Thomas Stearns Eliot 艾略特.docx

Thomas Stearns Eliot(1888-1965)1.General Introduction to T. S. Eliot .Occupation: Poet, dramatist, literary critic. Citizenship: American by birth, British from 1927Education: A.B. in philosophy. Alma mater(母校): Harvard University. Literary movement: Modernism. Spouse(s): Vivienne Haigh-Wood (19151947); Esm Valerie Fletcher (19571965)Notable awards: Nobel Prize for Literature (1948), Order of Merit (1948)Thomas Stearns T. S. Eliot OM （Order of Merit 英国功劳勋章）(September 26, 1888 January 4, 1965) was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably（可论证地） the most important English-language poet of the 20th century.The poem that made his name, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrockstarted in 1910 and published in Chicago in 1915is regarded as a masterpiece of the modernist movement.He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Eliot was born into the Eliot family, a bourgeois family originally from New England（New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.）, who had moved to St. Louis, Missouri. His mother, Charlotte Champe Stearns (18431929), wrote poetry and was a social worker, a new profession in the early 20th century. Eliot was the last of six surviving children; his parents were both 44 years old when he was born. From 1898 to 1905, Eliot attended Smith Academy, where his studies included Latin, Ancient Greek, French, and German. He studied philosophy at Harvard from 1906 to 1909, earning his bachelors degree after three years, instead of the usual four. After working as a philosophy assistant at Harvard from 19091910, Eliot moved to Paris, where from 19101911, he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne.From 19111914, he was back at Harvard studying Indian philosophy and Sanskrit（梵文）. By 1916, he had completed a PhD dissertation for Harvard on Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley, but he failed to return for the viva voce exam(口试).Thayer introduced Eliot to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a Cambridge governess. They were married at Hampstead Register Office on June 26, 1915.After leaving Merton, Eliot worked as a schoolteacher, most notably at Highgate School, a private school in London, where he taught French and Latin.To earn extra money, he wrote book reviews and lectured at evening extension courses. In 1917, he took a position at Lloyds Bank in London, working on foreign accounts.On a trip to Paris in August 1920, he met the writer James Joyce. Eliot said he found Joyce arrogantJoyce doubted Eliots ability as a poet at the timebut the two soon became friends, with Eliots visiting Joyce whenever he was in Paris.On June 29, 1927 Eliot converted to Anglicanism(英国国教) from Unitarianism(唯一神教派), and in November that year he took British citizenship. By 1932, Eliot had been contemplating a separation from his wife for some time. When Harvard offered him the Charles Eliot Norton professorship for the 1932-1933 academic year, he accepted and left Vivienne in England. On January 10, 1957, Eliot at the age of 68 married Esm Valerie Fletcher, who was 32. In contrast to his first marriage, Eliot knew Fletcher well, as she had been his secretary.Since Eliots death, Valerie has dedicated her time to preserving his legacy.Eliot died of emphysema(肺气肿) in London on January 4, 1965. For many years he had had health problems caused by his heavy smoking, and had often been laid low with bronchitis(支气管炎) or tachycardia(心跳过速). 2. Representative WorksPoetry Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) 普鲁弗洛克及其他 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock J.阿尔弗雷德 普鲁弗洛克的情歌 Portrait of a Lady (poem) 一位夫人的画像Aunt Helen Poems (1920) Gerontion 小老头The Waste Land (1922)荒原The Hollow Men (1925)空心人Ash Wednesday 圣灰星期三Old Possums Book of Practical Cats Four Quartets (1945)四个四重奏PlaysMurder in the Cathedral 大教堂谋杀案The Family Reunion 家庭团聚The Cocktail Party 鸡尾酒会NonfictionTradition and the Individual Talent (1920) 传统与个人才能The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920) 圣林Hamlet and His ProblemsHomage to John Dryden (1924) 向约翰德莱顿致敬For Lancelot Andrewes (1928) 纪念兰斯洛特安德鲁斯 The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933) Elizabethan Essays (1934)Essays Ancient and Modern (1936) On Poetry and Poets (1957) To Criticize the Critic (1965)3.The Waste Land （荒原）It revealed the spiritual crisis of postwar Europe. It reads like the manifesto of the “lost generation” and established Eliots position as the leader not only of American poetry, but of a whole generation of writers later to be identified as “Waste Land Painters like Hemingway and Faulkner. It consists of five discontinuous segments, each composed of fragments incorporating multiple voices and characters, literary and historical allusions, bits and pieces of contemporary life, myths and legends. The central theme-desperation Although it gestured toward religious belief , The Waste Land was not an affirmative or religious poem; the desperate quest for regeneration in a cacophonous, desolate landscape remains unfulfilled. 4. Writing stylea. Use of disconnected images/symbols b. Use of literary allusions/references c. Use of highly expressive meter and rhythm of free verses d. Use of metaphysical whimsical images/whimse. Use of flexible tone f. He is very difficult to read with learned quotations from and allusions to classical literature, heavy symbolism, highly fresh imagery, and stream-of-consciousness technique.F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)1. lifeHe was an Irish-American Jazz Age novelist and short story writer. Fitzgerald is regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. In his own age, Fitzgerald was the self-styled spokesman of the Lost Generation, or the Americans born in the 1890s who came of age during World War I. Fitzgerald spent 18981901 and 19031908 in Buffalo, New York, where his father worked for Procter & Gamble. When Fitzgerald, Sr., was fired, the family moved back to Minnesota, where Fitzgerald attended Saint Paul Academy and Summit School in Saint Paul, Minnesota from 19081911. He then attended Newman School, a prep school in Hackensack, New Jersey, in 191112. He entered Princeton University in 1913 as a member of the Class of 1917 and became friends with the future critics and writers Edmund Wilson (Class of 16) and John Peale Bishop (Class of 17). Saddled with academic difficulties throughout his three-year career at the university, Fitzgerald dropped out in 1917 to enlist in the United States Army when America entered World War I.While at Camp Sheridan, Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre (19001948), the top girl, in Fitzgeralds words, of Montgomery, Alabama, youth society. The two were engaged in 1919 and Fitzgerald moved into an apartment at 200 Claremont Avenue in New York City to try to lay a foundation for his life with Zelda2. major works His novels and short stories chronicled changing social attitudes during the 1920s, a period dubbed “The Jazz Age”. His first novel This Side of Paradise人间天堂won for him wealth and fame. His second novel, The Beautiful and Damned美丽与诅咒increased his popularity, which also portrays the emotional and spiritual collapse of a wealthy young man during an unstable marriage. His masterpiece The Great Gatsby了不起的盖茨比 (1925) made him one of the greatest American novelists. More important novel Tender is the Night 夜色温柔(l934), in which he traces the decline of a young American psychiatrist whose marriage to a beautiful and wealthy patient drains his personal energies and corrodes his professional career. His last novel The Last Tycoon最后的大亨 remains unfinished.Short story collections :Flappers and Philosophers新潮女郎与哲学家(1921), Tales of the Jazz Age 爵士乐时代的故事(1922), All the Sad Young Man形形色色忧郁的青年人(1926) and Taps at Reveille早晨的起床号 (1935). One of his best short stories is Babylon Revisited重访巴比伦 , which depicts an Americans return to Paris in the 1930s and his regretful realization that the past is beyond his reach, since he can neither alter it nor make any amends.3. Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age(1) The Jazz Age: It refers to the 1920s, a time marked by frivolity, carelessness, hedonism and excitement in the life of the flaming youth. Fitzgerald is largely responsible for the term and many of his literary works portray it. The Jazz Age is brought vividly to life in The Great Gatsby. (2) Most critics have agreed that Fitzgerald is both an insider and an outsider of the Jazz Age with a double vision of fascination and aloofness. He lived in his great moments and joined the big party in the l920s, partaking of the wealth, frivolity, temptations of the time, while reproducing the drama of the age by standing aloof and keeping a cold eye on the performance of his contemporaries. He drank and did crazy things after he got drunk, whereas staying sober enough to see the corruptive nature of the society and the vanity fair that everyone, including himself, was infatuated with. This doubleness or irony is one of the distinguishing marks as a writer and helps Fitzgerald to present a panorama of the Jazz Age with a deep insight.(3) Fitzgeralds fictional world is the best embodiment of the spirit of the Jazz Age, in which he shows a particular interest in the upper-class society, especially the upper-class young people. Young men and women in the 1920s had a sense of reckless confidence not only about money but about life in general. Since they grew up with the notion that the world would improve without their help, they felt excused from seeking the common good. Plunging into their personal adventures, engaging themselves in casual sex and heavy drinking, they took risks that did not impress them as being risks, and they spent money extravagantly and enjoyed themselves to their hearts content. But beneath their masks of relaxation and joviality there was only sterility, meaninglessness and futility, and amid the grandeur and extravagance a spiritual wasteland and a hint of decadence and moral decay. 4. Fitzgeralds styleHe is a great stylist in American literature. His style, closely related to his themes, is explicit and chilly. His accurate dialogues, his careful observation of mannerism, styles, models and attitudes provide the reader with a vivid sense of reality. He follows the Jamesian tradition in using the scenic method in his chapters, each one of which consists of one or more dramatic scenes, sometimes with intervening passages of narration, leaving the tedious process of transition to the readers imagination. He also skillfully employs the device of having events observed by a central consciousness to his great advantage. The accurate details, the completely original diction and metaphors, the bold impressionistic and colorful quality have all proved his consummate artistry.a. his writing style is simple, vivid graceful and polished. b. metaphors and symbols(use of colors) c. his novel are not long Ernest Hemingway(1899-1961), born in Oak Park, Illinois,.HewasthesecondchildandfirstsonborntoClarenceandGraceHemingway.HisfatherClarenceEdmondsHemingwaywasaphysician,andhismother,Grace,Hall-Hemingway,wasamusician.Bothwerewell-educatedandwell -respectedintheconservativecommunityofOakPark. lifeThe son of a country doctor, Hemingway worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star after graduating from high school in 1917. During World War I he served as an ambulance driver in France and in the Italian infantry and was wounded just before his 19th birthday. Later, while working in Paris as a correspondent for the Toronto Star, he became involved with the expatriate literary and artistic circle surrounding Gertrude Stein. During the Spanish Civil War, Hemingway served as a correspondent on the loyalist side. He fought in World War II and then settled in Cuba in 1945. In 1954, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. After his expulsion from Cuba by the Castro regime, he moved to Idaho. He was increasingly plagued by ill health and mental problems, and in July, 1961, he committed suicide by shooting himself.WorkHemingways fiction usually focuses on people living essential, dangerous livessoldiers, fishermen, athletes, bullfighterswho meet the pain and difficulty of their existence with stoic courage. His celebrated literary style, influenced by Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein, is direct, terse, and often monotonous, yet particularly suited to his elemental subject matter.Hemingways first books, Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923), In Our Time (short stories, 1924), and The Torrents of Spring (a novel, 1926), attracted attention primarily because of his literary style. With the publication of The Sun Also Rises (1926), he was recognized as the spokesman of the “lost generation” (so called by Gertrude Stein). The novel concerns a group of psychologically bruised, disillusioned expatriates living in postwar Paris, who take psychic refuge in such immediate physical activities as eating, drinking, traveling, brawling, and lovemaking.His next important novel, A Farewell to Arms (1929), tells of a tragic wartime love affair between an ambulance driver and an English nurse. Hemingway also published such volumes of short stories as Men without Women (1927) and Winner Take Nothing (1933), as well as The Fifth Column, a play. His First Forty-nine Stories (1938) includes such famous short stories as “The Killers,” “The Undefeated,” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” Hemingways nonfiction works, Death in the Afternoon (1932), about bullfighting, and Green Hills of Africa (1935), about big-game hunting, glorify virility, bravery, and the virtue of a primal challenge to life.From his experience in the Spanish Civil War came Hemingways great novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), which, in detailing an incident in the war, argues for human brotherhood. His novella The Old Man and the Sea (1952) celebrates the indomitable courage of an aged Cuban fisherman. Among Hemingways other works are the novels To Have and Have Not (1937) and Across the River and into the Trees (1950); he also edited an anthology of stories, Men at War (1942).Posthumous publications include A Moveable Feast (1964), a memoir of Paris in the 1920s; the novels Islands in the Stream (1970) and True at First Light (1999), a safari saga begun in 1954 and edited by his son Patrick; and The Nick Adams Stories (1972), a collection that includes previously unpublished pieces.His awardsDuring his lifetime, he was awarded with:Silver Medal of Military Valerian World War I Pulitzer Prize in 1953 (for The Old Man and the Sea)Nobel Prize in literature in 1954 (also partly for The Old Man and the Sea)In 2001, two of his books, The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, would be named to the list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century by the editorial board of the American Modern Library.HemingwayattendedOakPark andRiverForestHighSchoolfrom1913until1917,wherehetookpartinanumberofsportsboxing,trackandfield,waterpolo,andfootball hadgoodgradesinEnglishclasses,heperformedintheschoolorchestrafortwoyears.Inhisjunioryear,hetookajournalismclass,taughtbyFannieBiggs,whichwasstructuredasthoughtheclassroomwereanewspaperoffice.HemingwayattendedOakPark andRiverForestHighSchoolfrom1913until1917wherehetookpartinanumberof sportsboxing,trackandfield,waterpolo,andfootball hadgoodgradesinEnglishclasses,heperformedintheschoolorchestrafortwoyears,afterleavinghighschoolhewenttoworkforTheKansasCityStarasacubreporter.AlthoughhestayedthereforonlysixmonthshereliedontheStarsstyleguideasafoundationforhiswriting:Useshortsentences.Useshortfirstparagraphs.UsevigorousEnglish.Bepositive,notnegativeHeattendedWorldwarandSpanishCivilWarandWorldWarstarted his career as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen. After the United States entered the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. Serving at the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals. After his return to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution.During the twenties, Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris, which he described in his first important work,The Sun Also Rises(1926). Equally successful wasA Farewell to Arms(1929), the study of an American ambulance officers disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter. Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel,For Whom the Bell Tolls(1940). Among his later works, the most outstanding is the short novel,The Old Man and the Sea(1952), the story of an old fishermans journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and his victory in defeat.Hemingway - himself a great sportsman - liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters - tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories, some of which