英美文学

2. What makes the poet think that “thou” can be more beautiful than summer and immortal?

At the very beginning, the poet puts forth a question: ―Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?‖ Then he gives an answer: ―Thou art lovelier and more temperate.‖ On the one hand, ―Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer’s lease hath all too short a date;‖ on the other hand, ―Sometime too hot the heaven shines, and often is his gold complexion dimmed.‖ So from the above two aspects the poet thinks that ―thou‖ can be more beautiful than summer. In addition, ―And every fair from fair sometime declines, by chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed.‖ Compared with immortal, ―But thy eternal summer shall not fade, nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, nor shall death brag thou wand’ rest in his shade, when in eternal lines to times th ou grow’st.‖ Therefore, the poet draws a conclusion: ―So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to the e.‖ In this poem, the poet makes ―thou‖ more beautiful than summer and immortal because of his beautiful lines. So in this case, ―thou‖ in the poem can be regarded as female because love can beauty eternal. Or ―thou‖ can be referred to male, for friendship can make beauty everlasting. Even ―thou‖ can be abstract ―love‖ or ―beauty‖ which will become eternal in the wonderful poem.

莎士比亚诗歌的两个主题：时光不饶人，青春和美丽是短暂的；只有诗歌才有力量使美丽与爱情永存。(theme: 只有文学可与时间抗衡 )

3. As “the trumpet of prophecy”, what does the west wind predict in physical reali ty? How do you understand it symbolically?

As the speaker of "Ode to the West Wind" feels himself waning and decaying, he begs the wind to use him as an instrument, inhabit him, distribute his ideas, or prophesy th rough his mouth. He hopes to transform himself by uniting his own spirit with the larg er "Spirit" of the West Wind and of Nature itself.

The speaker wishes that the wind could affect him the way it does leaves and clouds a nd waves. Because it can’t, he asks the wind to play him like an instrument, bringing out his sadness in its own musical lament. Maybe the wind can even help him to send his ideas all over the worl d; even if they’re not powerful in their own right, his ideas might inspire others. The sad music that t he wind will play on him will become a prophecy. The West Wind of autumn brings o n a cold, barren period of winter, but isn’t winter always followed by a spring?

1. In what way is the West Wind both a destroyer and a preserver?

West wind is the destroyer as it is turbulent and strong and destroys the wide spread v egetation. It is a destroyer of the old, decaying and valueless things (such as dead leav es), blowing over the land, drives away the dead leaves. Shelly shows the irony of the

wind that acts in a contradictory manner.(use and Describe the words that show the po tential strength and use effective language)It is the preserver as it brings life to the dea d atmosphere, it spreads the seeds and they lie two inches beneath the ground and eve ntually sprout into seedlings.

>Theme of Man and the Natural World: Wordsworth is the granddaddy of all natur e poets, and he’s in top form in "I wandered lonely as a Cloud." In her journal entry about the day in q uestion, Wordsworth's sister Dorothy wrote about their surprise at finding so many daf fodils in such a strange place, next to a lake and under some trees. "How’d those get there?" she wondered, even guessing that maybe the seeds floated across t he lake. The event is one of the minor miracles that nature produces all the time, as an yone who has seen the documentary Planet Earth or the Disney movie Earth knows. Wordsworth’s nature is full of life and vitality. He appreciates its wildness and unpredictability, but he humanizes the landscape and fits it to his own mind.

Theme of Happiness" I wandered lonely as a Cloud" is a poem that just makes you fe el good about life. It says that even when you are by yourself and lonely and missing your friends, you can use your imagination to fine new friends in the world around yo u. As John Milton famously wrote, "The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven." The speaker of this poem makes a heaven out of a windy day and a bunch of daffodils. His happiness does not last forever – he’s not that unrealistic – but the daffodils give him a little boost of joy whenever he ne eds it, like recharging his batteries.

Theme of Spirituality The 19th century Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle coined the p hrase "natural supernaturalism," which has been used by later critics to describe how t he Romantic poets, and especially Wordsworth, viewed the natural world as a spiritual realm. The idea is that Heaven comes down to earth and is viewed as part of the worl d. This poem illustrates the principle of natural supernaturalism. The daffodils are like angels and twinkling stars, and the "bliss" of heaven occurs in speaker’s imagination. He uses Christian ideas and images to make an ode to nature without a ny reference to God.

Theme of Memory and the Past "I wandered lonely as a Cloud" is almost like a sim pler version of " Tintern Abbey ," one of Wordsworths other most famous works. In b oth poems, the memory of beautiful things serves as a comfort to the speaker even aft er the experience of viewing them has ended. He can always draw on his imagination to reproduce the joy of the event and to remember the spiritual wisdom that it provide d. In the case of "I wandered lonely as a Cloud," we do not realize just how far in the f uture the speaker’s perspective is located until the fourth stanza, when he describes just how often the d affodils have comforted him.

“half of love”

The nightingale described within the poem experiences a type of death but it does noa ctually die. Instead, the songbird is capable of living through its song, which is a fate tha t humans cannot expect. The poem ends with an acceptance that pleasure cannot las t and that deat is an inevitable part of life. In the poem, Keats imagines the loss of the physical world and ses himself dead—a "sod" over which the nightingale sin gs.

Theme：The Picture of Dorian Gray

The book represents the profound and damaging influence that art can have over an individual and serves as a warning to those who would surrender themselves so completely to such an influence.

Dorian's story plays upon the timeless theme of selling one's soul in exchange for earthly pleasures and the inevitable disaster that results.

达洛维夫人叙事特征

In Mrs. Dalloway, all of the action, aside from the flashbacks, takes place on a day in June. It is an example of stream of consciousness storytelling:every scene closely tracks the momentary thoughts of a particular character. Woolf blurs the distinction between direct and indirect speech throughout the novel, freely alternating her mode of narration between omniscient(无所不知) description, indirect interior monologue, and soliloquy. The narration follows at least twenty characters in this way, but the bulk of the novel is spent with Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith.

意识流：

Stream of consciousness is a narrative device that attempts to give the written equivalent of the character's thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue (see below), or in connection to his or her actions.

——20th C novels before 1950

David Herbert Lawrence(劳伦斯): Sons and Lovers(儿子与情人)

The Rainbow Women in Love

William Somerset Maugham: Of Human Bondage

The Moon and Sixpence Cakes and Ale The Razor’s Edge

Katherine Mansfield: The Garden Party and Other Stories

George Orwell(乔治·奥威尔): Animal Farm(动物庄园) Nineteen Eight-four(一九八四) ——Despair and Absurdity in contemporary English drama

John Osborne(约翰·奥斯朋): Look Back in Anger(愤怒中回顾)

Samuel Beckett(赛缪尔·贝克特)---a forerunner of the theater of the absurd

Waiting for Godot(等待戈多) Nobel Prize in 1969

"Annabel Lee" was composed in the form of a fairy tale. First, the poet chose simple everyday words as

that of tales to compose his poem, so that it

could be easily reached by everyone, even by small children.

Second, the starting line "It was many and many a year ago, / In a kingdom by the sea," suggests that the tale has existed for a long time and it has been told many times, which indicates the strong love

between the narrator and Annabel Lee doesn't fade with time, and it will be told from gen eration to generation; by this way, their love will reach immortality.

What is the image of the kingdom by the sea used for?

The images of "the kingdom by the sea", "the seraphs" and "the demons" create a mythical remote atmosphere. This implies that their love is so great and beautiful that it could only exist in a remote kingdom by the sea.

The image of children

"Children" implies that their love is pure and innocent, without being aware of the earthly troubles.

The image of moon and stars

"The moon" and "the stars" are the images of the universe, which show that all the things in the world make the narrator think of Annabel Lee.

The image of the sounding sea

"The sounding sea" is used to emphasize the quietness of the kingdom by contrast, and at the same time implies the changing of time in order to show the unchanging love by contrast.

Two roads, one is a more common route, the other is less traveled, which “was grassy and wanted wear”. What do the two roads signify?

The common easy path and exceptional challenging path. The two different paths sign ify two different kinds of lives. Choosing the common easy path, people will feel at ease and live in safety, because the outcome is predictable. Choosing the less traveled road represents the gamble of facing a more difficult path in lives. People hope to achieve a satisfactory and interesting life on this road. The wish is good, but reality is full of challenges and uncertainties. Nobody can be sure of the outcome.

The fact that the traveler took this path over the more popular, secure one indica tes what type of personality he has?

He does not want to necessarily follow the crowd but do more of what has never been done, what is new and different.

“Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.”What does this sentence tell us? Once the decision is made, there will be no way to return to the original choice to experience the other route.

After the decision, do you think the traveler will be regretful for his choice?

Probably yes, “I shall be telling this with a sigh, Somewhere ages and ages hence:”because he has missed some other things. But later he is proud of his choice, for “that has made all the difference.”