美国文学Lecture-3.pptVIP

W. H. Auden His portraits of abnormal or self-destructive states contributed much to Dostoyevsky, his ratiocinating hero is the ancestor of Sherlock Holmes and his many successors, his tales of the future lead to H. G. Wells, his adventure stories to Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson. Poe’s Artistic Theories argued for the creation of beauty and intensity of emotion, against the didactic motive for literature. the artist should be concerned solely with beauty, of imagination. literature should have no social function or responsibility but should be an expression of the isolated artist. The real world is cruel, ugly and fast into decaying. The artist’s life is lonely, painful and hopeless. The only happiness arose out of the creation and contemplation of beauty. John Keats (1795—1821) Truth is beauty, beauty truth. A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Oscar Wilde’s aesthetics: (1854-1900) The artist is the creator of beautiful things. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Book are well written, or badly written. That is all. Life imitates art. Art’s for art’s sake. - Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray Poe’s theory on Poetry The poem should be short, readable at one sitting avoids the intrusion of ugliness and tries to create a vision of beauty and a melodious sound, stress on rhythm. Musical effect with artistry of alliteration, assonance, and repetition. Opposed to the didactic and call for “pure” poetry. The basic tone is melancholy. The most poetical topic: the death of a beautiful woman. Poe’s theory on short story A good fiction should only tell one event, which can be finished at one sitting (brevity). Story should stimulate readers and impress them deeply. It should have a consistent effect throughout the whole text. He showed in his fiction the impulse to self-destruction, the fascination with horrible catastrop