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第一篇：Exercise 3 American RealismExercise 3American RealismI. Multiple choice:1. The Age of Realism in the literary history of the United States refers to the period from ________ to_________.A. 1861....1914B. 1763....1918C. 1865....1914D. 1865. (1918)2. Stylistically, Henry James’fiction is characterized by _______________.A. highly refined languageB. ordinary American speechC. short, clear sentencesD. abundance of local images3. ________ is described by Mark Twain as a boy with “a sound heart and a deformed conscience.A. Tom SawyerB. Huckleberry FinnC. JimD. Tony4. The setting of __________ is America, where some Europeans, who are actually expatriated Americans, learns with difficult to adapt themselves to the American life.A. MiddlemarchB. The EuropeansC. Daisy MillerD. The Portrait of a Lady5. Mark Twain wrote most of his literary works with a _____________ language.A. grandB. pompousC. simpleD. vernacular6. Henry James experimented with many different themes in his literary career, the most influential one being _______________.A. nothingnessB. disillusionmentC. international themeD. relationship between men and women7. The book from which “all modern American literature comes”refers to _________________.A. the Great GatsbyB. the sun Also risesC. The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnD. Moby-Dick8. Mark Twain stood on the side of China in its struggle against foreign invasions. His ___________ and__________ are two notable examples of his vigorous attacks on the imperialist behaviour of the United Statesand other foreign countries in China.A. the Treaty with ChinaB. To the Person Sitting in DarknessC. Disgraceful Persecution of a BoyD. Goldsmith’s Friend Abroad AgainII. Identification of fragment:“We dasn’t stop again at any town, for days and days; kept right along down the river. We was down south in the warm weather, now, and a mighty long ways from home. We began to come to trees with Spanish moss on them, hanging down from the limbs like long gray beards. It was the first I ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal.”Questions:A. Identify the author and the work.B. Whom does the word “we”refer to?C. What is the name of the river mentioned in the passage?III. Give brief answers:1. Who are the three dominant figures of the American Realistic Period and what are theirliterary differences?2. In American literature what is the significance of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”by MarkTwain?Suggested answers:I. 1.C2.A3.B4.B5.D6.C7.C8.A.BII. A. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnB. The word “we”refers to Huck and Jim.C. the Mississippi riverIII.1. The three dominant figures of the period were William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and Henry James. Though the three prominent writers all worked for realism, they had different understanding of the “truth”. While Mark Twain and Howells seem to have paid more attention to the “life”of the Americans, Henry Jameshas apparently laid a greater emphasis on the “inner world”of man. He is a realist of the inner life. Though Twain and Howells both share the same concern in presenting the truth of the American society, they have each of them different emphasis. Howells focuses his discussion on the rising middle class and the way they live, while Twain deals with his own region and people of the lower class of society at the forefront of his stories. James writes mostly of the upper reaches of American society.2. First of all, the novel is written in a language that is simple, direct and lucid and faithful to the colloquial speech. This unpretentious style of colloquialism is best described as “vernacular”. Speaking in vernacular,wild and uneducated Huck, running away from civilization for his freedom, is vividly brought to life.The book is also significant for 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 her both realistically and symbolically.Another great contribution of the book is the profound portrait of Huckleberry Finn. The novel begins with adescription 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 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 follow his own good-hearted moral impulse rather than conventional village morality –amounts to a vindication of what Twain called “the damned human race,”damned for its comfortable hypocrisies, its thoroughgoing dishonesties, and its pervasive crulties. With the eventual victory of his moral conscience over his social awareness, Huck grows.Huckleberry Finn marks the climax of Twain’s literary creativity. It is what Hemingway once describes asthe one book from which “all modern American literature comes.”第二篇：American Realism总结American RealismAmerican realism was an early 20th century idea in art, music and literature that showed through these different types of work, reflections of the time period. Also, American Realism age is the Gilded Age, an age of excess and extremes, of decline and progress, of poverty and dazzling wealth, of gloom and buoyant hope. Although Americans continued to read the works of Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne, and Poe, the great age of American romanticism had ended. By the 1870s the New England Renaissance had waned. Realism appeared in the United States in the literature of local color, an amalgam of romantic plots and realistic descriptions of things was immediately observable. Naturalism is a new and harsher realism, appearing at the end of the 19 century. Because of perception of society’s disorders, writers try to present characters of low social and economic classes who were dominated by their environment and heredity. The naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment; the religious “truths”were illusory, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death.William Dean Howells, the arbiter of 19th century literary realism in America, defines realism: nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material with an objective point of view. Howells` emphasis hasalways been on ethics. He stresses the need for sympathy and moral integrity, and the need for different social classes to harmoniously adapt to their environment and to another.Henry James is the founder of psychological realism. The literary career of him is generally divided into three periods, in the first periods, James took great interest in international theme; exemplify the mature and formidable style of a third literary period, which critics have come to praise as “The Major Phase”. In his critical commentaries, he made major contributions to the art of fiction itself, helping to transform the novel from its alliance with journalism and romantic story-telling into an art from of penetrating analysis of individuals confronting society, chronicles of the psychological perceptions that James himself defined as the highest from of experience.Mark Twain is essentially an affirmative writer though his first novel, The Gilded Age, is considered as a failure, but his masterwork Adventures of Huckleberry Finn turns out to be a huge success. His works are characterized by the local colorist——the detailed presentation in prose fiction of the setting, dialect, customs, dress and ways of thinking and feeling which are distinctive of a particular region. Without Mark Twain, American literature would be less delightful. After him, the American literature is no longer as the same before.Theodore Dreiser, his first novel “Sister Carrie”, which traces the material rise of Carrie Meeber and the tragic decline of G. W. Hurst wood is successful work. And his “An American Tragedy”，the identification of potency with money is at the heart of Dreiser’s greatest and most successful novel.第三篇：Unit 6 American RealismUnit 6 American Realism: William Dean Howells, Henry James and Mark TwainAmerican Realism: 1865-1914Historical BackgroundTwo phases: the phase of an expanding continental nation from 1865 till 1890s; and the so-called “progressive period”from 1890s till 1914.The Civil War: destroyed the innocence prevalent earlier in the 19th century;(Chang, 158: led many to question the assumptions shared by the Transcendentalists --- natural goodness, the optimistic view of nature and man, benevolent God.)The US changed from a nation of distinct regions into a nation dominated byNorthern industrialization, business and finance.Industrialism, mechanization, movement away from farm, metropolitan, lust forwealth and power“The Gilded Age”the age of wealth and poverty, of progress and decline, and theage of gaudy excesses.The closing frontierThe closing frontier: the development of railroads: mobile, Western settlement,settlement in the Great Plains and mountainous regions, awareness of regional characteristics; disillusionment and frustration, suffering and unhappinessThe Progressive EraFrom the 1890s on, there was a great deal of enthusiasm for various social andeconomic reforms, hence the term “the progressive era.”Most of the writers who wrote with seriousness and conviction were social critics.By the 1870s New England Renaissance had waned. (Hawthorne and Thoreau dead;Emerson, Longfellow and other New England celebrities old and feeble; Melville ceased to publish. Dickinson not brought to light yet. Only Whitman remained active.)The Age of Romanticism and Transcendentalism was by and large over.Parameters of Realism童明，143：Parameters of Realism: “American realism may be measured by the followingparameters”:1. Realism reacts against Romanticism’s emphasis on intuition, imagination, adreamy (or innocent) sense of wonder, idealism, faith in nature, and general optimistic belief in the goodness of things.2. Realists claim that they seek truth that is verifiable by experience and havepractical consequences; they do not seek abstract truth.3. Realism is embedded in a mimetic theory of art. “Mimesis”means “imitation.”Realists believe that literature imitates reality. …realists are attentive to such details as dialect, customs, and experiences that are commonplace and “real.”4. Realists try to describe a small portion of the knowable world in order to maintain“objectivity.”5. Local color and regional writings constituted the early phase of realism.Naturalism is another variation of realism in that it emphasizes a biological orsocioeconomic determinism.William Dean Howells (1837-1920)for several decades, the “dean”of his country’s literature.In a way the father of American Realism; born in a small town in Ohio; mostlyschooled himself from his father’s book-shelves; the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Monthly , used the journal to spread realism;The writer should reveal the good in life as more real than the evil (emphasizesmorality; “this smiling continent,”“smiling aspects); realism is a form of democracy and is peculiarly suitable as an American method.A Modern Instance (1882)The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885)William Dean Howells: An American realist author and literary critic. "The Dean of American Letters"Henry James (1843-1916)Born into a wealthy cultured family of New York City;great influence from his father and brotherFather, Henry James, Sr.: an unorthodox theologian, one of the best-knownintellectuals in mid-nineteenth-century America;brother, William James, philosopher and psychologistPsychological realismLiterary criticism: “The Art of Fiction”Novels:His writing career can be divided into three distinctive periods:A. 1865-1882: The American (1877), Daisy Miller (1879), The Portrait of a Lady (1881);the “international theme”: American innocence in face of European sophistication B. 1882-1895: tales of subtle studies of inter-personal relationships; plays: TheBostonians (1886)C. 1895-1915:1895-1900: novellas and tales dealing with childhood and adolescence, a revival of his earlier theme of innocence in a corrupted world; The Turn of the Screw (1898); What Maisie Knew (1897);1900-1904: trilogy, three great novels, The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), his most "perfect" work of art, The Golden Bowl (1904);1904-1915: some American impressions and some autobiographical matter.The International ThemeThe first and the third stages write about the “international theme”: innocentAmerican confronting the sophisticated European culture; the meeting of America and Europe, American innocence in contact and contrast with European decadence and the moral and psychological complications arising therefrom. For the American it was a process of progression from inexperience to experience, from innocence to knowledge and maturity.Local ColorismRealism and local colorism developed almost at the same time and were intertwined.Realism is at the heart of local colorism.Theoretical orientation:realism tries to capture the truth of life and portray life and people as they see it, esp.ordinary people;local colorism emphasizes the characteristics of their own region, deeply rooted inAmerica, in local soil and culture. For the first time, the rich variety of American life and American people are fully presented in literary works.Local colorism is mostly concerned with the characteristics of people and life of theirown regions. As a result, local colorists in different regions together presented a most colorful and comprehensive picture of America and American life, best presented not only the history of the country but the development of the nation and its culture.Hamlin Garland defined local colorism as “having such quality of texture andbackground that it could not have been written in any other place or by anyone else than a native”;“texture”refers to the elements which characterize a local culture, elements such asspeech, customs and mores peculiar to one particular place;“background”covers physical setting and those distinctive qualities of landscapewhich condition human thought and behavior.The ultimate aim of the local colorists is to create the illusion of an indigenous littleworld with qualities that tell it apart from the world outside.More than any type of literary works, local colorist literature is typically Americanand has the least influence from the European tradition. Rooted in legends, folk tales and dialect of that particular region.Local colorism as a trend first made its presence felt in the late 1860s and earlyseventies. Bret Harte, “The Luck of Roaring Camp”(1868): a significant development in the brief history of local color fiction.Almost every part of America has its regional writers. C.f. 常耀信，181－182.Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sarah Orne Jewett, New England; Bret Harte, (considered by many the founder of the local color school), the far West mining camps; George Washington Cable, Kate Chopin, the deep South (the Creole culture)Last decade of the 19th century, three major groups:1, Western (meaning mid-West: Indiana, Illinois, Ohio) writers;2, New Englanders;3, the Southern writers.童明，145：Regional and local color writings may be considered the early stage ofliterary realism. They were instances of realism insofar as they depicted contemporary life, used the speech of the common people and avoided, in general, fantastic plotlines.Mark Twain (1835-1910)Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, grew upin the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi River.Mark Twain’s contribution to the development of realism and to American literatureas a whole was partly through his theories of localism in American fiction, and partly through his colloquial style.One of the pioneers in stories that captured the “local color”of the West;Twain’s style, based on vigorous, realistic, colloquial American speech, gaveAmerican writers a new appreciation of their national voice. Twain was the first major author to come from the interior of the country, and he captured its distinctive, humorous slang and iconoclasm.1865, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”1873, The Gilded Age, gave its name to the America of the post-bellum period whichit attempts to satirize.1876, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: innocence1883, Life on the Mississippi1884, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , a sequel to Tom Sawyer, a finer book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)a success from its first publication and has always been regarded as one of thegreatest books of Western literature and Western civilization.Ernest Hemingway: “All modern literature comes from one book by Mark Twaincalled Huckleberry Finn.”Episodic structure; two runaways; escape, quest for freedom; racism; feud;swindlers; inner struggle; wilderness and civilizationMark Twain in his lecture notes proposes that "a sound heart is a surer guide thanan ill-trained conscience", and goes on to describe the novel as "...a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat".Essentially an affirmative writer, humanistic; but toward the latter part of his life,increasingly violent in his censure of man and his society; in his later works, change from an optimist and humorist to an almost despairing determinist; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (1924), The Mysterious Stranger (1916): bitter attacks on the human race.American realism: Local colorism and Mark twainMark Twain made colloquial speech an accepted, respectable literary medium in theliterary history of the country: a significant contributionSherwood Anderson: the first writer after Twain to take the vernacular as a seriousway of presenting reality; Hemingway’s mentor in the colloquial styleErnest Hemingway: the direct descendant of Mark Twain; his masculine prose, withits infinite power of suggestion and connotation, is the continuation of and improvement upon Twain’s style.In writers such as Stephen Crane, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, Faulkner, orHemingway, a style that flows with the easy grace of colloquial speech and gets its directness and simplicity by leaving out subordinate words and clauses, the language of Mark TwainT. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, E. E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, J. D. Salinger,etc.第四篇：US 3 American DreamTheAmerican Dream USIIITextbook Unit 9TermsGettysburg Address segregationRosa ParksMalcolm X“glass ceiling”The Great DepressionBrown v. Board of EducationMartin Luther King, Jr. civil disobedienceDiscussion Questions1. What rights does the Declaration of Independence guarantee? Who does it guarantee them to?Does it guarantee happiness?What is the problem with the promises and guarantees of the Declaration of Independence?2. Why was a civil war fought in America? What are the causes and effects of the war?3. What is a social movement? Which groups of people started socialmovements in the 1960s? What were their goals? Why did these movements occur in the 1960s?4. What is the goal of civil disobedience, or non-violent resistance? Who practiced this philosophy during the Civil Rights Movement? Was it successful? Who disagrees with this philosophy and why?5. What challenges do women face in modern times in both America and China?第五篇：passage translation exercises (翻译3)Passage translation exercises 1 1. 农历八月十五是中国的传统节日——中秋节。
