Brief Survey of
American Literature
Some Basic Characteristics of
American Literature
• Short history but great achievement
• Began with oral myths, legends, tales
• Poetry, fiction, drama, essay all highly developed
• Female, ethnic literature came into the centre
recently
• Drawn immense interest from Chinese readers
Outline of American Literature
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Beginnings to 1700
From colonies to nation: 1700-1820
The Romantic period: 1820—1865
The Realism and Naturalism: 1865—1914
The Modern period: 1914—1945
Contemporary literature: since 1945
Cf. Norton Anthology of American Literature, the 7th edition,
2007.
1. Beginnings to 1700
• Great mixing of peoples from the whole Atlantic
basin
• Bloody conflicts between Native Americans (or
American Indians) and European explorers and settlers
who had both religious and territorial aspirations
- Native American oral literature / oral tradition
- European explorers’ letters, diaries, reports, etc., such
as Christopher Columbus’s letters about his voyage to
the “New world”.
- Anglo (New England) settlers’ books, sermons,
journals, narratives, and poetry
Native American / American Indian
oral literature / oral tradition
•
•
•
•
creation stories（起源神话）
trickster tales（恶作剧者传奇）
rituals / ceremonies（典仪）
songs / chants（曲词）
Anglo Settlers’ Writings
• Highly religious and pragmatic
- John Smith, founder of Jamestown, Virginia; Pocahontas
- John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity”: “… We
shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are
upon us…”
- William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (1630-50, pub.
1856)
- Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), The Tenth Muse (1650), the
first volume of poems published by a resident of the New
World
- Edward Taylor (1642- 1729), Preparatory Meditations
(1682-1725, pub. 1939, 1960)
- Mary Rowlandson (1636-1711), A Narrative of the Captivity
and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682)
2. American Literature
1700-1820
From Colonies to Nation
• Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), whose
passionate sermons helped revive religious
fervor during the “Great Awakening”（大觉
醒运动, 1730s-1740s)
• Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
• Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
• Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
• Olaudah Equiano (1745?-1797)
• Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
• Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784)
• Hannah Webster Foster (1758-1840)
Enlightenment and
establishment of the
nation
Benjamin Franklin
• a second-generation immigrant of
English descendent
• Writer, printer, publisher, scientist,
statesman, and diplomat, he was the
most famous and respected private
figure
of
his
time.
Benjamin Franklin
(1706----1790)
• Benjamin Franklin recorded his early
life in his famous book The
Autobiography.
Benjamin Franklin
• He was the first great self-made man in America, a
poor democrat born in an aristocratic age
• supported the cause of independence,, and aided
Jefferson in writing the Declaration of
Independence.
• Practical yet idealistic, hard working and
enormously successful.
• the Scottish philosopher David Hume called him
America's "first great man of letters”.
Major Works
Franklin’s place in literature owes much to his
almanac and autobiography:
• Poor Richard’s Almanac (1732)
（穷理查格言历书）
• Published from 1732 to 1758 under the
name of Richard Saunders
• Full of proverbs which teach people thrift,
carefulness, and independence
Poor Richard’s Almanac
• “lost time is never found again”
• “a penny saved is a penny earned”
• “God helps those that help
themselves”
• “Early to bed, and early to rise,
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and
wise”
The Autobiography
• First published in Paris in March of 1791 entitled
“Memoires De La Vie Privee”
• The first English translation, "The Private Life
of the Late Benjamin Franklin. Originally
Written By Himself, And Now Translated
From The French," was published in London in
1793.
• Faithful Puritan account of the colorful career of
America’s first self-made man.
• The writing process lasted for 40 years, yet the
book was still not completed when he died。
13 virtues followed by
Franklin
1. Temperance 节制
（饮食）
2. Silence 沉默
3. Order 条理
4. Resolution 决心
5. Frugality 节俭
6. Industry 勤劳
7. Sincerity 真诚
8. Justice 公正
9. Moderation 温和
10. Cleanliness 整洁
11. Tranquility 平静
12. Chastity 贞洁
13. Humility 谦卑
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
• Political Pamphlets during the
revolutionary period:
- Common Sense (1776) urges
immediate independence from Britain
- Crisis (1776-1783) shore up the
soldiers’ spirits
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
• Third president of US (1801-9)
• Advocated religious freedom
• Major drafter and writer of The
Declaration of Independence (1776)
• Author of Notes on the State of Virginia
(1784) 《弗吉尼亚州笔记》 for religious
freedom（宗教自由），white superiority
（白人种族优越论）
More literature during
the revolution
Olaudah Equiano (1745?-1797)
• Black writer of autobiography: The
Interesting Narrative of the Life
of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus
Vassa, the African (1789)
- about the cruel slave trade
- promoting the abolition campaign in
England
Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
• “Poet of American Revolution”: poems
of patriotism and nationalism
• Poems in praise of nature and the
American Indian’s way of life (“noble
savage”), a part of American romantic
tradition
Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784)
• First black woman poet who published
poems in the literary history of the
United States
First American novelists
• Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810),
Wieland (1798)
• William Hill Brown (1765-1793), The Power
of Sympathy (1789)
• Hannah Webster Foster (1758-1840),
woman novelist who wrote The Coquette;
or, The History of Eliza Wharton; A
Novel; Founded on Fact. By a Lady of
Massachusetts (1797)
3. The Romantic period
1820—1865
Romanticism
• As an approach in literary creation, romanticism
is ever present in literature of all times.
• As a literary movement, it occurred and
developed in Europe and America at the turn of
the 19th century
• Under the historical background of the
Industrial Revolution around 1760 and the
French Revolution(1789—1799)
Romantic vs. Neoclassic (1)
• Neoclassicism:
- reason, order, elegant wit
- rationalism of enlightenment in 18th-cent.
• Romanticism:
- passion, emotion, natural beauty
- imagination, mysticism, liberalism
(freedom to express personal feelings)
Romantic vs. Neoclassic (2)
• Innovation:
- subjects:
common life; the
supernatural; the
far away and the
long ago
- style: common
language really
used by men;
poetic symbolism
• Strong
traditionalism:
-distrust of radical
innovation
-respect for
classical writers
-upper-class
subjects
-elevated style:
poetic diction
Romantic vs. Neoclassic(3)
• Good poetry is
• Poetry is an “art”
that needs long
“the spontaneous
overflow of
studied and practiced
skills to achieve
powerful feelings.”
“correctness”
- unforced and
free composition
- observe stylistic
out of the
decorum
inherent organic
- respect established
“laws” of the
/ artificial “rules” of
poet’s imagination
poetry
Romantic vs. Neoclassic(4)
• Subject matter:
nature; central
human
experiences and
problems
• Feelingful
meditation;
thinking
• Subject matter:
human beings
• Poetry is an
imitation of human
life, “a mirror held
up to nature”
• Art for humanity’s
sake: for
instruction and
aesthetic pleasure
Romantic vs. Neoclassic(5)
• Subject matter:
personal
experiences of
the poet, often
the social
nonconformists or
outcasts
• Subject matter
and objects: what
human beings
possess in common
– representative
characteristics
and widely shared
experiences,
thoughts, feelings
and tastes.
Romantic vs. Neoclassic(6)
• Human beings are
endowed with
limitless
aspiration toward
the infinite good
• Highest art – an
endeavour beyond
finite human
possibility
• Human beings are
limited
- attack human
“pride”
- Great Chain of
Being
- submitted to
“rules” or
conventions in
subjects,
structure, diction,
e.g. heroic couplet
The American Romanticism
• stretched from the end of the 18th century to
the end of the Civil War
• was extremely influential, and best represented
by the New England poets and novelists
• Both imitative and independent
• One of the most important periods in the
history of American literature, usually called
the Renaissance of American literature
Early Romanticism
•
•
•
•
•
•
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
James Russell Lowell
John Greenleaf Whittier
James Fenimore Cooper
Washington Irving
William Cullen Bryant
New England
Transcendentalism
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Henry David Thoreau
• Margaret Fuller
High Romanticism
•
•
•
•
•
Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Herman Melville
Edgar Allan Poe
Early romantic writers
Washington Irving (1783-1859)
• The first American writer
internationally acclaimed, most
famous for his book The Sketch
Book (1819-1820) including
- “Rip Van Winkle”
- “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
James Fenimore Cooper
(1789-1851)
• The Leather-stocking series皮袜子/
皮裹腿系列小说 (Natty Bumppo
wearing long deerskin leggings)
- The Pioneers (1823) 《开拓者》
- The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
《最后的莫希干人》
- The Prairie (1827)《大草原》
- The Pathfinder, (1840)《探路人》
- The Deerslayer (1841)《猎鹿人》
William Cullen Bryant
(1794-1878)
• The first important American
romantic poet of international
reputation famous for poems like
- “Thanatopsis” (1817)《死亡随想曲》
- “The Yellow Violet” (1814)《黄色的
堇香花》
- “To a Waterfoul” (1815)《致水鸟》
New England Poets
• Conservative and imitative:
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
- The Song of Hiawatha《海华沙之歌》（1855）
- “I Shot an Arrow” 我射出一支箭
- “A Psalm of Life” 生命颂 / 生之礼赞
• Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)
• James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)
• John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
- Snow-Bound (1866) (New England idyllic scene)
New England
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism
• The term “transcendentalism” is derived from
the Latin verb transcendere meaning, to rise above,
or to pass beyond the limits.
• Transcendentalism has been defined as the
recognition in man of the capacity of acquiring
knowledge transcending the reach of the
five senses, or of knowing truth intuitively,
or of reaching the divine without the need of an
intercessor.
Transcendentalism
• As the leader of this movement, Ralph Waldo
Emerson interpreted transcendentalism as
“whatever belongs to the class of intuitive
thought,” and as “idealism as it appears in 1842.”
He believed that the transcendental law was the
“moral law” through which man discovered the
nature of God as a living spirit.
Three Sources
• It was a system of thought that originated from three
sources.
• First, American Unitarianism. It represented a
thoughtful revolt against orthodox Puritanism.
Unitarianism believed God as one being, rejecting the
doctrine of trinity, stressing the divinity in human
nature. It laid the foundation for the central doctrines
of transcendentalism.
Three Sources
• Secondly, the idealistic philosophy from
France and Germany exerted enormous
impact on American intellectuals.
• Thirdly, oriental mysticism as revealed in
Hindu and Chinese classics reached America in
English translations.
As a result, New England Transcendentalism
blended native American tradition with foreign
influences.
Development
• Ralph Waldo Emerson published Nature in
1836 which represented a new way of intellectual
thinking in America.
• “The Universe is composed of Nature
and the Soul. Spirit is present
everywhere.” This new voice led American
Romanticism to a new and mature period, the
period of New England Transcendentalism.
• This was the most significant development of
American literature in the mid-19th century.
Development
• The Concord club was the first and most famous
of a series of forums that served during the next
few decades as social gathering points. It became
the movement's magnetic center.
• They advocated their views and principles in
various magazines. Besides, they even published
their journal, The Dial (1840-1844).
Major Transcendentalist Figures
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
• Nature (1836)
• The American Scholar (1837)
• Divinity School Address (1838)
• Essays: First Series (1841)
• Essays: Second Series (1844)
H. D. Thoreau (1817-1862)
• Walden (1854)
• “Civil Disobedience” (1849)
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)
• Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)
• Editor of The Dial (1840-42)
High Romanticism
Whitman and Dickinson:
Romantic & Modern Poets
1. Both passionate in expressing emotions
2. Unconventional in poetic forms and images
• Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
- Leaves of Grass (1855, 1856, 1860, 1867,
1871, 1876, 1881, 1889, 1891-2)
• Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
- Slant rhymes, capitalizations, dashes
- uncertainty
Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1804-1864)
• The Scarlet Letter (1850)《红字》
• The House of Seven Gables (1851)《带有
七个尖角阁的房子》
• The Blithedale Romance (1852)《福谷传奇》
• The Marble Faun (1860)《玉石雕像》
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Typee (1846)
Moby-Dick (1851)
The Piazza Tales (“Beneto Cereno”
“Bartleby the Scrivener”) (1856)
The Confidence Man (1857)
Billy Budd (1924, posthumously
published)
Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick
Billy Budd
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
“art for art’s sake”
Horror story
Science fiction
Detective story
Psychologically thrilling tale
Poems
Literary criticism
4. The Realism and
Naturalism
1865—1914
REALISM
Mid-19th-century French movement in
literature.
•Emphasized the use of Scientific Method: a
method of observation and hypothesis to
suggest solutions to problems.
•Today, it generally means the surface
details of things that appear life-like, or
theatre that seeks to give the appearance of
everyday reality.
62
The Local Color Movement
(1865-1880)
The second half of the 19th century
saw America becoming increasingly
self-conscious. Americans wanted to
know what their country looked like,
and how the varied races which made
up their growing population lived and
talked.
63
Local Color
• A kind of fiction that came to prominence in
the USA in the late 19th century, and was
devoted to capturing the unique customs,
manners, speech, folklore, and other
qualities of a particular regional community,
usually in humorous short stories. The most
famous of the local colorists was Mark
Twain; others included Bret Hart, Kate
Chopin, and Sarah Orne Jewett.
(Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms)
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Innocents Abroad (1869)
The Gilded Age (1873)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
The Prince and the Pauper (1882)
Life on the Mississippi (1883)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s
Court (1889)
• The Man That Corrupted Hadleydburg
(1900)
Bret Harte (1836-1902)
Editor, beginning in 1868, of The
Overland Monthly, San Francisco, in
which he published the stories “The
Luck of Roaring Camp” and “The
Outcasts of Poker Flat,” and the
poem “Plain Language from Truthful
James,” also known as “The Heathen
Chine.”
66
Local Color Women Novelists
• Kate Chopin (1851-1904)
- The Awakening (1899)
• Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)
- Deephaven (1877)
- A Country Doctor (1884)
- The Country of the Pointed Firs
(1896)
Characteristics of Realistic Writing
1. The purpose of writing is to instruct and to
entertain.
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 style of Realism
– Emphasis is placed upon scenic presentation,
– de-emphasizing authorial comment and
evaluation.
– rejects the omniscient point of view.
68
Realistic Techniques
1. Plots emphasizing the norm of daily
experience
2. Ordinary characters, studied in depth
3. Complete authorial objectivity
4. Responsible morality; a world truly
reported
5. Settings thoroughly familiar to the
writer
69
Theorist of American Realism
• William Dean Howells (1837-1920)
Editor of Atlantic Monthly, writer
of Criticism and Fiction (1891) in
which he championed realism, of the
novel The Rise of Silas Lapham
(1885)
Henry James (1843-1916),
master of psychological realism
• Writer of Daisy Miller (1879), The
Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Wings of
the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903),
The Golden Bowl (1904)
• International themes: Contrasting
American and European cultures
• The first to use Third-person limited
point of view第三人称有限视角, “center of
consciousness”
What is the difference between
Realism and Naturalism?
72
American Naturalism
An extension or continuation of
Realism with the addition of
pessimistic determinism.
73
American Naturalism
Includes all the characteristics of Realism, as
well as the following:
•The characters (who are representative of
humankind) must be seen as biological
phenomena whose behaviors are strictly
determined by HEREDITY and ENVIRONMENT
(influence of Darwin).
•Highly deterministic (fatalistic), life is
portrayed as brutal and ugly, where characters
have no sense of free will.
74
Subject Matter of Naturalism:
• Raw and unpleasant experiences which reduce
characters to "degrading" behavior in their
struggle to survive.
• Characters are mostly from the lower middle
or the lower classes—poor, uneducated, and
unsophisticated.
• Milieu is the commonplace and the unheroic.
• Life is usually the dull round of daily
existence.
75
Subject Matter of Naturalism:
• There is discussion of fate and “hubris”
that affect a character.
• Generally the controlling force is society
and the surrounding environment.
76
Authors of Naturalism
• Booker Taliaferro Washington (18561915)
• Frank Norris (1870-1902)
• Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
• Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
• Jack London (1876-1916)
• Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)
77
Booker T. Washington (18561915)
• Black educator and writer famous for
his Tuskegee Institute in Alabama
• Up from Slavery (1901), an
autobiography
Frank Norris (1870-1902)
• The Octopus (1901), dealing with the
raising of wheat in California and the
struggles of the ranchers against the
railroad
Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
• Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
(1893)
• The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Sister Carrie (1900)
Jennie Gerhardt (1911)
The Financier (1912)
The Titan (1914)
The Stoic (1947)
The Genius (1915)
An American Tragedy ( 1925)
Jack London (1876-1916)
•
•
•
•
The Call of the Wild (1903)
The Sea-Wolf (1904)
White Fang (1906)
Martin Eden (1909), a semiautobiographical novel
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)
• Muckraker writer
• The Jungle (1906)
5. The Modern period
1914—1945
Modernism
• Background:
- commercialization, industrialization
(mass production): threatens
individualism; sense of despair
- wars: loss of belief and certainty
- society is becoming worse
- the world is incomprehensible
- there are no solutions to problems:
more questions than answers
- breakdown of traditional values
Characteristics of modern
literature (1)
• Attitude towards what is significant
- Antihero vs. hero
Gertrude stein: 站在街头无所事事的士兵比
在山上英勇冲锋的士兵更值得文学的关注
• Focus of description
- internal, subjective, psychological world
Ulysses: 800 pages about 18 hours
Characteristics of modern
literature (2)
• subject matter: internal consciousness /
unconsciousness, antihero; strong sense of
loss, alienation, loneliness, rootlessness,
fragmentation, anxiety, obscurity,
absurdity
• Stylistic innovations—disruption of
traditional syntax and form
• Techniques: stream-of-consciousness,
juxtaposition of fragmentation, ambiguity,
uncertainty
The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock (T.S. Eliot, 1917)
• Let us go then, you and I,
• When the evening is spread out against
the sky
• Like a patient etherised upon a table
• ……
The Waste Land
(T.S. Eliot, 1922)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
四月是最残忍的月份，从
死去的土地上养育丁香，混合
记忆与欲望，让
春雨催生干枯的根芽。
冬天令我们温暖，遗忘的雪
覆盖在地上，从干枯的根里
滋养小小的生命。
夏天令我们震惊，斯丹卜吉希
一场暴雨来了；我们全都躲进柱廊，
等候雨过天晴，走进霍夫大公园，
喝着咖啡，聊上一个小时。
“我不是俄国人，我从立陶宛来，是个德国人。”
当我们小时候，住在大公家里，
他是我表哥，带我出去滑雪，
我害怕了。他说，玛丽玛丽
抓紧了啊。我们滑下去了。
在山里我们感到自由。
我在大半个晚上阅读，冬天去了南方。
91
Modern Poetry
• Chicago poets: Carl Sandburg (18781967), Hart Crane (1899-1932)
• Imagist poets
• T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
• Robert Frost (1874-1963)
• Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
• The Fugitives / Agrarians
Imagism (1909-1917)
• U.S.: Ezra Pound, H.D. (Hilda
Doolittle), John Gould Fletcher, Amy
Lowell, William Carlos Williams
• England: F.S. Flint, Richard Aldington,
D.H. Lawrence
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
• “The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock” (1915)
• The Waste Land (1922) 《荒原》
• The Four Quartets (1935-1942)《四
个四重奏》
• Murder in the Cathedral (1935)《大
教堂谋杀案》
The Fugitives / Agrarians
• Poets, novelists, critics (the New
Criticism)
- John Crowe Ransom
- Robert Penn Warren
- Allen Tate
- Cleanth Brooks
Modern Drama
• Social criticism
- Elmer Rice, The Adding Machine (1923)
- Clifford Odets (leftist playwright),
Waiting for Lefty (1935)
• Symbolism & Expressionism
- Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953)
Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953)
•
•
•
•
•
Emperor Jones (1920)
The Hairy Ape (1921)
Desire Under the Elms (1924)
The Iceman Cometh (1939)
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
(1940)
Modern Fiction
•
•
•
•
•
•
Women writers
Fiction about small-town people
The Lost Generation writers
Southern writers
Leftist writers
Black writers
Modern Women Novelists
• Gertrude Stein (1874-1946),
“writers’ writer”
- Three Lives (1909)
• Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
• Willa Cather (1873-1947)
Edith Wharton (18621937)
•
•
•
•
Novel of manners 风俗小说
The House of Mirth (1905)
The Custom of the Country (1913)
The Age of Innocence (1920)
Willa Cather (1873-1947)
• Frontier life on the western
prairies
• O, Pioneers! (1913)
• My Antonia (1918)
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
• Main Street (1920)
• Babbitt (1922)
Sherwood Anderson
(1876-1941)
• Winesburg, Ohio (1919), stories of
small-town people
• The Triumph of the Egg (1921),
stories and poems
• Death in the Woods and Other
Stories (1933)
The Lost Generation
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Ernest Hemingway
• John Dos Passos
F. Scott Fitzgerald
(1896-1940)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
This Side of Paradise (1920)
Flappers and Philosophers (1920)
Tales of Jazz Age (1922)
The Beautiful and Damned (1922)
The Great Gatsby (1925)
Tender Is the Night (1934)
The Last Tycoon (1941)
Ernest Hemingway (18991961)
• The Sun Also Rises (1926)
• A Farewell to Arms (1929)
• For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
• The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
John Dos Passos (18961970)
• Three Soldiers (1921)
• Manhattan Transfer (1925)
• U.S.A. trilogy
- The 42nd Parallel (1930)
- 1919 (1932)
- The Big Money (1936)
Southern Novelist: William
Faulkner (1897-1962)
• His mythical Yoknapatawpha County
• The Sound and the Fury (1929), the
stream-of-consciousness device
• As I Lay Dying (1930)
• Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
• Light in August (1932)
• Go Down, Moses (1942)
Leftist Writer
• John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
- The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
Black Writers
Harlem Renaissance 哈莱姆文艺复兴
• Jean Toomer (1894-1967)
- Cane (1923)
• Richard Wright (1908-1960)
- Native Son (1940), a “protest novel”
• Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)
- Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
《他们眼望上苍》
• Langston Hughes (1902-1967), “Harlem
laureate poet”
6. Contemporary
literature
since 1945
Main trends
• Post-modernism (more sense of
absurdity and uncertainty)
- beat generation, black humor, new
journalism
• Rise of ethnic literature
Contemporary Fiction
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The Beat Generation
The Black Humor
The Non-fiction / New Journalism novels
War Novels
Southern Writers
Black Writers
Jewish American writers
Native American writers
Chinese American writers
The Beat Generation
• - Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)’s novel
On the Road (1957)
The Black Humor
• Joseph Heller (1923-1999), Catch22 (1961)
• John Barth (1930- )
• Thomas Pynchon (1937- )
• Kurt Vonnegut (1922- ), SlaughterHouse Five (1969)
Non-fiction / New
Journalism novels
• Truman Capote (1924-1984), In Cold
Blood (1966)
• Tom Wolfe (1930- )
• Norman Mailer (1923-2007), The
Armies of the Night (1968)
• Joan Didion (1934- )
War Novels
• Norman Mailer (1923-2007), The Naked
and the Dead (1948)
• Irwin Shaw (1913-1984), The Young
Lions (1948)
• James Jones (1921-1977), From Here
to Eternity (1951)
• Herman Wouk (1915- ), The Winds of
War (1971)
Southern Writers
• Katherine Ann Porter (1890-1980)
• Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964)’s novel Wise
Blood (1952), short story “A Good Man Is Hard
to Find”
• Eudora Welty (1909-2001)
• Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989)’s novel All the
King’s Men (1946) won the Pulitzer Prize for
fiction. He received Pulitzer Prizes for poetry
twice. He is the only person to have won Pulitzer
Prizes for both fiction and poetry.
Black Writers
• Ralph Ellison (1914-1994), Invisible Man
(1952)
• James Baldwin (1924-1987), Go Tell It on
the Mountain (1953)
• Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), “I
Have a Dream”
• Malcolm X (1925-1965), The
Autobiography of Malcolm X (1964) which
was told to Alex Haley, writer of Roots
(1976)
• Leroy Jones (1934- ), a poet
Black Women Writers
• Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965)’s
play A Raisin in the Sun (1959)
• Alice Walker (1944- ), The Color
Purple (1982)
• Toni Morrison (1931- ) who won the
Nobel Prize in 1993, The Bluest Eye
(1970), Song of Solomon (1977),
Beloved (1987)
Jewish American Writers
• Norman Mailer
• I.B. Singer (1902-1991), Nobel Prize
winner in 1978
• Saul Bellow (1915-2005), Nobel Prize
Winner in 1976
• Bernard Malamud (1914-1986)
• Philip Roth (1933- )
• J.D. Salinger (1919-2010)
• Henry Roth (1906-1995), Call It Sleep
(1934)
Saul Bellow (1915-2005),
• Dangling Man (1944)
• The Adventures of Augie March (1953)获
全国图书奖
• Seize the Day (1956)
• Henderson the Rain King (1959)
• Herzog (1964)获全国图书奖
• Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970)获全国图书奖
• Humboldt’s Gift (1975) 获普利策奖
Bernard Malamud (1914-1986)
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Novels
The Assistant (1957)
The Fixer (1966) 获全国图书奖
The Tenants (1971)
Short Stories
The Magic Barrel (1958), short
story collection,获全国图书奖
Philip Roth (1933- )
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Goodbye, Columbus (1959)获全国图书奖
Portnoy’s Complaint (1969)
The Ghost Writer (1979)
The Counterlife (1986)获全国图书批评界奖
Sabbath’s Theater (1995)获全国图书奖
American Pastoral (1997) 获普利策奖
J.D. Salinger (1919-2010)
• The Catcher in the Rye (1951) 《麦
田里的守望者》
Native American Writers
• N. Scott Momady (1934- ), The House
Made of Dawn《晨曦之屋》 (1968)获普利策
奖
• Leslie Marmon Silko (1948- ), Ceremony
《仪式》 (1977)
• Louise Erdrich (1954- ), Love Medicine
(1984)《爱药》先后获得包括全国图书评论界
奖在内的5项小说奖
Chinese American Writers
• Maxine Hong Kingston 汤亭亭(1940- ),
Woman Warrior (1976)《女勇士》获非小说
类全国图书评论奖, China Man (1980)全国图
书奖
• Amy Tan谭恩美(1952- ), Joy Luck Club
(1989)《喜福会》
• Gish Jen任碧莲(1955- ), Typical American
(1991) 《典型的美国佬》
Other Novelists
• John Updike (1932-2009)
prolific writer famous for his rabbit
series novels and a novella
多产作家，以兔子五部曲闻名
• Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)
John Updike (1932-2009)
• Rabbit, Run (1960)
• Rabbit, Redux (1971)
• Rabbit Is Rich (1981)获普利策奖、
全国图书奖、全国书评家协会奖
• Rabbit at Rest (1990)获普利策奖
• Rabbit Remembered (2001), novella
Contemporary Poetry
• Beat Generation poetry
• Confessional poetry
• Other poets
Beat Generation poetry
• Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), Howl
(1956)
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919- ), A
Coney Island of the Mind (1958)《心
灵中的柯尼岛》
Confessional Poetry自白派诗歌
• 描述诗人自己的真实生活，尤其是一些私密的心理和
生理的体验，如性经验、心理痛苦和疾病、试用毒品
的感受、自杀冲动等。
Robert Lowell (1917-1977), Life Studies (1959) 获
全国图书奖
Allen Ginsberg
Ann Sexton (1928-1974), Live or Die (1966)获普利策
奖
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), Collected Poems (1981)获
普利策奖
John Berryman (1914-1972), 77 Dream Songs (1964)
获普利策奖
Other Poets
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Marianne Moore (1887-1972)
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917- )
Adrienne Rich (1929- )
Charles Olson (1910-1970)
John Ashberry (1927- )
Frank O’Hara (1926-1966)
Contemporary Drama
• Tennessee Williams (1914-1983)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1948)
The Glass Menagerie (1944)
• Arthur Miller (1915-2005)
Death of a Salesman (1949)
• Edward Albee (1928- )
The Zoo Story （1958）
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962)
Nobel Prize Winners
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Sinclair Lewis 1930
Eugene O’Neill 1936
Pearl Buck 1938 赛珍珠 The Good Earth《大地》
T.S. Eliot 1948
William Faulkner 1950
Ernest Hemingway 1954
John Steinbeck 1962
Saul Bellow 1976
Isaac Bashevis Singer 1978
Toni Morrison 1993