Theodore Dreiser and Sister Carrie 英语专业教学课件.ppt

Theodore Dreiser(1871-1945) American author, outstanding representative of naturalism, whose novels depict real-life subjects in a harsh light Life: 1. Dreiser was born in Indiana, the ninth child of German-speaking parents. 2. His childhood was spent in extreme poverty. 3. After some months at Indiana University, he became a reporter on the Chicago Globe before arriving in New York in 1894. 4. His first novel, Sister Carrie, was rejected because of his relentless honesty in presenting the true nature of American life. 5. 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. 6. He faced every form of attack that a serious artist could encounter misunderstanding, misrepresentation, artistic isolation and commercial seduction. But he survived to lead the rebellion of the 1900s. 7.Dreiser died of heart failure on December 28, 1945, before completing the last chapter of The Stoic. 8.Dreiser was buried in Hollywoods Forest Lawn Cemetery on January 3, 1946. Works Sister Carrie 1900 Jennie Gerhardt 1911 An American Tragedy 1925 The Financier 1912 The Titan 1914 The Stoic (posthumously) The Genius 1915 Dreiser Looks at Russia 1928 About Sister Carrie The book was initially rejected by many publishers on the grounds that is was immoral. Indeed, Harper Brothers, the first publisher to see the book, rejected it by saying it was not, sufficiently delicate to depict without offense to the reader the continued illicit relations of the heroine. Finally Doubleday and Company published the book in order to fulfill their contract, but Frank Doubleday refused to promote the book. As a result, it sold less than seven hundred copies and Dreiser received a reputation as a naturalist-barbarian. Sister Carrie, published in 1900, is one of the best-known story of American Drea