood and youth. The first among these books is Roughing It (1872), in which Twain describes a journey that works its way farther west. Life on the Mississippi tells a story of his boyhood ambition to become a riverboat pilot. Two of the best books during this period are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The former is usually regarded as a classic book written for boys about their particular horrors and joys, while the latter, being a boy’s book specially written for the adults, is Twain’s most representative work, describing a journey down the Mississippi undertaken by two fugitives, Huck and Jim. Their episodic set of encounters presents a sample of the social world from the bank of the river that runs through the heart of the country.

His social satire is The Gilded Age, written in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner. The novel

explored the scrupulous individualism in a world of fantastic speculation and unstable values, and gave its name to the get-rich-quick years of the post-Civil War era. Twain’s dark view of the society became more self-evident in the works published later in his life. In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (18), a parable of colonialization. A similar mood of despair permeates The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (14), which shows the dis

astrous effects of slavery on the victimizer and the victim alike and reveals to us a Mark Twain whose conscience as a white Southerner was tormented by fear and remorse. By the turn of the century, with the publication of The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg (l900) and The Mysterious Stranger (1916), the change in Mark Twain from an optimist to an almost despairing pessimist could be felt and his cynicism and disillusionment with what Twain referred to regularly as the “damned human race” became obvious.

(三) 领会

1.Twain as a local colorist

Twain is also known as a local colorist, who preferred to present social life through portraits of the local characters of his regions, including people living in that area, the landscape, and other peculiarities like the customs, dialects, costumes and so on. Consequently, the rich material of his boyhood experience on the Mississippi became the endless resources for his fiction, and the Mississippi

valley and the West became his major theme. Unlike James and Howe1ls, Mark Twain wrote about the lower-class people, because they were the people he knew so we1l ancl their 1ife was the one he himself had lived. Moreover he successfully used local color and historical settings to i1lustrate and shed light on the contemporary society.

2.His use of vernacular

Another fact that made Twain unique is his magic power with language, his use of vernacular. His words are col1oquial, concrete and direct in effect, and his sentence structures are simp1e, even ungrammatical, which is typical of the spoken 1anguage. And Twain skillfully used the colloquialism to cast his protagonists in their everyday life. What's more, his characters, confined to a particular region and to a particular historical moment, speak with a strong accent, which is true of his 1ocal colorism. Besides, different characters from different literary or cultural backgrounds talk differently, as is the case with Huck, Tom, and Jim. Indeed, with his great mastery and effective use of vernacular, Twain has made colloquial speech an accepted, respectable 1iterary medium in the literary history of the country. His style of language was later taken up by his descendants, Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, and influenced generations of letters.

3.His humor

Mark Twain's humor is remarkable, too. It is fun to read Twain to begin with, for most of his works tend to be funny, containing some practical jokes, comic details, witty remarks, etc., and some of them are actually tall ta1es. By considering his experience as a newspaperman, Mark Twain shared the popu1ar image of the American funny man whose punning, facetious, irreverenl articles filled the newspapers, and a great deal of his humor is characterized by puns, straight-faced exaggeration, repetition, and anti-climax, let alone tricks of travesty and invective. However, his humor is not only of witty remarks mocking at small things or of farcical elements making people laugh, but a kind of artistic style used to criticize the social injustice and satirize the decayed romanticism.

(四) 应用

Huckleberry Finn

What is the book about?

Huckleberry Finn, by general agreement, is Twain’s finest book and an outstanding American novel. Its narrator is Huck, a youngster whose carelessly recorded vernacular speech is admirably adapted to detailed and poetic de scription of scenes, vivid representations of characters, and narrative renditions that are both broadly comic and subtly inonic.

Huck, son of the village drunkard, is uneducated, superstitious, and sometimes credulous; but he also has a native shrewdness, a cheerfulness that is hard to put down, compassionate tolerance, and an instinctive tendency to reach the right decisions about important matters. He runs away from his persecuting father and, with his companion, the runaway slave Jim, makes a long and frequently interrupted voyage floating down the Mississippi River on a raft. During the journey Huck meets and comes to know members of greatly varied groups, so that the book memorably portrays almost every class living on or along the river. Huck overcomes his initial prejudices and learns to respect and love Jim.

The book’s pages are dotted with idyllic descriptions of the great river and the surrounding forests, and Huck’s exuberance and unconscious humor permeate the whole. But a thread that runs through adventure after adventure is the theme of man’s inhumanity to man---of human cruelty. Children miss this theme, but adults who read the book with care cannot fail to be impressed by an attitude that was to become a reiterated theme of the author during his later years.

The significance of the novel

The book marks the climax of Twain's literary creativity. Hemingway once described the novel the one book from which “all modern American literature comes.”The book is significant in many ways. First of all, the novel is written in a language that is totally different from the rhetorical language used by Emerson, Poe, and Melville. It is not grand, pompous, but simple, direct, lucid, and faithful to the

colloquial speech. This unpretentious style of colloquialism is best described as “vernacular”. Speaking in vernacular, a wild and uneducated Huck, running away fom civilization for his freedom, is vividly brought to life. Secondly, the great strength of the book also comes from the shape given to it by the course of the raft's journey down the Mississippi as Huck and Jim seek their different kinds of freedom. Twain, who knew the river intimately, uses it here both realistically and symbolically. Thirdly, the profound portrait of Huckleberry Finn is another great contribution of the book to the legacy of American literature. The novel begins with a description of how Widow Douglas attempts to civilize Huck and ends with him deciding not to let it happen again at the hands of Aunt Sally. The climax arises with Huck's inner struggle on the Mississippi, when Huck is polarized by the two opposing forces between his heart and his head, between his affection for Jim and the laws of the society against those who help slaves escape.

Huck’s final decision -- to fo1low his own good--hearted moral impulse rather than conventional village morality -- amounts to a vindication of what Mark Twain called\" the damned human race,\" damned for its comfortable hypocrisies, its thoroughgoing dishonesties, and its pervasive cruelties. With the eventual victory of his moral conscience over his social awareness, Huck grows.

3.Selected Reading:

An Excerpt from Chapter 3l of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

(1) the story:

This novel begins with Huck under the motherly protection of the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson. When his father comes to demand the boy’s fortume, Huck pretends that he has transferred the money to Judge Thather, so his father catches him and puts him into a lonely cabin. One night, ahen his father is drunken, Huck escapes to Jackson’s island and meets Miss Watson’s

runaway slave, Jim. They start down the river on a raft. After several adventures, the raft is hit by a steamboat and the two are separated. Huck swims ashore and is saved by the Grangerford family, whose feud with the Sheperdsons causes bloodshed. Later, Huck discovers Jim and they set down again, giving refuge to a gang of frauds: the “Duke”and “King,” whose dramatic performances culminate in the fraudulent exhibition of the “Royal Nonesuch.” Huck also witnesses the lynching and murder of a harmless drunkard by an Arkansas aristocrat on the shore. When he finds that some rogues intend to claim legacies as Peter Wilks’s brother, Huck interferes on behalf of the three daughters, and the scheme is failed by the arrival of the real brothers. Then he discovers that the “King” has sold Jim to Mrs Phelps, Tom Sawyer’s Aunt Sally. At the Phelps farm, Huck and Tom try to rescue Jim. In the rescue, Tom is accidentally shot and Jim is recaptured. Later, Tom reveals that the rescue is necessary only because he “wanted the adventures of it.” It is also disclosed at the end of the novel that Huck’s father has died, so Huck’s fortune is safe.

(2) The novel’s theme, characterization of “Huck” and the novel’s social significance:

Theme: The novel is a vindication of what Mark Twain called “ the damned human race.” That is the theme of man’s inhumanity to man---of human cruelty, hypocrisies, dishonesties, and moral corruptions. Mark Twain’s thematic contrasts between innocence and experience, nature and culture, wilderness and civilization.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is best known for Mark Twain’s wonderful characterization of “Huck,” a typical American boy whom its creator described as a boy with “a sound heart and a deformed conscience,” and remarkable for the raft’s journey down the Mississippi river, which Twain used both realistically and symbolically to shape his book into an organic whole.

Through the eyes of Huck, the innocent and reluctant rebel, we see the pre-Civil War American society fully exposed and at the same time we are deeply impressed by Mark Twain’s thematic

contrasts between innocence and experience, nature and culture, wilderness and civilization.

(3)The selected chapter:

Huck and Jim are with the frauds. They decide to leave them in their raft when Huck learns that Jim is sold by the “King” to Mrs.Phelps. There is a very important description here of Huck’s inner conflict about whether or not he should write a letter to tell Miss Watsom where Jim is. Huck’s internal conflict between his sound heart and deformed conscience is obvious: On one hand, he feels that he ought to help return Jim to his owner, Miss Watson. On the other hand, his friendship for Jim makes such a course of action difficult for him. Huck instinctively knows the right thing to do. But his conscience dictates the conventional morality of the South. The whole episode is a subtle yet powerful condemnation of the society that makes Huck feel that he will go to hell for doing what his very instinct knows to be the right thing to do. Huck’s moral dilemma is brought about by a corrupt society that has institutionalized slavery.

Ⅱ. Henry James (1843-1916 )

Henry James was the first American writer to conceive his career in international terms. Today with the development of the modern novel and the common acceptance of the Freudian approach, his importance, as well as his wide influence as a novelist and critic, has been all the more conspicuous.

(一) 一般识记

His life and writing:

Henry James was born in New York City. His father was a theological writer and his elder brother was the distinguished philosopher and psycho1ogist Wil1iam James, who made a great contribution to the theory of the stream-of-consciousness technique. James was one of the few authors in the

American literary history who was not ob1iged to work for a living. He exposed early to an international society. In 1862, he entered Harvard Law School where he developed a lifelong friendship with William Dean Howells. There he read intensively Balzac, Merimee , George Sand, George Eliot and Hawthorne. Later, he toured Europe and met Flaubert, Maupassant, Zola and Turgenev, who exerted a great influence on him. While Mark Twain and William Dean Howells satirized European manners at times, Henry James was an admirer of ancient European civilization. The materialistic bent of American life and its lack of culture and sophistication, he believed, cou1d not provide him with enough materials for great literary works, so he settled down in London in 1876, and in 1915 he became a naturalized British citizen.

二．识记

His major works:

Henry James's 1iterary achievement is remarkable. His literary writings are bulky and voluminous, ranging from the book reviews, stories, travel accounts, autobiographies, novels, plays, to literary criticism. It is his novels and his literary essays that make him a fascinating case in the American literary history and a conspicuous figure in world literature.

The three periods in his literary career:

The literary career of Henry James is generally divided into three periods. In the first period (1865-1882), James took great interest in international themes: his treatment with the c1ashes between two different cultures and the emotional and moral problems of Americans in Europe, or Europeans in America. His early works include The American (l877), Daisy Miller (l878), The Europeans (l878), and The Portrait of A Lady (188l ) which is generally considered to be his masterpiece, which incarnates the clash between the Old World and the New in the life journey of an American girl in a European cu1tura1 environment.

James experimented with different themes and forms in his middle period. Nove1s include The Bostonians (1886), and The Princess Casamassima (l886 ) . His short stories The Private Life (13), The Death of a Lion (14) and The Middle Years (posthumously 1917) succeed in exploring the

relationship of the artist to the society. Another group of short fictions includes The Turn of the Screw (18), a story about the troubled and abnormal psycho1ogy of oppressed children and The Beast in the Jungle (1903), which focuses on the imaginative obsession of some haunted men and women with their personal disaster in future.

In his last and major period, James returned to his \"international theme.\" From 15 to 1900, he wrote some novellas and stories dealing with childhood and adolescence, the most famous of which is What Maisie Knows (l7). After that, he successively created the following great books: The Wings of the Dove (l902), The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1904). These demanding novels are wide1y considered to be James's most influential contribution to literature. The treatment of the international theme is characrerized hy the richness of syntax and characterization and the originality in point of view, symbolism, metaphoric texture, and organizing rhythm. James is now more mature as an artist,

more at home in the craft of fiction.

And he also wrote quite a number of literary criticisms, among which The Art of Fiction is the most famous.

三．领会

1. James’s international theme:

James's fame generally rests upon his nove1s and stories with the international theme. These nove1s are always set against a large international background, usual1y between Europe and America,

and centered on the confrontation of the two different cu1tures with two different groups of peop1e representing two different value systems. American personalities of naivety, innocence, enthusiasm, vulgarity, ignorance, unsophistication, freshness, eagerness to learn, freedom, individuality are in contact and contrast with European personalities of over-refinement, degeneration, artificiality, complexity, high cultivation, urbanity. James admire European cultures. The typical pattern of the conf1ict between the two cultures wou1d be that of a young American man or an American gir1 who goes to Europe and affronts his or her destiny. The unsophisticated boy or girl wou1d be beguiled, betrayed, cruelly wronged at the hands of those who pretend to stand for the highest possible civilization. Marriage and 1ove are used by James as the focal point of the confrontation between the two value systems, and the protagonist usual1y goes through a painful process of a spiritual growth, gaining knowledge of good and evil from the conflict: However, we may misinterpret Henry James if we think he makes an antithesis, in his international novels, of American innocence versus European corruption.

2.James’s literary criticism (The theme of “The Art of Fiction”)

James's literary criticism is an indispensable part of his contribution to literature. It is both concerned with form and devoted to human values. The theme of his essay “The Art of Fiction” clearly indicates that the aim of the novel is to present life, so it is not surprising to find in his writings human experiences explored in every possible form: illusion, despair, reward, torment, inspiration, delight, etc. He also advocates the freedom of the artist to write about anything that concerns him, even the disagreeable, the ugly and the commonplace. The artist should be able to \"feel\" the life, to understand human nature, and then to record them in his own art form.''

3. James’s realism (psychological realism)

James’s realism is characterized by his psychological approach to his subject matter. His fictional

world is concerned more with the inner life of human beings than with overt human actions. His best and most mature works will render the drama of individual consciousness and convey the moment-to-moment sense of human experience as bewilderment and discovery. And we observe people and events filtering through the individual consciousness and participate in his experience. This emphasis on psychology and on the human consciousness proves to be a big breakthrough in novel writing and has great influence on the coming generations. James is generally regarded as the forerunner of the 20th century \"stream-of-consciousness\" novels and the founder of psychological realism.

4.James’s narrative point of view

One of James's literary techniques innovated to cater for this psychological emphasis is his narrative “point of view.” James avoids the authorial omniscience as much as possible and makes his characters reveal themselves with his minimal intervention. So it is often the case that in his novels we usually learn the main story by reading through one or severa1 minds and share their perspectives. This narrative method proves to be successful in bringing out his themes.

5. His language

James is not so easy to understand. He is often highly refined and insightful. With a large vocabulary, he is always accurate in word selection, trying to find the

best expression for his literary imagination .Therefore Henry James is not only one of themost important realists of the period before the First World War, but also the most expert stylist of his time.

四．应用

Selected Reading:

An Excerpt from the First Part of Daisy Miller

The story:

Frederick Winterbourne, the narrator of the story, is an American expatriate. While visiting Switzerland, he meets the newly rich Mrs. Miller from New York, her son Randolph and her daughter Daisy. The Millers come from America that advocates freedom and individuality so when they live among the Europeans they do not pay any attention to the complex code that underlies behavior in European society. Winterbourne is shocked at Daisy’s innocence and her mother’s unconcern when Daisy accompanies him to the castle of Chillon.Later he meets the Miller in Rome, where Daisy has aroused suspicion by being seen constantly with Giovanelli, a third-rate Italian, without being engaged. Daisy is abandoned by her former friends, because they think she has gone too far. Spending all the evenings in the Colosseum, Daisy is infected with Roman fever. She falls ill with malaria, and a week afterward dies. At her funeral Giovanelli tells Winterbourne that Daisy was “the most beautiful young lady Iever saw, and the most amiable…and the most innocent.”

1.The theme of the novel

Daisy Miller is one of James’s early works that dealt with the international theme, i.e., to set against a large international background, usual1y between Europe and America, and centered on the confrontation of the two different cu1tures with two different groups of peop1e representing two different value systems: American innocence in contact and contrast with European decadence and the moral and psychological complications arising therefrom.

2.Characterization of Daisy Miller

In this novel, the “Americanness ”in Daisy is revealed by her relatively unreserved manners. Daisy Miller, a typical young American girl who goes to Europe and affronts her destiny. The

unsophisticated girl is cruelly wronged because of the confrontation between the two value systems. Miller has ever since become the American Girl in Europe, a celebrated cultural type who embodies the spirit of the New World. However, innocence, the keynote of her character, turns out to be an admiring but a dangerous quality and her defiance of social taboos in the Old World finally brings her to a disaster in the clash between two different cultures. In this novel James’s sympathy for Daisy could be easily felt when we think of a tender flower crushed by the harsh winter in Rome.

3.The content of this selection: Daisy has just arrived at Switzerland with her family and meets Winterborne for the first time. Two days later Daisy goes alone with Winterborne on an excursion to an old castle, which is soon in the air among the upper class in Rome. Daisy Miller’s tragedy of indiscretion is intensified and enlarged by its narration from the point of view of the American youth Winterborne.

Ⅲ. Emily Dickinson (1830-l886)

一、一般识记

Dickinson’s life and writing

Miss Emi1y Dickinson was born into a Calvinist family of Amherst, Massachusetts. She attended Amherst Academy for seven years and suffered serious religious crisis. After affected by an unhappy 1ove affair with Reverend Charles Wadsworth, she became a total recluse, 1iving a normal New England village life only with her family. Her private life was pretty much in order. She wrote poetry, and read intensively by herself. Her favorite writers were Keats, the Brontes, the Brownings, and George E1iot; classic myths, the Bible, and Shakespeare were what Emily drew commonly on for allusions and references in her poetry and letters. She also drew intellectua1 resources from her contemporary American, Thoreau and Emerson. In general, Dickinson wanted to live simply as a complete independent being, and as a spinster.

Dickinson's poetry writing began in the early 1850s. Altogether she wrote 1,775 poems, of which only seven had appeared during her 1ifetime. Most of her poems were published after her death. Her fame kept rising. She is now recognized not only as a great poetess on her own right but as a poetess of considerable influence upon American poetry of the 20th century.

二．识记

Dicksinson’s poems:

(1) Her religious poems: she wrote about her doubt and be1ief about religious subjects. While she desired salvation and immortality, she denied the orthodox view of paradise. Although she believed in God, she sometimes doubted His benevolence.

(2)Her poems concerning death and immortality: These poems are closely related to her religious poetry, ranging over the physical as well as the psychological and emotional aspects of death. She showed her ambiguous attitude towards death and immortality. She looked at death from the point of view of both the living and the dying. She even imagined her own death, the loss of her own body, and the journey of her soul to the unknown. Perhaps her greatest rendering of the moment of death is to be found in \"I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died --\masterpieces.

(3)Her love poems: Love is another subject Dickinson dwelt on. One group of her love poems treats the suffering and frustration love can cause. These poems are clear1y the reflection of her own unhappy experience, closely re1ated to her deepest and most private feelings. Many of them are striking and original depictions of the longing for shared moments, the pain of separation, and the futility of finding happiness. The other group of 1ove poems focuses on the physical aspect of desire, in which Dickinson dealt with, allegorically, the influence of the male authorities over the female, emphasizing the power of physica1 attraction and expressing a mixture of fear and fascination for the

mysterious magnetism between sexes. However, it is those poems dealing with marriage that have aroused critical attention first and showed Dickinson's confusion and doubt about the role of women in the 19th century America.

(4)Her nature poems: More than 500 of her poems are about nature, in which her general skepticism about the relationship between man and nature is well-expressed. On the one hand, she shared with her romantic and transcendental predecessors who believed that a mythical bond between man and nature existed, that nature revealed to man things about mankind and universe. On the other hand, she felt strongly about nature's inscrutability and indifference to the life and interests of human beings. However, Dickinson managed to write about nature in the affirmation of the sheer joy and the appreciation, unaffected by philosophical speculations. Her acute observations, her concern for precise details and her interest in nature are pervasive, from sketches of flowers, insects, birds, to the sunset, the fully detailed summer storms, the change of seasons; from keen perception to witty ana1ysis.

三．领会

The thematic concerns and the original artistic features of Dickinson's poetry:

1．Themes: Dicksinson’s poems are usually based on her own experiences, her sorrows and joys. But within her litlle lyrics Dickinson addresses those issues that concern the whole human beings, which include religion, death, immortality, love, and nature.

2．Artistic features: Her poetry is unique and unconventional in its own way. Her poems have no titles, hence are always quoted by their first lines. In her poetry there is a particular stress pattern, in which dashes are used as a musica1 device to create cadence and capital letters as a means of emphasis. Most of her poems borrow the repeated four-line, rhymed stanzas of traditional Christian hymns, with two lines of four-beat meter alternating with two lines of three-beat meter. A master of

imagery that makes the spiritual materialize in surprising ways, Dickinson managed manifold variations within her simple form: She used imperfect rhymes, subtle breaks of rhythm, and

idiosyncratic syntax and punctuation to create fascinating word puzzles, which have produced greatly divergent interpretations over the years. Dickinson’s irregular or sometimes inverted sentence structure also confuses readers. However, her poetic idiom is noted for its laconic brevity, directness and plainness. Her poems are usually short, rarely more than twenty lines, and many of them are centered on a single image or symbo1 and focused on one subject matter. Due to her deliberate sec1usion, her poems tend to be very personal and meditative. She frequently uses personae to render the tone more familiar to the reader, and personification to vivify some abstract ideas. Dickinson's poetry, despite its ostensible formal simplicity, is remarkable for its variety, subtlety and richness; and her limited private world has never confined the limitless power of her creativity and imagination.

四．应用

Selected Readings:

1. (44l ) This is my letter to the World

This poem expresses Dickinson 's anxiety about her communication with the outside world and her vision of the poet’s task and function.

2. (465) I heard a Fly buzz -- when l died --

This poem is a description of the moment of death. Dickinson’s attitude toward death is that of peaceful acceptance. She looked at death from the point of view of both the living and the dying. She even imagined her own death, the loss of her own body, and the journey of her soul to the unknown. This poem, universally considered one of her masterpieces, is perhaps her greatest rendering of the

moment of death.

3. (585) I like to see it lap the Miles -

This poem is an interesting study of how Dickinson makes the train part of nature by animalizing it.

4. (7l2) Because I could not stop for Death-

This is one of Dickinson’s most celebrated poems describing death. It possesses many features typical of her poetry. She holds ambivalent attitudes towards death. On the one hand, death is a stage of life, where man bids farewell to the human world of transience and goes to the Heaven of immortality; death is a release from a lifetime of work and suffering to a lasting peace in heaven. Therefore, she depicts the dark subject of death in a light tone. In this poem Dickinson personifies death and immortality so as to make her message strongly felt and vivify the abstract ideas. On the other hand, she feels uncertain about immortality of death. Many rhetorical devices are used in this poem, such as personification (Death and immortality are personified as “He”.), image or symbols especially in the third stanza. Other symbols include “Carriage”(hearse), “House”(Ground) etc. She also uses punctuation for musicality and capitalization for emphasis.

Ⅳ.Theodore Dreiser (l87l-1945 )

Theodore Dreiser is generally acknowledged as one of America's literary naturalists. He possessed none of the usual aids to a writer’s career: no money, no friend in power, no formal education worthy of mention, no family tradition in letters. With every disadvantage piled upon him, Dreiser, by his strong will and his dogged persistence, eventually burst out and became one of the important American writers.

一、 一般识记

Dreiser’s life and writing:

Theodore Dreiser was born in Terre Hante, Indiana, into a poor and intensely re1igious family. He had a very unhappy chi1dhood. Dreiser had some education at a Catholic school in Terre Hante, and later went to a public school of Warsaw, Indiana, and then spent a year at Indiana University. Dreiser read voraciously by himself. He immersed himself in Dickens and Thackeray, read widely Shakespeare, and tasted Bunyan, Fielding, Pope, Thoreau, Emerson, and Twain, but his true literary influences were from Balzac, Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. From the age of fifteen, Dreiser began to work on his own, earning a meager support by doing some odd jobs. He had longed to become a writer, so he went up to Chicago afterwards and made a beginning by placing himself with one of Chicago's newspapers, where he learned by experience. Later on, he slowly groped his way to authorship. During the last two decades of his 1ife Dreiser turned away from fiction and involved himself in political activities and debating writing. He joined the Communist Party shortly before his death in 1945.

二．识记

His major works:

Dreiser is a prolific writer. Among his works, Sister Carrie (1900) is the best-known, tracing the material rise of Carrie Meeber and the tragic decline of G. W. Hurstwood. In his ear1y period some of his best short fictions were written, among which are Nigger Jeff and Old Rogaum and His Theresa. In l9l1, Jennie Gerhardt came out, followed by two volumes of his “Trilogy of Desire,” The Financier (1912) and The Titan (1914), the third, The Stoic, being published posthumously in 1947. The Genius (19l5), a c1assic story of a “misunderstood artist,” was once condemned for “obscenity and blasphemy,”remained unpublished unti1 1923. In 1925 Dreiser's greatest work The American Tragedy

appeared. But it was banned in Boston in 1927. In 1927 he accepted an invitation to visit Russia and wrote Dreiser Looks at Russia the following year.

三．领会

1.Dreiser’s literary naturalism (or American naturalism):

With the publication of Sister Carrie, Dreiser became one of the most significant American writers of literary naturalism. As a genre, naturalism emphasized heredity and environment as important deterministic forces shaping individualized characters who were presented in special and detailed circumstances. At bottom, life was shown to be ironic, even tragic. Dreiser described earthly existence as “a welter of inscrutable forces,” in which was trapped each individua1 human being. In his words, Man is a “victim of forces over which he has no control.” To him, life is \"so sad, so strange, so mysterious and so inexplicable.\" No wonder the characters in his books are often subject to the control of the natural forces -- especially those of environment and heredity.

2.The effect of Darwinist idea of \"survival of the fittest\" was shattering. It is not surprising to find in Dreiser's fiction a world of jungle, where “kill or to be killed” was the law.

3.Dreiser’s naturalism in his works:

Dreiser’s naturalism found expression in almost every book he wrote. In Sister Carrie Dreiser expressed his naturalistic pursuit by expounding the purposelessness of 1ife and attacking the conventional moral standards. After a series of incidents and coincidents, Carrie obtains fame and comfort while Hurstwood loses his wealth, social position, pride and eventually his life. In his \"Trilogy of Desire,\" Dreiser's focus shifted from the pathos of the helpless protagonists at the bottom of the society to the power of the American financial tycoons in the late 19th century. An American Tragedy proves to be his greatest work and by entit1ing this book with such a name, Dreiser intended to tell us

that it is the social pressure that makes Clyde's downfal1 inevitable. Clyde's tragedy is a tragedy that depends upon the American social system which encouraged people to pursue the \"dream of success\" at all costs.

4.Dreiser’s exploration of human desire and revelation of the dark side of human nature:

From the first novel Sister Carrie on, Dreiser set himself to project the American values for what he had found them to be --materialistic to the core. Living in such a society with such a value system, the human individual is obsessed with a never-ending, yet meaningless search for satisfaction of his desires. One of the desires is for money which was a motivating purpose of life in the United States in the late l9th century. For example, in Sister Carrie, there is not one character whose status is not determined economically. Sex is another human desire that Dreiser explored to considerab1e lengths in his novels to reveal the dark side of human nature. In Sister Carrie, Carrie climbs up the social ladder by means of her sexual appeal. Also in the “Trilogy of Desire,” the possession of sexual beauty symbolizes the acquisition of some social status of great magnitude. However, Dreiser never forgot to imply that these human desires in 1ife could hardly be defined. They are there like a powerful \"magnetism\" governing human existence and reducing human beings to nothing. So like all naturalists he was restrained from finding a solution to the social problems that appeared in his novels and accordingly almost all his works have tragic endings.

5.Dreiser's style

Dreiser's style has been a controversial aspect of his work from the beginning. For lack of concision, his writings appear more inclusive and less selective, and the readers are sometimes burdened with massive detailed descriptions of characters and events. Though the time sequence is clear and the plot straigt forward, he has been always accused of being awkward in sentence structure, inept and occasionally flat1y wrong in word selection and meaning, and mixed and disorganized in

voice and tone. For him 1anguage is a means of communication rather than an art form. However, Dreiser's contribution to the American literary history cannot be ignored. He broke away from the genteel tradition of literature and dramatized the life in a very realistic way. There is no comment, no judgment but facts of life in the stories. His style is not polished but very serious and well calculated to achieve the thematic ends he sought.

四．应用

An analysis of Sister Carrie:

1. The story of Sister Carrie

Carrie Meeber is the protagonist of the story. Penniless and “full of the illusions of ignorance and youth,” she leaves her rural home to seek work in Chicago. On the train, she becomes acquainted with Charles Drouet, a salesman. In Chicago, she lives with her sister and sister-in-law, and works for a time in a shoe factory. Meager income and terrible work condition oppress her imaginative spirit. After a period of unemployment and loneliness, she accepts Drouet and becomes his mistress. During his absence, she falls in love with Drouet’s friend George Hurstwood, a middle-aged, married, comparatively intelligent and cultured saloon manager. They finally elope, first to Montreal and then to New York. They live together for more than three years. Carrie becomes mature in intellect and emotion, while Hurstwood, away from the atmosphere of success on which his life has been based, steadily declines. So their relations become strained. At last, she thinks him too great a burden and leaves him. Hurstwood sinks lower and lower. After becoming a beggar, he commits suicide, while Carrie becomes a star of musical comedies. But in spite of her success, she is lonely and dissatisfied.

2. The theme of the book:

Sister Carrie best embodies Dreiser’s naturalistic belief that men are controlled and conditioned

by heredity, environment and chance, but a few extraordinary and unsophisticated human beings refuse to accept their fate wordlessly and instead strive, unsuccessfully, to find meaning and purpose for their existence. Carrie, as one of such, senses that she is merely a cipher in an uncaring world yet seeks to grasp the mysteries of life and thereby satisfies her desires for social status and material comfort. In Sister Carrie, Dreiser expressed his naturalistic pursuit by expounding the purposelessness of life and impotence of men.

3.The last chapter of the novel:

After Carrie deserts Hurstwood, he is in great despair. Feeble and penniless, Hurstwood wanders in a cold winter night with nobody trying to help. Extremely hopeless and totally devastated, he turns the gas on in a cheap lodging-house and ends his life, while at the same time Carrie is rocking comfortably in her luxuriant hotel room before she boards a ship for London.