McCarthy
War literature: the first wave of literature after the war was war novels. Among them, Mailer's Naked and the Dead (1948) and james jones's From Here to Eternity (195 1) are better. The similarity between the two books is that through the war, the contradiction between soldiers, junior officers and military institutions is written, that is, the conflict between human personality and the authority that stifles personality. These novels touched on the most prominent theme of the whole generation of literature after the war.
"Ten Years of Cowardice": In 1950s, the right-wing conservative forces attacked the radical tradition in 1930s, and many people turned from caring about social progress to caring about personal interests. This 10 year is called "the decade of cowardice" or "the decade of silence". During this period, some works appeared, which portrayed the bourgeoisie as a positive figure and advocated obedience to authority, such as The Man in Gray Flannel Clothes (1955). This kind of works tried to maintain the established value standard and the existing social order, and soon lost its influence. On the other hand, writers such as arthur miller (19 15 ~) resisted McCarthyism and continued to attack social injustice with their works.
"Beat Generation": The dull political atmosphere in the 1950s suffocated many young people. They take drugs, live in groups and express their protest with a decadent and indulgent lifestyle. Some of them write this kind of life and emotion into literary works, which is the "Beat Generation" literature. After the development in 1960s, this kind of literature has added some political color under the background of the upsurge of domestic democratic movement. But for many of them, eastern religions and eastern philosophy are more attractive. The "Beat Generation" is more lively in poetry creation and restores the tradition of American poetry recitation.
"Black humor": After entering the 1960s, people have a deeper understanding of irrationality and alienation in life. In their works, some writers use exaggerated and surreal methods to mix joy and pain, absurdity and terror, tenderness and cruelty, absurdity and eccentricity and solemnity, which makes readers laugh and cry and feel uneasy, thus gaining a deeper understanding of life. The author's view of the world prospect is often pessimistic. This is "black humor" literature, and its representative works include Catch-22 by Heller (196 1).
Some people put Albee's works (1928 ~) in the "black humor" school. Albee is a representative figure of American absurd drama. There is nothing funny or humorous in his comedies, but it is consistent with "black humor" in making readers feel uneasy. This shows that there is a blood relationship between the absurd drama and the "black humor" novel.
"Non-fiction": In 1960s and 1970s, a new style of "new news report" or "non-fiction" appeared. Some writers think that the strangeness of real life is beyond their imagination. It is better to write a novel to describe the events that caused social sensation than to make fiction. This genre allows journalists to mix their own observation and imagination when describing events, and can also adopt various symbolic techniques. This kind of works is more detailed than ordinary reportage, including the author's observation and imagination, and has the author's personal color and strong artistic appeal, such as Capote's Murder (1966) and Mailer's Song of the Executioner (1979).
Jewish literature: Jewish writers occupy a considerable proportion among contemporary American writers, and Jewish literature can almost be regarded as a "subculture" or "cultural tributary". Jewish literary works generally have the dual colors of ancient European culture and modern American culture, and the conflict and integration of the two cultures increase the complexity of Jewish literature. Religious thoughts and the slaughter of compatriots make Jewish writers feel guilty, the fate of history makes them feel wandering and confused, and the alienated society in the United States makes them feel unable to find a home. Therefore, the search for "self-essence" has become a prominent theme in their works. The masterpiece is The Adventures of Auggie March by Bello (19 15 ~). In fact, this is a manifestation of the Jewish nation's establishment of national status and national dignity. In the late 1970s, Bello, who represents a relatively new western ideological system, and Singer (1904 ~), who belongs to Yiddish cultural tradition, won the Nobel Prize one after another, indicating the importance of Jewish literature in American literature. Other important Jewish writers are Malamud (19 14 ~) and Ross (1933 ~).
Black literature: Black literature became more mature after the war. Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man (19 14 ~) and Baldwin's prose have reached the level of first-class literature. They expressed their protest against racial inequality in a more subtle and profound way. They want people to realize that black people have all human nature. During this period, the poems of the poetess Guan Brooks (19 17 ~) were widely praised.
American literature
. Playwright Roland Huntsbury (1930 ~ 1965)' s drama "Raisins in the Sun" (1959) has set a record for black drama on Broadway. Le Roy Jones (1934 ~) is a new generation of black poets. He gave himself another Muslim name to show his contempt for American culture.
Southern writers: Southern literature is still developing during this period. Old writers Faulkner, Porter (1890 ~ 1980) and Verdi (1909 ~) also have important works. New writers are constantly emerging, such as Stellen (1925 ~), O 'Connor (1925 ~ 1964), mccullers (19 17 ~ 1967) and so on. They no longer look for themes from historical legends, but care about the spiritual depression of southerners in real life. Tan Williams (19 14 ~) is a famous southern playwright after the war. His works such as Glass Zoo show the misfortune and emptiness of life through the sexual perversion of characters.
New york writers: new york writers do not have the same psychological factors as southern writers. People put them together because they all contribute to several magazines in new york (Party Review, New York Book Review and new york People), and the reviews and novels published by these magazines often have an impact on the fashion of American literature. Te Li Lilin (1905 ~ 1975) and Ma McCarthy (19 12 ~) are very insightful.
American literature
The novels of John Cheever (19 12 ~) and Updike (1932 ~), local critics, explore the psychology and consciousness of suburban residents in big cities with poetic and ironic exquisite brushwork, and paint exquisite genre paintings for the middle class in Northeast China.
Personalized Poetry: During this period, many schools of poetry appeared in the United States, such as Beat School, Montenegro School, new york School, Figurative School, Confession School and New Super School.
Marxist realism ". These factions have their own opinions, but their similarities are all trying to get rid of Eliot's "impersonal" influence. The new generation of poets express their thoughts directly and highlight personal factors, which has a kind of "modernity". They emphasize American characteristics and no longer regard London as an English poem.
American literature
Center; They interfere in politics and are no longer proud of being detached from things; They oppose authority and despise traditional rules. Their poems describe drug abuse, sex (including homosexual sex), schizophrenia and attachment to suicide. All this can be regarded as a rebellion against the mechanized, standardized and dehumanized society in the West.
Theory and Criticism: After the war, the power of "new criticism" gradually declined. In the 1960s, with the rise and fall of various radical movements and the "new left" ideological trend from Europe, the academic circles re-studied Marxism, and the theoretical proposition of combining Marxism with Freudian psychology reappeared. At the same time, structuralism theory became popular in academic circles.
During this period, the style of writers' biographies was relatively prosperous, with many detailed comments. The five-volume biography of Henry James (1953 ~ 1972) is representative, and the author is Lee adil (1907 ~).
American society
The American nation is young, naive, confident and full of vitality. Americans are like a warm-blooded young man, positive and unwilling to be lonely. Americans are like an energetic young man, who keeps doing this and that, and seems to have endless energy. People in the city always seem to be in a hurry to go somewhere; People in rural areas are always running between farmland, chicken farms, barns and dairy farms; People in the office have a mountain of paperwork to do; As soon as the secretary in the company calls directly, he delivers the documents. If you walk in the street, the people behind you will stride in front of you; When you go to a restaurant for dinner, it is rare to find a partner who can greet you with a smile. The rhythm of life, like a clockwork, keeps running in an orderly way, which constitutes a busy and almost crazy picture of modern life. The fast-paced lifestyle of Americans is closely related to the fierce competition in their society, in addition to the active nature of the American nation. America is a country with a highly developed market economy. The law of "natural selection, survival of the fittest" is its operating law. If you don't advance, you will retreat. Don't win or lose. In order to survive and succeed, Americans must struggle and struggle, and an important aspect of struggle and struggle is to compete with others for time and speed, so that they are always in a subordinate position. It can be seen that the fast-paced lifestyle of Americans is "forced" by their fierce social competition. Because this "persecution" is everywhere, Americans are used to a fast-paced lifestyle.
The United States is a country that respects individuality and advocates individualism. The story of personal success is the essence of the "American Dream". Whether Carnegie went from a poor apprentice to a rich steel king or Lincoln ascended the presidency from an ordinary family, they are all examples of personal success that ordinary Americans talk about and dream about.
The main content of American culture is to emphasize personal value, pursue democracy and freedom, advocate pioneering and competition, and stress rationality and practicality. Its core is individualism: the supremacy of the individual, the supremacy of selfish desires, the pursuit of personal interests and personal enjoyment, and the ultimate realization of personal value through personal struggle and personal self-design. This individualism, which deliberately shapes itself and pursues individuality, has both positive and negative aspects. It mobilizes the enthusiasm of individuals and enables many people to give full play to their wisdom and potential, thus promoting the rejuvenation and development of the whole nation and country. But if everyone takes me as the center, it will be difficult for interpersonal relationships to be harmonious and the whole society will lack cohesion.
education
American higher education attaches great importance to humanities and history education, and the United States generally has humanities and history departments. For example, the University of Maryland is a state-run higher education system composed of 13 universities including the University of Maryland, and College Park is the most important university in this university system. It has a history department with strong teachers and research strength, and the content of history courses is also very rich. For comprehensive universities, it is understandable to have such a history department. Other institutions in the University of Maryland system have history departments. However, some universities in the University of Maryland system are engineering or natural disciplines, such as MD Biotechnology University and MD Environmental Science University. This is unimaginable in Chinese mainland (because the proportion of universities with humanities departments in Hong Kong and Taiwan is also quite high). At present, there are not many universities with history departments and other humanities departments, mainly comprehensive universities and normal universities. Moreover, at present, many colleges and universities in China are afraid of having humanities departments such as history departments and philosophy departments, and they will either reduce the enrollment scale, change their names to history departments or change them to other departments. At the same time, in American universities, the course of human history is an important part of compulsory courses for college students. However, the humanities and history courses in Chinese universities are basically oriented to their respective majors, and few non-humanities students study humanities courses. Of course, this situation has been improved now, and many universities are taking various measures to improve students' humanistic quality, including scientific quality. For example, many non-comprehensive universities began to open humanities colleges. However, compared with the long history education system in American universities, there is still a big gap.
Why do American universities attach so much importance to humanities and history education? The fundamental reason is determined by the educational spirit and principles of American higher education (in fact, the whole American education) based on "generalist" education. Humanistic history education is the basic content of "generalist" education. The so-called "generalist" education, that is, whether it is liberal arts, science and engineering or other disciplines, is aimed at comprehensively cultivating college students' humanistic knowledge and thinking mode, and its purpose is to make college students have a more systematic and in-depth understanding of human material civilization and spiritual civilization, and to cultivate students' humanistic thinking mode. Because American universities focus on imparting all kinds of knowledge to college students, the education of professional skills and technology is the second in American university education. This is reflected in all aspects of its university education. American universities generally do not regard themselves as places to train technical experts, so no university in the United States has ever prided itself on being the cradle of engineers. American universities attach great importance to the basic position of the cultivation of humanistic knowledge in professional and skill learning. Many professional and highly skilled disciplines and majors are not offered at the undergraduate level, and students can only learn after laying a reasonable knowledge structure at the undergraduate level. Lawyers, for example, are the most sought-after occupations in the United States, and there are naturally many people studying law. However, there are no law departments and majors in American universities, and only those who have completed humanities and social sciences are eligible to further study law. I think this kind of thinking and practice is quite reasonable. Because law is the norm of complex social life, it was formed with the appearance of human society, and the law of real society is the inheritance and development of law in history. Therefore, if a person lacks a deep understanding of human social history and real life, then the law is just a bunch of mechanical provisions for him, and he can't really understand and implement the law well.
American universities generally have humanities departments, which is directly related to the fact that graduates from these departments are not difficult to find jobs, and they often excel in social competition. In the United States, history graduates not only have a wide range of employment fields, but also many people have become the backbone of American society. For example, many members of the U.S. Congress graduated from the humanities department, and many American presidents are from the liberal arts. Because America is a practical society, if a professional graduate can't find a job, he can't survive in American society. Of course, the employment of American humanities and history graduates is easily related to the comprehensive and reasonable knowledge structure and content they learned during their college years, so they have more comprehensive subject knowledge. As mentioned above, American universities emphasize "generalist" education, that is, college students should learn all the knowledge of arts and sciences, while students majoring in humanities and history must learn many other subjects. Therefore, American humanities and history graduates often have comprehensive humanities and history knowledge and way of thinking, as well as scientific knowledge and thinking ability. For example, in the history department of the University of Maryland, about half of the 120 credits that students have taken for four years are non-history majors, including many natural courses. So, how do students of humanities and history understand the courses of science and engineering? Many natural science courses in American universities focus on basic knowledge rather than professional knowledge of a certain subject. In addition, China's senior high school education in the United States has no liberal arts classes, and students have no difficulty in attending classes. American universities attach importance to humanities and history education, not only to let students master the basic knowledge of humanities and history, but also to cultivate students' humanistic spirit and historical thinking ability. In fact, knowledge in modern society is updated rapidly, and a lot of knowledge learned in universities is often outdated. However, the cultivation of humanistic and historical spirit and way of thinking is the most fundamental and not easy to go out of date. In contrast, the humanities and history departments and majors of China University are not taken seriously. How sharp the contrast is! I think the fundamental reason is that students majoring in humanities and history are not valued in society, which makes it difficult for students to find jobs. The deeper and more important reason is that many people, including students, do not really realize the decisive significance of learning and cultivating the knowledge and quality of humanities and history for people's own development and participation in social competition. Secondly, it is also directly related to the dogmatic and rigid content of the current humanities and history education in China and the backward educational methods, that is to say, it has not really played a role in cultivating students' humanistic spirit and free thinking.
Our university often talks about cultivating master scholars and becoming a world-class university; After our students enter the society, they are often determined to become the best in the fierce social competition. Then, if we compare the philosophy of humanities and history education between Chinese and American universities, can we reflect on and experience something useful from it?