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8.2.2. Прочитайте текст и дайте ответы на данные вопросы: “What makes America the fort front of modern culture?”, “In what way is American culture specific?”

THE ARTS. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, American art and literature took most of its cues from Europe. During its early history, America was a series of British colonies on the eastern coast of the present-day United States. Therefore, its literary tradition is of English literature. However, at present unique American characteristics and the breadth of its production is to be considered a separate path and tradition.

America’s first internationally popular writers were James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving in the early nineteenth century. They painted an American literary landscape full of humor and adventure. These were followed by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Henry David Thoreau who established a distinctive American literary voice in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Mark Twain, Henry James, and poet Walt Whitman were major figures in the century’s second half; Emily Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, would be recognized as America’s other essential poet. Eleven U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, including John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Eugene O’Neil, Pearl S. Buck, T.S. Eliot and Sinclair Lewis. Ernest Hemingway, the 1954 Nobel laureate, is often named as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.

Theater. Theater of the United States is based in the Western tradition and did not take on a unique dramatic identity until the emergence of Eugene O’Neill in the early twentieth century, now considered by many to be the father of American drama. O’Neill is a four time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize for literature. After O’Neill, American drama came of age and flourished with the likes of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, William Inge, and Clifford Odets during the first half of the twentieth century. After this period, American theater broke new ground, artistically, with the absurdist forms of Edward Albee in the 1960s.

Social commentary has also been a preoccupation of American theater, The United States is also the home and largest exporter of modern musical theater.

Music. American music styles and influences (such as country, jazz, rock and roll, rock, hip-hop, rap) and music based on it can/could be heard all over the world. Music in the U.S. is diverse. It includes African-American influence in the 20th century. The earlier 1900’s is famous for jazz, introduced by African-Americans in the south. In the 1970s and 80’s, rock was very prevalent.

American musicians include Eminem, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Mariah Carey, Bruce Springsteen, Woody Guthrie, Kurt Cobain, Whitney Houston, Jim Morrison, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Merle Haggard, among many others.

Dance. There is variety of dance in the United States. Some examples include: swing dances such as lindy hop, as well as square dancing. Modern dance styles include hip hop dances such as breaking, and others.

Visual arts. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, American artists primarily painted landscapes and portraits in a realistic style. A parallel development taking shape in rural America was the American craft movement, which began as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. Developments in modern art in Europe came to America from exhibitions in New York City such as the Armory Show in 1913. After World War II, New York emerged as a center of the art world. Painting in the United States today covers a vast range of styles. American painting includes works by Jackson Pollock, John Singer Sargent, and Norman Rockwell, among many others.

Architecture. Architecture in the United States is regionally diverse and has been shaped by many external forces, not only English. U.S. architecture can therefore be said to be eclectic, something unsurprising in such a multicultural society. Currently, the theme of American Architecture is modernity manifesting itself in the skyscrapers.

Cinema. The cinema of the United States, often generally referred to as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period. Since the 1920s, the American film industry has grossed more money every year than that of any other country.

The Hollywood cinema industry has been very influential on American culture, and others such as Bollywood have striven to emulate the American model.

Broadcasting. The US has been at the forefront of developments in film, radio, and television. Many successful American TV shows have been exported around the world. The United States has a large number of national and local radio stations which cover a great variety of programming.

8.2.3. Прочитайте текст еще раз. Дайте ответы на данные вопросы (работа в парах).

1. How can modern American literature be described?

2. How successful were American writers and poets in the twentieth century?

3. What were the stages of the development of the American literature?

4. What were the trends in the development of the American theater?

5. What influenced American music in the twentieth century?

6. What was opposed to the Industrial Revolution in visual arts?

7. What is the characteristic feature of the American architecture?

8. How does broadcasting develop in America?