本单元具体教学内容、教学基本要求、单元重点与难点

第12次课:南方文学（2节）

1.教学内容

Southern Literature

I. Heritage

II. Southern Myths – guilt, failure, poverty

1. Chevalier heritage

2. Agrarian virtue

3. Plantation aristocracy

4. Lost cause

5. White supremacy

6. Purity of womanhood

Southern literature: twisted, pessimistic, violent, distorted

Gothic novel: Poe

III. William Faulkner

1. life

2. literary career: three stages

3. point of view

4. themes

5. style/features of his works

IV. Close Reading: “Barn Burning”

Or “A rose for Emily” or Excerpt of Sound and Fury

V. 1. Travel of the Text from “Barn Burning” by Faulkner to Movie with the same title by south Korea

2. Representation Conflict between Classes in different text  Barn Burning Vs Parasite( a movie)

3.  Comparison of the image and way of presenting place in Mo Yan and Shen Congwen.

2. 教学基本要求

1)To make students acquire some basic knowledge of history of American South and some information about some major writers after American civil war.

2) To develop students’ understanding of the American southern renaissance and southern heritage.

3) To improve students’ abilities to interpret and appreciate  Faulkner’s Sound and Fury,  a Rose for Emliy, Barn burning.

4) To improve students’ language skills and cross-cultural competence in the representation of memory of the past and places and Shen Congwen, Mo Yan’s representation of the places.

5) To improve students’ ability to explore into Faulkner’s works on the problem of race, violence, class conflict and their representation.

 

3. 单元重点、难点 

重点:

1. American Southern heritage

2. Appreciation of Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” (class conflict) or “ A Rose for Emily”

3. Place representation in Faulkner and Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum, and Shen Congwen’s The Border Town

 

Southern Literature

I. Heritage

American southern literature can date back to Edgar Allen Poe, and reach its summit with the appearance of the two “giants” – Faulkner and Wolfe. There are southern women writers – Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor.

 

II. Southern Myths – guilt, failure, poverty

1. Chevalier heritage

2. Agrarian virtue

3. Plantation aristocracy

4. Lost cause

5. White supremacy

6. Purity of womanhood

Southern literature: twisted, pessimistic, violent, distorted

Gothic novel: Poe

III. William Faulkner

1. life

2. literary career: three stages

(1) 1924~1929: training as a writer

 The Marble Faun

 Soldier’s Pay

 Mosquitoes

(2) 1929~1936: most productive and prolific period

 Sartoris

 The Sound and the Fury

 As I Lay Dying

 Light in August

 Absalom, Absalom

(3) 1940~end: won recognition in America

 Go Down, Moses

3. point of view

He generally shows a grim picture of human society where violence and cruelty are frequently included, but his later works showed more optimism. His intention was to show the evil, harsh events in contrast to such eternal virtues as love, honour, pity, compassion, self-sacrifice, and thereby expose the faults of society. He felt that it was a writer’s duty to remind his readers constantly of true values and virtues.

4. themes

(1) history and race

He explains the present by examining the past, by telling the stories of several generations of family to show how history changes life. He was interested in the relationship between blacks and whites, especially concerned about the problems of the people who were of the mixed race of black and white, unacceptable to both races.

(2) Deterioration

(3) Conflicts between generations, classes, races, man and environment

(4) Horror, violence and the abnormal

5. style/features of his works

(1) complex plot

(2) stream of consciousness

(3) multiple point of view, circular form

(4) violation of chronology

(5) courtroom rhetoric: formal language

(6) characterization: he was able to probe into the psychology of characters

(7) “anti-hero”: weak, fable, vulnerable (true people in modern society)

He has a group of women writers following him, including O’Connor and Eudora Welty