期末英国文学复习

The tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
ACT3. Scene1. Hamlet‟s Soliloquy
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether …tis([诗] it is) nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings & arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
“To be or not to be” is the key sentence in this soliloquy. “To be” is to continue to live, or to take action. “Not to be” is to die, or to do nothing but suffering, to end one‟s life by self- destruction. It is a dilemma [di'lemə, ,dai-] of trying to determine the meaning of life and death. Is it nobler to suffer the life passively or to die (seek to end one‟s sufferings) actively? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.
To die: to sleep. It is a metaphor. Hamlet spoke of suicide as an escape. His speech has become proverbial [prəu'və:bjəl] adj. 谚语的；众所周知的；谚语式的as an outpouring 流露of utter world- weariness.
To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.
Why is it “the rub”? What makes us pause? Hamlet thinks that suic ide is a desirable action of escaping, but what will happen after dying? It alludes to暗指hesitation for sleeping/ dying because Hamlet realizes that unknown dreams will make us terrified.
There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?
This speech confirms Hamlet‟s suspicion of afterlife. People wo uld rather suffer life- long miseries than to sleep to undergo the unknown dreams, because comparatively the latter is more fearful.
who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
To be is more difficult and fearful than not to be. The speech indirectly gives Hamlet a reason why he has always been hesitating for taking revenge. Hamlet has to live a suspected life between fact and fiction, language and action. It is his speculation and vulnerability[,vʌlnərə'biliti] n. 易损性；弱点as well.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Hamlet thus concludes that the dread of the afterlife leads to excessive moral sensitivity that makes action impossible.
Main Idea:
It is taken from Shakespeare‟s greatest tragedy Hamlet. In this famous monologue, Hamlet, facing the dilemma of action and mind, is hesitating whether he should revenge for his father, which may bring him death, or he should suffer and hide his hatred for his uncle in his deep heart, which may secure his life.
…Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The theme
The poet desires the irresistible power of the wind to scatter the words he has written about his ideals and causes, one of which was opposition to Britain‟s monarchical government as a form of tyranny. Believing firmly in democracy and individual rights, he supported movements to reform government.
Destroyer and preserver
In the first stanza, the autumn wind scatters dead leaves and seeds on the forest soil where they eventually fertilize the earth and take root as new growth. Both “destroye r and preserver”, the wind ensures the cyclical regularity of the seasons. These themes of regeneration and the interconnectedness of death and life, endings and beginnings, run throughout “Ode to the west wind”.
The personal conflicts explain the imagery of death and decay in the first stanza of the poem. The poem calls for a mythical power to inspire and induce change or "a new Birth". It is about the regenerative powers of Nature to bring forth not only new life but also poetic inspiration. The call for inspiration comes in the form like a prayer, not to a Christian God, but to an unseen spiritual force which has the same omnipresence and power as a god.
Shelley's original drafts of 'Ode' had marked differences from the way readers see it today. The notebooks show that the original last line to the poem ended not in a question but in an assertion, "When Winter comes, Spring lags not far behind!" However, Shelley later changed this statement into a rhetorical question, "O Wind/ If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" By ending with a
question, Shelley draws in the reader to develop their thoughts on the creative process and of political change. The last line shows Shelley's optimism about Spring and regeneration.
Comments on Charles Dickens
CD, one of the greatest critical realism novelists of Victorian era in the 19th century in Britain, gives us a most vivid picture of the everyday life of ordinary people of his time. When presenting a truthful picture of the hardship, borne by the poor, he believed that a hard-working and honest man could yet achieve his little personal happiness under capitalism. He gave satire on the capitalist society.
David Copperfield written in first-person point of view portrays the DC‟s grown-up course. It is based on Dickens‟s early life experiences. Like Dickens, David worked as a child, pasting labels onto bottles. He also became first a law clerk, then a reporter and finally a successful novelist. Through the description of DC, Dickens made a fierce and harsh attack upon the bourgeois society, including the miserable family life, children‟s education and capitalism. In the novel, he critized the moralistic and sadistic oppressiveness of Mr. and Miss Murdstone, portrayed the inhumane child-labor life, the headmaster of a school carried on by sheer cruelty. At the same time he showed deep sympathy for the benevolent, the poor, the depressed and the innocent. In this novel, the good would surpass the evil, the truth would conquer the false and all kind-hearted people would embrace the endowments of life.
Jonathan Swift (1667—1745)
Swift is a Irish satiric writer.
His satire is marked by outward gravity and an apparent earnestness. This makes his satire all the more powerful.
He not only criticizes the evils of the English bourgeoisie but those of other bourgeois countries. Women‟s ignorance also serves as a target of his satire, as can be seen from his short poem The Furniture of a Woman’s Mind.
Swift is one of the greatest masters of English prose. His language is simple, clear and vigorous. He said, "Proper words in proper place, makes the true definition of a style".
Swift expresses democratic ideas in his works. .
Gulliver‟s Travels
The novel is divided into 4 parts: voyage to Lilliput; voyage to Brobdingnag; voyage to Laputa & other places; voyage to Houyhnhnm.
In the first part, through the description of the Lilliputian society and the war (about the correct way to break an egg) with the tiny neighboring island, the author satirizes England‟s rivalry between Whigs and Tories and the religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants.
In the second part, the author made his voyage to Brodingnag. The Brodingnaians are sixty feet tall. They look horrible, but they are good-natured with an enlightened monarch.
In the third part, the author‟s target of satire is the pedantry of scholars. They are indulged in their fanciful ideas and futile experiments. It is a scathing attack on science in the 16th and 17th centuries and reveals Swift‟s contempt and disdain for abstract theory and ideology that is not of practical service to human.
The fourth part focuses on the sharp contrast of Yahoos to Horses. Yahoos look like human beings, but they are capable of all the evils. Horses are ugly, but they will never do harm to other species.
The final voyage reveals Swift‟s ultimate satiric object---man‟s inability to come to terms with his true nature. The Yahoos as a satiric representation of debased humanity, while taking the Houyhnhnms as representatives of Swift‟s ideals of rationality and order.
George Gordon Byron
He is one of the most excellent representatives of English Romanticism and one of the most influential poets of the time.
Content: by giving a description of a beautiful lady through drawing from her pace, manner, eyes, hair, face to her smile and soul, Byron highly praised the lady‟s beauty and expressed his love for this beauty.
Analysis: Byron describes her “walk”first of all by using alliteration and simile to show her beauty. And he compares her “walk” as “cloudless and climes” and “starry skies”, thus this kind of human beauty and natural beauty merge together. The he expresses her beauty of “aspect”and “eyes” by using metaphor and comparison to emphasis her beauty further. He points out the glow of the lady‟s face is nearly perfect. The shades and ray are in simply the right proportion, and the lady possesses an unidentified grace. The when describing the beauty of her “tress” and “face”, he uses vivid words “waves and lightens” to change the abstract beauty into concrete images. Then he describes her beauty from her outside into her inner world. “So soft, so calm yet eloquent”vividly show the tenderness and quietness of the lady. “Eloquent” expresses that although the lady is quiet and tender; every emotions of her are described through the speechless expression. She is not only beautiful, but also true and kind. The merge of both outside beauty and inner beauty personifies the idealistic beauty.。