十個文學時期6:現代主義(美國篇)

今次已經係我讀個課程第二次講現代主義(modernism)，但今次較集中在美國的海明威，我反而比較少聽海明威。

1. Background: during WW1 ravaged the world: 9 million death; pointless death on a large scale; aimless, reckless, unable to believe in abstract ideas

2. Reject 19th century traditions; era pound: make it new

3. Experimental styles: james joyce, woolf, eliot, pound: rediscover the meaning and unity; language as a game

4. Decay and a growing alienation of the individual

5. Machinery of modern society

6. Lost generation in American literature: Gertrude stein, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, eliot; decadence, hedonism, revelaed the shallow, frivolous lives of the young 

7. Turn inwards to record the workings of consciousness;

8. Hemingway:  abandonment of all ornamental language; the sun also rises; Distill a complex and often tragic life story into a single incident, austere and incisive, ironic understatement, distinct theme, terse description, simple syntax compressed narration, dialogue, silence, action; human drama never trivial; minimalist movement, influenced many writers, such as Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, Elizabeth Tallent, Tim O'Brien; Blow to traditional gender roles; impotence; representation of fact rather than fact itself; Code: characterised by courage, self-discipline, grace under pressure; the principle of the iceberg; heroic fatalism

9. Idealised past: Daisy in Gatsby