王守仁《英国文学选读》笔记和课后习题详解-20世纪英国诗人(1)【圣才出品】

第15单元20世纪英国诗人(1)

15.1复习笔记

T.S.Eliot(1888-1965)(T.S.艾略特)

1.Life(生平)

Thomas Stearns Eliot,poet,dramatist and critic,was born in Saint Louis, Missouri,U.S.A.He entered Harvard at18majoring in philosophy,and finished his doctoral dissertation at Oxford.After settling in England in1914,Eliot worked as a school teacher,and then as a bank clerk.He associated with Yeats and Ezra Pound, who encouraged him to write poetry.In1927he became a British subject and joined the Church of England.Eliot’s reputation as a poet and man of letters increased incrementally from the mid-1920s.As early as1926he delivered the prestigious Clark Lectures at Cambridge University,followed in1932—1933by the Norton Lectures at Harvard,and just about every other honor the academy or the literary world had to offer.In1948Eliot received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

托马斯·史登斯·艾略特，诗人、剧作家兼评论家，出生于美国密苏里州圣路易斯。他18岁进入哈佛大学主修哲学，之后在牛津大学完成哲学博士论文。1914年定居英国后，他当过教师和银行职员，同时与叶芝和庞德交往，他们鼓励艾略特进行诗歌创作。艾略特1927年加入英国国籍，入英国国教。20世纪20年代中期起，艾略特作为诗人和文人名声大振。早在1926年就受邀在剑桥主讲颇具名望的“克拉克讲座”，1932至1933年在哈佛主讲“诺顿讲座”，几乎得遍了所有学术界和文学界的荣誉。1948年艾略特获得诺贝尔文学奖。

ments on Eliot(对艾略特的评论)

Eliot’s poetry and criticism marked a break with19th-century Romanticism started by Wordsworth and Coleridge.T.S.Eliot was a leader of the modernist movement in English poetry and a great innovator of verse technique.

艾略特的诗歌和评论标志着与19世纪的浪漫主义的决裂。他是英国诗歌现代主义运动的领导人，发展了诗歌创作的技巧。

3.Major Works(主要作品)

Prufrock and Other Observations(1917)《普鲁弗洛克及其他》

The Sacred Wood:Essays on Poetry and Criticism(1920)《圣林》

The Waste Land(1922)《荒原》

Murder in the Cathedral(1935)《大教堂谋杀案》

Tradition and the Individual Talent(1921)《传统与个人才能》

Four Quartets(1935—1942)《四个四重奏》

4.Selected Works(选读作品)

The Waste Land《荒原》

Published in1922,it was a landmark in English poetry,ending the Romantic period and signifying the emergence of Modernism.

It is a long poem of433lines,mainly free verse with occasional snatches of rhyme and with many quoted lines and references and allusions,many of which are

from the Bible.The poem is divided into5parts:“The Burial of the Dead”;“A Game of Chess”;“The Fire Sermon”;“Death by Water”;“What the Thunder Said”.

As is said by Eliot,The Waste Land is inspired by his reading of two extraordinarily influential anthropological texts,Jessie Weston’s From Ritual to Romance and Sir James Frazier’s The Golden Bough.Both of these works focus on the ancient fertility rituals;especially the story of the Fisher King,whose wounded genitals and consequent lack of potency make his country a“waste land”.Eliot uses the Fisher King legend’s wasteland as an appropriate description of the state of modern society.

This poem gave a picture of the spiritual ruins in Europe shortly after the end of World War I,and expressed the disillusionment of a generation of intellectuals. Symbols taken from ancient myths were used in the poem to describe the decay and fragmentation of Western culture.

出版于1922年，《荒原》标志着英国诗歌浪漫主义时期的结束，现代主义的开始。

该诗长达433行，主要是自由体写成，诗中有许多引用和典故，许多来源于《圣经》。该诗分为5部分：《死者葬仪》、《对弈》、《火诫》、《水中之死》、《雷霆的话》。

如艾略特所说，《荒原》的创作灵感来源于两本人类学著作：杰西•温斯顿的《从仪式到传奇》和詹姆斯•弗雷泽的《金枝》。两本书均关注古代生殖仪式，尤其是渔王的故事，他因为生殖器受伤而没有生殖能力，使他的国度一片荒芜。艾略特运用渔王的荒原传说，恰当地描绘了现代社会的状况。

诗歌通篇描写了一战后欧洲社会遭受的精神毁灭，表达了一代知识分子的幻灭感。该诗中从古代神话汲取的这些象征被用于描述西方文化的衰退和破碎。