c. The last great poems:
Milton wrote his three major poetical works: Paradise Lost, Paradise regained, and Samson Agonistes.
B. 代表作:
Paradise Lost:
A). The theme and structure:
Paradise Lost is a long epic divided into 12 books. The theme is the “Fall of Man”.
B). The humanistic spirits
a. Working through the tradition of a Christian humanism, Milton wrote Paradise Lost, intending to expose the ways of Satan and to “justify the ways of God to man.”
b. At the center of the conflict between human love and spiritual duty lies Milton’s fundamental concern with freedom and choice.
c. The freedom of the will is the keystone of Milton’s creed.
Jonathan Swift/乔纳森 斯威夫特作者简介
乔纳森 斯威夫特(1667-1745)出生于都柏林，是个遗腹子，在其伯父的抚养下长大。1682年入都柏林的三一学院求学，获得学士学位；1692年获牛津大学硕士学位，1701年在三一学院获神学博士学位。离开三一学院后，斯威夫特曾给贵族当私人秘书，后来回到故乡做牧师，介入政治，为托利党的《考察报》(The Examiner)撰稿，写下了大量的政论文和小册子。斯威夫特的文笔以讽刺见长，是讽刺文学的一代宗师。斯威夫特的讽刺性散文很多，较为著名的有《一只桶的故事》(“A Tale of a Tub”, 1697)、《书籍之战》(“The Battle of the Books”, 1698)以及《布商来信》(“The Drapier’s Letter”,1724)和《一个温和的建议》(“A Modest Proposal”,1729)等。斯威夫特一生不得志，他的社会经历使他看透了一切，于是他写下了不朽名著《格列佛游记》(Gulliver’s Travels,1726)。此外，后人根据斯威夫特给其女友写的信编成的《给斯黛拉的日记》(Journal to Stella, 1766)也是英语日记文学中很重要的一部作品。
格列佛游记》内容欣赏分析
《格列佛游记》向来被当作世界儿童文学的经典，但当初斯威夫特创作这部小说的目的并不是为了儿童。作者自己说，他的创作目的“不是为了提供娱乐而是为了激怒这个世界。”也许是作品中的讽刺过于辛辣，这部小说的初版是匿名发表的。在这部小说中，斯威夫特通过丰富的想象，含沙射影地对英国的政治和社会大加撘伐，对人性的弱点进行无情的嘲讽。在慧马国中，马的理智与高贵和野胡的贪欲与鄙陋形成反差极大的对比，高下立判；再通过马的视角观察人类--野胡的同类，或者说就是野胡--使人性中的贪婪、堕落和无知等诸多缺点暴露无疑。斯威夫特的冷嘲热讽不可谓不辛辣尖刻，但文字上不温不火，绵里藏针，精彩
华中师范大学英语专业英美文学课中英文课堂讲义
之处令人拍案叫绝。斯威夫特的语言具体明晰，简略中透出优雅；他曾把文字风格定义成“恰到好处的词语用在恰到好处的地方”，这也许是对他自己的语言风格的最好评注。
《格列佛游记》中的故事是幻想性的、超现实的，但他暗中讽刺的现实即使在今天也并不鲜见，而且他的描写细致入微，给人以强烈的现实感。幻想和现实的统一使这部小说超越了时空限制，成为世界范围内老幼咸宜的不朽名篇。
Simple introduction to Daniel Defoe/丹尼尔 笛福简介
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) English novelist, pamphleteer, and journalist, is most famous as the author of Robinson Crusoe (1719), a story of a man shipwrecked alone on an island. Along with Samuel Richardson, Defoe is considered the founder of the English novel.
Defoe was one of the first to write stories about believable characters in realistic situations using simple prose. He achieved literary immortality when in April 1719 he published Robinson Crusoe, which was based partly on the memoirs of voyagers and castaways, such as Alexander Selkirk.
《鲁宾逊漂流记》内容赏析
《鲁宾逊漂流记》一经发表即深受各阶层读者的广泛欢迎，究其原因，其中很重要的一点是鲁宾逊的形象契合了18世纪英国社会的精神。鲁宾逊渴望冒险，不甘平庸的生活，是资产阶级上升时期的代表人物。他沦落荒岛后，遇到了诸多似乎难以克服的困难，但他以坚强的毅力和百折不回的决心，逐一解决了居住、食物、工具等方面的问题，过上了舒适的生活。他十分乐观，充满了斗志，体现了自我奋斗的精神，他的创造性劳动及成果也体现了人类智慧的无穷魅力。鲁宾逊是富有开拓和进取精神的资产阶级英雄，也是充满征服欲和开疆拓土野心的殖民代表。他在岛上一站稳脚跟便在海边竖起了登岸标记，在后文叙述的他与星期五的关系中，鲁宾逊的殖民主义者形象更加明显。所以，《鲁宾逊漂流记》是资本主义奋斗精神的颂歌，也是企图使殖民主义合法化的叙事。
这部作品语言平实，叙事精确。本章节选部分叙述了鲁宾逊凭借一己之力在荒岛上安家的经过，看似十分困难，甚至不可能，但作者把鲁宾逊选址造屋的过程以精确具体的细节呈现在我们的眼前，具有强烈的真实感，十分可信，使我们觉得，如果我们处在鲁宾逊的位置似乎也会这样做，难怪后人把笛福称为“英国小说之父”，把《鲁宾逊漂流记》看作现实主义小说的奠基之作。
Motifs of Robinson Crusoe/鲁宾逊漂流记的中心思想
Counting and Measuring
Crusoe is a careful note-taker whenever numbers and quantities are involved. He does not simply tell us that his hedge encloses a large space, but informs us with a surveyor’s precision that the space is “150 yards in length, and 100 yards in breadth.” He tells us not simply that he spends a long time making his canoe in Chapter XVI, but that it takes precisely twenty days to fell the tree and fourteen to remove the branches. It is not just an immense tree, but is “five foot ten inches in diameter at the lower part . . . and four foot eleven inches diameter at the end of twenty-two foot.” Furthermore, time is measured with similar exactitude, as Crusoe’s journal shows. We may often wonder why Crusoe feels it useful to record that it did not rain on December 26, but for him the necessity of counting out each day is never questioned. All these examples of counting and measuring underscore Crusoe’s practical, businesslike character and his hands-on approach to life. But Defoe sometimes hints at the futility of Crusoe’s measuring—as when the carefully measured canoe cannot reach water or when his obsessively kept calendar is thrown off by a day