Page 1 John Steinbeck: Life and Works February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968

Page 2 John Steinbeck Born in Salinas, California. –He used this setting for many of his stories. One of the best known and most widely read American writers of the 20 th Century.

Page 3 John Steinbeck His characters and his stories were taken from real life struggles in the first half of the 20 th century. His body of work reflects his wide range of interests, including marine biology, jazz, politics, philosophy, history and myth.

Page 4 Notable Works Cup of Gold (1929) – First Novel Tortilla Flat (1935) – First Success In Dubious Battle (1936) Of Mice and Men (1937) The Grapes of Wrath (1939) The Moon is Down (1942) Cannery Row (1945) The Pearl (1947) East of Eden (1952) Sweet Thursday (1954) – Sequel to Cannery Row The Winter of Our Discontent (1961) – Final Novel

Page 5 Early Works Steinbeck’s first novel, published in 1929 was the unsuccessful mythological work Cup of Gold. Steinbeck achieved his first critical success with the novel Tortilla Flat (1935), which won the California Club’s Gold Medal.

Page 6 The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck followed his wave of success with The Grapes of Wrath (1939), based on newspaper articles he had written in San Francisco. Novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 Made into a John Ford directed film staring Henry Fonda.

Page 7 Writing Style Steinbeck often wrote about the need for humans to be in partnership with nature. His characters were, often, the outcasts of society, poor, uneducated and rebellious. Common Themes: economic hardships, dreams and hope lost, the dangers of isolation, rootless (unwanted) Americans, and man’s need to belong.

Page 8 Cannery Row Set during Great Depression in Monterey, California. –On a street lined with sardine canneries. Ocean View Avenue was later renamed Cannery Row in honor of the book. Sweet Thursday (1954) revisits the same characters nine years later.

Page 9 Steinbeck Legacy Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in –“I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature” – John Steinbeck Seventeen of his works went on to become Hollywood Films (notably East of Eden & The Grapes of Wrath) Of Mice and Men is one of then most frequently taught books in public high school.

Page 10 The Literary Canon

Page 11 What is the Canon? The term “literary canon” refers to a classification of literature. –It is a term used widely to refer to a group of literary works that are considered the most important of a particular time period or place. There are many ways in which literary works can be classified, but the canon seems to apply a certain validity or authority to a work of literature. Who decides the canon? –Influential literary critics, scholars, teachers, and others. –Subjective qualifications.

Page 12 Literary Periods and Movements

Page 13 What are Literary Periods/Movements? While tracing the evolution of literature through time, scholars often group works from a certain timeframe together. –These are labeled periods or movements. The movements and periods listed are not mutually exclusive in their timeframes. –They overlap. In some cases a single author can be claimed by more than one movement (i.e. Steinbeck) –Classifying art often ends up being more fluid than expected.

Page 14 Periods/Movements Medieval ( ) –Notable Texts: Beowulf & The Song of Roland Renaissance ( ) –Notable Texts: Milton’s Paradise Lost & Anything by Shakespeare The Enlightenment ( ) –Notable Texts: Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels & Franklin’s Poor Richards Almanack Romanticism ( ) –Notable Poets: Blake, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, & Coleridge Transcendentalism ( ) –Notable Texts: Whitman’s Leaves of Grass & Thoreau’s Walden Victorian ( ) –Notable Texts: Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles & Anything by Dickens Realism (1820–1920) –Notable Texts: Eliot’s Middlemarch & Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Naturalism ( ) –Notable Texts: Chopin’s The Awakening & Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets Modernism ( ) –Notable Texts: Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms & Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby Post-Modernism (1965-Present) –Wallace’s Infinite Jest & Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow

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Page 16 Realism ( ) The belief that the novel’s function is simply to report what happens, without comment or judgment. –The realistic novel rests upon the strengths of its characters rather than plot or turn of phrase. Movement was heavily informed by journalistic technique. –Objectivity and fidelity to the facts of the matter. Movement coincided with advances in the field of human psychology. –Freud, Jung, James & Adler all worked and published during this time. Henry James is considered one of the great realist authors with works like The Turn of the Screw and The Portrait of a Lady. Though readers at the time complained very little happened in realistic fiction.

Page 17 Naturalism ( ) Literature that focused on social and heredity conditions in characters. In the age of Darwin, Social Darwinism took hold of the movement. –The Naturalist writer simply takes the world as it is, for better or worse. The dominant themes of Naturalist literature is that persons are fated to whatever station in life their heredity, environmental, and social conditions prepare them for. A short lived literary movement. –Little financial success for the authors.

Page 18 Modernism ( ) Identified as a break from Naturalism and Realism because of modernisms break with genre and form. –Heightened use of ‘subjectivity’. Modernism was seen as the beginning between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art. The “unreliable” narrator become prominent in literature. –Readers were forced to question basic assumptions about how the novel should operate.

Page 19 Which Literary Period/Movement does Steinbeck and Cannery Row belong in? Why is Steinbeck taught in Public Education but widely ignored in Higher Education?