1、Historical Background,The influence of WWI ： an economic boom a sudden jump in technology The breakdown of old moral values bobbed hair, short skirts, women drinking and smoking a tremendous disillusionment,The 20th Century American Literature (1900-1910s),Nothing had changed. There was a popular co
2、ntempt for the lawthe prohibition of alcohol, bootleggers, etc. The dream had failed and the country was building up economic troubles toward disaster. A loss of faith began with Darwins theories of evolution. Without faith man could no longer keep his feeling and thought whole; hence a sense of lif
3、e being fragmented and chaotic. Without faith, man no longer felt secure and happy; hence the feeling of gloom and despair.,Bertrand Russell, commented on the spirit of the periodMan must not expect any help from a beneficent God. Man must recognize that he is of no importance in such a world - Noth
4、ing can preserve an individual life beyond the grave. Death will doom all human endeavors and achievements to ultimate extinction. He advises man to believe in himself, to face life with “a despairing courage”.,Imagism,Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored p
5、recision of imagery and clear, sharp language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry.,Literary Sources of Imagism,The Imagist Movement drew from a variety of poetic traditionsGreek, Provencal, Japanese and Chinese poetry. The ideographic
6、 and pictographic nature of Chinese language, and virile laconism and austere pregnancy which characterize ancient Chinese poetry fascinated the Imagists.,three major phases,19081909 An Englishman, T. E. Hulme, founded a Poets Club in 1908, which met in Soho every Wednesday evening to discuss poetry
7、. He believed that the most effective means to express the momentary impressions is through “the use of one dominant image”. 19121914 Ezra Pound took over the movement. In 1912, they published a collection of poems, entitled Des Imagistes, in which a manifesto came into being. a. Direct treatment of
8、 the “thing”, whether subjective or objective; b. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation; c. As regarding rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome. 19141917 Amy Lowell took over the movement and developed it into “Am
9、ygism”. In 1915, 1916, 1917, three volumes of Some Imagist Poets came out, containing six principles based on the original three. After 1917, Imagism ceased to be a movement.,Features of Imagism,To use the language of common speech, but to employ the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely
10、decorative word. We believe that the individuality of a poet may often be better expressed in free verse than in conventional forms. In poetry, a new cadence means a new idea. Absolute freedom in the choice of subject.,Features of Imagism,4. To present an image. We are not a school of painters, but
11、we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous. It is for this reason that we oppose the cosmic poet, who seems to us to shirk the real difficulties of his art. 5. To produce a poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred
12、 nor indefinite. 6. Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence of poetry.,In a Station of the Metro,a classic specimen of Imagist poetry the use of one dominant image to represent what he was experiencing apparition: appearance, something which shows up; something which is
13、 not real and which cannot be clearly observed influence from ancient Chinese poetry (长恨歌: “玉容寂寞泪阑干，梨花一枝春带雨.”),(1910s-1940s),1920s A time of carefree prosperity, isolated from the worlds problems, bewildering social change, a feverish pursuit of pleasure, selfish frivolity, abandonment of social cus
14、toms.,American Literature Between the Wars,Industrialization and urbanization. Womens liberation. Mass media and luxuries. A sense of disillusionment.,Young people took part in the War with great enthusiasm, believing this war will end all wars. However, they saw at last their ideals for a better wo
15、rld was bargained away for power and profit. People began to question politics and government.,All these helped to turn the US into a greedily consuming society. People lived beyond their means, gambling and making profits illegally. By 1920s, modernism became part of everyday vocabulary of the Amer
16、icans.T. S. Eliots The Waste Land (1922), disclosing the spiritual wasteland of modern people, established the modern tradition in the American literary scene.,The Lost Generation,The “Lost Generation” is a term used to refer to the generation, actually an age cohort, that came of age during World W
17、ar I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to Gertrude Stein, who was then his mentor and patron.,The term originated with Gertrude Stein who, after being unimpresse
18、d by the skills of a young car mechanic, asked the garage owner where the young man had been trained. The garage owner told her that while young men were easy to train, it was those in their mid-twenties to thirties, the men who had been through World War I, who he considered a “lost generation” une
19、 gnration perdue.,It refers to his generation, those who were members of the age classes called to duty in the “Great War”. This generation included distinguished artists such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, Waldo Peirce, Alan Seeger, and, Erich Maria Remarque.
20、 It has alternately been used to describe the generation which participated in the Cultural Revolution in China.,In Britain the term was originally used for those who died in the war, and often implicitly referred to upper-class casualties who were perceived to have died disproportionately, robbing
21、the country of a future elite. Many felt “that the flower of youth and the best of the nation had been destroyed”,Disillusioned by the War and disgusted about the society, many intellectuals and young people fled to Europe, standing aside and writing about what they saw the failure of communication
22、among Americans and the failure of the American society. They believed that the American bourgeois society was hypocritical, vulgar and crude, concerning only with making money. It was a society where individual thought and individual expression were crushed. They were looking forward for a complete
23、 change.,1930s,A time of poverty, unemployment, bleakness, important social movements, a new social consciousness and social upheaval.,1. The Crash,The collapse of the Stock Market in 1929 brought about an abrupt end to the prosperity in the previous decade. Workers were unemployed, thinking of orga
24、nizing and wresting power away from the bosses; whereas the farmers were driven off the land by drought and debts. By 1933, America was close to economic collapse.,2. The New Deal.,Thanks to Franklin Roosevelt who launched the New Deal, improvements were seen again and a lot of changes to benefit pe
25、ople were discovered.,3. The Leftists,The expatriates came back from Paris, taking an active part in political agitation and social improvements. They spoke on behalf of the oppressed and the suffering people, looking to Russia as an example of a better, more secure social system. They hoped that th
26、eir writing would play a decisive role in bringing about social changes. Therefore, they advocated new ways of writing and reforms in language. Unfortunately, after the joint Russo-German invasion of Poland, the country was soon swept into WWII.,It is said that people in the 1920s believed in everyt
27、hing, people in the 1930s believed in one thing, and people in the 1940s believed in nothing.,Robert Frost ( 1874-1963 ),born in San Francisco, but known as a New England poet. entered Dartmouth College, but soon left; later on he tried college again at Harvard, but left at the end of two years, bea
28、ring an enduring dislike for academic convention. lived by farming and writing poetry. He used to say he was one and a half mena half teacher, a half farmer, and a half poet. It took 20 years for him to get recognition. He later received honorary degrees from 44 colleges and universities, won the Pu
29、litzer Prize four times, and was invited to read his poem at the inauguration of President J. F. Kennedy in 1961.,other collections of poems,North of Boston Mountain Interval , 1916 New Hampshire , 1923, Pulitzer Prize winner Collected Poems , 1930, Pulitzer Prize winner A Further Range , 1937, Puli
30、tzer Prize winner A Witness Tree , 1942, Pulitzer Prize winner Complete Poems , 1949 In the Clearing , 1962,Features of his poetry,Frost depicts mostly New England landscape, but his poetry reflects the fragmentation of modern experience and alienation among modern men. The world of Frost can be app
31、alling and terrifying. However, Frost had a lovers quarrel with the world. He is concerned with constructing “a momentary stay against confusion”.,Features of his poetry,He wrote in Wordsworthian style plain speech of rural New Englanders, short traditional forms of lyric and narrative. He used symb
32、ols from everyday country life to express his deep ideas.,Features of his poetry,He had a lot of Emerson in him, seeing nature as a storehouse of analogy and symbol. In his probing into the mysteries of darkness and the indifferent universe, we see a great moral uncertainty. What he was doing was to
33、 explore the complexity of human existence through treating seemingly trivial subjects.,Ernest Hemingway ( 1899-1961 ),born in Oak park, Illinois tried to join the Army, but was rejected because of his bad eye which was injured when he learned boxing. volunteered as an ambulance driver in France, th
34、en a soldier in the Italian infantry. He was badly wounded and fell in love with a Red Cross nurse who refused his proposal. married his first wife in Chicago, then sailed to France, working as a correspondent for the Canadian Toronto Star. There he was introduced by Sherwood Anderson to Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound. During these years he wrote a lot and became a chief spokesman for the Lost Generation.,
