Download 6. John Bunyan (班扬）（1628-1688） As there is one great poet

6. John Bunyan (班扬）
（1628-1688）
As there is one great poet enough to express the Puritan spirit, so there is but one commanding
prose writer, John Bunyan.
(1) Bunyan’s Life:
① born of a tinker’s family in a village near Bedford
② learned to read and write at Bedford grammar school
③ joined the parliamentary army in 1642
④ preached form 1658 to 1660
⑤ kept in jail continually for nearly 12 years
⑥ published The Pilgrim’s Progress in 1678
(2) Bunyan’s works ( four religious allegories in prose)
① The Pilgrim’s Progress (天路历程）(1678)
1) Summary:
Christian the pilgrim, setting out in his search for salvation, is accompanied by Pliable, Mr.
Evangelist, Faithful and Hopeful.
And on the way he meets with many pitfalls and hindrances like The Slough of Despond (失望潭),
Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Apollyon,Vanity Fair (名利场), Judge Hategood, Giant Despair and the
Doubting Castle. After many narrow escapes and numerous tests of his steadfastness, he finally
arrives at the Celestial City.
2) Form: allegory and dream
3) Style: simple but lively and vivid prose style, straightforward narration and commonplace
colorful details
4) Purpose: as a book of religious instructions for simple folk
5) Characteristics: realism and faithful reflection of his age satires on the ruling class (esp.
Vanity Fair)
6) Importance: comparable to Dante’s The Divine Comedy and Spenser’s Farie Queene
② The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680)
1) Form: a dialogue between Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Attentive
2) Characteristic: satire on the evil ways by which the bourgeoisie accumulated wealth
③ The Holy War (1682) reflects the struggle between good and evil in man’s spiritual world.
④ Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners : an interesting account of the author’s own
early life.
Exercise:
1.Milton and Bunyan represented the extreme of English life in the 17th century. One gave us the
only epic since ____, the other gave us the only great ____.
2. Bunyan’s most important work is ____, written in the old-fashioned medieval form of ____ and
____.
3. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, the story begins with a man called ____setting out with a book in his
hand and a great load on his back from the city of ____.
4. Christian has two objects,--- to get rid of his ____, which holds the sins and fears of his life, and
to make his way to the ___.
5. John Bunyan gives a vivid and satirical description of ____ which is the symbol of London at
the time of Restoration.
6. The literature of the middle and later periods of the 17th century cultimated in the poetry of
____, in the prose writing of ____, and also in the plays and literary criticism of ____.
7. John Dryden(1631-1700)
a poet, a dramatist , a literary critic, a translator and a neo-classicist
(1) As a poet: (poet laureate) Political and personal satires in verse and religious poems
“ The Hind and the Panther” (debate Hind triumphs)
(2) As a dramatist, he introduced “heroic play”: portrayed great heroes with violent passions and
used bombastic language.
“ The Conquest of Granada” ( theme: conflict between love and honor”
(3) As a literary critic, “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy”(论戏剧诗） (Form: a dialogue among four
friends)
(4) As a translator, he made translations from various Roman authors like poet Ovid, satirist
Javenal and Persius, Bocassio and Homer and complete works of Virgil.
(5) As a neo-classicist, he was the earliest writer of prominence who advocated and carried out
the literary theories of neo-classicism
Part VII. The 18th Century The Age of Enlightenment in England
Section I. The Historical Background: Political and Ideological
1.Political Background:
(1)“constitutional monarchy”
(2) two major parties: the liberal Whigs: to safeguard popular liberty the conservative Tories: to
leave authority in the royal hands
(3) Influence on literature
2. Ideological Background: the Enlightenment and its effect on English literature
(1) A progressive intellectual movement and the struggle of bourgeoisie against feudalism
(2) Four characteristics of the Enlighteners:
① “education” for the people and the power of reason
② against survivals of feudalism
③ science
④ rejected false religious doctrines
(3) Two groups of Enlighteners
① Moderate group (partial reforms): Pope, Defoe, Addison and Steele, and Richardson
② Radical group ( resolute democratization and the interests of laboring masses) : Swift, Fielding,
Smollet, Sheridan and Goldsmith
(4) Three periods of English literature of the Enlightenment
① First period (1688-1730s): moderate group / neoclassicism/Alexander Pope’s poems , Addison
and Steele’s essays, Defoe and Swift’s first realistic fiction
② Second period ( 1740s-1750s) : realistic novels of Richardson,Fielding and Smollet
③ Third period: sentimentalism (Laurence Sterne) pre-romanticism ( William Blake, Robert
Burns)
Section II. English Literature in Early 18th Century
1. Neo-classicism: Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
(1) Importance: the age of Pope / an Enlightener, a critic and advocator of neo-classicism, a
powerful satirist, a great poet and an influential writer
(2) Major Works (chronological )
① As a critic and advocator of neo-classicism: An Essay on Criticism, a manifesto of English
neo-classicism:
1) emphasis on tradition
2) admiration of classical authors ( Homer, Bocaccio, Ovid, Virgil)
3) conservative (restraint and balance)
4) Nature is the sauce of art
5) heroic couplet
② As a powerful satirist,
1) The Rape of the Lock (1712) a mock epic shows Pope’s achievement in social satire and its
influence on Byron’s Don Juan
2) The Dunciad (1728-43) a satire on the literary enemies of his age.
③ As an Enlightener,
1) Essay on Man (1732-1734), four epistles “ Whatever is, is right” (best known and most
quoted)
2) Moral Essays (1731-35) a didactic poem on practical morality
2. Periodical Literature in Early 18th century England:
(1) The first modern periodical was Daniel Defoe’s The Review (1704)
(2) More influential periodicals were Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s The Tatler and
The Spectator.
3. Daniel Defoe(1661-1731)
Background knowledge (four facts)
① interest with the working classes
② a radical nonconformist or Dissenter
③ a novelist, a satirical poet, a journalist and a pamphleteer
④ prison life
2) Major works
① As a satirist poet,
1) The True-Born Englishman: satire on racial and family pride
“ A true-born English man’s a contradiction, In Speech an irony, in fact a fiction:”
2) A Hymn ( to the Pillory : doggerel verse ridiculing his prosecutors
“ Justice with change of interest learns to bow, And what was merit once is murder now:”
② As a journalist, The Review (1704), father of modern journalism
③ As a novelist,
1) Robinson Crusoe
 Summary:
 Inspiration: Alexander Seilkirk
 Form: the first person singular
 Theme: a man’s struggle against nature the glorification of the bourgeois man
2) Four picaresque novels narrate the exciting but criminal adventures of a hero or heroine.
Captain Singleton
Moll Flanders
Colonel Jack
Roxana
Pattern of picaresque novels: personal history-- low origin--unfortunate childhood-- changes
of life (ups and downs)--final prosperity or death and repentance
3) A historical fiction, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)
Exercise:
1. No sooner were the people in control of the government than they divided into hostile parties:
the liberal ____, and the conservative ____.
2. Another feature of the 18th century was the rapid development of ____.
3. The Enlighteners believed in the power of reason and therefore the 18th century is also called
“the age of ____”.
4. The Enlightenment on the whole was an expression of struggle of the progressive class of ____
against ____.
5. The enlighteners repudiate the false religious doctrines about the ____ of human nature, and
prove that man is born ____ and ____, and if he becomes depraved, it is only due to the influence
of ___ social environment.
6. It is simply for convenience that we study 18th century writings in three main divisions: the
reign of so-called ____, the revival of ___poetry, and the beginnings of the _____.
7. The essays and stories of Addison and Steele devoted not only to social problems, but also to
____ and ____.
8. Pope was a man of extraordinary ____ and extensive ____, and his contemporaries considered
him as the highest ____ in matters of literary art.
9. The image of an enterprising Englishman of the 18th century was created by Daniel Defoe in
his famous novel____.
10. ____ is the leading figure of neo-classicism in the early period of the 18th century.
11. Robinson Crusoe is largely an ___ story, rather than the study of ____ which Defoe probably
intended it to be.
12. In The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, in a vein of grim ___ which recalls Swift’s Modest
Proposal Defoe advocated hanging all dissenting ministers, and sending all member of the free
churches into exile.
13. The full name of Robinson Crusoe is ____.
14. The story of Robinson Crusoe itself is real enough to have come straight from a sailor’s ____.
15. Robinson named ____ to the saved savage.
16. Define the literary term, Picaresque Novels
4. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745): the most powerful satirist
(1) The Battle of the Books: the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns
(2) A Tale of a Tub: attack on all the chief branches of the Christian church and even on
Christian religion itself
(3) The Draper’s Letters: spoke up on behalf of the Irish people on the fundamental issue of
English tyranny and the loss of freedom for the whole Irish nation.
(4) A Modest Proposal: the ironical suggestion
(5) Gulliver’s Travels: a fantasy and a realistic work of fiction– four parts
① The island of Lilliput: similar ridiculous practices
② the giant race, the Brobdingnagians : superior to people in Gulliver’s society in wisdom,
humanity and stature
③ the floating island of Laputa: obtuse scientific researches and philosophical discussions are
ridiculed
④ the Country of Houyhnhnms” (sharpest and bitterest): the English society resembling the
Yahoos and in contrast with the nobility of the Houyhnhnms
Exercise:
1.The 18th century in English literature is an age of _____.
2. Swift is born of English parents in ______.
3. Swift was the most remarkable ____ in the 18th century who criticized the new
bourgeois-aristocratic society of his age without mercy.
4. Jonathan Swift’s masterpiece is ____.
5. Gulliver’s adventures begins with ____, who are so small that Gulliver is a giant among them.
6. The country in Gulliver’s Travels is ____, where horses are the real people and human beings ,
_____ are their filthy servants.
7. In the country of ____, Gulliver is but pygmy.
8. Gulliver’s third voyage is occupied with a visit to the flying island of ____.
9. A Modest Proposal is made to ____ government to relieve the poverty of ____ people.
10. The Tale of a Tub is a satire on the various ____ of the day.
Section III. English Literature in the Middle Decades of the 18th Century (1740s –1750s)
1. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761)
(1) Two novels
① “ Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded”: the first epistolary novel
② “ Clarissa Harlowe”: masterpiece (Lovelace)
(2) Importance: outstanding novelist
① sympathy for women
② detailed psychological study of female characters
③ conflict between the helpless women and the social evils
④ moral hypocrisy of the aristocratic-bourgeois society
⑤ the earliest representative of the sentimental tradition
(3) Limitation: his sentimentality weakens the social protest
2. Henry Fielding (1707-1754): greatest novelist in 18thc
(1) Four novels
① Jonathan Wild:
1) Summary: the notorious criminal of the London underworld who was hanged in 1725
2) Central point: political satire ( Robert Walpole)
② Joseph Andrews a parody of Richardson’s Pamela
1) Summary: (Pamela--- Mr. B) Joseph --- Lady Boody
2) Significance: broad picture of the English society
③ Tom Jones
1) Summary: three divisions of adventures
In the country
on the road
in London
2) Importance:
 a panoramic view of English life in the 18thc
 all kinds of persons
 a comic epic poem in prose
 sympathy for the poor and the oppressed; hatred to the wicked
④ Amelia: experience and knowledge gathered as a magistrate; expose of the English law and
prisons; a good wife in contrast with an unworthy husband (Colonel James, Billy Booth)
Section IV. English Literature in the Last Decades of the 18th Century (1760s –end)
1.Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
(1) Life: unhappy childhood, tyranny of his father, separation from his loved mother, the stamp of
melancholy, “literature of melancholy”.
(2) Masterpiece “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard: acme of graveyard poetry, artistic polish,
quotable lines and democratic sentiments
2. Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
(1) Life:
1) a poor and ugly man
“An ugly man and a poor man is society only for himself, and such society the world lets me enjoy
in great abundance. . . . I may sit down and laugh at the world, and at myself, the most ridiculous
object in it.”
2) a reputation for absurdity
(2) Works: with a gentle irony and a genuine feeling
1) Comedies: “the comedy of manners with wit and fun as the essential elements, “laughing
comedies”
The Good-natured Man
She Stoops to Conquer
2) Poems: The traveler and The Deserted Village
3) Essays: The Citizen of the World
4) Novel: The Vicar of Wakefield
 Character: Dr. Primrose, the hero, a very good man
 Theme or moral: the buffets of wanton fate can not destroy the human spirit.
 Inspiration: his father and his own experience
 Merits: excellent lyrics, charming anecdotes, and the best exposition of Toryism in the
18th-century literature
3. Richard Brinsley Sheridan
(1) Life:
1) Birth place: Dublin, Ireland
2) Parents: actor, theater manager and debater vs. author
3) Identity: a writer of comedy, a shareholder of a theatre, an orator and a MP
(2) Masterpieces: links between Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw
1) The Rivals
 Plot: a young man of aristocratic family, Captain Absolute, making love to a romantically
and sentimentally inclined girl, Lydia Languish by pretending to be a poor, low-ranked
army officer by the name of Ensign Beverley
 Theme: a satire on the sentimental and pseudo-romantic fancies of many young women of
the upper classes of the day
 Features: comedy of humors (幽默喜剧）with the exaggeration of a single trait in each of
the characters for the purpose of satire
e.g. Lydia
Mrs. Malaprop
Bob Acre
2) The Critic or A Tragedy Rehearsed
 called the best farce by Byron
 follows the tradition of dramatic burlesques started by George Villiers
 serves as a satire on the sentimental drama of the day
3) The School for Scandal
 Plot and characters: a series of scandal-mongers including:
Lady Sneerwell, Snake, Mrs. Candor, Crabtree, Sir Benjamin Backbite and Joseph
Surface; major characters, namely, Joseph Surface, Charles Surface, Maria, Sir Peter Teazle,
Oliver Surface
 Theme: a satire on moral degeneracy
on vicious scandal-mongering
on abnormal marital relations
on the life of extravagance and love intrigues
on the immorality and hypocrisy
 Features: witty and sparking dialogue and carefully woven plot
4. William Blake (1757-1827)
(1) General Review
1) Education: only formal education at the Royal Academy of Arts
2) Importance: most independent and most original romantic poet as the poet of pure fancy
(2) Works:
1) Early Lyrical Poems:
 The Poetical Sketches
 The Songs of Innocence
 The Songs of Experience
① Characteristics: penetrating observation of reality a sense of gloom, mystery and
power of evil protest against restrictive moral codes compliments on the spirit of love
② Greatest Poems: London—the whole picture of the miseries
Tiger—simple questions of curiosity and puzzlement, a mixture of the
simple and the childlike with the serious and the thoughtful,a touch of symbolism and mysticism
2) Later Prophetic Books
 Tiriel
 The Book of Thel
 Milton
 Jerusalem
 The Ghost of Abel
 The French Revolution:
① writing at the outbreak and prophesying the eventual triumph,
② an imaginary verse-narrative of historical episode
③ without any complex allegory or symbolism that leads to obscurity
5. Robert Burns (1759-1796) the greatest Scottish Poet
(1) Life
① Birth: peasant’s family, fight with poverty
② Education: 2 and a half years of regular schooling, taught by his father, through reading knew
the old Scottish songs ballads and French
(2) Works: short poems, various themes, different forms in the Scottish dialect
① the theme of love and friendship:
A Red Red Rose
Auld Lang Syne
John Anderson, My Jo
② Scottish life: A Cotter’s Saturday Night
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,An honest man’s the noblest work of God.
The Twa Dogs
a life of physical comfort and pleasure vs. the peace and contentment
③ patriotic Poems
My Heart’s in the Highlands
Scots, We Have”
④ political liberty and social equality
A man’s A man for that
⑤ religion: Adress to the Unco Guid
⑥ nature
(3) Importance
① a many sided-genius: a lyricist, a patriotic poet, a writer of political verse, a satirist
② master of language: simple and musical language of lyrical song playful words and ironic
phrasing
③ a peasant poet: affection and closeness to the people
④ hatred for tyranny and sympathy for the common peasants
Exercise:
1.Henry Fielding is the greatest novelist of the ____ century.
2.Fielding’s first novel , ____ was inspired by the success of Richardson’s novel Pamela.
3.Fielding’s later novels are ______, the story of a rogue ,which suggests Defoe’s narrative ;
_____(1749) his best work; and ______ (1751) , the story of a good wife in contrast with
an unworthy husband.
4.In his works Fielding strongly criticizes ____ in the Contemporary England.
5. Fielding hates that hypocrisy which tries to conceal itself underA mask of ____.
6. The lack of ____ of the age finds the most ample expression in his page.
7.To read Milton’s ____ and Gray’s is to see the beginning and the perfection of that “literature of
melancholy” which largely Occupied English poets for more than a century.
8. The author of the famous Elegy is the most scholarly and well-balanced of all the early ____
poets.
9. Oliver Goldsmith was one of the most ____ of author and made distinguished contributions in
several literary forms.
10. Goldsmith was born in ____ , the son of an ____ clergyman whose geniality he inherited and
whose improvidence he imitated.
11. As ____ ,Goldsmith is among the best of the century.
12. As a ____ he makes the riming couples as natural and simple as his prose.
8. The Deserted Village is a (n )____ story of the family of a clergy-man after they have lost their
money and are living in poverty.
9. Goldsmith’s two comedies , The Good-natured Man and She Stoops to Conquer met with
opposition because the fashion was then for ____ comedy.
10. The two plays by Sheridan and ____ are the only plays of the 18th century that have been
kept alive upon the modem stage.
11. Richard Brinsley Sheridan was, like Goldsmith ,a (n) ___man.
12. His famous comedy , ___ , was written in his twenty-four year.
13. Sheridan’s famous comedy ____, written in 1777, is considered His masterpiece.
14. Define the literary term, comedy of humors.
15. Of all the romantic poets of the 18th century ,Blake is the most independent and the most
____.
16. For greater part of his life Blake was the poet of inspiration alone , following no man’ s
____ , obeying no voice but that which be heard in his own mystic ____.
17. Beyond learning to ____ and ____, he received no education.
18. His only formal education was in ____.
19. At 14, Blake apprenticed for seven years to a well-known____ , James Basire.
20. After three years at Felpham ,Blake moved back to London ,determined to follow his “_____”
though it meant a life of isolation , misunderstanding , and poverty.
21. The underlying theme in Songs of Innocence is the all-pervading presence of divine and
____ , even in trouble and sorrow.
22.In 1790 Blake engraved his principal prose , ____ , in which, with vigorous satire and telling
apologue , he takes up his Revolutionary position.
23. ____ (1794) are in marked contrast with the Songs of Innocence.
24. The brightness of the earlier work gives place to a sense of ____and mystery , and of the
power of ____.
25. In Jerusalem we have expounded Blake ‘s theory of ____ .
26. The greatest of ____ poets is Robert Burns.
27. In 1786. when he was 27 years old ,Burns resolved to abandon the struggle and seek position
in the far-off island of ____.
28.Burns wrote some ____ poems , in which he expressed his deep Love for his motherland ,such
as “My Heart’s in the Highlands”.
29. Burns’ poetry bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of the ____ common people.