Analysis on the Effects of O. Henry’s Life Experience on His Literary Creation

ABSTRACT
O. Henry, a famous American realism short-story writer, is one of “the world three masters of short stories”. In addition, he is also called “Father of American modernism short fiction”. His fictions are plentiful in content, peculiar in structure, humourous in style, and especially excellent in its unique use of twist ending, which is called “O. Henry Ending”. His works have been published over and over during the past century, and are always welcomed by various kinds of readers. Among his most famous stories are “The Gift of the Magi”, “A Service of Love”, “The Cop and the Anthem”, and “The Last Leaf”. As a world-famous writer, O. Henry has been researched and studied from various aspects by foreign and Chinese scholars. Documents about the study results are of remarkable number. But few people has focused on the connection between O. Henry’s life experience and his literary creation. The author of this thesis just chooses to discuss this respect. In the thesis, the author fisrtly narrates the detailed life experience of O. Henry, then finds out obvious or subtle relationships between his life and literary creation, further analyses the literary features of O. Henry’s ficiotns based on the relationship and results obtained, and finally makes her own conclusions.
Key words: O. Henry, life experience, literary creation, short stories
Contents
Chapter One      Introduction to O. Henry and His Works4
1.1    O. Henry: A short biography-4
1.2    O. Henry’s life experience4
1.3    O. Henry’s works: A brief introduction-7
Chapter Two      Recent Researches on O. Henry and His Fictions9
2.1 Foreign and Chinese researches on O. Henry and his fictions 9
2.2 My review of the researches and choice of subject-10
Chapter Three    The Effects of O. Henry’s Life Experience on His Literary Creation-11
3.1 The influence of O. Henry’s childhood on his later literary career11
3.2 Life in the West and humorous writing style-11
3.3 The connection between work experience and creation materials-12
3.4 Two wives’ subtle influences on O. Henry’s literary career13
Chapter Four      My Analysis of Literary Features of O. Henry’s Fictions14
4.1 The most outstanding features of O. Henry’s fictions-14
4.2 Humorous writing style of O. Henry’s fictions-15
4.3 “O. Henry Ending”-16
Chapter Five     Conclusion17