Early Autumn英文讲义.doc

Selected Readings of English Literature What Is Literature?The Random House Dictionary definition of the word “literature”: writing regarded as having permanent worth through its intrinsic excellence; the entire body of writing of a specific language, period, people etc.; writing dealing with a particular subject;Comment on the following statements Israel Zangwill: In Literature, everything is true except names and places; in history nothing is true except names and places.Ezra Pound:Literature is “news that stays news.”Picasso: Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truthThe artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.Robert Frost:Literature is “a performance of words.”Franz Kafka: Literature “must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.”Jack London: (Good literature) transcends the limits of particularity to reach universality.Thomas Gray: Literature is “thoughts that breathe and words that burn.”Robert Scholes:The sources of pleasure in literary discourse(叙述) can be defined as matters of communicative capacity. Literary works offer readers a chance to use a fuller range of their interpretive(解释的) abilities than do non-literary texts. Brainstorming activity What is behind your choice of the elective, Selective Readings of English Literature? What do you think of literature reading? Or why are you fond of reading literature?Forms of Literature In the more specialized sense of the word, literature is the art that uses language as a medium. Literature contains fiction and non-fiction. Under fiction there are four genres - novels, short stories, plays, and poems.Purpose and Means of the Four Genres with the Use of Wordsl words are used to create imaginary persons or events in stories or plays.l words are used to show ideas and feelings in essays or poems.l words are addressed directly to the reader in stories and essays.l words are overheard by the reader in plays or poems.The ways literary forms are communicated to the reader A story, basically a narration through the report of a storyteller to the reader An essay, persuasion A poem, meditation A play, creation of action through the dialogue of imaginary personsWhat do we read for in western literature? (the first level) The most primitive approach to western literature, especially novels, is to read them for emotional satisfaction. Students at this level look for whats going on and whats happened to the characters they can identify with. All they care about is the “story.” To these readers, novels are recreational at least and therapeutic(有益健康的) at most.(the second level) The second level on which literature exists is what can be called the didactic one. Literature is regarded as a depositor of human experience of considerable variety and scope. It gains access to questions of moral philosophy - questions of value and of normative(规范的) judgment. In such belief, readers try to read as many meanings as they can into literary pieces. Literature is read for its hermeneutic(诠释的) function.(the third level) Advanced readers of literature have a distinctive concern over matters beyond didacticism. They are not satisfied with “what is going on,” or “what is said.” They look for “how it is said.” Readers at this level are also aware of artistic weaknesses. They even read texts closely as texts and not to move into the general context of human experience or history.How to approach literature? One must be both inside and outside of the work. One must allow himself be carried away by the work, and at the same time, on reading again and again think about the way the end is connected to the beginning. Eliot says that one has to give himself up, and then recover himself, and the third moment is having something to say, before one has wholly forgotten both surrender and recovery. And the self recovered is never the same as the self before it was given. Short story People tell stories to entertain or to instruct. Maupassant and Chekhov are two great writers of the later nineteenth century who can be taken as representatives of the two kinds of literature respectively - one of resolution, the other revelation. Much of the best short fiction from Chekhov onward is less concerned with what happens than with how character feels about the happenings. The emphasis is not on external action but in inner action, feeling. Reading IEarly Autumn by Langston Hughes Langston Hughes African-American Writer, Poet, (February 1, 1902 -May 22, 1967)About the writer Langston Hughes (1902-1967): a poet, playwright, novelist, songwriter, biographer, editor, newspaper columnist, translator and lecturer. Born in Joplin, Missouri, on February 1, 1902, Langston Hughes lived the first twelve years of his life in Kansas, Colorado, Indiana, and New York State. He graduated from high school in Cleveland, Ohio, where in his senior year he was elected class poet and editor of the yearbook. Hughes other travels included trips to Europe and Africa, and the character of his adventurous, wandering life was reflected in such works as his novel, Not Without Laughter (1930), his short stories, and his autobiography. By 1925, Hughes, together with other Negro writers, had formed a group in the Harlem section of New York City for the purpose of exchanging ideas, encouraging one another, and, eventually, sharing in the triumph created by the sudden popularity of their work. As spokesman for the group, Hughes published an article, “The Negro Artist and The Racial Mountain,” which amounted to a public declaration of the intent of Hughes and his contemporaries to break from their literary heritage and to initiate a new trend in Negro literature. For new black writers, Harlem and its people were to provide the inspiration for much of their artistic work. In later years, Hughes became known as the “O. Henry of Harlem” and wrote countless short stories, a number of volumes of poetry, seven novels, and six plays. In his poetry, he successfully caught and projected scenes of urban Negro life, and his sketches in verse with their undertones of bitterness, humor, and pathos became also a form of social protest.Questions for discussion1. In the first paragraph, it reads “Then something not very important had come between them, and they didnt speak” which finally led to their separation from each other. How do you think of both of their attitudes to this matter?2. Can you discern any pair of contrast in the way the two protagonists treat with each other in their unexpected encounter?3. Why did Mary not give an answer to Bills question “And your husband?” and instead said, “We have three children ”?4. Why did Mary desperately reach back into the past?5. We know that Mary impulsively married a man she thought she loved. Then why is it that we know the name of Bills wife, Lucille, but that of Marys husband has never been revealed?6. How do you look at the description of the falling leaves in Washington Square?7. How did it come that the lights of the Fifth Avenue turned out to be chains of misty brilliance? And later, how it came that “the lights on the avenue blurred, twinkled, blurred”?8. Note that soon after Mary gave her answer to what Bill said about his family, that he had two kids, the narrative following is, “A great many people went past them through the park. People they didnt know.” And how do you feel about the scene that Mary saw from her leaving bus, “People came between them outside, people crossing the street, people they didnt know. Space and people.” 9. What effects does the conclusive sentence achieve?10. What personal traits can be seen in both of the protagonists to which, to some extent, their different destinies can be attributed?11. If you had been one of the two parties in the short story, would you do the same as them, or would your demeanor be different?12. Titles of works often offer focus. How do you look at the title of this work, Early Autumn?Recreation Tell the story to each other, in the same way it is told or in a different version, from the perspective of Mary, of Bill, or of any other person.Role play the chance meeting in Washington Square Act out what will be going on after the encounter.Writing Choose a part in the story that is most appealing to you, and make your comment on it. If you were supposed to end the story, how would you conclude it? Give to the story an ending different from the original one. DreamsHold fast to dreams aFor if dreams die bLife is a broken-winged bird cThat cannot fly. bHold fast to dreams aFor when dreams go dLife is a barren field eFrozen with snow. dend-rhyme scheme: abcb adediamb dimeter (抑扬格二步诗)The Negro Speaks of Rivers Ive known rivers; Ive known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and Ive seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. Ive known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. This is a lyric(抒情的) poem in free verse (non-metrical poetry). 无韵诗 The speaker is a particular voice, an “I”, but also a general one, “the negro”. The paratactic style (并列排比式) in which things are listed The relationship between the particular and general, between the individual and a type, about a universal from a particular point of view A poem about knowledge, about identity, and about history The flowing of rivers is like the flowing of blood. And to know them is to know what is under or inside particular racial experience at the deepest level Or the title can be changed to “The Negro Speaks of Human Life and History as the Negro Knows it” Reading II War by Luige Pirandello Luigi Pirandello, 28 June 1867 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage. Pirandellos works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays. Each of us, face to face with other men, is clothed with some sort of dignity, but we know only too well all the unspeakable things that go on in the heart. - Luige PirandelloLuige Pirandellow ranks as the most important and innovative Italian dramatist of the early twentieth century. He was born in Sicily and moved to Rome to pursue a writing career. Novels and short stories flowed from his pen. Winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize in literature, Pirandello expresses the confusion and suffering of the human condition in disturbing yet humorous ways. His works focus primarily on the inherent instability of human existence, specifically the conflict of reason and instinct within the human mind.Pirandellos focus on the social masks that people wear has been a major influence on modern fiction, as well as on modern drama. Pirandello was fascinated by the contrast between appearance and reality in human behavior. He viewed life as a series of illusions, each concerning a surprising core: comedy in tragedy, sanity in madness, grief in happiness. He saw people as suffering from the necessity of leading insincere public lives, and he watched with compassion as they clung to their delusions. He created literature that he hoped would force people to examine their convictions, acknowledge their inner-selves, and lead more authentic lives.Questions for discussion1. What is the importance of the physical actions in the story? How do they offer clues to the feelings and attitudes of the characters? 2. If we believe that the contrast in the behavior of the fat old man (whether or not covering his mouth with his hand) before and after the revelation of the death of his child is meaningful, then, with the exposed missing teeth, what was it that the man would really want to hide from others? 3. What is the significance of the words we have italicized in the following sentence? “The old man, too, turned to look at her, fixing his great, bulging, horribly watery light gray eyes, deep in her face.” 4. What/When is the climax of this story? How can you tell it is the climax? 5. Is there any hint to the sorrow of the old man over his loss of son before the story reaches its climax?6. Imagine another version of this story. Suppose that the old man, whose son is merely at the front, argues with the other people in the compartment, and persuades them, as in the present version of the story; at a station, he receives a telegram saying that his son has been killed, whereupon he bursts into “heart-breaking, uncontrollable sobs” while they stare at him in amazement. Why would such a version be inferior to the story as Pirandello tells it? 7. In the short story War, the author, Luigi Pirandello, does not give any of the characters names. Why not? What effect