Chapter 3: The Modern Period
General Introduction
1. The historical and socio-cultural background of the American literature between the two World Wars:
1The two World Wars, especially the First World War (l914--l918), became the emblem of all wars in the twentieth century, which means violence, devastation, blood and death, and made a big impact on the life of the American people and their literary writings.
2The impact of Marxism, Freudianism and European modern art on American modern literature: Between the mid-l9th century and the first decade of the 20th century, there had been a big flush of new theories and new ideas in both social and natural sciences, as well as in the field of art in Europe, which played an indispensable role in bringing about modernism and the modernistic writings in the United States.
a. Marxism and Freudianism
William James, an American psychologist famous for his theory of “stream of consciousness,” and Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, noted for his “collective unconscious” and “archetypal symbol” as part of modern mythology. Their theories, plus Freud’s interpretation of dreams, have infused modern American literature and made it possible for most of the writers in the modern period to probe into the inner world of human reality.
b. European modern art:
The implications of modern European arts to modern American writings can also be strongly felt in the American literature between the wars, even thereafter.
3The expatriate movement
There was a spiritual crisis in the modern period, but a full blossoming of literary writings. The expatriate movement, also called the second American Renaissance, is the most recognizable literary movement that gave rise to the twentieth century American literature. When the First World War broke out, many young men volunteered to take part in “the war to end Wars” only to find that modern warfare was not as glorious or heroic as they thought it to be. Disillusioned and disgusted by the frivolous, greedy, and heedless way of life in America, they began to write and they wrote from their own experiences in the war. Among these young writers were the most prominent figures in American literature, especially in modern American literature. They were basically expatriates who left America and formed a community of writers and artists in Paris, involved with other European novelists and poets in their experimentation on new modes of thought and expression. These writers were later named by an American writer, Gertrude Stein, also an expatriate, “The Lost Generation.”
2. The historical and socio-cultural background of the American literature after the World War II:
What happened immediately after the Second World War in the United States and other parts of the world exerted a tremendous influence on the mentality of Americans. It changed man’s view of himself and the world as well.
First of all, the dropping of an atomic bomb over Hiroshima in Japan shocked the whole world and made possible the destruction of the Western civilization. Then a mutual fear and hostility grew between the Eastern and Western countries with the Cold War, the effect of which could be felt in the form of McCarthyism in the Unites States. Besides, the Korean War and the Vietnam War broadened the gap between the government and the people. The assassination of John F. Kennedy, and of Martin Luther King, spokesman of the American Civil Rights Movement, the resignation of Nixon because of the Water-Gate scandal, etc. intensified the terror and tossed the whole nation again into the grief and despair. The impact of these changes and upheavals on the American society is emotional. People start to question the role of science in human progress and the fear of the misuse of modern science and technology is spreading. They no longer believe in God but start to reconsider the nature of man and man’s capacity for evil. They begin to think of life as a big joke or an absurdity. The world is even more disintegrating and fragmentary and people are even more estranged and despondent.
3. American literature between the two world wars:
1 The Imagist Movement and the artistic characteristics of imagist poems:
Led by the American poet Ezra Pound, Imagist Movement is a poetic movement that flourished in the U.S. and England between 1909-1917. It advances modernism in arts which concentrates on reforming the medium of poetry as opposed to Romanticism, especially Tennyson’s worldliness and high-flown language in poetry. Pound endorsed three main principles as guidelines for Imagism, including direct treatment of poetic subjects, elimination of merely ornamental or superfluous words, and rhythmical composition should be composed with the phrasing of music, not a metronome. The primary Imagist objective is to avoid rhetoric and moralizing, to stick closely to the object or experience being described, and to move from explicit generalization. The leading poets are Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, D. H. Lawrence, etc.
2 The Lost Generation
It refers to, in general, the post-World War I generation, but specifically a group of expatriate disillusioned intellectuals and artists, who experimented on new modes of thought and expression by rebelling against former ideals and values and replacing them only by despair or a cynical hedonism. The remark of Gertrude Stein, “You are all a lost generation,” addressed to Hemingway, was used as an epigraph to the latter’s novel The Sun Also Rises, which brilliantly describes those expatriates who had cut themselves off from their past in America in order to create new types of writing.
3 What is Expressionism?
Expressionism is used to describe the works of art and literature in which the representation of reality is distorted to communicate an inner vision, transforming nature rather than imitating it. In literature it is often considered a revolt against realism and naturalism, a seeking to achieve a psychological or spiritual reality rather than to record external events.
4 The concept of “wasteland” in relation to the works of those writers in the twentieth-century American literature.
The Waste Land is a poem written by T.S. Eliot on the theme of the sterility and chaos of the contemporary world. This most widely known expression of the despair of the post-War era has appeared over and again in the works of those writers in the twentieth-century American literature.
4. Postwar American literature:
1 The Beat Generation Also called Beat Movement, it is an American social and literary movement originating in the 1950s. Beat Generation writings expressed profound dissatisfaction with contemporary American society and endorsed an alternative set of values. They rejected traditional forms and advocated personal release, purification, and illumination through the heightened sensory awareness.
2 The pluralism of postwar American fiction
5. The literary characteristics of American modern literature:
1 Theme:
In general terms, much serious literature written from 1912 onwards attempted to convey a vision of social breakdown and moral decay and the writer’s task was to develop techniques that could represent a break with the past. Thus, the defining formal characteristics of the modernistic works are discontinuity and fragmentation.
2 Technical experimentation:
An awareness of the irrational and the workings of the unconscious mind are pervasive in much modernistic writing. Technically, modernism was marked by a persistent experimentalism. It rejected the traditional framework of narrative, description, and rational exposition in poetry and prose, in favor of a stream of consciousness presentation of personality, a dependence on the poetic image as the essential vehicle of aesthetic communication, and upon myth as a characteristic structural principle.
Compared with earlier writings, modern American writings are notable for what they omit -- the explanations, interpretations, connections, and summaries. There are shifts in perspective, voice, and tone, but the biggest shift is from the external to the internal, from the public to the private, from the chronological to the psychic, from the objective description to the subjective projection. Modern American writers in general emphasize the concrete sensory images or details as the direct conveyer of experience. They strive for directness, compression, and vividness and are sparing of words. Modern fiction prefer suggestiveness and tend to employ the first person narration or limit the reader to the “central consciousness” or one character’s point of view. This limitation accorded with the modernistic vision that truth does not exist objectively but is the product of a personal interaction with reality. As a result, the effect of modern American writings is surprising, unsettling, and shocking.
The typical authors during this period
I. Robert Lee Frost
1. His life and writing:
Frost is an important poet in the 20th century. He won the Pulitzer Prize four times and read poetry at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961.
He spent his early childhood in the Far West and later the family moved to New Hampshire. He went to Harvard but left in the middle because of his tuberculosis. When he was 28, he began to venture on writing.
2. His major works:
His first book A Boy’s Will (1913), whose lyrics trace a boy’s development from self-centered idealism to maturity, is marked by an intense but restrained emotion and the characteristic flavor of New England life.
His second book, a volume of poems North of Boston (1914), is described by the author as “a book of people,” which shows a brilliant insight into New England character and the background that formed it.
Mountain Interval (1916) contains such characteristic poems as “The Road Not Taken,” “Birches”. New Hampshire (1923) that won Frost the first of four Pulitzer Prizes includes “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, which stems from the ambiguity of the speaker’s choice between safety and the unknown.
The collection West-Running Brook (1928) poses disturbing uncertainties about man’s prowess and importance.
Collected Poems (1930) and A Further Range (1935) gathered Frost’s second and third Pulitzer Prizes. Both translate modern upheaval into poetic material the poet could skillfully control.
Frost’s fourth Pulitzer Prize was awarded for A Witness Tree (l942) which includes “The Gift Outright,” the poem he later recited at President Kennedy’s inauguration.
Frost took up a religious question most notably in “After Apple-Picking:” can a man’s best efforts ever satisfy God? A Masque of Reason (l945) and A Masque of Mercy (1947) are comic-serious dramatic narratives, in both of which biblical characters in modern settings discuss ethics and man’s relations to God.
3. His thematic concerns:
(1) Generally Frost is considered a regional poet whose subject matters mainly focus on the landscape and people in New England. These thematic concerns include the terror and tragedy in nature, as well as its beauty, and the loneliness and poverty of the isolated human being. But first and foremost Frost is concerned with his love of life and his belief in a serenity that only came from working usefully, which he practiced himself throughout his life.
(2) Frost wrote many poems that investigate the basic themes of man’s life: the individual’s relationships to himself, to his fellow-man, to world, and to his God. Profound meanings are hidden underneath the plain language and simple form. His poetry, by using nature as a storehouse of analogy and symbol, often probes mysteries of darkness and irrationality in the bleak and chaotic landscapes of an indifferent universe when men stand alone, unaided and perplexed.
4. His nature poems:
Robert Frost is mainly known for his poems concerning New England life. He learned from the tradition, especially the familiar conventions of nature poetry and of classical pastoral poetry, and made the colloquial New England speech into a poetic expression.
5. Frost’s style in language:
By using simple spoken language and conversational rhythms, Frost achieved an effortless grace in his style. He combined traditional verse forms -- the sonnet, rhyming couplets, blank verse with a clear American local speech rhythm, the speech of New England farmers with its idiosyncratic diction and syntax. In verse form he was assorted; he wrote in both the metrical forms and the free verse, and sometimes he wrote in a form that borrows freely from the merits of both, in a form that might be called semi-free or semi-conventional.
II. Scott Fitzgerald
1. His life and writing:
Francis Scott Fitzgerald was a most representative figure of the 1920s, who was mirror of the exciting age in almost every way. An active participant of his age, he never failed to remain detached and foresee the failure and tragedy of the “Dollar Decade.” Thus he is often acclaimed literary spokesman of the Jazz Age.
2. His major works:
His novels and short stories chronicled changing social attitudes during the 1920s, a period dubbed “The Jazz Age”. His first novel This Side of Paradise won for him wealth and fame. His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned increased his popularity, which also portrays the emotional and spiritual collapse of a wealthy young man during an unstable marriage.
The couple in the novel were undoubtedly modeled after Fitzgerald himself and Zelda.
His masterpiece The Great Gatsby (1925) made him one of the greatest American novelists.
Afterwards, Fitzgerald wrote one more important novel Tender is the Night (l934), in which he traces the decline of a young American psychiatrist whose marriage to a beautiful and wealthy patient drains his personal energies and corrodes his professional career. His last novel The Last Tycoon remains unfinished.
Fitzgerald also wrote short stories of great popularity. His short story collections include Flappers and Philosophers (l92l), Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), All the Sad Young Man (l926) and Taps at Reveille (1935). One of his best short stories is “Babylon Revisited,” which depicts an American’s return to Paris in the 1930s and his regretful realization that the past is beyond his reach, since he can neither alter it nor make any amends.
3. Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age:
(1) The Jazz Age: It refers to the 1920s, a time marked by frivolity, carelessness, hedonism and excitement in the life of the flaming youth. Fitzgerald is largely responsible for the term and many of his literary works portray it. The Jazz Age is brought vividly to life in The Great Gatsby.
(2) Most critics have agreed that Fitzgerald is both an insider and an outsider of the Jazz Age with a double vision of fascination and aloofness.
(3) Fitzgerald’s fictional world is the best embodiment of the spirit of the Jazz Age, in which he shows a particular interest in the upper--class society, especially the upper-class young people.
4. Fitzgerald and the American Dream:
(1) Fitzgerald’s fictions often deal with the bankruptcy of the American Dream, which is highlighted by the disillusionment of the protagonists’ personal dreams due to the clashes between their romantic vision of life and the sordid reality.
(2) Fitzgerald’s own life was a mirror of the 1920s. He was the victim of his “American Dream.”
5. Fitzgerald’s style:
He is a great stylist in American literature.
His style, closely related to his themes, is explicit and chilly. His accurate dialogues, his careful observation of mannerism, styles, models and attitudes provide the reader with a vivid sense of reality. He follows the Jamesian tradition in using the scenic method in his chapters, each one of which consists of one or more dramatic scenes, sometimes with intervening passages of narration, leaving the tedious process of transition to the readers’ imagination. He also skillfully employs the device of having events observed by a “central consciousness” to his great advantage. The accurate details, the completely original diction and metaphors, the bold impressionistic and colorful quality have all proved his consummate artistry.
III. Ernest Hemingway
1. His life and writing:
Hemingway was a myth in his own time and his life was colorful. He was born in Oak Park, Illinois. Hemingway loved sports and often went hunting and fishing with his father, which provided him with writing materials. After high school, he worked as a reporter. During World War I he served as an honorable junior officer in the American Red Cross Ambulance Corps and in 1918 was severely wounded in both legs. After the war, he went to Paris as a foreign reporter. Influenced and guided by Sherwood Anderson, Stephen Crane and Gertrude Stein he became a writer and began to attract attention. Later he actively participated in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. In 1954, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In 1961, in ill health, anxiety and deep depression, Hemingway shot himself with a hunting gun.
2. His major works:
Greatly and permanently affected by the war experiences, Hemingway formed his own writing style, together with his theme and hero.
His first book In Our Time (1925) presents a Hemingway hero called Nick Adams. Exposed to and victimized by violence in various forms, Nick becomes the prototype of the wounded hero who, with all the dignity and courage he could muster, confronts situations which are not of his own choosing yet threaten his destruction.
The Sun Also Rises(l926), Hemingway’s first true novel, casts light on “The Lost Generation.” The young expatriates in this novel are a group of wandering, amusing, but aimless people, who are caught in the war and removed from the path of ordinary life.
Hemingway’s second big success is A Farewell to Arms (1929) wrote the epitaph to a decade and to the whole generation in the 1920s. It tells us about the tragic love story about a wounded American soldier with a British nurse. Frederick Henry represents the experience of a whole nation, who is wounded in war and disillusioned with the insanity and futility of the universe. In this novel, Hemingway not only emphasizes his belief that man is trapped both physically and mentally, but goes to same lengths to refute the idea of nature as an expression of either God’s design or his beneficence and to suggest that man is doomed to be entrapped.
For Whom the Bell Tolls concerns a volunteer American guerrilla Robert Jordan fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Although fully aware of the doomed failure of his struggle, he keeps on striving because it is a cause of freedom and democracy. In the end, the manner of his dying convinces people that life is worth living and there are causes worth dying for.
The Old Man and the Sea, capping his career and leading to his receipt of the Nobel Prize, is about an old Cuban fisherman Santiago and his losing battle with a giant marlin. In a tragic sense, it is a representation of life as a struggle against unconquerable natural forces in which only a partial victory is possible. Nevertheless, there is a feeling of great respect for the struggle and mankind.
Hemingway’s other important works include Men Without Women (1927), Death in the Afternoon (l932), The Green Hills of Africa (1935), The Snows Of Kilimanjaro (1936) and To Have and Have Not (1937).
3. The thematic patterns of his works:
1 The Lost Generation: It refers to, in general, the post-World War I generation, but specifically a group of expatriate disillusioned intellectuals and artists, who experimented on new modes of thought and expression by rebelling against former ideals and values and replacing them only by despair or a cynical hedonism.
2 The Hemingway Code Hero: It refers to some protagonists in Hemingway’s works. In the general situation of Hemingway’s novels, life is full of tension and battles; the world is in chaos and man is always fighting desperately a losing battle. Those who survive and perhaps emerge victorious in the process of seeking to master the code with a set of principles such as honor, courage, endurance, wisdom, discipline and dignity are known as “the Hemingway code”.
4. Hemingway’s style:
His style is probably the most widely imitated of any in the 20th century. He is generally known for his “mastery of the art of modern narration.” Hemingway himself once said, “The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” Typical of this “iceberg” analogy is Hemingway’s style.
According to Hemingway, good literary writing should be able to make readers feel the emotion of the characters directly and the best way to produce the effect is to set down exactly every particular kind of feeling without any authorial comments, without conventionally emotive language, and with a bare minimum of adjectives and adverbs. Seemingly simple and natural, Hemingway’s style is actually polished and tightly controlled, but highly suggestive and connotative. While rendering vividly the outward physical events and sensations Hemingway expresses the meaning of the story and conveys the complex emotions of his characters with a considerable range and astonishing intensity of feeling. Besides, Hemingway develops the style of colloquialism initiated by Mark Twain. The accents and mannerisms of human speech are so well presented that the characters are full of flesh and blood and the use of short, simple and conventional words and sentences has an effect of clearness, terseness and great care. This ruthless economy in his writing stands as a striking application of Mies van der Rohe’s architectural maxim: “Less is more.” No wonder Hemingway was highly praised by the Nobel Prize Committee for “his powerful style-forming mastery of the art” of creating modern fiction.
IV. William Faulkner
1. His life and writing:
Faulkner is the most powerful and eloquent representative of American Southern writers. American Southern writers mainly write about the history, customs, people and social change of the American South, a region that contains much beauty, violence, passion, courage and, finally tragedy. It was from the region’s characteristics that Faulkner drew the material for most of his fiction.
2. His major works:
Of Faulkner’s literary works, four novels are masterpieces by any standards: The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and Go Down, Moses. The Sound and the Fury is his acclaimed masterpiece, an account of the tragic downfall of the Compson family. It is a story of “lost innocence,” which proves itself to be an intensification of the theme of imprisonment in the past. Faulkner develops the theme of deterioration and loss by juxtaposing the childhood of the Compson brothers with their present experience. As a result, the novel not merely relates Quentin’s nostalgic feeling about the past, or a Southern family that remains trapped within its past, but conveys a strong sense of grief over the deterioration of the South from the past to the present.
The major concern of Light in August is primarily about the South as a state of mind. In this novel, different attitudes towards life - plainly obsessions with the past, with blood or race and solely concern with bringing forth and preserving life - represented by different major characters.
Absalom, Absalom! is a novel entirely of the attempts to explain the past, characterized by involutions of narrative structure. It is immensely complex, for it is both a “historical novel” and a novel about history as an epistemological problem.
Go Down, Moses is in a sense a companion piece to Absalom, Absalom! But at the same time another and very different attempt to handle the Southern reality of land, family and the plantation as a form of life. In this book, Faulkner illuminates the problem of black and white in Southern society as a close-knit destiny of blood brotherhood.
The best story to highlight Faulkner’s concern is “The Bear” in which the view of the moral abomination of slavery and the human entanglements goes beyond history, to the beginnings, to the mythic time. In this story, Faulkner skillfully employs an old crafty bear as a symbol of the timeless freedom of the wilderness.
3. Yoknapatawpha County as the setting:
Most of Faulkner’s works are set in the American South, with his emphasis on the Southern subjects and consciousness.
4. The thematic pattern:
Most of the major themes are directly related to the tragic collision or confrontation between the old South and the new South (or the civilized modern society) represented by different characters in his novels.
1.career [kə'rɪə] n. 生涯;职业 E.g. For Whom the Bell Tolls clearly represents a new beginning in Ernest Hemingway’s career as a writer, which concerns a volunteer American guerrilla(游击 战) Robert Jordan fighting in the Spanish Civil War.《丧钟为谁而鸣》是关于美国游 击战义工罗伯特·乔丹在西班牙内战中的战斗，代表了海明威职业生涯又一个新的开端。
2. poetic [pəʊ'etɪk] adj. 诗的，诗歌的;诗意的;诗人的 E.g. Though Robert Frost’s subject matters mainly focus on the landscape and people in New England, he wrote many poems that investigate the basic themes of man’s life in his long poetic career. 虽然罗伯特·弗罗斯特的题材主要集中在新英格兰的景观和 人民，在他漫长的诗歌生涯中，他写了很多探究人的生命基本主题的诗。
3. code [kəʊd] n. 代码，密码;编码;法典 vt. 编码 E.g. Hemingway’s code heroes are those who survive in the process of seeking to master the code with the honesty, the discipline, and the restraint. 海明威的硬汉英雄 是那些用诚实、纪律和自我约束，掌握生存法则从而存活下来的人。
4. cast [kɑːst] vt. 投，抛 E.g. cast light on 阐明某事 E.g. Hemingway’s first true novel, The Sun Also Rises, casts light on a whole generation after the First World War. 海明威第一部真正意义上的小说《太阳照常升起》 启发了一战后的一代人。
5. jazz [dʒæ z] n. 爵士乐，爵士舞;喧闹 E.g. As an active participant of his age, Fitzgerald is often acclaimed literary spokesman of the Jazz Age. 作为时代的积极参与者，菲茨杰拉德被称赞为早期爵士乐 时代的文学代言人。
6.Nobel ['nəʊbl] n. 诺贝尔(瑞典化学家及发明家，发明炸药，创设诺贝奖)
7. Prize [praɪz] n. 奖品;奖赏;战利品 E.g. In 1954, the Nobel Prize for literature was granted to Ernest Hemingway , one of the greatest of American writers. 1954 年，海明威荣获诺贝尔文学奖，美国作家最高奖项之一。
8. pulitzer ['pulitsə] n. 普利策(美国新闻业经营者) E.g. Collected Poems and A Further Range, which gathered Robert L. Frost’ s second and third PulitzerPrizes,bothtranslatemodernupheavalintopoeticmaterial. 诗集(l930)和《又 一片牧场》(1935年)帮助弗罗斯特把第二个和第三个普利策奖收入囊中，两者都把现代 社会的剧变转移到了诗人可以驾轻就熟的诗歌材料中。
9. southern ['sʌð (ə)n] adj.南方的 n. 南方人 E.g. In Go Down, Moses, William Faulkner illuminates the problem of black and white in Southern society as a close-knit destiny of blood brotherhood. 在《摩西，走下去》里，威廉·福克纳阐释了南方社会黑人和白人如血的兄弟情谊的命运问题。
10. biblical ['bɪblɪk(ə)l] adj. 圣经的;依据圣经的(等于 biblical) E.g. Robert Frost’ s A Masque of Reason and A Masque of Mercy are comic-serious dramatic narratives, in both of which biblical characters in modem settings discuss ethics and man’ s relations to God. 弗罗斯特的《理性的面具》(l945)和《慈悲的面具》(1947)都是滑稽的戏剧性的故事，两部作品中，现代场景中的圣经人物讨论道德和人与 神的关系。
11. brilliant ['brɪlj(ə)nt] adj. 灿烂的，闪耀的;杰出的;有才气的 E.g. Robert Frost described North of Boston as “a book of people,” which shows a brilliant insight into New England character and the background that formed it. 罗伯特·弗罗斯特把《波士顿以北》描述成一本关于人物的书，这显示了对新英格兰人的特点以及其形成背景的敏锐的洞察力。
12. decline [dɪ'klaɪn] n. 下降;衰退;斜面 vi. 下降;衰落;谢绝 vt. 谢绝;婉拒 E.g. William Faulkner creates his own mythical kingdom that mirrors not only the decline of the Southern society of America but also the spiritual wasteland of the wholeAmericansociety. 福克纳创造了自己的神话王国，不仅反映了美国南方社会的衰 落，而且映射了整个美国社会的精神荒原。
13.dignity ['dɪgnɪtɪ] n. 尊严;高贵 E.g. “Though life is but a losing battle, it is a struggle man can dominate in such a way that loss becomes dignity. ” This is an outlook towards life that Ernest Hemingway had been trying to illustrate in his works. 虽然打败仗，但吃败仗也是有尊严的，人类的肉体可以消亡，但精神永远不可战胜。
14. iceberg ['aɪsbɜːg] n. [地理] 冰山;显露部分 E.g. “The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” This “iceberg” analogy about prose style was put forward by Ernest Hemingway.“冰山运动的尊严在于只有八分之一露出水面。”这个“冰山与散文风格的类比”是由海明威提出的。
15. fury ['fjʊərɪ] n. 狂怒;暴怒;激怒者 E.g. Of Faulkner’s literary works, four novels are masterpieces by any standards: The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom ! and Go Down, Moses.福克纳最有影响力的是这四部小说:《喧嚣与骚动》，《八月之光》，《押沙龙，押沙龙!》 和《摩西，走下去》。
16. grace [greɪs] n. 优雅;恩惠;魅力;慈悲 vt. 使优美 E.g. Ernest Hemingway, had been trying to demonstrate in his works an unvarying code, known as “grace under pressure,” which is actually an attitude towards life. 海 明威一直试图在他的作品中表现出一种不变的准则，被称为“压力下的风度”，这实际上 也是一种生活态度。
17. hero ['hɪərəʊ] n. 英雄;男主角，男主人公
18. Protagonist [prə'tæ g(ə)nɪst] n. 主角，主演;主要人物，领导者 E.g. A careful study of Faulkner’ s protagonists will reveal a prevailing truth, that is, almost all his heroes turn out to be tragic. 仔细研究福克纳的主角，就会发现一个普遍 的道理，那就是，几乎所有他的英雄最后都是悲惨的。
19. illustrate ['ɪləstreɪt] vt. 阐明，举例说明;图解 vi. 举例 E.g. “Man can be physically destroyed but never defeated spiritually.” This is an attitude towards life that Ernest Hemingway had been trying to illustrate in his writings. 海明威在其作品中反映出他的人生态度是“人类的肉体可以消亡，但精神永远不可战胜。”
20. landscape ['læ n(d)skeɪp] n. 风景;风景画;景色 E.g. Though Robert Frost’s subject matters mainly focus on the landscape and people in New England, he wrote many poems that investigate the basic themes of man’s life in his long poetic career. 虽然罗伯特·弗罗斯特的题材主要集中在新英格兰的 景观和人民，在他漫长的诗歌生涯中，他写了很多探究人的生命基本主题的诗。
21. narrative ['næ rətɪv] n. 叙述;故事;讲述 adj. 叙事的，叙述的;叙事体的
22. chronology [krə'nɒlədʒɪ] n. 年表;年代学 E.g. In most of his writings, William Faulkner deliberately broke up the chronology of his narrative by juxtaposing the past with the present, in the way the montage does in a movie. 在他的大部分著作中，福克纳以电影中蒙太奇的方式，刻意打破了他叙述 的时间顺序，把过去与现在并置。
23. publish ['pʌblɪʃ] vt. 出版;发表;公布 vi. 出版;发行;刊印 E.g. With the help of his friends Phil Stone and Sherwood Anderson, Faulkner published a volume of poetry The Marble Faun and his first novel Soldiers’ Pay. 在他 的朋友菲尔斯通和舍伍德·安德森的帮助下，福克纳发表了诗集《玉石雕像》和他的第 一部小说《士兵的报酬》。
24. speech [spiːtʃ] n. 演讲;讲话;[语] 语音;演说 E.g. Robert Frost combined traditional verse forms with a clear American local speech rhythm, the speech of New England farmers with its idiosyncratic diction and syntax. 罗伯特·弗罗斯特把传统诗歌形式和具有明显的美国本土演讲节奏结合起来，把新英格 兰农民的讲话和其特定的用词和语法结合起来。
25. rhythm ['rɪð(ə)m] n. 节奏;韵律 E.g. By using simple spoken language and conversational rhythms, Robert Frost achieved an effortless grace in his style. 通过使用简单的口语和对话的节奏，弗罗斯特实现了一种轻松优雅的风格。
26. struggle ['strʌg(ə)l] vi. 奋斗，努力;挣扎 n. 努力，奋斗;竞争
27.unconquerable [ʌn'kɒŋk(ə)rəb(ə)l] adj. 克服不了的;不可征服的;压制不了的 E.g. Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is a representation of life as a struggle against unconquerable natural forces in which only a partial victory is possible. 海明威的《老人与海》再现了生活与不可征服的自然力量的抗争，在此过程中，只有部分的 胜利是可能的。
28. wound [wuːnd] n. 创伤，伤口 vt. 使受伤 vi. 受伤，伤害
29. mortally ['mɔrtəli] adv. 致命地;非常 E.g. The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway tells a brilliant short story about a mortally wounded American writer who attempts to redeem his imagination fromthe corrosions of wealth and domestic strife. 《乞力马扎罗的雪》是海明威的 一部中篇小说，是对于一个临死前的人心理轨迹的精彩描述，讲述了一个身受重伤的美国作家试图通过想象回顾自己的人生历程。
30. vision ['vɪʒ(ə)n] n. 视力;美景;眼力;幻象;想象力 vt. 想象;显现;梦见 E.g. Most literary critics think that Fitzgerald is both an insider and an outsider of the Jazz Age with a double vision. 大多数文学批评家认为，菲茨杰拉德既是爵士乐时代的 局内人，也是局外人，有着双重视角。
31. courage ['kʌrɪdʒ] n. 勇气;胆量 E.g. Those who survive and perhaps emerge victorious in the process of seeking to master the code with a set of principles such as honor, courage, endurance, wisdom, discipline and dignity are known as “the Hemingway code”.那些在寻求掌握必要准则过程中幸存下来或者可能胜利的人们所拥有的原则，比如荣誉，勇气，耐力，智慧，纪律 和尊严，被称为海明威准则。
32. despair [dɪ'speə] n. 绝望;令人绝望的人或事 vi. 绝望，丧失信心 E.g. This shows a man’s despairing courage to seek out the meaning of life.这展示 了一个人在寻求生命的意义时绝望的勇气。