本单元具体教学内容、教学基本要求、单元重点与难点

第11次课：1920年代的 美国文学

1.教学内容

Novels in the 1920s

I. F. Scott Fitzgerald

1. life – participant in 1920s

2. works

3. point of view

4. His ideas of “American Dream”

It is false to most young people. Only those who were dishonest could become rich.

5. Style

6. The Great Gatsby

Narrative point of view – Nick

He is related to everyone in the novel and is calm and detected observer who is never quick to make judgements.

Selected omniscient point of view

II. Ernest Hemingway

1. life

2. point of view (influenced by experience in war)

3. works

4. themes – “grace under pressure”

5. Style

III. Close Reading:

1. Farewell to Arms  Chapter 41

2. The Great Gatsby chapter 3

IV. Cultural extension: Fitzgerald's anti-hero vs. Hemingway’s hero?

3.  教学基本要求

1)To make students acquire some information about Fitzgerald's and Hemingway including their life experiences, point of view.

 

2) To develop students’ understanding of the Lost Generation

3) To improve students’ abilities to interpret and appreciate the literary representation of Jazz Age. and Hemingway Code Hero.

4) To improve students’ language skills and cross-cultural perspective. China’s revolutionary optimistic literature after 1949 and anti-war novels in American literature.

5) To improve students’  competence of exploring the similarities and differences between Fitzgerald's anti-hero and Hemingway’s hero. 

3. 单元重点、难点 

重点

1)Jazz Age and its literary representation in The Great Gatsby

2)Hemingway and his Code Hero in Farewell to Arms

3)Similarities and differences between Fitzgerald's anti-hero and Hemingway’s hero

难点

1). Similarities and differences between Fitzgerald's anti-hero and Hemingway’s hero

2) Cross-cultural perspective: different ways in presenting war in Chinese literature after 1949 and Hemingway and his followers.

Novels in the 1920s

I. F. Scott Fitzgerald

1. life – participant in 1920s

2. works

(1) This Side of Paradise

(2) Flappers and Philosophers

(3) The Beautiful and the Damned

(4) The Great Gatsby

(5) Tender is the Night

(6) All the Sad Young Man

(7) The Last Tycoon

3. point of view

(1) He expressed what the young people believed in the 1920s, the so-called “American Dream” is false in nature.

(2) He had always been critical of the rich and tried to show the integrating effects of money on the emotional make-up of his character. He found that wealth altered people’s characters, making them mean and distrusted. He thinks money brought only tragedy and remorse.

(3) His novels follow a pattern: dream – lack of attraction – failure and despair.

4. His ideas of “American Dream”

It is false to most young people. Only those who were dishonest could become rich.

5. Style

Fitzgerald was one of the great stylists in American literature. His prose is smooth, sensitive, and completely original in its diction and metaphors. Its simplicity and gracefulness, its skill in manipulating the relation between the general and the specific reveal his consummate artistry.

6. The Great Gatsby

Narrative point of view – Nick

He is related to everyone in the novel and is calm and detected observer who is never quick to make judgements.

Selected omniscient point of view