吴伟仁的英国文学史及选读

History and Anthology of English LiteraturePart One The Anglo-Saxon PeriodBeowulfQuestions:1.The earliest literature falls into two divisions ___________,and_______________.2.Christianity brings England not only __________ and___________but also thewealth of a new language.3.Who is Beowulf? And What is Beowulf?4.How did Beowulf come into being?5.Who is Grendel? And what is the result of Grendel‟s fight with Beowulf?6.How did the Jutes hold the funeral for him?Key points of this part:The most important work of old English literature is Beowulf------- the national epic of the English people. It is of Germanic heritage, perhaps the greatest Germanic epic and contains evidently pre-Christian elements existing at first in an oral tradition, the poem was passed from mouth to mouth for generations before it was written down. The manuscript preserved today was written in the Wessex tongue about 1000A.D., consisting altogether of 3183 lines.There are three episodes related to the career of Beowulf:1.the fight with the monster, Grendel.2.The fight with Grendel‟s mother, a still more frightful she-monster.3.The moral combat with the fire Dragon.The significance lies in the vivid portrayal of a great national hero, who is brave, courageous, selfless, and ever helpful to his people.There are three important features::1.Alliteration (words beginning with the same consonant sound). This ischaracteristic of all old English verse.2.Metaphors and understatements. There are many compound words used in thepoem to serve as indirect metaphors that are sometimes very picturesque. , e.g.“riging-giver”is used for King; “hearth-companions “for his attendant warriors;“Whale‟s road” for the sea; “spear-fighter” for soldier etc. And as understatement we can see: “not troublesome”for welcome; “need not praise”for a right to condemn. This quality is often regarded as characteristic of the English people and their language.3.Mixture of pagan and Christian elements: the observing of omen, cremation,blood-revenge, and the praise of worldly glory.All these woven into the poem.Part Two The Anglo-Norman Period (1066---1350)Questions:1.When and led by whom did England begin to receive French civilization andlanguage?2.What are the chief features of the literature in this period?3.What are the three types of the stories in this period?4.Who is the green knight? Why did he cut Gawain three times and why didGawain feel shame?5.Did Gawain win the game of exchanging blows?6.Why did the green knight offer the green girdle as a free gift to Gawainfinally?Medieval Literature Anglo-Norman PeriodThere are a few occurrences of historic events that should be kept in mind:1)The Establishment of the Feudal System2)The 1381 peasant Uprising------Watt Tyler of Kent: 100000 people marched onLondon, destroyed manor-houses, burnt court paper--- records of their bondage and demanded the abolition of serf slavery and a general pardon.3)The Launching of the Crusades: a series of wars between Christians and Muslimsthat lasted for 170 years.4)The Signing of the Magna Carter in 1215 by which King John was forced torecognize the rights of the powerful barons.5)The War with France or the Hundred Years‟ War (1337-1453)Sir Gawain and the Green KnightOne important story in the Arthurian legend has been refined in detail in a famous medieval poem. Little is know about its author except he was a contemporary of Chaucer and probably a Christian priest. The poem was composed towards the end of the 14th century (about 1375) as an evident effort to extol Sir Gawain and his knightly virtues of loyalty, valor, rectitude, and integrity.Sir Gawain is an upright knight, ever ready to uphold the ideals of King Arthur‟s court. One Christmas, as the story goes, a knight all in green appears at court and challenges the king to cut off his head on the condition that he comes to meet him in one year‟s time. Sir Gawain stands out for his lord and beheads the weird visitor.The Green Knight takes up his head and leaves. When the appointed time comes, Sir Gawain sets off to meet him. He comes to a castle and is well received by its lord and lady. The lord invites Sir Gawain to go hunting with him, but the knight prefers to stay at home. The two agree to share in the evening whatever they may have won during the day. This goes on for three days. On the first day the lord ofthe castle hunts for a deer, while Sir Gawain is under the lady‟s siege to kiss her. The lord is happy to give half of his trophy in the evening to Sir Gawain in return for his brief kiss on his cheek. The second day ends with the lord giving half a boar for another brief kiss. When the third evening comes, the lord gets three kisses for half of his fox‟s skin, Sir Gawain having withheld the girdle that the lady has forced on him for his safety. Then the day comes to meet the Green Knight, who turns out to be the lord of the castle. Sir Gawain shrinks a little but soon recovers his valor to face the blow. But the Green Knight only cuts a scratch on his neck, saying that he would not even have done that to him had he shared the girdle with him in honesty. They become good friends. Sir Gawain goes back to the king‟s court.Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a 4-part work of 2,530 lines in 101 sections. Part one(11.1-490) deals with the beheading; part two(11.491-1125)tells of the long and arduous trip Gawain makes to the castle; part three(11.1126-1996) relates the three days he spends in a bargain with the lord; and part four(11.1997-2530) wraps up his trip with his final encounter with the Green Knight and the anti-climatic revelation of the moral of the story. In structural terms the narrative is well conceived and neatly knit into an organic unity. The different parts and sections interlock and the threads are pulled together to offer a sense of finality. There is also a fine psychological element that enriches the plot and adds to the characterization. Sir Gawain is not presented as a rigid heroic type but as a human being with his worries and fears. The description of the change of seasons appears in a long portion of the second part of the poem, serves in fact as a means of externalizing the complex inner world of the man going to his death. In addition, Sir Gawain‟s hiding of the girdle, which the lady says can protect him form harm, is a nice tour de force to throw the man‟s fear into relief. There is then the three days‟ bargaining, which reveals the nature of the temptations that put Sir Gawain‟s integrity into a strenuous test—the lady‟s progressive advances to him. To the intensity of the lady‟s offensive, the hunting serves as an apt foil—deer (timidity). The boar (the wild and aggressive), and the fox (the cunning).The characterization of Sir Gawain is very interesting to note. His portrait is vivid and fully rounded. There is in him a stranger medley of conflicting qualities that makes him perfectly human. Alongside the best of all human virtues, there is also an indication of traits not altogether admirable. He hesitates in face of possible danger as Roland in C hanson de Roland does not. He meditates as Roland does not. He is just a little short of an ideal hero. The effect of allowing readers to see all the aspects of his personality is achieved by a subtly imbedded irony, a good-natured satirical edge, against chivalry.Sir Gawain and the Green Knight shares quite a few basic features with Old English poems like Beowulf. In line structure and the use of devices such as alliteration, it is notably similar. As it was written in the north Midland dialect, it is less approachable than Chaucer‟s London dialect. Usually, a modern translation is dispensable.Part IIIGeoffreyChaucer (1340----1400)Warming-up activity for pre-readingI.Fill in the blanks:1.Geoffrey Chaucer, the “________” and one of the greatest narrative poetsof England, was born in London in about 1340.2.Chaucer‟s masterpiece is ___, one of the most famous works in allliterature.3.The ________ provides a frame work for the tales in The Canterbury Tales ,and it comprises group of vivid pictures of various medieval figures.4.Chaucer created in The Canterbury Tales a strikingly brilliant andpicturesque panorama of ______.5.The Canterbury Tales opens with a general “Prologue” where we are toldof a company of pilgrims that gathered at ____Inn in Southwark, a suburb of London.6.Despite the enormous plan, The Canterbury Tales in fact contains a general“Prologue” and only ____ tales, of which two are left unfinished.II.Choose the best answer:1.Who is the “father of English poetry”and one of the greatest narrativepoets of England?a) Christopher Marlow b) Geoffrey Chaucer c) W.Shakespeare2. When he died, Chaucer was buried in ____the Poet‟s Cornera) Westminster Abbey b) Normandy c) CanterburyIII. Question for consideration:1.What is the social significance of The Canterbury Tales?The English which was used from about 1100---1500 is called Middle English, and the greatest poet of the time was Geoffrey Chaucer.Geoffrey Chaucer is the greatest writer of the middle ages. Although he was born a commoner, a merchant family, he did not live as a commoner; and although he was accepted by the aristocracy, he must always have been conscious of the fact that he did not really belong to that society of which birth alone could make one a true member. Chaucer characteristically regarded life in terms of aristocratic ideals, but he never lost the ability of regarding life as a purely practical matter. The art of being at once involved in and detached from a given situation is peculiarly Chaucer‟s.The influence of Renaissance was already felt in the field of English literature when Chaucer was learning from the great Italian writers like Petrarch and Boccaccio in the last part of the 14th century. Chaucer affirmed man‟s right to pursue earthly happiness and opposed asceticism; he praised man‟s energy, intellect, quick wit and love of life; he expose and satirized the social vices, including religious abuses. It thus can be said the though essentially still a medieval writer, Chaucer bore ；[ ‘；marks of humanism and participated a new era to come.From his birth to his death, Chaucer dealt continually with all sorts of people, the highest and the lowest, and his observant mind made the most of this ever-present opportunity. His wide range of reading gave himplots and ideas, but his experience gave him models of characters. In hisworks, Chaucer explores the theme of the individual‟s relation to the society in which he lives; he portrays clashes of characters‟ temperaments and their conflicts over material interests, he also shows the comic and ironic effects obtainable from the class distinctions felt by the newly emerged bourgeoisie as in the case of the Wife of Bath who is depicted as the new bourgeois wife asserting her independence. In short, Chaucer develops his characterization to a higher artistic level by presenting characters with both typical qualities and individual disposition.Chaucer dominated the works of his 15th-century English followers and the so-called Scottish Chaucerians For the Renaissance, he was the English Homer. Edmund Spenser paid tribute to him as his master; many Shakespeare‟s plays show thorough assimilation as Chaucer‟s comic spirit.Today, Chaucer‟reputation has been securely established as one of the best English poets for his wisdom, humor, and humanity.The Canterbury Tales total altogether about 17000 lines, about half of Chaucer‟s literary productionChaucer‟s best-known work The Canterbury Tales was written in the last 14 years of the poet‟s life. According to his original plan, the poem was to be a collection of something like a hundred and twenty tales, but it was not completed upon his death, and contains ,as we have it now, a general Prologue and only twenty-four tales, of which two are left unfinished. The poem as a whole gives a vivid and comprehensive picture of the social conditions of fourteenth-century England.The general Prologue, serves as a general introduction to the collection of tales. It first tells how the poet, preparing to go on a pilgrimage shrine of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, meets at the Tabard Inn in a London suburb twenty-nine other pilgrims bent on the same mission. Then he gives leisurely descriptions of the pilgrims one after another, revealing not only their outward appearances and professions but also their ways of life and their diverse tastes and humors. At the close of the Prologue, the host of the inn suggests to the pilgrims to entertain themselves on the journey to and from Canterbury by telling stories to one another, and the suggestion being accepted by all, the host offers to accompany them on their pilgrimage. Then the next day, after the drawing of lots the knight is the first of the pilgrims to tell a story. The twenty-nine pilgrims, representing almost all the classes and social groups of the poet‟s day ( with the only exceptions of the royalty and top nobility and the poorest laboring folk), are portrayed very effectively by the poet with much humor and satire.Part IV. The Renaissance of English literatureSupplemental material for the RenaissanceThe Renaissance marks a transition from the medieval to the modern world. Generally, it refers to the period between the 14th and mid-17th centuries. It first started in Italy, with the flowering of painting, sculpture and literature. From Italy the movement went to embrace the rest of Europe. The Renaissance, which means rebirth or revival, is actually a movement stimulated by a series of historical events, such as the recovery of ancient Roman and Greek culture, the new discoveries in geography and astrology, the religious reformation and the economic expansion. The Renaissance, therefore, in essence, is a historical period in which the European humanist thinkers and scholars made attempts to get rid of those old feudalist ideas in medieval Europe, to introduce new ideas that expressed the interests of the rising bourgeoisie, and to recover the purity of the early church from the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church. English Renaissance is perhaps England‟s Golden Age, especially in literature. Among the literary giants were Shakespeare, Spenser, Ben Jonson, Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlow, Bacon and John Donne.Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. It sprang from the endeavor to restore a medieval reverence for the antique authors and is frequently taken as the beginning of the Renaissance on its conscious, intellectual side, for the Greek and Roman civilization was based on such a conception that man is the measure of all things.English Renaissancemay be conveniently divided into three distinc stages: 1) Oxford Reformers by Thomas More and his Utopia 2) Elizabethan Age covers up roughly the second half of the 16th century,in poetry, Sidney and Spenser to Shakespeare and Ben Jonson and John Donne; in Drama, from the influence of church drama and folkdrama, By Marlowe, to the more mature comedies and the early tragedies of Shakepeare .Thomas More1478-1535More, the son of a judge of the king‟s Bench, first studied the classics at Oxford and then went to the Inns of Court. He began his career as a lawyer and became member of parliament when he was only 22. He offended Henry VII by speaking in parliament against the king‟s demands for subsidies. He retired to a monastery but left it after finding ignorance and hypocrisy in monastic life. When Henry VIII came to the throne, More returned to active life and was successively published his Under Shriff of Londen, Master of Request etc.Thomas More is the greatest humanistic leader of early 16th century. His masterpiece is Utopia tells the story of More meeting a traveller, who has discovered …Utopia‟which means …nowhere land coming from two Greek words signigying no place. In Utopia, the private ownership of property has been abolished. All citizens are politically equal. Everybody takes part in labour.The products of the society are distributed according to the needs of each citizen.The book at once became popular was translated into English from Latin.Main idea of the book, The miseries of the English people arising out of thepractice of the enclosure of land are vividly painted in particular, and the existence of private proverty is pointed out as the source of all social evils.Edmund Spenser(1552-1599)He was born in London and received a good education at Cambridge. He left Cambridge in 1576 and went to the north of England, where he fell in love and recorded his laments over the loss of Rosalind in love in The Shepheardes Calender He died “for want of bread”. He was buried beside his master Chaucer in Westminster Abbey.His masterpiece is The Faerie Queene, a great poem of its age. According to his own explanation, his principal intention is to present through “ historical poem”the example of a perfect gentleman: “to fashion gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline.” He speaks of 12 virtues of the private gentleman, and plans 12 books, each one with a different hero distinguished for one of the private virtues. The hero of heroes, who possesses all of virtues, is Arthur , and he is to play a role in each of the 12 major adventures, which has its own individual hero. Another character contributing to the unity of the work is Gloriana, the Fairy Queen. It is from her court and at her bidding that each of the heroes sets out on his particular adventure. Prince Arthur‟s great mission is his search forthe Fairy Queen, with whom he has fallen in love through a love vision. The Faerie Queene is full of adventur4es and marvels, dragons, witches, enchanted trees giants and the like.It is also an allegory.Five main qualities of Spenser‟s poetry should be mentioned; 1) a perfect melody;2) a rare sense of beauty; 3) a splendid imagination; 4) a lofty moral purity and seriousness; and 5) a dedicated idealism. It is Spenser‟s idealism, his love of beauty, and his exquisite melody that make him known as “the poets’ poet.”Example from his The Faerie QueeneA Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shield,Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine,The cruel markes of many a bloudy fielde;Yet armes till that time did he never wield:His angry steede did chide his forming bitt,As much disdayning to the curbe to yied;Full jolly knight he seemed, and fairy did sitt,As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.And the last thing for us to keep in our mind is The SpenserianStanza which was invented by the poet himself, meaning a stanza of nine lines, with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last nine line in iambic hexameter, rhyming abab bcbccChristopher MarloweBorn in 1564-1593, he was the son of a Canterbury shoemaker. Scholarships took him first to the King‟s School, and then Cambridge. During his stay at Cambridge, his career as a man of letters got started. His play, Tamburlaine, written before he left Cambridge, turned out to be a sweeping success on the stage. When he came to London in 1584, his soul was surging with the ideals of the Renaissance, which later found expression in Dr. Faustus On May 30, 1593, Marlowe was killed in a quarrel over a tavern bill in Deptford.As the most gifted of the “University Wits”, Marlowe composed six plays within his short lifetime. Among them the most important are : Tamburlaine, Dr. Faustus , The Jew of Malta and Edward II.Dr. Faustus is a play based on the German legend of a magician aspiring for knowledge and finally meeting his tragic end as a result of selling his soul to the Devil. The play‟s dominant moral is human rather than religious. It celebrates the human passion for knowledge, power and happiness; it also reveals man‟s frustration in realizing the high aspirations in a hostile moral order. And the confinement to time is the cruelest fact of man‟s condition.His greatest achievement lies in that he perfected the blank verse and made it the chief instrument of English drama.Another achievement is his creation of the Renaissance hero for English drama. Such a hero is always individualistic and full of ambition, facing bravely the challenge from both gods and men. He embodies Marlowe‟s humanistic ideal of human dignity and capacity. Different from the tragic hero in medieval plays, who seeks the way to heaven through salvation and God‟swill, he is against conventional morality and contrives to obtain heaven on earth through his own efforts. With the endless aspiration fro power, knowledge, and glory, the hero interprets the true Renaissance spirit.Example from Dr. Faustus:METH. Now, Faustus, what wouldst thou have me do?Faustus: I charge thee wait on me whilst I liveTo do whatever Faustus shall command,Be it be make the moon drop from her sphereOr the Ocean to overwhelm the world.METH. I am a servant to great LuciferAnd may not follow thee without his leave:No more than he commands must we performBen Jonson (1573-1637)He was the last great Elizabethan and probably the first poet laureate(1616) and the first literary dictator in English history. And also he was regarded as Shakespeare‟s formidable rival and most well-known successor. He was a soldier, an actor, a playwright, poet, scholar, critic, man of letters, and head of a literary group. Around him was clustered a group of literary figures called “sons of Ben”. Ben Jonson was a man of wisdom. He could always make himself victorious in allmatters. As a soldier in Flanders, he fought singled-handed with an enemy soldier and killed this man. As a person who was to be hanged for killing a fellow-actor, he got himself free by proving he could read and write. He came out of jail though he insulted the King‟s home country Scotland. He had literary wars with other playwrights. He rode out the trouble when he was much suspected after the Gunpowder Plot. He grew more and more mature as he grew older. And he was so respected by his contemporary literary figures and the whole society that he became the uncrowned king of literature in London, the king‟s pensioned poet.After his death he was buried in the Poets‟ Corner of Westminster Abbey.Achievements: Every Man in His Humour his first comedy Volpone or the Fox(1606) 2nd comedySong to Celia: Drink to me only with thine eyes,And I will pledge with mine;Or leave a kiss but in the cup,And I‟ll not look for mine.The thirst that from the soul doth riseDoth ask a drink divine;But might I of Jove‟s nectar sup,I would not change for thine.I sent thee late a rosy wreath,Not so much honouring theeAs giving it a hope that thereIt could not wither‟d be;But thou thereon didst only br5eatheAnd sent‟st it back to me;Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,Not of itself but thee!This famous poem is written in ballad metre: that is, in alternate 8-syllable and 6-syllable lines of iambic meters and with alternate rhymes.Philip Sidney (1554-1586)He was very popular poet in his own time. He was educated at Oxford.Achievements: Apologie for Poetrie(1595) defends the noble nature of poetry and its moral value against Puritan criticism and elevates poetry as the supreme form of art that heps enrich and make nature.A good number of Sidney‟s poems appear in Arcadia(1593), his pastoral prose romance.108 sonnets and 11 songs establish his fame in English literature.King James’ Bible : containing the 2 main divisions of the Old Testament and the New one, first written in the Hebrew, Greek languages in the regions adjoining the eastern part of Mediterranean Sea by many writers of varied countries , and then translated into the modern English by 47 scholars‟ work.W. Shakespeare (1564-1616)I. Background knowledge about his education and life.He has been said to have the “Midas‟touch.”Whatever he happened to do turned out to be a great success. He excelled in the literary field characteristic of the age of English Renaissance---- poetry and drama.III.Questions concerning his works:1.What are the periods of Shakespeare‟s plays?2.When did Shakespeare write his main comedies? What did he tell us in theircomedies?3.When were Shakespeare‟s main tragedies written? What did he write in thetragedies/4.What do Shakespeare‟s historical plays reflect?5.What are the main features of Shakespeare?6.What …s the main idea of The merchant of Venice?7.What …s the theme of Hamlet?8.What do you learn about Romeo and Juliet?9.What‟s your opinion of the heroines in Shakespeare‟s works?IV.An analysis of some of Shakespeare‟s plays1.Shakespeare, as a child of English Renaissance, best exemplifies thezeitgeist of his time. All the best features of the age find adequateexpression in his works. These include the sense of individual worth,the feeling of freedom in thought and action, the ambition and thedynamic aggressiveness, the plentitude of talent and the excesses ofenergy, the pioneering spirit of adventure and the desire foraccomplishment, the daring to conquer and the exuberance to inventand innovate, the self-assurance, the vision, the insight, theperspicacity and , on top of these all, the emotional abandon withwhich Renaissance inspires all its writers.The most famous speech in Hamlet is the prince‟s soliloquy,” To be, or not to be.‟ Said to be the most famous soliloquy in the history of the theater, it discusses the attitude of a Renaissance humanist toward life and death. The speech comes a critical juncture in the drama when the truth about Claudius‟ murder is about to be confined with the staging of a play within the play. While waiting for the moment to come, his sense of anxiety drives Hamlet to think seriously about the existentialist condition of man. Is it worth it dying in the fight with evil? Or is ir better to settle for the passive accestance of the second best, i.e. to ignore evil and endure the pain and live on? He may die in his effort to remove evil and avenge the blood of his father. Death may be the way out of all the suffering of life, but is death the end of all? Is‟nt there more anguish and sorrow in the next world? Hamlet realizes that, though thought guides action, excessive thinking makes people cowardly and jeopardizes the chances of success of great undertakings. This self-warning portrays the Renaissance humanists as both men of thought and action. Instead of talking about suicide and evading commitment as some critics think, Hamlet is in fact spurring himself to action. This speech is vehement criticism of the ills of the time---its oppression and its variousother forms of injustices. What strike the audience most is the density of thought and the poetry of the language.Macbeth, or The Tragedy of Macbeth, another famous tragedy, has also received a good deal of critical attention over the centuries. It is based on the story of regicide that is said to have occurred in ancient Scottish history. Shakespeare got the subject from his reading of Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577). As Shakespeare tells the story, Macbeth, having vanquished a rebellion and a foreign invasion, becomes ambitious enough to replace the weak King Duncan, his cousin. Encouraged by his wife Lady Macbeth, he murders the visiting monarch, and puts himself on the throne. He kills his fellow general Banquo in order to forestall a prophecy that Banquo‟s descendants may become future kings, and he removes many others to consolidate his power, thus alienating himself from his courtiers and people.Macbeth is now so anxious and high-strung that he cannot sleep well any more. Neither can his wife who, harassed by her guilt, sleepwalks, fast loses her sanity, and finally takes her own life. In the meantime, the English forces are invited in to help remove Macbeth and restore rule and order.Macbeth fights bravely, but dies.The characterization of Macbeth and his wife merits special analysis. Macbeth begins as a man of integrity, a pillar of his country, enjoying admiration and popularity. In view of a weakling king on the throne, he may have harbored an ambition of his own, but he would not have descended so low as to achieve his ends by killing his king, had he nit had Lady Macbeth to persuade him into doing it. He submits to her coercion, and oversteps the line between good and evil.That is when endless self-torment begins to prick his conscience so that he experiences sleepless nights and begins to admire the dead Duncan in his grave. The witches may be seen as an externalization of the complexity of his inner world. The first time the witches appear is when Macbeth is returning to a triumphant hero‟s welcome after his victories. The three women predict that he will be the king, but add that his companion‟s children will also be kings. This is in fact an objectification of Macbeth‟s hidden ambition and fear, that he wants to be the king but feels the threat from his fellow general---Banquo. The other occasion on which the witches surface is when they are sought by Macbeth. Their advice to him can again be construed as a mirror for Macbeth‟s inner soul: his fear lest Banquo‟s son should invite English intervention but at the same time he feels a dubious, qualified self-confidence. He represents the effect of sin and guilt upon the moral fiber of man: he ends with the tragic vision of human existence: Life is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing.”The Merchant of Venice is another of Shakespeare‟s popular plays. As the story goes, young Bassanio, who needs money to win the hand of the rich young heiress—Portia, comes to Antonio, a merchant of Venice, for help.Antonio, as he has no ready cash, goes to Shylock, the Jewish usurer, who has been at odds with Antonio because of the competition and recail discrimination he has suffered at his hands. The Jew decides to loan the money but asks him to sign a bond which demands a pound of flesh from him in case he fails to pay in time. With the money Bassanio wins Portia, but Antonio is in trouble.。