Sherwood Anderson And The Modernism In American Small Town Literature

This thesis is to research the often underrated position of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio in the history of American small town literature. Winesburg, Ohio diverted the direction of the traditional American small town literature by bringing modernism into its theme and style. Before the appearance of Winesburg, Ohio, most small town literary works depict the simple and na?ve small town life in the tone of"ideal, rosy America". In Winesburg, Ohio, Anderson writes about the alienation and loneliness of small town life. What's more, Anderson has a style all his own in creating his own eccentric characters, for instance, his search for symbolic ground for reality, especially through the device of"epiphany", his turning to the"open"or ambiguous endings, his use of the connotative forces of language to depict the interior or symbolic landscape in which the world is moved"inside"(structured symbolically or metaphorically) and time is moved into the interior as well (time becomes psychological time), his Freudian representation of the inner reality through psychoanalysis. These typically modern themes and techniques ushered modernism into American small town literature.The first part of the thesis is the introduction of Sherwood Anderson and Winesburg, Ohio, as his masterpiece. The second part of thesis is the about the deformed characters and the modern themes of"alienation"and"loneliness"in Winesburg, Ohio. The third part is about the modern narrative techniques in probing the inner reality. He often adopts the nights, the rain and the dim indoor setting to give impression of a cold and somber atmosphere. On the surface, it is about nostalgia. However, when touching upon the theme of alienation and loneliness, it is not simply nostalgic anymore. The questions that interested Anderson are the lonely, alienated or even morbid mentality in a society in which humanity has been violently destroyed. Anderson is very skillful at depicting the"moments", and those wonderful moments leave enduring impression on one's mind after reading it. To a large extent, Winesburg, Ohio can be seen as a patchwork novel. There is no one single plot that runs through the whole narrative. In stead, after reading it, only"moments"or pictures of moments are left in one's mind. These pictures represent the finest combination Anderson has yet achieved of imagination, intuition and observation welded into a dramatic unity by painstaking craftsmanship. In addition, he composes the work in an honest and penetrating way, with bold and simple strokes, which almost foresees the rising of Hemingway's style.