英美文学选读应用

《英美文学选读》应用English Literature

Chapter One The Renaissance Period

I. Shakespeare’s sonnets

1. With a few exceptions, Shakespeare writes his sonnets in the popular English form of three quatrains and a couplet. The couplet usually ties the sonnet to one of the general themes, leaving the quatrains free to develop the poetic intensity.

2. The sonnet’s most common themes concern the destructive effects of time, the quickness of physical decay, and the loss of beauty, vigor, and love. Although the poems celebrate life, they are always with a keen awareness of death.

3. His sonnet 18 expresses that beautiful things can rely on the force of literature to reach eternity. Literature is created by man, thus it declares man’s eternity. The poem shows the mighty self-confidence of the newly class. The vivid, variable and rich images reflect the lively and adventurous spirits of those who were opening new world.

II. Shakespeare’s A Merchant of Venice

1. Theme

(1) Justice vs. mercy: Shakespeare suggests that all men should be merciful. There is a further aspect of justice—the injustice revealed in the Christians’ treatment of the Jews.

(2) Appearance vs. reality: e.g. superficial or external beauty vs. moral or spiritual beauty or truth (in the case of three caskets); the letters of law vs. the spirit of the law.

(3) Commercial or material values vs. love: True love is much more worthwhile than money and material values. Antonio epitomizes true love in his friendship for Bassanio.

2. The character analysis of Shylock

Shylock is a Jewish usurer, and he is a tragic-comic character.

He is comic because he finally becomes the one punished by his own evil deed. He is avaricious. He accumulates as much wealth as he can and he even equates his lost daughter with his lost money. He is also cruel. In order to revenge, he would rather claim a pound of flesh from his enemy Antonio than get back his loan.

He is tragic, because he is the victim of the society. As a Jew, he is not treated equally by the society. The law is harsh to him. He has to make as much money as he can in order to protect him. He is abused by Antonio, so he wants to get revenge.

III. The character analysis of Hamlet

Hamlet is a scholar and a warrior. His father has been killed by his uncle, Claudius, who then take the throne and marries his mother. Hamlet is informed by the ghost of his father to take revenge, but the weakness of indecisiveness or indetermination in his character always delay his action, and finally leads to his tragic fall of death. Hamlet is not a man of action, but a man of thinking at first. He hesitates at some crucial moments. At last when he is forced to take some actions, he does kill Claudius gloriously, but he also sacrifices his own life.

V. Milton’s Paradise Lost :

1.Structure: The story is taken from the Old Testament. It extends chronologically from the exaltation of Christ before the creature of universe to the second coming of Christ. Geographically, it ranges over the entire world.

2. The character analysis of Satan:

He has the strength, the courage and the capacity for leadership, but he devoted all those qualities to evil. His defiance of God shows his egoistic pride, his false conception of freedom, and his alienation from all good. His own evil and damnation give him potentially tragic dimensions. Therefore, Satan is enveloped in dramatic irony because he fight in ignorance of the unshakable power of God and goodness.

3.Features: Parallel and contrast

The central conflict and contrast between good and evil are intensified by the contrast between heaven and hell, light and darkness, love and hate, reason and passion, etc.

Chapter Two The Neo-classical Period

III. The social satire of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels

The account of Lilliputian life, especially the games for people at court, alludes to the similar ridiculous practices or tricks in the English government. The description of the competition in the games before the royal members leads to the fact that the success of those government officials such as the Prime Minister lies not in their being any wiser or better but in their being more dexterous in the game. This alludes to the practices in England. And the pompous words singing of the Lilliputian emperor ridicule the aristocratic arrogance and vanity.

IV. Henry Fielding and his Tom Jones

It is a good example of “comic epic in prose”. Fielding describes the fight between Molly and the villagers and her fistfight with Goody Brown in the grand style of the Homeric epic. He first of all calls on the Muses to assist him in recounting the fight as if it were of great historical importance. Like Homer who would list names of gods involved in the battle, he lists the names of the villagers. He treats Molly as a great hero at battle, an “Amazonian heroine”. Besides, he uses a mock-epic tone and seems very solemn about what he is describing. He uses formal words and refined language. Finally, he makes use of different figures of speech, particularly, irony and hyperbole.

Chapter Three The Romantic Period

I. Wor dsworth and his “I wandered lonely as a cloud”

The poem is crystal clear and lucid. Below the immediate surface, we find that all the realistic details of the flowers, the trees, the waves, the wind, and all the realistic details of the active joy, are absorbed into an over-all concrete metaphor, the recurrent image of the dance. The flowers, the stars, the waves are units in this dancing pattern of order in diversity, of linked eternal harmony and vitality. Through the revelation and recognition of his kinship with nature, the poet himself becomes as it were a part of the whole cosmic dance.

II. Shelley and his “Ode to the West Wind”

In the poem, Shelley eulogizes the west wind as a powerful phenomenon of nature that is both destroyer and preserver. The w ind enjoys boundless freedom and has the power to spread messages far and wide. The keynote in the poem is Shelley’s ever-present wish for himself and his fellow men to share the freedom of the west wind, remembering meanwhile his own and common human miseries. And the dominant mood is that of hope rather than despair, as the poet is hoping for the realization of the freedom and joy. The optimism expressed in the last two lines show the poet’s critical attitude toward the ugly social reality and his faith in a bright future for humanity.

IV. The character analysis of Elizabeth in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

Elizabeth is a beautiful young lady in the Bennets. She is intelligent, contrasting her empty-minded, snobbish and vulgar mother. She is a women of distinct character. She is not passive, but pursue her true love bravely. She turns down Mr. Collin’s marriage proposal and seeking her happiness with Darcy, the one she possesses true affection for her. She is also courageous. When Darcy’s aunt lady co mes to force her into a promise of never consenting to marry Darcy, she boldly challenges her authority, contempt and arrogance. On the whole, Elizabeth is a typical image of the good, attractive lady in the 19th century.

Chapter Four The Victorian Period

I. The features of Charles Dickens

1. His critical realism: While sticking to the principle of faithful representation of the 18th-century realist novel, he carried the duty to the criticism of the society and the defense of the mass.

2. He is a mas ter storyteller. With his first sentence, he engages the reader’s attention and holds it to the end.

3. What he writes is mainly the middle and lower-middle class life in London.

4. He is a master of language with a large vocabulary and an adeptness with the vernacular.

5. He is a great humorist as well as a great painter of pathos. He always mingles the two to make his fictional world realistic.

6. His characters are not only true to life but also large than life. There are both individual characters and type characters.

II. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre

1. Theme: The novel sharply criticizes the religious hypocrisy of charity institutions like Lowood School, where girls are trained to be humble slaves. It rebukes the social discrimination and false convention about love and marriage. Besides, the novel is a moral fable. It tells us that people have to go through all kinds of physical or moral tests to obtain their final happiness.

2. The character analysis of Jane Eyre: Jane Eyre is an orphan child with a fiery spirit and a longing to love and be loved. She is poor and plain, but she dares to love her master, a man superior to her in many ways, as a little governess. She is brave enough to declare to the man her love for him. She cuts a completely new women image. She represents those middle-class working women who are struggling for recognition of their basic rights and equality as a human being.

III. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Height

1. The novel is an extraordinary moving love story: the passion between Heathcliff and Catherine is the most intense, beautiful, and the most horrible passions ever found among human beings.

2. It is also a work of critical realism. Heathcliff is abused, rejected and distorted by the society only because he is a poor orphan of obscure parents. He suffers all kinds of inhuman treatment after the death of his benefactor. He loves Catherine dearly but forced to be separated from her. So, Heathcliff’s cruel revenge upon his enemies is justified in a way.

3. The author makes clear that it is wrong to discriminate on the basis of social status, and it is cruel and destructive to break genuine, natural human passions. Although Catherine and Edgar’s marriage is ideal in the eyes of the whole neighborhood, her love for Heathcliff is hard and everlasting.

Chapter Five The Modern Period

I. The features of Shaw’s plays:

1. Problem plays: He took the modern social issues as his subject with the aim of directing social reforms. Most of his plays are concerned with political, economic, or religious problems.

2. In his characterization, he makes the tricks of showing up one character vividly at the expense of another. His characters are the representatives of ideas, which shift and alter during the play.

3. The strong sense of comedy in his play are achieved through his witty dialogues, sharp satires, and vivid portrayal of characters.

II. The theme of Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s profession

1. The play is not only moral, but also has a strong realistic theme. The guilt for prostitution lies more upon the social system than immoral woman. He shows all human sufferings are consequences of the economic exploitation.

2. The play is a spiritual triumph for Vivie who experiences a journey from illusion to reality. At first, she is ignorant of the evil, and through a series of temptations, she understands the capitalist world better.

IV. T. S. Eliot’s “The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Written in the form of monologue, the poem is the song of a being divided between passion and timidity. It is about the impotence and futility of a modern everyman and his existence. Prufrock is an interesting tragic figure. He is a man caught in a sense of defeated idealism and tortured by unsatisfied desire. He does not dare to seek love because even if he could find it, it would not satisfy his needs. He compares himself with Hamlet. As a result of his timidity he has become incapable of action of any sort.

V. D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers

1. Theme: Sociologically, it is a novel about modern civiliza tion, the “sickness of a whole civilization”. Psychologically, it is

a case study of the Oedipus complex theory, for it deals with a son who loves the mother too dearly and hates the father too despisingly. The psychic conflict (between dark self and white self) in human relationships is the central theme of the novel.

2. The character analysis of Paul Morel:

He is a light, quick, slender boy. From his childhood, he is especially sensitive, artistic and imaginative, and he becomes extraordinarily dependent on his mother. When he gets older, his distorted relationship with his mother prevents him from loving girls as fully as he feels he should. Besides, Paul is also an artist, and a likeable young man adored by many girls.

VI. The features of stream of consciousness

1. The unspoken thoughts and feelings of their characters are described without resorting to objective description or conventional dialogue.

2. The flux of a character’s thoughts, impressions, emotions are often shown without logical sequence or syntax.

American Literature

Chapter one : The romantic period

II. Hawthorne’s Puritanism and his black vision of man:

1. Puritanism—it is the religious belief of the Puristans, who had intended to purify and simplify the religious ritual of the church of England.

2. his black vision of man—by the Calvinistic concept of original sin, he believed that human being are evil natured and sinful, and this sin is ever present in human heart and will pass one generation to another.

3. Young Goodman Brown—it shows that everyone has some evil secrets. The innocent and na?ve Brown is confronted with the vision of human evil in one terrible night, and then he becomes distrustful and doubtful. Brown stands for everyone ,who is born pure and has no contact with the real world ,and the prominent people of the village and church. They cover their secrets during daily lives, and under some circumstances such as the witch’s Sabbath, they become what they are. Even his closed wife, Faith, is no exception. So Brown is aged in that night.

III. The symbolism of Melville’s Mobby-Dick

1.The voyage to catch the white whale is the one of the mind in quest of the truth and knowledge of universe.

2. To Ahab, the whale is an evil creature or the agent of an evil force that control the universe. As to readers, the whale is a symbol of physical limits, or a symbol of nature. It also can stand for the ultimate mystery of the universe and the wall behind which unknown malicious things are hiding.

IV. Whitman and his Leaves of Grass :

1. Theme: sing of the “en-mass” and the self / pursuit of love, happiness, and sexual love / sometimes about politics (Drum taps)

2. Whitman’s originality first in his use of the poetic form free verse (i.e. poetry without a fixed beat or regular rh yme scheme),by means of which he becomes conversational and casual.

3.He uses the first person pronoun “I” to stress individualism, and oral language to acquire sympathy from the common reader.

Chapter two : The realistic period

I. The character analysis and social meaning of Huck Finn in Adventure of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Huck is a typical American boy with “a sound heart and a deformed conscience”. He appears to be vulgar in language and in manner, but he is honest and decent i n essence. His remarkable raft’s journey down on the Mississippi river can be regarded as his process of education and his way to grow up. At first, he stands by slavery, for he clings to the idea that if he lets go the slave, he will be damned to go to he ll. And when the “King” sells Jim for money, Huck decides to inform Jim’s master. After he thinks of the past good time when Jim and he are on the raft where Jim shows great care and deep affection for him, he decide to rescue Jim. And Huck still thinks he is wrong while he is doing the right thing.

Huck is the son of nature and a symbol for freedom and earthly pragmatism. Through the eye of Huck, the innocent and reluctant rebel, we see the pre-Civil War American society fully exposed. Twain contrasts the life on the river and the life on the banks, the innocence and the experience, the nature and the culture, the wilderness and the civilization.

II. Daisy Miller by Henry James

1. Theme: The novel is a story about American innocence defeated by the stiff, traditional values of Europe. James condemns the American failure to adopt expressive manners intelligently and point out the false believing that a good heart is readily visible to all. The death of Daisy results from the misunderstanding between people with different cultural backgrounds.

2. The character analysis of Daisy: She represents typical American girl, who is uninformed and without the mature guidance. Ignorance and parental indulgence combine to foster he assertive self-confidence and fierce willfulness. She behaves in the same daring naive way in Europe as she does at home. When someone is against her, she becomes more contrary. She knows that she means no harm and is amazed that anyone should think she does. She does not compromise to the European manners.

3. The character analysis of Winterbourne: He is a Europeanized American, who has live too long in foreign parts. He is very experience and has a problem understanding Daisy. He endeavors to put her in sort of formula, i.e. to classify her.

III. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser:

1. Theme: The author invented the success of Carrie and the downfall of Hurstwood out of an inevitable and natural judgment, because the fittest can survive in a competitive, amoral society according to the social Darwinism.

2. The character analysis of Carrie: She follows the right direction to a pursuit of the American dream, and the circumstances and her desire for a better life direct to the successful goal. But she is not contented, because with wealth and fame, she still finds herself lonely. She is a product of the society, a realization of the theory of the survival of the fittest.

3. The character analysis of Hurstwood: He is a negative evidence of the theory of the survival of the fittest. Because he is still conventional and can not throw away the social morals, he is not fitted to live in New York.

Chapter three : The Modern Period

I. Ezra Pound and his theory of Imagism

1. The principles: a. direct treatment of the thing; b. to use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation; c. to compose in the sequence of the musical; d. to use the language of common speech and the exact word; e. to create new rhythms; f. absolutely freedom in the choice of subject.

2. Imagism is to present an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. An imagistic poem must present the object exactly the way the thing is seen. And the reader can form the image of the object through the process of reading the abstract and concrete words.

II. Frost and his poetry on nature:

Frost is deeply interested in nature and in men’s relationship to nature. Nature appears as an explicator and a mediator for man and serve as the center of reference of his behavior. Peace and order can be found in Frost’s poetical natural world. With surface simplicity of his poems, the thematic concerns are always presented in rich symbols. Therefore his work resists easy interpretation.

III. F. Scott Fitzgerald and his The Great Gatsby

1. Theme: Gatsby is American Everyman. His extraordinary energy and wealth make him pursue the dream. His death in the end points at the truth about the withering of the American Dream. The spiritual and moral sterility that has resulted from the withered American Dream is fully revealed in the article. However, although he is defeated, the dream has gave Gatsby a dignity and a set of qualities. His hope and belief in the promise of future makes him the embodiment of the values of the incorruptible American Dream .

2. The character analysis of Gatsby: Gatsby is great, because he is dignified and ennobled by his dream and his mythic vision of life. He has the desire to repeat the past, the desire for money, and the desire for incarnation of unutterable vision on this material earth. For Gatsby, Daisy is the soul of his dreams. He believe he can regain Daisy and romantically rebels of time. Although he has the wealth that can match with the leisured class, he does not have their manners. His tragedy lies in his possession of a naive sense and chivalry.

IV. Ernest Hemingway’s artistic features:

1. The Hemingway code heroes and grace under pressure:

They have seen the cold world ,and for one cause, they boldly and courageously face the reality. They has an indestructible spirit for his optimistic view of life. Whatever is the result is, the are ready to live with grace under pressure. No matter how tragic the ending is, they will never be defeated. Finally, they will be prevail because of their indestructible spirit and courage.

2.The iceberg technique:

Hemingway believe that a good writer does not need to reveal every detail of a character or action. The one-eighth the is presented will suggest all other meaningful dimensions of the story. Thus, Hemingway’s language is symbolic and suggestive.

V. The character analysis of Emily in A Rose for Emily:

Emily is a symbol of old values, standing for tradition, duty and past glory. But she is also a victim to all those she cares and embrace. The source of Emily’s strangeness is from her born pride and self-esteem, the domineering behavior of her father and the betrayal of her lover. Barricaded in her house, she has frozen the past to protect her dreams. Her life is tragic because the defiance of the community, her refusal to accept the change and her extreme pride have pushed her to abnormality and insanity.