John Steinbeck:
Life and Works
February 27, 1902 – December 20,
1968
Page 1
John Steinbeck
• Born in Salinas,
California.
– He used this setting
for many of his stories.
• One of the best
known and most
widely read American
writers of the 20th
Century.
Page 2
John Steinbeck
• His characters and his
stories were taken from
real life struggles in the
first half of the 20th
century.
• His body of work
reflects his wide range
of interests, including
marine biology, jazz,
politics, philosophy,
history and myth.
Page 3
Notable Works
Cup of Gold (1929) – First Novel
Tortilla Flat (1935) – First Success
In Dubious Battle (1936)
Of Mice and Men (1937)
The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
The Moon is Down (1942)
Cannery Row (1945)
The Pearl (1947)
East of Eden (1952)
Sweet Thursday (1954) – Sequel to
Cannery Row
The Winter of Our Discontent (1961) –
Final Novel
Page 4
Early Works
• Steinbeck’s first novel,
published in 1929 was
the unsuccessful
mythological work Cup
of Gold.
• Steinbeck achieved his
first critical success
with the novel Tortilla
Flat (1935), which won
the California Club’s
Gold Medal.
Page 5
The Grapes of Wrath
• Steinbeck followed his
wave of success with
The Grapes of Wrath
(1939), based on
newspaper articles he
had written in San
Francisco.
• Novel won the Pulitzer
Prize in 1940
• Made into a John Ford
directed film staring
Henry Fonda.
Page 6
Writing Style
• Steinbeck often wrote about the need for
humans to be in partnership with nature.
• His characters were, often, the outcasts of
society, poor, uneducated and rebellious.
• Common Themes: economic hardships,
dreams and hope lost, the dangers of
isolation, rootless (unwanted) Americans,
and man’s need to belong.
Page 7
Cannery Row
• Set during Great
Depression in
Monterey, California.
– On a street lined with
sardine canneries.
• Ocean View Avenue
was later renamed
Cannery Row in honor
of the book.
• Sweet Thursday (1954)
revisits the same
characters nine years
later.
Page 8
Steinbeck Legacy
• Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1962.
– “I hold that a writer who does not believe in the
perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any
membership in literature” – John Steinbeck
• Seventeen of his works went on to become
Hollywood Films (notably East of Eden & The
Grapes of Wrath)
• Of Mice and Men is one of then most
frequently taught books in public high school.
Page 9
The Literary Canon
Page 10
What is the Canon?
• The term “literary canon” refers to a classification of
literature.
– It is a term used widely to refer to a group of literary works that
are considered the most important of a particular time period or
place.
• There are many ways in which literary works can be
classified, but the canon seems to apply a certain validity
or authority to a work of literature.
• Who decides the canon?
– Influential literary critics, scholars, teachers, and others.
– Subjective qualifications.
Page 11
Literary Periods and
Movements
Page 12
What are Literary
Periods/Movements?
• While tracing the evolution of literature
through time, scholars often group works
from a certain timeframe together.
– These are labeled periods or movements.
• The movements and periods listed are not
mutually exclusive in their timeframes.
– They overlap. In some cases a single author can
be claimed by more than one movement (i.e.
Steinbeck)
– Classifying art often ends up being more fluid
than expected.
Page 13
Periods/Movements
•
Medieval (500-1500)
–
•
Renaissance (1500-1670)
–
•
Notable Texts: Chopin’s The Awakening & Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
Modernism (1910-1965)
–
•
Notable Texts: Eliot’s Middlemarch & Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Naturalism (1870-1920)
–
•
Notable Texts: Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles & Anything by
Dickens
Realism (1820–1920)
–
•
Notable Texts: Whitman’s Leaves of Grass & Thoreau’s Walden
Victorian (1837-1901)
–
•
Notable Poets: Blake, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, & Coleridge
Transcendentalism (1830-1860)
–
•
Notable Texts: Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels & Franklin’s Poor Richards Almanack
Romanticism (1798-1870)
–
•
Notable Texts: Milton’s Paradise Lost & Anything by Shakespeare
The Enlightenment (1700-1800)
–
•
Notable Texts: Beowulf & The Song of Roland
Notable Texts: Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms & Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
Post-Modernism (1965-Present)
–
Wallace’s Infinite Jest & Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow
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Page 15
Realism
(1820-1920)
• The belief that the novel’s function is simply to report what
happens, without comment or judgment.
– The realistic novel rests upon the strengths of its characters
rather than plot or turn of phrase.
• Movement was heavily informed by journalistic technique.
– Objectivity and fidelity to the facts of the matter.
• Movement coincided with advances in the field of human
psychology.
– Freud, Jung, James & Adler all worked and published during this
time.
• Henry James is considered one of the great realist authors
with works like The Turn of the Screw and The Portrait of a
Lady.
• Though readers at the time complained very little happened in
realistic fiction.
Page 16
Naturalism
(1870-1920)
• Literature that focused on social and heredity
conditions in characters.
• In the age of Darwin, Social Darwinism took hold
of the movement.
– The Naturalist writer simply takes the world as it is, for
better or worse.
• The dominant themes of Naturalist literature is that
persons are fated to whatever station in life their
heredity, environmental, and social conditions
prepare them for.
• A short lived literary movement.
– Little financial success for the authors.
Page 17
Modernism
(1910-1965)
• Identified as a break from Naturalism and
Realism because of modernisms break with
genre and form.
– Heightened use of ‘subjectivity’.
• Modernism was seen as the beginning
between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art.
• The “unreliable” narrator become prominent
in literature.
– Readers were forced to question basic
assumptions about how the novel should operate.
Page 18
Which Literary Period/Movement
does Steinbeck and Cannery
Row belong in?
Why is Steinbeck taught in Public
Education but widely ignored in
Higher Education?
Page 19