英国文学史及选读第三周.doc

英国文学史及选读第三周Lesson 3George Gordon Byron1. 一般识记 His LifeEnglish poet, born George Gordon Byron, in London, England, Jan. 22, 1788, and died in Missolonghi, Greece, April 19, 1824.Lord Byron was perhaps the most fascinating & influential literary personality of the Romantic age. An eloquent poet, handsome nobleman, & political rebel, he was one of the most popular & notorious figures of the 19th century.He was educated first at Harrow & then Cambridge. In 1807, a volume of Byrons poems, Hours of Idleness, was published. A very harsh review of this work in the Edinburgh Review prompted a satirical reply from Byron in heroic couplets, entitled English Bards & Scotch Reviewers (1809), in which Byron lashed not only his reviewers, but also the conservative schools of contemporary poetry, showing his lasting contempt for what he considered the commonplace & vulgarity of the Lake Poets. In 1811, Byron took his seat in the House of Lords, & made vehement speeches, attacking the reactionary policy of the English government, & showing his great sympathy for the oppressed poor. At the news of the Greek revolt against the Turks, Byron not only gave the insurgent Greeks financial help but plunged himself into the struggle for the national independence of that country. In July 1823, Byron joined the Greek insurgents at Missolonghi. The Greeks made him commander in chief of their forces in January 1824. Because of several months hard work under bad weather, Byron fell ill & died. The whole Greek nation mourned over his death.2. 识记 His Literary Career In 1807, a volume of Byrons poems, Hours of idleness, was published. In 1809, he wrote a satirical reply to a harsh review in the Edinburgh Review in heroic couplets, entitled English Bards & Scotch Reviewers. The publication in 1812 of the first two cantos of Childe Harolds Pilgrimage, a poem narrating his travels between 1809 & 1811 in Europe, brought Byron fame. In the following two years. He had written a number of long verse-tales, generally known as the Oriented Tales, with similar kind of heroes. In 1816, he wrote the third canto of Childe Harold & the narrative poem The Prisoner of Chillon. From 1816 to 1819, he produced, among other works, the verse drama Manfred (1817), the first two cantos of Don Juan (1818-1819), & the fourth & final canto of Childe Harold (1818). In 1821, Byron wrote the verse drama Cain & the narrative poem The Island. He published, in 1822, one of the greatest political satires, The Vision of Judgment, with its main attack on Southey, the Tory Poet Laureate. Don Juan, a mock epic in 16 cantos, was finished in 1823.3. 识记His Major works (1) Childe Harolds Pilgrimage2) Don Juan(The correct pronunciation of Juan is similar to the English word wan. )Don Juan is Byrons masterpiece, a great comic epic of the early 19th century. It is a poem based on a traditional Spanish legend of a great lover & seducer of women. In the conventional sense, Juan is immoral, yet Byron takes this poem as the most moral. He invests in Juan the moral positives like courage, generosity & frankness, which, according to Byron are virtues neglected by the modern society. In addition, though Don Juan is the central figure & all the threads of the story are woven around him, he & his adventures only provide the framework: the poets true intention is, by making use of Juans adventures, to present a panoramic view of different types of society.OVERVIEW: This long, digressive satiric poem is a loose narrative held together only by the hero, Don Juan, and the narrator, Byron himself, who maintains a mocking, ironic relationship with the story. Byron claimed that he had no plot in mind as he wrote the poem, and he continued to add episodes as long as he lived, completing sixteen cantos before his death. He began the poem in 1818 in Italy during a period of wild self-indulgence and profligacy. The first two cantos were published in 1819. Like many satires, it was criticized by some as being immoral STYLE. The Stanza form is ottava rima, an eight-line iambic pentameter stanza with the rhyme scheme ab ab ab cc. The final two lines of each stanza form a couplet which Byron frequently uses for a punch line or comic wind-up. Byron also creates comic effects with his use of forced rhymes (new one . . . Juan) and rhymes of two or three syllables (intellectual . . . henpeckedy you all). The poems light tone suggests that Byron does not take the characters and events seriously; the language is colloquial, conversational, and slangy. THE DON JUAN CHARACTER. Certain incidents and characters are drawn from Byrons life, but he is not Don Juan. He names his hero after the most notorious lover and seducer of women in European literature. Originally a villain in a Spanish story, Don Juan had become the archetype of the heartless, remorseless seducer. The Don Juan character represents a merely physical desire divorced from any spiritual or even humane feelings. Ironically, Byron gives the name of this cold and callous stock character to his own, more modest hero. Byrons young lover is, at first, simple and naive. Every woman who meets him finds him charming; thus he has not need for force, treachery, or the seductive arts. Byron projects his own, more worldly personality as the narrator. CANTO I. Canto I presents the birth, childhood, and education of Don Juan up through his first seduction and affair. Don Juan is the son of an aristocratic father and an intellectual mother. After the fathers early death, little Juan is educated according to his mothers plan. She has him tutored in arts and sciences, but she forbids him to learn anything that hints continuation of the species. Further, in his study of classical literature he cannot read any of the looser or suggestive poems; he must read only expurgated versions of these. In stanzas 52 and 53 the narrator protests such a distorted education. The narration moves forward to Juans sixteenth year, when his mothers friend, Donna Julia, begins to find him attractive. She is a pretty, young woman married to an elderly husband, and she deceives herself into believing that she can subdue her attraction to Juan. She vows not to see him but then goes the next day to visit his mother. Donna Julia imagines that she can maintain a platonic love for Juan, but all her resolve fails when she finds herself alone with him. Naive Juan, meanwhile, does not know the cause of his own discontent. He seeks answers in nature and in philosophy. Stanza 115 pictures Juan and Julia in a garden, half-embracing. The poet undercuts this romantic scene with a mocking tirade against Plato for spreading false ideas about love. In stanza 116 the temptation has become too great, and she whispering I will neer consent - consented. Byron shows the folly of self-deception that would deny the physical basis of love. After a digression the poet returns to Julia and Juan six months later. Their affair has intensified, and Julias husband, Don Alphonso, has become suspicious. He breaks into her bedroom one night with a posse of friends and servants, makes a comic search, but finds nothing. Sending the others away, he apologizes to his wife for his foolish jealousy. As he lingers by her bed, he sees Juans shoes. Young and slim, Juan has been hiding in the bed clothes all the time. There is a confrontation between lover and husband, but luckily neither has a sword. Juan escapes, but scandal follows. Julias husband sends her to a convent, and Juans mother sends him away on a grand tour to, ironically, perfect his morals. Canto I ends with an address by the poet to the reader in which he claims the story is true and gives as proof the many similar stories that appear in newspapers, plays, and operas. Then Byron as narrator sets out some poetical commandments by which he claims his writing is governed. Generally, he follows the principles of classical and English poetry and rejects the taste of his romantic contemporaries. He claims also that his poem is moral and promises a very moral conclusion in the final canto. Finally he comments on his own situation. Finding himself used up and burnt out at the age of thirty, he say, I have squandered my whole summer while twas May (stanza 213). He laments the loss of freshness and creative power but believes he has gained in judgment. He resolves to live more tamely from now on. Finally, he dismisses fame as a delusion and as a false motive for writing poetry. SUBSEQUENT CANTOS. The next cantos of this poem describe young Juans many and varied adventures. He loses his tutor when their ship becomes wrecked. The lovely and innocent Haidee discovers him washed ashore on a Greek island. Their ideal love is opposed by Haidees father, the pirate Lambro. Juan loses a fight with Lambro and is put into chains. Haidees heart is broken, and she fades away and dies. Meanwhile, Juan is sold as a slave to a sultana in Constantinople. She also loves him, but when she becomes jealous, Juan fears for his life. He escapes and joins the Russian army, eventually finding himself at the court of Catherine the Great, who, of course, also loves him. She sends him on a diplomatic mission to England. The final cantos show Juan moving about in English society, providing an opportunity for Byron to satirize contemporary social behaviors of his compatriots. He attacks the hypocrisy of the English, their false morality and their bad taste. In Don Juan Byron found a form suited to his tastes and abilities. Unconfined by a set narrative line, he allows himself as narrator the freedom to comment ironically on the action and characters, to digress into personal allusion, and to instruct the reader about how to read and judge the poem. having a seemingly endless supply of incidents and comments, Byron might have gone on forever. But the poem was cut short by Byrons heroic and fatal attempt to help liberate the Greeks. 4. 领会Characteristics of Byrons Poems Byrons poetry, though much criticized by some critics on moral grounds, was immensely popular at home, & also abroad, where it exerted great influence on the Romantic Movement. This popularity it owed to the authors persistent attacks on cant political, religious, & moral,(cant:Hypocritically pious language). to the novelty of his oriental scenery, to the romantic character of the Byronic hero, & to the easy, fluent, & natural beauty of his verse. Byrons diction, though unequal & frequently faulty, has on the whole a freedom, copiousness & vigor. His descriptions are simple & fresh, & often bring vivid objects before the reader. Byrons poetry is like the oratory which hurries the hearers without applause. The glowing imagination of the poet rises & sinks with the tones of his enthusiasm, roughing into argument, or softening into the melody feeling & sentiments. Byron employed the Ottva Rima (Octave Stanza) from Italians mock-heroic poetry. It was perfected in Don Juan in which the convention flows with ease & naturalness, as Colonel Stanhope described a stream sometimes smooth, sometimes rapid & sometimes rushing down in cataracts-a mixture of philosophy & slang-of everything.5 领会 Byronic HeroAs a leading Romanticist, Byrons chief contribution is his creation of the Byronic hero, a proud & mysterious rebel figure of noble origin. With immense superiority in his passions & powers, the Byronic hero would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in an evil society, & would fight single-handedly against any kind of tyrannical rules either in government, in religion or in moral principles with unconquerable wills & inexhaustible energies. The conflict is usually one of rebellious individuals against outworn social systems & convention. Such a hero appears first in Childe Harolds Pilgrimage, & then further developed in later works such as Oriented Tales, Manfred, & Don Juan in different guises. The figure is, to some extent, modeled on the life & personality of Byron himself, & makes Byron famous both at home and abroad.6 领会 His influenceFor a long time, there existed two controversial opinions on Byron. He was regarded in England as the perverted man, the satanic poet; while on the Continent, he was hailed as the champion of liberty, poet of the people. Byrons poetry has great influence on the literature of the whole world. Across Europe, patriots & painters & musicians are all inspired by him. Poets & novelists are profoundly influenced by his works. Actually Byron has enriched European poetry with an abundance of ideas, images, artistic forms & innovations. He stands with Shakespeare & Scott among the British writers who exert the greatest influence over the mainland of Europe.7 应用 Selected Readings 1) Song for the Luddites(1)Luddites named after Ned Ludd, a late 18th-century workers leader, were craftsmen who deliberately smashed machinery in the industrial centers of the East-Midlands, Lancashire & Yorkshire, because they believed that machinery was a cause of their unemployment. On February 27, 1812, Byron in the House of Lords made his famous parliamentary speech, showing his sympathy for the Luddites & indignation at the Frame-breakers Bill(破坏织机者法案) which would induce capital punishment to the destroyers of machines. The poem selected here was written in March 1817. It shows his sympathy & support for the workers in their struggle against the capitalist oppression & exploitation. It is composed of three 5-lined stanzas, each with a rhyme scheme of abaab, all of which are strong & vigorous masculine rhymes. The general metrical movement is anapestic trimeter & dimeter with line 3 in iambic dimeter. 2) The Isles of Greece (from Don Juan, III)Don Juan, the masterpiece of Byron, is a long satirical poem. Its hero Juan is an aristocratic libertine, amiable & charming to ladies. Byron puts into Don Juan his rich knowledge of his world & his wisdom. It presents brilliant pictures of life in its various stages of love, joy, suffering, hatred & fear. The unifying principle in Don Juan is the basic ironic theme of appearance & reality, i.e. what things seem to be & what they actually are. The selected section, The Isles of Greece, is taken from Canto III, which is sung by a Greek singer at the wedding of Don Juan & Haidee, the pure & beautiful daughter of a pirate. In the early 19th century, Greece was under the rule of Turk. By contrasting the freedom of ancient Greece & the present enslavement, the poet appealed to people to struggle for liberty. Percy Bysshe Shelley 1. 一般识记 His Life Shelley (1792-1822) was born into a wealthy family at Sussex. Though gentle by nature, his rebellious qualities were cultivated in his early years. At 18, Shelley entered Oxford University, where he had written & circulated a pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism (1811), repudiating the existence of God.(disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.) This event resulted in his expulsion from the university & being disinherited by his headstrong father. Early in 1818, Shelley & his wife Mary left England for Italy. During the Remaining four years of his life, Shelley traveled & lived in various Italian cities. Shelley was drowned in 1822 in storm near La Spezia, at the age of 30.2. 识记 His Literary OutlookShelley grew up with violent revolutionary ideas under the influence of the free thinkers like Hume & Godwin, so he held a life-long aversion to cruelty, injustice, authority, institutional religion & the formal shams of respectable society, condemning war, tyranny & exploitation, However, under the influence of Christian humanism, Shelley took interest in social reforms. He realized that the evil was also in mans mind. So he predicted that only trough gradual & suitable reforms of the existing institutions could benevolence be universally established & none of the evils would survive in this genuine society, where people could live together happily, freely & peacefully.3. 识记 His major works 1) Lyrics: To a Skylark & Ode to the West WindIn To a Skylark, the bird, suspended between reality & poetic image, pours forth an exultant song which suggests to the poet both celestial rapture & human limitation. Best of all the well-known lyric pieces is Shelleys Ode to the West Wind (1819); here Shelleys rhapsodic & declamatory tendencies find a subject perfectly suited to them. The autumn wind, burying the dead year, preparing for a new Spring, becomes an image of Shelley himself, as he would want to be, in its freedom, its destructive-constructive potential, its universality. I fall upon the thorns of Life! I bleed! calls the Shelley that could not bear being fettered to the humdrum realities of everyday! The whole poem has a logic of feeling, a not easily analyzable progression that leads to the triumphant, hopeful & convincing conclusion: If winter comes, can Spring before behind? The poem is written in the terza rima form Shelley derived from his reading of Dante. The nervous thrill of Shelleys response to nature however is here transformed through the power of art & imagination into a longing to be united with a force at once physical & prophetic. Here is no conservative reassurance, no comfortable mysticism, but the primal amorality of nature itself, with its mad fury & its pagan ruthlessness. Shelleys ode is an invocation to a primitive deity, a plea to exalt him in its fury & to trumpet the radical prophecy of hope & rebirth. 2) Poetic drama: Prometheus Unbound (1820)Shelleys greatest achievement is his four-act poetic drama, Prometheus Unbound. According to the Greek mythology, Prometheus, the champion of humanity, who has stolen the fire from Heaven, is punished by Zeus to be chained on Mount Caucasus & suffers the vultures feeding on his liver. Shelley ba