Специфіка формування англійської літератури.

Питання до іспиту з історії літератури англомовних країн

 

1. Специфіка формування англійської літератури.

2. Розвиток першої англійської літератури. Поема “Беовульф”.

3. Література Англії періоду Середньовіччя. Джефрі Чосер – основоположник літературної англійської мови.

4. Гуманістичні ідеї в англійській літературі епохи Відродження.

5. Загальна характеристика англійської літератури 17 ст. Дж. Мілтон – перший великий письменник Англії.

6. Ідеї Просвітництва в англійській літературі 18 ст.

7. Розвиток романтизму в літературі Англії 19 ст.

8. Загальна характеристика літератури Англії Вікторіанської епохи.

9. Основні тенденції розвитку роману в Англії початку 20 ст.

10. Провідні тенденції англійської літератури 20 ст.

11. Розвиток театру і драми в Англії в епоху Відродження. Літературна спадщина В. Шекспіра.

12. Комедії В. Шекспіра: “Дванадцята ніч”, “Комедія помилок”, “Сон в літню ніч”, “Два джентельмена з Верони”, “Приборкання строптивої” та ін.

13. Трагедії В. Шекспіра: “Ромео і Джульєта”, “Гамлет”, “Король Лір”, “Макбет”.

14. Розвиток літератури Англії у 17 ст. Творчість Джона Мілтона.

15. Розвиток поезії Просвітництва. Р. Бернс.

16. Творчість Д. Дефо. Роман “Робінзон Крузо”.

17. Тематика повісті М. Шелі “Франкенштейн”.

18. Англійський романтизм. Поезія Д. Г. Байрона.

19. Реалістичні риси творчості Ч. Дікенса.

20. Творчі погляди О. Уайльда. Роман “Портрет ДоріанаГрея”.

21. Англійська антиутопія: Джордж Оруелл та ОлдосХакслі.

22. Американський романтизм. Творчість Ф. Купера.

23. Американський романтизм. Творчість В. Ірвінга.

24. Творчість М. Твена.

25. О’Генрі – майстер короткого оповідання.

26. Реалізм у творчості Д. Лондона.

27. Творчість Ф. Фіцжеральда. Роман «Великий Гетсбі».

28. Новий герой в американській літературі. Творчість Е. Хемінгуея.

29. Спадкоємність у американській поезії:У. Уітмен, Р. Фрост.

30. Розвиток унтиутопії у американській літературі. Рей Бредбері, «451° за Фаренгейтом».

31. Специфіка формування американської літератури.

32. Характеристика основних періодів розвитку американської літератури.

33. Література колоній. Роль пурітанізму у формуванні американської літератури.Творчістьписьменників-пурітан.

34. Література періоду Просвітництва в США. Б. Франклін, Т. Джеферсон.

35. Розвиток романтизму в американській літературі першої половини 19ст.

36. Передумови розвитку американської літератури другої половини 19 ст. Пізній романтизм, трансценденталізм.

37. Розвиток реалістичних ідей в американській літературі 19 ст.

38. Загальна характеристика літературного процесу Америки 20 ст.

39. Американська драма 20 ст.

Ідеї Просвітництва в англійській літературі 18 ст.

Lit-re of the p-od Enlightenment. Early Enlightenment. Daniel Defoe «Robinson Crusoe». The satirical work of J. Swift «Gulliver’s Travels».

There are three periods of Enlightenment: Early (Pope, Defoe, Swift), Mature (Richardson, Fielding, Smollet) and Later (Goldsmith, Stern, Burns).

Literary trends: Classicism (Pope’s poetry), Realism (Defoe,Swift); Sentimentalism (Goldsmith, Stern), Preromantism (Burns, Austin)

The 17th century was one of the stormiest periods of English history. As a result of the English Bourgeois Revolution in the 1640s, the king was dethroned and beheaded and England was proclaimed a republic. It was an age of intensive industrial development. In spite of the progress of industry and culture in England, there are one of the most important problem of education. The Enlightenment defended the interest of the common people – craftsmen, tradesmen, peasants. The central problem of this period was the man and his nature. They considered it their duty to enlighten people, to help them see the roots of evil. The Enlighteners also believed in the powerful educational value of art. There were some writers, who consider that a few reforms were enough to improve: Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope and Samuel Richardson. In addition, there were another writers, who openly protested against the social order: Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Robert Burns, Oliver Goldsmith.

Daniel Defoe is regarded as the founder of realistic novel in English and European literature. His life was complicated and adventurous. He was born in 1661 in London. He was the son of wealthy London butcher and received a good education. Travelled a lot. wrote political pamphlets on any subject and every event. After producing political pamphlets he turned to novels. He came to it in when he was nearly 60. His first book Robinson Crouse had a success. Then he wrote Captain Singleton, Moll Flanders, Colonel Jacque. Defoe’s aim was to create society. He created the genre of the realistic novel. Defoe dead in London in 1731.

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. Presented as memoirs and narrated in the 1st person; has no real plot – just a series of episodes; the style is simple but effective, the characters believe in God and are self-reliable. The main characters: Robinson Crusoe, Friday, The Portuguese captain, The Spaniard, Xury, The widow.

The themes and the problems: 1. Courage and Determination, 2. Importance of Hard Work, 3. Friendship and Loyalty; 4. Relationship with Nature; 5. Faith in God. Conclusion: The book is still considered one of the masterpieces of English prose. That was a story about a simple self-made man, that came through the difficulties due to labor and faith in God. It’s true story that helped to overcome the suspicious attitude that people of that time had towards the novel.

The satirical work of J. Swift «Gulliver’s Travels” (published in 1726) is an adventure story. Like many other authors, Swift uses the journey as the backdrop for his satire. He invents a second author, Captain Lemuel Gulliver, who narrates and speaks directly to the reader from his own experience. Gulliver represents the everyman with his average intelligence and general good humor. The reader is able to identify with him and join him in his travels. Gulliver embarks on four distinct journeys, each of which begins with a shipwreck and ends with either a daring escape or a congenial decision that it is time for Gulliver to leave. The societies Gulliver comes into contact with help him (and the reader) to examine his own culture more closely. Swift’s work has been subject to criticism because of comparing humanity's ways with those of cultures decidedly beneath it (such as the Yahoos and the Lilliputians); second, by comparing humanity with cultures that are far superior in intellect and political ideals (such as the Houyhnhnms).

The main characters: Lemuel Gulliver, the Emperor of Lilliput, The King of Laputa… The themes: 1. The Body; 2. Human Pettiness(мелочность); 3.Narrow-Mindedness and Enlightenment.

Conclusion: Swift used his favorite weapon – laughter – to mock at bourgeois reality. His art had a great effect on the further development of English and European literature. Swift’s democratic ideas expressed in the book had a great influence on the English writers who came after Swift.

 

Themes

Dangerous Knowledge

The pursuit of knowledge is at the heart of Frankenstein, as Victor attempts to surge beyond accepted human limits and access the secret of life. Likewise, Robert Walton attempts to surpass previous human explorations by endeavoring to reach the North Pole. This ruthless pursuit of knowledge, of the light (see “Light and Fire”), proves dangerous, as Victor’s act of creation eventually results in the destruction of everyone dear to him, and Walton finds himself perilously trapped between sheets of ice. Whereas Victor’s obsessive hatred of the monster drives him to his death, Walton ultimately pulls back from his treacherous mission, having learned from Victor’s example how destructive the thirst for knowledge can be.

Sublime Nature

The sublime natural world, embraced by Romanticism (late eighteenth century to mid-nineteenth century) as a source of unrestrained emotional experience for the individual, initially offers characters the possibility of spiritual renewal. Mired in depression and remorse after the deaths of William and Justine, for which he feels responsible, Victor heads to the mountains to lift his spirits. Likewise, after a hellish winter of cold and abandonment, the monster feels his heart lighten as spring arrives. The influence of nature on mood is evident throughout the novel, but for Victor, the natural world’s power to console him wanes when he realizes that the monster will haunt him no matter where he goes. By the end, as Victor chases the monster obsessively, nature, in the form of the Arctic desert, functions simply as the symbolic backdrop for his primal struggle against the monster.

Monstrosity

Obviously, this theme pervades the entire novel, as the monster lies at the center of the action. Eight feet tall and hideously ugly, the monster is rejected by society. However, his monstrosity results not only from his grotesque appearance but also from the unnatural manner of his creation, which involves the secretive animation of a mix of stolen body parts and strange chemicals. He is a product not of collaborative scientific effort but of dark, supernatural workings.

The monster is only the most literal of a number of monstrous entities in the novel, including the knowledge that Victor used to create the monster (see “Dangerous Knowledge”). One can argue that Victor himself is a kind of monster, as his ambition, secrecy, and selfishness alienate him from human society. Ordinary on the outside, he may be the true “monster” inside, as he is eventually consumed by an obsessive hatred of his creation. Finally, many critics have described the novel itself as monstrous, a stitched-together combination of different voices, texts/

Secrecy

Victor conceives of science as a mystery to be probed; its secrets, once discovered, must be jealously guarded. He considers M. Krempe, the natural philosopher he meets at Ingolstadt, a model scientist: “an uncouth man, but deeply imbued in the secrets of his science.” Victor’s entire obsession with creating life is shrouded in secrecy, and his obsession with destroying the monster remains equally secret until Walton hears his tale.

Whereas Victor continues in his secrecy out of shame and guilt, the monster is forced into seclusion by his grotesque appearance. Walton serves as the final confessor for both, and their tragic relationship becomes immortalized in Walton’s letters. In confessing all just before he dies, Victor escapes the stifling secrecy that has ruined his life; likewise, the monster takes advantage of Walton’s presence to forge a human connection, hoping desperately that at last someone will understand, and empathize with, his miserable existence.

Motifs

Passive Women

For a novel written by the daughter of an important feminist, Frankenstein is strikingly devoid of strong female characters. The novel is littered with passive women who suffer calmly and then expire: Caroline Beaufort is a self-sacrificing mother who dies taking care of her adopted daughter; Justine is executed for murder, despite her innocence; the creation of the female monster is aborted by Victor because he fears being unable to control her actions once she is animated; Elizabeth waits, impatient but helpless, for Victor to return to her, and she is eventually murdered by the monster. One can argue that Shelley renders her female characters so passive and subjects them to such ill treatment in order to call attention to the obsessive and destructive behavior that Victor and the monster exhibit.

Abortion

The motif of abortion recurs as both Victor and the monster express their sense of the monster’s hideousness. About first seeing his creation, Victor says: “When I thought of him, I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so thoughtlessly made.” The monster feels a similar disgust for himself: “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.” Both lament the monster’s existence and wish that Victor had never engaged in his act of creation.

The motif appears also in regard to Victor’s other pursuits. When Victor destroys his work on a female monster, he literally aborts his act of creation, preventing the female monster from coming alive. Figurative abortion materializes in Victor’s description of natural philosophy: “I at once gave up my former occupations; set down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed and abortive creation; and entertained the greatest disdain for a would-be science, which could never even step within the threshold of real knowledge.” As with the monster, Victor becomes dissatisfied with natural philosophy and shuns it not only as unhelpful but also as intellectually grotesque.

Symbols

“What could not be expected in the country of eternal light?” asks Walton, displaying a faith in, and optimism about, science. In Frankenstein, light symbolizes knowledge, discovery, and enlightenment. The natural world is a place of dark secrets, hidden passages, and unknown mechanisms; the goal of the scientist is then to reach light. The dangerous and more powerful cousin of light is fire. The monster’s first experience with a still-smoldering flame reveals the dual nature of fire: he discovers excitedly that it creates light in the darkness of the night, but also that it harms him when he touches it.

The presence of fire in the text also brings to mind the full title of Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. The Greek god Prometheus gave the knowledge of fire to humanity and was then severely punished for it. Victor, attempting to become a modern Prometheus, is certainly punished, but unlike fire, his “gift” to humanity—knowledge of the secret of life—remains a secret.

 

Analysis

“She Walks in Beauty” is written in iambic tetrameter, “a meter commonly found in hymns and associated with ‘sincerity’ and ‘simplicity’” (Moran 2). Byron’s chosen meter conveys to the reader both his purity of intent (there is but one subject for this poem, the lady’s virtuous beauty) and a poetic parallel to his subject (the lady’s beauty arises from her purity or simplicity of nature). It is an astonishingly chaste poem given its author’s reputation for licentiousness, lust, and debauchery.

Byron wrote this poem about Mrs. Wilmot, his cousin Robert Wilmot’s wife. It echoes Wordsworth’s earlier “The Solitary Reaper” (1807) in its conceit: the speaker’s awe upon seeing a woman walking in her own aura of beauty. While ostensibly about a specific woman, the poem extends to encompass the unobtainable and ideal. The lady is not beautiful in herself, but she walks in an aura of Beauty (Flesch 1). In contrast to popular conceptions, her beauty is not easily described as brilliant or radiant, but it is also dark “like the night” (line 1) However, “all that’s best of dark and bright” (line 3) meet in her face and eyes, suggesting that while she walks in a dark beauty, she is herself a brighter, more radiant beauty. To further convolute the image, the woman is described as having “raven tress[es]” (black hair) (line 9), connecting her to the darkness, while the “nameless grace” (line 8) “lightens” her face—possibly a play on the word, meaning the grace alights on her face, but also including the brighter aspect of lightening her countenance.

Indeed, the beauty of Wilmot is found largely in its balance of opposites: the darkness she walks in (and her dark hair) counterpoise her fair skin and the bright pureness of her soul. In this lady, the “tender light” is “mellowed,” in contrast to the “gaudy day” which has only the glaring sun and no shade to soften its radiance. Thus the lady’s simple, inner perfection produces a beauty superior to nature itself.

This grace is “nameless” in that it is ineffable. It is a common idea to say that there is no way for human word or verse to encompass it, so it must remain nameless even as the speaker perceives it clearly. Prose cannot come close to a description of this abstract beauty, so the speaker must attempt it in verse.

These issues raise a concern that the woman seems so pure because she is so simple; she wears her thoughts directly on her face, and she shows no evidence of discrimination of better from worse. Her mind is “at peace with all below” (line 17), and she loves innocently. If she is beautiful like the night, perhaps her mind truly is like a sky without any clouds of trouble or confusion. In contrast, she has been able to spend her days in “goodness,” the tints in her face glowing like stars in the sky, small punctuations in a vast emptiness above.

Themes

The Purpose of Art

When The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890, it was decried as immoral. In revising the text the following year, Wilde included a preface, which serves as a useful explanation of his philosophy of art. The purpose of art, according to this series of epigrams, is to have no purpose. In order to understand this claim fully, one needs to consider the moral climate of Wilde’s time and the Victorian sensibility regarding art and morality. The Victorians believed that art could be used as a tool for social education and moral enlightenment, as illustrated in works by writers such as Charles Dickens and George Gissing. The aestheticism movement, of which Wilde was a major proponent, sought to free art from this responsibility. The aestheticists were motivated as much by a contempt for bourgeois morality—a sensibility embodied in Dorian Gray by Lord Henry, whose every word seems designed to shock the ethical certainties of the burgeoning middle class—as they were by the belief that art need not possess any other purpose than being beautiful.

Motifs

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The picture of Dorian Gray, “the most magical of mirrors,” shows Dorian the physical burdens of age and sin from which he has been spared. For a time, Dorian sets his conscience aside and lives his life according to a single goal: achieving pleasure. His painted image, however, asserts itself as his conscience and hounds him with the knowledge of his crimes: there he sees the cruelty he showed to Sibyl Vane and the blood he spilled killing Basil Hallward.

The Color White

Interestingly, Dorian’s trajectory from figure of innocence to figure of degradation can be charted by Wilde’s use of the color white. White usually connotes innocence and blankness, as it does when Dorian is first introduced. It is, in fact, “the white purity” of Dorian’s boyhood that Lord Henry finds so captivating. Basil invokes whiteness when he learns that Dorian has sacrificed his innocence, and, as the artist stares in horror at the ruined portrait, he quotes a biblical verse from the Book of Isaiah: “Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow.” But the days of Dorian’s innocence are over. It is a quality he now eschews, and, tellingly, when he orders flowers, he demands “as few white ones as possible.” When the color appears again, in the form of James Vane’s face—“like a white handkerchief”—peering in through a window, it has been transformed from the color of innocence to the color of death. It is this threatening pall that makes Dorian long, at the novel’s end, for his “rose-white boyhood,” but the hope is in vain, and he proves unable to wash away the stains of his sins.

Symbols

The Opium Dens

The opium dens, located in a remote and derelict section of London, represent the sordid state of Dorian’s mind. He flees to them at a crucial moment. After killing Basil, Dorian seeks to forget the awfulness of his crimes by losing consciousness in a drug-induced stupor. Although he has a canister of opium in his home, he leaves the safety of his neat and proper parlor to travel to the dark dens that reflect the degradation of his soul.

James Vane

James Vane is less a believable character than an embodiment of Dorian’s tortured conscience. As Sibyl’s brother, he is a rather flat caricature of the avenging relative. Still, Wilde saw him as essential to the story, adding his character during his revision of 1891. Appearing at the dock and later at Dorian’s country estate, James has an almost spectral quality. Like the ghost of Jacob Marley in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, who warns Scrooge of the sins he will have to face, James appears with his face “like a white handkerchief” to goad Dorian into accepting responsibility for the crimes he has committed.

The Yellow Book

Lord Henry gives Dorian a copy of the yellow book as a gift. Although he never gives the title, Wilde describes the book as a French novel that charts the outrageous experiences of its pleasure-seeking protagonist. The book becomes like holy scripture to Dorian, who buys nearly a dozen copies and bases his life and actions on it. The book represents the profound and damaging influence that art can have over an individual and serves as a warning to those who would surrender themselves so completely to such an influence.

ТворчістьМ. Твена.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),[1] better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Among his writings are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885),[2] the latter often called "The Great American Novel".

Twain began his career writing light, humorous verse, but evolved into a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, with Huckleberry Finn, he combined rich humor, sturdy narrative and social criticism. Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language. Many of Twain's works have been suppressed at times for various reasons.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, indicates this author's towering place in the tradition. Early 19th-century American writers tended to be too flowery, sentimental, or ostentatious -- partially because they were still trying to prove that they could write as elegantly as the English. Twain's style, based on vigorous, realistic, colloquial American speech, gave American writers a new appreciation of their national voice. Twain was the first major author to come from the interior of the country, and he captured its distinctive, humorous slang and iconoclasm.

For Twain and other American writers of the late 19th century, realism was not merely a literary technique: It was a way of speaking truth and exploding worn-out conventions.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain

The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about 20 years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.

Perennially popular with readers, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has also been the continued object of study by literary critics since its publication. It was criticized upon release because of its coarse language and became even more controversial in the 20th century because of its perceived use of racial stereotypes and because of its frequent use of the racial slur "nigger", despite strong arguments that the protagonist and the tenor of the book are anti-racist.

Huckleberry Finn ("Huck" to his friends) is a boy about thirteen or fourteen years old. He has been brought up by his father, the town drunk, and has a hard time fitting into society.

The story begins in fictional St. Petersburg, Missouri (based on the actual town of Hannibal, Missouri), on the shore of the Mississippi River "forty to fifty years ago" (the novel having been published in 1884). Huckleberry "Huck" Finn (the protagonist and first-person narrator) and his friend, Thomas "Tom" Sawyer, have each come into a considerable sum of money as a result of their earlier adventures (detailed in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). Huck explains how he is placed under the guardianship of the Widow Douglas, who, together with her stringent sister, Miss Watson, are attempting to "sivilize" him and teach him religion. Finding civilized life confining, his spirits are raised somewhat when Tom Sawyer helps him to escape one night past Miss Watson's slave Jim, to meet up with Tom's gang of self-proclaimed "robbers." Just as the gang's activities begin to bore Huck, he is suddenly interrupted by the reappearance of his shiftless father, "Pap", an abusive alcoholic. Knowing that Pap would only spend the money on alcohol, Huck is successful in preventing Pap from acquiring his fortune; however, Pap kidnaps Huck and leaves town with him.

Also there are few other plays: In Illinois and on Jackson's Island, In Kentucky: the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons, In Arkansas: the duke and the king, On the Phelps' farm.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn explores notions of race and identity. An obvious complexity exists concerning Jim's character. While some scholars point out that Jim is good-hearted, moral, and not unintelligent (in pointed contrast to several of the white characters), others have criticized the novel as racist, citing the use of the word "nigger" and emphasizing the stereotypically "comic" treatment of Jim's superstition and ignorance.

Huck struggles not only with the challenges of his strenuous journey, but also with the 19th century social climate and the role it forces on him regarding Jim. Throughout the story, Huck is in moral conflict with the received values of the society in which he lives, and while he is unable to consciously refute those values even in his thoughts, he makes a moral choice based on his own valuation of Jim's friendship and human worth, a decision in direct opposition to the things he has been taught. Mark Twain, in his lecture notes, proposes that "a sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience" and goes on to describe the novel as "...a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat".

Also there are a lot of films due to the Twains work’s: Film Tom Sawyer (1917 silent), Huck and Tom (1918 silent), Huckleberry Finn (1920 silent, Tom Sawyer, Detective (December 1938) by Paramount Pictures;

Cabbages and Kings (1904)

A series of stories which explore aspects of life in a paralytically sleepy Central American town, each advancing some aspect of the larger plot and relating back one to another in a complex structure. The larger, overriding plot slowly explicates its own background, even as it creates a town which is one of the most detailed literary creations of the period.

Roads of Destiny (1909)

A collection of 22 short stories:

"Roads of Destiny", "The Guardian of the Accolade", "The Discounters of Money", "The Enchanted Profile", "Next to Reading Matter", "Art and the Bronco", "Phœbe", "A Double-dyed Deceiver", "The Passing of Black Eagle", "A Retrieved Reformation", "Cherchez la Femme", "Friends in San Rosario", "The Fourth in Salvador

Whirligigs (1910)

A collection of 24 short stories: "The World and the Door", "The Theory and the Hound", "The Hypotheses of Failure", "Calloway's Code", "A Matter of Mean Elevation", "Girl.

O. Henry's stories frequently have surprise endings. In his day, he was called the American answer to Guy de Maupassant. While both authors wrote plot twist endings, O. Henry stories were considerably more playful.[according to whom?][citation needed] His stories are also known for witty narration.

Most of O. Henry's stories are set in his own time, the early 20th century. Many take place in New York City and deal for the most part with ordinary people: clerks, policemen, waitresses, etc.

O. Henry's work is wide-ranging, and his characters can be found roaming the cattle-lands of Texas, exploring the art of the con-man, or investigating the tensions of class and wealth in turn-of-the-century New York. O. Henry had an inimitable hand for isolating some element of society and describing it with an incredible economy and grace of language. Some of his best and least-known work is contained in Cabbages and Kings, a series of stories each of which explores some individual aspect of life in a paralytically sleepy Central American town, while advancing some aspect of the larger plot and relating back one to another.

Among his most famous stories are:

"The Gift of the Magi" about a young couple who are short of money but desperately want to buy each other Christmas gifts. Unbeknownst to Jim, Della sells her most valuable possession, her beautiful hair, in order to buy a platinum fob chain for Jim's watch; while unbeknownst to Della, Jim sells his own most valuable possession, his watch, to buy jeweled combs for Della's hair. The essential premise of this story has been copied, re-worked, parodied, and otherwise re-told countless times in the century since it was written.

"The Ransom of Red Chief", in which two men kidnap a boy of ten. The boy turns out to be so bratty and obnoxious that the desperate men ultimately pay the boy's father $250 to take him back.

"The Cop and the Anthem" about a New York City hobo named Soapy, who sets out to get arrested so that he can be a guest of the city jail instead of sleeping out in the cold winter. Despite efforts at petty theft, vandalism, disorderly conduct, and "mashing" with a young prostitute, Soapy fails to draw the attention of the police. Disconsolate, he pauses in front of a church, where an organ anthem inspires him to clean up his life—and is ironically charged for loitering and sentenced to three months in prison.

" A Retrieved Reformation ", which tells the tale of safecracker Jimmy Valentine, recently freed from prison. He goes to a town bank to case it before he robs it. As he walks to the door, he catches the eye of the banker's beautiful daughter. They immediately fall in love and Valentine decides to give up his criminal career. He moves into the town, taking up the identity of Ralph Spencer, a shoemaker. Just as he is about to leave to deliver his specialized tools to an old associate, a lawman who recognizes him arrives at the bank. Jimmy and his fiancée and her family are at the bank, inspecting a new safe, when a child accidentally gets locked inside the airtight vault. Knowing it will seal his fate, Valentine opens the safe to rescue the child. However, much to Valentine's surprise, the lawman denies recognizing him and lets him go.

" The Duplicity of Hargraves ".A short story about a nearly destitute father and daughter's trip to Washington, D.C.

"The Caballero's Way", in which Porter's most famous character, the Cisco Kid, is introduced. It was first published in 1907 in the July issue of Everybody's Magazine and collected in the book Heart of the West that same year. In later film and TV depictions, the Kid would be portrayed as a dashing adventurer, perhaps skirting the edges of the law, but primarily on the side of the angels. In the original short story, the only story by Porter to feature the character, the Kid is a murderous, ruthless border desperado, whose trail is dogged by a heroic Texas Ranger. The twist ending is, unusually for Porter, tragic.

Setting

Great Gatsby is set in New York City and on Long Island, in two areas known as "West Egg" and "East Egg"—in real life, Great Neck and Port Washington peninsulas on Long Island. Long Island's beach communities really were (and still are) home to the rich and fabulous of the New York City area, and Fitzgerald actually lived in a small house in West Egg. Apparently, he listened to his teachers and wrote what he knew, because Nick describes his own house as "an eyesore" that's "squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season"

These people are rich, and they have a lot of leisure time to spend worrying about how they're perceived socially. Nobody seems particularly interested in politics, or religion, or even education (you need the degree, but you don't need to have learned anything): instead, they spend their time conforming to certain standards, like not wearing pink suits.

 

Symbols

1)An owl-eyed man at a Gatsby party sits in awe in the library, murmuring with amazement that all the books on Gatsby's shelves are "real books"

2) The first time we see the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg, they're looming over the valley of ashes, which Nick and the others have to pass through any time they travel between the Eggs and the city. Compare Gatsby's lavish parties of fresh fruit and live music and champagne to this land of smokestacks and ash-men, and you quickly realize that not all the world is as privileged as our cast of characters.

But the valley of ashes can also be seen as more commentary on the American Dream. The America of The Great Gatsby is ashen, decaying, and barren. And the Wilsons live there, which means their whole sordid story—the infidelity, immorality, lack of compassion, and anger—is associated with this failed American Dream, too.

Nick goes on for three sentences about these weird, disembodied eyes before actually explaining that they're on a billboard. He gives your mind time to picture eerie images, to wonder what's going on, even to form other notions of what the eyes could be. Clearly, to us, the readers, the eyes are more than just a billboard.

There are a few directions you can take from here. The first is that, despite the absence of religion from the characters in this story, God is still there. He's all seeing, ever-present, and, as Nick points out, frowning. Things are not well in the valley of American ashes. The other shot you could take at this is to say that God has been replaced by capitalism. Instead of a truly religious representation, the best this world can do is manifest God in a billboard – an advertisement.

3) The Green Light

Situated at the end of Daisy’s East Egg dock and barely visible from Gatsby’s West Egg lawn, the green light represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and in Chapter 1 he reaches toward it in the darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal. Because Gatsby’s quest for Daisy is broadly associated with the American dream, the green light also symbolizes that more generalized ideal. In Chapter 9, Nick compares the green light to how America, rising out of the ocean, must have looked to early settlers of the new nation.

The green light also represents the hazy future, the future that is forever elusive, as Nick claims in the last page of the novel: "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter – to-morrow we will run farther, stretch out our arms farther…."

 

Themes

Censorship

Fahrenheit 451 doesn’t provide a single, clear explanation of why books are banned in the future. Instead, it suggests that many different factors could combine to create this result. These factors can be broken into two groups: factors that lead to a general lack of interest in reading and factors that make people actively hostile toward books. The novel doesn’t clearly distinguish these two developments. Apparently, they simply support one another.

The first group of factors includes the popularity of competing forms of entertainment such as television and radio. More broadly, Bradbury thinks that the presence of fast cars, loud music, and advertisements creates a lifestyle with too much stimulation in which no one has the time to concentrate. Also, the huge mass of published material is too overwhelming to think about, leading to a society that reads condensed books (which were very popular at the time Bradbury was writing) rather than the real thing.

The second group of factors, those that make people hostile toward books, involves envy. People don’t like to feel inferior to those who have read more than they have. But the novel implies that the most important factor leading to censorship is the objections of special-interest groups and “minorities” to things in books that offend them. Bradbury is careful to refrain from referring specifically to racial minorities—Beatty mentions dog lovers and cat lovers, for instance. The reader can only try to infer which special-interest groups he really has in mind.

 

As the Afterword to Fahrenheit 451 demonstrates, Bradbury is extremely sensitive to any attempts to restrict his free speech; for instance, he objects strongly to letters he has received suggesting that he revise his treatment of female or black characters. He sees such interventions as essentially hostile and intolerant—as the first step on the road to book burning.

Knowledge versus Ignorance

Montag, Faber, and Beatty’s struggle revolves around the tension between knowledge and ignorance. The fireman’s duty is to destroy knowledge and promote ignorance in order to equalize the population and promote sameness. Montag’s encounters with Clarisse, the old woman, and Faber ignite in him the spark of doubt about this approach. His resultant search for knowledge destroys the unquestioning ignorance he used to share with nearly everyone else, and he battles the basic beliefs of his society.

Motifs

Paradoxes

In the beginning of “The Hearth and the Salamander,” Montag’s bedroom is described first as “not empty” and then as “indeed empty,” because Mildred is physically there, but her thoughts and feelings are elsewhere. Bradbury’s repeated use of such paradoxical statements—especially that a character or thing is dead and alive or there and not there—is frequently applied to Mildred, suggesting her empty, half-alive condition. Bradbury also uses these paradoxical statements to describe the “Electric-Eyed Snake” stomach pump and, later, the Mechanical Hound. These paradoxes question the reality of beings that are apparently living but spiritually dead. Ultimately, Mildred and the rest of her society seem to be not much more than machines, thinking only what they are told to think. The culture of Fahrenheit 451 is a culture of insubstantiality and unreality, and Montag desperately seeks more substantial truths in the books he hoards.

Animal and Nature Imagery

Animal and nature imagery pervades the novel. Nature is presented as a force of innocence and truth, beginning with Clarisse’s adolescent, reverent love for nature. She convinces Montag to taste the rain, and the experience changes him irrevocably. His escape from the city into the country is a revelation to him, showing him the enlightening power of unspoiled nature.

Much of the novel’s animal imagery is ironic. Although this society is obsessed with technology and ignores nature, many frightening mechanical devices are modeled after or named for animals, such as the Electric-Eyed Snake machine and the Mechanical Hound.

Religion

Fahrenheit 451 contains a number of religious references. Mildred’s friends remind Montag of icons he once saw in a church and did not understand. The language Bradbury uses to describe the enameled, painted features of the artifacts Montag saw is similar to the language he uses to describe the firemen’s permanent smiles. Faber invokes the Christian value of forgiveness: after Montag turns against society, Faber reminds him that since he was once one of the faithful, he should demonstrate pity rather than fury.

The narrative also contains references to the miracle at Canaa, where Christ transformed water into wine. Faber describes himself as water and Montag as fire, asserting that the merging of the two will produce wine. In the biblical story, Jesus Christ’s transformation of water into wine was one of the miracles that proved his identity and instilled faith in his role as the savior. Montag longs to confirm his own identity through a similar self-transformation.

The references to fire are more complex. In the Christian tradition, fire has several meanings: from the pagan blaze in which the golden calf was made to Moses’ burning bush, it symbolizes both blatant heresy and divine presence. Fire in Fahrenheit 451 also possesses contradictory meanings. At the beginning it is the vehicle of a restrictive society, but Montag turns it upon his oppressor, using it to burn Beatty and win his freedom.

Finally, Bradbury uses language and imagery from the Bible to resolve the novel. In the last pages, as Montag and Granger’s group walk upriver to find survivors after the bombing of the city, Montag knows they will eventually talk, and he tries to remember appropriate passages from the Bible. He brings to mind Ecclesiastes 3:1, “To everything there is a season,” and also Revelations 22:2, “And on either side of the river was there a tree of life... and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations,” which he decides to save for when they reach the city. The verse from Revelations also speaks of the holy city of God, and the last line of the book, “When we reach the city,” implies a strong symbolic connection between the atomic holocaust of Montag’s world and the Apocalypse of the Bible.

Symbols

Blood

Blood appears throughout the novel as a symbol of a human being’s repressed soul or primal, instinctive self. Montag often “feels” his most revolutionary thoughts welling and circulating in his blood. Mildred, whose primal self has been irretrievably lost, remains unchanged when her poisoned blood is replaced with fresh, mechanically administered blood by the Electric-Eyed Snake machine. The symbol of blood is intimately related to the Snake machine. Bradbury uses the electronic device to reveal Mildred’s corrupted insides and the thick sediment of delusion, misery, and self-hatred within her. The Snake has explored “the layer upon layer of night and stone and stagnant spring water,” but its replacement of her blood could not rejuvenate her soul. Her poisoned, replaceable blood signifies the empty lifelessness of Mildred and the countless others like her.

“The Hearth and the Salamander”

Bradbury uses this conjunction of images as the title of the first part of Fahrenheit 451. The hearth, or fireplace, is a traditional symbol of the home; the salamander is one of the official symbols of the firemen, as well as the name they give to their fire trucks. Both of these symbols have to do with fire, the dominant image of Montag’s life—the hearth because it contains the fire that heats a home, and the salamander because of ancient beliefs that it lives in fire and is unaffected by flames.

“The Sieve and the Sand”

The title of the second part of Fahrenheit 451, “The Sieve and the Sand,” is taken from Montag’s childhood memory of trying to fill a sieve with sand on the beach to get a dime from a mischievous cousin and crying at the futility of the task. He compares this memory to his attempt to read the whole Bible as quickly as possible on the subway in the hope that, if he reads fast enough, some of the material will stay in his memory.

Simply put, the sand is a symbol of the tangible truth Montag seeks, and the sieve the human mind seeking a truth that remains elusive and, the metaphor suggests, impossible to grasp in any permanent way.

The Phoenix

After the bombing of the city, Granger compares mankind to a phoenix that burns itself up and then rises out of its ashes over and over again. Man’s advantage is his ability to recognize when he has made a mistake, so that eventually he will learn not to make that mistake anymore. Remembering the mistakes of the past is the task Granger and his group have set for themselves. They believe that individuals are not as important as the collective mass of culture and history. The symbol of the phoenix’s rebirth refers not only to the cyclical nature of history and the collective rebirth of humankind but also to Montag’s spiritual resurrection.

Mirrors

At the very end of the novel, Granger says they must build a mirror factory to take a long look at themselves; this remark recalls Montag’s description of Clarisse as a mirror in “The Hearth and the Salamander.” Mirrors here are symbols of self-understanding, of seeing oneself clearly.

Religion and Poetry

• Religion is prominent in colonial American literature and can be found mostly in Puritan writings. The Puritans wrote about the religious foundations of many of their settlements, especially the exodus from Britain, and employed the constant theme that God should be worshiped. They also used texts that prepared them for worship. This literature helped spread the message of God, suggesting that “life was a test” and the soul would face damnation if that test was failed. Ambition and hard work were continuously stressed. Many of the Puritan works were written in poetry form. Anne Bradstreet’s poetry, the “Bay Psalm Book,” and Pastor Edward Taylor’s “Preparatory Mediations” are good examples of religious texts of the era. It was this type of writing that led to the Puritanism and Great Awakening movements. Non-Puritan writers also used religion to show the religious tension between the colonial settlers and Native Americans.

The Enlightenment

• In the 18th century, the Enlightenment showed a great shift in colonial American literature from a religious foundation to scientific reasoning applied to human nature, society, culture and political awareness. Many texts were written in pamphlet or narrative form and challenged the role of God and religious life, seeking to replace them with reason. Rational thought and science were the new themes. “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” and the pamphlet “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine explored many of these new ideas. Similar texts also led the way to more awareness of social, economic and scientific issues. The American Revolution played a large part in this shifting of ideas.

• American writing began with the work of English adventurers and colonists in the New World chiefly for the benefit of readers in the mother country. Some of these early works reached the level of literature, as in the robust and perhaps truthful account of his adventures by Captain John Smith and the sober, tendentious journalistic histories of John Winthrop and William Bradford in New England. From the beginning, however, the literature of New England was also directed to the edification and instruction of the colonists themselves, intended to direct them in the ways of the godly.

• The first work published in the Puritan colonies was the Bay Psalm Book (1640), and the whole effort of the divines who wrote furiously to set forth their views—among them Roger Williams and ThomasHooker—was to defend and promote visions of the religious state. They set forth their visions—in effect the first formulation of the concept of national destiny—in a series of impassioned histories and jeremiads from EdwardJohnson's Wonder-Working Providence (1654) to Cotton Mather's epic Magnalia Christi Americana (1702).

• Even Puritan poetry was offered uniformly to the service of God. Michael Wigglesworth's Day of Doom (1662) was uncompromisingly theological, and Anne Bradstreet's poems, issued as The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650), were reflective of her own piety. The best of the Puritan poets, Edward Taylor, whose work was not published until two centuries after his death, wrote metaphysical verse worthy of comparison with that of the English metaphysical poet George Herbert.

• Sermons and tracts poured forth until austere Calvinism found its last utterance in the words of Jonathan Edwards. In the other colonies writing was usually more mundane and on the whole less notable, though the journal of the Quaker John Woolman is highly esteemed, and some critics maintain that the best writing of the colonial period is found in the witty and urbane observations of William Byrd, a gentleman planter of Westover, Virginia.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

Edgar Allan Poe is certainly one of the best known and most popular of American writers. His stories are read by children, probed with the tools of psychoanalysis by critics, and transformed into films. His poems, notably «The Raven», «To Helen» and «Annable Lee», are widely anthologized. And his critical notion that a poem should be readable in a single sitting so as not to mute its single effect is a familiar critical principle. More importantly, Poe’s poetic theories, outlined in such pieces as «The Poetic Principle», «The Rationale of Verse» and «The Philosophy of Composition, had a profound influence on the French symbolist movement.

Before he became a famous poet and short – storey writer, Poe was known as a journalist and magazine editor. He wrote numerous reviews about works now forgotten while producing his own memerable tales and poems. And though he never realized his dream of founding a literary magazine of his own, be contributed to many, including those he edited. In 1837 he moned his familyfrom Baltimore to New York, where he published his only full-length fictional work, «The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym». In 1840 he published his «Tales of the Grotesqu and Arabesque» (1840). Poe borrowed the terms «grotesque» and «arabesque» from the Romantic poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott, and meant them to suggest the terror associated with the bizarre and the beautiful associated with the poetic. He also meant to suggest that both elements were present in many stories in his collection.

«The Fall of the House of Usher» is among Poe’s most famous and most accomplished tales. The house that falls is both the literal Usher habitation and the family it signifies. The house also represents the mind of Roderick Usher. In its density of detail, bizarre events, and uncanny tone, the story suggest gothic fiction. In its psychological richness and fainted family history, it reaches back to Greek tragedy.

«The Cask of Amontillado» examplifies Poe’s genius at displaying a mad narrator whose intent is to convince his listeners of his sanity. Perhaps Poe’s best – known example of this type is the narrator of «The Tell – Tale Heart». But «The Cask of Amontilado» is an even richer story, with Poe pulling out all the stops in displaying multiple ironies while his narrator fels compelled to tell somebody of the perfect murder he committed fifty years before. The question is why he tells this tale after so many years.

In «The Purloined Letter» Poe gives way to his bent for stories of crime and punishment, this time from the outside point of view of the detective rather than from inside the criminals mind. Rather than considering what he would have done in like circumstances, the detective, Monsieur Dupin, must try to think the way the criminal thought, which is precisely what he does en route to to solving the case. The story celebrates Poe’s appreciation of the rational mind and contains a number of examples of riddles and games in which Poe delighted. It also ends with an elaborate puzzle built on a complex literary allusion, which contains the key Poe uses to unlock the inticacies of the story’s plot.

Poe’s fictional performances delighted audience in his own time continue to engage and intrigue readers today. Even though his style is ornate and his language far from colloquial, he remains a most readable writer, largely because he builds suspense, creates atmosphere, and probes the psychological complexities of his characters’ minds and hearts. If it is the horror of his stories that first draws readers in, it is Poe’s psychological richness and his control of tone that continue to bring them back for repeated readings of some inmatchable stories

CRITICAL REALISM

Towards the middle of the 19th century the romantic trend in American literature gave way to new, realistic forms. Critical re­alism as a trend in American literature developed after the Civil War. The critical realistic literature differed greatly from that of the previous writers such as Irving, Cooper and Longfellow.

The romanticists wrote their stories about ideal individuals through which they showed their emotions. The realists under­stood that the people should be shown as a whole. They saw man on the background of social conflicts of the day and explained human feelings in relation to this background.

Among the most outstanding American realists in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century were Mark Twain, O. Henry and Jack London.

Mark Twain depicted common American people with great sympathy and humour. At the same time he cruelly condemned hypocrisy, bigotry and greed.

Jack London and O. Henry created typical characters of the American common people — farmers, workers, intellectuals. They revealed the truth of American life in their works.

American critical realism developed in contact with European realism. The works of Balzac [ 'Ьгекэк], Gogol, Turgenev and Tol­stoy influenced it greatly. But American realism enriched world re­alism by introducing such problems as social injustice and Negro and Indian questions. American writers using the methods of criti­cal realism created great works of art.

| Top | Principles Of Realism

1. Insistence upon and defense of "the experienced commonplace".

2. Character more important than plot.

3. Attack upon romanticism and romantic writers.

4. Emphasis upon morality often self-realized and upon an examination of idealism.

5. Concept of realism as a realization of democracy.

Identifying Characteristics Of Realistic Writing

1. The philosophy of Realism is known as "descendental" or non-transcendental. The purpose of writing is to instruct and to entertain. Realists were pragmatic, relativistic, democratic, and experimental.

2. The subject matter of Realism is drawn from "our experience," - it treated the common, the average, the non-extreme, the representative, the probable.

3. The morality of Realism is intrinsic, integral, relativistic - relations between people and society are explored.

4. The style of Realism is the vehicle which carries realistic philosophy, subject matter, and morality. Emphasis is placed upon scenic presentation, de-emphasizing authorial comment and evaluation. There is an objection towards the omniscient point of view.

Realistic Complexity And Multiplicity

Complexity refers to the interwoven, entangled density of experience; multiplicity indicates the simultaneous existence of different levels of reality or of many truths, equally "true" from some point of view.

Realistic Characterization

There is the belief among the Realists that humans control their destinies; characters act on their environment rather than simply reacting to it. Character is superior to circumstance.

The Use Of Symbolism And Imagery

The Realists generally reject the kind of symbolism suggested by Emerson when he said "Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact." Their use of symbolism is controlled and limited; they depend more on the use of images.

Realistic Techniques

1. Settings thoroughly familiar to the writer

2. Plots emphasizing the norm of daily experience

3. Ordinary characters, studied in depth

4. Complete authorial objectivity

5. Responsible morality; a world truly reported

 

 

Американська драма 20 ст.

The rise of American drama

Although the United States' theatrical tradition can be traced back to the arrival of Lewis Hallam's troupe in the mid-18th century and was very active in the 19th century, as seen by the popularity of minstrel shows and of adaptations of Uncle Tom's Cabin, American drama attained international status only in the 1920s and 1930s, with the works of Eugene O'Neill, who won four Pulitzer Prizes and the Nobel Prize.

In the middle of the 20th century, American drama was dominated by the work of playwrights Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, as well as by the maturation of the American musical, which had found a way to integrate script, music and dance in such works as Oklahoma! and West Side Story. Later American playwrights of importance include Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, David Mamet, August Wilson and Tony Kushner.

The early years of the 20th century, before World War I, continued to see realism as the main development in drama. But starting around 1900, there was a revival of poetic drama in the States, corresponding to a similar revival in Europe (e.g. Yeats, Maeterlinck and Hauptmann). The most notable example of this trend was the "Biblical trilogy" of William Vaughn Moody, which also illustrate the rise of religious-themed drama during the same years, as seen in the 1899 production of Ben-Hur and two 1901 adaptations of Quo Vadis. Moody, however, is best known for two prose plays, The Great Divide (1906, later adapted into three film versions) and The Faith Healer (1909), which together point the way to modern American drama in their emphasis on the emotional conflicts that lie at the heart of contemporary social conflicts. Other key playwrights from this period (in addition to continued work by Howells and Fitch) include Edward Sheldon, Charles Rann Kennedy and one of the most successful women playwrights in American drama, Rachel Crothers, whose interest in women's issues can be seen in such plays as He and She (1911).[4]

During the period between the World Wars, American drama came to maturity, thanks in large part to the works of Eugene O'Neill and of the Provincetown Players. O'Neill's experiments with theatrical form and his combination of Naturalist and Expressionist techniques inspired other playwrights to use greater freedom in their works, whether expanding the techniques of Realism, as in Susan Glaspell's Trifles, or borrowing more heavily from German Expressionism (e.g., Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine), Other distinct movements during this period include folk-drama/regionalism (Paul Green's Pulitzer-winning In Abraham's Bosom), "pageant" drama (Green's The Lost Colony, about the mysterious Roanoke Colony), and even a return to poetic drama (Maxwell Anderson's Winterset). At the same time, the economic crisis of the Great Depression led to the growth of protest drama, as seen in the Federal Theatre Project's Living Newspaper productions and in the works of Clifford Odets (e.g., Waiting for Lefty) and of moralist drama, as in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes and The Children's Hour. Other key figures of this era include George S. Kaufman, George Kelly, Langston Hughes, S. N. Behrman, Sidney Howard, Robert E. Sherwood, and a set of playwrights who followed O'Neill's path of philosophical searching, Philip Barry, Thornton Wilder (Our Town) and William Saroyan (The Time of Your Life). Theatre criticism kept pace with the drama, such as in the work of George Jean Nathan and in the numerous books and journals on American theater that were published during this time.[4]