Instruction
Possibly the first American writer to achieve worldwide fame was the poet and, at the same time, the founder of the detective genre, Edgar Allan Poe. Being a deep mystic by nature, Poe was not at all like an American. Perhaps that is why his work, not finding followers in the writer's homeland, had a noticeable impact on European literature of the modern era.
A large place in the United States is occupied by adventure novels, which are based on the development of the continent and the relationship of the first settlers with the indigenous population. The largest representatives of this trend were James Fenimore Cooper, who wrote a lot and fascinatingly about the Indians and the collisions of American colonists with them, Mine Reed, whose novels masterfully combine a love line and a detective-adventure intrigue, and Jack London, who sang of the courage and courage of the pioneers of the harsh lands of Canada and Alaska.
One of the most remarkable American 19th century is the outstanding satirist Mark Twain. His works such as "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" are read with equal interest by both young and adult readers.
Henry James lived in Europe for many years, but did not stop being an American writer. In his novels "Wings of the Dove", "The Golden Cup" and others, the writer showed naive and simple-minded Americans by nature, who often fall victim to the intrigues of insidious Europeans.
Of particular note in the American 19th century is the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose anti-racist novel Uncle Tom's Cabin largely contributed to the liberation of blacks.
The first half of the 20th century could be called the American Renaissance. At this time, such wonderful authors as Theodore Dreiser, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway create their works. Dreiser's first novel, Sister Kerry, whose heroine achieves success at the cost of losing her best human qualities, at first seemed immoral to many. Based on a crime chronicle, the novel "An American Tragedy" turned into a story of the collapse of the "American dream".
The works of the king of the Jazz Age (a term coined by himself) Francis Scott Fitzgerald are largely based on autobiographical motifs. First of all, this refers to the magnificent novel Tender is the Night, where the writer told the story of his difficult and painful relationship with his wife Zelda. The collapse of the "American dream" Fitzgerald showed in the famous novel "The Great Gatsby".
A tough and courageous perception of reality distinguishes the work of Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway. Among the most outstanding works of the writer are the novels Farewell to Arms!, For Whom the Bell Tolls and the story The Old Man and the Sea.
Literary scholars call the end of the 19th century late American romanticism. During this period, a sharp division took place in the literary space of the country, caused by the Civil War between the North and the South. On the one hand, there is the literature of abolitionism, which, within the framework of romantic aesthetics, protests against slavery from ethical and general humanistic positions. On the other hand, the literature of the South, idealizing the traditions of the slave system, stands up for the historically doomed and reactionary way of life.
The motives of opposition to anti-humanistic laws occupy a significant place in the works of such writers as Longfellow, Emerson, Thoreau, and others. We can observe the same motives in the works of G. Beecher Stowe, D. G. and realistic elements is the work of the greatest American poet Walt Whitman. Dickinson's work is permeated with a romantic worldview - already outside the chronological framework of romanticism. Romantic motifs organically enter the creative method of F. Bret Hart, M. Twain, A. Beers, D. London and other US writers of the late 19th - early 20th centuries.
It should be noted that American romanticism differs significantly from European romanticism. The assertion of national identity and independence, the search for a "national idea" runs through all the art of American romanticism. The culture of the United States did not have the centuries-old experience that Europe had at that time - by the end of the 19th century, the new nation had not yet had time to "acquire" objects and realities that romantic associations could be attached to (such as the tulips of Holland and the roses of Italy). But gradually, in the books of Irving and Cooper, Longfellow and Melville, Hawthorne and Thoreau, phenomena and facts of American nature, history, and geography acquire a romantic flavor.
No less significant for American romanticism was the theme of the Indians. Indians in America from the very beginning a factor that is associated with a very complex psychological complex - admiration and fear, hostility and guilt. The image of the "noble savage", the life of the Indians, its freedom, naturalness, closeness to nature could become a romantic alternative to capitalist civilization in the books of Irving and Cooper, Thoreau and Longfellow. In the works of these authors, we see evidence that the conflict between the two races was not fatally inevitable, but the cruelty and greed of the white settlers were to blame for it. The work of American romantics makes the life and culture of the Indians an important component of the national literature of the United States, conveying its special imagery and coloring. The same applies to the perception of another ethnic minority - black Americans in the southern states.
The atmosphere of the American South is conveyed by the works of J. P. Kennedy and W. G. Simms. It is worth noting that the authors could not completely get rid of the stereotypes of glorifying the virtues of "southern democracy" and the advantages of the slave-owning order. With all these features of limitations, "southern" romanticism paves the way for the formation of a complex, multidimensional, but undoubtedly fruitful "southern tradition" in US literature, which in the 20th century. represented by the names of W. Faulkner, R. P. Warren, W. Styron, C. McCullers, S. E. Grau, and others. political reactionary positions, arguing that "joyfully, knowing no worries, the slave lives on the plantation."
The middle states are distinguished from the beginning by great ethnic and religious diversity and tolerance. Here American bourgeois democracy is being laid down and capitalist relations are developing especially rapidly. The work of Irving, Cooper, Paulding, and later Melville is associated with the middle states. The main themes in the work of the romantics of the middle states are the search for a national hero, interest in social issues, reflections on the path traveled by the country, a comparison of the past and present of America.
Romanticism in New England (Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Bryant, and others) is characterized primarily by the desire for a philosophical understanding of the American experience, for an analysis of the national past, its ideological and artistic heritage. Inherent in this literature is the exploration of complex ethical issues; An important place is occupied by the revision of the Puritan complex of religious and moral ideas of the Puritan colonists of the 17th-18th centuries, with which a deep successive connection is preserved. New English Romanticism has a strong tradition of moral-philosophical prose, rooted in America's Puritan colonial past. After the end of the Civil War in the literature of the United States, a realistic trend in literature began to develop. A new generation of writers is connected with a new region: it relies on the democratic spirit of the American West, on the elements of folk oral folklore and addresses its works to the widest, mass readership. From the point of view of the new aesthetics, romanticism ceased to meet the requirements of the time. Romantic "impulses" were sharply criticized by M. Twain, F. Bret Hart and other young realist writers. Their contradictions with the romantics are caused, first of all, by a different understanding of the truth of life and ways of expressing it in art. American realists of the second half of the 19th century. strive for maximum historical, social and everyday concreteness, they are not satisfied with the language of romantic allegories and symbols.
It must be said that this denial is purely dialectical in nature. In the literature of the USA of the XX century. there are romantic motives and they are associated, as a rule, with the search for lost high ideals and true spirituality, the unity of man and nature, with the moral utopia of extra-bourgeois human relations, with a protest against the transformation of the individual into a cog in the state machine. These motifs are clearly visible in the work of the greatest American word artists of our century - E. Hemingway and W. Faulkner, T. Wilder and D. Steinbeck, F. S. Fitzgerald and D. D. Salinger. US writers of recent decades continue to turn to them.
american literature novel realistic
Joseph Brodsky - "Democracy!"
Everyone knows Brodsky the poet, many know Brodsky the prose writer, but, for example, Brodsky is a playwright. "Democracy!" - a one-act play written at the turn of the 80s and 90s, on the eve of the death of the Soviet Union. The action takes place in a fictitious conditional country, where the Minister of Internal Affairs is named Petrovich, the Minister of Finance is Gustav Adolfovich, and the Minister of Culture is Cecilia. The full text of the play was published only in the early 2000s.
Vladimir Nabokov - "Look at the Harlequins"
This novel is less famous than "Lolita" or "The Gift", and meanwhile it is the last one that Nabokov managed to complete during his lifetime. The “Memoirs” of the famous writer Vadim Vadimovich N. are called a parody of an autobiography. The novel in seven parts describes his life in Russia, France, Italy and the USA, a series of loves and marriages, a trip to the USSR with a fake passport and the last love for his own daughter's age. The text contains many parallels with Nabokov's real biography, and the chapters about the visit to the USSR are based on the memoirs of his sister.
Charles Baudelaire - "Hashish Poem"
Few know, but Baudelaire also wrote prose. Mostly about drugs (there is also his essay "Opioman", for example). In the "Poem" he describes in detail the process of obtaining hashish oil and the various effects of its use. Tellingly, the author does not advertise his own experience in this matter. As a result, he comes to the unexpected conclusion that cannabis is a universal evil and much more dangerous than opium. But what to take from Baudelaire, even if doctors at the beginning of the last century treated cocaine addiction with heroin.
Boris Vian - "Dogs, Desire, Death"
This brilliant example of sadistic prose is famous mainly because, after a high-profile trial, the author was sentenced to prison for him. A short story from the perspective of a taxi driver sentenced to the electric chair. And no mimimi to you, as in “Foam of Days”. Based on the story, the film "Mona" directed by Jean-Francois Perfetti was made.
Oscar Wilde - The Ballad of Reading Gaol
A poem that Wilde wrote after serving two years in the aforementioned prison on charges of immorality. As the signature of the author at the end is the number of his camera - С.3.3. The stories of real prisoners formed the basis, and the last quatrain of the poem was used as an epitaph on the grave of the writer. The irony here is also that the name of the prison is consonant with the word reading.
Jerome David Salinger - "The Birthday Boy"
A six-page unpublished short story, typewritten at the University of Texas Library. Despite the fact that it was never officially published, copies of an illegally printed book appeared on the Internet, from which enthusiasts later performed a Russian translation. The hero of the story is 22-year-old Ray, who suffers from alcoholism. It is assumed that this story was not intended for prying eyes at all. Critics point out that it stands apart from Salinger's works because "there is no hint of enlightenment or redemption in the text."
Ivan Bunin - "Loopy Ears and Other Stories"
In addition to the famous Dark Alleys, Bunin has a lesser-known collection of short stories published posthumously in New York. The hero of the main one is "an unusually tall man" Adam Sokolovich, explaining to drunken sailors in a tavern that "geeks have ears in the form of a noose, the noose with which they are crushed." The heavy, oppressive atmosphere of the narrative makes it completely different from typical Bunin stories about unhappy love and broken destinies, where tragedy is nevertheless touched by romance.
1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
A novel about the tragic love of a married lady Anna Karenina and a brilliant officer Vronsky against the backdrop of a happy family life of the nobles Konstantin Levin and Kitty Shcherbatskaya. A large-scale picture of the manners and life of the noble environment of St. Petersburg and Moscow in the second half of the 19th century, combining the philosophical reflections of the author's alter ego of Levin with the most advanced in Russian literature, psychological sketches, as well as scenes from the life of peasants.
2. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
The main character of the novel is Emma Bovary, the doctor's wife, living beyond her means and having extramarital affairs in the hope of getting rid of the emptiness and routine of provincial life. Although the plot of the novel is quite simple and even banal, the true value of the novel lies in the details and forms of presentation of the plot. Flaubert as a writer was known for his desire to bring each work to the ideal, always trying to find the right words.
3. "War and Peace" Leo Tolstoy
An epic novel by Leo Tolstoy describing Russian society in the era of the wars against Napoleon in 1805-1812.
4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Huckleberry Finn, on the run from his abusive father, and Jim, a runaway black man, are rafting down the Mississippi River. After some time they are joined by rogues Duke and King, who eventually sell Jim into slavery. Huck and Tom Sawyer, who joined him, organize the release of the prisoner. Nevertheless, Huck releases Jim from imprisonment in earnest, and Tom does it simply out of interest - he knows that Jim's mistress has already given him freedom.
5. Stories by A.P. Chekhov
Over 25 years of creativity, Chekhov created about 900 different works (short humorous stories, serious stories, plays), many of which have become classics of world literature. The “Steppe”, “A Boring Story”, “Duel”, “Ward No. 6”, “The Story of an Unknown Man”, “Men” (1897), “The Man in a Case” (1898), “In the Ravine” drew particular attention to themselves. , "Children", "Drama on the hunt"; from the plays: "Ivanov", "The Seagull", "Uncle Vanya", "Three Sisters", "The Cherry Orchard".
6. "Middlemarch" George Eliot
Middlemarch is the name of the provincial town in and around which the novel takes place. Many characters inhabit its pages, and their destinies are intertwined by the will of the author: these are the hypocrite and pedant Casaubon and Dorothea Brooke, the talented doctor and scientist Lydgate and the petty bourgeois Rosamond Vincey, the hypocrite and hypocrite banker Bulstrode, pastor Ferbrother, the talented but poor Will Ladislav and many others, a lot others. Unsuccessful marriages and happy marital unions, dubious enrichment and fuss over the inheritance, political ambitions and ambitious intrigues. Middlemarch is a town where many human vices and virtues are manifested.
7. "Moby Dick" Herman Melville
Moby Dick by Herman Melville is considered the greatest American novel of the 19th century. At the center of this unique work written contrary to the laws of the genre is the pursuit of the White Whale. A captivating plot, epic sea scenes, descriptions of vivid human characters in a harmonious combination with the most universal philosophical generalizations make this book a true masterpiece of world literature.
8. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
“In the novel“ Great Expectations ”” - one of the last works of Dickens, the pearl of his work - tells the story of the life of a young Philip Pirrip, nicknamed Pip in childhood. Pip's dreams of a career, love and well-being in the "gentleman's world" are shattered in an instant, as soon as he learns the terrible secret of his unknown patron, who is being pursued by the police. Money stained with blood and marked with the seal of crime, as Pip is convinced, cannot bring happiness. And what is it, this happiness? And where will the hero of his dreams and high hopes lead?
9. "Crime and Punishment" Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The plot revolves around the main character, Rodion Raskolnikov, in whose head the theory of crime is ripening. Raskolnikov himself is very poor, he cannot pay not only for his studies at the university, but also for his own living. His mother and sister are also poor; he soon learns that his sister (Dunya Raskolnikova) is ready to marry a man she doesn't love for money to help her family. This was the last straw, and Raskolnikov commits the deliberate murder of an old pawnbroker and the forced murder of her sister, a witness. But Raskolnikov cannot use the stolen goods, he hides it. From this time begins the terrible life of a criminal.
The daughter of a wealthy landowner and a big dreamer, Emma tries to diversify her leisure time by organizing someone else's personal life. Confident that she will never marry, she acts as a matchmaker for her friends and acquaintances, but life brings her surprise after surprise.
America, as you know, was officially discovered by the Genoese Columbus in 1492. But by chance, she received the name of the Florentine Amerigo.
The discovery of the New World was the greatest event in the global history of mankind. Not to mention the fact that it dispelled many false ideas about our planet, which contributed to significant changes in the economic life of Europe and caused a wave of emigration to a new continent, it also affected the change in the spiritual climate in countries with a Christian faith (i.e., Christians). to. at the end of the century, Christians, as always, expected the "end of the world", "the Last Judgment", etc.).
America provided abundant food for the most enthusiastic dreams of European thinkers about a society without a state, without the social vices common to the Old World. A country of new opportunities, a country where you can build a completely different life. A country where everything is new and clean, where a civilized person has not yet spoiled anything. But there you can avoid all the mistakes made in the Old World - so thought European humanists in the 16th and 17th centuries. And all these thoughts, views and hopes, of course, found a response in literature, both European and American.
However, in reality, everything turned out quite differently. The history of the settlement of the newly discovered lands by immigrants from Europe was bloody. And not all writers of that time decided to show this truth of life (the Spaniards Las Casas and Gomara reflected this in their works).
In today's speech, the name "America" usually refers to only a part of that huge continent that was discovered at the end of the 16th century, namely the United States. This part of the American continent will be discussed.
Since the 17th century, the settlement of this territory by immigrants from Europe began. It continued in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the 17th century, a state arose called New England and subordinate to the English king and parliament. And only in the 70s of the XVIII century, 13 states gained strength in themselves to force England to recognize their independence. Thus, a new state appeared - the United States of America.
Fiction in the proper sense of the word, and in a capacity that allows it to enter the history of world literature, begins in America only in the 19th century, when such writers as Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper appeared on the literary scene.
During the period of the first settlers, in the 17th century, when the development of new lands was just beginning, the foundation of the first settlements was not yet up to literature. Only a few settlers kept diaries, records, chronicles. Although the soul of their authors still lived in England, its political and religious problems. They are not of particular literary interest, but are more valuable as a living picture of the first settlers of America, a story about the difficult days of settling in new places, ordeals, etc. Here are some famous diaries: Jan Winthrop 1630-1649, A History of New England, William Bradford's A History of the Settlement at Plymouth (1630-1651), John Smith's A General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624) .
Of the purely literary works, one should perhaps mention the poems of the poetess Anna Bredstreet (1612-1672), religiously edifying, very mediocre, but amusing the hearts of the first settlers (poem-dialogues "Quartets").
18th century
The 18th century in America passes under the flag of the struggle for independence. The central place is occupied by the ideas of the Enlightenment, which came from England and France. Cities grew in New England, universities were founded, newspapers began to appear. The first literary swallows also appeared: novels created under the influence of English educational literature and the "Gothic" novel, Henry Breckenridge (1748-1816) - "Modern Chivalry, or the Adventures of Captain John Farrato and Tig O'Reegen, his servant", Brockden Brown ( 1771-1810) - Wieland, Ormond, Arthur Mervin; poems Timothy Dwight (1752-1818) - "The Conquests of Canaan", "Greenfield Hill".
The second half of the century was marked by the appearance of a large group of poets who reflected the political passions of the era in their works. Conventionally, they were divided into sympathizers with the federalists (the most famous group is the “university poets”) and supporters of the revolution and democratic government. One of the most significant poets, an associate of Payne and Jefferson, is Philip Frenot (1752 - 1832). In his poems, he vividly reflected the political events in the country, although he later became disillusioned with the new American reality. In his best poems, he sang of nature and reflected on eternal life. Already in the work of Freno, it is easy to catch the beginnings of romanticism, which was fully formed in the USA only in the 19th century.
However, the main asset of American literature of the 18th century was its educational journalism with the names of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. These three people entered the history of American social thought, they left a noticeable mark in the history of world literature.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the author of the Declaration of Independence, the third President of the United States, is an undeniably talented and original person. A scientist, philosopher, inventor, possessing great and versatile knowledge, he should be mentioned in the history of literature as a brilliant stylist, who possessed a clear, precise and figurative language of a writer. His "Notes on Virginia", his "General Survey of the Rights of the British Empire" were valued by contemporaries not only for their expression of thought, but also for their literary merit. Mathematics, architecture, astronomy, natural sciences, linguistics (compiling dictionaries of Indian languages), history, music - all this was the subject of this person's hobbies and knowledge.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was one of the brilliant and versatile minds of the 18th century. Public thought in America was formed under the influence of this powerful mind, a self-taught genius.
For 25 years, Franklin published the famous calendar "The Simpleton Richard's Almanac", which in America served as a kind of encyclopedia, a collection of scientific information and, at the same time, witty everyday instructions. He printed a newspaper. He organized a public library in Philadelphia, a hospital, and wrote philosophical essays. He described his life in his Autobiography (published posthumously in 1791). His Teachings of the Simpleton Richard went around Europe. Many European universities gave him an honorary doctorate. Well, and, finally, he is a politician who carried out responsible diplomatic missions in Europe.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) is a talented, selfless revolutionary and educator. Published the pamphlet Common Sense. On January 10, 1776, the pamphlet became the sensation of the day. He called Americans to the war for independence, to the revolution. During the French bourgeois revolution, T. Payne fought on the side of the rebels. In addition, Payne wrote the book "Age of Reason" - an outstanding work of American enlightenment thought of the 18th century. The book, part of which was written in a Parisian prison, contains in rather harsh terms a condemnation of Christianity.
The American Enlightenment did not produce authors of such magnitude as the enlighteners of England, France, and Germany distinguished themselves. We will not find in the writings of Franklin, Jefferson, Paine and others the brilliance and wit of Voltaire, the depth of thought of Locke, the eloquence and passion of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the poetic imagination of Milton. These were more practitioners than thinkers and. Of course, least of all artists. They mastered the ideas of the European Enlightenment and tried, taking into account the possibilities, to apply them to their country. Thomas Paine was the boldest and most radical of them all.
American educators emphasized the issues of society, the individual and the state. Society is above the state. It can change its political system if the new generation finds it useful, they reasoned.
Thus, the American educational journalism of the 18th century theoretically substantiated the tasks of the bourgeois revolution. Thus, the American Enlightenment contributed to the development of emancipatory ideas and historical progress.
19th century
A priority direction in US policy in the XIX century. was the expansion of territories (attached: Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Upper California and other territories). One of the consequences of this is the military conflict with Mexico (1846-1848). As for the internal life of the country, the development of capitalism in the United States in the XIX century. was uneven. The "slowdown", the postponement of its growth in the first half of the 19th century, prepared for its especially wide and intensive development, a particularly violent explosion of economic and social contradictions in the second half of the century.
When studying the history of American culture and literature, one cannot but pay attention to the fact that such an uneven development of capitalism left a characteristic imprint on the ideological life of the United States, in particular, it caused the relative backwardness, “immaturity” of social thought and social consciousness of American society. The provincial isolation of the United States from European cultural centers also played its role. The social consciousness in the country was largely dominated by obsolete illusions and prejudices.
Disappointment with the results of the post-revolutionary development of the country leads American writers to search for a romantic ideal that opposes inhumane reality.
American romantics are the creators of the national literature of the United States. This, above all, distinguishes them from their European counterparts. While in Europe at the beginning of the XIX century. national literatures have secured for themselves qualities that have evolved over almost a whole millennium and have become their specific national features, American literature, like the nation, was still being defined. And in the New World, not only at the beginning of the 19th century, but also later, several decades later. The book market was dominated mainly by the works of English writers and literature translated from other European languages. The American book hardly made its way to the domestic reader. At that time, literary clubs already existed in New York, but English literature and an orientation towards European culture reigned in tastes: American in the bourgeois environment was considered "vulgar".
