《了不起的盖茨比》中的文学印象主义.docx
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1、了不起的盖茨比中的文学印象主义IntroductionFitzgerald and The Great GatsbyFrancis Scott Fitzgerald is now hailed as a representative author of the LostGeneration, the Poet Laureate of the Jazz Age and an outstanding chronicler. However,his literary career is so full of twists and turns. His first novel This Side of
2、 Paradise(1920) and the second one The Beautiful and Damned (1922) were both made thebestsellers. However, the critical reception of the second was disappointing. Anxiousabout making little progress while enjoying the fame and fortune, he made up hismind to write something new - something extraordin
3、ary and beautiful and simple andintricately patterned; (Bruccoli 170) when he was planning his third novel, The GreatGatsby. Unfortunately, it didn’t sell well until the 1940s when interest in it began topick up in earnest. It was after his death that his fame, after a period of declination,ha
4、s increased thanks to the Fitzgerald Revival.It’s worth analyzing the artistic techniques in Gatsby because this work showsFitzgerald’s maturity in artistic style. It marks a transition of his writing style, atransition from Wellsian aesthetics to the Jamesian one. In his early period of
5、 literarycreation, he was influenced by the British realist writer Herbert George Wells whoadvocates the novel of saturation which encompasses whatever the writer is interestedin at the time of writing (Tredell 196). However, his masterpiece Gatsby creativelyemploys what Henry James calls for: the n
6、ovel of selection which means to chooseonly salient details that enrich the theme and enhance the fictional illusion (Tredell196). By the time he wrote The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald had completely shifted hisallegiance; (Miller Jr 1) from Wells to James.Impressionism from Painting to LiteratureIf we a
7、re to understand the term literary impressionism; better, we have to startfrom where impressionism originated. Impressionism originally refers to a style ofpainting characterized by blurred outlines but brilliant colors in the late 19th centuryFrance. The artists at that time preferred painting land
8、scape and contemporary life to painting historical or mythological scenes. In pursuit of expressing ephemeral feelingsand impressions, they tended to capture kaleidoscopic colors in the sunlight. In 1874,a French journalist, Louis Leroy, used the word impressionist in ridicule of theaffronting forml
9、essness of a painting by Claude Monet, Impression-Sunrise, andtherefore, the artists defiantly adopted it. The main representatives of impressionistpainting include Edward Monet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sislley andPirre Auguste Renoir (Rewald 1). These painters, instead of painting co
10、nceptually,produced their works in a perceptual way. They tried to look at the world afresh and toshow what they actually saw. For example, a tree, intrinsically green, might appearred at sunset. Instead of painting a tree, impressionist painters painted the effect of atree.There are several conspic
11、uous artistic features of impressionist painting. First,impressionists capture transitory and instantaneous impressions of nature as theyactually perceive in a single fleeting moment (Rewald 219). Second, impressionistsput much emphasis on the importance of the effects of light and colors in theirch
12、anging qualities (Rewald 219). They are interested in the function of light and theoptical effects caused by it. They also believe that colors are conditional under thenatural light and that new hues could be created by putting pigments and dots togetherwithout mixing them. Third, impressionists pre
13、fer to simplify their compositions,omitting details to achieve an overall striking effect (Rewald 219). In a word,impressionist paintings are characterized by brilliant colors, vibrant surface andblurred outlines.Chapter 1 The Impressionistic NarrativeAs noted earlier, impressionist writers tend to
14、render their stories in the way lifemakes impressions on brains instead of narrating in an organized and logical way. Inorder to achieve this aim, they usually compose their works with the technique ofverbal collage which includes fragmentation, defamiliarization, juxtaposition andconsequently an un
15、earned increment. Vaguely divided, these skills usually overlapwith one another. It is in order to achieve a certain effect that impressionist writersjuxtapose seemingly unrelated fragments which actually play important roles. It doesnot choose surfaces and fragments over depths and wholes but makes
16、 surfaces showdepths, makes fragments suggest wholes; (Matz 1). Fitzgerald is expert in expressingthe thematic meaning through the technique of verbal collage. To be specific, theillusory nature of the distorted American Dream is better conveyed through thefragmented and juxtaposed narrative. The fr
17、agmented narrative allows thecharacterization of Gatsby as a mysterious and vague figure which is symbolic of theimpossibility of realizing the American Dream. Likewise, the juxtaposed narrativealso brings out the sense of disillusionment. The juxtaposition of Gatsby’s past andpresent as well
18、as that of night and daytime make the conflict of romantic dream andcruel reality come into prominence.1.1FragmentationLike Conrad, Fitzgerald advocates the authentic representation of life. Heemploys the fragmented narrative to render the story as life makes various fragmentedimpressions on human b
19、rains. This kind of narrative is evident in rendering the imageof Gatsby.Maxwell Perkins, the mentor and muse to Fitzgerald, once commented onGatsby after reading the initial drafts of the novel:Gatsby is somewhat vague. The reader’s eyes can never quite focus upon him.His outlines are dim. No
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