During the 1940s and 1950s, some reviewers criticized Dreiser’s works from the aspect of the social and political issue。 Take Lionel Trilling for example。Lionel Trilling, wrote Reality in America, attacked Dreiser’s work severely。 He thought that “Dreiser’s idea, which was the reflection of his political view, was vulgar and empty。 Dreiser’s fiction, in short, was analogous to communism in its simplistic view of life, a view which failed to take cognizance of the role of the mental or spiritual in human affairs”(Pizer 2007,16)。 In addition, at that time, the representatives of the New Criticism believed that compared to Henry James and T。S。 Eliot, Dreiser’s works had a strong feature of journalism as they were simple in outline and tight in structure。
By the mid 1960s, some reviewers began to study Dreiser’s aspect of naturalism, which was regarded as a distinctive element in his fiction。 While a group of critics studied the ideological contents in Dreiser’s works, others paid their attention on Dreiser’s writing style。 Both of them focused on the richness of the novels themselves instead of studying Dreiser’s inept style and sentences。 However, Stuart Sherman, as mentioned before, clarified that Dreiser’s attitude to women was from the aspect of naturalism and his description of characters was real and close to real life。 Therefore, plenty of reviewers thought Sister Carrie was a valuable documents recording the history of America in the 20th century。
During the 1980s, the critics studied Dreiser’s works from the aspect of social value because of the development of western literary theory。 In their eyes, Dreiser’s works reflected many aspects of social realities at that time so they not only focused on Dreiser’s language style and writing techniques, but also the deep significance of Dreiser’s characters。 Walter Benn Michael, who wrote Sister Carrie’s Popular Economy to discuss the fundamental economy posed by Sister Carrie。 And Tomas P。 Riggio studies Sister Carrie’s melancholy from Dreiser’s own life experience in his eaasy “Carrie’s Bluse”。 In Siser Carrie: The City, the self, and the Modes of Narrative Discourse, Richard Lehan studies Sister Carrie from the angle of literary naturalism。
In the early 1930s, Dresier’s works were introduced to China by famous literary Qu Qiubai。 And from then on, more and more Dreiser’s works were translated into Chinese and studies by Chinese readers。 Up till now, Dreiser’s eight stories and two collections of short stories have been translated in Chinese。 Chinese readers studies his works in many perspectives,such as naturalism, feminism, realism and so on。 Among all his works, Sister Carrie is the one sell most and studied most。
In China, most critics focused on class struggle reflected in Sister Carrie。 For example, in The Moral Sense of The Scarlet Letter and Sister Carrie (1992) by Gao Xingsheng, the author claimed that Sister Carrie revealed the hypocritical moral of upper class。 Besides, there were some reviewers studied Sister Carrie from the aspect of naturalism。 For example, in Detailed Description of Naturalism in Dreiser’s Novels (1997) by Zhang Hezhen, in Dreiser’s early Naturalism in Sister Carrie (2002) by Hu Yonghui。 In addition, some critics analyze Sister Carrie in cultural perspective, especially from the perspective of consumer culture and American Dream, such as Consumer Culture and Theodore Dreiser’s Early Writing (2003) by Xie Malan , An analysis of Sister Carrie from Cultural Perspective (2007) by Wen Hui, On the Disillusionment with the American Dream--An Analysis of Sister Carrie by Dreiser (2007 ) by Wang Yulian and Causes of the Disillusionment of Sister Carrie’s American Dream (2013) by Tan Jia。 文献综述
On the whole, China does not have enough studies on Dreiser and Sister Carrie compared to western countries。 But more and more Chinese literary and readers have began analyzed Sister Carrie in recent years。 With more and more papers on Sister Carrie published, the way for the further study on Dreiser and his works are brilliant。 嘉莉妹妹的美国梦(3):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_86086.html