3) The authors introduced common people such as: industrial workers and farmers, ambitious businessmen, vagrants, prostitutes/street girls, and unheroic soldiers in fiction;
4) American writers displayed native trends in portrayal of the landscape ad social surface realistically;
5) They formed perfect vernacular style in language;
6) Some authors explored and exploited/used the literary possibilities of the interior life/psychology, such as Henry James;
7) The representatives were: Mark Twain, Henry James, William Dean Howells;
In short, they set the example and pictured the future course for the modernism. (in the subject, themes, techniques, and styles of fiction)
(P472---474)

2. Take examples to analyze the style and theme of Mark Twain.
Answer:
Mark Twain is a great literary of America, H. L. Mencken considered him "the true father of our national literature".
1) Twain’s works like "Adventure of Huckleberry Finn" and "Life on the Mississippi" shaped the views of America and combined American folk humor and serious literature together;
2) "The adventures of Tom Sawyer" and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" proved to be the milestone in American literature, and they were the record of a vanishing way of life in the pre-Civil War Mississippi.
3) The books were noted for their unpretentious, colloquial, poetic, humorous, innocent and free style;
4) The language of Twain was simple, direct, lucid and faithful to truth -"vernacular";
5) Twain was famous for a local colorist, who presented social life through portraits of the local characters of his region -people living in the area, the landscape, the customs, dialects, costumes. Especially the theme of the Mississippi valley and the West;
6) The work of Twain were always confined to a particular region, historical moment, strong accent, intensified humor to criticize the social injustice and satirize the decayed romanticism. (P477-481)

3. Give a comment on the experience of Carrie.
参考答案：
1) Penniless and "full of the illusions of ignorance and youth", Sister Carrie leaves her rural home to seek work in Chicago, she grows from an innocent, pure country girl to be a girl mature in intellect and emotion, and she becomes a star of musical comedies. But in spite of her success in material, she is not happy but lonely and dissatisfied.
2) Sister Carrie best embodies Dreiser’s naturalistic belief that while men are controlled and conditioned by heredity, instinct and chance, a few extraordinary and unsophisticated human beings refuse to accept their fate wordlessly and instead strive, unsuccessfully, to find meaning and purpose for their existence. (P527-528)

4. The characteristic and theme analyses of Henry James.
Answer:
1) The Freudian approach is famous in his novels and his literary essays.
2) James took great interest in international themes -the clashed between two different cultures and the emotional and moral problems of Americans in Europe, or Europeans in America in his first period.
3) "The Portrait of A Lay" is generally considered to be his masterpiece.
4) James experimented with different themes and forms in his middle period.
5) In his last an major period, James returned to his "international-theme."
6) The typical pattern of the conflict between the two cultures would be that of a young American man or an American girl (Daisy Miller) who goes to Europe and affronts/met with his or her destiny. The unsophisticated boy or girl would be beguiled, betrayed, cruelly wronged at the hands of those who pretend to stand for the highest possible civilization.
7) He focuses on psychological approach. His fictional world is concerned more with the inner life of human beings -this emphasis on psychology and on the human consciousness proves to be a big breakthrough in novel writing.
8) He is regarded as the forerunner of the 20th century "stream-of-consciousness" novels and the founder of psychological realism.
9) James avoids the authorial omniscience as much as possible and makes his characters reveal themselves with his minimal intervention. (P495-498)

5. The period from 1865 to 1914 has been referred to the Age of Realism (The Gilded Age) in the literary history of the United States, why did it happen and what characters did it have?
Answer:
1) The American society after the Civil War provided rich soil for the rise and development of Realism, and Civil War affected the social and the value system of the country, America had transformed into an industrialized and commercialised society.
2) The war stimulated the technological development;
3) The booming economy and industry stepped up urbanization;
4) The phenomenon of polarization is serious;
5) People became doubtful about the human nature and the benevolence/grace of God;
6) Gone was the frontier, the spirit of the frontiersman/pioneer, the spirit of freedom and the American dream. (P471---472)

6. Please analyze the characteristics of Emily Dickinson’s poems.
Answer:
1) Dickinson’s poems are usually based on her own experiences, her sorrows and joys. But within her little lyrics Dickinson addresses those issues that concern the whole human beings, which include religion, death, immortality, love, and nature. (theme)
2) Her masterpiece -----"I heard a Fly buzz---when I died", she looked at death from the point of view of both the living and the dying. She even imagined her own death, the loss of her own body, and the journey of her soul to the unknown.
3) The style of Dickinson:
A: A particular stress pattern: dash“-------”
B: Capital letters as a means of emphasis;
C: Language: brief, direct, and plain;
D: Poem: short, always on single image or symbol (e.g. "I like to see it lap the miles"---------describe a train in the personification of the literary device)
E: Her poems tend to be personal and meditative (e.g. “Because I could not stop for Death”).
(P517---519)

7. In the representatives of "Local colorism", the writers shared some things in common and also had some differences, please analyze them.
Answer:
1) 3 prominent writers differed in the understanding of the "truth": Mark Twain and Howells paid attention to the life of the Americans; Henry James emphasized the "inner world";
2) Howells focused on the rising middle class, while Twine dealt with the region and the people at the forefront;
3) The other local colorists concerned with the life of the small, well-defined region or province, the setting is always the isolated small town;
4) They were nostalgic historians, recording the vanishing way of life, and the fading present. (P474---475)

8. Analyze the theory of Theodore Dreiser’naturalism with example.
Answer:
1) His naturalism emphasized heredity and environment as important deterministic forces shaping individualized characters who were presented in special and detailed circumstances. At bottom, life was shown to be ironic, even tragic.
2) The characters in his books are often subject to the control of the natural forces -especially those of environment and heredity. For example, the hero Hurstwood’s tragic death showed the theory.
3) The effect of Darwinist idea of "survival of the fittest" was shattering. It is not surprising to find in Dreiser’s fiction a world of jungle, where "kill or to be killed" was the law.
4) He criticizes materialistic to the core, living in such a society with such a value system, the human individual is obsessed with a never-ending, yet meaningless search for satisfaction of his/her desires. One of the desires is for money which was a motivating purpose of life in the United States in the late 19th century. For example in his masterpiece "Sister Carrie" he traces the material rise of Carrie Meeber, which indicates the critical attitude of the author.
5) Sexual beauty symbolizes the acquisition of some social status of great magnitude. (P525---527)

9. Darwin’s evolutionary theory gave rise to American naturalism, what are their characteristics?
Answer:
The American naturalists accepted the more negative implication of Darwin’s theory, and used it to explain the behaviours in literary works.
1) They regarded man as the complex combinations of inherited attributes/elements, their habits conditioned/controlled by social and economic forces;
2) They chose their subjects from the lower ranks of the society and portrayed misery and poverty/poorness;
3) They dealt with the nature of the man of "underdogs" -"bestiality", as an explanation of sexual desire;
4) Their languages were unpolished;
5) The naturalists believed that the real and true nature is hidden from the eyes o the individual, or beyond his control;
6) Naturalism evolved/came from realism, but the tone of the authors were more ironic and pessimistic. (P475-476)
American Literature

Chapter 3 The Modern Period
I. Choose the right answer:
1. Ezra Pound is a leading spokesman of the_________.
A. Imagist Movement  B. Chartist Movement C. Modernist Movement D. Romantic Movement
Answer: A (P553)
2. Strong affinity of the Chinese and Oriental literature can be found in the works of_________.
A. Mark Twain B. Ezra Pound C. Emily Dickinson D. Arthur Miller