英国文学复习(工商学院).ppt

1、Selected Readings in English Literature,-英国文学复习,1 . Pre-Chaucerian Age,1. Pre-Chaucerian AgeAnglo-Saxon period (450-1066)-(Anglo-Saxon)Teutonic conquest: formation of English as a nation, language, and people-Poetry: BeowulfAnglo-Norman period-Norman Conquest-Romance: Sir Gawin and the Green Knight,

2、Romance,Romance, alliterative and metrical, refers to some verse narrative that sings of knightly adventures or other heroic deeds, and usually emphasizes the chivalric love of the Middle Ages in Europe. The hero is usually the knight, who sets out on a journey to accomplish some goal- to protect th

3、e church, to rescue a maiden, to meet a challenge, and etc. Characterization is standardized. The language and style are simple and straightforward.,2. The Age of Chaucer (1340-1400),Geoffrey Chaucer - “father of English poetry” - the first to write about common people in a realistic way instead of

4、in an allegorical way- The Canterbury Tales in rhyming coupletheroic couplet,15th-16th century,After Chaucer, English literature began to decline. Except the “The Death of Arthur” by Thomas Marlory, there was no written literature in its real sense. However, ballads became an important feature in th

5、is age.- Sir Patrick Spens- RobinhoodAll are in ballad.,. The English Renaissance,Historical backgroun - Renaissance in Europe-Humanism: the most outstanding intellectual movement- The ideal/core of Renaissance is humanism 2. Literary Achievement (Age of drama)- William Shakespeare- Francis Bacon -t

6、he first English essayist-Thomas Moore (“Utopia”)- Drama /blank verse-Sonnet and sonnet sequence,The ideal/core of Renaissance is humanism. Renaissance humanists found in the classics a justification to exalt human nature and came to see that human beings were glorious creatures capable of individua

7、l development in the direction of perfection, and inhabited in a world it was theirs not to despise but to interrogate, explore and enjoy. Thus, by emphasizing the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life, they voiced their beliefs that man did not only have the right to enjoy

8、the beauty of this life, but had the ability to perfect himself and to perform wonders. They also expressed their rebellious spirit against the tyranny of feudal rule and ecclesiastical domination.,Shakespeare,His 4 great comedies are The Merchant of Venice; Much Ado About Nothing; As You Like It; T

9、welfth Night. His 4 great tragedies are Hamlet; Othello; King Lear; Macbeth.,Sonnet 18the permanence or immortality of poetry. Poetry will bring eternity to the one the poet loves and eulogizes. Figurative devicesMetaphor: summers day-the beloved person. Personification: summers day -hold a lease. S

10、ymbol: bud, the eye of heaven-beautiful things,. 17th century(Puritan Age),-Bourgeois revolution: for church but against despotic rulers-Metaphysical poets-John Milton: The Paradise Lost,Metaphysical poets,Donne was the founder of the metaphysical school and a poet of genius, known by his contempora

11、ries as “the great writer of conceited verse”. conceits,-logical reasoning (to express the emotion), -psychological analysis of the emotions and religion, -their fondness of the novel and the shocking, - the use of bold and ingenious conceits and incongruous imagery, - their statement of complex ide

12、as or thought, - frequent use of paradox, - their ignoring of the conventional metric devicesAll resulted frequently in obscurity, rough verse, and strained imagery.,John Milton:“Paradise”in blank verseFighting the God- fighting the despotism,. 18th century(Age of Novel),-Enlightenment (emphasis on

13、reason)-Poets: John Dryden ; Alexandra Pope -Essayists: Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, -Novelists: Daniel Defoe,Henry Fielding-Sentimentalism: Thomas Gray (the representative)-Pre-Romanticism: William Blake, Robert Burns,William Blake - Songs of Innocence ; Songs of Experience The symbolic meaning

14、of Tyger,R. Burns - in scottish dialect - A Red, Red Rose:Symbolic language,.Romanticism (1798-1832),The French Revolution; the Industrial Revolution From emphasis on reason to instinct and emotion Wordsworth; Coleridge; Southey;Shelley; Byron; Keats Post-Romanticism: the Browings; Tennysons,Princip

15、les for Romanticism,“all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling.” - Subjectivism -Spontaneity -Nature -Simplicity/plainness -Life of the common people -Imagination -Rebellious spirit,W. Wordsworth(1770-1850),In 1798, in collaboration with Coleridge, he published us first major v

16、olume of poetry, “The Lyrical Ballads”, an epoch-making book in English poetry.,I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud：the happy recollections tend to enable the poet to understand the harmony between things in nature, and harmony between the poet himself and the nature, thus realizing the happiness of onenes

17、s of the soul and creatures,Shelley(1792-1822 ） Ode to the West Wind： “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” illustrated Shelleys optimistic belief in the future of mankind. The image of west wind,Keats - Keats odes have generally been considered as his most important works, Ode to Nightingale

18、 -synaethesia -his ideal garden of Eden,Robert Browning(1812-1889)My Last Duchess:Dramatic monologue Characterization,.19th. Century (The Victorian Age 1832-1901),-Age of Novels:critical realism-Dickens; Thackery-Women novelists: Bronte sisters; Jane Austin-Thomas Hardy,Jane AustinPride and Prejudic

19、e -Theme -Character analysis,Thomas HardyTess -Stonehenge scene and its significance -causes for Tesss tragedy,. 20th Century,Modernist literature - T.S. Eliot: the desolation in the western country after the war, and their spirit -D. H., lawrence: concerns with the sex, the defect in western civili

20、zation-V. Wolf (Mrs. Dalloway; To the light House) and James Joyce (Ulysses): a search into the soul of modern westerners by adopting the Stream of Consciousness Doris lessing: a female writer about the repression suffered by women and the awakening of their self-consciousness Ted Hughes: a poet of

21、Animal writes into the human nature.,T.S. Eliot: the desolation in the western country after the war, and their spirit A Love Song: Style,Style analysis,-Monologue -imagery -allusion -irony -fragmentation,Fragmentation,fragmentation is the accumulation of numerous and varied - often to chaotic effec

22、t - signs (words, images, sounds).,1.Fragmentation in stanza form:-fragmented stanzas represented not in sequential fashion.i.e. Street womens room fog womens room-elliptical structure-absence of bridge,2.The rhythm of the lines is deliberately irregular. Eliot occasionally rhymes for long stretches

23、 (LL 4-12) and then not at all; his rhyme scheme itself seems like he confusing “Streets that follow like a tedious argument“ (8).,The concluding two three-line stanzas act as a sestet (six lines). Although the rhyme scheme differs (here it is abbcdd), Petrarchan sonnets complement the opening octet

24、 (first eight lines) with a sestet(cdecde). This is Eliots final mock-allusion to yet another Renaissance artist (after Dante and Michelangelo). Petrarch unrequitedly mooned after his love, Laura, but Prufrock, whose name sounds much like Petrarchs, does not even have an unattainable ideal love. He

25、has unattainable, frustrated, paralyzed desire for all women who reject him.,3.Prufrocks fragmented voiceIt is difficult to decide who is the speaker because it is a combination of so many historic poetic voices. The poem comes in the form of a dramatic monologue, a form that is usually fit for a re

26、sonant speaking voice (and one that extinguishes the personality of the poet, too). But “Prufrock“ has a chorus of fragmented voices - the epigraph to Dante, the frequent allusions to the Bible, Shakespeare, and many poetic predecessors - which deny the existence of a solo voice. This, then, is Pruf

27、rocks voice: a fragmentation of voices past and present that somehow harmonize.,Fragmentation is also embodied in the rhetorical devices used, such as image, allusion.,Imagery,City imagesunlit sky as looking “like a patient etherised upon a table“ (Eliot 3). This is an unusual imagery that would be

28、out of place in a traditional love poem, and this “etherised“ outside world is the key to understanding all of Prufrocks views. He is afraid of the increasingly industrialized and impersonal city surrounding him, and he is unsure of what to do and afraid to commit to any particular choice of action,

29、2.fog image“rubs its back upon the window-panes“ ;rubs its muzzle on the window panes“. Later on in the poem, Prufrock refers to smoke again while describing the streets he is walking on. All this imagery 1) leaves the reader feeling that the place Prufrock is at is dark and hazy and not at all welc

30、oming, and it conveys Prufrocks discontentment with his surroundings. 2) subliminal feeling of the speaker- desire and inaction,3.Insect image-his overall boredom with life. -his paralysis/impotence,4. Crab image:self-reproach and self-comfort,5. Mermaid imageBy the end of the poem, Prufrock is imag

31、ing mermaids, or mans ideal vision of women sitting on the beach, but even in his imagination they do not sing to him. When he is awakened from his daydream by a human voice, it is apparent that even in his fantasies Prufrock is paralyzed and non-active.,The fragmentation of the images in the poem a

32、lso shed some light on Prufrocks fears. He rarely says what he means, if he is even sure of it himself. Instead, like the magic lantern throwing “patterns on a screen,“ The poem is like a set of slides, showing us Prufrocks failures and experiences hes collected. Prufrock moves from streets to woman

33、 talking to images of woman and mythological creatures. There is no congruity in the poem.,Allusion,1.Epigraph -Prufrocks plight2.Michelangelo- ideal man- hypocrisy of the noble,3.There will be timeworks and days- Ps hesitation and indecisiveness/inaction,4.Head on a platterJohn the Baptist strong d

34、esire and extreme hesitation5.Hamlet hesitation,All these allusions-add to the effect of fragmentation;- enhances the historical and realistic meaning,Why fragmentation? Modernists believe that1)modern world presents an “immense panorama of futility and anarchy” esp. after WWI. So there is a2)a keen

35、 need to “give shape and significance” to the meaningless, futile and chaotic experience of modern man, because3) meaning could be made out of these fragments. From the ruins of fragments, some coherence can be established; only this gives the chaos of modern life hope.,So in this poem,Nothing is ex

36、plained in logical manner.Readers have to make leaps in reading and appreciation.but careful readers can perceive the tone and understand the underlying meaning.,2. J. Joyces Araby,Araby- Setting- Point of view- Epiphany,Setting,Setting is usually a part of atmosphere and that atmosphere consists of

37、 the prevailing tone of the work and its resultant meaning or effect. The boy in the story is intensely subject to the citys dark, hopeless conformity, and his tragic yearning toward the exotic in the face of drab, ugly reality forms the center of the story. Questions:- Whats the setting like? Whats

38、 the function of the setting description?,Scenes described: -the opening description of the boys street, -his house, -his relationship to his aunt and uncle, the information about the priest and his belongings, the boys two trips-his walks through Dublin shopping and his subsequent ride to Araby.,(1

39、) North Richmond Street,North Richmond Street presents the reader with his first view of the boys world. -The street is “blind“; a dead end-its inhabitants are smugly complacent; -the houses are “imperturbable“ in the “quiet,“ the “cold,“ the “dark muddy lanes“ and “dark dripping gardens.“ The total

40、 effect of such setting is an atmosphere permeated with stagnation and isolation.,(2) Priests (and the boys) house,The house description:- the former tenant:a priest- the possessions left behind- the central apple tree;(symbols of spiritual life in the past)-straggling bushesThe effect of the descri

41、ption is to deepen, through a sense of a dead past, the spiritual and intellectual stagnation of the present. This may refer us to the understanding of what happened later at Araby bazzar.,(3) Shopping center,-ugly, drab reality “most hostile to romance” (where the boy accompanied his aunt to shoppi

42、ng) -imagining that he bears not parcels, but a “chalice through a throng of foes.“ -transforming in his mind a perfectly ordinary girl into an enchanted princess: untouchable, promising, saintly. Setting in this scene depicts the harsh, dirty reality of life which the boy blindly ignores. The contr

43、ast between the real and the boys dreams is ironically drawn and clearly foreshadows the boys inability to keep the dream, while remaining blind.,(4) Arabythe bazaar,Araby: the most important image The tawdry superficiality of the bazaar, which in his mind had been an “Oriental enchantment,“ strips

44、away his blindness and leaves him alone with the realization that life and love differ from the dream. Araby, the symbolic temple of love, is now a hell to the boy. The bazaar is dark and empty, like other places; it thrives on the same profit motive as the market place (“two men were counting money

45、 on a salver“); love is represented as an empty, passing flirtation.The boys final disappointment occurs as a result of his awakening to the world around him.,Summary:“Araby“ is a portrait of a world that defies the ideal and the dream. Thus setting in this story becomes extremely important, embodyi

46、ng an atmosphere of spiritual paralysis against which a young boys idealistic dreams are no match. Realizing this, the boy takes his first step into adulthood.,Structure of the final Test,I. Multiple choice(30points) II. Matching(10points) III. Identification and comprehension(40points) IV.Essay wri

47、ting (20 points) 1. Fragmentation in The Love Song of J.A. Prufrock. 2. Function of setting in James Joyces short story of Araby,Ballad,A ballad is a story in a song, usually a narrative song or poem, with foreshortened alternating four- and three-stress lines (ballad meter) and simple repeating rhy

48、mes, and often with a refrain (叠句).It is a rhythmic saga of a past affair, which may be heroic, romantic or satirical, political, almost inevitably catastrophic, which is related in the third person. Hardly an event of national interest escapes being made the subject of a so-called ballad.,Character

49、istics of a balladA ballad tells a story A ballad focuses on actions and dialogue rather than characteristics and narration. A ballad has a simple metrical structure and sentence structure. A ballad is sung to a modal melody. A ballad is of oral tradition, passed down by word of mouth. Therefore, it undergoes changes and is of anonymous authorship. Repetition and refrains are usually used in many ballads,