常耀信美国文学史第三版Chapter16.ppt

Literary contribution Lewis was a sociological writer. His novel forms a segment of American social history. For several decades Lewis nibbled like a silkworm at the mulberry leaf of American middle-class life, so that he got to known it inside out. He explained the American middle-class and gave a name, Babbitt, a word which has found its way into the English dictionary as a synonym for the vulgar and philistine businessman. Lewis’ limitations In theme his affirmation of what he regarded as the best middle-class virtues made him appear rather old-fashioned. In style, apart from the fact that his novels sprawl and want order and art, he was accurate in external description but lacking in psychological exploration. Thus, amid the experimental atmosphere of the postwar years, he looked conservative and outmoded. That image has remained in the memory of critics and readers alike even today. Willa Cather ——章嫣然 2013105204 Willa Cather(1873-1947) She was born in Virginia, Willa Cather moved at the age of nine with her family to a prairie state of the West-Nebraska. Old west thus becomes in most of her novels the center of moral reference against which modern existence is measured. She was one of the few “ uneasy survivors of the nineteenth century.” Hanging onto the traditional values, she was never able to come to terms with modernity. She lived in between the worlds, rejecting the modern and trying to escape into the refuge of the past. Her works are a fictional projection of her own crisis in life. WORKS My Antonio(1918) —— 我的安东妮亚 The Song of the Lark(1915) —— 云雀之歌 A Lost Lady(1923)—— 一个迷途的女人 The Professor’s House(1925)—— 教授的房子 Death Comes for the Archbishop(1927) —— 大主教之死 Shadows on the Rock(1931)—— 岩石上的影子 My Antonio(1918) My Antonia is a novel published in 1918 by American writer Willa Cather, considered one of her best works. It is the final book of her prairie trilogy of novels, preceded by O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark. T