Selected-Readings-in-English-and-American-Literature-Chpt.VI.pptx

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1、英美文学精粹英美文学精粹赏析析Selected Readings In English and American Literature人民邮电出版社人民邮电出版社The Modernism Period Historical Backgroundl The two WWs made Britain the once sun-never-set Empire finally collapsedPhilosophical trends:return to rationality,determinism,pessimismNew theories:S.Freud,K.Marx,A.Einstein,

2、H.Bergson,etc.Range:As an artistic movement,it covered all major art forms:painting,sculpture,music,and dance.Cultural BackgroundAfter WWI,trends of modernism appeared in western countries:expressionism,surrealism,futurism,Dadaism,imagism and streams of consciousness.After WWII:varieties or post mod

3、ernism-existentialist literature,theatre of absurd,new novels and black humorFeatures of LiteratureMarking a strong and conscious break with the past.Emphasizing the need to move away from public to the private,from the objective to the subjective.Upholding a new view of time by emphasizing the psyc

4、hic time over the chronological one.A reaction against realism George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950 I.Life Irish dramatist,literary critic,a socialist spokesman,and a leading figure in the 20th century theater.Shaw was a freethinker,defender of womens rights,and advocate of equality of income.In 1925 he wa

5、s awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.II.Literary Achievements Shaws plays were first performed in the 1890s.By the end of the decade he was an established playwright.He wrote sixty-three plays and his output as novelist,critic,pamphleteer,essayist and private correspondent was prodigious.Problem

6、 plays:As a realistic dramatist,most of Shaws plays are concerned with political,economic,moral or religious problemsCharacterizations:Shaws characterization is full of variety.One feature is that he makes the tricks of showing up one character vividly at the expense of another.Another is that his c

7、haracters are representatives of ideas,points of viewA strong sense of comedy:The comic effects in Shaws play are achieved through his witty dialogues,sharp satires,and vivid portrayal of charactersLanguage:witty,easy,and forceful.Conversation takes primacy over plots.Action is reduced to a minimum.

8、III.Selected ReadingsPygmalionPygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw,named after a Greek mythological character.It was first presented on stage to the public in 1912.Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl,Eliza Doolittle,to pass for a

9、duchess at an ambassadors garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility,the most important element of which,he believes,is impeccable speech.The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on womens independenceIn ancient Greek mythology,Pygma

10、lion fell in love with one of his sculptures,which then came to life.The general idea of that myth was a popular subject for Victorian era English playwrights,including one of Shaws influences,W.S.Gilbert,who wrote a successful play based on the story called Pygmalion and Galatea first presented in

11、1871.Shaw also would have been familiar with the burlesque version,Galatea,or Pygmalion Reversed.Shaws play has been adapted numerous times,most notably as the musical My Fair Lady and the film of that name.About Pygmalion T.S.Eliot 1888-1965 I.Lifean essayist,publisher,playwright,literary and socia

12、l critic and one of the twentieth centurys major poets.attracted widespread attention for his poem The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock(1915),which is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement.It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language.It was followed by some of the

13、best-known poems in the English language,including The Waste Land(1922),The Hollow Men(1925),etc.He is also known for his seven plays,particularly Murder in the Cathedral(1935).He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948,for his outstanding,pioneer contribution to present-day poetry.II.Lite

14、rary AchievementEliot has been one of the most daring innovators of twentieth-century poetry.Never compromising either with the public or indeed with language itself,he has followed his belief that poetry should aim at a representation of the complexities of modern civilization in language and that

15、such representation necessarily leads to difficult poetry.Despite this difficulty his influence on modern poetic diction has been immense.Eliot has always taken care not to become a“religious poet”.and often belittled the power of poetry as a religious force.However,his dramas are more openly Christ

16、ian apologies.In his essays,especially the later ones,Eliot advocates a traditionalism in religion,society,and literature that seems at odds with his pioneer activity as a poet.But it should not be forgotten that for Eliot tradition is a living organism comprising past and present in constant mutual

17、 interaction.Subject matter:the subject matter of Eliots poetry is to expose the sterility and futility of the Western culture,to reveal the breakdown of communication between human beings,to show mans disillusionment and frustration caught between his sense of meaning and his sense of meaninglessne

18、ss,and to quest for a spiritual regeneration by finding salvation in religionLiterary allusion:Eliots poetry is full of classical,biblical and mythical allusions,which always call forth an immediate response in the readers mind to the wonderful past so as to make the truth of his poetry transcend bo

19、th time and spaceMyth:Eliot regards myth as an effective means of reaching beneath the level of present and conscious experience.Ancient myth is often used to convey mans struggle and failure in penetrating the mystical consciousness and obtaining self-knowledge in a sterile world.III.Special Featur

20、esIV.Selected ReadingsThe love song of J.Alfred Prufrock His early poetry,including Prufrock,deals with spiritually exhausted people who exist in the impersonal modern city.Prufrock is a representative character who cannot reconcile his thoughts and understanding with his feelings and will.The poem

21、displays several levels of irony,the most important of which grows out of the vain,weak mans insights into his sterile life and his lack of will to change that life.The poem,was published in 1915,is replete with images of enervation and paralysis,such as the evening described as “etherized,”immobile

22、.Prufrock understands that he and his associates lack authenticity.One part of himself would like to startle them out of their meaningless lives,but to accomplish this he would have to risk disturbing his universe,being rejected.The latter part of the poem captures his sense defeat for failing to ac

23、t courageously.Eliot helped to set the modernist fashion for blending references to the classics with the most sordid type of realism,then expressing the blend in majestic language which seems to mock the subject.James Joyce 1882-1941 I.LifeAn Irish novelist and poet,considered to be one of the most

24、 influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century and the most prominent stream-of-consciousness novelist,noted for his experimental use of language.II.Literary AchievementJoyce is best known for Ulysses(1922),a landmark work in which the episodes of Homers Odyssey are para

25、lleled in an array of contrasting literary styles,perhaps most prominent among these the stream of consciousness technique he perfected.Other major works are the short-story collection Dubliners(1914),and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man(1916)and Finnegans Wake(1939).His complete o

26、euvre includes three books of poetry,a play,occasional journalism,and his published letters Joyces technical innovations in the art of the novel include an extensive use of interior monologue;he used a complex network of symbolic parallels drawn from the mythology,history,and literature,and created

27、a unique language of invented words,puns,and allusions.III.Selected ReadingsAraby A young boy,with the dawning awareness of sexuality,develops a strong liking toward the sister of one of his playmates.She asks him to go Araby and he resolves to go and buy a gift for her.His uncle promises to give hi

28、m the money,but on the very day,his uncle delayed.The waiting of his uncles coming home torments him.Nevertheless,he manages to get to the market only to be disappointed by the gap between his expectation and the actuality of the almost deserted fair.He was disillusioned and sees himself as a creatu

29、re driven and derided by vanity.”IV.Theme of ArabyA meaningful episode of the protagonists life experience that introduces him to awareness about the discrepancies between expectation and reality,between his pure infatuation about love and the reality of vulgarity.The story is carried on and organiz

30、ed by the quest on the boys part of his idealized childish love,up to the point of the boys recognition of the drabness and harshness of the adult world.The story is therefore basically about the loss of innocence through painful experience the boy gets to know the complexities of a world that he once thought simple and predictable.