美国文学9 Stephen Crane.ppt

Stephen Crane(1871-1900) Introduction Although he was born more than six years after the end of the American Civil War, Stephen Cranes novel The Red Badge of Courage depicted that war so vividly, and rendered the fears of men in battle so intensely, that many veterans who read the book were convinced that he was one of them. In a career of less than ten years, Crane produced a body of work that, in its striking and concise phrasing and its unflinching [not showing fear or shrinking] confrontation of smugness and hypocrisy, helped set the course of American fiction and poetry in the twentieth century. 2. Early Years Born in Newark, New Jersey, on November 1, 1871, Stephen Crane was his parents fourteenth (and last) child. Crane attended the Hudson River Institute in Claverack, New York, from 1888 to 1890, where he was taught history by John B. Van Petten, who had been an officer in the Civil War. In September 1890, he enrolled at Lafayette College to study mining engineering, but left without completing his first semester. He entered Syracuse University in January 1891and in his single semester at Syracuse, he passed only one course of six—English literature, for which he received an A. 3. Literary Career Crane later maintained that he wrote his first major work of fiction, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, in two days just before Christmas of 1891. He borrowed money from one of his brothers to have it printed, since he was unable to publish it commercially because of its bleak and uncompromising presentation of life in the slums of New York City: the title character is forced to turn to prostitution after being self-righteously rejected by everyone she has loved and trusted. The book appeared early in 1893 under the pseudonym Johnston Smith, and, while very few copies were sold, it won favorable attention from the influential novelists Hamlin Garland and William Dean Howells. Also in early 1893, Crane wrote a first version of what would become The