2) Women’s social position; 3) Women’s equal rights with men; 4) Moral problems; 5) The capital system and social problems
28. The major contribution made by the 19th century critical realists is their
perfection of the novel. Like the realists of the 18th century, the 19th century critical realist made use of the form of novel of full and detailed representations of social and political events, and of the fate of individuals and of whole social classes. However, the realistic novels of the 19th century went a step further than those of the 18th century in that they not only pictured the conflicts between individuals who stood for definite social strata, but also showed the broad social conflicts over and above the fate of mere individuals. Their artistic representation of vital social movements such as Chartism, and their vivid description of the dramatic conflicts of the time make the 19th century realistic novel ―the epic of the bourgeois society‖. 29. The similarities and dissimilarities of the leading Victorian poets: Similarities:
1) Their poems are the continuation of Romanticism and influenced by
poems of Romantists.
2) The poets show the practice in metrical patterns and literary styles. Dissimilarities:
1) Browning is active and optimistic while Tennyson is pessimistic. 2) Browning seeks for new styles while Tennyson follows conventions. 30. The setting in ―Crossing the Bar‖: The setting refers to sunset, evening star,
twilight and bell. They show the dividing line between life and death. The speaker in the poem is old and he is standing on the edge of death. He is between life and death. The setting agrees with the author’s own situation. 31. Aestheticism: The basic theory of the Aesthetic movement is ―art for art’s
sake‖. Aestheticism places art above life, and holds that life should imitate art, not art imitate life. According to the aesthetes, all artistic creation is absolutely subjective as opposed to objective. Art should be free from any influence of egoism. Only when art is for art’s sake, can it be immortal. This
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was one of the reactions against the materialism and commercialism of the Victorian industrial era, as well as a reaction against the Victorian convention of art for morality’s sake, or art for money’s sake. The representatives are Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater.
Chapter Seven
English Literature of the First Half of the 20th Century
主要内容：
1. Historical background: WWI & WWII 2. Modernism
3. Imagism: Ezra Pound
4. Thomas Hardy(poet): Wessex Poems 5. Georgian Poets 6. War Poets
7. William Butler Yeats 8. the Abbey Theatre 9. Auden Group
10. Dylan Thomas: The Map of Love
11. Neo-Romanticism: Robert Louis Stevenson 12. Movement Poets 13. Philip Larkin
14. John Galsworthy: The Forsyte Saga
15. Herbert George Wells: The Time Machine, The Invisible Man 16. Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness 17. E. M. Forster: A Passage to India
18. James Joyce: Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses 19. Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse 20. D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow 21. Evelyn Waugh
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22. George Orwell: Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four 23. Graham Greene
24. Katherine Mansfield: The Garden-Party 25. George Bernard Shaw 26. J. M. Synge 27. Sean O’Casey
28. T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land 29. Beckett and absurd drama 重点掌握:
1. Joyce was born in Ireland and became the founder of stream of consciousness
school of novel writing.
2. Symbolism, Surrealism, Imagism, Expressionism, etc, all belong to School of
Modernism.
3. The Waste Land was mainly encouraged by the author’s study of Golden Bough. 4. The dominant poetic technique used in The Waste Land is symbolism. 5. Dubliners is a writing of stream of consciousness.
6. The name of the protagonist in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was
derived from Greek mythology.
7. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was written by James Joyce. 8. Conrad was born in Poland.
9. The person who influenced Lawrence life and writing is his mother.
10. Auden wrote For the Time Being, The Sea and the Mirror and The Age of Anxiety. 11. Dylan Thomas belongs to the school of Neo-romanticism. 12. Angry Young Man of the 1950’s most came from the lower class. 13. Saint Joan was written by Shaw. It is a historical play. 14. Widowers’ House was written by Bernard Shaw
15. ―Justice was done; and the president of the Immortals had ended his sport‖ is a
part of the quotation from Tess of D’ Urbervilles. 16. Goldsmith, Sheridan, and Swift are Irish.
17. William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde and J. M. Synge are
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Irish dramatists.
18. The Tradition and the Individual Talents established T. S. Eliot as an important
critic.
19. The short story ―The Rocking Horse Winner‖ was written by Lawrence.
20. Paul is tortured between his mother and his girl friends in Sons and Lovers. His
mother’s all-possessive affection for her son becomes a hindrance to his independent development as a man. She opposes Paul’s love for Miriam. Miriam’s love is egocentric and intolerable. Clara’ passion is stifling. The three women all want to possess Paul.
21. As an independent literary genre, the short story did not win popularity in
England until the turn of the 20th century. Anton Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant represent the two major tendencies in the development of the English short stories.
22. The Movement Poets was a school of poets who refused Imagism of Ezra Pound
and Modernism of T. S. Eliot but followed the tradition of the Auden Group. Their poetry seemed to be an accurate reflection of the post-war British society. They sought an unpretentious and undecorated diction, which could render an experience simply and truthfully. Larkin’s poems with their themes of deprivation and absence outranked all of his contemporaries.
23. Paul’s relation with three women in Sons and Lovers: He loves his mother and
Clara and Miriam, his two lovers. His mother’s all-possessive affection for her son becomes a hindrance to his independent development as a man. Miriam’s love is egocentric and intolerable. Clara’s passion is stifling.
24. The symbolic meaning of the title in the story of Araby by Joyce: The word
Araby comes from Arabian which reminds the reader of the oriental land----a wonderful and dreaming world. In his story, Araby is the name of a bazaar which symbolizes the dream, the ideal and the embodiment of beauty for the boy. 25. The theme of Araby is the frustrated quest for beauty is drabness at last. It reflects
the situation in Ireland in the particular period. The society is of coldness, gloom and harshness.
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26. Characteristics of Yeats’ poetical creation in different periods: 1) During the early
years of Yeats’ literary career, he wrote romantic poetry under the influence of Spenser, Shelly and the Pre-Raphaelites. 2) The 1910s were Yeats’ period of transition, during which he departed from the romanticism of his early period and developed into modernism, influenced by the poetry and criticism of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. 3) The years 1919-1939 were Yeats’ final period of maturity. 27. Men’s attitudes toward death in ―Do not go gentle into that good night‖: 1) Wise
men resist death because they have not get succeed in speaking words that were as powerful as they wished. 2) Good men do not want to die because their deeds have not produced enough results. 3) Wild men regret that they did not keep the energy of their youth, but allow themselves to grow sad, and they won’t have another chance. 4) Grave men finally understand that there are unexpected possibilities in life.
28. The Irish Literary Revival of the early 20th century: It deals with dramas greatly
which is also called Revival of Drama with the outstanding figures like Yeats, Synge and Beckett, etc. It aimed at the revival of the Irish language and independence from England
29. Modernist English poetry has the following chief traits. 1. Modernist poets
insisted on ―direct treatment of things‖ and on the avoidance of all words ―that do not contribute to the presentation‖ 2. Modernist poetry has freer metrical movement. 3. Modernism introduced into poetry a much higher degree of intellectual complexity because of the enthusiasm for metaphysical poetry. 4. The modernist poets frequently made use of symbolism 5. it brought poetic language and rhythm closer to that of conversation by the use of colloquial expressions and even slang. 6, it employed irony and puns which had been banished from serious poetry for over two hundred years 7. it was often international and urban in theme.
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