Write an essay on the topic “How did Sam Clemens’s pseudonym influence his life and career?” Limit your essay to 250 words.

LISTENING AND WATCHING

1. Before you listen to a report [51] with Marc Schuster about the American realism be ready to discuss some questions.

1. What writers of the American realism can you enumerate?

2. What idea does the American realism movement express?

3. What spheres of life could be seen in the American realism movement?

 

Listen to a report with Marc Schuster about the American realism and agree or disagree with the following statements.

1. Very often realist writers turned away from grandiose subject matter and focused on the lower and middle classes.

2. Realist writers depicted daily life in courageous and pleasant detail.

3. Literature didn’t have any power to change society that time.

4. In the American realism painting, for example, romantised subjects like war.

5. Photography offered stark depictions of its subject matter.

6.  Mark Twain tended to practice such a brand of realism as regionalism.

 

After listening to a report be ready to discuss some questions with your groupmates.

1. Why do you think realist writers could change the world without being too preachy about it?

2. Where did “the effort to depict the world” find its roots?

3. What number reached newspaper publishing in America in 1870?

4.  What did Mark Twain and William Dean Howells adapt?

5. How did William Dean Howells define “realism”?

6.  What trend in the Yellow Wallpaper does Mark Schuster describe?

7. What did all realist writers have in common?

 

Before watching a video about “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” be ready to discuss some questions.

1. Have you ever read “The adventures of Tom Sawyer”, one of the well-known books of Mark Twain?

2.  How can you describe the main character of Mark Twain’s book?

3. What do you know about his family, friends, etc.?

 

5. While watching a video [52] about “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” write down the main characters and their roles in the film.

 

After watching a video discuss some questions.

1. How old is Tom Sawyer? Where and who does he live with?

2. What kind of character is Tom Sawyer in the film?

3.   How many characters can you enumerate in the film? What are they? What are they doing?

4.  What adventures does Tom Sawyer get into? Do all of them finish successfully?

5.  What values are described in the film?

SPEAKING

1. Imagine that you are preparing a project about the importance of American words in the American realism movement with your groupmate. You have found some interesting and useful material [53] for the presentation and you want to share it with other groupmates. Work in groups and be ready to discuss the importance of American words given in the text.

Twain, Faulkner, and many other writers, particularly southerners, are indebted to frontier pre-Civil War humorists such as Johnson Hooper, George Washington Harris, Augustus Longstreet, Thomas Bangs Thorpe, and Joseph Baldwin. From them and the American frontier folk came the wild proliferation of comical new American words: "absquatulate" (leave), "flabbergasted" (amazed), "rampagious" (unruly, rampaging). Local boasters, or "ring-tailed roarers," who asserted they were half horse, half alligator, also underscored the boundless energy of the frontier. They drew strength from natural hazards that would terrify lesser men. "I'm a regular tornado," one swelled, "tough as hickory and long-winded as a nor'wester. I can strike a blow like a falling tree, and every lick makes a gap in the crowd that lets in an acre of sunshine."

 

Read the extract about Mark Twain and make a dialogue on any difficult situations a person can get into.

Mark Twain's absent-mindedness put the writer in difficult situations. One day, when he was on the train, the controller came into the compartment. The writer began to look for a ticket, but to no avail. Finally, the controller, who knew the writer by sight, said, "Don't worry, show your ticket when I go back. And if you do not find it, it does not matter. It's nothing." "What a little thing it is," Twain protested. – I must find this ticket, otherwise how do I know where I'm going?!»

 

Make a presentation on one of the most famous American writers.

1) O. Henry

2) Theodore Dreiser

3) John Reed

4) Stephen Crane

5) Henry James

Additional texts

Charles Dickens Biography

Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870) is a Victorian novelist who created some of the most memorable characters in English Literature, while also criticising the worst excesses of Victorian society.

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth on 7 February 1812.As a child, he experienced the fickle hands of fate; he first studied at a private school, which he had to quit because of his family’s financial hardship.

In fact, his father’s debts were so bad, that the whole family (apart from the young Charles) was sent to the debtor’s prison. Although Charles escaped detention in the debtors’ prison, he was made to work long, 10 hour a day, at a local boot-blacking factory. The hard and dangerous work left a lasting impression on Charles Dickens, who would later incorporate in his writings a sense of social injustice that was endemic in Victorian Britain.

Charles managed to escape the grind of factory work, by training to be a shorthand writer and gaining employment as a journalist – reporting on court cases.

In 1833, he became a parliamentary journalist for the Morning Chronicle. Shortly after this, he began writing his first serialised stories, published under a pseudonym – Boz.

In 1836, he married Catherine Hogarth and also in that year, he saw the first publication of ‘ The Pickwick Papers.’ His first book proved to be a great seller, and this enabled him to become a full-time writer.

    Charles Dickens also took great interest in the social issues of the day. He toured both Europe and the United States speaking against slavery and the various social injustices that he saw. He even founded his own paper – The Daily News.

Charles Dickens is one of the most popular writers in English. In particular, his novels are brimming with colourful and eccentric characters which leave a lasting impression. He achieved this through his vivid memory of the various people he had met through his life, but also he added a touch of fantasy and exaggeration with his vivid descriptive style.

He frequently highlighted the worst excesses of Victorian society and made a passionate case for a more caring and moral society.

For his attacks on social injustice, Dickens was considered a “Radical” of his time. Dickens was a noted philanthropist helping to raise funds for charities. He also helped to set up a home for ‘fallen women.’ The emphasis was on providing destitute women with an education and way to redeem themselves in society’s eyes. Redemption was an important aspect of Dickens’ philosophy and he often criticised harsh and punitive punishments, such as solitary confinement.

Dickens died on June 8th, 1870 after a stroke. He was writing a book ‘Edwin Drood’. He had wished to be buried at Rochester Cathedral in a simple and private manner, but contrary to his wishes, he was buried at Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey.

William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray(1811— 1863), English novelist whose reputation rests chiefly on Vanity Fair (1847–48), a novel of the Napoleonic period in England, and The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. (1852), set in the early 18th century.

Thackeray was the only son of Richmond Thackeray, an administrator in the East India Company. His father died in 1815, and in 1816 Thackeray was sent home to England. His mother joined him in 1820, having married (1817) an engineering officer. He got education in several grammar schools and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He considered painting as a profession; his artistic gifts are seen in his letters and many of his early writings, which are amusingly and energetically illustrated. In 1836, while studying art in Paris, he married a penniless Irish girl, and his stepfather bought a newspaper so that he could remain there as its correspondent. After the paper’s failure (1837) he took his wife back to Bloomsbury, London, and became a hardworking and prolific professional journalist.

Of Thackeray’s three daughters, one died in infancy (1839); and in 1840 Mrs. Thackeray became insane. She never recovered and long survived her husband, living with friends in the country. Thackeray was, in effect, a widower, giving more and more attention to his daughters, for whom he established a home in London in 1846. The serial publication in 1847–48 of his novel Vanity Fair brought Thackeray both fame and prosperity, and from then on he was an established author on the English scene.

Thackeray lectured in the United States on The English Humorists of the 18th Century (1852–53; published 1853) and on The Four Georges (1855–56; published 1860). But after 1856 he settled in London. After he died in 1863, a commemorative bust of him was placed in Westminster Abbey.

In his own time Thackeray was regarded as the only possible rival to Dickens. His pictures of contemporary life were obviously real and were accepted as such by the middle classes. A great professional, wrote to be read aloud in the long Victorian family evenings. Throughout his works, Thackeray analyzed and deplored snobbery and frequently gave his opinions on human behaviour and the shortcomings of society.  He examined such subjects as hypocrisy, secret emotions, the sorrows sometimes attendant on love, remembrance of things past, and the vanity of life—such moralizing is, in his opinion, an important function of the novelist. He preferred to be true to life, subtly depicting various moods and plunging the reader into a stream of entertaining narrative, description, dialogue, and comment.

Thackeray’s high reputation as a novelist continued unchallenged to the end of the 19th century but then began to decline. Vanity Fair is still his most interesting and readable work and has retained its place among the great historical novels in the English language.

 

Mark Twain

Mark Twain (1835 -1910) is the pen name of Samuel L. Clemens, who is considered to be the father of American literature. E. Hemingway wrote: “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called ’Huckleberry Finn’.”

Clemens was born in the backwoods of Missouri, but while he was yet a small boy the family moved to Hannibal on the Mississippi River. Sam had a passion for the river and a desire to become a pilot on as river boat. This was a dream of all the boys along the river. Twain was proud of himself when he actually became a pilot. 

At the age of 11, after his father’s death, Sam left school and was apprenticed to a printer. He changed a lot of jobs: worked in his brother’s newspaper, was a printer, served as a volunteer soldier during the Civil War, at last he became a pilot.

In1862 he went West. First he wrote for a newspaper in Nevada and then to San Francisco. He wrote many humorous sketches, the most famous being “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”. Between 1865 and 1870, Clemens went on tours on Hawaii, Europe, and Middle East as a correspondent. Later his adventures served as the subject of several books.

In 1870 he married a wealthy aristocratic girl, Olivia Langton, and settled in Hartford, Connecticut. Mark Twain gave up journalism to make fiction writing his career. Now he was surrounded by a wealthy, genteel society, which, some people think, made his satirical writing less sharp.

Mark Twain and Olivia lived in Hartford in a big beautiful house for 20 years, entertaining friends, making frequent trips to Europe, watching their daughters grow up, and enjoying a happy life together. Here, between 1871 and 1891, M. Twain wrote his two masterpieces, ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ and ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’. In these books he gave a rich panorama of America during Twain’s boyhood and youth. It is a world of peace and beauty, yet the story has dark overtones. There is fear, cruelty, injustice and violence, which provide a sharp contrast between what is good in a natural boy and what has gone wrong with adult society.

These two books together with other writings, ‘A Tramp Abroad’ (1880), ‘The Prince and the Pauper’ (1882), ’Life on the Mississippi’ (1883),’A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’ (1889), brought him fame and success.

As he grew older, Twain depressed and disillusioned by people. Besides, he made some unlucky business investments and in 1984 he declared bankruptcy with a lot of debts, which he paid off with great efforts.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, Mark Twain was one of the most best-known figures in the USA and world-famous as well. The joy of his success, however was dulled by his personal loses: his wife and his daughters died. In spite of his grief, he continued to write with an inexhaustible store of wit and humor.

 

Unit 4. Modern Trends.