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1、常耀信美国文学的学习课件常耀信美国文学的学习课件Chapter 4The Age of Realism (1)Representatives: William Dean Howells Henry James Mark Twainrealistic american landscape By waltcurlee on Flickr Contents? Historical background The Civil War Post-war development In literary sceneAssignments?Tell the nature of American realism?
2、What are the common features shared by then American realists?What is William Dean Howells definition for realism?State the symbolic meanings of “the house” in The Rise of Silas Lapham.?Tell the range of Henry James international theme.?List the themes in The Jolly Coner.?The three questions on P100
3、 of the Selected Readings of American Literature.Historical background?The Civil War With the development of Northern industrialization, the conflict between the North and South was becoming more and more fierce, and finally the Civil War broke out. As a result, the factory defeated the farm, and th
4、e United States headed toward capitalism. The war made many people question the assumption shared be Transcendentalists, and marked a change in the quality of American life, a deterioration of American moral values.II. Post-war development?After the Civil War, commerce took the lead on the national
5、economy.?Railroads tripled in 15 years and multiplied five times in 25, and petroleum was discovered in sizeable quantities. Industrialization and mechanization of the country were fully developing.?Wealth and power were more and more concentrated in the hands of the few “captains of industry” and “
6、robber barons”, such as, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J.P.Morgan. When young, they tried to avoided military service and made great fortune during the war. The spirit of self-reliance by Emerson was perverted into admiration for driving ambition, and a lust for money and power. Children
7、 now were brought up on the idea that a person with ambition could make his own world.?The frontier was closing. The worth of American dream, the idealized romantic view of man and his life in the New world, began to lose its hold in the imagination of the people. III. In literary scene?The age of R
8、omanticism and Transcendentalism were ended Younger writers appeared on the scene. William Dean Howells, Henry James, and Mark Twain were becoming established as novelists of no small talent. ?Nature of American realism As a literary movement realism came in the latter half of the 19th century as a
9、reaction against “the lie” of romanticism and transcendentalism. It expressed the concern for the world of experience, of the commonplace, and for the familiar and the low.?The common features of the realists “verisimilitude of detail derived from observation,” the efforts to approach the norm of ex
10、periencea reliance on the representative in plot, setting and character, and to offer an objective rather than an ideal view of human nature and experience.? William Dean Howells(1837-1920 ) Contents? His life experience (p118)? His literary position ? His ideas on realism? His ideas on literary cri
11、ticism ?His masterpiece：The Rise of Silas Lapham (p121-p123) ?His life experience (p118)?His literary position He was a prolific writer, writing volumes of drama, poetry, and novels in addition to criticism, travelogues, and autobiography, As a critic of eminent standing and as a prolific writer, he
12、 helped to mould public taste and became the champion of literary realism of America. It is estimated that he wrote, in addition to the great number of social novels, 8 critical books and about 1,700book reviews to spread the credo of realism.His ideas on realism ?His definition of realism He define
13、s realism as “fidelity to experience and probability of motive,” as a quest of the average and the habitual rather than the exceptional or the uniquely high or low. ?His aim of realism ?to do nothing more than “talk of some ordinary traits of American life”?to interpret sympathetically “the common f
14、eelings of the common people”?to seek man not in his “heroic or occasional phase,” but “in his habitual moods of vacancy and tiresomeness”?Thus man in his natural and unaffected dullness was the object of his fictional representatives. To him, realism is by no means mere photographic pictures of ext
15、ernals but includes a central concern with “motives” and psychological conflicts.?Defects in his realism ?much of his realism was external characters and events viewed from without?rarely achieved or sought to achieve “psychological depth”?his realism having a “smiling aspect”, only saving himself f
16、rom pessimistic defeatism by his constructive use of novel to promote brotherly love .His ideas on literary criticism ?The literary critic should not try to impose arbitrary or subjective evaluations on books but should follow the detached scientists in accurate description, interpretation, and classification. The critics job is “to identify the literary species and explain the weaknesses of a work in the light of the authors intentions”.His masterpiece：The Rise of Silas Lapham Outline?
