美国文学史及作品选读

Unit 7 American Naturalism: Stephen Crane,

Theodore Dreiser and others

American Naturalism

American Naturalism: a new and harsher realism

Historical Background

American NaturalismAmerican Naturalism: a new and harsher realism

Historical Background

American Naturalism

Historical Background

American NaturalismAmerican Naturalism: a new and harsher realism

Historical Background

Herbert Spencer: Social Darwinism Freud’s psychology: unconsciousness

decides one’s fate, largely from the childhood experience

Chang Yaoxin: “Living in a cold, indifferent, and essentially Godless world, man was no longer free in any sense of the word. He was completely thrown upon himself for survival.”

American NaturalismAmerican Naturalism: a new and harsher realism

American NaturalismAmerican Naturalism: a new and harsher realism

Under the influence of European writers such as Emile Zola, Thomas Hardy and George Eliot, American literary naturalism emerged in the 1890s as an outgrowth of American realism.

American NaturalismAmerican Naturalism: a new and harsher realism

Naturalism vs. Realism

American NaturalismAmerican Naturalism: a new and harsher realism

Naturalism vs. Realism

Naturalism vs. Realism

Chang Yaoxin： To some young writers just emerging,

Howellsian realism was now too restrained and genteel in tone to tell the truth of the harsher realities of American life. …In the 1890s, French naturalism, with its new technique and new way of writing, appealed to the imagination of the younger generation like Stephen Crane, Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser.

American Naturalism

Chang Yaoxin: They tore the mask of gentility to pieces and wrote

about the helplessness of man, his insignificance in a cold world, and his lack of dignity in face of the crushing forces of environment and heredity. They reported truthfully and objectively, with a passion for scientific accuracy and an overwhelming accumulation of factual detail. They painted life as it was lived in the slums, and were accused of telling just the hideous side of it and making “a god of the dull commonplace.”

American Naturalism

Chang Yaoxin: Human beings battle hopelessly against

overwhelming odds in a cold, harsh, and at best apathetic environment, driven as “a wisp of wind,” with their lives very much determined by forces they have no means whatever of manipulating. The whole picture is sombre and dark; and the general tone one of hopelessness and even despair.

American Naturalism

Chang Yaoxin： American naturalist writers were first

journalists; close to the society and change; many were from poor families; either observed or personally experienced the hardship of the poor; the workers and individuals were helpless before the gigantic machine of capitalism; the fate was determined by the alien force of capitalism which was beyond their control.

American Naturalism

Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

“The Open Boat”

Characters

Each crewmember is an Each crewmember is an archetype that, when joined archetype that, when joined with his fellow castaways, with his fellow castaways,

constitutes part of a microcosm constitutes part of a microcosm of society. of society.

Themes

McTeague (1899): “the first full-bodied naturalistic American novel” and “a consciously naturalistic manifesto.” A classic case study of the inevitable effect of environment and heredity on human lives

A trilogy on the production, distribution and consumption of wheat:

The Octopus (1901); The Pit (1903); and a never written third

Frank Norris (1870-1902)

One of America’s most talented and certainly one of the most prolific: he is the author of 49 volumes of fiction, plays and essays.

Published his first book in 1900 and in 16 years wrote enough to win himself fame, wealth, worldly possessions and rewards in the form of love and learning. This, however, led to his egocentric despair and probable suicide.

The Call of the Wild (1903); The Sea Wolf (1904); White Fang (1906); Martin Eden (1909) Wrote two types of works almost at the same time: realist

works and naturalist works; or the two tendencies mixed in the same work. He is at the same time a realist, socialist, social Darwinist, and naturalist.

Jack London (1876-1916)

Theodore Dreiser (1870-1945)

Amorality; “Might is right,” and the powerful and the ruthless alone survive. This is a Godless world in which man is thrown upon himself to keep alive as best he can against the overwhelming odds of the cold, indifferent environment.

The forces ranged against an individual are so strong that he or she can either yield to them or be destroyed by them. A key word in Dreiser: determinism.

Dreiser has been a controversial figure in American literary history. His works are powerful in their portrayal of the changing American life, but his style is considered crude. He showed a new way of presenting reality and inspired the writers of the 1920s with courage and insight. The revival of naturalism in the 1930s enthroned Dreiser as the guide and pioneer for the latter-day naturalists such as James T. Farrel, John O’Hara, and John Dos Passos, for it is in Dreiser’s works that American naturalism is said to have come of age.