一个英语生的文学导论课笔记

An introduction to literature Literature

一、What is literature?

?Literature comes from Latin "litterae", meaning "letter" in English.

?The word literature literally means "acquaintance with letters" and the term

"letters" is sometimes used to signify "literature," as in the figures of speech "arts and letters" and "man of letters."

?General meanings?

①published writings in a particular style on a particular subject (publications, books, brochures and so on)

②creative writing of recognized artistic value (artistic and literary writings)

③the profession or art of a writer (vocation)

④the humanistic study of a body of literature (subject)

⑤musical product

⑥knowledge or learning

⑦reading (supplementary literature)

A Crazy Act

?Literature is about writing in a particular country of a period, all over the world in general.

?Literature is a writing which has claimed to consider underground of beauty of form, and emotional effect. (Aestheticism)

?Literature is all the writings that have permanent value, excellent form and great emotional effect.

?Literature is a writing having excellence of form or expression, and expressing ideas of permanence of universal interest. (critical mind)

? A developing term.

Aestheticism

Aestheticism (or the Aesthetic Movement) was a 19th century European art movement that emphasized aesthetic values more than socio-political themes for literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design.

Generally, it represents the same tendencies that symbolism or decadence represented in France, and may be considered the British version of the same style.

It was part of the anti-19th century reaction and had post-Romantic origins, and as such anticipates modernism. It was a feature of the late 19th century from about 1868 to about 1900.

The artists and writers of Aesthetic style used the slogan "Art for Art's Sake"(艺术是纯粹的), tended to profess that the Arts should provide refined sensuous pleasure, rather than convey moral or sentimental messages. Instead, they believed that Art did not have any didactic purpose; it need only be beautiful.

The Aesthetes developed a cult of beauty, which they considered the basic factor of art. Life should copy Art, they asserted. They considered nature as crude and lacking in design when compared to art.

In Britain the best representatives were Oscar Wilde and Algernon Charles Swinburne, also including John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, greatly influenced by the French Symbolists.

Oscar Wilde (1856-1900):

a. an Irish playwright, an aesthete advocating ―art for art’s sake‖.

b. His language is concise, witty and sharp. He criticizes the hypocrisy and corruption of the upper class. His attacks are more like jokes.

https://www.360docs.net/doc/317615996.html,dy Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest

A developing term.

What is literature?

1)The definition of 14th century:

It means polite learning through reading. A man of literature or a man of letters = a man of wide reading, ―literacy‖

2)The definition of 18th century:

practice and profession of writing

3)The definition of 19th century:

the high skills of writing in the special context of high imagination

4)Robert Frost‘s definition:

performance in words

5)Modern definition:

We can define literature as language artistically used to achieve identifiable literary qualities and to convey meaningful messages. Literature is characterized by beauty of expression and form and by universality intellectual and emotional appeal.

Different Ideas

?Literature is imitation.

?Literature is function.

?Literature is an expression of emotions. (imagism意象派)

?Literature is literature.（pay attention to its form）

Imagism

1)It is a Movement in U.S. and English poetry characterized by the use of

concrete language and figures of speech, modern subject matter, metrical freedom, and avoidance of romantic or mystical themes, aiming at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images.

2)It grew out of the Symbolist Movement in 1912 and was initially led by Ezra

Pound, Amy Lowell, and others.

3)The Imagist manifesto came out in 1912 showed three Imagist poetic

principles: direct treatment of the “thing”（no fuss, frill, or ornament）, exclusion of superfluous words（precision and economy of expression）, the rhythm of the musical phrase rather than the sequence of a metronome（free verse form and music）.

4)Pound defined an image as that which presents an intellectual and emotional

complex in an instant of time, and later he extended this definition when he stated that an image was ―a vortex or cluster of fused ideas, endowed with energy.‖

5)Generally an Imagist‘s image represents a moment of revealed truth, trut h

revealed by a physical object presented and seen as such. An Imagist poem, therefore, often contains a single dominant image, or a quick succession of related images. Its effect is meant to be instantaneous. For example:

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

人群中幽然浮现的一张张脸庞，

黝黑的湿树枝上的一片片花瓣。

6)About the above poem:

The ―Metro‖ is the underground railway of Paris. In this brief poem, Pound uses the fewest possible words to convey an accurate image, according to the principles of the ―Imagists‖.

He tries to render exactly his observation of human faces seen in an underground railway station. He sees the faces, turned variously toward light and darkness, like flower petals which are half absorbed by, half resisting, the wet, dark texture of a bough.

The word ―apparition‖, with its double meaning, binds the two aspects of the observation together:

Apparition meaning ―appearance‖, in the sense of something which appears, or shows up; something which can be clearly observed.

Apparition meaning something which seems real but perhaps is not real;

something ghostly which cannot be clearly observed.

This is perhaps the most famous poem written by Ezra Pound.

1.His Life:

1)Born in Idaho in 1885 and raised in Pennsylvania, Ezra Pound spent

most of his life in Europe and became one of the 20th century's most influential -- and controversial -- poets in the English language.

2)Pound was undoubtedly a genius. Before he graduated from university,

he had mastered 9 languages as well as English grammar and literature. After college in Pennsylvania and a brief stint as a teacher, in 1908 Pound travelled to Venice and then to London, where he refined his aesthetic sensibilities and edited the anthology Des Imagistes (1914).

3)Pound championed the likes of T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams and

James Joyce and, influenced by Chinese and Japanese poetry, advocated free

meter and a more economical use of words and images in poetic expression, leading the Imagist Movement of poetry.

4)He moved to Paris in 1920 and got acquainted with Gertrude Stein and

her circle of friends (which included Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso), then settled in Italy in 1924.

5)Enamored with Benito Mussolini, Pound made anti-American radio

broadcasts during World War II. He was arrested as a traitor in 1945 and initially confined in Pisa. He was then sent to the U.S., where he was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial for treason.

6)Pound was confined for 12 years in a hospital (actually prison) for the

criminally insane in Washington. During this time he translated works of ancient Greek and ancient Chinese literature. While in prison, he was awarded

a prestigious poetry prize in 1949 for his last Cantos.

7)In 1958 he returned to Italy, where he continued to write and make

translations until he died in 1972.

2. His works:

1)Pound wrote 70 books and over 1500 articles in his life.

2)His major work of poetry is The Cantos, a long poem which he wrote in

sections between 1915 and 1945.

3. His masterpiece: The Cantos

1)In this poem, he traces the rise and fall of eastern and western empires,

the destruction caused by greed and materialism.

2)He deplores the corruption of America after the heroic time of Jefferson,

3)The last part, produced from his own suffering, is the most moving.

7）There existed great influence of Chinese poetry on the Imagist movement.

Imagists found value in Chinese poetry was because Chinese poetry is, by virtue of the ideographic and pictographic nature of the Chinese language, essentially imagistic poetry.

《天净沙·秋思》

马致远

枯藤、老树、昏鸦，小桥、流水、人家，

古道、西风、瘦马，夕阳西下，断肠人在天涯。

Autumn

Evening crows perch on old trees wreathed with withered vine,

Water of a stream flows by a family cottage near a tiny bridge.

A lean horse walks on an ancient road in western breeze,

The sun is setting in the west,

The heart-broken one is at the end of the Earth.

二、Why should we study literature?

?It can nourish our emotional life.

?It can broaden people's perspectives on the world and offer them knowledge in the form of information.

?It can help people to escape from reality.

?For nothing but the aesthetic pleasure of observing good artistry form.

?It can help students to write a paper or pass an examination.

三、How to study literature?

Literature is not literature.

Historical Perspectives:Biographical-Historical and Moral-Philosophical.(Diverse Types of Historicisms: including Feminist, Sociological or Marxian Studies of Language, Literature and Translation)

Structuralist Perspectives:Looking for Systematic Deep Structures both in Form and Content.(Semiotics, TG Grammar, Systematic/Functional Grammar, Narratology, Freudian psycho-analysis, Russian Formalism, Anglo-American New Criticism, Archetypalism, Myth Criticism, Structural Marxism, Ideology)

Poststructuralist or Postmodern Perspectives: Deconstructing Structuring Binaries (No Clear Distinction between Form and Content)[Postmodern Feminism, Postcolonialism, Postmodern Narratologies, New Historicism, Ideological Studies, Discourse Analysis, Reception Theories, Trauma Studies, Trans-Atlantic Studies, Transnationalism, Eco-criticism, Cultural Pathology, and other Postmodernisms]

1. The Traditional Approaches:

1)Analytical Approach

Be familiar with the elements of a literary work, eg: plot, character, setting, point of view, structure, style, atmosphere, theme, etc; answer some basic questions about the text itself.

2)Thematic Approach

―What is the story, the poem, the play or the essay about?‖

3)Historical - Biographical Approach

4)Moral - Philosophical Approach.

2. The Formalistic Appoach

Structuralism, Poststructuralism, Semiotics

3．The Psychological Approach: Freud

4. Mythological and Archetypal Approach

5. Feminist Approaches

6. Sociological Approach

7. Deconstruction

8. Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory

9. Cultural Criticism

American Multicultualism

The New Historicism, British Cultural Materialism

10. Additional Approaches:

①Aristotlian Criticism

②Genre Criticism

③Rhetoric, Linguistics, and Stylistics

④The Marxist Approach

⑤Ecological Criticism

⑥Post Colonialism

Fiction

I. What is fiction?

?Fiction refers to any narrative which has not actually occurred in the history

or in the historical or real world, usually written in prose. It is often associated with novel.

?The term novel probably comes from the Italian word "novella", meaning "a

little new thing" and "tale".

?纪实小说？

?Novel: a long work of prose fiction.

?Novel, as a more realistic literary genre, is sometimes distinguished in

academic literary criticism from the romance, but this distinction is not maintained by all critics.

?Novel is different form romance in that it is more realistic, secular, social,

psychological, character-centered, and so on.

?Romance consist of "the Constant Loves and invincible Courages of Heros,

Heroins, Kings and Queens, Mortals of the first rank." (imagination) Novels, however, "are of a more familiar Nature; Come near us, and represent to us Intrigues in Practice, delight us with Accidents and odd Events, but not such as are wholly unusual or unpresidented, such which being not so distant from our Belief bring also the pleasure nearer us. Romances give more Wonder, Novels more Delight." (William Congreve)

?All in all, fiction is an imaginary but usually plausible and comparatively

truthful prose narrative which dramatizes changes in human relationship.

The author draws his materials from his experiences and observation of life, but shakes them to his purposes which include illumination of human experience.

Romance (heroic literature)

As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romanc e is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as having heroic qualities, who goes on a quest. Popular literature also drew on themes of romance, but with ironic, satiric or burlesque intent. Romances reworked legends, fairy tales, and history to suit the readers' and hearers' tastes, but by c.1600 they were out of fashion. Still, the modern image of "medieval" is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, and the word medieval invokes knights, distressed damsels, dragons, and other romantic tropes.

Modern usage of term "romance" usually refer to the romance novel, which is a subgenre that focuses on the relationship and romantic love between two people;

these novels must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Despite the popularity of this popular meaning of Romance, other works are still,

occasionally, referred to as romances because of their uses of other elements descended from the medieval romance, or from the Romantic Movement: larger-than-life heroes and heroines, drama and adventure, marvels that may become fantastic, themes of honor and loyalty, or fairy-tale-like stories and story settings.

Shakespeare's later comedies, such as The Tempest or The Winter's Tale are sometimes called this romances. Modern works may differentiate from love-story as romance into different genres, such as planetary romance or Ruritanian romance. Science fiction was, for a time, termed scientific romance, and gaslamp fantasy is sometimes termed gaslight romance.

II. Types of fiction

?Character: the Kunstlerroman, the spy novel, the Bildungsroman (initative novel)

?Setting: the historical novel, the campus novel

?Plot: the detective novel

?Structure: the epistolary novel, the picaresque novel

?Length: novel, novella, short story, novellet

?...... (Stream-of-consciousness novel, hypertext novel, Saga novel ...)

Künstlerroman艺术家成长小说

A Künstlerroman, meaning "artist's novel" in German, is a narrative about an artist's growth to maturity. It may be classified as a specific sub-genre of Bildungsroman; such a work, usually a novel, tends to depict the conflicts of a sensitive youth against the values of a bourgeois society of his or her time.

?1909 Jack London Martin Eden

?1913 D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers

?1914 James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

?1920 F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise

?1927 Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse

Bildungsroman成长小说，教育小说

Bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story, or apprenticeship novel, or novel of education, arising in Germany, is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age), and in which character change is thus extremely important. The term coming-of-age novel is sometimes used interchangeably with Bildungsroman, but its use is usually wider and less technical.

There are many variations and subgenres of Bildungsroman that focus on the growth of an individual. An Entwicklungsroman ("development novel") is a story of general growth rather than self-cultivation. An Erziehungsroman ("education novel") focuses on training and formal schooling, while a Künstlerroman ("artist novel") is about the development of an artist and shows a growth of the self.

A Bildungsroman tells about the growing up of a sensitive person who is looking

for answers and experience. The genre evolved from folklore tales of a dunce or youngest son going out in the world to seek his fortune.

Usually in the beginning of the story there is an emotional loss which makes the protagonist leave on his journey. In a Bildungsroman, the goal is maturity, and the protagonist achieves it gradually and with difficulty.

The genre often features a main conflict between the main character and society. Typically, the values of society are gradually accepted by the protagonist and he is ultimately accepted into society – the protagonist's mistakes and disappointments are over. In some works, the protagonist is able to reach out and help others after having achieved maturity.

?Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte (1847)

?David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens (1850)

?Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens (1860-1861)

?Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (1884)

?The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde (1890)

?The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger (1951)

?Goodbye, Columbus, by Philip Roth (1959)

Eepistolary Novel书信体小说

An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use.

The epistolary form can add greater realism to a story, because it mimics the workings of real life. It is thus able to demonstrate differing points of view without recourse to the device of an omniscient narrator.

Saul Bellow's novel Herzog (1964) is largely written in letter format. These are both real and imagined letters, written by the protagonist Moses E. Herzog to family members, friends and famous figures.

Picaresque novel流浪汉小说(例:唐吉柯德)

Miguel de‘Cervantes 流浪汉小说鼻祖（Don Quixote de la Mancha）

The picaresque novel is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts, in realistic and often humorous detail, the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. This style of novel originated in sixteenth century Spain and flourished throughout Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It continues to influence modern literature.

Stream-of-consciousness novel意识流小说

In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode that seeks to portray an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue, or in connection to his or her actions. The term "Stream of Consciousness" was taken from the book "The Principles of Psychology". Stream-of-consciousness writing is usually regarded as a

special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose difficult to follow.

Stream of consciousness and interior monologue are distinguished from dramatic monologue, where the speaker is addressing an audience or a third person, which is used chiefly in poetry or drama. In stream of consciousness, the speaker's thought processes are more often depicted as overheard in the mind (or addressed to oneself); it is primarily a fictional device. The term was introduced to the field of literary studies from that of psychology, where it was coined by philosopher and psychologist William James.

Stream of consciousness is the continuous flow of sense‐perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and memories in the human mind or a literary method of representing a blending of mental processes in fictional characters, usually in an unpunctuated or disjointed form of interior monologue. The term is often used as a synonym for interior monologue, but they can also be distinguished, in two ways. In the first (psychological) sense, the stream of consciousness is the subject‐matter while interior monologue is the technique for presenting it.

In the second (literary) sense, stream of consciousness is a special style of interior monologue: while an interior monologue always presents a character's thoughts ?directly‘, without the apparent intervention of a summarizing and selecting narr ator, it does not necessarily mingle them with impressions and perceptions, nor does it necessarily violate the norms of grammar, syntax, and logic; but the stream‐of‐consciousness technique also does one or both of these things. An important device of modernist fiction and its later imitators, the technique was pioneered by James Joyce in Ulysses (1922), and further developed by Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and William Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury (1928).

Hypertext novel超文本小说

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the underlying concept defining the structure of the World Wide Web. It is an easy-to-use and flexible format to share information over the Internet.

Saga novel大型系列小说

A saga novel is a novel among various literary novels which is encompassing the wide scopes of stories and narratives such as religious saga, national saga, family saga, and human saga, etc.

The major example of a saga novel in English literature is George Eliot's Middlemarch. In the US, Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth and Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind belong to the category of saga novels.

However, the British and American Sagas are usually underestimated more than middle-sized novels in academic institutions despite their public popularity. In China, Lo Guanzhong (Lo Kuanchung)'s Sanguo zhi yanyi(Romance of the Three

Kingdoms) is the most representative and well-known saga novel since the 14th century as one of the four great classical novels in China.

? A Dream of Red Mansions (The Story of the Stone)

?Pilgrimage to the West (Journey to the West)

?Heroes of Marshes (Water Margins)

?Romance of the Three Kingdoms

III. History of fiction. (4-6)

①the early 14th century

②the mid-17th century——the first true novel

France, the development of a refined short novel

③the 18th century

Walter Scott, 历史小说经典作家, moved from romanticism to realism

④the 19th century

The 19th century was an age of conversion from a tradition pre-modern state to a modern industrial society.

⑤the 20th century

There arose a more deliberate kind of realism called neutralism which aimed to provide a precise description of actual circumstances of human life in minute detail.

In fiction, the established chronological development was challenged by Joseph Conrad and William Faulkner, while James Joyce and Virginia Woolf attempted stream-of-consciousness.

IV．Elements of fiction

?Plot

?Structure

?Character

?Setting

?Point of view

?Theme

?style

?......

Plot

Traditionally, plots arise out of conflict, either internal or external. When a story includes an internal conflict, the protagonist(主角) often undergoes a conflict within himself or herself.

四种关系：人与社会、人与自然、人与人、人与自我、（人与宗教）

?An author‘s careful arrangement of incidents in a narrative to achieve a desired effect.

?Plot is defined as the events that make up the story, particularly as they relate to one another in a pattern, in a sequence, through cause or effect, or by coincidence. One is generally interested in how well this pattern of events accomplishes some artistic or emotional effect.

?Plot and story.

?Plot and structure.

Plot is the pattern of events and situation in a narrative work. It keeps us interested and turning pages to find out what will happen next. Different from the story that indicates the ―raw material‖ of events, the plot is the selected version of events in

a certain order or duration. An effective plot usually follows the mode of cause

and effect between incidents.

A story‘s structure can be examined in relation to its plot. In examining structure,

we look for patterns, for the shape that the story as a whole possesses. If plot is the sequence of unfolding action, structure is the design or form of the complete action. Plot and structure together reveal aspects of the story‘s artistic design.

?the focus of plot ——conflict.

1) Virginia Woolf

．．．．．．．．．．．．．‘s The Waves

2) Thomas Hardy‘s Tess of the d’Urbervilles（坏境悲剧、性格悲剧、命运悲剧）

3) William Faulkner‘s A Rose for Emily

The Waves

The Waves, more than any of Virginia Woolf's novels, conveys the complexities of human experience. Tracing the lives of a group of friends, The Waves follows their development from childhood to youth and middle age.

While social events, individual achievements and disappointments form its narrative, the novel is most remarkable for the rich poetic language that conveys the inner life of its characters: their aspirations, their triumphs and regrets, their awareness of unity and isolation. Separately and together, they query the relationship of past to present, and the meaning of life itself.

Woolf's novel is concerned with the individual consciousness and the ways in which multiple consciousnesses can weave together. It‘s different from a Bildungsroman in that the self may very well be considered to be its own society. The difficulty of assigning genre to this novel is complicated by the fact that obliterates traditional distinctions between prose and poetry, allowing the novel to flow between six not dissimilar interior monologues. The book similarly breaks down traditional boundaries between people, and Woolf herself wrote in her that the six were not meant to be separate "characters" at all, but rather facets of consciousness illuminating a sense of continuity. Even the name "novel" may not accurately describe the complex form of. Woolf herself called it not a novel but a "playpoem."

Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Tess of the D‘Urbervilles was subtitled A Pure Woman and published in 1891. It is one of Hardy‘s saddest tales of rural troubles. Tess is the daughter of the poor John Durbeyfield who learn from the village parson that his family is related to ancient nobility, being the last of the family the D‘Urbervilles. In trying to make use of this connection, Joan –John‘s wife - suggests that Tess pursue the son of the local family of Mrs D‘Urberville. As it turns out the Mrs D‘Urberville has merely taken the n ame for convenience but Tess becomes involved with her son Alec nonetheless who gives her employment but takes advantage of her and in unpleasant circumstances seduces her.

They have a child together who dies early and cannot be baptised because he is illegitimate. The second stage of the novel concerns the family of the Reverend Mr Clare and his son Angel. Angel and Tess marry but when she admits the incident with Alec their relationship is torn apart leading to Angel‘s departure for South America and Alec‘s second attempt to ensnare Tess. This leads to murder, escape and superficial impurity on the part of Tess who is finally brought to "Justice".

This is an exceptionally bleak novel that offers little relapse from the persistent cruelty of fate (or as the novel would have it the President of the Immortals) against Tess. At the time the novel was considered pessimistic and immoral, and Henry James thought it thoroughly poorly conceived which reminds us of a certain conversation between a pot and a black kettle.

A Rose for Emily

The story, told in five sections, opens in section one with an unnamed narrator describing the funeral of Miss Emily Grierson. (The narrator always refers to himself in collective pronouns; he is perceived as being the voice of the average citizen of the town of Jefferson.) He notes that while the men attend the funeral out of obligation, the women go primarily because no one has been inside Emily‘s house for years. The narrator describes what was once a grand house ??set on what had once been our most select street.‘‘ Emily‘s origins are aristocratic, but b oth her house and the neighborhood it is in have deteriorated.

The narrator notes that prior to her death, Emily had been ??a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town.‘‘ This is because Colonel Sartoris, the former mayor of the town, remitted Emily‘s taxes dating from the death of her father ―on into perpetuity.‘‘ Apparently, Emily‘s father left her with nothing when he died. Colonel Sartoris invented a story explaining the remittance of Emily‘s taxes (it is the town‘s method of paying back a loan to her father) to save her from the embarrassment of accepting charity.

The narrator uses this opportunity to segue into the first of several flashbacks in the story. The first incident he describes takes place approximately a decade before Emily‘s death. A new generation of politicians takes over Jefferson‘s government. They are unmoved by Colonel Sartoris‘s grand gesture on Emily‘s behalf, and they attempt to collect taxes from her. She ignores their notices and letters.

Finally, the Board of Aldermen sends a deputation to discuss the situation with her. The men are led into a decrepit parlor by Emily‘s black man-servant, Tobe. The first physical description of Emily is unflattering: she is ??a small, fat woman in black‖ who looks ―bloated, like a body long subm erged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue.‖ After the spokesman awkwardly explains the reason for their visit, Emily repeatedly insists that she has no taxes in Jefferson and tells the men to see Colonel Sartoris. The narrator notes that Colonel Sartoris has been dead at that point for almost ten years. She sends the men away from her house with nothing.

Story-telling techniques

?Flashback：

disrupt the linear movement of the plot and present an earlier action ?Foreshadowing

?Suspense

?Coincidence

Tickets, Please by D. H. Laurence

①本我与超我的碰撞

②欲望本能

③非理性主义的艺术审美

Character

?flat character and round character

?major character and minor character

?static character and active character

?direct characterization and indirect characterization

Point of view and tone

It is the vantage point from which the story is presented by the narrator. In other words, it is the position of the story teller.

Forms

First-person narratives (I)

Third-person narratives (he, she, they)

Second-person narratives (you)

First-person narratives

There is little doubt that the first-person point of view is fairly ―limited‖.

reliable narrator and unreliable narrator

Third-person Narrator

the third-person omniscient narrator

the third-person limited narrator

limited omniscience

multiple point of view

Second-person Narrator

Its most striking feature is the person addressed by the narrator as “you”has different referents in various contexts:Specific character within the story, the current reader, or even the narrator himself.

Tone

Tone in writing is somewhat like some of voice in speech and can be serious, introspective, satirical, sad, ironic, playful, condescending, forma, or informal.

Tone is the author‘s attitude toward the characters, the topic, or the readers, as expressed by the narrator.

Irony

Verbal irony言语反讽

Situational irony情景反讽

Dramatic irony喜剧反讽

Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions.

Ironic statements (verbal irony) are statements that imply a meaning in opposition to their literal meaning. A situation is often said to be ironic (situational irony) if the actions taken have an effect exactly opposite from what was intended. The discordance of verbal irony may be deliberately created as a means of communication (as in art or rhetoric). Descriptions or depictions of situational irony, whether in fiction or in non-fiction, serves the communicative function of sharpening or highlighting certain discordant features of reality.

Verbal and situational irony are often used for emphasis in the assertion of a truth. The ironic form of simile, used in sarcasm, and some forms of litotes emphasize one's meaning by the deliberate use of language which states the opposite of the truth — or drastically and obviously understates a factual connection.

In dramatic irony, the author causes a character to speak or act erroneously, out of ignorance of some portion of the truth of which the audience is aware. In other words, the audience knows the character is making a mistake, even as the character is making it. This technique highlights the importance of a particular truth by portraying a person who is strikingly unaware of it.

课本P49 Rape Fantasies

1. Verbal irony consists of understatements and overstatements.

Ex: Greta‘s and Chrissy‘s rape fantasies understate the impact of rape and what that situation would be like. When Darlene says that they should not go out alone at night, it is an overstatement.

2. Situational irony

Ex: Greta‘s and Chrissy‘s rape fantasies are not what rape truly be like but rather what they hope it would be like.

Ex: In her fantasies stranger rape her, but statistics show that women are more likely to be raped by someone they know.

3. Dramatic irony

Ex: Estelle is talking to the men at the bar about having a conversation with a rapist to remind him that she is real human and has a life too. She says she doesn‘t think the person would be able to go through with the plans after having such a realization. Theme

Like a common thread, the theme is repeated and incorporated throughout a literary work. It denotes the central idea formulated as a generalization.

In essence, the theme is the main idea or some type of lesson or message that the author wants to convey to the reader.

The Theme of ―The Egg‖:Disillusionment is necessary to the process of maturing.

Familiar Thematic Concerns

①The relations (p51)

②Time (52)

③Death (52)

④Life

⑤Love

⑥……

The Theme of Time

①《喧嚣与骚动》的时间主题

②《了不起的盖茨比》的时间主题

③莎士比亚十四行诗的时间主题

④米兰·昆德拉小说的时间主题

Ways to Identify Theme

①the title

②the central topic or ―big idea‖

③to organize thoughts (evidence that support the top ic, protagonist‘s actions,

speeches and responses, and so on)

Style

Definition:

?Style is the manner of expression of a particular writer, school, period, or genre produced by choice of words, grammatical structures, use of literary devices, and all the possible parts of language use. It is a combined qualities that distinguish one category from another.

?Subjectively, the style is the man himself.

?Objectively, proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style. Relative Elements:

①Tone：Indicate the speaker‘s attitude towards his subject and his audience.

②Diction: refers to a writer‘s choice of words.

③Imagery: is to establish a writer‘s styles it extends to all the sense.

④Syntax: is the pattern o arrangement of individual words and phrases

⑤Structure: is helpful for a write to create a particular style

two groups:①③②④⑤

文学：对谁说，说什么，怎么说

The Hallmarks of Two Styles:

?Formal Style: periodic and loose sentences, parallelism, repetition, metaphor and comparison, Latinate language and multisyllabic words, as well as avulsions.

?Familiar Style: judicious use of speech characteristics, such as simple vocabulary, use of slang and profanity, less rigorous grammar, contractions, simple and short sentences and irony and humor, minimal use of subordinate clauses and use of dialogue. (the art of modern narration)

The art of modern narration现代叙事艺术

For his novels and for his short stories, which include some of the finest in the English language, Hemingway received wide acclaim. In 1954 he was awarded a Nobel Prize for his "mastery of the art of modern narration." Taking his cue from Mark Twain's masterpiece, Hemingway brought the colloquial style to near perfection in American literature.In Paris, Hemingway -- along with Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and James Joyce --accomplished a revolution in literary style and language. He developed a spare, tight, reportorial prose based on simple sentence structure and using a restricted vocabulary, precise imagery, and an impersonal, dramatic tone.

His language is characterized by features including: economy of expression, short sentences and paragraphs, vigorous and positive language, and deliberate avoidance of gorgeous adjectives, and etc.

He-man 硬汉；4 marriages, 4 wars, 4 air crashes

In Another Country by Ernest Hemingway

It is about an ambulance corps member in Milan during World War I. Although unnamed, he is assumed to be "Nick" a character Hemingway made to represent him. He has an injured knee and visits a hospital daily for rehabilitation. There the "machines" are used to speed the healing, with the doctors making much of the miraculous new technology. They show pictures to the wounded of injuries like theirs healed by the machines, but the war-hardened soldiers are portrayed as skeptical, perhaps justifiably so.

As the narrator walks through the streets with fellow soldiers, the townspeople hate them openly because they are officers. Their oasis from this treatment is Cafe Cava, where the waitresses are very patriotic. When the fellow soldiers admire the protagonist's medal, they learn that he is American, ipso facto not having to face the same struggles in order to achieve the medal, and no longer view him as an equal, but still recognize him as a friend against the outsiders. The protagonist accepts this, since he feels that they have done far more to earn their medals than he has.

Later on, a major who is friends with the narrator, in an angry fit tells Nick he should never get married, it being only a way to set one up for hurt. It is later revealed that the major's wife had suddenly and unexpectedly died. The major is depicted as far more grievously wounded, with a hand withered to the size of a baby's hand, and Hemingway memorably describes the withered hand being manipulated by a machine which the major dismisses as a "damn thing." But the major seems even more deeply wounded by the loss of his wife. It is also implied this entire episode is a dream, by subtle references to night time and searching for needed light. It is reminiscent of Dante's Inferno.

Loss, failure, and ruin permeate this brief story. Many of the characters grapple with a loss of function, a loss of purpose, and a loss of faith. It appears contagious. Two characters lose the normal use of a limb--the narrator (leg) and the major (hand). Almost all the characters in the story are portrayed as casualties of some sort. Detachment, disability, and fear of death are pervasive. For the soldiers, courage is not just facing enemy fire on the front line but also picking up the pieces of their

damaged lives and facing the prospect of tomorrow. War, it seems, is forever.

The title of the story is interesting. At first glance, "In Another Country," refers to the fact that the American narrator is indeed in a foreign land--Italy. Yet he is also a visitor to another realm--the "country" of the sick and injured. And maybe World War I is the ultimate other country--a setting that defines nations or destroys them and has the potential to erase people, ideology, and the future. Does the doctor featured in the story truly believe that his patients will recover from their injuries or is he merely accustomed to dispensing hope in much the same way he might dole out aspirin? The likelihood that the machines will heal the soldiers is debatable. Do these gadgets prefigure modern technology or are they another reminder of how dependent upon machines both war and medicine really are?

Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)

I. Biography:

1)Born in Oak Park, Illinois, the son of a country doctor, Hemingway worked as

a reporter for the Kansas City Star after graduating from high school in 1917.

2)During World War I he served as an ambulance driver for the American Red

Cross; wounded on the Austro-Italian front just before his 19th birthday, he was decorated for heroism.

3)After recuperating in the United States, he sailed for France as a foreign

correspondent for the Toronto Star. In Paris he became part of the coterie of expatriate Americans that included Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

4)During the Spanish Civil War, Hemingway served as a correspondent on the

loyalist side.

5)He fought in World War II and then settled in Cuba in 1945.

6)In 1954, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

7)By 1960 Fidel Castro's revolution had led Hemingway to leave Cuba and

settle in Idaho. There, anxiety-ridden, depressed, and ill with cancer, he shot himself, leaving behind many manuscripts. Two of his posthumously published books are the admired memoir of his apprentice days in Paris: A Moveable Feast (1964), and Islands in the Stream (1970), consisting of three closely related novellas.

II. His Novels:

1)The Sun Also Rise(1926) The novel concerns a group of psychologically

bruised, disillusioned expatriates living in postwar Paris, who take psychic refuge in such immediate physical activities as eating, drinking, traveling, brawling, and lovemaking. With the publication of it, he was recognized as the spokesman of the ―lost generation‖ (so called by Gertrude Stein).

2) A Farewell To Arms(1929) tells of a tragic wartime love affair between an

ambulance driver and an English nurse.

3)Death in the Afternoon (1932), a nonfiction work about bullfighting

4)Green Hills of Africa(1935), a nonfiction work about big-game hunting,

glorify virility, bravery, and the virtue of a primal challenge to life.

5)To Have And Have Not (1937)

6)The Fifth Column (his only play 1938)

7)For Whom The Bell Tolls (1940), in detailing an incident in the war, argues for

human brotherhood.

8)Across the River and into the Trees (1950)

9)The Old Man And The Sea (1952, Pulitzer Prize), celebrates the indomitable

courage of an aged Cuban fisherman.

10)Paris: A Moveable Feast (1964)

11)Islands in the Stream (1970)

III. His Collections of Stories

1)Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923),

2)In Our Time (1924)

3)Men without Women (1927)

4)Winner Take Nothing (1933)

5)First Forty-nine Stories (1938)

IV. His famous stories:

1)The Killers

2)The Undefeated

3)The Snows of Kilimanjaro

V.His Writing Style:

1.Hemingway‘s fiction usually focuses on people living essential, dangerous

lives—soldiers, fishermen, athletes, bullfighters—who meet the pain and difficulty of their existence with stoic courage. His celebrated literary style, influenced by Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein, is direct, terse, and often monotonous, yet particularly suited to his elemental subject matter.

2.While Hemingway‘s early career benefited from his connections with

Fitzgerald and (more so) with American novelist Sherwood Anderson, his aesthetic is actually closer to that shared by the transplanted American poets that he met in Paris during the 1920s; T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and, most crucially, Gertrude Stein. In this context, we must realize that Hemingway‘s approach to the craft of fiction is direct but never blunt or just plain simple.

3.Hemingway‘s text is the result of a painstaking selection process, each word

performing an assigned function in the narrative. These choices of language, in turn, occur through the mind and experience of his novels‘ central characters whether they serve explicitly as narrators of their experience or as focal characters from whose perspectives the story unfolds. The main working corollary of Hemingway‘s “iceberg principle”（冰山原则）is that the full meaning of the text is not limited to moving the plot forward: there is always a web of association and inference, a submerged reason behind the inclusion (or even the omission) of every detail.

4.We note, too, that although Hemingway‘s novels usually follow a

straightforward chronological progression as in the three days of For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway does make use of summary accounts of the past, of memories related externally as stories, and of flashbacks. These devices lend

further depth to his characters and create narrative structures that are not completely straightforward chronicles.

5.Hemingway is direct. But he is also quite subtle, and subtlety is not a trait that

we ascribe to the American way. In the end, Hemingway is an international artist, a man who never relinquished his American identity but who entered new territories too broad and too deep to fit within the domain of any national culture.

6.As or more important, Hemingway‘s style, with its consistent use of short,

concrete, direct prose and of scenes consisting exclusively of dialogue, gives his novels and short stories a distinctive accessibility that is immediately identifiable with the author. Owing to the direct character of both his style and his life-style, t here is a tendency to cast Hemingway as a ―representative‖ American writer whose work reflects the bold, forthright and rugged individualism of the American spirit in action.

7.His own background as a wounded veteran of World War I, as an engaged

combatant in the fight against Fascism/Nazism, and as a ―he-man‖ with a passion for outdoor adventures and other manly pursuits reinforce this association.

8.But this identification of Hemingway as a uniquely American genius is

problematic. Although three of his major novels are told by and/or through American men, Hemingway‘s protagonists are expatriates, and his fictional settings are in France, Italy, Spain, and later Cuba, rather than America itself. Poetry

I. What is Poetry?

?Poetry is the language sung, chanted, spoken, or written according to some pattern of recurrence that emphasizes the relationships between words on the basis of sound and sense. (dictionary)

?Poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings…recollected in tranquility.”(William Wordsworth)

?Poetry is “musical thought.”(Thomas Carlyle)

?If I read a book and it makes my body so cold nofire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry. (Emily Dickinson)

?Poetry is “hundreds of things coming together at the right moment.”

(Elizabeth Bishop)

?In essence, poetry is a kind of "saying". As the most condensed and concentrated form of literature, poetry says the most in the fewest number of words.

II. Classification

1.narrative poetry 叙事诗

2.lyric poetry 抒情诗

3.dramatic poetry 戏剧诗

Narrative poetry is a form of poetry which tells a story, often making use of the voices of a narrator and characters as well; the entire story is usually written in metered verse. The poems that make up this genre may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be complex. It is usually dramatic, with objectives, diverse characters, and meter. Narrative poems include epics(史诗), romance, and ballads.

Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were sung, accompanied by a lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat. Aristotle, in Poetics, mentions lyric poetry along with drama, epic poetry, dancing, painting and other forms of mimesis. The lyric poem, dating from the Romantic era, does have some thematic antecedents in ancient Greek and Roman verse, but the ancient definition was based on metrical criteria, and in archaic and classical Greek culture presupposed live performance accompanied by a stringed instrument. Lyric poetry is characterized by brevity, melody and emotional intensity.

?epigram讽刺诗(epigraph)

?elegy and lament（哀歌、挽歌）

?ode颂歌

?aubade晨曲、黎明曲（爱情）

?sonnet 十四行诗(Petrarchan and Shakespearean)

?sestina

?villanelle

The sonnet has two basic patterns: the Italian (or (Petrarchan) and the English (or Shakespearean). An Italian sonnet is composed of an eight-line octave and a six- line sestet. A Shakespearean sonnet is composed of three four-line quatrain and a concluding two-line couplet.

A villanelle is a poetic form that entered English-language poetry in the 19th century from the imitation of French models. The word derives from the Italian villanelle from Latin villanus (rustic). A villanelle has only two rhyme sounds. The first and third lines of the first stanza are rhyming refrains that alternate as the third line in each successive stanza and form a couplet at the close. A villanelle is nineteen lines long, consisting of five tercets and one concluding quatrain. Because of its non-linear structure, the villanelle resists narrative development. Villanelles do not tell a story or establish a conversational tone. In music, the villanelle is a dance form, accompanied by sung lyrics or an instrumental piece based on this dance form.

维拉内拉诗(16世纪法国的一种19行诗)；①农村舞曲，维拉涅拉歌舞(意大利古代农村的一种歌舞)，②那不勒斯民歌( villanella的名词复数) (意大利16世纪时的一种无伴奏的歌曲，如牧歌——pastorale) Dramatic poetry presents the voice of an imaginary character or characters speaking directly, without any additional narration by the author. In a dramatic poem, the poet says within the limits of one imaginary character addressing another imaginary character.Dramatic poetry is form writing with very deep expression of deep emotions. The poet's motive is to capture the audiences' attention and make them feel the writing. It usually involves a narrative poem about a person involved in a situation, sometimes a true story and sometimes it is just a form of creative art.

III. History