Part Four Modern American Literature (1910- ) Chapter 8 American Literature after WWⅡblack humor, Joseph Heller, Catch-22Ⅰ.Historical Background for Literature after WW21. historical events•Nazi’ butchery; the use of atomic bomb–people' s panic, fear of the modern science&technology •Cold War; McCarthyism–mutual fear and hostility•The Korean War and the Vietnam War–broaden the gap between government and the people •The Assassination of Kennedy and of Martin Luther king ;The American Civil Rights Movement, Feminism; anti-war movement; the Water-Gate scandal –intensified the terror and tossed the whole nation into the grief and despair•Increasing population; environmental pollution2. The impact•The impact on the American society is emotional•The world is full of chaos, fear, anger and grief.•The American writers’ dissatisfaction with the society and politics;•They no longer believed in God but started to reconsider the nature of man•Freudian Psychoanalysis as their psychology Existentialism 存在主义as their philosophy•They begin to think of life as a big joke.ⅡExistentialism 存在主义/生存主义•source: European philosophy that inspired the 1950s-1960s America.•time: It is formulated in the first half of 20th century;•Sartre 萨特•Views: “Existence precedes essence.” 存在先于本质–传统观点：According to Platonism-Christianity, the essence of man is a priori and fixed, a given from God.–存在主义观点：The existentialists counter-argue that there is no pre-established essence of man. Each individual man is what he makesof himself by a succession of actions taken with the freedom of choice自由选择in a specific physical and historical context. The world, byitself, is purposeless and thus absurd偶然荒诞.(既然所有的存在都不是决定的，而是偶然的，所以，存在是不确定的。
由此可以推知，从根本上讲，存在是荒诞的)–The idea of absurdity is thus central to existentialism.•Effect: Man’s rebellion against absurdity is thus life’s struggle.Ⅲ. Litertary development•The Beat Generation(垮掉的一代）1950's•The Black Humor（黑色幽默）1960's•Theatre of the Absurd（荒诞派戏剧）•The pluralism of postwar American fiction1. Beat Generation 垮掉的一代•The word “beat” refers to the rhythm of jazz music•In the 50s there was a widespread discontentment among the post-war generation•protest against all the mainstream culture, all conventional values, concerning sex, religion and the American way of life,•the need to escape into an unconventional mode of living.•Representatives: 杰克·克鲁亚克Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957)“因为我很贫穷，所以我拥有一切。
”艾伦·金斯堡Allen Ginsberg’s Howl《嚎叫》威廉·巴勒斯William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959)2. The pluralism of postwar American fictiona. War fiction (战争文学）b. Southern literature （南方文学）c. Jewish literature （犹太人文学）d. Black fiction（黑人文学）e. Non-fiction novel （非虚构小说）f. Literature of ethnic（种族）groupsⅣ.Joseph Heller (1923-1999)•Catch-22《第22条军规》–war fiction (反战小说)–the archetypal example of black humor(黑色幽默）–Anti-hero (反英雄）–1. Life story (1)•Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn in 1923.•He served as an Air Force bombardier(投弹手）in World War II and enjoyeda long career as a writer and a teacher.•His best-selling books include Something Happened(1974), Good as Gold, Picture This(1988), God Knows(1984), and Closing Time(1994), but his first novel, Catch-22 (1961), remains his most famous and acclaimed work.•He died of a heart attack in December 1999.2. Plot of Catch-22 ?•It is about the story of Captain Joseph Yossarian（尤索林），bombardier •He tries again and again to escape missions so that he may be safe in the war.•First he tries to finish the required 25 flying missions, but the commander increased the number of mission to 50 and he finished 51, but he was informed of Catch-22 that a solider should obey the authority.•第二十二条军规规定，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。
•Then he asks the doctor to declare him insane and unfit for duty, but the doctor tells him “Catch-22”,•“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22…•“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.•Orr was crazy and could be grounded(停飞）. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions.•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，属于头脑清醒着，应继续执行飞行任务。
因为如果一个人真的神志不清，他会主动执行飞行任务，因此便没有人能获准免于飞行。
•最后，尤萨林终于明白：“这里面只有一个圈套……就是第二十二条军规。
”3. What is Catch-22 ?•The title of this work (Catch-22)entered the English lexicon to refer to• a catch, a predicament, paradox• A tricky or disadvantageous situation in which a desired outcome or solution is impossible to attain because of a set of illogical rules or conditions characterized by absurdity or senselessness.•不可逾越的障碍；由于一套本身不合逻辑的规则或条件而不可能获得期望的结果或解决方式的情形：4. theme•criticize bureaucracy（官僚主义）through exposing the irrationality and absurdity of the abuse of patriotic heroism on account of personal ambition for power and money.corruption of the American Army.• e.g. The commander: an ambition for promotion at the expense of others’ lives.• e.g. The mess officer: shameless dealer in speculation（投机）and profiteering（谋取暴利）.•the American airforce base = a microcosm of modern American society.5. Style:•Black humor 黑色幽默•It is a term applied to a large group of American novels beginning in the 1950s.•约瑟夫海勒: “我要人们先开怀大笑，然后回过头去以恐惧的心理回顾他们所笑过的一切”•What: the combination of humor with resentment, gloom, despair and anger.•Cause: seeing all that is hypocritical, unreasonable, ugly and even crazy, writers of black humor nurture a grievance愤恨against their society which is full of institutionalized absurdity, insensitivity, paradox(悖论）, and cruelty.Yet they are cynical and laugh a morbid laugh in face of a tragic situation.•Style: in hopeless indignation they take up freezing irony and burning satires as their weapon to exaggerate. The novel are often in form of anti-novel, devoid of completeness of plot and characterized by fragmentation and dislocation.•Subject: death, disease, or warfare•Representative:•Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961) and•Kurt Vonnegut’s库尔特·冯内古特Slaughterhouse-Five《第五屠宰场》(1969).•5. Anti-hero or anti-heroine反英雄•Possessing qualities antithetical相反to those of the traditional hero；lack nobility and magnanimity•The anti-hero is not simply failed hero but a social misfit不合时宜, graceless, weak, and often comic, the embodiment of ineptitude不称职and bad luck ina world apparently made for others.•Yossarian is endowed by the author with such values as questioning the justification of authority and refusing blind obedience.•Cervan tes’s塞凡提斯Don Quixote ,<<堂吉诃德>> (1605).•Arthur Miller, notably Death of a Salesman (1949).Part Four Modern American Literature (1910- ) Chapter 7 American Literature after WW1Movement: Afro-American Literature 美国黑人Ⅰ. Historical background1. Slavery•The first known Africans in the British colonies arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619.•They worked as slaves, mainly in the southern plantations, for more than two hundred years.•After the Emancipation Proclamation (《解放奴隶宣言》) in 1863, the negroes won freedom.2. Jim Crowe Laws—laws passed in the 1890’s, designed to segregate blacks form whites;— a terrible effect on blacks3. Great Migration and Civil Rights movement•Great Migration— The terrible conditions in the Southern US caused many blacks to immigrate to the North of the country.—This event was known as the “Great Migration”.•Civil Rights Movement (民权运动)— The Civil Rights movement lasted from 1954 to 1968.— The movement was characterized by major campaigns of civil resistance.•The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at the National Mall.（August 28th, 1963）4. Noted legislative achievements:— Civil Rights Act of 1964 (民权法案);— the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (选举权法)II. Literary DevelopmentUniqueness•African American literature is patterned on a myth of deliverance (解救) from slavery, that of the Hebrew prophet Moses leading the Jews in their flight from the bondage in Egypt.•This is the essential spirit through black American literature — their longing for freedom and emancipation.1. Early Stage•Oral traditions—songs, ballads, spirituals (灵歌，圣歌) blues, jazz and other modes of African-American folk literature;— expressing the sorrow of the singer's earthly condition and longing for freedomin the next world2. Literature in Written Form• A. Poetry:–religious• B. Slave Narrative (奴隶叙事)–autobiographical records• C. Fiction–Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)：Uncle Tom‘s Cabin (1852) 《汤姆叔叔的小屋》–Mark Twain: The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn4. Three waves of Afro-American literature 美国黑人文学发展的三次高潮1. 1920s Harlem Renaissance–Langston Hughes 兰斯顿.休斯2. 1940s-1950s–Richard Wright 赖特Native Son 土生子–James Baldwin 鲍得温Go Tell It on the Mountain 《向苍天呼吁》–Ralph Ellison 艾里森Invisible Man 看不见的人3. 1970s-–Alice Walker沃克The Color Purple 紫色–Toni Morrison 莫里森（1993 Nobel Prize）•The Bluest Eye 最蓝的眼睛Beloved宠儿Ⅲ. 1920s Harlem Renaissance1. Harlem Renaissance,–an African American cultural movement–Time: 1920s and early 1930s–Location: Harlem neighborhood of New York City.–Representatives: Langston Hughes2. Social factors for the movement–the Great Migration;–an African American middle class;3. Features● a strong sense of racial pride and a desire for social and political equality;●the diversity of its expression—Langston Hughes’s weaving of the rhythms of African American music into his poems of ghetto少数民族的集中住宅区life, as in The Weary Blues (1926).4. Significance●African American arts attracted significant attention from the nation at large.●African American artists and writers used culture instead of direct politicalmeans to work for the goals of civil rights and equality.Ⅳ. Langston Hughes (1902-1967)1. Contribution:⏹One of the first black authors, who could support himself by writing⏹One of the leading voices in the Harlem Renaissance of 1920s 哈莱姆桂冠诗人2. Literary Style•two modes of his poetry:–lyrics about black life•using rhythms and refrains叠句from jazz and blues;–poems of racial protest;•Subjects: from black life and racial theme;•Style: utter directness and simplicity, with simple stanza patterns, short lines;•3. The Negro Speaks of Rivers《黑人谈河》1) BackgroundHughes wrote the poem while on a train ride to Mexico, where he would live with his father for one year. When his train crossed the Mississippi River, Hughes was inspired by its beauty and was also reminded of its role in sustaining slavery in America. The sun was setting, and Hughes had a long journey ahead of him. He took out a letter his father had written him and wrote this poem on the back of its pages.2) Symbolism--The riversRivers deepen their beds by cutting channels through earth and rock. Black men and women deepen their knowledge, wisdom and character by persevering through trials and tribulations苦难. Their experiences build a collective consciousness that flows, like a river, from one generation to the next.3) Themes Wisdom and Experience—The Negroid race is a race with deep wisdom and experience accumulated since the dawn of human existence.Pride—Black men and women have a proud cultural history and record of accomplishment against adversity.Perseverance —In spite of suffering inflicted on them, black men and women have endured through the ages, never giving up.。
