Statute of VIrginia (закона штата вирджиния)

Brian O'Nolan (1911 – 1966)

 

6. Роман-антиутопия в творчестве Дж. Оруэлла.

 

George Orwell (Eric Blair) (1903 – 1950)

Eric Blair was born in 1903 in Motihari (Bihar, India) in the then British colony of India, where his father, Richard, worked for the Opium Department of the Civil Service. After finishing his studies at Eton, having no prospect of gaining a university scholarship and his family's means being insufficient to pay his tuition, Eric joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma (Myanmar). He resigned and returned to England in 1928 having grown to hate imperialism (as shown by his first novel Burmese Days, published in 1934, and by such essays as 'A Hanging', and 'Shooting an Elephant'). He adopted his pen name in 1933, while writing for the New Adelphi. He chose a pen name that stressed his deep, lifelong affection for the English tradition and countryside: George is the patron saint of England (and George V was monarch at the time), while the River Orwell in Suffolk was one of his most beloved English sites.

Soon after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Orwell volunteered to fight for the Republicans against Franco's Nationalist uprising. As a sympathiser of the Independent Labour Party (of which he became a member in 1938), he joined the militia of its sister party in Spain, the non-Stalinist far-left POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), in which he fought as an infantryman.

In 1944 Orwell finished his anti-Stalinist allegory Animal Farm, an allegory of the corruption of the socialist ideals of the Russian Revolution by Stalinism, and the latter is Orwell's prophetic vision of the results of totalitarianism.

In 1949 his best-known work, the dystopian Nineteen Eighty-Four, was published.

 

Orwell is also known for his insights about the political implications of the use of language. In the essay "Politics and the English Language", he decries the effects of cliche, bureaucratic euphemism, and academic jargon on literary styles, and ultimately on thought itself. Orwell's concern over the power of language to shape reality is also reflected in his invention of Newspeak, the official language of the imaginary country of Oceania in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Newspeak is a variant of English in which vocabulary is strictly limited by government fiat. The goal is to make it increasingly difficult to express ideas that contradict the official line - with the final aim of making it impossible even to conceive such ideas. (cf. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis). A number of words and phrases that Orwell coined in Nineteen Eighty-Four have entered the standard vocabulary, such as "memory hole," (дырка в памяти) "Big Brother," (диктатор) "Room 101," (комната пыток) "doublethink," (двоемыслие) "thought police,"(полиция нравов) and "newspeak" (новояз - пропагандистский язык, предельно сужающий возможности выразить что-л., выходящее за пределы узкого круга навязанных носителю идей).

Fiction

· 1933 – Down and Out in Paris and London

· 1934 – Burmese Days

· 1935 – A Clergyman's Daughter

· 1936 – Keep the Aspidistra Flying

· 1939 – Coming Up for Air

· 1945 – Animal Farm

· 1949 – Nineteen Eighty-Four

Non-Fiction

· 1937 – The Road to Wigan Pier

· 1938 – Homage to Catalonia

 

In the book 1984 By George Orwell, Winston Smith, the protagonist, lives in a world where the government attempts to control the bodies and minds of the civilians. He and Julia, a woman he meets about mid-novel, together hold to the belief that the party can never take away their love towards each other, and hatred towards the omnipotent government. However, in the end, the two are proven wrong when they are captured, taken to the Ministry of Love, and physically and mentally tortured. The party succeeds in molding their minds and, after Winston comes back to his dull life, he professes his love towards Big Brother and betrays Julia by ceasing to love her. Many readers of Orwell's novel are angered by this ending because it shows them how easily they can let the government manipulate and control their minds which undermines their ability to think for themselves. However, this point is necessary to the work because it is the final contribution to Orwell's message of the dangers of a totalitarianism authority.

 

Персонажи: Winston Smith, Julia, O’Brien, Emmanuel Goldstein, secondary characters

Места: Oceania (Australia and New Zeland), Eurasia and Eastasia (China, India, Indonesia)

Министерства: Ministry of Love, Ministry of Peace, Ministry of Plenty, Ministry of Truth, Room 101

Группы: Outer and Inner Party, Proles, The Brotherhood, Thought Police

Концепты: Newspeak, Doublethink, Two + two = five, Thoughtcrime, Telescreen, Memory hole, Goldstein's book, Two Minutes Hate, Hate week, Prolefeed, Unperson, Ingsoc

 

 

7. Э. Берджес и его роман «Заводной апельсин».

 

DYSTOPIA - an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad. The opposite of Utopia.

 

Anthony Burgess (1917 – 1993)

 

Satiric anti-utopia

A Clockwork Orange (1962) deals with violence, illustrated in a long line of incidents. A short (150-page) novel, it is written in the first person, narrated by Alex (anti-hero), a terrifyingly violent teenager. The atmosphere of killing, blood and assaults is so exacerbated, the characters’ language is so full of Russian influences (so many Russian words, adapted to English=слэнг Надсат; написаны латиницей).

What are the most important parts of the book are the ethic question of human essence and experimental language based on a fictional slang. The title is adapted from a piece of slang as well. It is a part of a Cockney expression as queer as a clockwork orange, which could, but not necessarily, be a sexual allusion to homosexuality.

The book has three untitled parts, of which each contains seven numerated chapters. Each chapter starts with the same utterance What is going to be then, eh? This repeats during the whole book many times and expresses the idea that, in spite of the effort not to be, Alex ́s and his friends ́ life is monotonous and empty as their parents ́. In fact, drugs and violence every day could become the same monotonous after some time as going to work.

The novel is set in unspecified time in future and in unspecified metropolitan city. A reader only knows that it happens after the Second World War and after 1960 ́s, which are the only two time references in the book. The indefinite setting emphasises timelessness, a possibility than it could happen at any time. Moreover, according to Burgess ́ attitude, this phase of human existence regularly repeats without end.

Characters are not described in detail. There are only few remarks. Other members of the band, Pete, Georgie and Dim, are described as a group with typical image inspired by the subculture of the fifties and sixties. The narrator, Alex, is also the protagonist. He is violent but witty, honestly, unlike his friends, and considers himself to be the leader of the group, which afterwards leads to a conflict with his three companions.

 

8. Творчество У.Голдинга.

 

9. Творчество Дж.Фаулза.

 

10. Магический реализм в творчестве С. Рашди.

 

11. Философские романы А. Мердок.

 

12. Драматургия 2 пол. 20 века: С.Беккет, Г. Пинтер.

 

13. Поэзия 20в. Ф.Ларкин, Э.Э. Каммингс

 

14. История Великобритании в творчестве Дж.Барнса, П.Акройда.

 

США

15. Просветительская литература США 18 века.

 

The American Enlightenment

The Enlightenment took root in Europe in the 1600’s and 1700’s. It influenced governments, economies and entire cultures. With the increasing use of the printing press, the ideas of John Locke and Baron de Montesquieu, as well as others, traveled across the Atlantic Ocean and into the hands of men such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The Enlightenment shaped the justification for independence as set down in the famous “Declaration of Independence”.

Thomas Jefferson (1743 –1826) believed in the Enlightenment idea of natural rights, and we can see their influence in Declaration of Independence.

AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE (ДЕКЛАРАЦИИ 
 НЕЗАВИСИМОСТИ АМЕРИКИ) (1776)

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA (УНИВЕРСИТЕТА ВИРДЖИНИИ)

Genres

Poe's best known fiction works are Gothic. His most recurring themes deal with questions of death, including its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning.

Many of his works are generally considered part of the dark romanticism genre, a literary reaction to transcendentalism, which Poe strongly disliked.

Dark Romanticism (often conflated with Gothicism or called American Romanticism) is a literary subgenre.^[1] It has been suggested that Dark Romantics present individuals as prone to sin and self-destruction. Works of Dark Romanticism frequently show individuals failing in their attempts to make changes for the better.

Beyond horror, Poe also wrote satires, humor tales, and hoaxes (leg-pulls). For comic effect, he used irony and ludicrous extravagance, often in an attempt to liberate the reader from cultural conformity.

Examples of Poe’s use of mysterious writing are the tactic of using vagueness and lack of detail especially concerning time and space. By doing this, Poe keeps the readers guessing and asking questions which keeps them reading.

 

Poe achieves an aesthetic, or artistic, impression in his writings. Poe manages this by creating what he terms the "Philosophy of Composition."

Poe's "Philosophy of Composition" is basically a guideline that he created to determine what separates "art" from "fiction." According to this guideline, Poe believes the author must decide the purpose of the work, and the desired reaction from the reader. Secondly, Poe asserts the author can find ways to achieve this result by considering the theme, the plot, the setting, and the characters as well as the central conflicts within the story.

Poe's "Philosophy of Composition" can be applied to several of his works. Following this theory, when examining a piece of literature, the reader should first consider the author's intent. Understanding Poe's history, it is easy for the reader to understand that Poe's dark, Gothic roots could have been planted early in childhood. Secondly, the reader should thoroughly examine the plot, characters, setting and theme to find ways the author accomplishes the intended goals. Careful examination of word choice, theme, setting and character conflicts will reveal the ways in which Poe attains his literary goals.

Ruins and destruction are common elements of Gothic literature which help paint the picture of a terrifying setting for the reader.

Poe's "Philosophy of Composition" helped him follow guidelines to create aesthetic fiction. Aesthetic fiction paints a picture for the reader instead of merely tells the story. Anyone can tell a story, it takes remarkable talent to aesthetically illustrate the story to the imagination of millions of readers using limited tools-- tools like plot, setting, theme, characters and conflicts. Poe aesthetically shows many readers why they should be afraid rather than merely telling them to be afraid.

По часто повторял, что удел поэзии – воплощать прекрасное. Под прекрасным он подразумевал порядок, соразмерность и гармонию. Всякая диспропорция, отсутствие чувства меры, в том числе и пафос, им отвергались. Любовь к гармонии и отвращение к хаосу, полагал Э. По, были дарованы человеку самой природой. В его стихах царит пропорция, тождество, повтор, причем ритм, рифма, размер и строка – лишь форма выражения идеи равенства. Отсюда его приемы звуковой организации стиха: акцентировка ритма, аллитерация, ассонанс, внутренняя рифма, синтаксические повторы. Все эти приемы, связанные в одно целое, образуют законченную систему, определяющую особенности творческой манеры поэта.

Давно уже замечено, что монотонный скандирующий ритм многих поздних стихотворений, и, в частности, “Ворона”, оказывает завораживающее, близкое к гипнотическому воздействие на читателя. Такое воздействие позднее стали называть суггестивным, то есть основанным на внушении. Именно этот прием принес необыкновенную славу “Ворону”.

 

18. Разработка жанра исторического и приключенческого романа: Д.Ф.Купер

 

A novel is a long prose narrative that describes fictional characters and events in the form of a sequential story, usually.

historical novel is "a novel that has as its setting a usually significant period of history and that attempts to convey the spirit, manners, and social conditions of a past age with realistic details and fidelity (which is in some cases only apparent fidelity) to historical fact. The work may deal with actual historical characters...or it may contain a mixture of fictional and historical characters.

Adventure fiction is a genre of fiction in which an adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, forms the main storyline.

James Fenimore Cooper, (born September 15, 1789, Burlington, New Jersey, U.S.—died September 14, 1851, Cooperstown, New York), first major American novelist, author of the novels of frontier adventure known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring the wilderness scout called Natty Bumppo, or Hawkeye. They include The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841).

This novel introduces Natty Bumppo as "Deerslayer", a young frontiersman in early 18th-century New York. He is contrasted to other frontiersmen and settlers in the novel who have no compunctions in taking scalps in that his natural philosophy is that every living thing should follow "the gifts" of its nature—which would keep European Americans from taking scalps. Two such characters in the work who actually seek to take scalps are Henry March ("Hurry Harry") and floating Tom Hutter.

In the dead of night Hutter and March sneak into the camp of the besieging members of the Huron tribe in order to kill and scalp as many as they can. Their plan fails, and Tom Hutter and March are captured. They are later ransomed by Bumppo, his lifelong friend Chingachgook (the Delaware word for great Serpent), and Hutter's daughters, Judith and Hetty. Bumppo and Chingachgook come up with a plan to rescue Chingachgook's kidnappedbetrothed Wah-ta!-Wah from the Hurons; but, in rescuing her, Bumppo is captured. In his absence, the Hurons invade Hutter's home, and Hutter is mortally wounded and scalped. After the death of Hutter his supposed daughters find out that they were not his natural daughters and he had been a notorious pirate. Bumppo's remaining allies and friends plan how to aid his escape from his Huron captors. (1744 год^[1]. Случайно встретившись, два совершенно разных человека, Гарри Марч по прозвищу Непоседа и юный охотник Натти Бампо по прозвищу Зверобой, направляются к озеру под названиемМерцающее зеркало. Зверобой должен помочь своему другу могиканину Чингачгуку вырвать из рукгуронов его возлюбленную Уа-та-Уа, а Гарри безуспешно добивается сердца красавицы Джудит Хаттер, живущей на озере вместе с сестрой Хетти и пожилым отцом^[2] Томасом.

В ходе столкновений с племенем гуронов Зверобой получает новое прозвище Соколиный глаз, Чингачгук освобождает Уа-та-Уа, Хетти Хаттер погибает от шальной пули, Томас Хаттер заживо лишается скальпа, а отряд гуронов практически полностью уничтожен.)

At the height of his fame in the early nineteenth century, James Fenimore Cooper was America's foremost novelist and one of the most successful writers in the world. Building on the example of the British novelist Sir Walter Scott, Cooper wrote the first American historical novels and in the process made subjects such as Native Americans, the western wilderness, and the democratic political system compelling and popular topics for fiction.

Cooper was raised in Cooperstown, the village his father founded in the forests of upstate New York. His third novel, The Pioneers, is closely based on his memories of growing up in this frontier community.

In 1820, Cooper changed the course of his life when he wrote his first work of fiction, Precaution, a conventional novel of manners set in England. Despite his initial offhand attitude toward writing, Cooper took the American Revolution as the subject for his second book and composed the first important American historical novel, The Spy (1821). It met with enormous critical and financial success.

In 1823 Cooper published The Pioneers, the first of his five Leather-Stocking novels and the most autobiographical of his books. In it he introduced Natty Bumppo (known as the "Leather-Stocking"), who seized the American imagination as the independent backwoods hunter and friend to the Indians. Figured as a sort of personification of the American wilderness, Natty helped construct the mythology of the frontier and fuel American nostalgia for an idealized past before "civilization" intruded into the woods. Cooper followed The Pioneers with other successful novels, including The Last of the Mohicans, which chronicles Natty's adventures in upstate New York during the French and Indian War of 1754-63.

The Pioneers: The Sources of the Susquehanna; a Descriptive Tale is a historical novel, the first published of the Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five novels by American writer James Fenimore Cooper.

Plot summary

The story takes place on the rapidly advancing frontier of New York State and features an elderly Leatherstocking (Natty Bumpo), Judge Marmaduke Temple of Templeton, whose life parallels that of the author's father Judge William Cooper, and Elizabeth Temple (based on the author's sister, Hannah Cooper), of the fictional Templeton, New York. The story begins with an argument between the Judge and Leatherstocking over who killed a buck, and as Cooper reviews many of the changes to New York's Lake Otsego, questions of environmental stewardship, conservation, and use prevail. Leatherstocking and his closest friend, the Mohican Indian Chingachgook, begin to compete with the Temples for the loyalties of a mysterious young visitor, a "young hunter" known as Oliver Edwards, who eventually marries Elizabeth. Chingachgook dies, exemplifying the vexed figure of the "dying Indian", and Natty vanishes into the sunset.

Naturalist Ideas: Although not classified as a naturalist novel, Cooper depicts many naturalist based ideas in the Pioneers. His use of language, dialogue and description help to convey this movement within this novel.

· Landscape: In The Pioneers, Cooper thematically debates the complexity of landscape within a new American frontier. The battle between nature and civilization is a constant and competing force within the minds of the characters and in the general surroundings. Cooper evaluates his landscape as one that will be established by a civilization unable to escape its own traits of wastefulness and arrogance.

Tone: Cooper’s tone in The Pioneers is one of criticism and mock towards Puritan society, “established society”. The dialogue of the settlers displays the carelessness of their society towards the wilderness. Through this Cooper mocks and belittles their society because of their attitudes. The whole scene in Chapter II (The Judge’s History of Settlement) is an over exaggerated depiction of the reactions of the settler’s to a falling tree and storm. The naivety of the settler’s is portrayed in their responses to their journey into the wilderness. Cooper’s mocking and critical tone is seen throughout the novel, and the natural wilderness versus a civilized society furthers this tone.

James Fenimore Cooper wrote some novels of sea adventure, and during his lifetime they were at least as famous as his stories of the frontier. It was not until about 1850 that America abandoned its longstanding tradition as a leading maritime nation, and turned its face inward to conquer the new frontiers of the American West.

Cooper's sea novels cover the world, and much of its history. They deal with naval warfare, piracy and privateering, and with the quieter if often as dangerous adventures of merchant ships.

 

19. Творчество Г. Мелвилла.

 

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American writer best known for the novel Moby-Dick.

Сюжет

Повествование ведётся от имени американского моряка Измаила, ушедшего в рейс на китобойном судне «Пекод», капитан которого, Ахав, одержим идеей мести гигантскому белому киту, убийце китобоев, известному как Моби Дик (в предыдущем плавании он откусил Ахаву ногу, и с тех пор капитан использует протез).

Ахав приказывает постоянно наблюдать за морем и обещает золотой дублон тому, кто первым заметит Моби Дика. На корабле начинают происходить зловещие события — капитан Ахав окончательно лишается рассудка. Вдобавок, выпав из лодки во время охоты на китов и проведя ночь на бочке в открытом море, сходит с ума и юнга корабля, мальчик Пип.

Тем временем корабль совершает кругосветное плавание. Несколько раз «Пекод» и его шлюпки почти нагоняют Моби Дика, попутно собирая большую добычу из обычных китов.

В конце концов «Пекод» настигает Моби Дика. Погоня продолжается три дня, за это время три раза команда корабля пытаются загарпунить Моби Дика, но он каждый день разбивает вельботы. На второй день умирает Федалла, который предсказал Ахаву, что он уйдет перед ним. На третий день корабль дрейфует невдалеке. Ахав бьёт гарпуном Моби Дика, запутывается в лине и тонет. Моби Дик полностью уничтожает лодки и их экипаж, кроме Измаила. От удара Моби Дика тонет и сам корабль вместе со всеми, кто на нём оставался.

Но погибают не все: пустой гроб (который заранее себе приготовил один из китобоев — простодушный дикарь Квикег — затем переоборудованный в спасательный буй), как пробка, всплывает рядом с Измаилом, и тот, схватившись за него, остаётся в живых. Через некоторое время его подбирает проплывавшее мимо судно «Рахиль».

Роман содержит множество отступлений от сюжетной линии. Параллельно развитию фабулы автор приводит множество сведений, так или иначе связанных с китами и китобойным промыслом, что делает роман своего рода «китовой энциклопедией». С другой стороны, Мелвилл перемежает такие главы рассуждениями, имеющими под практическим смыслом второе, символическое или аллегорическое, значение. Кроме того, он часто подшучивает над читателем, под видом поучительных историй рассказывая полуфантастические.

Moby Dick is a story told on three levels: 1. a magnificient adventure novel of the sea and whaling; 2. a novel of fantasy and symbolysm; 3. and a psychological novel, about man’s relationship to the universe.

Melville’s novel is a most extraordinary work including many literary types—sermons, drama, non-fiction. The author has contrasted a romance, a tragedy, and a natural history, not without numerous gratuitous suggestions on psychology, ethics, and theology, etc.—encyclopedic scope. A form that fits the national character.

Melville's last and best and most wildly imaginative story has influenced attitudes and beliefs on the destiny of man and has shown that there is more than one view of every object. It shows people that they need to be open-minded and examine things from more than perspective before passing judgment. One of Melville’s goals was of indicating man’s uncertainty in the universe. Melville also shows the reader about Man’s absolute insignificance in the universe. He represented objects with ideas and beliefs of deeper meaning. Throughout the book man’s insignificance in the universe is represented by the relationship of the crew to the ocean. It is also shown how a man’s decision, once executed, cannot be changed. Moby Dick is a significant piece of writing to every reader who is seeking to know more about man’s relation to the universe.

 

Romanticism is a type of writing in which the author describes nature. The author uses nature as a tool to express his thoughts, and make the story movement. Other aspects of romanticism are individuality, separating one from the rest of the civilization in order to increase emotional growth. There is an important focus in emotions, independence, and spirituality. It is believed that these aspects of life are natural, bringing out the creative and undistracted sides of humans. The visual arts are an important factor of romanticism as well, the authors making the reading as graphic as possible, leaving the reader to make his own imaginations of the environment described. Transcendentalism is a literary movement of the nineteenth century as well. The transcendentalists were based in New England, inspired by the romanticism movement. The believers thought that the intuition, emotion, individual conscience are more valid and believable then the left brain. An example of both of these terms, romanticism and transcendentalism, of Herman Melville’ writing is “Moby Dick”. The romantic side of the story is the nature. The man is out in the ocean, interacting with an animal, there are no distractions, and he is just out on his own. The main character learns information about himself. There is also the simplicity of the mind, which fits in categories, romanticism and transcendentalism. The man is away from rural and social distractions; he is simply using a piece of wood to live on as a boat. He is out in the nature, and any distractions that he will use are simple spiritual distractions. There is also a proof of simple transcendentalism in the book, regarding the intuitions. The main character is following his intuitions in the fight against nature: the whale. This action is the basis of transcendentalism.

 

20. Творчество У.Уитмена.

 

 

Walter "Walt" Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.

The American Romantics used symbols of the external world ("nature") as representative of of an invisible inner reality. Whitman's work has been grouped with these earlier Romantics since he sought to use natural imagery such as the sea, the road, or personified animals to signify spiritual dimensions of the self and of the world. Whitman's "Song of Myself" is the best example of this element of the work, as the poet attempts to relate the body to the soul, and the physical world to the spiritual.

Whitman's poetry is significant because it is an artistic embodiment of the ideals of democracy, freedom, and revolution; the ideals on which the United States was founded and for which it fought during the Civil War. He recognized that America undertook a unique democratic experiment, one which was not at all certain to succeed. Whitman's poetry, like America's politics, broke the established form and structure. It relied not on tradition but on innovation.

Whitman's poetry idealized traveling, searching, and exploring. This mirrored the American landscape of the nineteenth century. During Whitman's lifetime, the United State grew from 22 states to 44 and acquired most of the territories that would later become the remaining six states. America was a wilderness, and Whitman sought to celebrate what was wild and what was natural about the land and the people that inhabited it. As the country traveled West, so did Whitman's poetry. It was an attempt to encapsulate an American spirit that crossed a vast landscape and was common to all people in the nation.

The Lyric and the Epic

Leaves of Grass became as famous for its style as for its content when it was first published in the second half of the nineteenth century. Just as his content sought to correlate paradoxical themes, his style also attempted to combine varying understandings of the American poetic form. Specifically, Whitman sought to combine the lyric and the epic. Lyric poetry is traditionally a short poem of reflection. It expresses the thoughts, beliefs, or actions of the writers. The epic, on the other hand, is a celebration of the deeds and adventures of a hero. It often focuses on the physical and real as opposed to the internal.

To combine these two poetic forms, Whitman cast himself as the poem's epic hero. His journey became both a physical journey across the American landscape, and a spiritual journey through his own soul and through nature. As opposed to the epic tradition, Whitman cast himself as a commoner. His epic deeds, as well as the epic deeds of the American people, were not great displays of heroism but simple, common work which extolled the democratic virtue of the new nation.

 

Реформатор американской поэзии. В сборнике стихов «Листья травы» (1855—1891) идеи об очищающей человека близости к природе приняли космический характер; любой человек и любая вещь восприняты священными на фоне бесконечной во времени и пространстве эволюции Вселенной. Чувство родства со всеми людьми и всеми явлениями мира выражено посредством преображения лирического героя в других людей и неодушевлённые предметы. Уитмен — певец «мировой демократии», всемирного братства людей труда, позитивных наук, любви и товарищества, не знающих социальных границ. Новатор свободного стиха.

Его главную книгу «Листья травы» пронизала идея демократии. В XX веке «Листья травы» признаны одним из важнейших литературных событий, знаменовавших собой революцию в поэзии, связанную с появлением свободного стиха (верлибра), новаторской стиховой системы, пионером которой выступил Уитмен.

Предки поэта были выходцами из Голландии. Родился он 31 мая 1819 года, в бедной семье фермеров, в поселке на острове Лонг-Айленд недалеко от Бруклина (штат Нью-Йорк). В многодетной семье было девятеро детей, Уолт был старшим. С 1825 — 1830 учился в бруклинской школе, но из-за нехватки денег был вынужден оставить учебу. Он поменял множество профессий: посыльный, наборщик-укладчик, учитель, журналист, редактор провинциальных газет. Любил путешествовать, пешком прошел через 17 штатов.

С конца 30-х годов в журналах появляются статьи Уитмена, в которых он выступал против культа доллара, подчеркивал что деньги приводят к духовному опустошению.В литературную жизнь Америки пришел поздно.

В 1850 г. были напечатаны некоторые стихотворения поэта, - в частности «Европа». В этом произведении автор высказал свое восприятие истории, событий революции 1848 г., воспевал свободу.

Ранние стихотворения были лишь предвестниками рождения оригинального самобытного поэта, который смело заявил о себе в сборнике «Листья травы», первое издание которого вышло в Нью-Йорке в 1855 году. Этот год был значимым в творчестве поэта, он разделил его жизнь на два этапа — до сборника и после. Особенное место в структуре книги занимает «Песнь о себе», которая является одной из наиболее важных ее частей. Она как и весь сборник целиком — выражение поэтического кредо автора.

Листья травы (англ. Leaves of Grass) — поэтический сборник американского поэта Уолта Уитмена. Хотя первое издание было опубликовано в 1855 году, Уитман продолжал писать сборник на протяжении всей своей жизни и до своей смерти успел выпустить несколько изданий. Сборник известен своим восхвалением и восхищением чувствами во времена, когда такая прямолинейность считалась аморальной. Когда большая часть поэзии того времени была сфокусирована на символизме и аллегориях на духовные и религиозные темы, в «Листьях травы» (в особенности первое издание) восхвалялся телесный и материальный мир. Однако Уитман, по примеру Эмерсона, который в значительной степени повлиял на его поэзию, не преуменьшает значение разума и духа, а, скорее, возвышает человеческий разум и форму, считая и то, и другое достойным поэтического восхваления.

 

 

21. Критический реализм второй половины XIX века: Э.Диккенсон, Г.Б. Стоу.

 

Realism – (1865-1915) - Realism is the presentation in art of the details of actual life. Realism was also a literary movement that began during the nineteenth century and stressed the actual as opposed to the imagined or the fanciful. The Realists tried to write truthfully and objectively about ordinary characters in ordinary situations. They reacted against Romanticism, rejecting heroic, adventurous, unusual, or unfamiliar subjects. The Realists, in turn, were followed by the Naturalists, who traced the effects of heredity and environment on people helpless to change their situations. American realism grew from the work of local-color writers such as Bret Harte and Sarah Orne Jewett and is evident in the writings of major figures such as Mark Twain and Henry James.

CRITICAL REALISM

Critical Realism as a trend in American literature reached full development after the Civil War. But already before it writers and men of reason turned their thought to the material environment around them. The deep-going changes in the country, the new type of human relations that had come into being compelled them to see man as a product of his environment, to deal with actual facts and realities. Hitherto writers had built their stories around ideal individuals through which they portrayed their own personal emotions and reactions. This no longer satisfied the new generation of writers; they realized that the people must be represented as a whole, the life of the individual interlinked with that of other human beings. The highly critical realistic literature that came into being differed greatly from that of the previous generation represented by Irving, Cooper and Longfellow.
Critical Realism embraced all aspects of American life. Many of the old themes were the same but they were treated in a new light including that of love, and of the role of art and the artist in society. The romantic school had treated love as a refuge from the commonplace in practical
life; the realists used the theme to show up the immorality of bourgeois society which made love and marriage a matter of business. The romanticists understood the role of art and the artist merely as a great power which could conjure up visions and influence the outlook of men and women; without denying this, realists also showed how the bourgeois commercialization of art and the artist could destroy the noble role of art and reduce it to a commodity.
The realists saw man on the background of social conflicts of the day I and analysed human nature and human emotions in relation to this background. The reader could imagine the past and the future of each I literary personage because the development of the image was closely linked with the historical development of the present. The American realists rejected sentimentality and the "genteel tradition” in the style of writing. Their portrayal of life, as they found it, may sometimes have been rude and unpolished but it was always original and truthful.
Mark Twain, Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, Jack London and Theodore Dreiser were among the many writers of that period.whose works were I brilliant examples of mature realism.
American Critical Realism developed in contact with European realism; it was greatly influenced by Balzac, Gogol, Turgenev and Tolstoy. But American realism enriched world realism by advancing the problems of social injustice, the Negro and Indian questions, the fate of the young generation and the problem of emancipation of women.
American authors armed with the methods of Critical Realism created great works of art which served to unmask the truth about the reactionary foundations of modern imperialism, and served to greatly influence the struggle for social justice.

Emily Dickinson

Since most of her writing falls in-between defined literary movements, Realism and Modernism, there has been much confusion on which period Emily Dickinson fits into. It is difficult to tell which movement she fits into, because she has qualities from both literary movements. Her unconventional methods could place her with the Modernists, though, because Modernism was basically a rebellion against traditional writing ("Early Twentieth Century"). The most common characteristic of Modernism writing was an unpredictable style, which Emily Dickinson definitely has ("Early Twentieth Century").

Even though her writing does have a few traits of the literary movement that would take place after her, Modernism, she has more features of Realism. Dickinson uses imagery in many of her poems, as well as personification (Fajardo-Acosta). According to Paul Reuben, realists highlighted morality, as Dickinson did. In fact, one of her most popular themes was death. Realists often focused on things familiar to them, which was, for Dickinson, loneliness and religion ("American Realism"). Like Realists, Dickinson develops her characters fully, even if her character is something nontraditional, like the sun or death ("American Realism"). For example, in " The Sun Just Touched the Morning," she describes the sun in detail, saying that it is a happy thing, and if it stayed out all the time, more people would be happy. Emily Dickinson could be a Realist because of her development of characters and themes, but could also be a Modernist because of her nontraditional style.

Major Themes:

Death, Truth and its tenuous nature, Fame and success(negative attitude),Grief, Faith,…

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Seeking to portray reality as it is, realist writers frequently dealt with social abuses and the sordid aspects of human behavior and social life. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) depicted the horrors of slavery.

Henry James, (1843-1916), was one of America's greatest writers. In his short stories and novels, he created characters of great psychological complexity. His prose style changed over the course of his 50-year writing career. At first, James' style was straightforward and realistic, and he often sharply satirized manners and morals. Later, his style became complicated, and his basic realism became deepened by a rich, almost poetic symbolism. James also wrote literary criticism. His reviews, essays, and prefaces have established him as one of the most important theorists of fiction.

The Ambassadors (1903), The Turn of the Screw (1898), and The Portrait of a Lady (1881)

James's works include narrative romances with highly developed characters set amongst illuminating social commentary on politics, class, and status, as well as explorations of the themes of personal freedom, feminism, and morality. In his short stories and novels he employs techniques of interior monologue and point of view to expand the readers' enjoyment of character perception and insight.

James is one of the major figures of trans-Atlantic literature. His works frequently juxtapose characters from the Old World (Europe), embodying a feudal civilization that is beautiful, often corrupt, and alluring, and from the New World (United States), where people are often brash, open, and assertive and embody the virtues—freedom and a more highly evolved moral character—of the new American society. James explores this clash of personalities and cultures, in stories of personal relationships in which power is exercised well or badly. His protagonists were often young American women facing oppression or abuse.

Красной нитью через всё его творчество проходит тема непосредственности и наивности представителей Нового Света, которые вынуждены приспосабливаться либо бросать вызов интеллектуальности и коварству клонящегося к упадку Старого Света («Дейзи Миллер»,1878; «Женский портрет», 1881; «Послы», 1903). В 1875-76 г писатель обосновался в Париже, где был написан роман «Американец» (1877) — история про бесхитростного и прямолинейного американского миллионера, который пытается войти в семью высокомерных и коварных французских аристократов.

Предмодернизм[править]

В больших романах XX века — «Крылья голубки», 1902; «Послы», 1903; «Золотая чаша», 1904 — Джеймс сводит число персонажей к минимуму и ставит их в психологически напряжённые ситуации, подлинная драматичность которых раскрывается по ходу повествования. Его проза насыщается сложными грамматическими конструкциями, культурными аллюзиями и символическими образами, становится всё более субъективной и тяжёлой для понимания, предвещая эстетикумодернизма.

Для записи своих текстов стареющий Джеймс всё чаще прибегает к услугам стенографистки. Одновременно размышляет над путями развития современного романа (книга «Мастерство романа»). В 1905 и 1909 гг. он издал два томика путевых заметок, посвящённых Англии и Италии, соответственно. В 1904-05 гг. в последний раз посетил США, с тревогой отметив расцвет идеологии потребительства и всеобщий культ материального преуспевания.

 

26. Творчество У.Фолкнера.

 

William Faulkner (1897-1962)


Born to an old southern family, William Harrison Faulkner was raised in Oxford, Mississippi, where he lived most of his life. Faulkner created an entire imaginative landscape, Yoknapatawpha County, mentioned in numerous novels, along with several families with interconnections extending back for generations. Yoknapatawpha County, with its capital, "Jefferson," is closely modeled on Oxford, Mississippi, and its surroundings. Faulkner re-creates the history of the land and the various races – Indian, African-American, Euro-American, and various mixtures – who have lived on it. An innovative writer, Faulkner experimented brilliantly with narrative chronology, different points of view and voices (including those of outcasts, children, and illiterates), and a rich and demanding baroque style built of extremely long sentences full of complicated subordinate parts. 
The best of Faulkner's novels include The Sound and the Fury (1929) and As I Lay Dying (1930), two modernist works experimenting with viewpoint and voice to probe southern families under the stress of losing a family member; Light in August (1932), about complex and violent relations between a white woman and a black man; and Absalom, Absalom! (1936), perhaps his finest, about the rise of a self-made plantation owner and his tragic fall through racial prejudice and a failure to love. 
Most of these novels use different characters to tell parts of the story and demonstrate how meaning resides in the manner of telling, as much as in the subject at hand. The use of various viewpoints makes Faulkner more self-referential, or "reflexive," than Hemingway or Fitzgerald; each novel reflects upon itself, while it simultaneously unfolds a story of universal interest. Faulkner's themes are southern tradition, family, community, the land, history and the past, race, and the passions of ambition and love. He also created three novels focusing on the rise of a degenerate family, the Snopes clan: The Hamlet (1940), The Town (1957), and The Mansion (1959).

 

The Sound and Fury

Part 1: April 7, 1928 Benjy

Part 2: June 2, 1910 Quentin

Part 3: April 6, 1928 Jason

Part 4: April 8, 1928 Dilsey

(Appendix: Compson: 1699 – 1945)

 

 

27. Изображение американского общества в романах Т.Драйзера и Дж. Дж. Стейнбека и Э.Синклера.

 

REALISM

NATURALISM

Naturalism first appeared in Europe. It is usually traced to the works of Honor‚ de Balzac in the 1840s and seen as a French literary movement associated with Gustave Flaubert, Edmond and Jules Goncourt, Èmile Zola, and Guy de Maupassant. It daringly opened up the seamy underside of society and such topics as divorce, sex, adultery, poverty, and crime.

Naturalism flourished as Americans became urbanized and aware of the importance of large economic and social forces. By 1890, the frontier was declared officially closed. Most Americans resided in towns, and business dominated even remote farmsteads.

MUCKRAKING

 

 

THEODORE DREISER (1871 – 1945) ranks as the foremost American writer in the Naturalism movement (a pessimistic form of Realism). Dreiser's characters are victims of apparently meaningless incidents that result in pressures they can neither control nor understand. He based such novels as SISTER CARRIE and AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY on events from real life. He condemned not his villains, but the repressive, hypocritical society that produced them.

Dreiser's first novel, SISTER CARRIE, was partly based on the experiences of one of his sisters.

 

the Great Depression (1929­1933)

JOHN STEINBECK (1902 – 1968)

The crisis of the American Dream in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath: mythic naturalism and experimental structure. The adaptability of the term “epic” to novels that portray social groups and/or representative individuals to capture the totality of the American experience in its variety and complexity.

John Steinbeck uses realistic depictions of working people in authentic settings to politically charge his work. When Steinbeck's material is examined through a working-class lens, we find a wealth of working-class themes embedded in the social commentary that runs throughout his work. It is these social observations, as best illustrated by The Grapes of Wrath.

The Grapes of Wrath charts the journey of a small group of farmers as they flee from the Dust Bowl and seek work in California. In the novel, the Joads are forced to sell their possessions for gas money, to abandon pets, and to leave their family land. Steinbeck shows us their experience in great detail. The Joads are hungry, beaten, and miserable. They are icons of working-class suffering during the Great Depression, and Steinbeck accurately shows their declining situation.

Additionally, working-class struggle can be seen in Of Mice and Men as Steinbeck uses land as a symbol of class consciousness. Throughout the novel it is land that makes men work in the morning and sleep at night; it is the dream of owning land that drives the protagonists. Steinbeck intended to present this unattainable dream, which was typical at the time of southwest workers, to the reader in an attempt to gain sympathy and make visible the social stigma of the working-class.

Steinbeck was deeply concerned with the working-class and wished to advance their interests through his writing.

Key works:

Cannery Row

East of Eden

Of Mice and Men

The Grapes of Wrath

The Pearl

The Red Pony

Novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) follows the travails of a poor Oklahoma family that loses its farm during the Depression and travels to California to seek work. Family members suffer conditions of feudal oppression by rich landowners.

 

Upton Sinclair (1878 – 1968)

Sinclair was an idealistic supporter of socialism and became famous as a "muckraker." The muckrakers were writers in the early 1900s whose principal goal was exposing social and political evils.

Sinclair wrote The Jungle to expose the appalling working conditions in the meat-packing industry. His description of diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat shocked the public and led to new federal food safety laws.

In other novels, Sinclair attacked capitalistic society (THE METROPOLIS and THE MONEYCHANGERS, both 1908), conditions in coal mines (KING COAL, 1917), and the oil industry (OIL!, 1927).

Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968), was an American author and one-time candidate for governor of California who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle (1906). It exposed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.^[1] Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence.

Он обрёл известность с выходом социологического романа «Джунгли» (The Jungle, 1906) — события одновременно литературного и общественного. Роман рассказывает о судьбе литовских иммигрантов, безжалостно эксплуатируемых на их новой родине, в США. Герой на пути к «социалистической вере» проходит путь от безработного люмпена-бродяги до узника и штрейкбрехера. Жена гибнет от преждевременных родов, оба сына умирают, также безрадостны судьбы их родственников. Всё это происходит на фоне натуралистичных сцен в мрачных чикагских бойнях, где в чудовищных миазмах разложения главный герой свежует павший туберкулезный скот, из мяса которого производятся консервы и колбаса. Этот документальный репортаж вместе с метафорическим заглавием, прочно закрепившись в обороте, повергнув читателей в шок, вызвал огромный резонанс — была создана сенатская комиссия для расследования ситуации на бойнях.

Писатель принадлежал к большой группе публицистов и журналистов — «разгребателей грязи», (лидер — Линкольн Стеффенс), печатавших в многотиражных изданиях обличения коррупции, фальсификации медикаментов, продажности стражей правопорядка, финансовых махинаций и торговли «живым товаром», эксплуатации детского труда и афер политиков.

 

 

Naturalistic writers were influenced by Darwin’s theory, in that they believed that one's heredity and surroundings determine one's character. Whereas Realism seeks only to describe subjects as they really are, Naturalism also attempts to scientifically ascertain the underlying forces influencing those subjects' actions.

Both genres are diametrically opposed to Romanticism — Naturalistic works often include earthy, sordid, tell-it-as-it-is subject matter. An example might be a frankness about sexuality or a pervasive pessimism throughout a work.

 

 

28. Имажинизм и поэзия Э.Паунда.

 

Imagism is a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. The poets, led by Ezra Pound, called for clear and precise language in poetry, opposing the flowery semantics of Romantic and Victorian poetry.

Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972) is an American poet and critic of the early modernist movement. His contribution to poetry began with his promotion of Imagism, a movement that called for a return to more Classical values, stressing clarity, precision and economy of language.

The term ‘Imagist’ was conjured by Ezra Pound to characterize the style of recent work by his friends and collaborators, the American Hilda Doolittle (H. D.) and the Englishman Richard Aldington.

 

ancient Greek literature

 

H. D.’s poem is not a translation, but a loose version in which aesthetic goals related to the ideals of the Greek epigram are reconfigured as a modern poetics which specifically seeks to substitute a laconic detachment for what was perceived as the emotional effusive- ness of the late Victorian poets.

 

Символизм

 

Imagism is interesting not so much for the range of work which it pro- duced as for the intentions which shaped it and for its theoretical under- pinning, which Pound, in particular, developed into a whole poetics that in a variety of forms would buttress the work which occupied him for the whole of his writing life from 1917 onwards – The Cantos.

Like H. D., Pound at this time was seeking to create a modern mode of writing which would provide a flexible alternative to the Victorian mode, and satisfy a new aesthetic criterion based not on emotional indulgence but on the precision of the practice of writing itself.

 

Key works:

 

 

29. Литература потерянного поколения: С.Фиджеральд. Э.Хемингуэй.

 

MODERNISM

Vladimir Nabokov (1889-1977)