河南大学老师的课件Eugene O’Neill.ppt

1、Eugene ONeill(1888-1953)尤金奥尼尔,The Hairy Ape毛猿,Portrait of Eugene ONeill,Cover of The Hairy Ape,I. Life,1. Birthplace: New York City 2. Family: his father, an actor 3. Education: a Catholic boarding school, Betts Academy, Princeton 4. Working Experiences: Prospector, sailor,II. Literary Achievements,

2、1920: Beyond the Horizon 天边外 1920: The Emperor Jones 琼斯王 1920: Anna Christie安娜克里斯蒂 1921: The Hairy Ape 毛猿 1924: Desire Under the Elms 榆树下的欲望 1925: The Great God Brown 大神布朗 1928: The Strange Interlude 奇异的插曲,Literary Achievements,1931: Mourning Becomes Electra 悲悼 1934: Days Without End 无穷的岁月 1939: The

3、 Iceman Cometh 送冰人来了 1940: Long Days Journey into Night 进入黑夜的漫长旅程,III. Comment,ONeill was no doubt the greatest American dramatist of the first half of the 20th century. He was the first playwright to explore serious themes in the theater and to carry out his continual, vigorous, courageous experime

4、nts with theatrical conventions. His plays have been translated and staged all over the world. Three Pulitzer Prizes(1920, 1922, 1928) and the Noble Prize in 1936 show his achievement and influence at home and abroad.,comment,As the nations first important playwright with forty nine published plays,

5、 he did a great deal to establish the modes of the modern theatre in the country. With him American drama developed into a form of literature and in him American drama came of age.,Comment,As Americas foremost playwright, ONeill successfully introduced the European theatrical trends of realism, natu

6、ralism and expressionism to the American stage as devices to express his comprehensive interest in life and humanity. He often ignored normal play divisions of scenes and acts, paid little attention to the expected length of plays, made his characters wear masks, split one character between two acto

7、rs, reintroduced ghosts, chorus, monologue, and direct addresses to audience.,comment,He employed sets, lighting, and sounds to enhance emotion rather than to represent a real place. He made great contributions to establishing the modes of the modern American drama. He represented the new trend on t

8、he stage by introducing a modern and timely content. He grounded his works in personal experience. His works reflect the life of his country and his time.,Comment,He was able to do this, not merely because he had a talent for theatre but because he was good at using the modern themes and styles deve

9、loped abroad, and making them serve his own purpose. He was able to succeed also because he had a bursting desire to put on stage what he felt and knew.,comment,His success in the realistic and expressionistic drama has turned others from the traditions of romantic comedy and melodrama which had for

10、 so long bound the American stage, and opened the way for new literary experiments. All his life ONeill remained individual and nonpolitical. He stood aloft among his contemporary playwrights.,IV. Expressionism表现主义,a general term for a mode of literary or visual art which in extreme reaction against

11、 realism or naturalism, presents a world violently distorted under the pressure of intense personal moods, ideas, and emotions: image and language thus express feeling and imagination rather than represent external reality. In literature, a common concern of expressionism is with the eruption of irr

12、ational and chaotic forces from beneath the surface of a mechanized modern world.,Expressionism,Some of its explosive energies issued into Dada, Vorticism, and other avant-garde movements of the 1920s. In the English-speaking world, expressionist dramatic techniques were adopted in some of the plays

13、 of Eugene ONeill and Sean OCasey, and in the Circe” episode of James Joyces novel Ulysses(1922); in poetry, T. S. Eliots The Waste Land (1922) may be considered expressionist in its fragmentary rendering of post-war isolation.,Expressionism,In a further sense, the term is sometimes applied to the b

14、elief that literary works are essentially expressions of their authors moods and thoughts; this has been the dominant assumption about literature since the rise of Romanticism.,V. The Hairy Ape,Story,Yank, the protagonist, is a leading stoker on a transatlantic liner. Strong and brutish, he has won

15、respect from his fellow men, the kind of “grudging respect of fear.” Completely adapted to his environment, Yank is satisfied with the life he leads, and is proud of himself.,Story,But when Mildred Douglas, daughter of the ships owner, displays her horror and terror of him and calls him a “filthy be

16、ast” on her visit to the stokehole, Yank feels insulted, and denied a position in the world. He goes out to prove his position by insulting aristocratic strollers in New York and is then put to prison. He cannot make himself understood by his fellow prisoners, and is later rejected by the I. W. W. (

17、Industrial Workers of the World), a labor organization.,Story,Frustrated, Yank goes to the zoo to see the ape at night. He sets free the beast, offers to shake hands with it but is killed.,theme,Modern man loses his sense of belonging under technological progress. Humanity is in a predicament by creating a world he does not belong to.,VI. Topics for