英美文学选读应用

《英美文学选读》应用English Literature

Chapter One The Renaissance Period

I. Shakespeare’s sonnets

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

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

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

II. Shakespeare’s A Merchant of Venice

1. Theme

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

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

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

2. The character analysis of Shylock

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

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

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

III. The character analysis of Hamlet

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

V. Milton’s Paradise Lost :

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

2. The character analysis of Satan:

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

3.Features: Parallel and contrast

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