Contents introduction chapter the battle of good and evil in literature of the XIX century

CHAPTER 2.
LITERATURE OF THE USA AT THE TURN OF THE 19TH - 20TH CENTURIES


2.1. US literature of the late 19th century
In the beginning, I would like to make a short digression into the history of the United States of interest to us during the period. without knowledge of the main historical events, it is impossible to understand literary processes and analyze texts.
The United States of America is one of the youngest states. The development of the continent by Europeans began in the 16th century; before their appearance, the territory of the future world power was inhabited by Indian tribes. By the 18th century, the entire North American continent had been colonized by Europeans. In 1774, 13 British colonies began hostilities in the struggle for independence. The result of their trouble on July 4, 1776 was the formation of a new sovereign state.
During the 19th century, the territory of the United States increased due to the acquisition of Louisiana from the French , Florida from the Spaniards and the conquest of other lands. The capture of local states was accompanied either by the forced eviction of the Indian people in reservations, or by the complete annihilation of the population.
In 1861, disagreements arose between the southern and northern states related to economic and cultural issues, as a result of which the Confederation of 11 southern states arose, which announced its separation. At the beginning of the civil war, the southerners won several victories, but in the end it ended with the victory of the northern states and the preservation of the federation.
The end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century is marked by a grandiose economic recovery in the United States due to the influx of immigrants from other continents. April 4, 1917 America entered the First World War . Until that time, the state preferred to take a neutral position in relation to events in Europe. At this time , the United States was engaged in the creation of zones of influence in the countries of the Pacific Ocean, the Caribbean and Central America . After the war in 1929, a sharp jump in the country's economy gave way to a terrible crisis. During the Great Depression , production dropped significantly and unemployment increased. On December 7, 1941, as a result of the bombing of an American base in Pearl Harb by Japanese fighters, the US Army entered World War II with Japan . After December 11, 1941, America entered into a military conflict with Italy and Germany. The Americans deployed all their military operations mainly in the Pacific. After the Tegeran Conference on June 6, 1944, the US Army figured in the defeat of the German army on the Atlantic coast of France. The fighting against Japan successfully took place in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. On August 6, 1945, the Americans dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima , and on August 9, a bomb was dropped on another Japanese city, Nagasaki. On September 2, 1945, the Emperor of Japan Hirohito signed an act of resignation .
Literary scholars call the end of the 19th century late American romanticism. During this period, a sharp division took place in the literary space of the country, caused by the Civil War between the North and the South. On the one hand, the literature of a Bolitionism stands out, which, within the framework of romantic aesthetics, protests against slavery from ethical and general humanistic positions. On the other hand, the literature of the South, idealizing the traditions of the slave system, stands up for the historically doomed and reactionary way of life.
The motives of opposition to anti-humanistic laws occupy a significant place in the works of such writers as Longfellow, Emerson, Thoreau, and others. We can observe the same motives in the works of G. Beecher Stowe, D. G. and realistic elements is the work of the greatest American poet Walt Whitman. Dickinson's work is permeated with a romantic worldview - already outside the chronological framework of romanticism. Romantic motifs organically enter the creative method of F. Bret Hart, M. Twain, A. Beers, D. London and other US writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.⁴
It should be noted that American romanticism differs significantly from European romanticism. The assertion of national identity and independence, the search for a "national idea" run through all the art of American romanticism. The culture of the United States did not have the centuries-old experience that Europe had at that time - by the end of the 19th century, the new nation had not yet managed to “acquire” objects and realities that romantic associations could be attached to (such as the tulips of Holland and the roses of Italy). But gradually, in the books of Irving and Cooper, Longfellow and Melville, Hawthorne and Thoreau, phenomena and facts of American nature, history, and geography acquire a romantic flavor.
No less significant for American romanticism was the theme of the Indians. Indians in America from the very beginning a factor that is associated with a very complex psychological complex - admiration and fear, hostility and guilt. O the image of the "noble savage", the life of the Indians, its freedom, naturalness, closeness to nature could become a romantic alternative to capitalist civilization in the books of Irving and Cooper, Thoreau and Longfellow. In the works of these authors, we see evidence that the conflict between the two races was not fatally inevitable, but the cruelty and greed of the white settlers were to blame for it . The work of American romantics makes the life and culture of the Indians an important component of the national literature of the United States, conveying its special imagery and coloring. The same applies to the perception of another ethnic minority - black Americans in the southern states. [3]
Within American Romanticism , within a single creative method, there were notable regional differences. The main literary regions are New England (northeastern states), the middle states, the South.
The atmosphere of the American South is conveyed by the works of J. P. Kennedy and W. G. Simms. It is worth noting that the authors could not completely get rid of the stereotypes of glorifying the virtues of "southern democracy" and the advantages of the slave-owning order . With all these features of limitations, “southern” romanticism paves the way for the formation of a complex, multifaceted , but undoubtedly fruitful “southern tradition” in US literature, which in the 20th century. represented by the names of W. Faulkner, R. P. Warren , W. Styron, C. McCullers, S. E. Grau, and others. this is from a politically reactionary position, arguing that "joyfully, knowing no worries, the slave lives on the plantation."
The middle states are distinguished from the beginning by great ethnic and religious diversity and tolerance. Here American bourgeois democracy is being laid down and capitalist relations are developing especially rapidly. The work of Irving, Cooper, Paulding, and later Melville is associated with the middle states. The main themes in the work of the romantics of the middle states are the search for a national hero, interest in social issues, reflections on the path traveled by the country, a comparison of the past and present of America.
Romanticism in New England (Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Bryant, and others) is characterized primarily by the desire for a philosophical understanding of the American experience, for an analysis of the national past, its ideological and artistic heritage. Inherent in this literature is the exploration of complex ethical issues; An important place is occupied by the revision of the Puritan complex of religious and moral ideas of the Puritan colonists of the 17th-18th centuries, with which a deep successive connection is preserved. New English Romanticism has a strong tradition of moral-philosophical prose, rooted in America's Puritan colonial past. After the end of the Civil War in the literature of the United States , a realistic trend in literature began to develop . The new generation of writers is connected with the new region: o but relies on the democratic spirit of the American West, on the element of folk oral folklore and addresses their works to the widest, mass reader. From the point of view of the new aesthetics, romanticism ceased to meet the requirements of the time. Romantic "impulses" were sharply criticized by M. Twain, F. Bret Hart and other young realist writers. Their contradictions with the romantics are caused, first of all, by a different understanding of the truth of life and ways of expressing it in art. American realists of the second half of the 19th century. strive for maximum historical, social and everyday concreteness, they are not satisfied with the language of romantic allegories and symbols.
It must be said that this denial is purely dialectical in nature. In the literature of the USA of the XX century. there are romantic motives and they are associated, as a rule, with the search for lost high ideals and true spirituality, the unity of man and nature, with the moral utopia of extra-bourgeois human relations, with a protest against the transformation of the individual into a cog in the state machine. These motifs are clearly visible in the work of the greatest American word artists of our century - E. Hemingway and W. Faulkner, T. Wilder and D. Steinbeck, F. S. Fitzgerald and D. D. Salinger. US writers of recent decades continue to turn to them.novel realistic