Defoe is generally considered the first great realistic novelist in English fiction. He based his stories on current events & materials, such as the maps & logs of actual sea voyages, personal memoirs& historical or eyewitness reports.
Perhaps his most popular novel is Robinson Crusoe (1719), an adventure story based partly on the actual experience of a man who had been trapped on a deserted island. A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), sometimes considered his best work, has such a colorful & detailed account of the London plague of 1664 & 1665 that it seems to have been written by an observer on the scene. Defoe's third masterpiece, Moll Flanders (1722), is a lively novel tracing the adventures of a female rogue. Told in the form of "confessions", the narrative includes vivid descriptions of the courts, prisons, & other social institutions of Defoe's era.
4. 领会Characteristics of his works
Defoe was a very good story-teller. He had a gift for organizing minute details in such a vivid way that his stories could be both credible& fascinating. His sentences are sometimes short, crisp & plain, & sometimes long & rambling, which leave on the reader on impression of casual narration. His language is smooth, easy, colloquial & mostly vernacular. There is nothing artificial in his language: it is common English at its best.
5. 应用Selected Reading
An Excerpt from chapter IV of Robinson Crouse.
Robinson Crouse, an adventure story very much in the spirit of the time, is universally considered his masterpiece. In the novel, Defoe traces the growth of Robinson from a na?ve & simple youth into a mature & hardened man, tempered by numerous trials in his eventful life. The realistic presentation of the successful struggle of Robinson single-handedly against the hostile nature proves the best part of the novel. Robinson is here a real hero: a typical eighteenth-century English middle-class man with a great capacity for work, inexhaustible energy, courage, patience & persistence in overcoming obstacles, in struggling against the hostile natural environment. He is the very prototype of the empire builder, the pioneer colonist. In describing Robinson's life on the island, Defoe glorifies human labor &the puritan fortitude, which save Robinson from despair & are a source of pride &happiness .He toils for the sake of subsistence, & get his reward.
VI. Jonathan Swift
1. 一般识记His life
English author, born in Dublin, Ireland, Nov. 30, 1667, and died in Dublin, Oct. 19, 1745.
Swift is generally considered the greatest prose satirist in English literature. Through fables, allegories, & pamphlets he savagely exposed the vices &follies of mankind &championed common sense.
2. 识记Swift's humanist view
Swift was a man of great moral integrity & social charm. A man with bitter life experience, he had a deep hatred for all the rich oppressors & a deep sympathy for all the poor & oppressed. His understanding of human nature is profound. In his opinion, human nature is seriously & permanently flawed. To better human life, enlightenment is needed, but to redress it is very hard. So, in his writings, although he intends not to condemn but to reform & improve human nature &human institutions. There is often an Under-or over tone of helplessness & indignation.
3 领会His style
Swift is a master satirist. His satire is usually masked by an out word gravity &an apparent earnestness which renders his satire all the more powerful.
Swift is one of the greatest masters of English prose. He is almost unsurpassed in the writing of simple, direct, precise prose. He defined a good style as "proper words in proper places." Clear, simple, concrete diction, uncomplicated sentence structure, economy & conciseness of language mark all his writings-essays, poems & novels.
4. 应用Selected reading
An Excerpt from Chapter III, Part I of Gulliver's Travels.
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift's best fictional work, contains four parts, each about one particular voyage during which Gulliver has extraordinary adventures on some remote island after he has met with shipwreck or piracy or some other misfortune. As a whole the book is one of the most effective & devastating criticisms & satires of all aspects in the then English & satires of all aspects in the then English & European life - socially, politically, religiously, philosophically, scientifically, & morally. Its social significance is great & its exploration into human nature profound.
Gulliver's Travels is also an artistic masterpiece. Here we find its author at his best as a master of prose. In structure, the four parts make an organic whole, with each contrived upon an independent structure, & yet complementing the others & contributing to the central concern of study of human nature & life. The first two parts are generally considered smallness in Part I words just as effectively as the exaggerated largeness in Part 2. The similarities between human beings & the Lilliputians & the contrast between the Brobdingnagians & human beings both bear reference to the possibilities of human state. Part 3 furthers the criticism of the western civilization & deals with different malpractices & false illusions about science, philosophy, history & false illusions about science, philosophy, history & even immortality. The lost part, where comparison is made through both similarities &differences, leads the reader to a basic question: What on earth is a human being?
V. Henry Fielding
１. 一般识记：His life & career
English author, born in Sharpham Park, England, April. 22. 1707, and died in Lisbon, Portugal, Oct. & 1754.
During his career as a dramatist, Fielding had attempted a considerable number of forms of plays. Witty comedies of manners or intrigues in the Restoration tradition, farce or ballad operas with political implication, & burlesques & satires that been heavily upon the status quo of England. Of all his plays, the best known are The coffee-House Politician ((1730), The Tragedy of Tragedies (1730), Pasquin (1736) & The Historical Register for the Year 1736(1737).
Fielding started to write novels when he was preparing himself for the Bar. In 1742 appeared his first novel, The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews & of his friend Mr. Abraham Adams, Written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, which was first intended as a burlesque of the dubious morality & false sentimentality of Richardson's Pamela. The next year came The History of Jonathan Wild the Great, a satiric biography that harks back to Fielding's early plays. The novel was followed by The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) & The History of Amelia (1751). The former is a masterpiece on the subject of human nature & the latter the story of the unfortunate life of an idealized woman, a maudlin picture of the social life at the time.
2. 识记: His major works
1) Joseph Andrews
In this novel, Joseph supposedly the young handsome & chaste brother of Richardson's virtuous heroine Pamela, is tempted by his amorous mistress, supposedly aunt of Pamela's husband, Mr. B. Here, instead of being rewarded for his virtue, Joseph is turned out of doors by his mistress. But the burlesque ends here; the book quickly turns into a great novel of the open road, a "comic epic in prose", whose subject is "the true ridiculous" in human nature, as exposed in all its variety as Joseph & the amiable quixotic parson journey homeward through the heart of England. The dominating qualities of the novel are its excellent character-portrayal, timely entrances & exits, robustness of tone &hilarious, hearty humor.
2) The History of Jonathan Wild the Great
It's a satiric biography that harks back to Fielding's early plays. It takes the life of a notorious real-life thief as a theme for demonstrating the petty division between a great rogue & a great politician such as Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister. The ironical praises for the very qualities of the unscrupulous self-aggrandizement of wild point out the way the Prime Minister had achieved his "greatness." The Great Man, properly considered, is no letter than a great gangster.
3. 领会：His achievement in English novel
Fielding has been regarded by some as "Father of the English Novel," for his contribution to the establishment of the form of the modern novel. Of all the eighteenth-century novelists he was the first to set out, both in theory & practice, to write specifically a "comic epic in prose," the first to give the modern novel its structure & style. Before him, the relating of a story in a novel was either in the epistolary form (a series of letters), as in Richardson's Pamela, or the picaresque form (adventurous wanderings) through the mouth of the principal character, as in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, but Fielding adopted " the third-person narration," in which the author becomes the "all-knowing God." He "thinks the thought" of all his characters, so he is able-to present not only their external behaviors but also the internal workings of their minds. In planning his stories, he tries to retain the grand epical form of the classical works but at the same time keeps faithful to his realistic presentation of common life as it is.
4. 领会：Characteristics of his language
His language is easy, unlabored & familiar, but extremely vivid & vigorous. His sentences are always distinguished by logic & rhythm, & his structure carefully planned towards an inevitable ending. His works are also noted for lively, dramatic dialogues & other theatrical devices such as suspense, coincidence & unexpectedness.
5.应用：Selected Reading
An Excerpt from chapter VIII, Book Four of Tom Jones.
Tom Jones, generally considered Fielding's masterpiece, brings its author the name of the "Pose Homer." The panoramic view it provides of the 18th century English country & city life with different places & about 40 characters is unsurpassed. The language is one of clarity & suppleness. And last of all, the plot construction is excellent. Its 18 books of epic form are divided into 3 sections, 6 books each, clearly marked out by the change of scenes: in the country, on the high way & in London. By this, Fielding has indeed achieved his goal of writing a "comic epic in prose."
VI. Samuel Johnson
1. 一般识记：His life & literary career
Samuel Johnson, English writer, critic, & lexicographer, born in Richfield, England, Sept. 18.1709, and died in London. England, Dec, 13,1784.
Samuel Johnson, commonly called Dr. Johnson, was one of the greatest figures of 18th-century English literature. He was an energetic & versatile writer. He had a hand in all the different branches of literary activities. He was a poet, dramatist, prose romancer, biographer, essayist, critic, lexicographer & publicist.
2. 识记：His major works
His major works include poems: "London"(1738), & "The vanity of Human Wishes"(1749); a romance: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759); a tragedy: Irene (1749); several hundred essays which appeared in the two periodicals under his editorship-The Rambler & The Idler; & literary criticism as found in the preface to his edition of Shakespeare & in his comments on 52 poet in Lives of the Poets (1779-1781). As a lexicographer, Johnson distinguished himself as the author of the first English dictionary by an Englishman-A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), a gigantic task which Johnson undertook single-handedly & finished in over seven years.
3. 领会：His neoclassical literary outlook &style
Samuel Johnson was the last great neoclassicist enlightener in the late 18th century. He was very much concerned with the theme of the vanity bear this theme. He tried to warn men against this folly & hoped to care then of it through his writings. In literary creation & criticism, be was rather conservative, openly showing his dislike for some newly rising form of literature &his appreciation for those writings which carried a lot of moralizing & his appreciation for those writings which carried a lot of moralizing & philosophizing. He held that a writer must adhere to universal truth & experience, i.e. Nature; he must please, but he must also instruct; he must not offend against religion or promote immorality; & he must let himself be guided by old principles. Like Pope, he was particularly fond of moralizing & didacticism.
Samuel Johnson's language is characteristically general, often Latinate & polysyllabic. His sentences are long & well structured with parallel words & phrases. However, no matter how complex his sentences are, his idea is always clearly expressed; & though he tends to use "learned words," they are always accurately used Reading his works gives the reader the impression that he is talking with a very learned man.
4. 领会：His contribution to English language-A Dictionary of the English Language
In 1746, a group of booksellers commissioned Johnson to prepare a dictionary. Published in 1755, A dictionary of the English Language was the first real attempt at a systematic & interestingly written survey of English usage & the first dictionary to quote from poets & other writers to illustrate definitions. On the whole, the work showed great scholarship, although it contained humor & reflected a number of Johnson's prejudices.
5. 应用：Selected Reading
To the Right Honorable the Earl of chesterfield
The letter is written in a refined & very polite language, with a bitter undertone of defiance & anger. The seemingly peaceful retrospection, reasoning & questioning express, to the best satiric effect, the author's strong indignation at the lord's fame-fishing & his firm resolution not to be reconciled to the hypocritical lord. It expresses explicitly the author's assertion of his independence, signifying the opening of a new era in the development of literature.
VII. Richard Brinsley Sheridan
1. 一般识记: His dramatic career
Richard B. Sheridan, British dramatist & statesman, born in Dublin, Ireland, Oct. 30, 1751, and died in London, England, July 7, 1816.
Sheridan is ranked among the important comic playwrights of the English drama. His masterpiece. The School for Scandal (1777) is considered one of the finest English comedies of manners. A satire on gossip, hypocrisy, & the corrupting influence of fashionable city life, it is also admired for its ingenious plot construction & witty dissection of character. Sheridan's other outstanding comedy. The Rivals (1775), is famous for the character Mrs. Malaprop, whose misuse of words has made her one of the great comic creation of the English theater. Both plays, in their attack on false sentimentalism & moralizing, represent a rebirth of the type of polished, sophisticated comedy written during the Restoration(1660-1700)
2识记The theme of his plays
Morality is the constant theme of Richard B. Sheridan's plays. He is much concerned with the current moral issues & lashes harshly at the social vices of the day.
3领会: His writing techniques
Sheridan's greatness also lies in his theatrical art. He seems to have inherited from his parents a natural ability &inborn knowledge about the theatre. His plays are the product of a dramatic genius as well as of a well-versed theatrical man. Though his dramatic techniques are largely conventional. They are exploited to the best advantage. His plots are well organized, his characters, either major or miner. Are all sharply drawn, & his manipulation of such devices as disguise, mistaken identity & dramatic irony is masterly. Witty dialogues & neat &decent language also make a characteristic of his plays.
4领会：His major works
His plays, especially The Rivals & The School for scandal, are generally regarded as important links between the masterpieces of Shakespeare & those of Bernard Shaw, & as true classics in English comedy. In The Rivals, a comedy of manners, he is satirizing the traditional practice of the parents to arrange marriages for their children without considering the latter's opinion. The school for Scandal is a sharp satire on the moral degeneracy of the aristocratic-bourgeois society in the 18th century England, on the vicious scandal-mongering among the idle rich, on the reckless life of extravagance & love intrigues in the high society, and above all, on the immorality & hypocrisy behind the mask of honorable living & high-sounding moral principles.
Besides The Rivals & The School for Scandal, Sheridan's other works include: St. Patrick's Day, or the Scheming Lieutenant (1775), a two act farce; The Duenna(1775), a comic opera; The Critic(1779), a burlesque & a satire on sentimental drama; & Pizarro (1799), a tragedy adapted from a German play.
5
