Текст Лекции (изначальный) (1157953), страница 44
Текст из файла (страница 44)
The pride of Americans oftheir country is perhaps not much different from that in other nations, but it seems moreapparent. The ‘Star-Spangled Banner” and the flags of the states are found in many places anddisplayed on many occasions, including even demonstrations against the government.Advertisements, too, sometimes cater to a shared sense of national pride. To Americans,patriotism is largely a natural response to the nation’s history and its ideas. Immigrants whoapply after five years of residence to be naturalized and become American citizens must provethat they know the national symbols and support the Constitution of the USA..1.
Answer the questions.1 .Why is it so difficult to make generalizations about American character?2. What is the main idea of the “Melting pot”?3. What are the most distinctive American characteristics from your point of view?4. What can you say about American social life?5. Why Americans are Americans so much involved in volunteer work?6. Why do so many American parents think that part-time jobs are “good for theirkids”?7. What is the impact of cars on the US economics?8.
What are the main demands for an immigrant to be naturalized and become anAmerican citizen?2. Speak about recent changes in American lifestyle according to the models:Now that VCRs have come in drive-ins are getting out; Now that compact discs havecome in records have gone out; Economy cars-big cars; push-button-telephones-dialtelephones; aerobics-jogging; canned and frozen food-traditional cooking; wash and wearclothes-ironing; credit cards-checkbooks; checkbooks-cash.3 .Match the names in the left part with the definitions in the right one:Car park1) a window that you drive up to and get your banking problems done;Parking meter2) a special area for parking cars;Parking lot3) a multi-stored building for parking cars;Parking ticket4) a place where people can watch movies staying in the cars;Drive-in theater5) a metal box on a stick to drop the money for parking;Drive-in bank6) a document for paying a parking penalty;Drive-in food stand 7 ) a window that you drive up to and buy some food.4.Discussion problems:1.The American Frontier and American character;2.Compare typical English and American characters.
Which traits are incommon and which are different?3.American houses and homes;4.American society and carsCHAPTER IX. CULTURAL LIFERead and translate the following words and word combinations:to set the problemto pull the legto degenerateprogenitorto steer boatsgospel musicexpatriateromantic crooningto defer (deferred)at largeto enchantspiritualismensuingunconventionalto be nourishedto shuttle back and forthAlthough it is a generalization, it is useful to divide the US cultural history into threebroad stages.The first stage stretches from colonial times until about the Civil war.
In this period,American art, architecture, music and literature were strongly influenced by European ideasand traditions. What was fashionable or popular in London, Paris, Rome or Vienna usually setthe pattern for Boston, New Orleans, New York, and Philadelphia. Some of the colonialpainters, like other craftsmen, came across the sea to try their luck. A few Americanpainters of that time among them Benjamin West, Washington Allston, John SingletonCopley and Gilbert Stuart still considered themselves largely as part of European tradition.Gradually America was becoming subject and substance of separate artistic creation.Through the Colonial period and for the first half century of the Republic, American paintingwas dominated by portraiture.
Painting portraits was the way an artist could make at that timea living. Like the 17th century European portraitists, the American artists left rich informationabout their time. Portraits became documents detailing furniture, costumes, jewelry, andimplements of their occupation. Unfortunately there were few history paintings of goodquality recording the Revolution, except some made John Trumbull After the invention ofcamera in 1839 the proportion of portraits to dropped and.
the Civil War was best recorded byits photographers except for the genre pieces of life done by Eastman Johnson and WinslowHomer.The period after the Civil War saw two new genres in American painting, the creationof works, which described American landscapes and the everyday life of people, depictedmostly by a Russian artist Pavel Svirin.
Scores of street scenes, gathering in village taverns,political rallies, poor women’s kitchens, factory workers, Black slaves were already oncanvases.If genre art was nourished by political and social forms, landscape paintings owedmuch to romantic poetry of William Cullen Bryant and books by James FennimoreCooper.Landscape were merged with scenes of the migrants crossing the plains andmountains in their wagons, with Indians, buffalo and death often in the background. Amongthe American artists of that period one can mark Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins..A landmark in the history of American painting was made by the Armory Show of1913 Sixteen hundred paintings by more than 300 Americans artists were shown there,representing some new genres like the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and the Cubists.Later on with the Depression, many American artist of different sties depicted the strikers,the unemployed, the Blacks, all those whose lives were crushed by the economic desaster.
R.Marsh was dealing with urban poor, Ch. Burchfield and E. Hopper with dreary workingclass identical houses.Like scientists many of highly creative artists were driven to America by the SecondWorld War. In the 1950-60s abstract expressionism, pop art, minimal art and photo-realismbecame quite common in the USA. Some of the artists associated with such movements areClose, Davis, de Kooning, Demuth, Dine, Estes, Hanson, Johns, Kline, Lichtenstein,Motherwell, Oldenburg, Pollock, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist, Rothko, Segal andWarhol..By the 60-70s New York had become one of the art capitals of the world. Now in NewYork alone there are around 12000 artists and sculptors, around 400 art galleries and hundredsof exhibitions and shows each season. Among the great New York museums there are theMuseum of Modern Art (MOMA) which houses the most complete collection of modern artin the world, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheism, The Cloisters with itsfine medieval collection, the Brooklyn Museum, the Frick Collection, the Nation Museumof Design, the Museum of American Indian, the American raft Museum and theWhitney Museum of Modern Art.
Besides New York Chicago is often associated with artand modern architecture. Chicago is the city where several important artists live. Some ofthem, like Mies van der Rohe or Philip Johnson, did much to influence modern design. InChicago there is also the museum of Louis Sullivan, called “the father of the skyscraper”.LiteratureLike in art, American literature of the first generations was strongly dependent onBritish traditions and books brought from there. Before the Revolution and after it manyrevolutionary-minded Americans viewed literature and art as the means of independence anddemanded to lay the foundations of national American literature.
The progenitor of Americanshort story was Washington Irving (1783-1859), the author of “The Sketch-Book” (1819)and “Alhambra”(1832). James Fennimore Cooper (1789-1851) wrote the number of novelsabout American frontier. His novels “The Spy”(1821) and “Last of the Michigan’s”(1926)became the first American bestsellers, translated into many world languages.. A poet andprose-writer Edgar Poe (1809-49), the author of “The Murders in the Rue Morgan” (1841),“The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Gold Bug”, initiated.
the detective genre. HermanMelville’s masterpiece “Moby Dick”was published in 1850. Poet Henry Longfellow (180782) in his poems of “The Song of Hiawatha” (1855), “Paul Revere’s Ride” and “TheCourtship of Miles Standish” (1858) created images of courageous Indian heroes.Walt Whitman’s(1819-92) “Leaves of the Grass” (1855) glorified people and opposedslavery. It was a tribute to the Civil War soldiers who had laid on the battlefields and whomhe had seen while serving as an army nurse. The book went through numerous editions duringthe author’s lifetime, swelling in content from a thin volume to the voluminous work it istoday.
Walt Whitman’s poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom” (1865) wasdedicated to the memory of Abraham Lincoln. The strong rhythms and unusual style ofWhitman’s verses, the brightness and impressiveness of his images made Whitman thegreatest poet of the USA.Travel was also a favorite subject. When F. Parkman (1823-93) published his work“The California and Oregon Trail or Life on the Prairies and in the Wigwam” (1849) andRalph Waldo Emerson composed his memorable essay, glorifying the spirit of the youthfuland vigorous United States, they. became immediately popular..Whitman, Longfellow, Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Lowell to a greater orlesser degree stood against the slavery. But their influence was relatively smaller compared tothat of Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96), the author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life Amongthe Lowly”. Like many novels of the time, it first appeared serialized in “The National Era”and copies could not be printed fast enough to keep up with the demand of the readers.
“Soyou’re the little woman who started the big war”- said Abrahams Lincoln when he met H.Stowe at first time in 1882.Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908) composed a great number of Black folklore andpublished his collections of tales “Uncle Remus Stories” (1880) and “Nights with UncleRemus” (1883).The period after the Civil War is associated with the second stage of the US literature.The leading prose writer of the end of the 19 th century was Mark Twain (SamuelPPLanghorne Clemens) (1835-1910).
![](https://s.studizba.com/z.php?f=/templates/si/i/noavatar.png&w=100&h=100&t=1"){kind=avatar}
