Беликова Е.К., Саратовская Л.Б. - The United Kingdom and United States of America in Past and Present (1268141), страница 45
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The progenitor of Americanshort story was Washington Irving (1783-1859), the author of “TheSketch-Book” (1819) and “Alhambra” (1832). James FennimoreCooper (1789-1851) wrote the number of novels about Americanfrontier. His novels “The Spy” (1821) and “Last of the Michigan’s”(1926) became the first American bestsellers, translated into many worldlanguages. A poet and prose-writer Edgar Poe (1809-49), the author of“The Murders in the Rue Morgan” (1841), “The Fall of the House ofUsher” and “The Gold Bug”, initiated the detective genre. HermanMelville’s masterpiece “Moby Dick”was published in 1850. Poet HenryLongfellow (1807-82) in his poems of “The Song of Hiawatha” (1855),“Paul Reverie’s Ride” and “The Courtship of Miles Standish” (1858)created images of courageous Indian heroes.Walt Whitman’s (1819-92) “Leaves of the Grass” (1855) glorifiedpeople and opposed slavery.
It was a tribute to the Civil War soldiers whohad laid on the battlefields and whom he had seen while serving as anarmy nurse. The book went through numerous editions during theauthor’s lifetime, swelling in content from a thin volume to thevoluminous work it is today. Walt Whitman’s poem “When Lilacs Last inthe Dooryard Bloom” (1865) was dedicated to the memory of AbrahamLincoln.
The strong rhythms and unusual style of Whitman’s verses, thebrightness and impressiveness of his images made Whitman the greatestpoet 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 thePrairies and in the Wigwam” (1849) and Ralph Waldo Emersoncomposed his memorable essay, glorifying the spirit of the youthful andvigorous United States, they became immediately popular.Whitman, Longfellow, Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Lowellto a greater or lesser degree stood against the slavery.
But their influencewas relatively smaller compared to that of Harriet Beecher Stowe(1811-96), the author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life among the Lowly”.Like many novels of the time, it first appeared serialized in “The NationalEra” and copies could not be printed fast enough to keep up with thedemand of the readers.
“So you’re the little woman who started the bigwar”- said Abrahams Lincoln when he met H. Stowe at first time in 1882.176Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908) composed a great number of Blackfolklore and published his collections of tales “Uncle Ramous Stories”(1880) and “Nights with Uncle Ramous” (1883).The period after the Civil War is associated with the second stage of theUS literature. The leading prose writer of the end of the 19th century wasMark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (1835-1910). Twain wasborn in the state near the Mississippi River His work as a riverboat pilotsteering boats up and down the river made the most important influenceon him and his books. One of Twain’s first books is called “Life on theMississippi” (1883).
His “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1976) and“Huckleberry Finn” (1884) tell about the lives of young heroes on theMississippi river. Together with Twain’s romantic tale “The Prince andthe Pauper” (1889) they are still read by children all over the world. Atthe same time his “Golden Age” (1873) and “A Connecticut Yankee atKing Arthur’s Court” (1889), exposing American vanity, corruption andhypocrisy, are full of strong satire.
Incomparable depiction of colloquialspeech, peculiarities of paradox, humor and wit are characteristic featuresof Mark Twain’s writing..The third and present stage is marked by a tremendous surge ofAmerican creativity in all areas, by a steady self-confidence and bygrowing international influence of American literature.
The Americanliterature of the 20th century as a mirror of society was opened byTheodore Dreiser (1871-1945). In his first realistic novel “SisterCarrie” Dreiser challenged the American myth that honesty and hardwork inevitably led to success. He followed the novel with several otherstrong social-critical works of fiction “Jennie Gerhard” (1911), “TheFinancier”(1912), “The Titan”(1914), “An American Tragedy” (1925).Later T. Dreiser published two collections of stories “Free and OtherStories”(1918) and “Chains: Lesser Novels and Stories”(1927).
Many ofthese stories dramatized the theme of love as the most powerful force inlife.O. Henry (Porter William Sidney) (1862-1910) created a greatnumber of short stories about the life of simple, poor Americans,collected in his books “Cabbages and Kings”(1904),”The FourMillion”(1906),“The Gentle Grafter”(1908).The Northern stories by Jack London (1876-1916) were extremelypopular both in the USA and abroad. His novels “The Son of Wolf”177(1900), “The Sea-Wolf” (1904), “Martin Eden” (1909) and many otherswere translated and published in Europe and Russia.The horrors of World War I and the period following it in the 1920ssparkled the imagination of some of the greatest writers in Americanliterary.
They include Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), the authorof short stories and novels “The Great Gatsby” (1925), “Tender is theNight”(1934), “The Last Tycoon”(1941) about so-called “lostgeneration” and Gertrude Stein (1874-1946). Her most widely readbook “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas” was devoted to her life inParis, her meeting with famous French artists and expatriate Americanwriters such as Ernest Hemingway. The great master of the modern prosestyle E. Hemingway (1899-1961) in his early books “Fiesta”(1926),“For Whom the Bell Tolls” (1940) also expressed theframes of mind of the “lost generation”.
E. Hemingwayvolunteered for an ambulance unit in Spain during WorldWar I, but was wounded and hospitalized for six months.His first successful novel “The Sun also Rises” (1926) isabout the group of American expatriates living in Franceand Spain who had lost their joy in life and felt wasted.His “Farewell to Arms” (1929) is another work thatreflected the growing disillusionment with war. Themain idea of the author is the tragic stoicism of his main characters.According to Hemingway a man must retain courage and dignity undervery harsh circumstances, even facing the threat of death.
While living inCuba in the early 1950s, he wrote “The Old Man and the Sea” (1952)about the courage and fortitude of an old Cuban fisherman, awarded withthe Nobel Prize(1954).More than ten other American writers received the Nobel Prize forLiterature. The very first American to be honored by a Nobel Prize inLiterature in 1930 was Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951).In his popular novels“Main Street”(1920), “Babbitt”(1922) and “Arrow Smith”(1925) S.Lewis could describe the lives and values of small town people withsincerity and great understanding.William Faulkner (1897-1962), known for his novels about peopleliving in the South “ The Sound and the Fury”(1929),”As I layDying”(1930),”Intruder in that Dust”(1948), received the Nobel prize in1949.
Faulkner’s style is very much different from that of Hemingway.While Hemingway wrote in short, simple sentences and used a great deal178of conversation, Faulkner’s sentences sometimes carry on for almost anentire page, with a lot clauses strung together by commas.Among the other Nobel prize winners there are a playwright Eugene0’Neill(1888- 1953), Saul Bellow (1915), Isaac Bashevis Singer (190491) and John Steinbeck (1902-68), noted for “Grapes of Wrath” and“The Winter of Our Discontent” picturing the complexities of life inAmerica.John Cheever (1912-82) published the novels and stories “TheWapshot Chronicle”(1957),”Bullety Park”(1969), “Falconer”(1977) inwhich he used satire to express socio-economic essence of life.
J.D.Salinger (1919- ) achieved great literary success with the publication ofhis novel “The Catcher in the Rye”, centered on the character of 16-yearold boy, who flees his elite boarding school for the outside world only tobecome disillusioned by its materialism and phoniness. A playwright andpoet Dubose Hayward (1885-1940) wrote about the life of blackAmerican Dockers. His popular novel “Porgy” was staged in 1927 andlater became the plot of opera “Porgy and Bess”.
Black Americans alsowrote about their experiences in American society. Black writer RichardWright (1908- 1960) became well known as the author of the number ofnovels describing the feelings and fates of black Americans.During the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s more AfroAmericans began to write. James Baldwin (1924-1987) is well-knownwriter of that time. His first novel “Go Tell It on the Mountain” (1953) isabout his own life as a poor child growing up in New York ghetto,Harlem. In protest against racism in American society, J.
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