Early Romantic Literature
The emergence of real literary works began at the beginning of 19 century. After the victory of the War of Independence, the intellectual elites were often puzzled by the short history of the United States. Washington irving, known as the founder of American romantic literature, wrote The History of new york in 1809, which solved this problem. The character described in the book-father Mr. Crick Polk-became the first mythical hero in American history. In Ripper's Dream and the Legend of Sleepless Valley, Owen tells many legendary stories of the past in the United States and creates many unforgettable characters. Owen once pointed out affectionately in his Notes on European Travel and Columbus Legends and Historical Stories Alhambra that American writers should not only remain patriots, but also be limited to painting from American soil.
Owen's Roaming on the Grassland shows his interest in creating western literature. This is the literary creation field of his new york colleague James Fenimo Cooper. Cooper's novel The Spy describes an exciting spy story in new york during the Revolution of Independence, but Cooper didn't formally write as a writer until the publication of The Pioneers. Pioneers is the first of five romantic works that make up the story of leather socks. Cooper's conception skills surpassed Owen's. In The Pioneers, he described the legendary forest hunter Nadi Bambo. Bambo later became a ranger, bear hunter and cowboy pioneer of all heroes in American novels and movies. The Last Moxigan Man, Grassland, Pathfinder and Deerslayer trace Bambo's experience from the first warm-blooded man to his later years in the western plain. The Story of Leather Socks regulates the value conflict between nature and civilization-reveals the lack of civilization. In other works, such as American Democrats, Cooper continues to examine American civilization in a more straightforward way.
/kloc-in the first half of the 0/9th century, American territory continued to expand westward. However, in the northeastern states, that is, the "New England" region, the preaching of the early Puritans still has a strong influence, and the writer's writing style still cannot get rid of the imitation of English literature. In order to pursue the depth of thought and express the spiritual world of bourgeois liberalism and individualism, writers in New England established two literary communes, Brooke Farm and Flower Orchard, and formed the so-called Transcendentalism Club, seeking to get rid of the influence of English literature on American literature. Ralph Waldo Emerson is the most influential writer in this period. 1836, Emerson published a book on nature, which was deeply shocked. In this book, he pointed out that people do not need to rely on traditional religion, but can reach a higher spiritual realm by studying and responding to nature with great concentration. A group of intellectuals who were very dissatisfied with the environment in New England quickly gathered around Emerson. They accepted Emerson's spiritual transcendentalism and were called "transcendentalists" by the world. Henry david thoreau is an active follower of Emerson.
Thoreau followed the traditional American values, advocated individual independence, advocated self-study and independent thinking, and firmly believed that people should go to nature to find the truth of life. In order to realize his ideal, Thoreau retired from his humble hut by Walden Lake, isolated himself from the world, thought behind closed doors and worked alone. He lived a simple life here for two years, where he could only maintain a basic existence. Thoreau's book Walden Lake or Life in the Woods, published in 1854, truly records Thoreau's life experience in these two years. Few people describe life close to nature as charming as Thoreau. Thoreau's many views on the role of individuals in society can be summarized in one sentence-the domination of personal conscience should be higher than the requirements of society. Today, these views are still refreshing.
1837, a young writer named nathaniel hawthorne in New England published a collection of stories, Restatement of Stories, which was full of symbolic expressions and grotesque events. Hawthorne disagreed with transcendentalists and criticized the traditional view of life in New England. His novels are full of romantic imagination. Hawthorne believes that novel creation should not necessarily be rooted in real life, but should explore moral fields such as sin, arrogance and passion expression.
Hawthorne's works had a great influence on his best friend, another American writer, herman melville. Melville's rich father went bankrupt for various reasons, so he did a lot of work. Later, 1839, he became an officer on a sea ship and began a series of sea voyages. A few years later, Melville wrote several well-known literary works based on his adventures on the high seas and what he saw and heard in foreign ports. However, Melville was not satisfied. He hoped to follow Hawthorne's example and write more serious literary works, and began to write literary works mainly involving politics and religion, but readers were not interested in these works. In the following years, Melville wrote almost no other works except some poems. Ironically, the book that was not accepted by people when he was alive is the most respected work today. Moby Dick, published in 1852, not only tells the story of chasing a whale fish that escaped from the net, but also reveals the fate of human beings and the conflict between nature and evil, eulogizing the persistent struggle spirit of human beings to explore the mysteries of the universe. This work is recognized as a masterpiece in the history of American literature.
While intellectuals in New England are stating their own literary views and personal attitudes towards life, writers in other regions are focusing on human imagination and people's enthusiasm for life. Edgar allan poe's poems not only have extraordinary images, but also have a sense of music. His poetry works make him on par with European romantic poets. Representative novels include The Red Death Masquerade and The Collapse of Nisher Mansion. These novels are characterized by mystery and grotesque, full of horror and suspense.
After years of efforts by many writers, American literature has established its position in the world literary world. 1In the 1950s, a voice truly representing the United States appeared in the American literary world. This voice enthusiastically praised the hardworking and brave American people, colorful American scenery and democratic and free American political system. The representative figure of this kind of voice is walt whitman. 1855, Whitman's epoch-making book Leaves of Grass was published. In the form of free-flowing poems and irregular long and short sentences, this collection of poems enthusiastically praises the United States and the American people, which makes readers strongly shocked. Whitman boldly broke through the traditional creative form in order to have more space to express the American spirit.
Emily Dickinson, another contemporary poetess of Whitman, was little known before her death, but became famous after her death. Emily Dickinson lived a quiet and lonely life in her parents' manor outside amherst, Massachusetts. She left more than 1500 poems in her life, but only two poems were copied and published by her friends before her death. Her poems are exquisite and unconventional, deliberately exploring people's inner world; Her imagination gave her wings of fantasy, and imaginary distant foreign names can be seen everywhere in her poems. On the other hand, she poeticizes the things that are close at hand-the broken plates on the shelf of the restaurant or the buzzing of bees in the garden. She is obsessed with life, but a little obsessed with death. Of the 1500 poems she wrote, more than 600 were related to death. Most of her poems are short and pithy, rarely exceeding 65,438+02 lines or 65,438+05 lines, but she resorted to a strange emotional impulse in this narrow poetic space.
At the same time, with the upsurge of the abolitionist movement, abolitionist literature rose in the American literary world. The first American abolitionist novel was Slave published by Richard Hildreth in 1836. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin published in 1852 had the greatest influence on abolitionist literature. This book has the characteristics of sadness and melodrama, portraying black slaves as suffering and sympathetic characters, and Simon Raggelli as a cruel slave owner. With the publication of this bestseller, the issue of slavery in the South has become the focus of American political life. In order to maintain their lifestyle of plantation economy based on slave labor, the southern slave owners decided to leave the Federation and establish their own independent country. This led to the outbreak of the American Civil War (186 1- 1865), forcing the north to use force to safeguard national unity. The civil war ended in the complete failure of the South, and slavery was abolished in the United States. Uncle Tom's Cabin had such a great influence on American society at that time that abraham lincoln called Mrs. Stowe the little woman who caused the civil war.
After World War II
In 1950s, under the background of "Cold War", McCarthyism and Korean War, the literary world tended to be silent. In the 1970s, after the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the student movement, the feminist movement and the Watergate incident, the literary world became active and a number of thoughtful writers appeared. In their eyes, American society has become very complicated and its values are chaotic. They generally feel that they don't know how to explain this reality, so they reproduce the chaos, terror and madness in their lives through grotesque, fantastic and exaggerated ways. They showed a dream world without goals and directions. They tell fragmented stories and write "anti-heroes" or even incomplete images. There are also many descriptions of sex (including homosexuality) in literary works during this period; Explicit.
The first wave of war literature after the war was war novels. Among them, Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and james jones's From Here to Eternity are the best.
"Ten Years of Cowardice": In 1950s, the right-wing conservative forces attacked the radical tradition in 1930s, and many people turned from caring about social progress to caring about personal interests. This 10 year is called "the decade of cowardice" or "the decade of silence". During this period, some works appeared, which portrayed the bourgeoisie as a positive figure and advocated obedience to authority, such as The Man in Gray Flannel Clothes. This kind of works tried to maintain the established value standard and the existing social order, and soon lost its influence. On the other hand, writers such as arthur miller resisted McCarthyism and continued to attack social injustice with their works.
"Beat Generation": The dull political atmosphere in the 1950s suffocated many young people. They take drugs, live in groups and express their protest with a decadent and indulgent lifestyle. Some of them write this kind of life and emotion into literary works, which is the "Beat Generation" literature. After the development in 1960s, this kind of literature has added some political color under the background of the upsurge of domestic democratic movement. But for many of them, eastern religions and eastern philosophy are more attractive. The "Beat Generation" is more lively in poetry creation and restores the tradition of American poetry recitation.
"Black humor": After entering the 1960s, people have a deeper understanding of irrationality and alienation in life. In their works, some writers use exaggerated and surreal methods to mix joy and pain, absurdity and terror, tenderness and cruelty, absurdity and eccentricity and solemnity, which makes readers laugh and cry and feel uneasy, thus gaining a deeper understanding of life. The author's view of the world prospect is often pessimistic. This is "black humor" literature, and its representative works include Catch-22 by Heller (196 1). Some people classify Albee's works as "black humor". Albee is a representative figure of American absurd drama. There is nothing funny or humorous in his comedies, but it is consistent with "black humor" in making readers feel uneasy. This shows that there is a blood relationship between the absurd drama and the "black humor" novel.
"Non-fiction": In 1960s and 1970s, a new style of "new news report" or "non-fiction" appeared. Some writers think that the strangeness of real life is beyond their imagination. It is better to write a novel to describe the events that caused social sensation than to make fiction. This genre allows journalists to mix their own observation and imagination when describing events, and can also adopt various symbolic techniques. Such works are more profound and detailed than ordinary reportage, including the author's observation and imagination, and have the author's personal color and strong artistic appeal, such as Capote's Murder and Mailer's Song of the Executioner.
Jewish literature: Jewish writers occupy a considerable proportion among contemporary American writers, and Jewish literature can almost be regarded as a "subculture" or "cultural tributary". Jewish literary works generally have the dual colors of ancient European culture and modern American culture, and the conflict and integration of the two cultures increase the complexity of Jewish literature. Religious thoughts and the slaughter of compatriots make Jewish writers feel guilty, the fate of history makes them feel wandering and confused, and the alienated society in the United States makes them feel unable to find a home. Therefore, the search for "self-essence" has become a prominent theme in their works. The masterpiece is Bello's Adventures of Auggie March. In fact, this is a manifestation of the Jewish nation's establishment of national status and national dignity. At the end of 1970s, Bello, who represents a relatively new western ideological system, and Singer, who belongs to Yiddish cultural tradition, successively won the Nobel Prize, indicating the importance of Jewish literature in American literature. Other important Jewish writers include Malamud and Ross.
Black literature: Black literature became more mature after the war. Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man and Baldwin's prose have reached the level of first-class literature. They expressed their protest against racial inequality in a more subtle and profound way. They want people to realize that black people have all human nature. During this period, poetess Guan's poems were widely praised. Playwright Roland Huntsbury's drama "Raisins in the Sun" (1959) set a record for black drama on Broadway. Le Roy Jones is a new generation of black poets. He gave himself another Muslim name to show his contempt for American culture.
Southern writers: Southern literature is still developing during this period, and important works of old writers Faulkner, Potter and Verdi are still being published. New writers are constantly emerging, such as Stellen, O 'Connor and mccullers. They no longer look for themes from historical legends, but care about the spiritual depression of southerners in real life. Tan Williams is a famous southern playwright after the war. His works such as Glass Zoo express the misfortune and emptiness of life through the sexual perversion of characters.
New york writers: new york writers do not have the same psychological factors as southern writers. People put them together because they all contribute to several magazines in new york (Party Review, New York Book Review and new york People), and the reviews and novels published by these magazines often have an impact on the fashion of American literature. Leigh Trilling and Ma McCarthy are insightful critics. John Cheever and Updike's novels explore the psychology and consciousness of suburban residents in big cities with exquisite poetic and ironic brushstrokes, and paint exquisite genre paintings for the middle class in Northeast China.
Personalized Poetry: During this period, many schools of poetry appeared in America. These schools have their own opinions, but their similarities are all trying to get rid of Eliot's "impersonal" influence. The new generation of poets express their thoughts directly and highlight personal factors, which has a kind of "modernity". They emphasize American characteristics and no longer regard London as the center of English poetry; They interfere in politics and are no longer proud of being detached from things; They oppose authority and despise traditional rules. Their poems describe drug abuse, sex (including homosexual sex), schizophrenia and attachment to suicide. All this can be regarded as a rebellion against the mechanized, standardized and dehumanized society in the West. After the war between theory and criticism, the power of new criticism gradually declined. In the 1960s, with the rise and fall of various radical movements and the "new left" ideological trend from Europe, the academic circles re-studied Marxism, and the theoretical proposition of combining Marxism with Freudian psychology reappeared. At the same time, structuralism theory became popular in academic circles. During this period, the style of writers' biographies was relatively prosperous, and many detailed biographies appeared, among which the five-volume biography of Henry James written by Lee adil was more representative.
Physiocrats: a loose cultural group composed of modern American southern writers, also known as "escapists". 19 15 years, some relevant intellectuals of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee often get together to discuss literary and philosophical issues. The rally was once interrupted during World War I, and 19 19 resumed. Vanderbilt University teacher and poet John Crowe Lanson became the actual leader of this activity, and a group of talented young people gathered around him, such as poets Robert Pan Warren, alan tate Donald Davidson, novelist Andrew Nelson Wright and poet Morey Moore. From 1922 to 1925, they published a very influential literary magazine, Fugitives, from which came the word "Fugitive School".
Fugitives advocated maintaining the traditional literary egoism in the South and became the backbone of the "Southern Renaissance". 1930, 12 Southern writers, including Ranson, Warren, Tate, poet john fletcher, playwright Stark Younger, etc., wrote a monographic collection "I want to show my attitude". This book, regarded as the manifesto of "physiocrats", caused quite a stir in the society. The main purpose of these articles is to evaluate and criticize the modern American capitalist society with the agricultural society in South China as the yardstick. Since then, alan tate and others have edited and published the second collection of essays of the physiocrats, Who owns the United States? 》。
During the Great Depression in 1930s, the thought of attaching importance to agriculture had a great influence on southern intellectuals. This idea not only runs through the works of Ranson, Davidson, Tate, Warren and others, but also has a distinct embodiment in the novels of william faulkner, Caroline Gordon, Wright and eudora welty, which has formed a very strong cultural trend for a while, so that it is called the "physiocratic movement". 1935, Warren and Collins Brooks co-founded Southern Review; 1939, Lanson founded Kenyon Review, which became an important activity position for "physiocrats" writers. New criticism is an important school of modern American literary criticism, which is formed around these publications. Many members of the "New Criticism" are also the core figures of the "physiocrats".
The lost generation: a literary school that appeared in the United States after World War I. It is not an organized group with the same program. This word comes from gertrude stein, an American woman writer who lives in Paris. She once pointed to Hemingway and others and said, "You are all a lost generation." Hemingway took this sentence as the inscription of his novel The Sun Also Rises, so "The Generation of Fans" became the name of a literary school. The similarity of the "lost generation" writers is that they hate the imperialist war, but they can't find a way out. When World War I broke out, most of them were young people around the age of 20. They were bewitched by the slogan of "saving world democracy" of the American government and went to the European battlefield with democratic ideals. They witnessed the unprecedented massacre of mankind and found that war was far from their heroic cause. The so-called "democracy", "glory" and "sacrifice" are all deceptive things. They experienced all kinds of hardships in the war and learned about the anti-war sentiment among ordinary soldiers. This left an incurable wound in their hearts. Their works reflect these thoughts and feelings. For example, john dos passos's The Three Soldiers, Love Cummings' The Huge Room, william faulkner's The Reward of Soldiers and Sartor Rees. Ernest. Hemingway is the representative writer of the "lost generation". He fought in Europe and was seriously injured. Hemingway's attitude towards war at that time, like other anti-war writers, was limited to disgust, evasion and cursing. He had no hope for a peaceful life after the war, so he felt confused and pessimistic in his works. The "lost generation" not only refers to the writers who participated in the European War, but also refers to the writers who did not participate in the war in the 1920s, but were confused and hesitant about the future, such as Scott Fitzgerald, thomas eliot and Thomas Wolff. The "fan generation" mainly flourished in the1920s; After 1930s, their creative tendencies, including Hemingway, have changed.
A school of contemporary American poetry. In the early 1950s, Cha Olson, Luo Duncan, Luo Crilley and others who taught at Montenegro College in Massachusetts founded Montenegro Review, advocating "radial" poetry which was contrary to the traditional metrical style popular in the 1940s, and gradually formed a genre. Olson's radiant poetry (1950) expounds their main points. Olson believes that poetry is something that conveys the poet's "energy" to readers, so poetry is "energy structure" and "energy radiation"; It is necessary to replace the beat in the traditional poetic rhythm with "phrases" that conform to the breath; Form is only an extension of content; One idea must lead directly to another, so fast writing is advocated. Poets in Montenegro also advocate poetry recitation. They emphasized the spontaneity and colloquialism of poetry, adopted American colloquialism and buried language, and opposed the academic poetic style of Eliot and others. In the late 1950s, it merged with the Beat poets, which caused great repercussions.
The Beat Generation: A literary genre that appeared in the United States after World War II. The "beat youth" were dissatisfied with the reality of postwar American society and forced by the reactionary political pressure of McCarthyism, so they protested in a "refined" way. They wear strange clothes, despise traditional ideas, hate their studies and work, and wander at the bottom of society for a long time, forming a unique social circle and philosophy of life. In the early 1950s, their rebellious mood showed a tendency of "underground literature", which impacted the rule of conservative culture. Most of the beat writers come from the east. The famous ones are Jack Kerouac, allen ginsberg, William Barros and Gregory. Corzo, John Clarence Holmes, Samuel Kramer and gary snyder. 1950, Kerouac and Barros failed to write a detective novel together, but they each finished a beat novel Town and City (195 1) and Drug Addicts (1953). Inspired by this, Holmes reflected the life feelings of new york's "beat youth" more clearly in his novel Let's Go (1952), and advocated beat literature in The New York Times. However, this attempt was suppressed by the eastern academic forces, who went to the west to seek the same way and development base. At that time, there was a beat organization headed by Lawrence Lipton in West Venice, a suburb of Los Angeles. He published the novel The Holy Barbarian on 1955. In San Francisco, there are a group of anti-academic poets who are determined to engage in the Renaissance around Lawrence Foehlinger's "City Lights" bookstore. Their leader is Kenneth Rexroth, who later became a "Beat Generation" theorist.
/kloc-in the summer of 0/955, the "beat literati" and anti-academic poets (including San Francisco poets and Montenegro poets) jointly held a poetry reading meeting in San Francisco, and the beat literary works became popular from then on. At the meeting, Ginsburg recited his long poem "Howl", which was known as "the wasteland of 1950s". This poem expresses the pain and self-abandonment of "my generation elite" with the wail of resentment, and denounces the militarized and commercialized society under the rule of "Morlock". 1956, his poems were published, which caused a sensation throughout the country. 1957, Kerouac's novel On the Road was published, which described the life of the beat elements wandering around and fascinated a large number of depressed young people, and was regarded as a "life textbook". After the publication of these two works, magazines such as Evergreen Review and Montenegro Review published special issues one after another and recommended them. Norman mailer's White Negro (1957), which is regarded as the declaration of American existentialism, and his defense of Barros' novels in the Boston trial in 1960, theoretically demonstrated the meaning of "broken literature". Commercial propaganda has made American youth accept the "broken" lifestyle, from jazz, swing dancing, smoking marijuana and sexual indulgence to attending Buddhist prayer and "backpack revolution" (referring to roaming), which has become a trend for a while.
The core of the "Beat School" philosophy of life is the survival of individuals in contemporary society. Holmes and Mailer borrowed the concept of European existentialism and advocated grasping themselves by satisfying sensory desires. Snyder and Rexroth absorbed the theory of Zen and faced the crisis of existence with nihilism. Politically, they flaunt themselves as "rebels without goals, agitators without slogans and revolutionaries without platforms". In terms of art, according to Rexroth's Divorce: The Art of the Beat Generation (1957), they are "characterized by total denial of elegant culture". Kerouac invented the writing method of "spontaneous prose" and Charles Olson's theory of "radiation poetry", which was widely sought after by "beat literati".
The "Beat Literature" movement, led by the above-mentioned artistic views, although short-lived and mixed with a lot of unhealthy factors, still left a certain influence in the history of American literature. A large number of "beat poems" have been circulated among young people for a long time because of their popularization and anti-symbolism tendency. As far as novels are concerned, Kerouac wrote a group of "novels on the road" by spontaneous expression, besides On the Road, there are Underground Man (1958), Damocles Tramp (1958) and Treaster Sa (1959). One of their characteristics is that they inherited the tradition of writing vagrancy in American literature initiated by Mark Twain's The Adventures of Hakberg Faith, and formed a model imitated by other novelists of the same age, in which the protagonist wandered around in order to escape the dirty environment and seek freedom and home. Another feature of them is that the protagonist openly talks about his situation and feelings and makes self-analysis. This "personal news style" technique has been greatly developed in the Indian era.
Barros's descriptions of atrocities, depravity, drug abuse and crime are second to none among the writers of the "Beat Generation". At the same time, he made bold experiments in language and novel form, and pieced together and changed the structure of the novel through "tailoring". His masterpiece "Naked Lunch" (1959) caused a harmonious lawsuit dispute because it reflected the underground life of "real hell". Later works, such as Nova Express (1964), Soft Machine (1966) and Explosive Train Tickets (1967), also adopted the method of mixing reality with dreams, which fully showed the author's cold sense of humor of hating society. Later, someone listed Barros as ".
Black humor: an important American literary school in the 1960s. 1In March, 965, Friedman compiled a collection of short stories, which included the works of 12 writers. The title was Black Humor, from which the word "black humor" came. It is one of the most representative schools of American novel creation in the 1960s. After entering the 1970s, the momentum of "black humor" was greatly reduced, but new works still appeared from time to time, which still had a far-reaching influence in American literature. Its main writers are joseph heller, Kurt Wernig, Thomas Pinchin, John Bass, James Poe's brother, Bruce Jay Friedman and Donald Basim.
Novelists with "black humor" highlight the absurdity of the world around the characters and the oppression of individuals by society, express the disharmony between the environment and individuals (that is, "self") with helpless irony, and amplify and distort this disharmony, making it more absurd and ridiculous, and at the same time making people feel heavy and depressed. Therefore, some critics refer to "black humor" as "humor under the gallows" or "humor before disaster". "Black humor" writers often create some eccentric "anti-heroes", and use their ridiculous words and deeds to insinuate social reality and express their views on social problems. In terms of description techniques, "black humor" writers also break the tradition, and the plot of the novel lacks logical connection. They often mix narrative real life with fantasy and memory, and mix serious philosophy with gag. For example, Heller's Catch-22, Pinchin's Gravitational Rainbow, and Wernig's First-class Breakfast. Some "black humor" novels laugh at the spiritual crisis of human beings, such as the tobacco agent in Bath and cabot Wright in Bodie.
As an aesthetic form, "black humor" belongs to the category of comedy, but it is also a kind of abnormal comedy with tragic color. The appearance of "black humor" is related to the turmoil in the United States in the 1960s. Absurd things and "comic" contradictions in contemporary capitalist society are not created by writers' subjective will, but reflect that kind of social life. Although this reflection has certain social significance and cognitive value, writers also attack all authorities, including the ruling class, but they emphasize that the social environment is difficult to change, so their works often reveal pessimism and despair.
O 'Neill is a monument in American history. His outstanding drama creation marks the maturity of American national drama and makes it catch up with the world level. O 'Neill's playwrights inherited the artistic styles of Strindberg and Ibsen, and combined traditional realism with modern expressionism to explore the bottom of human mind. The theme that the author pays most attention to in his life is the distortion of human personality under external pressure, and even the process of personality division. As a modern tragic writer, his many psychological tragedies are not only branded with modern psychoanalysis (especially Freudianism), but also heavily permeated with the tragic consciousness of ancient Greece. 1936, O 'Neill won the Nobel Prize in Literature, "because his plays reflect the charm, sincerity and deep passion of the traditional concept of tragedy".