Elements of Reading Fictions

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Understanding Fiction小说理解

12
• Hero 男主角 • Heroine 女主角 • supporting role 配角
Characters in Oliver Twist
• • • • • • • • Oliver Twist old Sally Bumble Mr. Mrs. Sowerberry Noah Claypole Jack Dawkins Fagin Mr. Brownlow
2. Setting
• In a narrow sense, setting is the place and time of the work, but broadly it includes the total environment of the fiction. • Setting, therefore, refers to such factors as the physical locale that frames the action, the time of day or year, the climatic conditions, and the historical period during which the action takes place.
2.Antagonist反面人物:
In Greek drama, the character who opposes the protagonist, or hero: therefore, any character who opposes another. In some works, the antagonist is clearly the villain, but in strict terminology an antagonist is merely an opponent, and may be in the right, like Creon in Oedipus. 3. deuteragonist: 配角 the person second in importance to the protagonist in a drama

Character Analysis 分析

-
emotiona pleasant l
-follow the instructi on from the old man
Social
-very kind -arrogant Afraid that -even to other -ambitious the boy though he people to get a loose his is in even never cadillac little finger mental met before disorder, he stiil keep kind to other people for example to the man
"He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women , nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy."
- be good in a work by follow the instruction of the boss
Elements of Fiction
•Setting
•Character •Plot •Point of View •Theme •Symbolism •Other
Types of Characters

the elements of style笔记

the elements of style笔记【实用版】目录1.概述《风格的要素》2.《风格的要素》的主要内容3.对《风格的要素》的评价和反思正文《风格的要素》是一本关于英语写作风格的经典指南，作者威廉·斯特劳斯（William Strunk Jr.）在书中详细阐述了英语写作的基本原则和方法。

本书分为四个部分，包括“词汇”、“句子”、“段落”和“篇章”，为英语写作提供了全面的指导。

首先，在“词汇”部分，斯特劳斯强调了选择恰当词汇的重要性，提倡简练、准确的表达。

他认为，恰当的词汇能够增强文章的说服力，提升读者的阅读体验。

此外，他还提醒作者避免使用过于华丽的辞藻，以免陷入堆砌词汇的陷阱。

其次，在“句子”部分，斯特劳斯阐述了如何构建简洁、有力的句子。

他提出了一些实用的建议，如避免过长的句子，使用主动语态等。

同时，他还强调了句子内部的平衡和对仗，认为这是写出优美句子的关键。

接下来，在“段落”部分，斯特劳斯讲解了如何组织段落，使之既有逻辑性，又易于阅读。

他提倡使用短段落，并确保每个段落只包含一个主题。

此外，他还强调了段落间过渡的重要性，以确保文章的连贯性。

最后，在“篇章”部分，斯特劳斯讨论了如何构建一篇完整的文章。

他强调了文章主题的重要性，并提醒作者始终保持对主题的关注。

同时，他还建议作者在文章中设置明确的起点、发展和结尾，使文章结构更加清晰。

总的来说，《风格的要素》是一本极具价值的写作指南，无论是对于初学者还是有经验的作者，都具有很大的启发意义。

然而，我们也应意识到，随着时代的发展，一些具体的写作规则可能已经过时。

第1页共1页。

Five Elements of a Short Story Plot, Character, Setting

Five Elements of Fiction:Plot, Setting, Character, Point of View, ThemeI.Plot–How the author arranges events to develop the basic idea; it is the sequence of events in a story or play. Theplot is a planned, logical series of events having a beginning, middle, and end. The short story usually has one plot so it can be read in one sitting. There are five essential parts of plot:1)Exposition (introduction)– Beginning of the story; characters, background, and setting revealed.2)Rising Action – Events in the story become complicated; the conflict is revealed. These are events betweenthe introduction and climax.•Conflict –Essential to plot, opposition ties incidents together and moves the plot. Not merely limited to arguments, conflict can be any form of struggle the main character faces. Within a shortstory, there may be only one central struggle, or there may be many minor obstacles within adominant struggle. There are two types of conflict:o Internal– Struggle within one's self.▪Character vs. Self– Struggles with own soul, physical limitations, choices, etc.o External– Struggle with a force outside one's self.▪Character vs. Character– Struggles against other people.▪Character vs. Nature– Struggles against animals, weather, environment, etc.▪Character vs. Society– Struggles against ideas, practices, or customs of others3)Climax – Turning point of the story. Readers wonders what will happen next; will the conflict be resolvedor not? Consider the climax as a three-fold phenomenon:•Main character receives new information.•Main character accepts this information (realizes it but does not necessarily agree with it).•Main character acts on this information (makes a choice that will determine whether or not objective is met).4)Falling action– Resolution begins; events and complications start to fall into place. These are the eventsbetween climax and denouement.5)Resolution (Conclusion) –Final outcome of events in the story.II.Setting –Time and location that a story takes place. For some stories, the setting is very important; while for others, it is not. When examining how setting contributes to a story, there are multiple aspects to consider:1)Place - Geographical location; where is the action of the story taking place?2)Time - Historical period, time of day, year, etc; when is the story taking place?3)Weather conditions - Is it rainy, sunny, stormy, etc?4)Social conditions - What is the daily life of the character's like? Does the story contain local colour (writingthat focuses on the speech, dress, mannerisms, customs, etc. of a particular place)?5)Mood or atmosphere - What feeling is created at the beginning of the story? Cheerful or eerie?III.Character– There are two meanings for “character”: 1) a person in a fictional story; or 2) qua lities of a person.1) People in a work of fiction can be a(n):•Protagonist –Clear center of story; all major events are important to this character.•Antagonist –Opposition or “enemy” of main character.2) Characteristics of a character can be revealed through:•his/her physical appearance•what he/she says, thinks, feels, dreams and what he/she does or does not do•what others say about him/her and how others react to him/her3)Characters can be...•Round –Fully developed personalities that are affected by the story’s events; they can learn, grow, or deteriorate by the end of the story.Characters are most convincing when they resemble realpeople by being consistent, motivated, and life-like.•Flat - One-dimensional character•Dynamic–Character who does go through change and “grows” during a story•Static– Character does not go through a change.IV.Point of View – The angle from which the story is told. There are several variations of POV:1)First Person– Story told by the protagonist or a character who interacts closely with the protagonist or othercharacters; speaker uses the pronouns “I”, “me”, “we”. R eaders experiences the story through this person'seyes and only knows what he/she knows and feels.2)Second Person–Story told by a narrator who addresses the read er or some other assumed “you”; speakeruses pronouns “you”, “your”, and “yours”. Ex: You wake up to discover that you have been robbed of all ofyour worldly possessions.3)Third Person–Story told by a narrator who sees all of the action; speaker uses the pronouns “he”, “she”,“it”, “they”, “his”, “hers”, “its”, and “theirs”. This person may be a character in the story. There are severaltypes of third person POV:•Limited – Prob ably the easiest POV for a beginning writer to use, “limited” POV funnels all action through the eyes of a single character; readers only see what the narrator sees.•Omniscient- God-like, the narrator knows and sees everything, and can move from one charac ter’s mind to another. Authors can be omniscient narrators by moving from character to character, eventto event, and introducing information at their discretion. There are two main types of omniscientPOV:4)Innocent Eye/Naïve Narrator – Story told throug h child’s eyes; narrator’s judgment is different from thatof an adult.5)Stream of Consciousness –Story told so reader s solely experience a character’s thoughts and reactions. V.Theme –Central message, “moral of the story,” and underlying meaning of a fictional piece; may be the author’s thoughts on the topic or view of human nature.1)Story’s title usually emphasizes what the author is saying.2)Various figures of speech (symbolism, allusion, simile, metaphor, hyperbole, or irony) may be utilized tohighlight the theme.3)Examples of common themes occurring in literature, on television, and in film are:•Things are not always as they appear to be.•Love is blind.•Believe in yourself.•People are afraid of change.•Don't judge a book by its cover.。

fiction-the elements of fiction

• Fiction is the truth inside the lie. -Stephen King 小说是谎言中的真相。 • Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible. -Francis Bacon 真相太难出口,所以有时需要小说让真相变得合理。
Plot
• Rising Action
• Climax • Falling Action
Characters
• Static Character vs. Dynamic Character 静止人物与动态人物
• Flat Character vs. Round Character 扁平人物与圆形人物
Elements of Fiction
• • • • • Setting Plot Characters Theme Point of view • • • • • 背景情节人物主题视点
Setting
• Social & Historical Background • Place that the story happens • Time • Symbolic setting-natural scenery, weather, metropolis, wilderness, boat, roads, etc.
Tone
• • • • • serious or ironic sad or happy private or public angry or affectionate bitter or nostalgic
Irony
Verbal irony Structural irony

elements of novel

Tone
• Tone indicates the author’s implicit attitude toward the people, places, and events in fiction.
• e.g. A mother who says “come here” to her child, • may convey affection, anger, concern, or alarm. • Direct commentary / dramatic presentation / ironic language
• Syntax: The ways the author arranges words into phrases, clauses and finally whole sentences to achieve particular effects.
• (short and spare/ long and involved, simple/compound/ complex, loose/periodic/balanced)
• Conflict • External (physical, moral, or psychological contest between antagonistic characters) • Internal (moral, psychological, or spiritual struggle within the character itself)
• • Parable (格言）—— teaching Ficiton —— its generalized view of life and human nature.
• Theme Vs subject • Many stories share identical subjects, such as fate, love, war, death, growth, racial prejudice, and sex discrimination, etc. Yet each usu. makes its own statement about the subject and expresses its distinct view of life.

The Elements of Fiction

PLOT

conflict: The basic tension, predicament, or challenge that propels a story's plot complications: Plot events that plunge the protagonist further into conflict rising action: The part of a plot in which the drama intensifies, rising toward the climax climax: The plot's most dramatic and revealing moment, usually the turning point of the story falling action: The part of the plot after the climax, when the drama subsides and the conflict is resolved
The Elements of Fiction

While the list of formal elements encourages us to divide a story into parts, in the story itself these elements blend to create a whole. At some level, or perhaps in the first reading of a piece, readers should read without applying these divisions in order to experience the story's unique effect. Nevertheless, knowledge of the formal elements is necessary for most critical discussions of fiction. These elements provide a basic vocabulary and set of critical tools that can be used in conjunction with many other critical approaches.

The-Elements-of-Fiction

Setting as Time- Includes time in all of its dimensions. To
determine the importance, ask, “what was going on at that time?”
Setting as Cultural Context- Setting also involves the
Rising Action: the series of conflicts and crisis in the story that lead to the climax
Falling Action: all of the action which follows the climax
Exposition: the start of the story, the situation before the action starts
The Elements of Fiction
Fiction refers to any imaginary work
portraying characters and events
Classification of fiction
novel novelette short story
The Elements Include:
social circumstances of the time and place. Consider historical events and social and political issues of the time.
Effects of Setting- Creates atmosphere, gives insight to

why fiction is good for you

why fiction is good for you（原创实用版）目录1.引言：介绍虚构类作品2.小说与现实生活的关系3.阅读虚构作品的好处4.结论：提倡阅读虚构作品正文虚构类作品，如小说、电影和戏剧等，一直以来都是人们喜闻乐见的艺术形式。

尽管它们是虚构的，但却能引起我们的共鸣，让我们在想象中体验不同的人生。

有人认为，虚构作品并不能给我们带来实际的好处，但事实上，阅读虚构作品对我们的身心健康大有裨益。

首先，虚构作品与现实生活息息相关。

虽然它们是作者创造出来的世界，但其中的人物和故事往往源于现实生活。

通过阅读虚构作品，我们可以从另一个角度审视自己的生活，发现生活中的美好与不足。

同时，虚构作品也可以让我们体验到不同的文化和生活方式，拓宽我们的视野。

其次，阅读虚构作品可以提高我们的想象力和创造力。

在阅读过程中，我们需要根据文字描述去想象故事的场景、人物形象等，这无疑对我们的想象力是一次很好的锻炼。

而在这个过程中，我们也可能会产生一些新的想法和灵感，进一步激发我们的创造力。

此外，阅读虚构作品还可以帮助我们缓解压力。

在紧张忙碌的生活中，读一本引人入胜的小说，可以让我们暂时忘却现实的烦恼，让心灵得到放松。

而且，通过阅读虚构作品，我们还可以学习到一些人生哲理，帮助我们更好地面对生活中的困境。

最后，阅读虚构作品可以增进我们的社交能力。

在阅读过程中，我们会与故事中的人物产生情感共鸣，学会理解和关心他人。

而在与他人分享阅读心得时，我们也可以锻炼自己的表达和沟通能力。

综上所述，阅读虚构作品不仅让我们在想象中体验不同的人生，还能提高我们的想象力、创造力，缓解压力，增进社交能力等。

英国文学导论

Requirements of the Course
Course Paper Guidance: Special Notice!!! Write your own paper. All ideas and phrases that are not your own, whether they are derived from printed sources, resources on the internet, or lectures, must be acknowledged. Failure to acknowledge your sources will result in partial or total loss of marks for that piece of work. In more serious cases it will result in failure in the unit of study. Students who allow their work to be copied and passed off as the work of another student will be regarded as complicit in an act of plagiarism.
Elements of Poetry
Figure of Speech: simile, metaphor, personification, Speech: paradox, ambiguity, onomatopoeia; Tone: Tone: mood, voice, attitude and outlook of a poet (eg. cold, eager, uncertain, boastful, protecting…) Image: Image: sense impressions (trees….) to create atmosphere, to focus an idea… Theme: emotionTheme: emotion-arousing (a novel is always thoughtthought-provoking)

《基础英语》课程标准

陕西国际商贸学院基础英语课程标准一、课程基本信息二、课程的性质与任务及设置目的（一）课程性质与任务本课程是为高等院校英语专业本科生基础阶段开设的专业基础课之一，是英语专业的主干课程。

本课程通过语言基础训练与篇章讲解分析，使学生了解英语各种文体的表达方式和特点，扩大词汇量并熟悉英语常用句型，巩固英语基础知识，了解英语国家社会文化知识，并能借助多种工具获取信息、自主学习，在语言学习过程中逐步提高综合素质，基本达到运用英语顺利进行口语及书面语表达的能力，从而为进入高年学习奠定扎实的语言基础。

（二）前后续课程的安排先修课程：中学英语课程并修课程：语法、语音、听说、阅读、口语等后续课程：基础英语、高级英语、英语语言学、英美文学、翻译、基础写作、高级写作、毕业论文等三、课程目标（一）总体目标课程名称基础英语课程编号 05020116302考试/考查考试总学时256 实验（实训）学时 0 总学分 16 课程性质专业基础必修课适用专业英语本科开课单位文化与艺术学院通过本课程的学习，尽快帮助学生熟悉大学学习环境和自主学习方法，使学生养成良好的学习习惯；培养学生独立工作的能力；引导学生正确理解和分析鉴别学习内容；帮助学生学习使用英语释义词典级其他基本工具书；并具备一定的语言应用能力和跨文化交际能力。

（二）具体目标1.知识目标本课程主要盘活中学所学，提高学生的语音、语调和朗读技巧；系统传授系统的语音、语法、词汇、篇章结构等基础语言知识，了解英语各种文体的表达方式和特点，扩大词汇量和熟悉英语常用句型。

2.能力目标通过本课程的学习，使学生掌握一些英语学习的基本技能：(1）语音方面：纠正常见的语音错误；(2）阅读方面：掌握基础的阅读技巧，理清上下文逻辑关系，抓住文章大意，理解作者的言外之意；(3）表达方面: 学会使用常见句型，清楚正确地表达自己的意思;(4）翻译方面：掌握常用的翻译技巧；能借助词典对题材熟悉的文章进行英汉互译，译文基本流畅，能在翻译时使用适当的翻译技巧。

Elements of Fiction

He makes no comment nor enters the mind of any of the characters.
All action, dialogue, setting, stage directions are presented as if in a play. That’s why the method is called “dramatic”.
Disadvantage: 1) If not handled skillfully it may result in a lack of focus; 2) Keeping the reader in a passive position to be always told;
3) Runs contrary to experience, for in actual life, everyone is limited in vision, can’t see everyone else’s mind.
He may freely 1) interpret behaviour; 2) comment on the action; 3) even come forward to address the reader; Being used in story-telling for many years, this point of view makes it possible for the author to move freely and give the reader a broad scope of human life.
Therefore, modern writers tend to avoid it, or at least modify it in their writings.

小说要素(Factors of Fiction)美国文学

小说要素(Factors of Fiction)
小说是以刻画人物为中心，通过完整的故事情节和具体的环境描写来反映社会生活的一种文学体裁。.
• 小说有三个要素：人物、故事情节、环境（自然环境和社会环境）。
小说各要素的作用
• 人物是小说的核心 • 情节是小说的骨架 • 环境是小说的依托
• 主要手段是塑造人物形象 • 小说中的人物，称为典型人物.可以通过人物的外貌、动作，语言，心理，神态进行描写； • 环境包括自然环境和社会环境； • 故事情节包括开端，发展，高潮，结局.
Байду номын сангаас 代表作品
• 代表作品：小说《黑猫》、《厄舍府的倒塌》，诗《乌鸦》
• 爱伦· 坡、安布鲁斯.布尔斯（1842～ 1914？）和H.P.洛夫克拉夫特（1890～ 1937）并称为美国三大恐怖小说家
Edgar Allan Poe 埃德加.爱伦.坡
• • • • • • • 国籍：美国出生地：波士顿出生日期：1809年1月19日逝世日期：1849年10月7日职业：诗人，小说家，评论家毕业院校：弗吉尼亚大学主要成就：侦探小说、恐怖小说、效果论、
• 侦探小说(detective story)鼻祖、科幻小说 (science fiction)先驱之一、恐怖小说(horror fiction)大师、短篇哥特小说巅峰、象征主义 (symbolism)先驱之一，唯美主义 (aestheticism)者。

how to appreciate ficiton

Perspective on life and world
If the above elements deal with external factors of fiction, writers’ perspective on life and the world is more than internal for it determines the philosophy of characters, manipulates their destiny as well as conveys writers’ perception to readers.
Artistic skills
Great writers excel in the variety of artistic skills they apply in their works. Some use all kinds of artistic skills, while most of them manipulate a certain sets of skills so well that these skills become distinctive features of their works.
How to appreciate fiction
Though various schools of fiction theories are so overwhelming that the function and role of these elements have been repeatedly redefined, they have remained vital to the effective apprehension of fiction since the time of its birth, especially to beginners.

纷乱中迷失的爱——《最后死亡的是心脏》的伦理叙事

摘要玛格丽特·阿特伍德是加拿大当代著名作家，作为加拿大拥有文学作品最多的作家之一，她被誉为“加拿大文学女王”。

她的小说融入了其绝妙的写作技巧，展现了备受关注的社会问题，因而总是引起激烈的社会讨论。

《最后死亡的是心脏》是阿特伍德的第十六部小说。

在这部小说中，阿特伍德描绘了斯坦和查梅因这对夫妇的生存以及他们在康西里恩斯城的生活，反映了两人在失序的环境下迷失的爱。

本论文试从文学伦理学批评和叙事学的角度分析《最后死亡的是心脏》的伦理叙事特征。

本文首先从社会制度、科技、医学和性关系四个角度分析了小说环境描写中的伦理混乱，指出这种混乱的伦理环境逐渐导致了男女主人公关系的异化。

其次，本文探究了小说主人公面对的伦理困境和做出的伦理选择。

小说的两位主人公都在多重伦理困境中做出了各自的伦理选择，查梅因的三次伦理选择和斯坦的两次伦理选择都从侧面体现了他们的伦理态度和不同性格。

最后，本文探究了小说的叙事结构和叙述声音，指出阿特伍德选择的“双线多结”的故事结构和引人深思的开放式结局，暗示了小说的伦理意蕴。

作家采用的男女主人公交替的叙述视角，通过内心描写和没有感情的叙述者声音，进一步展现了复杂的两性关系在混乱的伦理环境中不可避免的扭曲。

本文最终得出结论：《最后死亡的是心脏》中充斥着伦理现象和伦理元素，而小说的伦理主题就是纷乱中迷失的爱。

该小说伦理叙事的价值就在于小说中描绘的伦理混乱对现实世界有警示作用，这体现了玛格丽特·阿特伍德对当代人类社会发展和人与人之间关系的深刻思虑。

关键词：玛格丽特·阿特伍德；《最后死亡的是心脏》；伦理叙事AbstractMargaret Atwood is a renowned contemporary Canadian writer. As one of the most prolific Canadian writers, she is hailed as “Queen of Canadian Literature”. Most of her novels involve her excellent writing skills and give a glimpse into widely focused social problems, hence provoking heated public discussions. The Heart Goes Last is Atwood’s sixteenth novel, in which she portrays the survival of Stan and Charmaine with a focus on their life in the town of Consilience, thus reflecting their loss of love in the disordered environment.The thesis attempts to explore the ethical narrative of The Heart Goes Last from the perspective of ethical literary criticism and narratology. Firstly, it analyzes ethical confusion of social system, technology, medicine and sex in the environment and points out that such disordered environment gradually causes the alienation of the two protagonists. Secondly, the thesis explores the ethical predicament and choice of the characters. The two protagonists make ethical selection respectively in different ethical predicaments. Charmaine’s three ethical choices and Stan’s two ethical choices all reflect their ethical attitudes and different personalities. Finally, the thesis examines ethical narrative in the structure and voice. In the novel, Atwood adopts the structure of “two ethical lines, several ethical knots” and the thought-provoking open ending to imply the ethical themes and ideas of the novel. Besides, in order to further clarify how the complicated gender relationship is unavoidably distorted in the ethical confusion, Atwood combines the alternate narrative perspective with mental description and unemotional narrative voice. The thesis ultimately draws the conclusion that The Heart Goes Last is filled with ethical phenomena and ethical elements, and the ethical theme of it is the loss of love in the disordered order. In the novel, the value of ethical narrative expresses itself in its warning to people in the real world about the ethical disorder in the fictional world, which represents Atwood’s profound thought on the development of contemporary human society and human relationship.Key Words: Margaret Atwood; The Heart Goes Last; ethical narrativeContents摘要 (i)Abstract (ii)Introduction (1)1. Margaret Atwood and The Heart Goes Last (1)2. Literature Review (2)3. Theoretical Framework of the Thesis (9)4. Significance and Structure of the Thesis (12)Chapter One Ethical Confusion in the Environment (14)1.1 Ethical Confusion of Social System (14)1.2 Ethical Confusion of Technology (18)1.3 Ethical Confusion of Medicine (20)1.4 Ethical Confusion of Sex (21)Chapter Two Ethical Predicament and Choice of the Characters (25)2.1 Charmaine’s Ethical Predicaments and Choices (25)2.1.1 To Cheat on Stan or to Keep Marriage (25)2.1.2 To Kill Stan or to Risk Her life (26)2.1.3 To Continue Love or to Leave Stan (28)2.2 Stan’s Ethical Predicaments and Choices (29)2.2.1 To Pursue Dream Lover or to Keep Marriage (30)2.2.2 To Run away or to Give up Halfway (30)Chapter Three Ethical Narrative in the Structure and Voice (33)3.1 Ethical Implications in the Structure (33)3.1.1 “Two Ethical Lines, Several Ethical Knots” (33)3.1.2 Open Ending: Provoking Ethical Thinking (35)3.2 Ethical Implications in the Perspective and V oice (36)3.2.1 Alternate Narrative Perspective between Stan and Charmaine (37)3.2.2 Mental Description (39)3.2.3 Unemotional Narrative V oice (40)Conclusion (41)Bibliography (43)Acknowledgements (46)Introduction1. Margaret Atwood and The Heart Goes LastMargaret Atwood (1939-) is a renowned Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and critic. Born in 1939 in Ottawa, Atwood was the second child in a family of five. Due to her father’s occupation as entomologist, she spent a lot of time reading and playing with her brother in the jungle before seven years old, which provided a solid basis for her literary writing and provoked her interests in nature and literature. In 1961, Atwood graduated from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and then pursued her master’s degree in literature at Radcliffe College of Harvard University.Atwood is one of the most prolific contemporary Canadian writers and is hailed as “Queen of Canadian Literature”. Until now, she has written 17 novels, 8 short story collections and over 15 books of poetry. Besides, she is also the author of children’s books, nonfictions and television scripts. Her works have been translated into more than 30 languages and published in many countries. Among her numerous honors and awards in fictions are a Los Angeles Times Book Award, an Arthur C. Clarke Award for her most famous book The Handmaid Tale and two Booker Prize for The Blind Assassin and The Testaments respectively. Atwood’s novels always generate heated public discussion, for most of them are imbued with excellent writing skills and give a glimpse into some widely focused social issues.The Heart Goes Last was firstly published as Atwood’s 16th novel by McClelland & Stewart in 2015. Earlier than that, the whole story was serialized on from 2012 to 2013 in four parts, I’m Starving for You, Choke Collar, Erase Me and The Heart Goes Last. As a speculative novel imbued with dystopian metaphors, The Heart Goes Last is always compared with Atwood’s another well-established novel The Handmaid’s Tale by reviewers. However, more real-world problems concerning us can be found in The Heart Goes Last, because in this novel Atwood crafts a near future that “pierces an arrow through the heart of relationships, exposing the nervy testament that appearances can deceive” (Pressick).The Heart Goes Last is set in the near future of America and revolves around a young married couple, Stan and Charmaine. At the beginning of the novel, the two lives a happy marriage life and is able to make ends meet with what they have earned, but it seems that a serious economic crisis sneaks up on the country overnight. With the whole financial system falling into pieces, Stan loses his well-paying job at Dimple Robotics, and Charmaine is laid off by Ruby Slippers Retirement Homes and Clinics. They can barely make their living, so they have no choice but to stay in a cramped third-hand car under the potential threat of violent gangs and solitary vandals. Until one day, Charmaine sees an advertisement about the Positron Project launched in the town of Consilience. She is extremely interested in the self-sufficient society described in the advertisement and immediately persuades Stan into joining the project together.The Positron Project is a social experiment based on the Consilience/Positron twin city. Each participant must sign up for permanent residency and agree to spend one month in prison every other month. In return, citizens there can have different kinds of jobs and a comfortable shared house. At first, Stan and Charmaine do live a better life than before, but gradually a series of problems arise. Charmaine has a secret affair with the alternate man and discards her childish and disguised self. At the same time, Stan goes crazy for another mature and sluttish woman called Jasmine, whom he thinks is the female alternate but actually is Charmaine. Then both Stan and Charmaine are involved in Jocelyn’s tightly woven plan to expose the dark side of the Positron Project, such as prison abuses, organ harvesting and sex slaves created by neurosurgery. Charmaine is given the challenging task to kill Stan with the lethal injection. She completes it after a difficult emotional struggle. However, Stan is not dead. It is Jocelyn who falsifies Stan’s death in order to assist him to successfully escape from Consilience in the shape of a sex robot. Finally, the Positron Project collapses because of the documents and videos disclosed by Stan. But there is still one thing left to be figured out for Charmaine: now that she and Stan have restarted their marriage life after the reunion, should she tell Stan the truth that she had no brain operation at all and consider carefully whether she genuinely love Stan or not? It’s time for the heart to decide.2. Literature ReviewThe study of Margaret Atwood and her works abroad started in the late 1960s. In 1968,William H. New published a passage named “A Wellspring of Magma: Modern Canadian Writing” on Twentieth Century Literature, in the bibliography of which he referred to Atwood as one of the youngest poets. Since then, poems written by Margaret Atwood began to catch the attention of researchers. However, it was not until 1973 that her novel was firstly mentioned in a journal with the title “Margaret Atwood: Beyond Victimhood”. Later, in the late 1980s, foreign study finally began to focus more on Atwood’s novels. As a result, a great number of books regarding Margaret Atwood were published, such as Rigney, Barbara Hill’s Margaret Atwood, Coral Ann Howells’ Margaret Atwood, Rosemary Sullivan’s The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood Starting Out.During the past forty years of foreign study concerning Atwood’s novels, it is not difficult to find that a great number of scholars have analyzed Atwood’s novels from various perspectives, among which feminism has the highest proportion. Most scholars delve into textual analysis from the perspective of feminism or explore Atwood’s ideas of feminism hidden in the text, such as Shirley Neuman, Laura M. Robinson, Elaine T. Hansen and Fiona Tolan. Besides, some scholars pay attention to the female bildungsroman. In Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman, Ellen McWilliams thinks that the subject of bildungsroman apparently exists in Atwood’s early works and undercut later works. The opinion is shared by Carol Osborne in “Constructing the Self through Memory: ‘Cat’s Eye’ as a Novel of Female Development”. Apart from these two aspects, some scholars analyze Atwood’s novels by revealing the gender images and the relationship between male and female. For example, Patricia F. Goldblatt analyzes several female protagonists in Atwood’s works to illuminate that Atwood reconstructs women victims in her writings with the aim to encourage women to use their strength to revitalize their suppressed life. Instead of studying Atwood’s novels merely by utilizing feminism, some scholars combine feminism with other literary theories to provide a further possibility of academic research. For example, Sonia Mycak and Eleonora Rao, Ruth Parkin-Gounelas, Jean Wyatt all illustrate Atwood’s novels from the perspective of women’s psychoanalysis, while Dana Phillips and Amelia Defalco conduct researches on eco-feminism and Gothic feminism respectively.Scholars also elaborate multiple themes of Margaret Atwood’s novels. Some of them have noticed the Canadian national character and culture in these works. Lauren A. Rulefocuses on two Atwood’s novels whose landscapes are haunted by US imperialism in “Not Fading into Another Landscape: Specters of American Empire in Margaret Atwood’s Fiction”. Kiley Kapuscinski thinks the frequently brutal narrator of Atwood’s Surfacing uncovers how the reputed vulnerability central to the Canadian identity is open to interrogation and re-interpretation in “Negotiating the Nation: The Reproduction and Reconstruction of the National Imaginary in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing”. Others talk about the recurrent theme of survival in Atwood’s works, like Earl G. Ingersoll in his article “Survival in Margaret Atwood’s Novel Oryx and Crake”.Moreover, Margaret Atwood’s writing techniques have also drawn the attention of a lot of foreign researchers during the past years, and therefore they wrote books and journal articles to search for Atwood’s typical way of creation. Molly Hite wrote The Other Side of the Story: Structures and Strategies of Contemporary Feminist Narratives. she employs one chapter to deal with the shift and disappearance of boundaries between self and other and between reality and unreality in Atwood’s Lady Oracle. Shannon E. Hengen wrote Margaret Atwood's power: mirrors, reflections and images in select fiction and poetry. Bouson J. Brooks wrote Brutal Choreographies: Oppositional Strategies and Narrative Design in the Novels of Margaret Atwood. He thinks that her works are carefully choreographed and preoccupied with form and design. Sharon Rose Wilson edited Margaret Atwood’s Textual Assassinations: Recent Poetry and Fiction. Essays in the collection become “assassinations” of traditional genres, structures, plots, narrative strategies, writing techniques and reader expectations. In academic journals, foreign scholars mainly investigate the use of imagery, narrative strategies, dystopia elements, contextuality and canon reconstruction in Atwood’s novels. Emma Parker holds the view that the coded expressions of power is behind the activity of eating. She thinks the absence of the depiction of women’s eating in literature implies women’s lower social status than men. Then Shelley Boyd in 2015 further analyzes the image of breakfast in Atwood’s MaddAddam. As for narrative strategies, Dominick M. Grace explains the “Historical Notes” in The Handmaid Tale and points out that to deny her tale’s historicity, Atwood subverts the pseudo-documentary voice that is often used by science fiction. Magali C. Michael in “Rethinking History as Patchwork: The Case of Atwood’s Alias Grace” and Edina Szalay’s “Quilting Her Story: The Resisting FemaleSubject in Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace” reveals the intricate quilt-like patchwork of texts in Atwood’s works. Besides, scholars like David Ketterer, Dennis Rohatyn, Karen F. Stein and Katherine V. Snyder explore dystopian elements in Atwood’s novels and illustrate why she always portraits a fiction world with potential social realism. Additionally, some researchers study Atwood’s novels from the perspective of canon reconstruction, like Mihoko Suzuki, who wrote “Rewriting the ‘Odyssey’ in the Twenty-First Century: Mary Zimmerman’s ‘Odyssey’ and Margaret Atwood’s ‘Penelopiad’” to analyze Atwood’s rewriting of Odyssey.Although Atwood’s renowned novels have been analyzed from various kinds of perspectives, limited people have probed into her novel The Heart Goes Last. The study of The Heart Goes Last started in 2016 with the thesis “Revising Justice: Punitory Thought and Action in the Work of Atwood, Jordan, and Oates”. In the thesis, Natalya Machnaigh Barker delineates the conception of punitory justice in The Heart Goes Last and other two novels. Later in 2017，Fiona Tolan briefly introduced The Heart Goes Last and showed the text of her interview with Margaret Atwood about this novel and her writing ideas. In the same year, Coral Ann Howells wrote “True Trash: Genre Fiction Revisited in Margaret Atwood’s Stone Mattress, The Heart Goes Las t and Hag-Seed”, in which she thinks Atwood “challenges realistic conventions as she revisits an array of popular genres” (297) and “seeks as always to engage readers with her seriously held ethical values” (298). Besides, More After More: Essays Commemorating the Five-Hundredth Anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia (2017) includes Anna De Vaul’s “No Light Without Shadow: The Control of Language and Discourse in Margaret Atwood’s Dystopian Fiction”. In the article, she explores how Atwood makes use of discourse to distinguish eutopia and dystopia in The Handmaid Tale and The Heart Goes Last. Then in the following year, Tim Engles wrote “Margaret Atwood and the Features of Domineering White Masculinity” in the epilogue of White Male Nostalgia in Contemporary North American Literature. He points out that compared with The Handmaid’s Tale, The Heart Goes Last exposes many latent menaces that are inextricably linked to current American realities. Atwood in this novel portrays catastrophic consequences of a society with neo-liberal economic order, in which “dominant white masculine tendencies have resulted in commodified possession of nearly everyone andeverything, including nostalgia” (224). Eleanor March (2018) completed a dissertation about the role of prisons in Atwood’s novels (including The Heart Goes Last) as an expression of the author’s political beliefs. Recently, there was a comparative study focusing on The Heart Goes Last, namely, Ewa Kowal’s “Nostalgia, Kitsch and the Great Recession in Margaret Atwood's The Heart Goes Last and Westworld (Season 1)”. Because The Heart Goes Last was serialized on the Internet at first, some online book reviews concerning this novel were published between 2015 and 2016. Despite the fact that some of these reviews implicitly criticize this novel, reviewers all express their unique opinions towards this novel. Pauline Finch summarizes the main content of the novel and reveals that social problems in the novel are not far away from us at all. Then Clarine Fallon’s review appeared on Huffington Post in the October of 2015. She thinks that there is no hero like Offred in this novel, and Atwood never brings out any measures to remedy the dislocated society. Tasha Robinson issued her review named “‘The Heart Goes Last’ is a Swiftian Satire of Imbeciles in the Apocalypse”, in which she explains that Atwood revolves around human nature and gender relationship, to be exactly, “how women and men treat each other, how women see each other, and how sex affects societies both real and metaphorical”.In conclusion, foreign scholars pay more attention to the early novels of Margaret Atwood and make use of a lot of literary theories to analyze her famous novels such as The Handmaid Tale, Surfacing, Alias Grace and MaddAddam Trilogy. On the contrary, The Heart Goes Last still lacks systematic illustration. Although some reviewers analyzed themes and Atwood’s ethical ideas hidden in the novel, their study was not combined with literary criticism theory and thus have little reference value.In China, the study of Margaret Atwood and her works started in the early 1980s. In 1981, Huang Zhongwen published “English Canadian Literature” on Foreign Literature, in which he focuses on the development of Canadian literature and introduces a number of Canadian writers including Margaret Atwood. Later, the sixth volume of World Literature in 1983 published the translation of Sara Solecki’s “An Introduction to English Canadian Literature” and Atwood’s short story “The Man from Mars”. However, Chinese researchers didn’t pay attention to novels written by Atwood until 1989, when Kan Chen’s “Margaret Atwood’s New Work: Cat’s Eye” was published on Foreign Literature Review. Since then,plenty of scholars have been conducting researches on Atwood’s novels. After 2003, journal articles and theses based on Atwood’s novels began to increase stably and reached the climax in 2011. By the end of March, 2020, Chinese scholars analyze The Handmaid Tale most, followed by Oryx and Crake, The Edible Woman and The Blind Assassin.As for research perspectives, domestic study mainly focuses on themes, images, writing techniques in Atwood’s novels. About themes, Wang Xiaoying published “Survival, Return, True Self: Diversified Themes of Surfacing” on Foreign Literature Studies. Ding Lingpeng published “The recurring theme of Sneaking Underground in Atwood’s novels” on Foreign Literatures. About images, Yuan Xia published “The Significance of Patchwork Quilts in Margaret Atwood’s Writing” on Contemporary Foreign Literature. Zhang Wen published “The Image of ‘Hand’ and Narrative Strategies in Atwood’s Bodily Harm” on Masterpieces Review. About writing techniques, some scholars discuss Atwood’s narrative strategies, like Zhang Wen’s “The Blind Assassin: Writing Canadian History with Left Hand” and Li Wenliang’s doctoral dissertation “Narrative Arts of Margaret Atwood’s Novels”. Others explore the intertextuality or canon reconstruction in Atwood’s novels, like Ke Qianting’s “Intertextuality and the Post-modernist Conception of the Real: On Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace” and Yang Lixin’s “Canon Reconstruction under feminism: Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad”. Besides, a wide range of scholars have done comprehensive researches on Atwood’s novels by adopting different literary theories, like feminism (especially eco-feminism), psychoanalysis, Foucauldian theory of power and so on.Although The Heart Goes Last has been published for more than four years, most scholars at home still don’t attach much importance to it. Consequently, domestic research on this novel is comparatively scarce. According to the search result on Chinese cnki.cet, there are only two journal articles about The Heart Goes Last, and both of them were written by Professor Yuan Xia of Nanjing Normal University in 2016. One is “The Prison Image in The Heart Goes Last” on Journal of Hunan University of Science & Technology (Social Science Edition). In this article, Yuan Xia compares the private car at the beginning of the novel to the prison and explains that this kind of description emphasizes the hellish world. Then she penetrates into the image of panopticon prison in the trial twin city to reveal that the seemingly idealistic social model is actually at the cost of everyone’s freedom. At last,she analyzes the image of the knitted teddy bears as the prison built for cheated citizens in the name of love and loyalty. The other article is “The Ethical Predicament of Both Sexes in The Heart Goes Last” on New Perspectives on World Literature. In this article, Yuan Xia thinks that Atwood in the novel delineates the ethical confusion of sex in the disordered society, the relationship between male and female with the consideration of medical ethics and the ethical crisis of sex in the age of technology. She further points out that through writing this novel, Atwood intends to urge modern people to reflect themselves and then build harmonious sexual relations to prompt the steady development of our whole society.All in all, only Professor Yuan Xia have done domestic researches on Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last. She utilizes “ethical predicament” and “ethical confusion”, two terms from ethical literary criticism, to delve into the complicate relationship of both sexes in this novel. However, her emphasis is placed on the ethical predicament of both sexes in the novel and Atwood’s writing purpose behind the text. Still, nobody in China has given a detailed and comprehensive explanation of the ethical narrative of The Heart Goes Last. Nevertheless, many researchers have already paid attention to the ethical elements in Atwood’s other novels.In 2012, Yu Chunyan of Jiangxi Normal University completed her master’s thesis called “Conflict Between Technology and Ecology—An Ethical Reading of Oryx and Crake”. In her thesis she analyzes the conflict between sci-tech and ecology in Oryx and Crake from the ethical perspective and delineated the deteriorating relationship between man and nature and the alienating relationship between man and man. For the following five years, some people also studied the ethical elements in Oryx and Crake. For example, Yuan Xia in “A Study on the Globalization Crisis in Oryx and Crake”(2017) points out that Oryx and Crake shows natural crisis, survival crisis and sex crisis that people are probably faced with in the future. She also calls for an ethical renaissance through reflection on the negative effects of globalization. Her student Xiang Huiling in the next year wrote the master’s thesis named “Humanity and Animality under Genetic Engineering—A Study of Oryx and Crake from the Perspective of Animal Ethics” with the key word of animal ethics. Apart from researches centered on Oryx and Crake, some master’s theses clarified several ethical elements in Atwood’s other novels, such as Yan Lili’s “‘Animals R Us’—A Study of the Question of theAnimal in The Year of the Flood’’, Cao Jiao’s “Coexistence in Harmony: A Study of the Ethical Writing of The Blind Assassin” and Liu Yi’s “The Construction of Dystopia in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy”.In general, domestic study on Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last is still insufficient, and its research scope is comparatively limited. Some master’s theses and journal articles mentioned ethical elements in Atwood’s novels, but they didn’t explore further under the guidance of ethical literary criticism. In my opinion, it is feasible and meaningful to analyze Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last from the perspective of ethical literary criticism and narratology to seek the novel’s ethical theme and confirm its ethical value.3. Theoretical Framework of the ThesisIn the late 1980s, western critics started to pay more attention to the relationship between ethics and literature, and from then on, plenty of western literary critics attempted to search for a reasonable system to analyze literature works by exploiting ethical theories. According to Michael Eskin, the wave of ethical turn has double meanings. One is the turn to ethics in literature studies, the other is the turn to literature in moral philosophy. In the former domain, Wayne C. Booth, an American critic with the Chicago school of literary criticism, can be regarded as the forerunner. In The Rhetoric of Fiction, Booth points out that most novelists today must feel an inseparable connection between art and morality. He then explains that this kind of morality means “a judgement on what they see” and that “they would ask us to share as part of the vision” (385). In another book, The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction, Booth further clarifies his thoughts on ethical criticism. He insists that all narrative works are didactic with the ethical dimension, and he suggests to make use of so-called “conduction” to thoroughly understand the connections among writer, reader and literary work and to comprehensively study how society influenced them. However, Adam Zachary Newton thinks Booth failed to emphasize the function of narrative in his definition of ethics of fiction. Therefore, in 1995, Newton published Narrative Ethics with the intention of pursuing “the more conjunctive dynamic between narrative and ethics” (10). He purposes that narrative ethics implies narrative as ethics, namely, “the ethical consequences of narrating story and fictionalizing person, and the reciprocal claims binding teller, listener, witness, and reader in that process” (Newton 11).It was not until the 21st century that Chinese scholars began to combine ethics with narrative. In 2004, Liu Xiaofeng published The Heavy Body: The Narrative of Modern Ethics, in which he formulates the concept of narrative ethics in China. In his opinion, ethics can be divided into rational ethics and narrative ethics. The former is equal to moral philosophy, while the latter aims to “raise questions about feelings of life through the narration of personal experiences and to reflect specific moral consciousness and ethical appeal” (Liu 4). Later, Wu Maoguo also concentrated on the research of narrative ethics and ethic of narrative in literary works. He believes that the core feature of the study of narrative ethics is the organic combination of “strategy of storytelling” and abstract ethical thinking. According to Ethic of Narrative of Modern Fiction, ethic of narrative has two aspects, ethic of story and ethic of narration. Ethic of story takes the responsibility of presenting major ethical themes of the era from the point of narrative as well as exploring whether it is possible for some kind of ethic to exist. Ethic of narration talks about the way through which narrative process, narrative techniques and narrative forms successfully implying ethical meanings. In addition, it shows the interaction between ethical consciousness and narrative in novels, between ethical consciousness of the author and the reader and that of the author and the narrator.The concept of ethical narrative was put forward by Zhang Wenhong in Ethical Narrative and Ethic of Narrative: Textual Practice of Chinese novels in the 1990s. According to her, in contrast with ethic of narrative which belongs to narratology, ethical narrative falls into the category of thematics, and it can be regarded as narrative about ethic. Because literature works are more or less close to things that have happened in real life, we can summarize their different ethical themes after reading them carefully. In 2009, Yan Wei further explained the meaning of ethical narrative. “The so-called ethical narrative is the author’s presenting of the ethical situation and moral condition of characters in the novel by means of some narrative discourse” (Yan 12). And he thinks ethical narrative embodies what kind of ethical relationship the author narrates and how this kind of ethical relationship is narrated. Apart from the mentioned scholars above, Du Juan and Gong Gang also declared their thoughts on ethical narrative. Du Juan redefines ethical narrative as expressed ethical story that is to some extent close to the meaning of “ethical text”. Ethical narrative not only focus on ethical thoughts in literary works but also refers to narrative strategies and forms.。

elements of the novel

Elements of the Novel
By Robert
6.1 .1 Story
What is Story?
A story is a series of happening arraged in the natural temporal order as they occur.
Story is the basis of the novel, and indeed the basis of narrative works of all kinds.
Apart from the story, the reader should read more for the style.
6.2 Character
Broadly, a character is an invented personality to resemble but never to equal a real person in life.
6.3.1 What is Plot?
A plot is a particular arrangement of happening in a novel that is aimed at revealing their causal relationship or at conveying the novelist's ideas. e.g.
6.2.2 Kinds of Characters
By their roles in the novel, the characters can be grouped as heroes, main characters and minor characters, and foils.
By the degrees of their development, characters can be grouped as round characters and flat characters.This division is proposed by E.M Forster.

英美文学方向

英语专业英美文学方向✓英美戏剧Drama✓英美文学选读与欣赏Reading Course on British&American Literature✓英美小说British&American Fiction1.英美戏剧DramaWhat:This course is to develop drama appreciation ability with the introduction to basic drama concepts and learning of several classical English&American dramas.1.Definition:Drama is a composite art.It is an art made out of words.2.Elements:Plot(a beginning,middle,a climax and an end);Character;Thought;Diction;Music;Spectacle3.Three unities:The unity of action:a play should have one main actionThe unity of place:a play should cover a single physical spaceThe unity of time:the action in a play should take place less than24hours.4.Historya).From the beginning to Shakespeare–The tenth century:●the church service,the earliest English dramatic form–The fourteenth century:●Miracle play(biblical histories)(1300-1450)A dramatization of the Legend of some saint or martyr and presented either miracles performedby the saint or his relics or image,or the sufferings and death of the martyr●Morality play(religious drama)late fourteenthThe characters are for the most part personified virtues and vices and they are shown characteristically as competing for the soul of the man–The late fifteenth century,early sixteenth century:●Interlude幕间幽默短剧–The end of sixteenth century(the period of transition)●Classical drama(comedy and tragedy)b).Shakespeare and his contemporaries–the last two decades of the sixteenth century●Christopher Marlowe(Elizabethan tragedy)Doctor Faustus●William Shakespeare–the first decade of the seventeenth century●Ben Johnson The Alchemistc).Restoration and the Eighteenth century：–Comedy of manners风尚喜剧–Richard Sheridand).19th century:Oscar Wildee).20th century:Bernard ShawProblem play:Drama of social criticism discusses social,economic,or political problems by means of a play.Mrs.Warren’s Profession；Major Barbara5.Hamlet:It’s about a man called on to exact revenge for the murder of his fatherProblems:The murderer is a king;the source of the information is a ghost;the revenge must be honorable Structure:Exposition:Ghost orders revenge---Rising action:Hamlet acts mad---Climax:Hamlet does things(puts ona play,berates his mother,and kills Polonius)---Falling action:Events conspire against Hamlet while he sails toEngland---Resolution:Hamlet kills king,dies.“To be,or not to be,that is a question”---The young prince meditates upon suicide,reckons on the ills of life and concludes that man bears the burden of life only because of fears of the life to come.This famous speech performs two functions of a soliloquy:to give expression to a complicated state of mind of a character and to provide a point of view on the events of the play.6.Death of a SalesmanStyle:The play is mostly told from the point of view of the protagonist,Willy,and the previous parts of Willy's life are revealed in the form of flashback.The play's structure is a stream of consciousness.When we are in the present the characters abide by the rules of the set,entering only through the stage door to the left;however,when we visit Willy's"past"these rules are removed,with characters openly moving through walls.As Willy's mental state deteriorates,the boundaries between past and present are destroyed,and the two start to exist in parallel.Character analysis:William"Willy"Loman:The salesman.He vacillates between different perceptions of his life.Willy relies on others for support.His first name,Willy,reflects this childlike aspect as well as sounding like the question"Will he?"His last name gives the feel of Willy's being a"low man,"someone low on the social ladder and unlikely to succeed.Biff Loman:Willy's older son.He likes being outdoors and working with his hands yet wants to do something worthwhile so Willy will be proud.Overall Biff remains a realist,and informs Willy that he is just a normal guy.Harold"Happy"Loman:Willy's younger son.He's lived in the shadow of his older brother Biff most of his life and seems to be almost ignored,but he still tries to be supportive towards his family.He has a very restless lifestyle as a womanizer and dreams of moving upward.Uncle Ben:He represents Willy's idea of the American Dream success story.2.英美小说British&American FictionWhat:This course is to develop fiction appreciation ability with the appreciation of several classical English&American fictions.1.Elements of FictionsTheme;Plot;Character;Diction;Point of View2.A Rose for EmilyIt is a short story by American author William Faulkner.He was an American writer known for his novels and short stories,many of which are set in South.His common theme is the Failure and decay of the South of America.Title:a)Faulkner indicates his pity and salute...to a woman you would hand a roseb)Rose is used here as a symbol of decay and deathTheme:Resistance to changeEmily's inability to realize her father's death and refusal to adapt to a changing world intensify her solitary.Character:The protagonist Emily is protector of the tradition,and its convict,beneficiary and revolter.Diction:rich nouns and abundant adjectivesPoint of View:Multiple points of view=First-person account+third-person account3.英美文学选读与欣赏Reading Course on British&American LiteratureWhat:This course is not a major course but a public selective course.Because students of all majors might take it,it is primarily focus on the appreciation ofThe Road not to be taken1.Author:Robert Lee Frost is highly regarded for his realistic description of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech.His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England.2.Analysis:Language:plain but meaningfulTheme:1.Choices and sequencesThe road that forks into2different directions always presents a choice to be made.The speaker would like to travel both but it is impossible.He is aware of the implications of choosing badly and does not see enough differences between the two roads.But this is the nature of life.The only way is to examine and evaluate all the details until one choice seems more appealing to the character. In this case,the speaker chooses the one less travelled.However,the choice seems to be wrong“ages and ages hence”.The"sigh"can be interpreted as regret,as this is mirrored in the regretful tone of the opening lines.It would not be right to say that choosing was the most important thing, but it is the fact that a choice has been made at all“that has made all the difference”2.A reflection of individualismIt encourages the choice of“less travelled by”,of being a loner.The Road not to be takenTwo roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler,long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other,as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black. Oh,I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood,and I—I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.British Part1.The Old and Medieval English literature(8th-14th)2.The Renaissance Period(14th-mid17th)features the essence of humanism.3.The Neoclassical Period(1660-1798)under the influence of Enlightenment Movement celebrated reason of rationality,equality and science.4.The Romanticism period(1798-1837)gave primary concern to passion,emotion,and national beauty.5.The Realism Period(1870-1914)in the Victorian Period is concerned about the fate of the common people.6.The Modern Period(1914-1945)is mainly featured by symbolism,the stream of consciousness and naturalism after theWorld War One.American Part1.The Romanticism period(1782-1859)2.The Realism Period(1870-1914)6.The Modern Period(1914-1945)Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography is the first real American writing as well as the first real autobiography in English.Washington Irving was the first American writer who gained international fame.Ralph Waldo Emerson was regarded as leader of the movement of Transcendentalist.Ernest Hemingway is famous for his simple style and careful structuring of his fiction.。

How_to_Read_Fiction

e.g.
Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficienct to make his wife understand his character. her mind was less difficult to develop. she was a woman of mean understanding little information, and uncertain temper.
6
CONTENTS
The definition of fiction
The differences between fictions and novels
Elements of Fiction
Suggestions for Fiction appreciation
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C. Elements of Fiction
novel
A highly stylized prose account of fictional reality in the form of story with profundity for the purpose of changing the reader’mind by the aid of the reader’s active involvement while providing entertainment and superior 5 truth of life.
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Characterization

英美文学5

John Bunyan
6.Symbolism is another feature in The Pilgrim's Progress. 人生→ 人生→朝圣者们的艰难历程人→天路的朝圣者基督寻求救赎的朝圣历程→ 基督寻求救赎的朝圣历程→ 人类摆脱世间烦恼和焦虑, 人类摆脱世间烦恼和焦虑, 追求美好永恒未来的过程. 追求美好永恒未来的过程.
Superstition Pickthank拍马 Badman恶人 Malice怨恨
Doubting Castle 怀疑 Nhomakorabea堡 the Vanity Fair
名利场
the Slough of Despond
绝望泥潭
the City of Destruction
毁灭城
Analysis: The Pilgrim's Progress
Analysis: The Pilgrim's Progress
…a
man clothed with rags standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; 基督徒 and as he read, he wept and trembled; and, not being able longer to contain, 一个人穿着破烂的衣服穿着破烂的衣服, he brake out with a lamentable cry, 一个人穿着破烂的衣服站在一个地方,背对着自站在一个地方背对着自 saying, "What shall I do?" 己的房舍,受礼拿着一本书受礼拿着一本书,背上己的房舍受礼拿着一本书背上负着一个沉重的包袱我正看着,只见他打开书本一边阅读, 包袱. 负着一个沉重的包袱.我正看着,只见他打开书本一边阅读, 一边流泪,全身颤抖,后来情不自禁地伤心起来: 一边流泪,全身颤抖,后来情不自禁地伤心起来:"我应该做点什么? 点什么?" the worldly troubles the Bible and worries

The Elements of Fiction

stock characters
Some flat characters are recognized as stock characters; they embody stereotypes such as the “dumb blonde” or the “mean stepfather.” They become types rather than individuals.
First Person POV
The author disappears into one of the characters. Shares the limitations of third person limited. Uses the pronouns “I” and “we”.
Theme
Round characters
are more complex than flat or stock characters, and often display the inconsistencies and internal conflicts found in most real people. They are more fully developed, and therefore are harder to summarize.
The Elements of Fiction
Fiction refers to any imaginary work
portraying characters and events
Classification of fiction
novel novelette short story
The Elements Include:
Oory is told in third person by a narrator who has unlimited knowledge of events and characters.