Thoreau,Milton,Wordsworth人物资料.doc

Henry D(avid) Thoreau (1817-1862) American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher, best-known for his autobiographical story of life in the woods, WALDEN (1854). Thoreau became one of the leading personalities in New England Transcendentalism. He wrote tirelessly but earned from his books and journalism little. Thoreaus CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE (1849) influenced Gandhi in his passive resistance campaigns, Martin Luther King, Jr., and at one time the politics of the British Labour Party. For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it. (Journal, February 22, 1845-1847 - no year in Thoreaus dateline) Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, which was center of his life, although he spent several years in his childhood in the neighboring towns and elsewhere in his adulthood. In 1835 Thoreau contracted tuberculosis and suffered from recurring bouts throughout his life. However, a few years later Emerson described Thoreau as a strong healthy youth fresh from college. He had an out-of doors complexion, and he was often seen walking around his home town. Thoreau studied at Concord Academy (1828-33), and at Harvard University, graduating in 1837. He was teacher in Canton, Massachusetts (1835-36), and at Center School (1837), resigning after two weeks - he first refused to continue the tradition of daily canings and then beat six students to protest against corporal punishment. From 1837-38 Thoreau worked in his fathers pencil factory, and returning to the factory in 1844 and 1849-50. With his elder brother John he opened a school in Concord. Thoreau taught there in 1838-41 until his John Thoreau became fatally ill. From 1848 he was a regular lecturer at Concord Lyceum. He also worked as a land surveyor.A decisive turning point in Thoreaus life came when he met Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was a member of Emerson household from 1841 to 1843, earning his living as a handyman. In 1843 he was a tutor to William Emersons sons in Staten Island, New York, and in 1847-48 he again lived in Emersons house. In 1845 Thoreau built a home on the shores of Walden Point for twenty-eight dollars. His observations and speculations Thoreau recorded in A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS (1849). The account was based on a trip he took with John Thoreau in 1839. His first book sold poorly and Thoreau remarked, I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself. Thoreaus most famous essay, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE (1849), was a result of a overnight visit in 1846 in a jail, where he ended after refusing to pay his taxes in protest against the Mexican War and the extension of slavery. Later Thoreau lectured and wrote about the evils of slavery and helped fleeing slaves. In his famous statement, the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, he crystallized his idea to be the one who has the courage to live, to stand against the trends of his own time. Walden; or, Life in the Woods described a two-year period in Thoreaus life from March 1845 to September 1847. From the Fourth of July, the author retired from the town to live alone at Walden Pond. Much of Waldens material was derived from his journals and contains such pieces as Reading and The Pond in the Winter. We are a race of titmen, and soar but a little higher in our intellectual flights than the columns of the daily paper, Thoreau wrote in Reading in Walden. Other famous sections involve Thoreaus visits with a Canadian woodcutter and with an Irish family, a trip to Concord, and a description of his bean field. Although Walden has become an inspiration to all idealists who want to escape civilization, Thoreau was a practical person and took with him seed, lumber, clothes, nails, and other devices to survive - and his friends helped him to put the roof on his hut. We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my own townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. Although Thoreau never earned a living by his writings, his works fill 20 volumes. Among his many correspondence friends was H.G.O. Blake, once a Unitarian minister and later attached to the Transcendentalist, whom he wrote in December 1856: I am grateful for what I am & have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contended one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Aware that he was dying of tuberculosis, Thoreau cut short his travels and returned to Concord. There prepared some of his journals for publication. Thoreau died at Concord on May 6, 1862. His letters were edited by his friend Emerson and published posthumously in 1865. POEMS OF NATURE appeared in 1895 and COLLECTED POEMS in 1943. Thoreaus collection of journals was published in 1906 in 14 volumes.Light-winged Smoke! Icarian bird, Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight, Lark without song, and messenger of dawn, Circling above the hamlets as thy nest; Or else, departing dream, and shadowly form Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts; By night star-veiling, and by day Darkening the light and blotting out the sun; Go thou my incense upward from this hearth, And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame. Thoreaus primary genre was essay. His fascination with the natural surroundings is reflected in many of his writings. Natural History of Massachusetts includes poetry, describes the Merrimack River, and discusses the best technique for spear-fishing. In Resistance to Civil Government, often reprinted with the title Civil Disobedience, Thoreau recommends disobeying unjust laws. I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. Many readers have pointed out that in Slavery in Massachusetts Thoreaus defense of John Brown, when he raided on the armory at Harpers Ferry, contradicts his idea of passive resistance. In his final essay, Life Without Principle, the writer warns that working for money alone will never bring happiness. He attacks his contemporaries fascination with news and gossips and explains how individuals must resist conformity in the search for truth. In 1999 appeared Thoreaus WILD FRUITS, written with henscratched handwriting. The text was born during the last decade of his life. Thoreau lived in the third-floor attic of his parents house and recorded his observations about vegetation surrounding Concord. In Wild Fruits he argued against the destruction of the wilderness around him. Selected works: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849 Resistance to Civil Government / Civil Disobedience / On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, 1849 - Kansalaistottelemattomuudesta (trans. by Outi Lauhakangas) Walden; or, Life in the Woods, 1854 - Elm metsss (trans. by Mikko Kilpi) Excursions, 1863 The Maine Woods, 1864 Slavery in Massachusetts, 1854 A Plea for Captain John Brown, 1859 Walking, 1862 (Atlantic Monthly) Cape Cod, 1865 A Yankee in Canada, 1866 Journal, 1906 (14 vols.) Complete Works, 1929 (5 vols.) Collected Poems, 1943 The Journals, 1949 Consciousness in Concord: The Hitherto Lost Journal, 1958 The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 1959 Walden, and Other Writings, 1962 Collected Poems, 1964 The Portable Thoreau, 1964 Thoreaus Vision, 1973 Writings, 1971-93 (7 vols.; in progress) Civil Disobedience and Other Essays, 1993 Faith in a Seed, 1993 Political Writings, 1996 Wild Fruits, 1999 (ed. by Bradley Dean) John Milton （1608-1674）John Milton was born on December 9, 1608, in London, as the second child of John and Sara (ne Jeffrey). The family lived on Bread Street in Cheapside, near St. Pauls Cathedral. John Milton Sr. worked as a scrivener, a legal secretary whose duties included preparation and notarization of documents , as well as real estate transactions and moneylending. Miltons father was also a composer of church music, and Milton himself experienced a lifelong delight in music. The familys financial prosperity afforded Milton to be taught classical languages, first by private tutors at home, followed by entrance to St. Pauls School at age twelve, in 1620. In 1625, Milton was admitted to Christs College, Cambridge. While Milton was a hardworking student, he was also argumentative to the extent that only a year later, in 1626, he got suspended after a dispute with his tutor, William Chappell. During his temporary return to London, Milton attended plays, and perhaps began his first forays into poetry. At his return to Cambridge, Milton was assigned a new tutor, Nathaniel Tovey. Life at Cambridge was still not easy on Milton; he felt he was disliked by many of his fellow students and he was dissatisfied with the curriculum. It was at Cambridge that he composed On the Morning of Christs Nativity on December 25, 1629.In 1632, Milton took his M.A. cum laude at Cambridge, after which he retired to the family homes in London and Horton, Buckinghamshire, for years of private study and literary composition.1 His poem, On Shakespeare, was published in the same year in the Second Folio. From this period hail also his LAllegro and Il Penseroso. Miltons Comus, a masque, was performed at Ludlow Castle in 1634, to be first published anonymously in 1637, music by the famed court composer Henry Lawes. In April 1637, Milton was nearing the end of his studies when his mother died and was buried at Horton. Only a few months later, in August, Miltons friend Edward King died as well, by drowning. In November, upon his memory, Milton composed the beautiful elegy, Lycidas. It was published in a memorial volume at Cambridge in 1638.As customary for young gentlemen of means, Milton set out for a tour of Europe in the spring of 1638. He met famed scholar Hugo Grotius in Paris, where he stayed briefly before continuing on to Italy. Milton arrived in Florence in the autumn, where he probably met with Galileo, who was then under house arrest by order of the Inquisition. In Rome, he was a guest of Cardinal Barberini, the Popes nephew, and visited the Vatican Library. In Naples, Milton met Giovanni Batista, biographer of Torquato Tasso. Milton wrote Mansus in his honor. Upon reaching Geneva to visit with Calvinist theologian Giovanni Diodati, Milton found out about the death of his childhood friend, Charles Diodati in London. Miltons tour of Europe was cut short with rumors of impending civil war in England, and he returned home in July 1639. Shortly after, Milton composed Epitaphium Damonis, a Latin poem to the memory of his dearest friend.Milton settled down in London, where he began schooling his two nephews, later also taking in children of the better families. The Civil War was brewing King Charles I invaded Scotland in 1639, and the Long Parliament was convened in 1640. Milton began writing pamphlets on political and religious matters; Of Reformation, Animadversions, and Of Prelatical Episcopacy were published in 1641, The Reason for Church Government in February, 1642.In the spring of 1642, Milton married Mary Powell, 17 years old to his 34, but the relationship was an unhappy one, and Mary left him to visit the family home briefly thereafter, and did not return. Matters were not improved when the Powells declared for the King in the Civil War which broke out in August. This prompted Milton to write his so-called Divorce Tracts speaking for divorce on the grounds of incompatibility. In 1643, Milton published the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, which had its second, longer edition in early 1644. In 1644, Milton also published The Judgement of Martin Bucer Concerning Divorce. The Divorce Tracts caused an uproar both in parliament and amidst the clergy, as well as with the general populace, which earned him the nickname Milton the Divorcer.2 It is in reference to the attempted censorship of the same by the Stationers Company, that Milton published his eloquent Areopagitica, an oration advocating freedom of the press, in late 1644.3 Milton had also had time to write a treatise Of Education, which prescribed a rigorous course of study for English youth. In 1645, Milton published Tetrachordon and Colasterion, and registered Poems of Mr. John Milton, Both English and Latin.Milton had made plans to remarry, when Mary Powell returned. The two seem to have reconciled, since their daughter Anne was born in 1646. The whole Powell clan moved in with the Miltons, because Royalists had been ousted from Oxford. The situation was not savory. The year 1647 saw the death of both Miltons father and his father-in-law. The Powells eventually moved out and the Miltons moved to the neighborhood of High Holborn, where their daughter Mary was born in 1648.It is probable that Milton witnessed the public execution of Charles I on January 30, 1649.4 Tenure of Kings and Magistrates was published two weeks later. In March, the Cromwellian government appointed Milton Secretary for Foreign Tongues and ordered him to write an answer to Charles Is purported Eikon Basilike (Royal Image). After publishing Observations on the Articles of Peace, Milton published Eikonoklastes (Image Breaker) in October, 1649. In 1650, the Council of State ordered Milton to write a response to Salmasius Defensio Regia the Continental outcry against the English action (Defense of Kingship). Defensio pro populo Anglicano was published in February, 1651. Miltons first son, John, was born in March and the Miltons moved to Westminster.The year 1652 was one of many personal losses for Milton. In February, Milton lost his sight. This prompted him to write the sonnet When I Consider How My Light is Spent. In May, 1652, Mary gave birth to a daughter, Deborah, and died a few days later. In June, one year-old John died.In 1654, Milton published Defensio Secunda, the response he had been ordered to write for Pierre du Moulins Regii sanguinis clamor (Clamor of the Kings Blood). Andrew Marvell had become his assistant, and he had aides to take dictation, to facilitate the carrying out of his duties as Secretary. In 1655, Defensio Pro Se (Defense of Himself) was published. In 1656, Milton married Katherine Woodcock, but the happiness was short-lived. Miltons daughter Katherine was born in late 1657, but by early 1658, both mother and daughter had passed away. It is to the memory of Katherine Woodcock that Milton wrote the sonnet Methought I saw my late espousd saint.Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell died in October, 1658, and the days of the Commonwealth were coming to a close. In early 1659, Milton published A Treatise of Civil Power and Ready and Easy Way To Establish a Free Commonwealth. For his propaganda writings, Milton had to go into hiding, for fear of retribution from the followers of King Charles II. In June, 1659, both Defensio pro populo Anglicano and Eikonoklastes were publicly burned. In early autumn, Milton was arrested and thrown in prison, to be released by order of Parliament before Christmas. King Charles II was restored to the throne on May 30, 1660.In 1663, Milton remarried again, to Elizabeth Minshull, a match his daughters opposed. He spent his time tutoring students and finishing his lifes work, the epic, Paradise Lost. Among the greatest works ever to be written in English, the feat is all the more remarkable for Miltons blindness he would compose verse upon verse at night in his head and then dictate them from memory to his aides in the morning. Paradise Lost finally saw publication in 1667, in ten books. It was reissued in 1668 with a new title-page and additional materials. The book was met with instant success and amazement; even Dryden is reported to have said, This man cuts us all out, and the ancients too.5History of Britain was published in 1670; Paradise Regaind and Samson Agonistes were published together in 1671. Of True Religion and Poems, &c. upon Several Occasions were published in 1673. In summer 1674, the second edition of Paradise Lost was published, in twelve books. Milton died peacefully of gout in November, 1674, and was buried in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate. His funeral was attended by his learned and great Friends in London, not without a friendly concourse of the Vulgar.6 A monument to Milton rests in Poets Corner at Westminster Abbey.William WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in a fine Georgian house in Cockermouth, now called Wordsworth House. His father John was estate agent to Sir James Lowther, who owned the house. The garden at the back, with the River Derwent flowing past, was a place of magic and adventure for the young William. William has an elder brother Richard, a younger sister Dorothy and two younger brothers John and Christopher. His childhood was spent largely in Cockermouth and Penrith, his mothers home town. William and Dorothy and his future wife Mary Hutchinson attended infant school in Penrith between 1776 and 1777. Williams mother died in Penrith when he was 8. His father died when he was 13, and is buried in the churchyard of All Saints Cockermouth. All Saints church rooms is on the site of the Cockermouth school that William attended as a boy. From 1779 until 1787 William attended the Grammar School in Hawkshead, lodging with Ann Tyson at Colthouse initially, then with his brothers. At Hawkshead William thrived - receiving encouragement from the headmaster to read and write poetry. During these years he made many visits to the countryside, gaining inspiration