刘意青《简明英国文学史》课后习题详解(世纪末和现代主义文学 现代主义文学)【圣才出品】

第20章现代主义文学

1.What does Virginia Woolf mean by“materialist”?How do her own novels bear

out her arguments against these“materialists”?

Key:The charge or grievance that Woolf brought against these writers was rendered as simply as a one-word label,that is,materialism.For Woolf,these writers working tamely within the“tyranny”of traditional realism were not “realists”in a strict sense,but rather“materialists”.It is because they are concerned not with the spirit but with the body that they have disappointed us, and left us with the feeling that the sooner English fiction turns its back upon them,as politely as may be,and marches,if only into the desert,the better for its soul.[…]The writers seems constrained,not by his own free will but by some powerful and unscrupulous tyrant who has him in thrall,to provide a plot,to provide comedy,tragedy,love interest,and an air of probability embalming the whole so impeccable that if all his figures were to come to life they would find themselves dressed down to the last button of their coats in the fashion of the hour.

2.What is the subtle relationship between mother and son in Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers?How does it overlap with certain parts of Lawrence’s own life?

Key:Sons and Lovers is an autobiographic novel.Set in the mining communities of English Midlands,where Lawrence himself spent his early life,the novel centers

around the relationship between Paul Morel and his possessive mother.Mrs. Morel was a woman torn between the conflicting demands of her own social and spiritual aspirations and the earthly,working-class existence of her husband, Walter Morel,a collier.What she failed to find in her marriage she overcompensated for in her relationship with her sons,especially with Paul,a boy with artistic gifts.Mrs.Morel believed in her son’s extraordinary talent and encouraged him to pursue his dreams.The overwhelming maternal influence led to Paul’s disassociation from his father and his inability to have satisfactory sexual relationships with his girlfriends.

3.Read the whole poem of Eliot’s“The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock”and explain what is exactly Prufrock’s problem.Is he a singular case,or does his situation bespeak a general modern malaise?

Key:“The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock”portrays a modern world of spiritual sloth and inertia,where man is hopelessly trapped in his own mediocrity and lack of action.The imaginary Prufrock,a typical modern anti-hero,roams the evening street and frequents upper-class salons without the courage and strength to “force the moment to its crisis”and accomplish the single act that can give meaning to his hollow existence.He hesitates,quite like the“Prince Hamlet”with whom he hates to be identified,till“the native hue of resolution/is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought.”More ironically,he is no Prince Hamlet, because he does not have the heroic stature and is rather more like a facetious