on the art of living with others

An Integrated English Course (Unit 6 Book 7)Time Allocation and Teaching Procedure：(about 8 classes are needed for Unit 6) The 1st two classes:1. students’ presentations2. teacher’s comments and brief introduction to the text I3. introduction of the authorThe 2nd two classes: interpretation of text IThe 3rd two classes: interpretation of text I; exercises after the text IThe 4th two classes: review of text I; interpretation of text IIText I: On the Art of Living with OthersI. Topics for Presentation1.Do you believe that living is an art, or that living with others requires an art?2.Do you think courtesy or politeness is still valid as a code of conduct?3.What do you think is the most important principle in getting along with others?4.Give a brief intruduction of the two surviving ancient Greek epics Iliad andOdyssey .II. About the authorSir Arthur Helps (1813-1875), English writer and dean of the Privy Council, youngest son of Thomas Helps, a London merchant, was born in Streatham in South London. He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge. As a member of the "Conversazione Society," better known as the Apostles, a society established in 1820 for the purposes of discussion on social and literary questions by a few young men attracted to each other by a common taste for literature and speculation, he was associated with Charles Buller, Frederick Maurice, Richard Chenevix Trench, Monckton Milnes, Arthur Hallam and Alfred Tennyson. Helps possessed, however, enough dramatic power to give life and individuality to the dialogues with which he enlivened many of his other books. In his Friends in Council, a Series of Readings and Discourse thereon (1847-1859), Helps varied his presentment of social and moral problems by dialogues between imaginary personages, who, under the names of Milverton, Ellesmere and Dunsford, grew to be almost as real to Helps's readers as they certainly became to himself.III. Style and StrategiesThe way the author develops the essay: classification and division.IV. Text Explanations1.The Iliad for war; the Odyssey for wandering; but where is the great domesticepic?The Iliad is a great epic about human beings’ brave deeds in wars; the Odyssey is an epic describing the Greek hero’s ten-year-long homebound journey; but it seems that there is no epic to be found in history portraying ordinary householdlife.2.Men have worshipped some fantastic being for living alone in a wilderness; butsocial martyrdoms place no saints upon the calendar.For those who have succeed in living alone in a wilderness, people respect them and deem them as heroes; yet for those who have sacrificed their lives in order to keep society going smoothly and harmoniously, people fail to recognize the nobility in their deeds and to pay due respect to them.3.… and there is a tendency in all minor disputes to drift down to it.(If such a mentality has been formed,) any minor dispute would easily fall into a standing subject for quarrel and one becomes unconciously the victim of his own bigotry.4.But certainly it is not the way to arrive at flood temper.Though reasoning is not the best way in solving domestic problem, it is not the worst, either. At least, it can prevent people from flying into a rage.5.It would be like living between the glasses of a microscope.Living between the glasses of microscope means one’s any small fault will be greatly enlarged and deemed as intolerable.6.criricism over the shoulder: belated critism, close to the Chinese expression “马后炮”7.They are non-conductors of all the heats and animosities around them.The reticent people would neither cause nor make worse the conflicts between people.8.hasty and uncharitable speeches: harsh or unfair utterances made too quickly to beaccurate or wise9. a reproductive irritability: an irritability that might continously escalate when metby strong and hostile response10.make a bad use of the knowledge which they have gained of each other by theirintimacy: undermine each other’s fame by leaking to others some very personal information11.The most refined part of us lies in this region of taste, which is perhaps a resultof our whole being rather than a part of our nature, and, at any rate, is the region of our most subtle sympathies and antipathies.Taste is the most delicate part of being, for it is not a direct result of any individual human nature, but a result of the comprehensive work of all our human nature, though there is no telling of taste, yet we receive very clear instructions from it about what to like and dislike.Questions concerning the text:1.Why does the author hold the belief that “a thorough conviction of the differenceof men is the great thing to be assured of in social knowledge?”2.Why should we avoid having stock subjects of disputation?3.Why should people not hold too much to logic if a good relationship with others isto be achieved?4.Why should we not expect more from our friends and companions than they cangive?5.Why are “people who have some reticence” also regarded as promoters of socialhappiness?V. Words and expressionsrage [reidʒ] vi. 大发脾气, 动怒She raged when her jewels were stolen while under police protection.在有警察保护的情况下她的珠宝被偷, 她十分生气。