A Small Town In American Literature

Continuously from the very beginning of the United States until the present has developed a body of small-town writing in American literature too large and varied to be ignored.However,it is neglected and it shows the deficiency of systematic studying.At the end of 19 th century and the beginning of 20 th century,the Mid-west has contributed many famous novelists,like Hamlin Garland,Willa Cather,Sherwood Anderson,Sinclair Lewis,and F·Fitzgerald.This thesis mainly concentrates on those writers and their writings.It concerns the small-town writing tradition of American literature,especially the Mid-west.The thesis focuses on the people in small-town and the writhing consciousness,which contains three arrangements of ideas,namely,the nostalgic sense,the critical sense and the constructive sense.Besides the preface and the epilogue,this thesis is divided into four chapters.The introduction part mainly elaborates related research of this topic and the main research idea and methods will be used.The first chapter is the introduction of the small-town and its features,and it also involves the writing of small-town in American fictions.The second chapter focuses on the people of the small-town,their life traces and the reasons behind under the traces.The third chapter talks about the writing consciousness of the small-town.The fourth chapter discusses the aesthetic analysis of the small-town writing.And the final part is the epilogue.