Part V. Twentieth-Century Literature
Contents
Historical Introduction
Literary trends of the 20th century
Historical Background
The 20th century began with a strong sense of social breakdown. A series of wars fought on the international scene affected the life of Americans and their literary writings. With all these wars, the whole world had undergone a dramatic social change, a transformation from order to disorder.
(1) The First World War (1914-1918)
Two results of the war to US: economic boom (it became the most powerful industrialized nation in the world, the technological revolution had brought about great changes in the life of American people)
A. Along with the changes in the material landscape, came the changes in beliefs and behavior. Losing faith
(Nietzsche‘s ―death of God‖) (purposeless, futile and chaotic life)
People went into it feeling very optimistic, but quickly became disillusioned. People began to distrust propaganda. Many people died, this made everyone else feel very sad, but also angry and frustrated.
Idealism gave way to disillusionment. A decline in moral standard, more cynical about the accepted standard of honesty and morality
The first decade of the 20th century was best described as a spiritual wasteland. Individual powerlessness and hopelessness became part of the American experience. With the feelings of fear, loss, disorientation and disillusionment.
B. Despite its booming industry and material prosperity, there was a sense of restlessness underneath.
(strikes in big cities—industrial depression, uneven distribution of wealth, the rate of unemployment went up— accumulated in the collapse of the stock market in 1929— the Great Economic Depression – made the already disordered world more turbulent)
C. Social changes. ―Jazz Age‖ (1920s); broken old moral rules; women‘s liberation; social reforms; racial
discrimination (Ku Klux Klan)
―Jazz Age‖ : After WWI, people found that the war which cost millions of lives failed to provide an abiding solutions to the world‘s problems, that the war was just the traps of political leaders. Such a disillusionment about the value of war, accompanied by the booming of American economy drove people to cynical hedonism. People experiment with new amusements. They restlessly pursued stimulus and pleasures, wallow in heavy drinking, fast driving and casual sex. By these, they hoped to seek relief from serious problems.
The reasons for the coming of Jazz Age
Economically,because of the war, American industry developed fast.The nation is full of bouncing ebullience, fearful of nothing, confident smug isolationism.
Socially, decline of idealism. Patriotism became cynical disillusionment. Unity of family weakened. There appeared the revolt of the Younger Generation. They escaped responsibility and assumed immorality.
D. Science development (radio, automobile, movie) Science became increasingly important, and made
people doubt their very belief systems. People found themselves living in a spiritual wasteland- they could not look to the old ideas for certainties any more. Man is not so important in the world, he is alone, and when he dies, that is it—we must face this with ―despairing courage‖.
(All in all, the beginning of the 20th century is a chaotic age. It was also a transitional age. After 1920s, US society stepped into its modern times.)
(2). 欧州现代艺术、马克思主义、弗洛伊德学说的意义及对美国现代文学产生的影响。
Between the mid-19th and the first decade of the 20th century, there had been a big flush of new theories and new ideas in both social and natural science as well as in the field of art in Europe which exerted
influence on the development of American Literature in the Modern Period.
1, Darwinism, which suggests that man was dominated by the irresistible forces;
2, Marxist theory, which holds that the root cause of all behavior was economic and that the leading feature of the economic life was the division of society into antagonistic classes based on a relation to the means of production.
3, Freud‘s psychoanalysis which emphasizes on the unconscious and the irrational side of human psyche.
4, modern European arts such as Impressionism, Expressionism, and Cubism also had great impact on the American Literature.
Literary trends of the 20th century
1. Before World War I, Realism and Naturalism remained the vital forces. P151, Para2
2. Since the 1920s, US literature stepped into the modern age. And the beginning part of the 20th century
was called the second renaissance in American literature (First Nobel Prize, several great writers, Southern Renaissance, Harlem Renaissance). A large group of writers began to make all kinds of literary experiments because they felt old literary form can‘t express the new spirits.
Literary trends of the 20th century
Modernism
Lost Generation
New Drama
Harlem Renaissance: (P. 154)
The Great Depression of 1930s
“Beat Generation” in 1950s
Literature of 1960s
Literature of 1970s
Modernism
Modernism was an international movement in literature and arts, especially in literary criticism, which began in the late 19th century and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base.
A. it began in the late 19th century and lasted until the end of World War II. It is a Wide range of
experimental and avant-garde trends in literature (and other arts), including Symbolism, Futurism,
Expressionism, Imagism, Dadaism, Cubism, Imagism and Surrealism.
B. Modernist literature is characterized by a rejection of the 19th century traditions and of their consensus
between author and reader. Modernist writers tend to see themselves as an avant-garde, disengaged from the bourgeois values and disturbed their readers by adopting complex and difficult new forms and styles.
In fiction, the accepted continuity of chronological development was abandoned, and they attempted new ways of tracing the flow of character‘s thoughts in their stream-of consciousness styles.
Stream of consciousness: It is a narrative device with which the author makes an attempt to describe the exact process of mental workings of the character, with all its illogical darts and dashes and sudden turns and free associations. Both Faulkner and Joyce employed this literary device in some of their works.
In poetry, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot replaced the logical expression of thoughts with collages of fragmentary images and complex allusions. (P.153)
In theatre, new forms of abstraction took place of realist and naturalist representation. (P.153)
C. Theme: Modernist writings are more concerned with alienation from society, loss of self-identity,
loneliness of man, inability to feel or express love, meaninglessness of life, absurdity of the world,
dehumanization of the modern society, subjectivity and spontaneity. The major themes of the modernist literature are the distorted, alienated and ill relationships between man and nature, man and society, man and man, and man and himself.
D. Modernist writings are predominantly cosmopolitan, and often express a sense of urban cultural
dislocation, along with an awareness of new anthropological and psychological theories.
E. The modernist writers concentrate more on the private and subjective than on the public and objective,
mainly concerned with the inner being of an individual. They pay more attention to the psychic time than the chronological one. It‘s favored techniques of juxtaposition and multiple point of view challenge to reader to reestablish a coherence of meaning from fragmentary forms.
Lost Generation
Also termed the Sad Young Men, which was created by F.S. Fitzgerald in his book ―All the Sad Young Men‖, the term in general refers to the post-World War I generation, but especially a group of writers who came of age during the war and established their literary reputation in the 1920s.
It stems from a remark made by Gertrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway, ―You are all a lost generation.‖ Hemingway used it as an epigraph to ―The Sun Also Rises‖ (1926), a novel tha t captures the attitude of a hard-drinking, fast-living set of disillusioned young expatriates in postwar Paris.
Lost Generation
Refers to those writers who were devoid of faith, values and ideals and who were alienated from the civilization the capitalist society advocated. They rebelled against former values and ideas, but replaced them only by despair or a cynical hedonism.
They were totally frustrated by the WWI and returned from that ―Great War‖ to their own country only to find the grim reality that the social values and civilization were hollow and affected if compared to the cruel realities of the battleground. They felt alienated from American civilization, which was conveyed in their lives of exile and expatriation.
They had cut themselves off from their past and old values in America and yet unable to come to terms with the new era when civilization had gone mad. They wandered pointlessly and restlessly, enjoying things like fishing, swimming, bullfight and beauties of nature, but they were aware all the while that the world is crazy and meaningless and futile. Their whole life was undercut and defeated. They cast away all past concepts and values in order to create new types of writing, which was characterized by disillusionment with ideals and further with civilization the capitalist society advocated. They painted the post-war western world as a waste land, lifeless and hopeless due to ethical degradation and disillusionment with dreams.
The term embraces Hemingway, Fitzgerald, John Dos Passons, e.e. cummings, Hart, Crane and many other writers who made Paris the center of their literary activities in the 20s. They were never a literary school. In the 2930s, as these writers turned in different directions, their works lost the distinctive stamp of the post war period. (P. 152-3)
Harlem Renaissance
"From 1920 until about 1930 an unprecedented outburst of creative activity among African-Americans occurred in all fields of art. Beginning as a series of literary discussions in the lower Manhattan (Greenwich Village) and upper Manhattan (Harlem) sections of New York City, this African-American cultural movement became known as "The New Negro Movement" and later as the Harlem Renaissance.
◆The first time Mainstream publishers and critic took African American literature seriously and Black
American literature and arts attracted significant attention from the nation at large.
◆It is more than a literary movement and more than a social revolt against racism, the Harlem Renaissance
exalted the unique culture of African-Americans and redefined African-American expression.
African-Americans were encouraged to celebrate their heritage and to become "The New Negro".
One of the factors contributing to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance was the great migration of African-Americans to northern cities (such as New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.) between 1919 and 1926. In his influential book The New Negro (1925), Locke described the northward migration of blacks as "something like a spiritual emancipation."
Black urban migration, combined with trends in American society as a whole toward experimentation during the 1920s, and the rise of radical black intellectuals — including Locke, Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and W. E. B. Du Bois, editor of The Crisis magazine —all contributed to the particular styles and unprecedented success of black artists during the Harlem
Renaissance period."
1930s, Great Depression
I. Historical Background: under the attack of the grave world economic crisis, all contradictions inherent in
the capitalist system intensified.slow recovery, social upheavals, the world drifted toward another great war.
the populace terrified. They lost confidence in everything.
II. Literature of political and social criticism.The novels mirrored the threats to democratic thought and a strong ideological countercurrent which caused great ideological confusion into Americans.
Novels: John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath 1939.
《愤怒的葡萄》是美国30年代大萧条时期的一部史诗。小说主人公约德刑满被释回家，发现家乡一片荒芜，穷困潦倒的乔德一家，被迫背井离乡，携家乘坐一辆破旧的汽车到西部谋生，到加利福尼亚州去寻找安居的乐土。他们在途中遇到种种磨难，并且前途茫茫，但母亲仍鼓励大家顽强地活下去…后来在那里的一个农场做工。一家人拼命干活，只能勉强糊口，农场主还不断地压低工资。农工们奋起反抗，举行罢工，警察前来镇压，牧师凯绥同情农工，被武装流氓打死。约德将凶手击毙，只得再次背井离乡。
这部作品，反映了广大人民群众对现存社会的日益不满和叛逆精神，具有鲜明的时代特征。为此，斯坦贝克成了―被压迫者的代言人‖。他以深刻写实的笔触，在书中展现了当时美国农民在生死线上挣扎、反抗的情景。作品出版后，引起各州统治阶层的恐慌，许多州禁止小说发行，甚至有一本名为《快乐的葡萄》的小说出版以示针锋相对。但一切都无法动摇《愤怒的葡萄》在美国现代文学史上的重要地位。
Literature of 1950s
I. Historical Background:
After the WWII, the nuclear time had unmistakably claimed itself and Americans were suddenly brought to face a completely new world in which old rules and guidelines turned out to be helpless. America got even more involved in the international affairs.
50s, America‘s rival with the Soviet Union, resulted in the initial of the Cold War. A series of major incidents occurred to the attention of the world. as Truman‘s containment to East Asia faltered, Korean War broke out in June 1950. This was the first war that American had ever fought without victory. This unbalance and lost war tarred the prestige of Americans as heroes of the second World War and shed a dark shadow on the mind of Americans.
Literature in the 50s
A new generation of American authors appeared writing in the skeptical, ironic tradition of the earlier realists
and naturalists. In the 1950s, the ―Beat‖ writers, in expression of disaffection with ―official‖ American life, were brutally and directly dominant. The so-called ―Beat Generation,‖ though not expatriate like the Lost Generation, were alienated—feeling like foreigners in their own country.
Beat Generation
Identifies a loose-kit group of poets and novelists, writing in the second half of the 1950s and early 1960s, who shared a set of social attitudes—anti-establishment, anti-political, anti-intellectual, opposed to the prevailing cultural, and moral values, and in favor of unfettered self-realization and self-expression.
The Beat writers often performed in coffee-houses and other public places, to the accompaniment of drums or jazz music.
The group included such diverse figures as Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the novelists William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac.
Main Works
Jack Kerouac, On the Road,
poet Allen Ginsberg, Howl,
Jewish Writer Saul Bellow, Seize the Day, 1956,
Black Writer Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man 1956,
Norman Mailer, The Naked and The Dead, 1948,
J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1951.
嚎叫艾伦．金斯堡
我看见这一代最杰出的头脑毁于疯狂，挨着饿歇斯底里浑身赤裸，拖着自己走过黎明时分的黑人街巷寻找狠命的一剂，
天使般圣洁的西卜斯特渴望与黑夜机械中那星光闪烁的发电机沟通古朴的美妙关系，
他们贫穷衣衫破旧双眼深陷昏昏然在冷水公寓那超越自然的黑暗中吸着烟飘浮过城市上空冥思爵士乐章彻夜不眠，
他们在高架铁轨下对上苍袒露真情，发现默罕默德的天使们灯火通明的住宅屋顶上摇摇欲坠，
他们睁着闪亮的冷眼进出大学，在研究战争的学者群中幻遇阿肯色和布莱克启示的悲剧，
他们被逐出学校因为疯狂因为在骷髅般的窗玻璃上发表猥亵的颂诗，
他们套着短裤蜷缩在没有剃须的房间，焚烧纸币于废纸篓中隔墙倾听恐怖之声，
他们返回纽约带着成捆的大麻穿越拉雷多裸着耻毛被逮住，
他们在涂抹香粉的旅馆吞火要么去‖乐园幽径―饮松油，或死，或夜复一夜地作贱自己的躯体，
用梦幻，用毒品，用清醒的恶梦，用酒精和阳具和数不清的睾丸，
颤抖的乌云筑起无与伦比的死巷而脑海中的闪电冲往加拿大和培特森，照亮这两极之间死寂的时光世界，
金斯堡：对着时代嚎叫——帮助你认识60年代的美国
这首诗以松散的形式、毫无藻饰的粗卑语言，对美国社会视为圣洁的一切进行了无情的讥讽与揭露。它一出版就在美国文坛上掀起一场轩然大波。有人斥之为―淫秽之作‖，甚至就此告到司法当局。旧金山警方和海关将这部作品扣留。出版商弗林格蒂受到传讯。但是，一些开明的评论家持有不同看法，认为《嚎叫》是―对社会的一种严厉批评，具有拯救社会的价值‖。一年后，法院将此案撤销，宣布弗林格蒂无罪。这样，这场在美国轰动一时的文案，不但使名不见经传的金斯堡立时名闻遐迩，也使他及其朋友们的同类作品出版合法化。这不啻正式宣告了―垮掉的一代‖作家堂而皇之地登上美国文坛。《嚎叫》一诗后来被一些评论家称为―美国新崛起的文学流派?垮掉的一代‘的经典之作‖，印行近40万册，风靡美国和西欧。
从此，金斯堡跳出自我，扩大活动范围，诗界进一步开阔。他到美国和世界各地漫游，并到处朗诵自己的作品。有时，为表示自己的率真，他在成千上万人的集会上赤身裸体进行朗诵。他积极参加民权运动和反对越南战争的大游行，成为美国群众运动中一名活跃人物。同时，他信佛参禅，耽于幻觉沉思，鼓吹性解放，宣扬同性恋。他说，他―把自己的这一切经历、一切信仰、一切失望、一切激忿都倾注到自己的创作中去了‖。他先后出版有诗集《现实三明治》(1967)、《星球消息》(1968)、《飞机上的梦》(1968)。1973年出版的诗集《美国的堕落》中，有不少反对美国侵越战争的诗作。次年，这本书获得美国全国图书奖，他本人成为美国文学艺术院成员。通过这些作品，金斯堡进一步奠定了他作为―垮掉的一代‖的代言人地位，受到美国和国际文艺界的广泛关注。
作为一首诗和一部文献，《嚎叫》可以同艾略特的《荒原》相提并论，它成为金斯堡和他的同时代人的里程碑。
诗歌通篇是怨气冲天的牢骚，愤慨不平的责问，狂怒的批评和无可奈何的衷诉，带着强烈的冲动，表现出美国青年在资本主义非人化的世界中的敏感，急躁心情和忧郁徬徨的态度。这首长诗的主调是绝望和愤恨。作者尖锐地批判了缺乏人性的商业文化，歌颂并肯定了一切生命，包括那些卑贱的，受到灾难袭击的人们。字里行间集中了愤怒的“嚎叫”，并使之宣泄，旨在引起人的注意到美国精神生活中才智遭受践踏的不正常现象。
Literature in the1960s
Historical Background:
The Cuban missile crisis took place in Oct, 1962. Vietnam War (1965-73) was another stage of the Cold War.
The U. S. continuous slaughter proved little military efficiency. The War in Vietnam seemed to Americans a life-swallow machine without end and victory in sight. Disillusionment spread throughout the United States.
Anti-war movement grew in size and militancy. More than 500,000 soldiers were deserted during the Vietnam years. This unjust war ended in Americans‘ humiliating withdrawal of their exhausted troops from ―a
small unimportant country‖ in 1973. The war left a permanent scar in the memory of Americans.
Literature in the 60s
It was a decade when literature began to diverse in style and form. Various themes and different ways of exploration of the meaning of life were experienced.
1. Psychological realistic novels:
John Updike, Rabbit Run, 1960,
Wright Morris, Ceremony in Lone Tree, 1960,
John Cheever, The Wapshot Scandal, 1984,
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, 1966,
Joyce Carol Oates, A Garden of Earthly Delights 1967,
Saul Bellow, Herzog 1964,
Issac Bashevis Singer, The Manor, 1967.
Literature in the 60s
2. Southern novels:
William Faulkner, The Receivers 1962,
Flannery O‘Conner, The Violent Bear it Away, 1960,
3. Poetry: Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg.
4. Drama: Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams.
Literature in the 1960s
5. The writes turned to experimental techniques, to absurd humor, to mocking examination of the irrational
and the disordered. The black humor featured the 1960s.
Joseph Heller, Catch-22, 1961,
John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor, 1961, Ken Kesey,
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1962,
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow 1973.
Black humor
The use of the morbid and the absurd for darkly comic purpose in modern fiction and Drama. The term refers as much to the tone of anger and bitterness as it does to the grotesque and morbid situations, which often deal with suffering,anxiety and death. It is a substantial element in the Anti-novel and the theater of the absurd. Joseph Heller‘s catch-22 is an archetypal example.
黑色幽默出现于六十年代，是当代美国文学中最重要的文学流派之一。这一流派的作家突出描写人物周围世界的荒谬和社会对个人的压迫。他们用放大镜和哈哈镜把这种荒谬和压迫加以放大、扭曲、变形，变得更加荒诞不经，滑稽可笑，更加反常无理，丑恶可憎，其中也寄托了他们无可奈何的悲观和痛苦心情。因此有人把黑色幽默称之为―绞刑架下的幽默‖或―大难临头时的幽默‖。《第二十二条军规》
这部小说号称黑色幽默的鼻祖，是《柯林斯词典》选出的1961年的标志。约瑟夫·赫勒根据自己在第二次世界大战中的亲身经历创作的黑色幽默小说。是美国反映第二次世界大战的最佳小说，但是这部作品的意义显然超出了战争的范畴。海勒的着眼点并不仅仅在于战争，他只不过想藉战争这一荒诞的极端形式来表现他眼中的美国社会。
―如果你能证明自己发疯，那就说明你没疯‖。这部小说太有影响了，以至于在当代美语中，Catch-22已作为一个独立的单词，使用频率极高，用来形容任何自相矛盾、不合逻辑的规定或条件所造成的无法摆脱的困境、难以逾越的障碍，表示人们处于左右为难的境地，或者是一件事陷入了死循环，或者跌进逻辑陷阱，等等。
【军规内容】
―如果你能证明自己发疯，那就说明你没疯。‖
〖孪生：精神病院院规〗
―如果你不承认自己发疯，那就证明你疯了。‖
―你说你没病,你就是有病。‖
——自古以来疯人院-精神病院及类似社会组织赖以生存、发展的一套整人理论与实践。是典型的唯心主义谬论。难道精神科医生敢承认自己有病吗?!
该书的主人公尤索林是上尉投弹手，他厌恶战争，求生成为他生活的最高目的。为了逃避战斗，他多次装病住院。可是逃避的愿望本身又证明了他的神志清醒。
根据第二十二条军规，疯子才能获准免于飞行，但必须由本人提出申请；同时又规定，凡能意识到飞行有危险而提出免飞申请的，属头脑清醒者，应继续执行飞行任务。第二十二条军规还规定，飞行员飞满上级规定的次数就能回国，但它又说，你必须绝对服从命令，要不就不准回国。因此上级可以不断给飞行员增加飞行次数，而你不得违抗。如此反复，永无休止。最后，尤索林终于明白了，第二十二条军规原来是个骗局，是个圈套，是个无法逾越的障碍。这个世界到处都由第二十二条军规统治着，就像天罗地网一样，令你无法摆脱。他认为世人正在利用所谓“正义行为”来为自己巧取豪夺。最后，他不得不开小差逃往瑞典。
Literature of the 1970s
The 1970s was a stage on which all kinds of literary art were performed. The Southern fiction, Jewish fiction, Psychological fiction, African-American Fiction, Science fiction, feminist fiction, etc., completed
inter-relatedly to present themselves, which displayed a prosperous panorama of literature.
Jewish novelists Saul Bellow and Issac Singer were separately awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976 and in 1978. Bellow was ranked as one of the most important novelists of the 20th century American literature after the WWII.
Black Literature: Richard Wright, Native Son, 1940, Ellison, Invisible Man, 1952, Alex Haley, Malcolm X, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison.
Poetry: poets urged by upheavals of the post-war period participated actively all kinds of political or literary movement with their pens, to express their views, to utter their uneasiness about the uses of social power and industrial power, in poems.
Theodore Roethke, Robert Lowell, Richard Wilbur, Richard Eberhart, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Sylvia Plath, Delmore Schwarts.
Plays after WWII
Plays after WWII survived under the squeeze of movies and especially television. Old playwrights like Eugene O‘Neill continued to produce sensational plays-----his combination of naturalism, expressionism and Greek tragedy.
New and young playwrights were struggling to broaden the ways and forms of theatrical language in the narrowing art space.
The influence of Europe‘s ―Theater of the Absurd‖, and Broadway‘s commercialization all pushed modern drama to emerge in new faces: ―Middle Drama‖, ―Off-Broadway‖非百老汇戏剧界, ―Off-Off-Broadway‖, Black Theater and other experimental forms.
Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee.
《看不见的人》
本书是当代美国黑人文学中的经典之作。主人公是个年轻的黑人，竭尽全力想得到别人的承认，想―使人看见他‖。他做过―老实的黑人‖，试图在美国工业里为自己找一席之地，使自己成为那种机器上一个合用的齿轮；他曾经加入―兄弟会‖，使自己依附于左派政治——他尝试过的每一件事情，似乎都能使一个黑人在美国生活里处于被人看见的地位，但是，这些事情没有一件能使他进入理想的精神文明，所以他现在宁愿做个地下人，以地洞为家躲藏起来，作深刻的自我反省，翻来复去思考着自己在宇宙中的地位，
在主题思想上，本书以存在主义的观点探索人的社会异化和自我异化问题，通过主人公在荒诞，敌对的环境里失去和寻找自我的故事，描写主人公的心理变化和西方让会的精神危机，正是在这个意义上，?°看不见的人?±，这个人物具有一定的典型性，被西方评论家们奉为?°当代人的典型?±。尽管主人公是黑人，书中也描绘了黑人生活和当时社会上的种族歧视，组织者并不从社会学的角度对主活中的种族问题提出批评或抗议，而是用抽象人性的概念来描绘和反映人的共同命运以及现代社会黑人与人之间不正常的、无理性的关系。作者认为，最能说明人的自我异化和在敌对环境里的荒谬处境的，莫过于美国黑人，因此他采用象征手法以黑人为例，通过?°看不见的人?±的经历及他的思想演变，以抒写整个人类的命运和处境