ayed & distorted by his social betters because he is a poor nobody. As a love story, this is one of the most moving: the passion between Heathcliff & Catherine proves the most intense, the most beautiful & at the same time the most horrible passion ever to be found possible in human beings.
III. Alfred Tennyson
1.一般识记 His Life & Literary Career
Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) is certainly the most representative Victorian poet. His poetry voices the doubt & the faith, the grief & the joy of the English people in an age of fast social changes. 2.识记 His major poetic works & their theme
1) In Memoriam
Presumably it is an elegy on the death of Hallam, yet less than half of its l00 pieces are directly connected with him. The poet here does not merely dwell on the personal bereavement. As a poetic diary, the poem is also an elaborate & powerful expression of the poet's philosophical & religious thoughts - his doubts about the meaning of life, the existence of the soul & the afterlife, & his faith in the power of love & the soul's instinct & immortality. Such doubts & beliefs were shared by most people in an age when the old Christian belief was challenged by new scientific discoveries, though to most readers today, the real attraction of the poem lies more in its profound feeling & artistic beauty than in the philosophical & religious reflections. The familiar trance-like experience, mellifluous rhythm & pictorial descriptions make it one of the best elegies in English literature. 2) Idylls of the Kin g (1842-1885)
It is his most ambitious work which took him over 30 years to complete. It is made up of 12 books of narrative poems, based on the Celtic legends of King Arthur & his Knights of the Round Table. But it is not a mere reproduction of the old legend, though. It is a modern interpretation of the classic myth. For one thing, the moral standards & sentiments reflected in the poem belong to the Victorians rather than to the medieval royal people. For another, the story of the rise & fall of King Arthur is, in fact, meant to represent a cyclic history of western civilization, which , in Tennyson's mind , is going on a spiritual decline & will end in destruction. 3.领会Artistic Features of His Poetry
Tennyson is a real artist. He has the natural power of linking visual pictures with musical expressions, & these two with the feelings. He has perfect control of the sound of English, & a sensitive ear, an excellent choice & taste of words. His poetry is rich in poetic images & melodious language, & noted for its lyrical beauty & metrical charm. His works are not only the products of the creative imagination of a poetic genius but also products of a long & rich English heritage. His wonderful works manifest all the qu
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alities of England's great poets. The dreaminess of Spenser, the majesty of Milton, the natural simplicity of Wordsworth, the fantasy of Blake & Coleridge, the melody of Keats & Shelley, & the narrative vigor of Scott & Byron, --- all these striking qualities are evident on successive pages of Tennyson's poetry.
4. 应用 Selected Readings
(1) Break, Break, Break (1)
This short lyric is written in memory of Tennyson's best friend, Arthur Hallam, whose death has a lifelong influence on the poet. Here, the poet's own feelings of sadness are contrasted with the carefree, innocent joys of the children & the unfeeling movement of the ship & the sea waves. The beauty of the lyric is to be found in the musical language & in the association of sound & images with feelings & emotions. The poem contains 4 quatrains, with combined iambic & anapaestic feet. Most lines have three feet & some four. The rhyme scheme is a b c b.
Chapter ５ The Modern Period
I. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) 二． 识记
2. His major works: (1) His early plays were mainly concerned with social problems and directed towards the criticism of the contemporary social, economic, moral and religious evils. Widowers' House is a grotesquely realistic exposure of slum landlordism; Mrs. Warren's Profession is a play about the economic oppression of women.
(2) contemporary society. The important plays of this group are Caesar and Cleopatra (1898) and St. Joan (1923).
(3) l plays, exploring his idea of \Life Force,\the power that would create superior beings to be equal to God and to solve all the social, moral, and metaphysical problems of human society. The typical examples of this group are Man and Superman (1904) and Back to Methuselah (1921). (4) Besides, Shaw wrote plays on miscellaneous subjects: for instance. The Apple Cart (1929) is about politics; John Bull's Other Island (1904) is about racial problems; Pygmalion (1912) is about culture and art; Getting Married (1908), Misalliance (1910) and Fanny's First Play (1911) are about the problem of family and marriage; and The Doctor's Dilemma (1906) is about the ignorance, incompetence, arrogance and bigotry of the medical profession. Too True to Be Good (1932) is a better play of the later period, with the author's almost nihilistic bitterness on the subjects of the cruelty and madness of World War I and the aimlessness and disillusion of the young.
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三． 领会
1. Shaw's literary ideas:
2. The main characteristics of Bernard Shaw's plays:
(1) Structurally and thematically, Shaw followed the great traditions of realism. (2) One feature of Shaw's characterization is that he makes the trick of showing up one character vividly at the expense of another. Action is reduced to a minimum, while the dialogue and the interplay of the minds of the characters maintain the interest of the audience. The forward motion consists not in the unrolling of plot but in the operation of the spirit of discourse.
四． 应用：Selected Reading: An Excerpt from Act II of Mrs. Warren's Profession:
The outline and social significance of Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession: (1) The outline: Mrs. Warren's Profession is a play about the economic oppression of women. Mrs. Warren's profession is keeping brothels. Sir George Crofts, an old aristocrat, is her partner in this business. Vivie, Mrs. Warren's daughter, is educated in a very moral atmosphere at a boarding school. Upon graduation, she returns home and by accident discovers the source of her mother's income. Her conversations with Mrs. Warren and Sir George Crofts reveal the unscrupulousness of these members of the ruling class. It must be noted, however, that while protesting strongly against bourgeois exploitation and the immorality of the English ruling classes, Shaw points out no corrective. His heroine Vivie simply leaves her mother and, living independently, tries to earn her bread by honest work. Like Shaw, she is under the delusion that piecemeal, pretty and gradual reform will eventually do away with the evils of capitalism.
(2) The social significance: The play tells an outrageous truth: in a moribund capitalist society, even prostitution can be made a means of exploitation by an ex-prostitution Mrs. Warren, and a sound investment by a respectable aristocrat Sir George Crofts. Here he exposes and satirizes the entire capitalist system, shows his infinite sympathy for the exploited, and therefore sharply and daringly touches on the most fundamental being of the capitalist system.
Ⅱ.John Galsworthy (1867-1933) 二．识记 His major works:
He published his first book, From the Four Winds (a volume of short stories), in 1897 under the pseudonym of John Sinjohn. The experiences of his wife's unhappy life of the first marriage were reflected in The Man of Property (1906), which, together with his first p1ay, The Silver Box (1906), established him as a prominent novelist and playwright in the public mind. After the First Wor1d War he completed The Forsyte Saga, his first trilogy: The Man of Property, In Chancery (1920) and To Let (1921). His second
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Forsyte trilogy, A Modern Comedy, appeared in 1929, and the third, End of the Chapter, posthumous1y in 1934. 三． 领会
1．John Galsworthy basic literary ideas: Galsworthy was essentially a bourgeois liberal, a reformist. Throughout his life, he was preoccupied with the social injustice in his time. He regarded human life as a struggle between the rich and the poor. And his sympathy always went out to the suffering poor. In his works, he criticizes a dull, parasitic and inhuman class of the rich, which is against any kind of change; and showed great sympathy to the oppressed, but rebellious and unyie1ding class of the poor, which is bent on reforming things. He battled for many liberal causes, from women's suffrage to the abo1ition of censorship. He was also a moralist and a critic whose primary aim as a writer was not to create a new society but to criticize the existing one, though his final aim was to keep a balance between the rich and the poor. His works were designed to help improve the status quo; there was no suggestion in them that society shou1d be radical1y and painfully reconstructed if socia1 enemies were to be reconciled and social i11s remedied. 2．The characteristics of Galsworthy's critical realism and its social effect:
Ga1sworthy was a conventional writer, having inherited the fine traditions of the great Victorian nove1ists of the critical realism such as Dickens and Thackeray. He learned from Maupassant for the vigor, economy and clarity of writing, Turgenev for the wisdom and naturalness, and Tostoy for the depth of insight and the breadth of character drawing. Technically, he was more traditional than adventurous, focusing on plot development and character portrayal. With an objective observation and a naturalistic description, Galsworthy had tried his best to make an impartial presentation of the social 1ife in a documentary precision. By emphasizing the critical element in his writing, he daunt1essly laid bare the true features of the good and the evi1 of the bourgeois society. He was also successful in his attempt to present satire and humor in his writing. He wrote in a clear and unpretentious sty1e with a c1ear and straightforward language. 四．应用：Selected Reading:
An Excerpt from Chapter l3 of The Man of Property
1. The outline of the story: The Man of Property is the first novel of the Forsyte trilogies which tell the ups and downs of the Forsyte family from 1886 to 1926. This novel centers itself on the Soames-Irene-Bosinney triangle. Soames Forsyte, a typical Forsyte, represents the essence of the principle that the accumulation of wealth is the sole aim of life, for he considers everything in terms of one's property. Irene, his young and beautiful wife, on the contrary, loves art and cherishes noble ideals of life. But Soames never pay any attention to her thoughts and feeling; he takes her merel
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