American Literature
Although the roots of American literature are in the chronicles as early as about 1 600 - on William Brandford and his History of the Plymouth Plantation - the real history of American literature begins in the time of the American fight for independence. It tells us about the problems and needs of that time. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin describes the life of a scientist, journalist and politican. Thomas Paine, in Common Sense, urged an immediate declaration of independence which was accepted thanks mainly to Thomas Jefferson.
Next significant writer is Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849 → romanticism). He tried to write poetry but he wasn't succesful untill 1845 when The Raven was published. The Raven is about the mourning for the death of a beautiful lover. Poe was a journalist and edited several American magazines in which he published his literary critique and some of his short stories. He invented a new literary form: the detective story. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (with The Fall of the House of Usher) represents his tales of terror.
„The Gilded Age“ is represented by Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), an American humorist of world-wide popularity. The son of a poor father himself, he gained most of the material for his stories and novels while piloting a steamboat on the Mississippi. Every child enjoys reading Tom Sawyer, a series of wild adventures of Tom and his friend Huck. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck himself is the principal hero and his friend is Negro Jim. But Twain also wrote books that took inspiration from English history - let us mention The Prince and the Pauper, or a satire A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Twain's short story The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg shows how the soul of entire town can be rotten (zkažená).
The pioneer (průkopník) of new poetry (civilicism - celebration of human work, ordinary things, picture of modern life) in America was Walt Whitman ( 1819 - 1892). He is one of the greatest American poets. In his epoch-making Leaves of Grass he is a true singer of democracy in the best sense of the word.They are poems which have a new form (free verse). Jack London (1876 - 1916) belongs to the greatest personages in literature in the past times. His novels The Call of the Wild ( novel from Alaskan nature) and Martin Eden (it's autobiographical) still remain world classics.
American prose between wars
Gertrude Stein invented the term „Lost Generation“ for a group of writers who lost their illusions after the World War I. and who grew sober (vystřízlivět) from American dream. The most important of them are Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940) with the novels This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night - proses reflect profligate face of american social élite in „jazz time“ and William Faulkner (1897 - 1962) with the novels The Wild Palms,The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom! and short story A Rose for Emily. He wrote about American South, social and racial problems. Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961). During World War I. he served as a voluntary ambulance driver and was seriously injured. He began his career with short stories which he wrote in Paris - his first book of stories In Our Time was published in 1925. His heroes are virile and fond of sports (Hemingway was a great lover of hunting, fishing and bull-fighting) but they are maimed either physically or mentally. His world famous novel A Farewell to Arms is an epic description of World War I. and thus a protest against any war. But it is also a moving love-story of an American lieutenant in the American Ambulance Service and an English nurse. They go off to Switzerland to avoid the horror. But the beloved girl dies during child-birth. During this time Hemingway lives in Florida, goes watching bull-fighting in Spain, hunting wild animals in Africa, fishing, using these topics in his books Death in the Afternoon and Green Hills of Africa.
In his famous novel For Whom the Bell Tolls , which is a psychological picture of war, Robert Jordan, a young American, comes to Spain as a volunteer to help in the fight against fascism. Jordan succeeds in blowing up(podaří vyhodit do vzduchu)a bridge but only at the cost of his life. His creed is: “You can do nothing for yourself but perhaps for another.“ Hemingway took part also in World War II. as a war reporter and proved to be dauntless again(ukázal se jako nebojácný), especially during the taking of Paris. This inspirated him to write another love story - the novel Across the River and into the Trees. The Old Man and the Sea seems to be the most famous of Hemingway`s novels. This tiny book is a masterpiece giving a most detailed picture of doing, thinking and feeling of quite plain men and passionate fishermen. It is also a poem about the sea and about the eternal fight between nature and man which must lose if he fights alone. For this book Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954. During his last years he suffered from a depression leading to his suicide in 1961. In this time he wrote two works published posthumously, the last of them is Islands in the Stream. These are autobiographical memoirs linked by the person of a successful painter Thomas Hudson.
To the same group belongs John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968). His best - known books are Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath (fates of Californian farmers in time of economic cris) and East of Eden, which tells about a long family saga from the Civil War to World War I. Steinbeck described America in his Travels with Charley in Search of America. He got the Nobel Prize.
Theodore Dreiser (1871 - 1945), one of the representatives of American naturalism and social realism.In the world known for his An American Tragedy, where he resolves problem of crime and punishment.
Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885 - 1951) as a first American writer received the Nobel Prize.Let us name from his books Babbitt and Arrowsmith at least.
Beat generation
movement 50. - 60. years
ridicule to traditional values (wealth, career, family), official morals, consumption society
inclination to oriental philosophy (zendbudhism); looking inner liberty; eccentricity in fashion; drugs, alcohol, sexual dissoluteness, jazz music, vagabond
in literature: effort to shock and provoke; vulgarism and slang
beat terms: hipster (men persuaded that liberty can be only out of sphere of normal society) and squares (straight people - spořádaní)
Allan Ginsberg.(1926) - poet.Howl, The Fall of America - they are his poetic works.The best known writer this movement is Jack Kerouac (1922 - 1969) who named this group.On the Road, The Subterraneans and The Dharma Bums rank among his famous novels. On the Roads - bible of beat generation, is written by special experimental method → spontaneous prose.Besides Kerouac they are represented mainly by writers such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William S. Burroughs (1986 movie about him) and Charles Bukowski (autobiographical novel Hollywood).
Absurd literature/ drama
We should mention Edward Albee (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), Thorton Wilder (Hallo,Dolly), Arthur Miller(All my sons, Witches from Salem,Death of a Salesman), Tennessee Williams (Orpheus Descending), Eugen Gladstone O` Neill (Mourning Becomes Electra) - Nobel Prize
Science fiction
Ray Bradbury (1920)
Others important authors
John dos Passos (U.S.A.), Woody Allen (tales), Robert Fulghum, Arthur Hailey (Hotel), Joseph Heller (Catch - 22), Stephen King (It; Carrye), MacDonald, Ken Kesey (One flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - from mental hospital; movie by Miloš Forman), Jerome David Salinger (only one book - The Catcher in the Rye - subject-matter: teenage boy), William Saroyan (The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze and Other Stories).
We can't forget William Styron who reflected the horrors of fascism and concentration camps in his novel Sophie's Choice.
Latin America
Pablo Neruda - Chilean poet
Octavio Paz - Nobel Prize-winner
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