Unit 6 British Literature
Unit 6 British Literature
English literature has a long history and a secure position in world literature.
England has often produced fine novelists, poets and playwrights.
Early Writing
1. Beowulf
A. Depicts the deeds and death
B. A folk legend brought to England
by Anglo-Saxons
C. Written down in the 10th century
D. A reflection of a tribal society
A knight served as a vassal to a lord.
At age seven, a nobleman’s son pages.
At age 15, a page a squire.
Each squire was assigned to a knight.
the Code of Chivalry:
all knights had to be brave in battle.
They had to keep their promises.
They had to defend the church.
They had to treat noblewomen in a courteous manner.
Over time, chivalry became the basis of good manners in Western society.
2. Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400)
A. The father of English poetry
B. His main contribution to English poetry is the introduction of rhyming stanzas of various types from France.
C. His masterpiece: The Canterbury Tales
D. His language is vivid and exact and he was the first to write in London dialect. Elizabethan Drama
1. William Shakespeare’s time
A. English drama is completely dominated by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
a. Greatest genius of the world theater
b. 37 plays, mostly in verse
c. His plays contained a surprising variety of human qualities and moods, and
a wealth of eloquence and
word-mastery.
d. His comedies: As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Winter’s Tale, The Merchant of V enice, The Tempest and Twelfth Night
e. His tragedies: Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello
B. Cristopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
a. Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (masterpiece)
b. His heroes have resolute character and overpowering passion.
c. The theme is the praise of individuality and the human effect in conquering the universe.
C.Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
a. The finest neo-classical dramatist of his day.
b. V olpone: the medieval theory of “humours”
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
Doctor Faustus is a German scholar who is well known for his accomplishments. He grows sick of the limitations on human knowledge, which leads him to his interest with magic. Faustus summons a demon, Mephistophilis, ordering him to go to Lucifer with the offer of Faustus’soul in return for twenty-four years of servitude from Mephistophilis. At the news of acceptance from Lucifer, Faustus begins his years filled with sinful nature. Faustus feeds sin with his need for power, praise, and trickery.
He becomes absorbed in the way people look up to him, believing him to be a sort of ‘hero’. In the end, Faustus realizes his mistake in believing the knowledge power will bring him happiness. At the end of his twenty-four years, Faustus is filled with fear and he becomes incredibly remorseful for his past actions, yet this comes too late. When fellow scholars find Faustus the next morning, he is torn limb from limb, with his soul carried off to hell.
the Calvinist concludes that his damnation was inevitable.
His rejection of God and subsequent inability to repent. 忏悔
For the Calvinist, Faustus represents the worst kind of sinner.
The anti-Calvinist view, interpret Doctor Faustus as a criticism of such doctrines. The 16th century
A. Thomas More (1478-1535):
a. Masterpiece: Utopia in two books
First: a long conversation on the social
condition of England
Second: detailed description of a communist society of
Utopia
Main idea: the poverty of the labouring classes and
the greed and luxury of the rich
Principle of Utopia: From everyone according to his
capacities, to everyone according to his needs,
which is the practical basis for a communist society.
b. Thomas More:
He was one of the giants of Renaissance and a far-sighted thinker, but was no revolutionary movement among the exploited classes.
He could see what was wrong and what was needed, but he could not find the ideological means for realizing his wishes.
The 17th century
A. John Bunyan (1628-1668)
a. A commanding prose writer
b. great allegory--- Pilgrim’s Progress:
the most widely read book in England after the Bible.
c. It is a religious allegory which depicts the spiritual pilgrimage of a Christian.
d. He cherished a deep hatred for the king and his government and detested the injustices of the law.
The Pilgrim's Progress
Christian, an everyman普通人character
his journey from his hometown, the "City of Destruction" ("this world"), to the "Celestial City" ("that which is to come": Heaven Christian is weighed down by a great burden, the knowledge of his sin, which he believed came from his reading "the book in his hand,"
(the Bible). This burden, which would cause him to sink into hell, is so unbearable that Christian must seek deliverance.
Christian and Hopeful
into the Celestial City through his own good deeds rather than as a gift of God's grace.
they are welcomed into the Celestial City.
three great allegories
The world’s literature has three great allegories:
Spenser’s Faery Queen
Dante’s Divina Commedia
Spenser’s Faery Queen
Spenser describes the allegorical presentation of virtues through Arthurian knights in the mythical "Faerieland."
a different knight who exemplified one of 12 "private virtues", and a possible 12 more
centred on King Arthur displaying twelve "public virtues".
Book I: Holiness Temperance Chastity
Friendship Justice Courtesy
The poem celebrates and memorializes the Tudor dynasty (of which Elizabeth was a part), much in the tradition of Virgil's Aeneid's celebration of Augustus Caesar's Rome letter written by Spenser to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1589 contains a preface for The Faerie Queene, in which Spenser describes the allegorical presentation of virtues through Arthurian knights in the mythical "Faerieland." Presented as a preface to the epic in most published editions, this letter outlines plans for 24 books: 12 based each on a different knight who exemplified one of 12 "private virtues", and a possible 12 more centred on King Arthur displaying twelve "public virtues". Spenser names Aristotle as his source for these virtues, although the influence of Thomas Aquinas can be observed as well. It is impossible to predict what the work would have looked like had Spenser lived to complete it, since the reliability of the predictions made in his letter to Raleigh is not absolute, as numerous divergences from that scheme emerged as early as 1590, in the first Faerie Queene publication.
John Milton (1608-1674):
a. the greatest English revolutionary poet
b. He wrote the long epic Paradise Lost in blank verse as his masterpiece.
c. He is famous for his grand and majestic style resulting from his use of heroic rhythms and sentence structures and of highsounding names.
Virgil (70 -19 BC)
Virgil came to be regarded as one of Rome’s greatest poets. His Aeneid can be
considered a national epic of Rome. Aeneas was a Trojan hero, He fought and won wars, founding the city of Rome.
The 18th century
A. Daniel Defoe (1661-1731):
Robinson Crusoe
a. It carries factual realism to its limit.
b. One of the few novels which has held its popularity undiminished for two centuries.
B. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745):
Gulliver’s Travels
a. Swift criticizes the vices of the age.
b. He hated all kinds of oppression
and had deep love for the people.
C. Thomas Gray (1716-1771):
a notable poet, whose famous Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, “ the best-known poem in the English language”, marked an early expression of “Romantic” feeling.
D. Robert Burns (1759-1796):
a. a Scottish peasant poet
b. Inspired by the lives and loves of the rural people, he wrote many poems of democracy.
E. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816):
a. the most outstanding dramatist of the realistic school,
b. well-known comedy The School for Scandal
F. Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774):
a. satirical comedy She Stoops to Conquer
b. best poem The Deserted Village
G. Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
The Coffeehouse Politician, The Historical Register for the Year
The Romantic Period
Samuel Coleridge
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is a tale of retribution, since the Ancient Mariner spends most of the poem paying for his one, impulsive error of killing the Albatross. The spiritual world avenges the Albatross's death by wreaking physical and psychological havoc on the Ancient Mariner and his shipmates.
The Ancient Mariner warn others about the harsh, permanent consequences of momentary foolishness, selfishness, and disrespect of the natural world.
D. William Wordsworth (1770-1850):
a. a famous nature-poet at the turn of the century lived in Lake District.
b. The rocks and streams had a mystical influence on his mind.
c. His works: Daffodils, Lyrical Ballads, The Prelude, Ode to Duty and The Excursion
A. George Gordon Byron (1788-1824):
Don Juan is his first work.
B. Percy Bysshe Shelly (1792-1822):
a. “the genius, the prophet”
b. Ode to the West Wind, Ode to
a Skylark, Queen Mab
c. His poems are full of optimism, expressing his confidence in the future and the final victory of the revolution.
C. John Keats (1795-1821):
a. He “lived apart from men and all political measures, worshiping beauty like a devotee, perfectly content to write what was in his own heart, or to reflect some splendor of the nature world as he saw and dreamed it to be”
b. Isabella, Hyperion
To a Skylark
The speaker, addressing a skylark, says that it is a “blithe Spirit” rather than a bird, for its song comes from Heaven, and from its full heart pours “profuse strains of unpremeditated art.”
The skylark flies higher and higher, “like a cloud of fire”in the blue sky, singing as it flies.
If the West Wind was Shelley’s first convincing attempt to articulate an aesthetic philosophy through metaphors of nature, the skylark is his greatest natural metaphor for pure poetic expression, the “harmonious madness”of pure inspiration.
The 19th Century Novel
Frankenstein
作品以四封信为开篇。
这些信件叙述了一个人随船队在北极探险时所遇到的一个怪人讲述的故事。
原来，这个人是瑞士贵族弗兰肯斯坦，他曾留学德国，研究电化学和生命，发现了死亡的秘密，于是决定着手制造生命。现怪物已经失踪。
他先从尸体中寻找材料，然后进行组装，最后借助电化学方法予以激活。但是，本来全都是由好材料制造的、高达8 英尺的怪物在被赋予了生命之后，却变得面目狰狞、奇丑无比，弗兰肯斯坦下意识逃离了实验室，醒来之后发怪物已经失踪 .
其实怪物刚刚诞生时还是十分热爱这个世界的，他躲藏在山里并学会了使用火，并遇到隐居在山中的一位盲爷爷和一对青年男女，由此受到感动，开始热爱人类社会。
怪物白天趁青年男女外出时偷偷帮助盲爷爷打柴，并偷出书来自学了阿拉伯语和法语等各种语言，阅读了《少年维特之烦恼》等大量文学和哲学名著，于是开始渴望艺术和爱情。但他同时又十分感慨自己的情况，认为“撒旦才代表我目前的处境”，强烈地希望能够改变现状。于是怪物潜入这一家中，发现只有盲爷爷在家，便与之海阔天空地聊了起来；这时青年男女突然归来，姑娘吓得晕了过去，小伙子气愤地把它赶出了家门。这严重地伤害了怪物的自尊心，他冷静后想到，自己与其向别人求情，还不如去找缔造者。但它刚一出现在大街上，就受到了很多人的打骂，屡屡遭到大家的厌恶和恐惧，甚至有人朝它开枪。怪物终于丧失了最后一丝善良，认为这一切都来源于它的制造者。
Walter Scott (1771-1832)
a. A poet and famous Scottish historical novelist
b. Ivanhoe and his best novel is The Heart of Midlothian.
Women novelists
a. Jane Austen (1775-1817):
She wrote about middle-class family life with satire of social snobbery.
widely-read novel is Pride and Prejudice , Sense and Sensibility and Emma.
b. The Bronte sisters, Emily and Charlotte
Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre
Love story with social comment
They were talented but died tragically young.
化身博士
《化身博士》是罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森所写的一部小说，讲述基克尔博士为了探索人性的善恶，研究发明了一种药，用药后便化身成为海德先生，博士把自己所有的恶念全部赋予了海德。基克尔博士行医多年，多行善事，名声极好，海德则无恶不作，杀人害命。杰克尔虽然已有贤惠的未婚妻，但是被放荡的风尘女子勾起了他变成海德的欲望，悲剧终于一发不可收拾。基克尔博士无法摆脱海德，最后选择了自杀。
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928):
Under the Greenwood Tree, The Return of the Native, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (the summit of his realism)
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
a. A representative of critical realism, who wrote about middle-class family.
b. masterpiece: V anity Fair
c. He satirized various aspects of upper and middle-class society and the different kinds of people of the ruling class at the time.
c. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865)
d. Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880): George Eliot
Feature: detailed characterization of psychology
Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda
A. Oscar Wilde (1856-1900):
a. an Irish playwright, an aesthete
advocating “art for art’s sake”.
b. His language is concise, witty and sharp. He criticizes the hypocrisy and corruption of the upper class. His attacks are more like jokes.
https://www.wendangku.net/doc/2b759593.html,dy Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest
Art for art’s sake
It is a theory advocated by Irish playwright Oscar Wilde.
His novel “the Picture of Dorian Gray” is the product of this theory.
道林·格雷的画像
道林格雷的画像漫画，天生漂亮异常的道林格雷因见了画家霍华德给他画的真人一样大的肖像,发现了自己惊人的美,又听信了亨利爵士的吹嘘,开始为自己韶华易逝,美貌难久感到痛苦,表示希望那幅肖像能代替自己承担岁月和心灵的负担,而让自己永远保持青春貌美.他的这个想入非非的愿望后来却莫名其妙的实现了.他开始挥霍自
己的罪恶,最后这幅肖像却成为了记录恶行的证据,他因肖像而生也因肖像而死
The 20th Century Literature
A. Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936):
He was the first British novelist to win the Nobel Prize.
David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930):
a. an innovator of psychological fiction and one of the most controversial writers of the early 20th century.
b. He was disgusted with industrial civilization and despaired for the future of the West.
c. major works: Sons and Lovers, the Rainbow, Women in Love
James Joyce (1882-1941):
His strength was the frank portrayal
of human nature and a mastery
of the English language.
Works: Ulysses, Finnegans Wake,
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941):
a. A novelist and a critic
b. the most important “stream-of-consciousness” novelist with Joyce in Britain
c. New ways of looking at life and rich and expressive use of language
d.Works: To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, the Waves
John Galsworthy (1867-1933):
He was a prolific writer. The Forsyte
Saga established him as a first-class writer.
In 1932, he won the Nobel Prize for literature.
H. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970):
a. Nobel Prize winner, a philosopher,
mathematician, logician and novelist.
b. Works on social problems:
Roads to Freedom, Marriage and Morals
Works on philosophy: Mysticism and logic, Skeptical Essays, The Analysis of Mind, The History of Western Philosophy
d. Works on mathematics: Principia Mathematica
e. Short novels: Satan in the Suburbs
William Golding (1911-1993):
He won the Nobel Prize in 1983
for his first novel Lord of the Flies.
Doris Lessing (1919- )
a. She won Nobel Prize in 2007.
b. One of her best-known novel is
The Golden Notebook
The 20th century Poetry
A. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
1890s: musical romantic poetry
1920s-1930s: realistic, symbolic and visionary poetry with lyrical themes
The Second Coming,The Wind Among
the Weeds, Responsibilities, The Tower,
The Winding Star
Won the Nobel Prize in 1923
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)
a. best-known work: The Waste Land ---
originality and the attack on English
and American society
b. The Hollow Men, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Ash-Wednesday
Parted from the techniques and subject matter of Victorian poetry and helped to reshape modern literature, won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948.
B. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950):
a. He was against “art for art’s sake”.
b. In popularity, he comes next to Shakespeare, and he won the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1925.
c. He opposed the imperialist war,
sympathized and supposed the U.S.S.R.
d. He wrote 51plays such as Pygmalion,
Too True To Be Good
e. He is good at different means of artistic expression.
The 20th Century Drama
A. Irish playwrights: George Bernard Shaw, John Millington Synge, William Butler Yeats and Sean O’Casey
B. English drama developed in two new directions after the WW II:
a. the Theater of the Absurd.
b. Those of Existentialism or “kitchen sink” drama which had been popular on the English stage for nearly a century.
C. Angry Young Men
a. a title often to the playwrights who wrote drama which described the lower class life.
b. Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer
c. Arnold Wesker (1932-): Chicken Soup With Barley, The Old Ones
D. Samuel Beckett (1906-1989):
a. He w as best known for his “absurd” plays, such as Waiting for Godot.
b. He was awarded the
Nobel Prize in 1969.