《英美文学教学资料》The Glass Mountain.pptVIP

Different Literary Schools Neo-Classicism: reason理性---order 次序(didactic, moralizing ) Romanticism: emotion情感---individuality 个性(confessional) Realism: humanism人道---type典型(critical) Modernism: alienation异化---absurdity 荒诞 (nauseating, strange, awakening) Absurdity is a form of expressing alienation, a mark of awakening and the beginning to realize the world truly. Postmodernism: deconstruction解构---playfulness 游戏(exaggerating, distorting, grotesque, fantastic to reveal the truth of life) like building toy bricks 积木. Postmodernism (mid 20thC-) Postmodernism disbelieves rationalism, idealism, and the subjective apprehension of experience. Holds that the reality of modem life was too elusive and uncertain for people, to rationalize and idealize. Any attempt to impose order on a disordered reality was artificial and falsifying. Therefore, they chose the play of irrationality, the free play of language over discursive coherence and formalistic unity. By rendering language irrational and even unreadable, postmodern writers neutralized the fiasco(惨败)of reality and the imposture(欺诈)of history and suggested participation in the chaos and absurdity of the world as the only meaningful way of life. They believed this was the way to come closer to the truth of the world. By using pastiche(模仿), parody(仿拟), irony, digression (离题), and playfulness, postmodernist writing created a rupture (决裂) in order to revive an “exhausted” genre---a genre that could no longer accommodate and express the extravagant notions of time and space of the postindustrial reality. Hence, disorder, deliberate chaos, fragmentation, violence, disruption, dislocation, decentering, contradiction, confrontation, multiplicity, and indetermination comprise and accompany the postmodern text. modernism and postmodernism Postmodernism is a reaction against modernism. Modernists tried to control the fragmented society through the agency of art and give it an art form, but postmodern writers were too nihilisti