American literature of the first half of the ÕÕ century

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Ðàçìåùåíî íà http://www.allbest.ru/

Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

"Penza State University"

Department "Translation and Translation"

Course work

By discipline: "The history and culture of the countries of the studied language"

Theme: "American literature of the first half of the ÕÕ century"

Author: student group 16IL1 Nikitina A.D.

Head: ass. Savostyanov V.O.

2017



Contents

Introduction

1. The situation in society and the periodization of literature

2. The most popular literary styles and their representatives

2.1 American novel of the first half of the 20th century

2.2 The works of the writers of a «Lost Generation»

2.3 Absurdity in the writings of the first half of the 20th century

2.4 Dramatic works

2.5 American poetry

Conclusion

References



Introduction

American literature is the literature written or produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies. Although its history is noticeably shorter than the history of the literature of European and Asian countries, since the second half of the 19th century, American literature has gained wide development and distinctive significance. The United States gave the world literature such classics as Mark Twain, Edgar Poe, Ernest Hemingway, Ray Bradbury and many others.

The first half of the 20th century is known for artistic experiments. Literature tries new pictorial means, destroys canonical forms and rhythms. Further development is given to modernism - at the stage of avant-gardism. Paraliterature becomes qualitatively new, the so-called «Mass», popular or commercial that is in fact alternative to art. In the first half of the 20th century happen two world wars 1914-1918 and 1939-1945, the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman empires and royal Russia crumble. On the world map new states are formed: they gain independence, restore the statehood of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Poland, the state of Yugoslavia.

Writers react to all these historical events, including in America. New styles and works that demonstrate them are the product of the influence of these historical events. They try to analyze the experience, draw conclusions.

The aim of the work is to study the main directions of the US literature in the first half of the 20th century and their representatives.

The object of the study is American literature.

The subject of the study is works written in the first half of the 20th century in the United States.

To fulfill the intended goal, the following tasks are set:

1) to study the situation in society at this stage in history;

2) to trace the interrelation of historical events and their reflections in the literature;

3) to distinguish the main literary styles and describe their main features and representatives.



1. The situation in society and the periodization of literature

Before the Second World War, the history of the United States was determined by the following events: the victory in the Spanish-American War of 1899 and participation in the First World War, industrial riot, industrialization, which led to the appearance of a tram, William Ford's factories, which became a leader in engineering, the Panama Canal and the final settlement of the territories, namely, Alaska and California. In addition, one of the main events in the history was the Great Depression of 1929, the New Economic Policy of Franklin Roosevelt, as a result the United States became the leading world power by the beginning of the Second World War.

People's discontent and the rise of the labor movement contributed to development of proletarian literature and manifested themselves in sympathy for the ideas of socialism. This was reflected in the work of Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, Eugene O'Neill, and Carl Sandberg. In 1935 the anthology called «Proletarian literature in the United States» was published. Its authors were 63 writers. Among them were John Dos Passos, Erskine Caldwell, Clifford Odets, literary critic Malcolm Cowley.

The theme of the «American dream» has changed a lot in the US literature, which clearly sounded in the literature of 19th century and was further developed in the literature of the 20th century. Now optimistic belief in the prosperity of America and the happiness granted wealth was questioned. The theme of the «American Dream» transformed into the theme of «American tragedy». «An American tragedy» is the so-called Theodor Dreiser's most famous novel.

The gloomy atmosphere of America's economic crisis is transmitted in the works of John Steinbeck (1902-1968), especially in the story «Of Mice and Men» (1937), and in the novel called «The Grapes of Wrath» (1939). In this work is told about the working family of Jowd, crossing America in search of earnings. The novel is based on facts, collected by the writer in acquaintance with the life of seasonal workers. The viability of the book provoked a contradictory reaction: in some states it has been banned and burned. In the year 1940 Steinbeck was awarded for the novel «The Grapes of Wrath» Pulitzer Prize.

The literature of this period is divided into 3 periods:

1) 1890-1900-ies. - The dominance of positivism, the strong influence of late romanticism;

2) from the late 1910s to the 1930s - American literature solves the issue of individual skill, the romantic conflict of culture and civilization is widespread;

3) 1930's. - Lyrical and epic (naturalistic technique and a romantic idea of a new type of individualism) are reconciled. Observing the politicization of literature in connection with the economic crisis, civil wars, and the threat of fascism;

The 30s were marked by a rapid labor movement. Under the influence of these events, American writers intensify criticism of the capitalist order. Among them were Thomas Wolfe and John Steinbeck;

4) the end of the 30-ies - until 1945. In these years, many American writers are included in the struggle against Hitlerism. Hemingway, Sinclair and others publish anti-fascist works;

5) post-war years (after 1945);

The post-war period is characterized by a period of the Cold War. It includes works by Alexander Saxton, Shirley Graham, Lloyd Brown, William Saroyan, William Faulkner.

The search for new ways in literature went along different paths:

1) in an in-depth study of the human psyche (F. Scott Fitzgerald);

2) at the level of a formal experiment;

3) in studying the laws of the new society (William Faulkner);

4) outside of America, in the flight of man from civilization (Ernest Hemingway);

After World War II, there is a certain decline in the development of literature, but this does not apply to poetry and drama, where the works of the poets Robert Lowell and Alan Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlingetti, playwrights Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee have received worldwide fame.

In the postwar years, the anti-racist theme is deepening. This is evidenced by Lengston Hughes' poetry and prose, John Killens' novels («Youngblood», «And Then We Heard the Thunder»), James Baldwin's journalism, and Lorraine Hensberry's drama. One of the brightest representatives of Negro art was Richard Wright («Native Son»).

Increasingly, literature is being created «on demand» by the ruling circles of America. The novels of L. Nyson, L. Staling and others, which were portrayed in the heroic halo of the actions of American troops in the years of World War I, are published in a huge number of books on the book market.

In the years of World War II, the ruling circles of the United States managed to subdue many writers. And for the first time on the same scale, US literature was placed at the service of government propaganda. As many critics of the time have noted, this process marked a disastrous movement backward in the development of US literature, which was vividly confirmed in the post-war history of the country.

Widely distributed in the United States receives the so-called mass fiction, which aims is to move the reader into a pleasant and iridescent world. The book market was filled with novels by Kathleen Norris, Temple Bailey, Fennie Gerst, who produced lightweight, patterned novels, with an indispensable happy end.



2. The most popular literary styles and their representatives

2.1 American novel of the first half of the 20th century

The development of the American novel is due to the popularity of L. Tolstoy and F. Dostoevsky in America in 1910-1920, as well as the need to comprehend the gap between the «American dream» and the reality of social contrasts.

The novel developed in two directions:

1) realistic, oriented to naturalism (T. Dreiser, early D. Steinbeck);

2) synthetic, containing all the novel traditions, including modern ones.

The realistic novel is firstly represented by Theodor Dreiser's novelism (1871-1945) - a publicist, reporter, creator of the American novel. Dreiser attributed himself to the supporters of «mud razors» - a group of journalists who opposed the traditions of decency in literature. The creator of the great American novel came from a family of immigrants and learned a hard life early. His main method was critical realism. In early art, Dreiser was strongly influenced by O. de Balzac. So, Dreiser used the basic Balzac principle «to see the historical meaning of minor changes», and also used the type of a young man standing on the threshold of life and challenging it.

The first novel called «Sister Carrie» (1900) was not pleasant to society, it was forbidden as immoral, and the author was officially recognized as the «shame of America», which plunged Dreiser into poverty. In «Sister Carrie» Dreiser portrayed a changing society, writing about a young woman who flees rural life for the city and struggles with poverty, complex relationships with men, and prostitution. The next novel called «Jennie Gerhardt» and published in 1911 was a mirror image of the deceived wealth of Carrie. The theme of business, the subject of becoming a businessman became central to the trilogy «The Financier» (1912), «The Titan» (1914), «The Stoic» (1947), which were written under the influence of Nietzsche's ideas. «An American Tragedy» (1925) is a novel about the death of two lovers, which was the result of their desire to achieve the «American Dream».

In the 1830 Dreiser's weapon was anti-fascist journalism. Until the end of his days he continued his spiritual search and still remains in literature the main representative of realism.

The next representative of this style is Jack London. His real name was John Griffith of London (1876-1916). It is a writer whose life was rich in events and had served as a source of creativity. The problems of social justice began to worry him early. His enthusiasm for socialist ideas was logical - London was interested in Nietzsche's philosophy, although the attitude towards him was ambiguous. All the free time London spent on reading and self-education.

In 1900 the first collection of stories «The Son of the Wolf» was published and in 1901 was written the collection «The God of His Fathers». At the age of 24, success, glory and material prosperity came to London.

The popularity of the writer's novels is partly due to the literary situation. In the American literature of the turn of the century there was a strengthening of the positions of realism, the influence of the «tradition of refinement» was clearly weakened. In the new realistic works, in addition to social criticism, the hero-victim of social conditions was depicted. J. London was a supporter of not a "mundane" realism based on everyday plausibility, but a realism of poetic, animated romance, exalting the reader over everyday life. London in his stories gives a different type of hero - an active man, asserting himself through energy, resourcefulness and courage.

J. London's poetic realism does not prevent the writer from exploring life. In 1902, the writer goes on a business trip to London, and the result is the book «People of the Abyss». In 1904, London goes to the Russo-Japanese War as a correspondent. Rebellious moods were expressed in the novel-utopia called «The Iron Heel» (1907). That year London also travels on its own yacht built according to its designs. The main result of the trip is the novel «Martin Eden» (1909). Autobiographical, the disclosure of the writer's psychology, pessimism - here are the main characteristics of the novel in brief. The book has largely become prophetic. Outwardly it was an example of prosperity, but the writer was in a deep crisis. This personal and creative crisis was largely related to a new time of broken ideals, in which the writer never found himself and in 1916 committed suicide by taking a large dose of morphine.

William Faulkner (1897-1962) is Nobel laureate. He worked in the genre of a synthetic novel. The main themes of his work were the duality of the human soul; the problem of crime and punishment; the way of the person with ideals. The features of the writer's works are:

1) using the principle of understatement, this allows the reader to create his own impression;

2) innovation of form: there is no genre definition; the writer complicates the syntax (strives to express the whole in one phrase); uses the technique of the multiple narrator; repeat occurrence of events, violation of chronology, temporary shifts. Uses specific means of individualization of heroes (southern eloquence, slang, reception of oral story, peculiar humor);

The main motives of his production are the motif of fate, sin, rejection of history or from ancestors, which results are the terrible consequences; biblical allusions. Faulkner's achievements are the use of regional mythology (American South), a tragicomic understanding of history, romantic-symbolic thinking.

From the early 1920s to the outbreak of World War II, when he left for California, Faulkner published 13 novels and many short stories. Such a body of work formed the basis of his reputation and led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize at age 52. Faulkner's prodigious output, mainly driven by an obscure writer's need for money, includes his most celebrated novels such as «The Sound and the Fury» (1929), «As I Lay Dying» (1930), «Light in August» (1932), and «Absalom, Absalom!» (1936). Faulkner was also a prolific writer of short stories.



2.2 The works of the writers of a «Lost Generation»

In the 1920's a new group enters the literature, the idea of which is associated with the image of the «lost generatio». They are young people who have been on the fronts of the First World, shocked by cruelty, unable to enter the track of life in the post-war period. They got their name from the phrase attributed to G. Stein «That is what you are. That's what you all are ... all of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation». The origins of the worldview of this informal literary group lie in a sense of frustration with the course and outcome of the First World War. Writers of the «lost generation» have some features:

1) skepticism about progress, pessimism, akin the "lost" with the modernists, but not signifying the identity of ideological and aesthetic aspirations;

2) the image of war from the standpoint of naturalism is combined with the inclusion of experience in the channel of human experience. The war appears either as a reality, full of repulsive details, or as an importunate remembrance that takes away the psyche that interferes with the transition to a peaceful life;

3) the painful comprehension of loneliness;

4) the search for a new ideal - first of all in terms of artistic skill: tragic mood, the theme of self-knowledge, lyrical tension;

5) the ideal is in disappointment, the illusion of "a nightingale song through the wild voice of catastrophes;

6) picturesque style;

7) the heroes of the works are individualists who are not alien to higher values (sincere love, loyal friendship). The experience of the heroes is a bitterness of comprehension of one's own «knockout», which, however, does not mean a choice in favor of other ideologies. The heroes are apolitical: «participation in the social struggle is preferred to the departure into the realm of illusions, intimate, profoundly personal experiences» [8].

Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961) is American journalist, Nobel laureate, participant of the First World War. He wrote little about America: the novel «The Sun Also Rises» takes place in Spain and France; «À Farewell to Arms» - in Italy; «The Old Man and The Sea» - in Cuba. The main motive of his work is loneliness. Hemingway-writer is distinguished by the following features:

1) non- print style, which is an influence of journalistic experience: laconism, detail accuracy, lack of text adornments;

2) careful work on the composition. There is examined an insignificant at first glance event, behind which stands the human drama. It often takes a piece of life «without beginning and end» (the influence of impressionism);

3) creation of a realistic picture of the postwar period: the description of the conditions of reality is given with the help of verbs of movement, by turning to sensory perception of reality;

4) using Chekhov's manner of emotional influence on the reader: author's intonation in combination with the implication, what Hemingway called «the principle of the iceberg» - «if the writer knows well what he writes about, he can omit much of what he knows, and if he writes truthfully, the reader will feel everything omitted as strongly as if the writer had said this. Each word has a hidden meaning, so any piece of text can be omitted, but the overall emotional impact will continue» [11]. An example of such a reception is the novel «Cat in the Rain»;

5) external and internal dialogues, when the characters exchange insignificant phrases, are ragged and random, but the reader feels behind these words something hidden deeply in the consciousness of the heroes (something that cannot always be expressed directly);

6) the hero is in a duel with himself;

The novel «A Moveable Feast» is pessimistic; it is also called «the manifesto of the early Hemingway». The main idea of the novel is the superiority of man in his quest for life, despite his uselessness at the celebration of life. The thirst for love and the rejection of love is the Stoic code. The main issue is the «art of living» under the new conditions. Life is a carnival. The main symbol is the bullfight and the art of the matador - the answer to the question «how to live?».

The anti-war novel «Farewell to Arms» depicts the path of insight into the hero who runs away from the war without thinking, without thinking, because he simply wants to live. The philosophy of «finding is in losses» is shown on the example of the fate of one person.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) is a writer who embodies the beginning of the «Jazz Age», the values of the younger generation, where youth, pleasure and carefree gaiety were brought to the foreground. The heroes of the early works were in many ways identified by the reader and critics with the author himself (as the embodiment of the American dream), so the serious novels «The Great Gatsby» (1925) and «Tender is the Night» (1934) remained misunderstood, as they became a kind of debunking the myth of the American dream in the country of equal opportunities.

Although in general the work of the writer fits within the framework of classical literature, Fitzgerald was one of the first in American literature to develop the principles of lyrical prose. Lyrical prose involves romantic symbols, the universal meaning of works, and attention to the movements of the human soul. The writer himself has been influenced for a long time by the myth of the American dream, so the motif of wealth is central to the novels.

Fitzgerald's stylistics suggests the following features:

1) the artistic method of "double vision" - in the process of narration reveals the contrast, the combination of opposites;

2) using the reception of the comedy of morals: the hero is absurd, a little unreal;

3) the motif of loneliness, alienation (in many respects going back to romanticism, which existed until the end of the 19th century.) - Gatsby does not fit into the environment, both externally (habits, language), and internally (retains love, moral values);

4) unusual composition. The novel begins with a climax. Although at first it was supposed to appeal to the hero's childhood;

5) the image of Gatsby is realistic. The author reflects, explaining the combination of the idealist and the vulgar person of the «Jazz Age»;

6) the idea that a man of the 20th century, with his torn consciousness and chaos of being, should live in harmony with moral truth.

2.3 Absurdity in the writings of the first half of the 20th century

In the first half of 20th century, F. Kafka and Jean-Paul Sartre were the symbols of the literature of the absurd. Sartre and A. Camus, whose work influenced all the literature of the 20th century, whose concept of absurdity marked the beginning of the whole avant-garde culture of the late 20th century.

Absurd in Latin is translated as «ridiculous». Absurdity is the main characteristic of the situation in a person exists. Each of the authors put their own, quite specific content into this concept and this difference determined different artistic world. american literature style work

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is a writer whose destiny became the embodiment of modernist alienation. Austrian in citizenship, German in language, a Jew by birth - this confusion largely determined the writer's view of the world.

«Kafka poses the problem of absurdity in its entirety», says A. Camus in his article «Hope and Absurdity in Kafka's Work» and continues: «The writer's skill is in the ability to re-read. Its denouement or lack thereof suggests interpretation, but does not express it unambiguously and to make sure that you understand correctly, to come reread under new angles of view» [5].

The approach from the form really gives one of the ways of understanding the works of F. Kafka, written in the genre of the parable. The oldest genre has the following features:

1) there are no temporal and spatial reference points, when and where the action takes place;

2) there are no specific names;

3) there are no descriptions;

4) there is no appearance of the hero, there is no qualities of the soul, and there is an object of ethical choice;

Parable influenced all European literature. Writers of the 20th century used the traditions of the parable or the form of the parable. Parableship is an important part for understanding the literature of the absurd, because it sets the impossibility of an unambiguous reading, understanding of the text.

The absurd world of F. Kafka's works is built according to the laws of sleep and is characterized by fragmentation (there is no beginning, end, and motive).

A man is persistent and powerless at the same time. Its goal is unattainable, despite all the efforts to achieve it. This dedication as an attempt to clarify the situation makes the hero alienated, not like everyone else. Human life is in the hope and this hope helps to overcome absurdity.

If F. Kafka only poses the problem of an absurd world, then in the works of A. Camou and J.-P. Sartre's absurd world is the starting point. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) is a teacher of philosophy, a member of the Resistance, an intellectual, consistent in his convictions a principled man. In 1964, he refused the Nobel Prize. Jean-Paul Sartre graduated from the prestigious liberal arts university in France, defended his thesis on philosophy, taught at the lyceum of Le Havre, Lyon, Paris. Since 1936 his philosophical works are beginning to be published: «Imagination» (1936), «Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions» (1939), «Being and Nothingness» (1943), etc.

Free from labels, from engagement, he puts freedom at the center of his understanding of the absurd. J.-P. Sartre writes in his work «Being and Nothingness»: «Existence has no reason and no need».

The novel «Nausea» (1938) depicts the process of discovering absurdity. The hero pursues a feeling of nausea - a painful confusion before the inhuman in the man himself, involuntary confusion at the sight of what we really are. According to Sartre, we are all things. In the novel, the world appears as a senseless, aggressive, sucking mass of things. And nausea is a sign of a person's merging with this mass.

Albert Camus (1913-1960) is a philologist, Dostoevsky's aficionado, a member of the Resistance, a winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize. Unlike Sartre he did not share the views of existentialism and denied his belonging to this direction.

The story «The Outsider» (1940) is a reflection of the theoretical views set forth in the work «The Myth of Sisyphus». According to this article:

1) the world is unreasonable to have no meaning, which is revealed in the alien world: « ... we are waited by the feeling of our alienatiom in the world. In the depths of beauty lies something inhuman, and all around - these hills, this gentle sky, the outlines of trees - suddenly loses the illusory meaning that we attributed to them». [4];

2) absurdity is discord, which is rooted neither in man, nor in the world, but in their joint presence. It arises from their collision and at present it is the only connecting thread to them;

3) absurdity is the extreme expression of an absurd person who continued a meaningless existence with the persistence of the doomed, the only truth for which is rebellion as a break with reality;

4) the discovery of the life's absurdity allows to plunge into it with all impetuosity, an absurd world fills all human life, so a person must act so that he feels happy. This will be the expression of an absolute rebellion.

The story «The Outsider» tells about alienation. The protagonist called Merco is free from moral attitudes in a world where there is no god and there is no sense. «This is one of those simple-minded who cause horror and outrage the society, because they do not accept the rules of his game. He lives in a surrounding of strangers and he himself is an outsider. And we ourselves open the book and have not imbued yet with a sense of absurdity and try in vain to judge Merso according to our customary norms. For us, he is also an outsider [9].

Another way out of the world of absurdity is to fight and tin to people - the writer gives it in the later novel called «The Plague».

In 1951, he published «The Rebel», a philosophical analysis of rebellion and revolution which expressed his rejection of communism. Upsetting many of his colleagues and contemporaries in France, the book brought about the final split with Sartre. The dour reception depressed Camus; he began to translate plays.

Thus, each of the authors in his own way solves the problem of the existence of a man in an absurd world.

2.4 Dramatic works

Although drama had not been a major art form in the 19th century, no type of writing was more experimental than a new drama that arose in rebellion against the glib commercial stage. In the early years of the 20th century, Americans traveling in Europe encountered a vital, flourishing theatre; returning home, some of them became active in founding the Little Theatre movement throughout the country. Freed from commercial limitations, playwrights experimented with dramatic forms and methods of production, and in time producers, actors, and dramatists appeared who had been trained in college classrooms and community playhouses. Some Little Theatre groups became commercial producers--for example, the Washington Square Players, founded in 1915, which became the Theatre Guild (first production in 1919). The resulting drama was marked by a spirit of innovation and by a new seriousness and maturity.

American drama copied the English and European theater to the very beginning of the 20th century. The plays of English authors or translations from European languages often prevailed in the theatrical seasons. An imperfect copyright law, which could neither protect nor encourage American playwrights, was working against a truly original drama. In addition, imported drama enjoyed a higher status than national productions.

In the 19th century was popular melodrama with its exemplary democratic characters and a clear division between good and evil. Plays on social topics, such as slavery, also collected a large number of spectators. Sometimes these were transcriptions of novels, like «Uncle Tom's Cabin». Only in the 20th century, an attempt was made to aesthetic innovation in the genre of serious drama. However, pop culture developed vigorously, especially in the vaudeville genre (a kind of stage with sketches, clownery, and music). The original forms also developed in the show, based on African-American music and folklore, performed by white, dressed in black.

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (1883-1953) is the founder of the American drama. He was born in an acting family, tried many low-skilled professions from the sailor to the postman before entering Harvard, deciding to engage professionally in drama. In this era commercial theater was popular in the United States, which placed only the borrowed European dramas with characteristic clichés.

O'Neil developed his theory of tragedy:

1) first of all it had to be relevant, related to life itself. There were the tension of action and the severity of the conflict. So in the most famous drama «Desire under the Elms» (1924), the struggle for land destroys love and family ties, replacing them with calculation, deception, greed;

2) drama combines naturalistic and expressionist poetics. Special importance is given to dialogue and overtones, as the character is studied, the conscious and unconscious in man are investigated;

3) O'Neill refuses to act as a stable actor, replacing them with dramas of human souls: a person is significant only when «a person for the sake of the future and his noble values comes into conflict with all hostile forces inside and outside himself».

4) O'Neill was close to the ancient understanding of the tragedy, «which exalted them [the Greeks], prompted them to live more and more shelf life. She gave them a deep spiritual perception of things».

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) is known for his plays «Our Town» (1938) and the novel « The bridge of San Luis Rey» (1927).

In «Our Town» positive American values are stated. Here there are all elements of sentimentality and nostalgia - the archetype of a traditional town in the countryside, good-natured parents and mischievous children, young lovers. The charm of the play is given to ingenious moments, including ghosts, voices from the public and bold shifts in time. In fact, this is a play about life and death, in which the dead are reborn at least for a moment.

Clifford Odets (1906-1963) is the master of social drama. Clifford Odets came from a family of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. He grew up in New York and became one of the first actors of the Group Theater, directed by directors Harold Clurman, Lee Strasburg and Cheryl Crawford, who were dedicated to putting only American plays.

In his most famous play «Waiting for Lefty» (1935), an experimental one-act drama, Odets was enthusiastically defending the workers' trade unions. Another popular success was the nostalgic family drama «Wake up and sing!», followed by the «Golden Boy», telling about an Italian immigrant youth ruining his musical talent when, being tempted by money, he becomes a boxer and injures his hands . Like Fitzgerald in «The Great Gatsby» and Dreiser in «The American Tragedy», Odets warns his play against the danger of excessive ambition and materialism.

2.5 American poetry

American poetry, the poetry of the United States, arose first as efforts by colonists to add their voices to English poetry in the 17th century, well before the constitutional unification of the thirteen colonies (although before this unification, a strong oral tradition often likened to poetry existed among Native American societies). Unsurprisingly, most of the early colonists' work relied on contemporary British models of poetic form, diction, and theme. However, in the 19th century, a distinctive American idiom began to emerge. By the later part of that century, when Walt Whitman was winning an enthusiastic audience abroad, poets from the United States had begun to take their place at the forefront of the English-language avant-garde.

The history of American poetry is not easy to know. Much of the American poetry published between 1910 and 1945 remains lost in the pages of small circulation political periodicals, particularly the ones on the far left, destroyed by librarians during the 1950s McCarthy era. The received narrative of Modernism proposes that Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot were perhaps the most influential modernist English-language poets in the period during World War I. But this narrative leaves out African American and women poets who were published and read widely in the first half of the twentieth century. By the 1960s, the young poets of the British Poetry Revival looked to their American contemporaries and predecessors as models for the kind of poetry they wanted to write. Toward the end of the millennium, consideration of American poetry had diversified, as scholars placed an increased emphasis on poetry by women, African Americans, Hispanics, Chicanos and other cultural groupings.

The beginning of the 20th century has received from historians of US literature the name of the «poetic Renaissance». Usually it is considered to be the beginning of 1912, when in Chicago «Òhe Poetry» magazine was founded, in which poets such as V. Lindsay and E. Lee Masters, K Sandberg and Robert Frost were printed. One of these external reasons was the emergence of «small» non-profit magazines, where still unknown authors rushed. A new worldview required new poetic forms. They were searched in a variety of ways - then relying on traditions, then renouncing them.

The development of events after the Second World War led to the fact that history began to be perceived as a violation of continuity: every action, experience and moment was conceived as something unique. Style and form were viewed from now on as something conditional, a kind of improvisation, reflecting the creative process and self-consciousness of the author. The usual categories of expression of thought began to arouse suspicion: originality was elevated to the rank of a new tradition.

There are three partially overlapping directions: traditionalists, single poets, and experimental poets. Traditional poets preserve the continuity of the poetic tradition or seek to breathe new life into it. Single poets use both traditional and innovative techniques to achieve the uniqueness of the poetic voice. Experimental poets turn to new cultural styles.

Distinctive features inherent in traditionalist poets are accuracy of descriptions, realism, propensity to paradoxes; often, as in the case of Richard Wilber, English poets-metaphysics of the 15th-16th centuries had a significant influence on their poetry. Wilber's most famous text: "The world, devoid of objects - a tangible emptiness" (1950), owes its name to the line of Thomas Traern, one of the poets-metaphysicians. These verses serve as an excellent example of how a poet can achieve transparent clarity, using rhyme and a formally fixed structure.

Traditional poets, unlike many experimenters in poetry, who destroy the «too poetic» fabric of the poem, willingly resort to sonorous phrases. Traditional poets are often prone to rhetorical archaism, the use of rare words, craving for definitions and inversions, so that the natural colloquial syntax of the English language is transformed beyond recognition. Sometimes this effect gives, as in Warren's verses, the nobility of poetic speech; sometimes the verse looks too stilted and has lost touch with real experiences, like Tate's. Sometimes the stream of consciousness is connected with paradoxes, puns, literary allusions. James Merrill, known for his innovations, is characterized by urban themes, unrhymed lines, subjectivism of descriptions and easy conversational tone, shares with poets-traditionalists a passion for paradox; so in the collection «Broken Heart» (1966), one can meet the likeness of marriage to a cocktail.

Carl August Sandburg (1878 - 1967) was an American poet, writer, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as «a major figure in contemporary literature», especially for volumes of his collected verse, including «Chicago Poems» (1916), «Cornhuskers» (1918), and «Smoke and Steel» (1920). He enjoyed «unrivaled appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because the breadth of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life» [3].

Much of Carl Sandburg's poetry, such as «Chicago», focused on Chicago, Illinois, where he spent time as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and the Day Book.

Sandburg earned Pulitzer Prizes for his collection «The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg», «Corn Huskers», and for his biography of Abraham Lincoln («Abraham Lincoln: The War Years»). He recorded excerpts from the biography and some of Lincoln's speeches for Caedmon Records in New York City in May 1957. He was awarded a Grammy Award in 1959 for Best Performance - «Documentary Or Spoken Word» for his recording of «Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait» with the New York Philharmonic.

Sandburg is also remembered by generations of children for his «Rootabaga Stories» and «Rootabaga Pigeons», a series of whimsical, sometimes melancholy stories he originally created for his own daughters. The «Rootabaga Stories» were born of Sandburg's desire for «American fairy tales» to match American childhood. He felt that the European stories involving royalty and knights were inappropriate, and so populated his stories with skyscrapers, trains, corn fairies and the «Five Marvelous Pretzels»

Robert Lee Frost (1874 - 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in America. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. One of the most popular and critically respected American poets of the 20th century, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare «public literary figures, almost an artistic institution». He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works.

In 2003, the critic Charles McGrath noted that critical views on Frost's poetry have changed over the years. In an article called «The Vicissitudes of Literary Reputation», McGrath wrote, «Robert Frost ... at the time of his death in 1963 was generally considered to be a New England folkie ... In 1977, the third volume of Lawrance Thompson's biography suggested that Frost was a much nastier piece of work than anyone had imagined; a few years later, thanks to the reappraisal of critics like William H. Pritchard and Harold Bloom and of younger poets like Joseph Brodsky, he bounced back again, this time as a bleak and unforgiving modernist» [7].

Edgar Lee Masters (1868 - 1950) was an American attorney, poet, biographer, and dramatist. Masters first published his early poems and essays under the pseudonym Dexter Wallace (after his mother's maiden name and his father's middle name) until the year 1903. Masters began developing as a notable American poet in 1914, when he began a series of poems, this time under the pseudonym Webster Ford, about his childhood experiences in Western Illinois, which appeared in «Reedy's Mirror», a St. Louis publication.

In 1915 the series was bound into a volume and re-titled «Spoon River Anthology». Years later, he wrote a memorable and invaluable account of the book's background and genesis, his working methods and influences, as well as its reception by the critics, favorable and hostile, in an autobiographical article notable for its human warmth and general interest.

Although he never matched the success of his «Spoon River Anthology», he did publish several other volumes of poems including «Book of Verses» in 1898, «Songs and Sonnets» in 1910, «The Great Valley» in 1916, «Song and Satires» in 1916, «The Open Sea» in 1921, «The New Spoon River» in 1924, «Lee» in 1926, «Jack Kelso» in 1928, and so on.

In 1931 Masters published the biography «Lincoln: the Man», which demythologizes Abraham Lincoln, portraying him as a tool of bankers wanting a new Bank of the United States, «that political system which doles favors to the strong in order to win and keep their adherence to the government», and advocates «a people taxed to make profits for enterprises that cannot stand alone». He claimed the Whig Party led by Lincoln's mentor Henry Clay «had no platform to announce because its principles were plunder and nothing else».

Conclusion

Despite a relatively short history, American literature has made an invaluable contribution to world culture. It is the 20th century that is the flowering of American literature. Against the background of the Great Depression, two world wars and the struggle against racial discrimination in America, there are born the classics of world literature, laureates of Nobel Prizes, and writers whose works characterize the whole era of art.

Masters of American prose deliberately refused from the complex technique of the richly developed poignant and entertaining plot of the novel of the 19th century. In their opinion, a simple plot, devoid of elements of entertaining, is better able to emphasize the tragedy of the position of the protagonist. They believed that in the 20th century the aesthetics of reading should become more tense than in the last century. Therefore, they do not aspire, like their predecessors, to report in the exposition all the basic information about their heroes. An additional effort is required from the reader to understand and comprehend the components of the complex composition of the novel.

Meanwhile, American culture, however, like all Western culture, develops in two directions:

1) further development of the realism of classical art, improvement and search for the new forms of expressiveness within the boundaries of this artistic direction;

2) the search for fundamentally new means of artistic expression, which led to the emergence of a culture of modernism.

For the culture of this time are inherent:

1) the absence of a single artistic style and the dominance of a number of trends;

2) philosophy;

3) constant renewal of means of artistic expressiveness. One direction replaces the other. ;

4) the emergence of new types of art, which significantly affect the masses.

The voices of the era are John Steinbeck, Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, Carl August Sandburg, Ernest Miller Hemingway, William Faulkner. They develop such directions as novelism, absurdism. American drama is replenished with new works, which become classics of drama. Poetry is represented by three directions: traditional, single and experiential.



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