Expressionism In Winesburg, Ohio

Sherwood Anderson(1876-1941) is one of the most innovative writers in the modernhistory of America literature. His masterpiece Winesburg, Ohio, a classic work of fictionabout small-town life in the American Midwest, became a great hit after its publication in1919. It is generally agreed that its significance in American literary history lies in the factthat it provides an important link between modernism and postmodernism. But not adequateattention is paid to the factor of its contribution to American literature, that is, Anderson’sExpressionist experiments. Accordingly, the thesis makes a close analysis of the Expressioniststyle in Winesburg, Ohio, bringing out the artistic features of the novel which have influenceon American literature.This thesis holds that by writing his “Book of the Grotesque”, Winesburg, Ohio, with thegoal to give outward expression to the intense private feelings of small town people in the ageof pre-industrialization, Sherwood Anderson created the high modernistic prototype of aneo-gothic mode of fiction. He employs his expressionist style as a reaction against theincreasing mechanization of society, thus making an “elegy”—an aesthetic modernity ofalienation and loneliness. His unadorned but poetic prose style and his “grotesque” charactershad a deep influence on other writers of his generation. His expressionist experiments play asignificant role in American literary history, for they mark a sharp break with both realism andimpressionism, and have made themselves the valued features of postmodern fiction.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One gives a brief introduction of SherwoodAnderson, his masterpiece Winesburg, Ohio and the ties between Expressionism andWinesburg, Ohio. Chapter Two analyzes Anderson’s expressionist style and form in the novel.Chapter Three further analyzes the striking features of Anderson’s expressionism againsttraditional realism. Chapter Four probes into the modernist themes of Anderson’sexpressionist idea of art reflected in the novel.In Conclusion the thesis emphasizes that Anderson’s expressionist experiments havetheir historical significance in American literary history. And the intention of his using expressionist techniques to link together those fragmentations and personal visions of thereality finds expression in the modernity of expressionism, in his bittersweet tone andeloquent insight into the modernity of lives which are loneliness and alienation and which aretempered only occasionally by the beauty of love and hope.