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spry 敏捷的， 充满活力的

prig 自命不凡者

stanza 诗节

heroic couplet 互相押韵的含有五个抑扬音步的两行诗

blank verse 无韵诗

sonnet 十四行诗

ballad 叙事诗

chorus 叠句

rhyming scheme 押韵格式

annihilate 毁灭

idyll 田园诗

haggle 争论不休

rapture着迷

Review Kit

Alliteration

Repeated consonant sound occurring at the beginnings of words and within words as well. Alliteration is used to create melody, establish mood, call attention to important words, and point out similarities and contrast.

Alliteration in poetry give pleasure. The repeated sounds help to create melody, which is pleasant to the ear. But a good poet seldom uses alliteration simply because he thinks his readers will enjoy the repeated sounds. Alexander Pope, a respected eighteenth-century English poet, said, “ The sound must be an echo to the sense,” and capable poets follow Pope’s rule. How sound can echo sense, or meaning, is demonstrated very clearly in these lines:

The moan of doves in immemorial elms,

And murmuring of innumerable bees.

Here the repeated M sound is an echo of the murmuring of doves and hum of bees.

Alliteration can be used to call attention to important words in a poem, it can point out contrasts:

He was haughty, she was humble,

He was loathed, she was loved.

The sounds produced by alliteration can also affect the mood of a poem:

She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,

That slid into my soul.

In these lines, the repeat S sound help create a calm effect.

Rhyme

The repetition of syllable sound. End words that share a particular sound are called end rhymes. Rhyming words within a line of poetry are called internal rhymes.

When used in a poem, end rhymes set up a definite pattern of sounds, a rhyme scheme. You can chart a rhyme scheme with letters of alphabet by using the same letter for end words that rhyme.

Theme

The underlying meaning of a literary work, a general truth about life and mankind. A theme may be stated or implied.

Tone

The stated or implied attitude of an author toward his subject in a particular literary work. The author reveals his attitude, whether it is one of anger, sadness, amusement, joy, defiance, or some other emotion or may be a combination of several different emotions , such as anger and pity, through his choice of words and details. Sometimes an author will state directly how he feels about a character, a situation or an idea.

Supplementary reading

The Secret Heart

Across the years he could recall

His father one way best of all.

In the stillest hour of night

The boy awakened to a light.

Half in dreams, he saw his sire

With his great hands full of fire.

The man had struck a match to see

If his son slept peacefully.

He held his palms each side the spark

His love had kindled in the dark.

His two hands were curved apart

In the semblance of a heart.

He wore, it seemed to his small son,

A bare heart on his hidden one.

A heart that gave out such a glow

No son awake could bear to know.

It showed a look upon a face

Too tender for the day to trace.

One instant, it lit all about,

And then the secret heart went out.

But it shone long enough for one

To know that hands held up the sun.

Discussion questions

A, Review the section on Poetic Forms (Task 4, Activity 2, Unit 2. ) Does this poem belong to sonnet, blank verse, ballad or couplet?

B. Look at the title. Whose secret heart is the poet writing about?

C. What do the father’s hands look like to the boy? What does this shape represent?

D. What does the father’s night visit mean to the boy?

More on Robert Burns’ poem A Red, Red Rose:

A Red, Red Rose

This is one of Burns’ popular love lyrics and is also a good example of how the poet made use of old Scottish folk poetry and created immortal lines by revising the old folk material. The extreme simplicity of the language and the charming rhythmic beat of the verse express better than anything else the poet’s true sentiments toward his beloved.

The verse is essentially in the metrical form of the ballad stanza, i.e., quatrains with alternate lines of four and three feet and with rimes falling on the second and fourth lines of each stanza.

Video Scripts

1. Jane Austen

Let us start with Jane Austen and her masterpiece Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen (1775-1817), 英国现实主义小说家。她是乡村牧师的女儿，一生住在乡间，对乡村士绅的生活了解很深。平生写过六部小说，多以此为背景，而更以婚姻问题为中心题材。但她的作品并不单调乏味，相反，在她的作品里不仅反映了她所熟悉的那一部分英国社会生活，而且情节结构精密紧凑，人物描写深刻生动，戏剧场面精彩，对话巧妙，加上她那略带嘲讽口气的清丽散文，颇为英国人民所乐读，在我国也颇受欢迎。

Pride and Prejudice 出版于1813年，是Austen最著名的小说，也是英国文学中的名著。书中主要情节是Bennet太太五个女儿的婚事，而以她第二个女儿Elizabeth和Darcy先生的结合为中心，后者的傲慢曾引起前者的偏见，始而似乎相斥，终而相爱。本单元的Warm up练习选了全书的开场。这里Austen以简练的笔法，点出全书主体：女大当嫁，并以戏剧的场面、巧妙的对话描绘了Bennet先生和太太两个人，一个玩世不恭，一个庸俗愚昧，使读者如闻其声，如见其人，而通篇充斥的温厚的讽刺又是全书的特色。这是英国文学中有名的篇章之一。

2. Robert Burns

The second author we shall briefly examine is Robert Burns. Robert Burns (1759-1796), 苏格兰大诗人，农民出身，在田间劳动了大半生，后为生活所逼做税关职员，曾因同情法国革命受上级传讯。一生经济困难，三十七岁时即于贫病交加中死去。他从小爱好吟哦，稍长用苏格兰方言写诗，1786年诗集Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect出版，受到苏格兰文坛的普遍称赏。后又长期在业余从事苏格兰民间歌谣的搜集、整理工作，大量将近失传的民歌靠他的努力得以保存，这是Robert Burns在文学史上的伟大功绩之一。他本人的诗更是开文学史上的新页，最出色的是根据民歌调子写的短诗，其中包括以 “A Red, Red Rose”为代表的大量的爱情诗。

Activity 2中出现的“A Red, Red Rose”是彭斯爱情诗里最有名的一首，作于1794年，发表于1796年。它原来也有几个苏格兰民歌的本子，经过彭斯加工、改写，才去掉它们的芜杂和庸俗，集中它们的精华，成为现在这样的抒情绝唱。它清新，咏美人而无一丝脂粉气；它明白如画，但又有足够的份量与深度，经得起不断玩味、思索；它自然，但又有完整的形式；诗中叠字复句的运用更有无限匠心，尤其第八、九两行—Till a’ the seas gang dry—的重复是意味深长的天才之笔，因为这一重复出现在全诗的正中，划分了而又衔接了两个不同的境界：前八行是你我之间的恋爱，只牵涉两人，情调虽热烈而轻快；后八行则将岩石、海洋和太阳都卷了进来，爱情有了一个宇宙背景，不仅空间扩大，时间上也延长了；最后又回到原来的两人，这时爱情深化了，人生经验也丰富了，于是结句—Tho’ it were ten thousand mile! – 在我们读者面前展开了一条千里万里的尘土和风雪的旅途，但是行人不论怎样遥远，却一定要回来，会回来，因为经过这样上天入地，爱情是经受得起一切考验了。从一朵红红的玫瑰开始，以通到天涯海角去的大路作结，其间有转折，有深化，显示出对于爱情的高度洞察力，唯有民歌才能供给这样深厚的感情和成熟的智慧作为再创造的基础，唯有天才诗人才能从这基础出发，写出如此新鲜、如此深情的不朽诗篇！（王佐良：《英国文学名篇选注》，p. 638）

本单元的Activity 2还选了彭斯的另一首名诗 “Auld Lang Syne”。此诗作于1788年，改写于1793年，发表于1796年。彭斯自称是听了一位老人唱一支古民歌时当场录下而成，并且加了这样的按语：

Light be the turf on the breast of the heaven-inspired Poet who composed this glorious Fragment! There is more of the fire of native genius in it, than in half a dozen of modern English Bacchanalians.

(Letter to Mrs. Dunlop, 7th December, 1788)

（写这一辉煌的断片的天才诗人应为埋骨的青山增色！这诗燃烧着民间天才之火，纵使拿出六七个近代英国的骚人墨客的大作，也无法同它相比。）

这是不易之论。诗里响彻了auld lang syne的回音，这三字无论音义都带给听众一种感喟和怀念。起节突然两问，也是奇笔。第三四节叙儿时嬉乐及后来沧桑，虽用差不多的情景互相呼应，但是第四节的But seas between us braid hae roar’d（如今大海的怒涛将我们隔开）却又深入一层。也正因由这点人生艰辛的沉重之感，才使这首“劝君更进一杯酒”式的叙旧诗更有感染力。后来此诗经过谱曲，成为世界名歌之一。

3. Emily Bronte

The third author we shall have a look at is Emily Bronte. A selection from her masterpiece Wuthering Heights is included in Activity 2, Task 6. With Emily Bronte, two other important names in the history of English literature must also be mentioned. They are Charlotte Bronte and Anne Bronte. Together the three sisters are referred to as the Brontes.

Their works, transcending Victorian conventions, have become beloved classics. The sisters Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855), Emily (Jane) Brontë (1818-1848), and Anne Brontë (1820-1849), and their brother (Patrick) Branwell Brontë (1817-1848), were born in Thornton, Yorkshire. They had had a difficult childhood, but it seems that each of them was full of imagination and started writing at a very early age. Charlotte's discovery of Emily's poems led to the decision to have the sisters' verses published; these appeared, at their own expense, as Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846), each sister using her own initials in these pseudonyms. Two copies were sold.

Each sister then embarked on a novel. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was published first, in 1847; Anne's Agnes Grey and Emily's Wuthering Heights appeared a little later that year. Not very long after that, Emily and Anne died. Only Charlotte lived a little longer.

Since their deaths, new generations of readers have been fascinated by the circumstances of the Brontës' lives, their untimely deaths, and their astonishing achievements. Jane Eyre's popularity has never waned; it is a passionate expression of female issues and concerns. The Brontës' transcendent masterpiece, however, is almost certainly Emily's novel Wuthering Heights, a story of passionate love, in which irreconcilable principles of energy and calm are ultimately harmonized. Emily Brontë was a mystic, as her poetry shows, and Wuthering Heights dramatizes her intuitive apprehension of the nature of life. (Encarta 97 Encyclopedia)

4. Ralph Waldo Emerson

The fourth author we shall have a look at is Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American essayist and poet, a leader of the philosophical movement of transcendentalism. Influenced by such schools of thought as English romanticism, Neoplatonism, and Hindu philosophy, Emerson is noted for his skill in presenting his ideas eloquently and in poetic language.

His most detailed statement of belief was reserved for his first published book, Nature (1836). The volume received little notice, but it has come to be regarded as Emerson's most original and significant work, offering the essence of his philosophy of transcendentalism. This idealist doctrine opposed the popular materialist and Calvinist views of life and at the same time voiced a plea for freedom of the individual from artificial restraints.

In the Warm-up exercises of Unit 2, we find a short poem by Emerson titled “Fable”. It narrates an imagined conversation between the mountain and the squirrel. The mountain, thinking himself very important, looked down upon the squirrel. The squirrel argues his position well: the mountain alone cannot make the whole world. Everybody has his own special talents and his own place in the world. There is no reason for the mountain to feel proud and no reason for the squirrel to feel uneasy.

5. Mark Twain

The fifth author we shall introduce is Mark Twain. In Task 5, Activity 3, we read a selection from his The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In Task 3, Activity 4, we read a selection from his Life on the Mississippi.

Twain, Mark, pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), American writer and humorist, whose best work is characterized by broad, often irreverent humor or biting social satire. Twain's writing is also known for realism of place and language, memorable characters, and hatred of hypocrisy and oppression.

Much of Twain's best work was written in the 1870s and 1880s. Among them, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) celebrates boyhood in a town on the Mississippi River; Life on the Mississippi (1883) combines an autobiographical account of his experiences as a river pilot with a visit to the Mississippi nearly two decades after he left it.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the sequel to Tom Sawyer, is considered Twain's masterpiece. The book is the story of the title character, known as Huck, a boy who flees his father by rafting down the Mississippi River with a runaway slave, Jim. The pair's adventures show Huck (and the reader) the cruelty of which men and women are capable. Another theme of the novel is the conflict between Huck's feelings of friendship with Jim, who is one of the few people he can trust, and his knowledge that he is breaking the laws of the time by helping Jim escape. Huckleberry Finn, which is almost entirely narrated from Huck's point of view, is noted for its authentic language and for its deep commitment to freedom. Huck's adventures also provide the reader with a panorama of American life along the Mississippi before the Civil War. Twain's skill in capturing the rhythms of that life help make the book one of the masterpieces of American literature.

Twain's work was inspired by the unconventional West, and the popularity of his work marked the end of the domination of American literature by New England writers. He is justly renowned as a humorist but was not always appreciated by the writers of his time as anything more than that. Successive generations of writers, however, recognized the role that Twain played in creating a truly American literature. He portrayed uniquely American subjects in a humorous and colloquial, yet poetic, language. His success in creating this plain but evocative language precipitated the end of American reverence for British and European culture and for the more formal language associated with those traditions. His adherence to American themes, settings, and language set him apart from many other novelists of the day and had a powerful effect on such later American writers as Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, both of whom pointed to Twain as an inspiration for their own writing.

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