Chapter7 America During the War 英美文化概论 教学课件
英美文化与国家概案
In 1920s, the U.S. has been described by many historians as a period of material success and spiritual frustration or confusion and purposelessness.Chapter 6 Political InstitutionsI. ConstitutionThe American Constitution is the oldest written constitution in the world. It was drawn up in 1787 and went into effect in 1789. It is the basic instrument of American Government and the Supreme law of the land.Separation of powers: checks and balances 制约和平衡The government is divided into three branched: the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. Each branch has part of the powers but not all the power.II. The Executive BranchThe President of the U.S is the head of the executive branch and the head of the state elected by the whole nation. The Constitution requires the President to be a natural-born American citizen at least 35 years of age. The president election was held every 4 years.Presidency Election1) In American, the “winner-take-all” system applies in all states expect Maine.2) The electors of all fifty states and the District of Columbia-a total of 538 persons-comprise what is known as the Electoral College. To be successful, a candidate for the Presidency must receive 270 votes.3) The presidential term of 4 years begin on Jan 20 following the November election, the president publicly takes an oath of office, which is administered by the Chief Justice of the U.S. A president can be elected to office only twice.The Presidential Powerslegislative powers；Executive powers: the highest duty；Powers in foreign affairs；Judiciary powers: give reprieves(缓刑) and pardons (赦免) in federal criminal cases.III. The Legislative Branch1. A Two-chamber Congress (国会)Article I of the Constitution grants all legislative power of the federal government to a Congress composed of two chambers, a Senate and a House of Representatives.Every 2 years one-third of the Senate stands for re-election. Today, the House is composed of 435 members.The Senate is composed of 2 members from each state, Membership in the House is based on population and its size is therefore not specified in the Constitution.1) Each house of the Congress has the power to introduce legislation on any subject, except revenue bills，which must first come from the House of Representatives.2) The Constitution provides that the Vice president shall be president of the Senate. He has no vote, except in a case of a tie. The House of Representatives choose its own presiding officer-the Speaker of the House.IV. The Judiciary Branch1. According to the Constitution, the judicial power of the U.S shall be vested in one Supreme Court. The judicial system has evolved into the present structure: the Supreme Court, 11 court of appeals, 91 district courts, and 3 courts of special jurisdiction. U.S. judges are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.2. The Supreme Court is the highest court of the U.S and is the only organ which has the power to interpret the Constitution. The Supreme Court at present consists of a Chief Justice and 8 Associate Justices.III. Political PartiesIn general, American has a two-party system. There are two major political parties in America: the Democrats and the Republicans. There have been four periods in the history of political parties in American.Chapter 7 EducationUnder the Tenth Amendment to the U.S Constitution, education was included among the respon sibilities which were “reserved to the states or the people”.It is a general view that every American has the right and obligation to become educated. American believe that ,through education, an individual acquires the knowledge, skill ,attitudes and abilities which will enable him to fit into society and improve his social status. Education helps to shape the society and develop the national strength.Characteristics of American Education1. In American, there are more public elementary and secondary schools that private ones, while private colleges and universities outnumber public ones.the west coast.。
英美文化基础教程课本 课后练习答案(朱永涛)
British CultureChapter 2 English history填空：1.The Crusades2.Columbus; Vasco da Gama3. the hundred years’ war4. Parliament; King Charles I5. Charles Darwin6. the Great slump7. the league of Nations ; the United Nations选择：1C 2D 3A 4C 5DChapter 4 British government system1.不用记2.On Her Majesty’s Service3.the Most Noble Order of the Garter4.head of the church of England5.acts of parliament; the prerogative of the crown; convention of the constitution;common law; parliamentary privilege6.5; 6357.the Crown; the House of Lords; the House of Commons8.parliament9.the final court of appeal in civil cases and criminal cases except criminal case inScotland10.to make laws; to control and criticize the executive government; to control theraising and the spending of money11.the Lord Chancellor12.her ministers13.the Parliament;is accountable or responsible to Parliament ; the House ofCommons; the people选择1B 2C 3A 4D 5C 6 AChapter 6 English Literature1.8th century; 6th2.their Viking raiders swept into Britain3.the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; the Roman Invasion of Britain to the middle of the12th century4.Chaucer; Shakespeare; Milton5.Thomas More; Utopia6.Hamlet; King Lear; Othello; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; As you like it;Twelfth Night; Richard II; Henry V; Julius Caesar7.the Essays8.paradise lost; Paradise regained; Samson Agonistes9.pilgrim’s progress10.Jonathan Swift11.London12.Robert Burns13.Robinson Crusoe14.William Wordsworth; Taylor Coleridge; Lord Byron; John Keats;Percy Bysshe Shelley15.Jane Austen; Charlotte Bronte; Emily Bronte16.Stevenson; Lewis Carroll; Thackeray; David Copperfield; Pickwick papers;George Eliot; Oscar Wilde; the return of the Native; Tess of the D’Urbervilles17.James Joyce; Ulysses18.George Bernard Shaw选择1D 2A 3C 4A 5A 6D 8A 9D 10DChapter 7 Religion and Beliefs1.Roman Catholic Church; Protestant Church2.the Old Testament; the New Testament3.The Queen; the Archbishop of Canterbury 坎特伯雷大主教4.God; Jesus; Holy Spirit5.Presbyterian6.The Pope7.the Methodist; the Congregation Church; the Baptist Church; the Quakers; theChristian ScientistsChapter 8 character and manner1.impolite/ill-bred2.modesty; conceit3. a sense of humor4.sportsmanshipChapter 9 Education1.5; 152.Christmas; Easter; summer3.selective; comprehensive4.Eton; Harrow; Rugby5.Being free6.Oxford; Cambridge7.St. Andrews; Glasgow8.open university9.Leads; Lancaster10.exclusiveness选择1A 2C 3D 4DAmerican CultureChapter 2 American History1.The Vikings; Christopher Columbus2.Jamestown in Virginia3.pilgrims; Roger Williams; William Penn4.1775; 17835. a second continental congress6.July 4th7.the Federalists; the Republicans; strong, efficient central authority; individualliberties8.Thomas Jefferson9.John Marshall10.Uncle Tom’s Cabin11.it put an end to slavery and decided that American was not a collection ofsemi-independent states, but a single individual nation12. being able to pay high wages and earn enormous money13. the New York Stock Exchange14. laissez-fair; government should interfere with business as little as possible;government action选择1B 2A 3D 4A 5B 6 C 7D 8A 9A 10BChapter 3 The Forms of Government1.Federalism; the separation of powers and respect for the Constitution and the ruleof law2.foreign affairs and with matters of general concern to all the states includingcommerce between the states.3.Democrats ; Republicans4.executive branch; legislative branch; judicial branch5.Ford; Nelson Rockefeller; the president Nixon resigned6.the vice-president7.4; 4; John Kennedy8.two terms9.435; 2; 100; 610.both houses; the senate; two-thirds majority11.confederation12.192013.The supreme court14.life; president; the senate;15.FBI选择：1A 2 C 3D 4C 5B 6D 7C 8BChapter 4 American Literature1.Washington Irving华盛顿·欧文; Fenimore Cooper费尼莫尔·库柏;2.Edgar Allan Poe埃德加·爱伦·坡; The Fall of the House of Usher厄舍府的倒塌3.Concord康科德; Ralph Waldo Emerson ; Henry David Thoreau 梭罗;Nathaniel Hawthorne 纳撒尼尔﹒霍桑4.Nature; The American Scholar; Self-reliance5.Walden 瓦尔登湖6.Scarlet Letter 红字7.Herman Melville赫尔曼·麦尔维尔8. The Adventure of Tom Sawyer; Life on the Mississippi; The Adventures ofHuckleberry Finn （汤姆·索亚的历险；在密西西比河上；哈克贝利·弗恩历险记）9.Theodore Dreiser西奥多·德莱塞10.The Great Gatsby; which is about Gatsby, a man at the end of his youth, is strivingto recapture a beautiful dream he once believed in. He sees the dream turn into a nightmare. （了不起的盖茨比）11.Jonh Dos Passos 约翰·多斯·帕索斯12.the Sound and the Fury喧嚣与骚动; Light in August Light in August; Absalom,Absalom 押沙龙,押沙龙13.The Sun Also Rise太阳照常升起; A Farewell to Arms永别了，武器; For Whom theBell Tolls丧钟为谁而鸣14.John Steinbeck约翰·斯坦贝克; Ralph Ellison拉尔夫·艾里森15.Eugene O’Neill尤金奥尼尔; Long Day’s Journey into Night长夜漫漫路迢迢选择：1C 2A 3D 4B 5D 6A 7C 8C 9A 10D 11B 12C为帮助大家记忆这些作家作品，将其姓名和作品的汉译提供给大家Chapter 7 American Education1.122.age3.kindergarten classes for five-year-olds4.grammar school or elementary school5.the nation’s population explosion ; a trend toward democratizing highereducation6.The7.FootballChapter 8 American Family Life1.rural, small town living; big city life2.each resident owns his own apartment3.youth; a feeling of being respected, wanted and needed.。
英美文化概况 名词解释 问答题
英美文化概况问答题以及答案：1.What are the some of the major powers of each of the three branches of the US government? How are the three branches supposed to check and balance each other? Can political reform in China borrow anything from that? 美国政府三大部门的一些主要权利是什么？三大部门之间如何制约和平衡？中国的政治改革能否从中借鉴什么？A．What are the some of the major powers of each of the three branches of the US government?The three branches—the Legislative, the Executive, headed by the president. And the Judicial, headed by the Supreme Court.The Legislative, including both houses of Congress (the Senate and the House of Representative) 。
The legislative branch(立法机构）is the only branch that can make federal laws, levy federal taxes and declare war or put foreign treaties into effect.The Executive, headed by the president. The president can appoint federal judges as vacancies occur, including members of the Supreme Court. All such court appointments are subject to confirmation by the Senate. The president has broad powers, with the executive branch, to issue regulations and directives regarding the work of the federal departments. He is the commander in chief of the armed forces. The judicial branch(司法机构) is headed by the Supreme Court with a chief justice and 8 associate justices. The Federal courts have jurisdiction over cases arising out of the Constitution and other cases which do not arise out of individual states.The Supreme Court has the judicial review power.B．How are the three branches supposed to check and balance each other? System of “checks and balances (制约与平衡的原则)”of the three-part national government works to keep serious mistakes from being made by one branch or another.C．Can political reform in China borrow anything from that?China does not make the separation, but can absorb the reasonable factors. The people's congress system is a basic system suitable to China's national conditions. It directly reflects that people's democratic dictatorship is national nature in our country, reflected the whole picture of our political life and is the basic forms and means for the people to be the masters of democratic rights.(中国不搞三权分立，但可以吸收其合理的因素。
unit 7 (British and American Studies)英美文化 教学课件
Third Principle: Checks and Balances. ➢ The power given to government is divided between the federal and state government.
➢ The power granted to each government is sub-divided among the three branches of government, the legislative, the executive and the judicial. Each branch can check or block the actions of the other branches.
Unit 2
Government and Politics
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2.2.2 Three Branches
Legislative Branch (Congress)
➢ Functions of Congress
• The central function is to make federal laws
• collect taxes and levy duties
• pay national debts
• regulate foreign commerce
• raise armies and pay for them
Senate
House of Representative
Cabinet
Executive Department
Courts of Appeals
英美文化课后答案Chapter7
英美文化课后答案Chapter7英美文化课后答案7Lecture 7T ell whether each of the following statements is true or false.1-10: FTFTT/FTTFT 11-20: TFTFT/TFTTTFill in the blanks with the correct information.1. Old English2. The Canterbury Tales3. The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus4. William Shakespeare5. historical plays; comedies6. P. B. Shelley; William Wordsworth7. Sense and Sensibility8. Oliver Twist9. The Heart of Darkness 10. stream of consciousness 11. the Transcendentalist Club 12. Natty Bumpoo 13. Moby Dick 14. Walt Whitman 15. The Red Badge of Courage 16. King of the English 17. Lord Protector 18. Princess Diana 19. Alchemist 20. calculus, gravitation 21. religious, interpretation 22. Boz 23. clerk, potential 24. florid, poetic 25. Locomotive 26. instructor 27. James Bond Series 28. satirist, boom, 1960s 29. Julie Andrews 30. big, gigantic 31. John Peel 32. The Lady with the Lamp 33. land, water 34. George Washington 35. New Deal 36. John Fitzgerald Kennedy 37. George Walker Bush 38. Barack Hussein Obama 39. Martin Luther King 40. Ray Kroc 41. Disneyland Park 42. William Henry Bill Gates 43. The Sketch BookChoose the correct answer on the basis of what is stated in the text.1-10: BACCA/DABDB 11-20: CABBA/CDCAD 21-30:CBADC/BACBA31-32: CDExplain the following terms.1. The Canterbury TalesChaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is made up of a series of stories. These stories are told by pilgrims who were on their way to the important Christian church at Canterbury. Although these tales are incomplete, they cover all major types of medieval literature. It contains almost all the typical medieval figures. It isa miniature of the English society of Chaucer’s time.2.William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare is probably the best known literary figure in the world. His many plays include tragedies, comedies and history plays. Shakespeare created four great tragedies. Hamlet is the most performed play in the world. Shakespeare is regarded as one of the founders of realism in the world literature.3. Jane EyreJane Eyre tells the story of an orphan, who has a loveless childhood at a terrible boarding school. When she grows up, she goes to work for Mr. Rochester as a governess to his child. Mr. Rochester becomes attracted to her because of her independence and free spirit.4. Tess of the D’UrbervillesThis story tells the tragic fate of Tess, a beautiful country girl. Tess is seduced by Alec D’urbervilles and has an illegitimate baby. She meets Angel Clare and they fall in love with each other. However, she is abandoned by Angel when he knows her past story. Tess has no choice butto live with Alec because her father dies and the family is starving. Later Angel regrets how he abandoned Tess and comes back to find her. Tess kills Alec in strong despair and greatmadness.5. Stream of consciousnessIn literary critic ism, “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.6. TranscendentalismTranscendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture, and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early to middle 19th century. Among transcendentalists' core beliefs was an ideal spiritual state that “transcends” the physical and empirical and is only realized through the individual's intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions. Prominent transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.7. The lost generationThis is a term coined by author and poet, Gertrude Stein. Often it is used to refer to a group of American writers who lived in Paris and other parts of Europe, some after military service in the First World War. Figures identified with the "Lost Generation" include authors and poets Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ezra Pound. The Lost Generation captures the zeitgeist of the time period: disillusionment.8. Moby DickIt is considered one of the world’s greatest masterpieces. This is a story about a whaling voyage. The hero Ishmael went out to sea on the whaling ship, Pequod. The captain, Ahab, lost one leg on a previous voyage when he met the white whale Moby Dick, so he was determined to kill the white whale. At last MobyDick appeared and Captain Ahab ordered his ship to fight with it. All the crew were drowned except Ishmael, who survived to tell the story.9. Mark TwainMark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Twain had an American sense of humor; he dealt with the lower strata of society. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was an immediate success and its sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, became his masterwork. Mark Twain made colloquial speech a literary medium. This is his great contribution to American literature. His style influenced writers who followed, like Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemmingway.10. The Great GatsbyF. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece is The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald created a myth out of American life from his personal experience. Gatsby falls in love with Daisy, but he is too poor to marry her. Daisy married Tom Buchanan. In order to win his love back, Gatsby began bootlegging and other activities to make a big fortune. But finally he found Daisy was not the ideal love of his dreams. He had a strong sense of loss and disillusionment.11. Charlie ChaplinCharlie Chaplin (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was an English comic actor and film director of the silent film era. He became one of the best-known film stars in the world before the end of the First World War. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and continued well into the era of the talkies, though his films decreased in frequency from the end of the 1920s. His most famous role was that of The Tramp, which he first played in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice in 1914. From the April 1914 one-reeler Twenty Minutes of Loveonwards he was writing and directing most of his films, by 1916 he was also producing, and from 1918 composing the music. With Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, he co-founded United Artists in 1919.12. John LennonJohn Lennon (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, and together with Paul McCartney formed one of the most successful songwriting partnerships of the 20th century. Lennon revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, his writing, on film, and in interviews, and became controversial through his work as a peace activist. He moved to New Y ork City in 1971, where his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a lengthy attempt by Richard Nixon's administration to deport him, while his songs were adapted as anthems by the anti-war movement. Disengaging himself from the music business in 1975 to devote time to his family, Lennon reemerged in 1980 with a comeback album, Double Fantasy, but was murdered three weeks after its release.13. David BeckhamDavid Beckham (born 2 May 1975) is an English footballer who currently plays in midfield for Los Angeles Galaxy in Major League Soccer, having previously played for Manchester United, Preston North End, Real Madrid, and Milan, as well as the England national team, for whom he holds the all-time appearance record for an outfield player.Beckham has twice been runner-up for FIFA World Player of the Y ear and in 2004 was the world's highest-paid footballer when taking into account salary and advertising deals. Beckham was the first British footballer to play 100Champions League matches. He was Google's most searched of all sports topics in both 2003 and 2004. With such global recognition he has become an elite advertising brand and a top fashion icon. When joining the MLS in 2007 he was given the highest player salary in the league's history, with his playing contract with the Galaxy over the next three years being worth $6.5m per year.14. James WattJames Watt (19 January 1736 –25 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both the Kingdom of Great Britain and the world.15. Florence NightingaleFlorence Nightingale (12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. A Christian universalist, Nightingale believed that God had called her to be a nurse. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where shetended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night. Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world. The Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honour, and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.Translation1. 值得怀疑的是在人们最需要开心、快乐与放松的时候，是否能有人比卓别林带给人们更多的欢乐。
英美文学 第七章
Part SevenThe American Literature in the 1930s and American Drama Chapter I The American Literature in the 1930s1.Historical BackgroundIt is a misconception that the 1930s was a dim decade as compared with the glittering twenties. There is a visible continuity between the two decades. While authors who made their names in the twenties, authors such as Eliot, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner, continued to produce great works of literature, new forces appeared on the scene, writing with no less vitality and energy.However, the mood of the thirties was different from that of the twenties. The Wall Street crash of 1929 set the tone for the writing of the decade. As the Depression spread, life became an experience of want, poverty, and absolute misery. Economic disaster and the wretched workless existence for the masses of the people brought the realization that the system had collapsed. Everything seemed to be disintegrating all of a sudden and all at once, and an ordered, rational existence proved to be impossible. There was widespread panic. If there had been any hope in the frustrating twenties, there was, for many, sheer despair in the bleak years of the thirties. It is true that, when F. D. Roosevelt came into the White House, he brought with him a refreshing breeze of hope and optimism into it and into the country. Roosevelt was clever enough tooffer his New Deal which helped toward dispelling the crisis-laden atmosphere hanging over the country. This measure restored confidence to the defeatist nation. However, it was not until the outbreak of the Second World War that the country felt safe again. The war saved the United States.Faced with the new reality of want and despair, American writers, like their brothers in England and Europe, found themselves asking the question, “What can writers do for the country?”It was apparent that social concern was topmost in the minds of many authors, and that social involvement was to be the major feature of the literature of the thirties.In addition to Dos Passos and his monumental trilogy, U.S.A., there were young novelists such as James T. Farrell, John Ohara, and Erskine Caldwell who poured out their anger and protest in their left-oriented works.2.Prominent Figures in the 1930s1) John Dos Passos (1896-1970)His life and his literary contributions:In a sense the thirties can be called the decade of John Dos Passos. He was the leading naturalist of the Depression, and his masterwork, U.S.A., was probably the best work that came out of the period. John Dos Passos was a spectacular phenomenon in the 20th century literary history of the United States.He started off writing for the oppressed, calling himself a “red radical revolutionary” in 1917. His writings were Communist-oriented for a long period. And his attack on capitalism remained great until the fifties when his change to conservatism seemed complete. During the latter part of his career, Dos Passos showed admiration for business, and supported the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.Dos Passos’ literary output was immense. In addition to the novels he wrote, he is remembered today chiefly for U.S.A., the most ambitious of fictions produced in the thirties. He wants to tell the truth about American life. He hopes to paint a panorama of American society. And he did so.The common theme of Dos Passos’s works is attack on the “machine”, that is, the government. He beheld that the “machine”is hostile to the physical and spiritual welfare of the individual. The reason why he finally gave up communism was that he believed that communism was another “machine”.Like William Faulkner, John Dos Passos was also a courageous experimentalist in the art of novel-writing. He employed, in his fiction, devices which had not been known before, such as the “Newsreels”(新闻短片), “Biographies” (人物肖像), “Camera Eye” (摄影机眼).2) John Steinbeck (1902-1968)A.His LifeAnother significant Depression writer was John Steinbeck. He was born in Salinas, California. His father was government official, and his mother a school teacher. He grew up at home reading British and French classics. He went to Stanford University, but never graduated. A rather odd period of his youth followed in which he did not know what to do with himself. He worked as a farm laborer, a seaman on a cattle-boat, a newspaper reporter, a bricklayer, a chemist’s assistant, a surveyor, and a migratory fruit picker. This was a very educational period for him because it set the basis of his works, especially The Grapes of Wrath. Later, with his father’s support, he decided to be a professional writer. He wrote some romantic books, but none of these made any stir in the literary scene.Then in 1935, at the age of 33, Steinbeck discovered himself. He discovered both his subject and his method. The book that appeared that year, Tortilla Flat (1935), made him popular.B.His Literary Achievements and ContributionsHis greatest book is, of course, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). A story of the migration of agricultural workers from the dust bowl of Oklahoma to California, the novel is full of bitterness and pain but not exactly despair. Through inconceivable suffering and privation shines still a refreshing ray of hope conspicuously absent in the other crisis novels of the thirties. It is essentially its humanity that triumphs. The Grapes ofWrath helped in great measure toward increasing the nation’s awareness of the seriousness of its problems, and won in time the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It was banned and attacked for a length of time on both ideological and artistic grounds: it was accused of being communist (which it is of course not) and structurally formless book.The Grapes of Wrath is a crisis novel. It is Steinbeck’s clear expression of sympathy with the dispossessed and the wretched. The Great Depression throws the country into disorder and makes life intolerable for the luckless millions. One of the worst stricken areas is the central prairie lands. There, farmers become bankrupt and begin to move in a body toward California, where they hope to have a better life. The west movement is a most tragic and brutalizing human experience for families like the Joads in the novel. There is unspeakable pain and suffering on the road, and death occurs frequently. Everywhere they travel, they see a universal landscape of decay and desolation. When they reach California and try to settle down, they meet with bitter resistance from the local landowners. The prophecy of an imminent explosion is sent forth from the anger-filled pages: “When a majority of the people is hungry and cold they will take by force what they need,” Steinbeck is saying. The day of wrath is coming. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy. Something in the nature of a social revolution would be about to happen if nothing is done to stop the explosion. This isperhaps one of the reasons why the book was banned for many years.Structurally,The Grapes of Wrath consists of two blocks of material: the westward trek of the Joads and the dispossessed Oklahomans, and the general picture of the Great Depression.Readers sense the despair as they read along, and see no prospect of compensation for all this earthly suffering until one reaches the last chapter of the book. There, one sees a gleam of hope, and one’s confidence in man and human nature, the belief that a better life will be possible, returns to overbalance the scale of one’s judgment. Here lays, probably, the distinction which tells Steinbeck apart from other crisis writers of the 1930s. Amid the gloom and the defeatism which pervade the writing of the decade, Steinbeck manages to keep a refreshing faith in humanity, in the future when man will come to grips with his problems and come out all right. This ability to see beyond the immediate present into a better future has proved to be one of the things that have given Steinbeck his claim to fame and permanence.Chapter II American DramaLate 19th century some realists made their attempt to place realistic drama on the American stage. Some carried out dramatic experimentation around the turn of 20th century. With the stimulus that came from the naturalistic, symbolic, and critical drama of Europe, and possibly movedby the vigorous stirring in American poetry and fiction, American drama began the process of developing itself into a department of American literature equal in significance to both poetry and the novel.The theatre of the Depression was not depressing. Like other branches of literature the drama was preoccupied with social concerns. All through the forties and in the post-war period, new plays kept appearing and with them new playwrights. If Eugene O’Neill dominated the theatre in the 1920s, then it is safe to say that Tennessee Williams did so in the post-war years. The late fifties saw a temporary decline in dramatic productions, but in the next decade, American drama picked up a good deal of fresh energy and entered a new phase in its development with diversity as its features. The period is still in progress, and reputations are still being made. This is an overview of American drama. There are a few important figures that we students should know about American drama.We begin with Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953), American greatest playwright. With his father who was a famous actor, love of drama ran in the blood of the man. It was some years yet before he became a mature playwright, but those years of knowing about in the world can be seen as a preparation for his career. He traveled around with his father, had been to South America and South Africa. Back in America, he was out of work. He made friends with the lowest of society and got to know life better.The experience of wandering and loafing about provided him with material for his creative works.His first performed play, the one-act Bound East for Cardiff marked the beginning of his long career. He is best remembered for his later work Beyond the Horizon, the Iceman Cometh(1946), and Long Day’s Journey into Night (1956). He received the Pulitzer Prize for his Beyond the Horizon in 1920 and Nobel Prize in 1936. This play is somewhat an autobiographical. It is actually a metaphor for O’Neill’s lifelong endeavor to find truth and the way to acceptance. He was a tireless experimentalist in dramatic art. He took drama away from the old traditions of the 19th century and rooted it deeply in life. His ceaseless experimentation enriched American drama and influenced later playwrights greatly.The second distinguished American playwright we should know is Elmer Rice (1892-1967). He was the author of the well-known play, The Adding Machine. Now let us take a look at The Adding Machine. Mr. Zero has worked in a store for 25 years, doing the same job –adding figures – and is expecting a raise when his boss comes one day to tell him that he has to leave because the store has bought adding machines. In a sudden fit of anger he kills his boss with a bill file. He is tried, and condemned to death. He was a failure and a “waste product”of mechanization. He remains a “zero” in modern life.What Rice was trying to illustrate is that machines turn people out of jobs and drive them to their doom. Modern life turns people into mechanical fool. Mr. Zero, never having “missed a day, an hour, a minute” in his 25 years work adding figures, can no longer think except in terms of figures. Even when defending himself in the courtroom, he cannot help dragging in figures. In the midst of confessing to the murder that he has committee, he starts counting numbers from one to twelve, telling a puzzled audience that six and six makes twelve, and five is seventeen, and eight is twenty-five, and three is twenty-eight, etc. Then his mind switches back to the court proceedings, curses the figures, and says that he has worked for 25 years all for nothing. The human mind has been mechanized so thoroughly. Men become numbered, Mr. One, Mr. Two… as if they were machines or machine parts. Zero is portrayed as dehumanized so that he is almost devoid of emotional response. That is probably the saddest part of his – modern man’s – life.In 1931 actors, dramatists and producers formed their own organization, The Group Theatre, to produce plays of social significance. Clifford Odets(1906-1963) joined the Group Theatre and won recognition as one of the country’s leading dramatists in 1935. His famous plays are Waiting for Lefty, Awake and Sing!，Paradise Lost.A great play by Odets is Waiting for Lefty. It is about a taxi-driver’sstrike. A union meeting is going on. When the drivers are trying to decide whether to strike or not, the union boss who has already sold out to the companies tries to keep them from striking. All the time people come up on the stage and tell their stories, the union boss is smoking a cigar. The smoke keeps drifting in, a telling symbol of the fact that he is the one who has got all the decisions to make. Now Lefty is a character fighting against the corrupted union boss and trying to get the people to strike for higher wages. Throughout the play people are waiting for him before they decide to strike, but he never appears. In the meantime people keep talking about their bitter lives. Finally, there comes a shout from the back of the hall which interrupts everything. Somebody runs in and says, “wait a minute! We’ve found Lefty! We found him in an alley with a bullet in his head!” The suggestion is clear, that the union boss has had him killed. The people run up on the stage and shout, “What are we going to do？”Somebody at the back of the audience shouts, “Strike! Strike!” and they pick this up on stage and join the chorus.The interesting thing to note about the play is its acting. The actors are scattered through the audience and some on these people jump up now and then to echo in shouts what is being said on stage. It is very exciting to see one person next to you, who looks just like you, working himself up in agitation and presently standing up, shouting, “Listen! Listen!” and charging onto the stage: He is, you realize, one of the actors!The point of this arrangement was to include the audience in the acting, and its effect was powerful in the social theatre of the 1930s. The audience joined the “chorus”and the whole theatre was boiling. Propaganda it certainly is, but as certainly it is also exquisite art: The whole performance is a combination of the two. And from the stories of the drivers we get very authentic details of life during the Depression. Waiting for Lefty is a very powerful play to come out of the theatre of the thirties.Post-war American drama has been said to begin with the staging of The Glass Menagerie in 1945. Its author, Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) has certainly become one of the greatest American dramatists to go down in the country’s literary history. He of course is the next one that we should remember, for he is the typical one of the post-O’Neill era.Another great dramatist to come out of the forties is Arthur Miller (1915- ) who has, along with Tennessee Williams, led the post-war new drama. Miller grew up in the Depression. He witnessed his father’s business failure and worked at a variety of proletarian jobs. The staging of Death of a Salesman (1947), his masterpiece, established him a writer of no small talent.Questions for review:1.What was John Dos Passos mainly concerned with throughout his literary life?2.What “new” writing techniques did Passos employ in his books?3.What was Steinbeck mainly concerned with throughout his literary life?。
英美文化概论论文
英美文化概论论文－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－英美文化概论论文In the past few weeks, we spent 10 lessons on essentials of British & American cultures study. In this course, we learn in brief about the history and government system etc. During the Learning process, what impresses me most is the cowboys.An integral part of the story of America, the cowboy is a national icon, a romantic, rugged metaphor for America’s frontier past, Westward expansion and creation myths. Sensationalizedby Hollywood and by real-life bad boys, the heroic, hard-working, hard-riding, free-thinking cowboy is inseparable from American history itself.America’s first cowboys came from Mexico. Beginning in the 1500s, vaqueros—the Spanish term for “cowboy”—were hired by ranchersto drive and tend to livestockbetween Mexico and what is now New Mexico and Texas. During the early 1800s, and leading up to Texas’s independence from Mexico in 1836, the number of English speaking settlers in the area increased. These American settlers took their cues from the vaquero culture, borrowing clothing styles and vocabulary and learning how to drive their cattle in the same way.The vaquero influence persisted throughout the 1800s. Cowboys came from a variety of backgrounds, and included European immigrants, African Americans, Native Americans and Midwestern and Southern settlers. In the nineteenth century, one out of three American cowboys in the south was Mexican.As America built railroads further and further west, fostering industry, transportation and white settlements in former Indian territories, the cowboy played a crucial part in the nation’s expansion. In the early 1800s, Texas cattleman had herded cows via the Shawnee Trail to cattle markets in St. Louis and Kansas City. During the 1860s and following the Civil War, they began herding via the Chisholm and Western Trails towards the new railroads in Kansas, where livestock was then loaded into freight cars and transported to markets around the country.In less than two decades cowboys herded more than six million cows and steers to the railroads. Most cowboys were young—the average age was 24—and hard-working men in need of quick cash, although the pay was low. The work was exhausting and lonely. Cowboys also helped establish towns, spending their money in the “cowtown” settlements across the wes t during their time off. Townspeople frowned oncowboys as lawless troublemakers who brought nothing but violence and immorality, and some even banned them from town.Ranching, or the raising of cattle or other livestock on range land, also expanded during the late nineteenth century. The forced removal of Native Americans and the clearing of the American frontier resulted in the near extinction of the region’s many buffalo and bison. This land, now dominated by white homesteaders, was used for ranching.Public lands on the Great Plains constituted “open range,” where any white settler could buy and raise cattle for grazing. The invention and distribution of barbed wire in the 1870s revolutionized the concept of privately owned land in the Midwest, fencing off homesteads suitable for farming and ranching—but also limiting the work to be done by cowboys.With the rise of private landholdings in the late 1800s, the cattle driving industry had lost its cachet. Private landowners and “free grazers”—vaqueros and cowboys alike—locked horns over what was appropriate use for land whose ownership was also in question. By the 1890s, the wideopen ranges and cattle trails were gone and privatized, and the days of the long cattle drives tothe railroads were over.Smaller-scale cattle drives continued until the mid-1900s, with livestock herded from Arizona to New Mexico and throughout the southwestern United States. Most cowboys left the open trail and took jobs at one of the myriad of private ranches that were settling across the West. But as the work of actual cowboys declined in the U.S., the cowboy lifestyle continued to be popularized—and stereotyped—by a new Hollywood film genre: the Western movie.The late 1900s were tough times for cowboys, ranchers, farmers and anyone working with the land in the U.S. Changing modes of food distribution and production, widespread urbanization and severe economic difficulties forced many to sell their land, go bankrupt, change professions, or take out large loans. As Vern Sager says in The Last Cowboy, “Don’t seem quite fair. A person works hard to make a little and gives it to the bank.”Cowboys in the 21st century might seem like an anachronism, but as Sager demonstrates, their work still needs to be done. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, cowboys—included in the occupation category “support activities for animal production”—numbered 9,730 workers in 2003, making an average of $19,340 per year, working in ranches, stockyards and rodeos. About one-third of these worke rs were listed in the subcategory of “spectator sports,” making their living primarily at rodeos, circuses and theatrical venues as livestock handlers.As the ranchers and cowboys of Sager’s generation age, who will be left to do their jobs? Despite decade s of socioeconomic change, cowboys still don’t have health insurance—and they don’t retire. Times might be changing, but as a symbol of persistence, self-sufficiency and a hard work ethic, cowboys live on.感谢阅读，欢迎大家下载使用！。
英美文化概论---纯正英语版----Education-in-UK[1]
![英美文化概论---纯正英语版----Education-in-UK[1]](https://img.taocdn.com/s3/m/b0823797c0c708a1284ac850ad02de80d5d80675.png)
In Britain the academic year is divided into three terms of about twelve weeks each.
The education system in the UK is divided into four main parts, primary education, secondary education, further education and higher education.
not only to provide children with literacy and the other basic skills they will need to become active members of society
but also to socialize children, learn the rules and values they need to become good citizens, to participate in the community, and to contribute to the economic prosperity of an advanced industrial economy.