哈尔滨师范大学美国文学课程三册教材课件.ppt

American Literature Book III Table of Contents Theodore Dreiser Edwin Arlington Robinson Carl Sandburg Sinclair Lewis Henry L. Mencken F. Scott Fitzgerald John Steinbeck Theodore Dreiser(1871-1945) American author, outstanding representative of naturalism, whose novels depict real-life subjects in a harsh light Theodore Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1871. The ninth child of German immigrants, he experienced considerable poverty while a child and at the age of fifteen was forced to leave home in search of work. Dreiser worked for the New York World before Frank Norris, who was working for Doubleday, helped Dreisers first novel, Sister Carrie (1900), to be published. However, the owners disapproved of the novels subject matter (the moral corruption of the heroine, Carrie Meeber) and it was not promoted and therefore sold badly. The young author felt so depressed by “a decade’s delay”—in the words of Larzer Ziff—in social recognition that he was said to have walked by the East River at the turn of the century, seriously committing suicide. Dreiser was left-oriented in his views. Dreiser continued to work as a journalist and as well as writing for mainstream newspapers such as the Saturday Evening Post, also had work published in socialist magazines such as The Call. However, unlike many of his literary friends such as Sinclair Lewis, and Jack London, he never joined the Socialist Party. In 1898 Dreiser married Sara White, a Missouri schoolteacher, but the marriage was unhappy. Dreiser separated permanently from her in 1909, but never earnestly sought a divorce. In his own life Dreiser practiced his principle that mans greatest appetite is sexual - the desire for women His strength clearly ebbing, Dreiser died of heart failure on December 28, 1945, before completing the last chapter of The Stoic. Dreiser was buried in Hollywoods Forest Lawn Cemetery on January 3, 1946. 1. Works Sister Carrie 1900 Jennie Gerhardt 1911 An American Trage