英美文学选读_总复习概要

Chapter4 Victorian Period1836-1901

2. background

(1)early years: rapid economic development as well as serious social problems

(2)the next twenty years: prosperity and relative stability. a national spirit of earnestness, respectability, modesty domesticity

(3)the last three decades: the decline of the British empire and the decay of the Victorian values

3. idea:

(1)Darwin‘s The Origin of Species; The Descent of Man shook the theoretical basis of the traditional faith

(2)Utilitarianism: whether it could promote the material happiness

(3)socially conscious writers criticized(2)‘s depreciation of cultural values, cold indifference towards human feeling

(4)literature: magnitude and diversity, romantically and realistically

4.critical realist writers: criticized the society, concerned about the fate of common people

Charles Dickens

1.theme:critical realist writers, criticize: poverty, injustice, hypocrisy, corruptness

2.works: Oliver Twist; The Pickwick Paper; David Copperfield; Domeby and Son; A Tale of Two Cities; Bleak House; Little Dorrit; Hard Times; Great Expectations

3.characteristics:

(1)he is skillful in the dialect and have a large vocabulary

(2)character portrayal

(3)characters are mostly innocent, helpless ,persecuted child characters

(4)a mixture of humor and sympathism

(5)bizarre figure, horrible

4.Oliver Twist: the cruelty and hypocrisy of the workhouse system and the dark criminal underworld life

The Bronte Sisters

1.scene:vast,rough,untouched moorland wilderness

2.Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre

Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre.

Rochester: a grim-looking, energetic, quick-tempered, but an understanding middle-aged man

Jane Eyre: has a burning spirit and a longing to love and be loved

Jane Eyre: struggles for recognition of her basic rights and equality as a woman. It‘s an individual conscious struggle towards self-realization. She gets joy through the sacrifice of herself or her weakness overcome

3.Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights(uses flashbacks)

Nelly: Catherine‘s old nurse, narrator, told Mr.Lockwood, a temporary tenant the story

Alfred Tennyson

1.Crossing the Bar; Ulysses; Break, Break, Break

2.evaluation:Poet Laureate (Wordsworth, Southey)

3.features:a powerful expression of the poet‘s phil osophical and religious thoughts, his doubts about life, soul.

Robert Browning

1.features:perfects "dramatic monologue", keeps readers onmouseover, thoughtful and enlightened

2.works: My Last Dutches, in heroic couplets, dramatic monologue

George Eliot

1.idea:founder of "stream of consciousness", focus on inner struggle. hereditary influences govern human action. concern for the destiny of woman. the tragedy of women lies in their very birth(hereditary influences)

2.works features :naturalistic and psychological novel

3.works:Middlemarch:a full view of life in a small Englishtown

Thomas Hardy

1.evaluation:naturalist(https://www.360docs.net/doc/bb10094679.html,wrance; Theodore Dreiser; George Eliot),also critical realist writer (Dickens)

2.works:Wessex，The Return of the Nature; The Mayor of Casterbridge; Tess of the D‘Urbervilles; Jude the Obscure

3.features:nostalgic(Washington Irving; F.Scott Fitzergerald; William Faulkner),also pessimistic

4.naturalism:Darwin‘s idea of "survival of the fittest"

(1)man is born with tragic,inevitably bound by his own hereditary traits

(2)man proves powerless before fate however he tries,he seldom escapes his doomed destiny

5.Tess of the D‘Urbervilles:

(1)criticize the society, hypocrisy of the society

(2)nauralism, the misery, poverty Tess suffers

Chapter5 The Modern Period (England)

1.background:second half of the 19th century to early of the 20th decades

(1)natural and social sciences enormously advanced

(2)capitalism came into its monopoly stage

(3)the gap between the rich and the poor was further deepened

(4)World War 1 2 broke

2.what ideas influence this period: all kinds of philosophical ideas

(1)Karl Marx: scientific socialism

(2)Darwin‘s theory of evolution, "survival of the fittest"

(3)Freud‘s analytical psy chology

(4)The irrationalist philosophers give immense influence

3.ideas:(1)Modernism originated from skepticism and disillusion of capitalism

(2)The French symbolism announced modernism

(3)takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base.The major themes are the distorted,alienated and ill relationships

4.difference between Modernism and Realism

Modernism is a reaction against realism in many aspects

(1)Modernism rejects rationalism, which is the theoretical base of Realism

(2)Modernism refects the source of Realism, i.e. the external, objective, material world

(3)Modernism rejects almost all the traditional elements in literature

https://www.360docs.net/doc/bb10094679.html,wence‘s works‘ features:

(1)he interests in exploring the psychological development, he thinks life impulse is man‘s instinct. any conscious oppression will cause distortion of the individual‘s personality

(2)make a psychological exploration of human relationships, especially those between men and women

(3)he emphasizes that it‘s capitalist industrialization that turn man into inhuman machines. And the desires for power and money cause the alienation of human relationships

6.John Osborne: "Look back in Anger" "Angry Young Man", the working-class drama and the Theater of Absurb

George Bernard Shawn

1.idea:against "art for art‘s sake", art should serve social purposes by reflecting human life, revealing social contradictions and educating common people

2.works features: prolem plays, only one passion: indignation

(1)showing one‘s character by the expense of another‘s

(2)inversion

3.works:Mrs Warren‘s Profession(a play about the economic oppression of woman); St. Joan(historical play); The Apple Cart(political play); The Doctor‘s Dilemma(political play)

John Galsworthy

1.works: trilogy:The Man of Property; In Chancery; To Let

2.The Man of Property:Soames(husband),Irene(wife),Bosinney(wife‘s lover)

the predominant possessive instinct of the Forsytes

Soames represents the principle that the accumulation of wealth in the aim of life,for he considers everything in terms of one‘s property,he never pays any attention to his wife‘s thoughts and feelings,he takes her merely as part of his own property.

theme:human relationships of the contemporary English Society are merely an extension of property relationships

William Butler Yeats

1.works:The Lake Isle of Innisfree; Down by the Salley Gardens

T.S.Eliot

1.works:The Waste Land

(1)presents physical disorder and spiritual decadence in the modern western society

(2)reflects disillusion and despair of a whole post war generation.anguish,menace,sterility had been afflicting all sensitive members of the postwar generation

(3)concerns with the spiritual breakup of a modern civilization in which human life has lost its meaning

(4)reflects the 20th century people‘s disillusion and frustration in a meaningless and boring world

2.works:The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock: dramatic monologue in ironic tone

content: the meditation of an aging young man over the proposing marriage

theme: the speaker‘s incapability of facing up to love and to life in a sterile upper-class world

https://www.360docs.net/doc/bb10094679.html,wence

1.works:The Rainbow; Women in Love; Lady Chatterley‘s Lover

2.Sons and Lovers

contents: ignorant, drunken and brutish father(Mr.Morel), the weary, frustrated mother(Mrs.Morel), the intelligent and ambitious woman, tries to find emotional fulfillment in her sons(Paul).she hopes her sons should never became miners, they will be educated to realize her ideals of success, happiness and social respect. Paul is incapable of escaping the overpowering emotional bond imposed by her mothers love. (distorted relationship)

James Joyce

1.scene:the same setting: Ireland, especially Dublin, the same subject: the Irish people and their life

2. works: Ulysses: an account of man‘s life during one day

3.stream of consciousness: presents unspoken materials directly from the psyche of the characters, or make the characters tell their own inner thoughts in monologues; a literary form presenting psychological aspects of characters

The events seem to be trivial, insignificant, but below the surface of them, the natural flow of mental reflections, the shifting moods and impulses in the characters inner world are richly presented in an frank and penetrating way.(Ulysses)

4.Araby(from Dubliners):a tale of the frustrated quest for beauty

theme :the child lives not with his parents but with an uncle and aunt, a symbol of that isolation and lack of proper relation between parents and children

Chapter7 The Realistic Period 1865-1914

1.background:the Civil War affected both the social and the value system

(1)transformed from an agricultural one to an industrialized and commercialized one

(2)stimulated technological development

(3)stepped up urbanization

(4)people became dubious about the human nature and the charity of God The Gilded Age

2.American Realistic Period and English Realistic Period(Victorian Period)

common ground

(1)a great interest in the realities of life, aim at the interpretation of the actualities of any aspect of life

(2)what was brutal or filthy, the open portrayal of class struggle

(3)common people mostly depicted

differences(America)

(1)native trends in the realistic portrayal of the landscape and social surfaces

(2)perfect the dialect style

(3)concern about "local colorism", a unique variation of American literary realism

3.American Naturalism: influe nced by Darwin‘s evolutionary theory

(1)accept the more negative implications of it and use it to explain the behavior of those characters in litrary works

(2)inherited qualities, and habits confined by social forces are depicted

(3)theme: human "bestiality", especially the sexual desire

(4)unpolished language

(5)philosophically, the truth is always partially hidden from the eyes of the individual, or beyond his control

(6)material source from the lower ranks of society portray misery and poverty

(7)naturalism is evolved from realism.author‘s tone in writing is less serious and sympathetic,more ironic and pessimistic

Mark Twain

1.works: Life on the Mississippi; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (trilogy of Mississippi)；The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County; Innocents Abroad; The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg

2.features:

(1)paid more attention to the "life" of the Americans

(2)preferred to have his own region and people in his stories, i.e. "local colorism"

(3)concerned with the life of a small, well-defined region and the lower-class people

(4)nostalgic in a vanishing way of life and recorders of a present that faded before their eyes

(5)skillfully used the colloquialism, the language is simple, direct, faithful. protagonists spoke in vernacular, both realistically and symbolically

(6)his humor is remarkable, his humor is not only funny elements making people laugh, but a kind of artistic style to criticize the social injustice and satirize the decayed romanticism

3.Advantures of Huckleberry Finn: The climax is Huck‘s inner struggle on the Mississippi, between his affection for Jim and the laws, finally he follows his own good-hearted morality rather than the conventional village one

Huckleberry Finn: a typical American boy with "a sound heart and a deformed conscience", innocent and rebel

Henry James

1.evaluation:fluenced by Freud, pioneer of "stream-of-consciousness", founder of psychological realism

2.works:The Portrait of A Lady(masterpiece):international themes

3.Daisy Miller

narrator: Frederick Winterbourne

Daisy Miller: Freedom an individuality, innocent, a pretty American Flirt

Emily Dickinson

1.works features:

(1)she uses a particular rhyme pattern, uses dashes and captical letters as a means of emphasis

(2)simplicity and plainness

(3)focus on a single image or symbol

(4)poems are personal and meditative

(5)personification

2.idea:skeptical about the relationship between man and nature, concerns religion, death, immortality, love, nature

3.works:This is my letter to the World; I heard a Fly buzz-when I died; Because I could not stop for Death

Theodore Dreiser

1.works:Sister Carrie greatest work: An American Tragedy

2.trilogy of desire: The Financier; The Titan; The Stoic

3.idea:naturalist

(1)heredity and environment are the forces determining man‘s destiny, under what life was ironic, even tragic

(2)human beings‘ life was trapped into ‘a welter of inscrutable forces‘

(3)Darwin‘s idea of " survial of the fittest" is embodied as "kill or to be killed" in Dreiser‘s works

(4)explain the insignificance of life and attack the conventional moral standards

(5)materialism is the core. man has a meaningless, endless search for satisfaction of his desires, desires for money

(6)sex is another human desire. sexual beauty symbolizes the social status

Chapter8 The Modern Period (America)

1.age: second half of the 19th century to early decades of the 20th century

2.background:

(1)the U.S. has become the most powerful country

(2)technological revolution

(3)a decline in moral standard, a spiritual wasteland, feelings of fear, loss, disorientation and disillusionment

3. influencing ideas:

(1)the same as English Modern period: Karl Marx, Darwin, Freud

(2)stream of consciousness:

4."The Lost Generation" by Gertrude

5.John Steinbeck: "The Grapes of Wrath"

Allen Ginsberg: "Howl", the manifesto of Beat Movement

Salinger: "The Catcher in the Rye"

6.modernism‘s features:

literature: convey a vision of social breakdown and moral decay

writer: develop techniques that could represent a break with the past. modernistic works are discontinuity and fragmentation

7.The differences between Modernism America and England

(1)American writers emphasize the concrete sensory images or details as the direct conveyor of experience

(2)modern fiction employ the first narration or confine the reader to the "central consciousness" or one character‘s point of view

common ground: directness, compression, vividness, sparing of words

Ezra Pound

1.imagist:

(1)direct treatment of poetic subjects

(2)eliminate ornamental words

(3)rhythmical composition in the sequence of the musical phrase rather than in the sequence of a metronome

example:"In a Station of the Metro"

2.works:In a Station of the metro; The River-Merchent‘s Wife; A pact(free verse)

Robert Lee Frost

1.works:The Road Not Taken, Mountain Interval, uncertainty of the speaker‘s choice between safety and unknown(meditative)

Stopping by Woods on a snowy Evening-New Hampshire

After Apple-Picking, a man‘s best efforts ever satisfy God?

2.idea:a momentary stay against confusion, like Wordsworth

3.The Road Not Taken: took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference

Eugene I‘Neill

1.works: The Hairy Ape

characters seek meaning and purpose in their lives through love or religion or revenge. the result is disappointment or despair. use Expressionism

2.The Hairy Ape: concerns the problem of modern man‘s position.Yank‘s sense of belonging nowhere is a typical of the mood of isolation and alienation in the early twentieth century in the US and the whole world as well.

F.Scott Fitzgerald

1.both an insider and outsider of the Jazz Age

2.The Great Gatsby

narrator: Nick Carraway

Ernest Hemingway

1.Hemingway hero

(1)a wounded hero confronts all the difficulties of the situation with his dignity and courage.(In Our Times-Nick Adams)

(2)a group of wandering, amusing and aimless people caught in the war.(The Sun Also Rises-The Lost Generation)

(3)man suffers both physically and mentally, and is doomed to suffer, refute God‘s kindness to

man.(A Farewell to Arms-Frederick Henry)

(4)proves life‘s worth and there are causes worth dying for.(For Whom the Bell Tolls-Robert Jordan)

(5)show great respect for the struggle of mankind against unconquerable natural forces, though only

a partial victory is possible.(The Old Man and the Sea-Santiago)

(6)he is with the honesty, the discipline, and the restraint. man always fights a losing battle of life,but never lose dignity. man can be physically destroyed, but never defeated spiritually

(7)man of courage, and masculinity and inflexible heroism.(The Undefeated)

2.The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water

3.colloquialism (Mark Twain)(short, simple, conventional words)

4.works: Indian Camp(In Our Times)

William Faulkner

1.works:The Sound and The Fury; Light in August; Absalom, Absalom!; Go Down, Moses; The Marble Faun; Soldiers‘ Pay; As I Lay Dyi ng; Wild Palms; The Hamlet; Intruder in the Dust(Nobel Prize); The Bear; Requiem for a Nun; The Fable; The Town; The Mansion

2.background: American South, Northern Mississippi, Yoknapatawpha County

3.theme:almost all his heroes are tragic

(1)they are prisoners of the past or of the society, or of some social and moral taboos, or of their own personalities

(2)society conditions man with its laws and institutions and eliminates man‘s chance of responding naturally to the experiences of his existence

(3)man tries to explain the incomprehensible by turning away from reality, but becomes weak, cowardly and confused(Emily-coward)

4. nostalgic in The Sound and The Fury

5.works‘ features:

(1)use of narrative techniques is remarkable, let the characters explain themself, the reader experiences the work of art directly

(2)breaks up chronology, juxtaposes the past with the present

(3)stream of consciousness

(4)inner musings of the narrator

(5)good at presenting multiple points of view

6.works: A Rose for Emily(Gothic devices)

Emily :the symbols of the Old South, the prisoners of the past. an eccentric spinster. she refuses the inevitable changes and loss with the pass of time